“Anyway, a couple months later, I found out I was pregnant and I called to let him know.” She cringed internally when she thought about the hoops she’d had to jump through just to get a message to him. She’d honestly been surprised he called her back at all. Or remembered who she was. “He seemed rattled . . . all but hung up on me. I was scared. Alone. But I thought, well, he doesn’t want anything to do with this and so I’m on my own. Next thing I know, though, his wife—the girlfriend he said he’d broken up with, who he’d married the week before in some secret ceremony—is at my door. She kindly requested that I sign a non-disclosure agreement saying I would never make Royce’s paternity public and if I did so, I would be sued.”
“He sent his wife to confront you?”
Scarlett nodded. Yeah, that had been humiliating. Royce hadn’t even had the balls to come meet with her himself, to look her in the eyes, ask if she was okay. She would have signed the paperwork either way. She was capable of caring for her baby, even if it meant barely making ends meet. She wasn’t going to try to force him to acknowledge their child if he had no interest. Yeah, she would have signed the paperwork either way. She just might not have taken the money if it’d been him who came to see her.
She didn’t tell Camden about that though. She still felt such deep conflict on that subject. He might look at it as selling out her own daughter. And why shouldn’t he? Wasn’t that sort of what she’d done?
He was looking at her in that way again, but now she didn’t welcome it. Now she wanted to hide.
“Is that why you moved?”
“No. Royce and his wife live in New York City. I only met him because he was filming a movie in California. I wasn’t . . . you know . . . running away from him or anything.” Although in a small sense she’d done just that. She refused to even glance at tabloids in the grocery store, she no longer watched shows that included entertainment news, and she rarely went to movies, and if she did, she made sure to show up after the previews had aired.
“Does Haddie know who her father is?”
“No, and now I have to swear you to secrecy, because . . . lawsuits and all. If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
His eyes softened. “Scarlett, your secret’s safe with me.” He watched her for another minute before saying, “I should go.”
“Right. Yeah, of course. I should try to get some sleep anyway before . . .” She nodded back to the sleeping baby bird.
Camden stood, picking up their glasses and placing them next to the sink. Scarlett headed out of the kitchen toward the front foyer and he followed. When she got to the door, he was suddenly right next to her. Her breath stuttered and she looked up at him. He was so close, and though it was dim in the foyer, the flickering light of the gas lamps picked up the lightness of his eyes, mesmerizing her. Her gaze washed over his features, the perfect combination of hard and soft. She took in the rigid set of his jaw, and the fullness of his lower lip, the sharp line of his cheekbone, and the velvet fringe of his lashes. His eyes went to her mouth and for a heartbeat she swore he was going to lean in and kiss her. Her pulse jumped, her ribs tingling. She wanted it, his lips on hers. Instead, he took a small step back, though his gaze didn’t waver. “You won’t be able to let him go,” he said.
“What?” The word was barely breath.
“The nestling. He’s at the stage where he’ll imprint on you if you care for him.”
“Imprint?”
“Consider you his.”
She broke eye contact, her gaze sliding away from his intense stare. “Oh,” she murmured. “Should I—?”
“There’s nothing to do about it. It’s just nature. He can’t control it any more than you can.”
Their gazes tangled. Just nature . . . She’d thought something similar earlier, about the chemistry that sizzled in the air between them. Just nature. Indeed. “So . . . he’ll be mine forever?” she asked.
He paused a beat, his gaze narrowing very slightly. She got the odd sense that something akin to anger stirred within him. They were communicating with each other in a language she didn’t fully recognize, the uttered words barely scratching the surface. “Is anything forever, Scarlett?” His hand covered hers on the doorknob and at the feel of his warm, rough palm, she pulled away, swaying slightly now that she had nothing to hold on to. Apparently, the question was rhetorical because without waiting for her answer, he turned the knob and walked out into the night.