“Goodbye,” he said.
“Bye, Mr. Harvey!” Corinne called after him. He shook his head, to think that his own child called him mister.
He got dressed, called his lawyer and instructed him to file an injunction preventing his mother from acting on his behalf in any legal proceeding. Then he told the man to accelerate the bid for visitation rights. His mother called and he let it go to voice mail. Then he called his brother, Ryan.
“What?” his brother said.
“You get your phone manners from our mother,” Harvey said.
“Whatever. Why’d you call? I’m at a club.”
“I can hear that. Look I need you to do something really stupid and public, get Mom off my ass for about a week. She’s on the warpath, and I need you to do me a solid favor.”
“I don’t know. Mom’s a total pain in the ass. Why would I want to do that?”
“Because I bailed you out in Montenegro and she’s none the wiser.”
“Blackmail? My perfect little brother? You’re a charmer, not a blackmailer. I never would have believed it from you. It’s about fucking time. I’ll do it.”
Harvey hung up and wondered why his life had fallen apart this way. He could be on a yacht with the delectable Catherine, her perfect breasts straining against her bikini top, but, no. He was begging favors from his evil twin to protect a woman who hid his children from him. It was insane. It was so far from what he wanted his life to be.
Chapter 13
Bella let the kids swim for a few minutes before ushering them to the locker room to dry off. As she dressed the skinny, shivering children, she thought of what he’d said about his mother, and about not doing things the way Bella wanted them done. It was scary as hell. She dressed her kids, took them home to get Corinne ready for the birthday party, and all the while she imagined getting some kind of court order to surrender them to Harvey.
It was with a heavy heart that she let Maria take Corinne to the birthday party and Caden to a movie so she could email her lawyer with the latest developments. It was painful to be separated from her children even for so short a time, and she hated laying bare all her actions for an attorney, but it would be necessary to protect the twins.
She spoke with the lawyer on the phone as well and answered his questions, emailed him a copy of the diary she’d kept recording all interactions with Harvey and the children as well as any attempts he made to contact them. The lawyer was encouraged that Harvey had complained more than he’d actually tried to see or take the twins, and said it was probably just a threat he was making rather than a serious bid for custody.
Even so, she savored her time with them, cuddling with them and reading extra stories at bedtime. By Monday morning she was a nervous wreck, barely able to face going to work because he would be there and because the children would be out of her sight. It would only take a matter of minutes for her to be served with papers and the children swooped up by Harvey or his mother, taken someplace she couldn’t get to them. Her hands trembling, she kissed them goodbye and went to the office. She did her job, avoided Harvey, and kept her head down. She was frightened and angry. It was like that all week.
Every night, she clutched her children in her arms and kissed them, and as they talked about their day at school, she looked at their precious faces, their blue eyes and pale hair, and ached at the thought of losing them. It was agony to consider spending days without them, missing out on the funny things they said, missing the chance to comfort after a scraped knee or hurt feelings.
After they were in bed, she’d pace, checking on them dozens of times, kissing their foreheads, picking up a fallen stuffed toy, tucking them in one more time. It was torture to anticipate this battle. She resorted to Googling Harvey and saw pictures of his brother instead—Ryan Carlson spotted table-dancing with a transsexual burlesque performer in the Netherlands. Ryan Carlson photographed dropping his pants in queue at an exclusive Amsterdam club. It seemed his brother had a spate of headline-snagging antics suddenly. She hoped that tabloid crap was keeping the mother too busy to make a grab for the twins.
Chapter 14
After days of waiting for his next move, she stalked into his office and confronted him. Tired of the anticipation and fear, Bella barged in before Greta could even buzz the intercom. Harvey was pacing the room, talking into his cell. When he saw her, he hung up the phone.
“What?” he said shortly.
“What the hell are you doing? Are you going after custody? Is your mother going to make a grab for my kids?”
“It’s interesting to me that you feel entitled to private legal information after withholding some crucial information for six years,” he said.
“You’re torturing me. Fine. I get it. But don’t use the twins as pawns in your revenge game. All you have to do is lay your cards on the table, and we’ll figure out how to handle this. I don’t want drama and acrimony around the kids. Please, Harvey!” She said, her desperation, her pleading plain in her voice.
“It isn’t a game, and it isn’t about revenge. It’s about claiming what’s mine. You’ll receive a court order for DNA testing to cement putative paternity within the week. My financial manager is drawing up paperwork on a trust for the children and my attorneys will be in touch with a preliminary custody agreement soon.”
“Are you going to serve me with a court order demanding that I surrender the children?”
“If I were, why would I tell you? So you could run off and hide with them again? I know they exist now. You’ll never succeed in keeping me from them again.”
“Just tell me!”
“No. I won’t satisfy your curiosity and reassure you that everything is fine. Because nothing could be further from fine. Now, if you’ll do me the courtesy of getting the hell out of my office, I do have a company to run.”
“No, I won’t do you the courtesy because I have a family to take care of and your inaction is holding us effectively hostage. State your intentions. If you just want visitation, that’s fine. If you think they need a trust fund, I’m sure it’ll help with college. Otherwise, we don’t need money, and we don’t need any major interference with their routine. Saturdays, for example, are usually pretty full, but I think Sunday afternoons would be convenient for visiting you. We can set up play dates, or you can brainstorm some activities you’d like to do with us.”