Chapter 45

Colten and I had sat down yesterday and talked about my conversation with Kaitlin. Surprisingly, the kid had handled it pretty well. He was confused and frustrated by her sudden appearance, sure, but he hadn’t spun out because of it.

Ultimately, he’d simply made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with her and that he was afraid she was going to come between the two of us. As soon as I’d assured him I wouldn’t let that happen, he’d seemed much happier.

Now, however, it was Monday afternoon and the workday would be coming to an end soon. I’d put in a call earlier to a colleague of mine who specialized in marital law, and while I’d been worried the guy wouldn’t get back to me today, I grabbed my phone as soon as it rang.

“Hey, Brandon. Thanks for calling me back.”

“Yeah, of course, man. What’s up?”

“Can you hang on a sec?” I glanced at Colten lounging on the sofa and showed him that I’d be a minute. Then I got up and strode to the study. Once I was there, I shut the door behind me just in case. “So, uh, I need your advice about something. I’m pretty sure I know what my legal position is, but it was recently pointed out to me that I don’t work in your field.”

He chuckled. “It’s always best to get an outside opinion on personal matters anyway. I guess I just didn’t realize that you were married.”

“I’m not,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about a messy divorce. This is actually about my son and his mother, who has shown up after a decade of not having any contact with us.”

Brandon scoffed. “Seriously? She wants custody after not seeing the kid for that long?”

“I don’t know,” I mused out loud. “Frankly, I’m not actually sure what she’s after. I asked her point blank, but she was squirrely about it. Didn’t give me a straight answer. It might have something to do with an inheritance I just received, though.”

“Ah,” he said knowingly. “Yeah, the past tends to come back to haunt people once there’s a nice chunk of change on the table. You said you hadn’t had any contact with her for a decade before she showed up?”

“Yep. She walked out on our son when he was just a baby. Left him in his crib while I was at work with a note saying that she couldn’t do it. He’s ten now and Saturday night was the first time she’s seen him since.”

“Shit.” He let out a low whistle. “Has she tried to contact either him or you in that time? Sent birthday cards or Christmas presents?”

“No, no, and no,” I said. “To the best of my knowledge, she’s never tried to reach out. I still have the same number and Colten goes to the school we’ve been wanting to send him to since he was born. They haven’t said anything about anyone trying to see him there or to get any information about him and she sure as hell hasn’t called me.”

“Let me get this straight,” he said after a brief pause. “She abandoned your son with you as a baby and disappeared until Saturday?”

“That’s about it.”

He chuckled. “You don’t have to worry about losing a custody battle, Payne. She doesn’t have a case and I’m so confident about it that I’ll put my money where my mouth is. If it comes down to it and we lose, you won’t have to pay my fees.”

Relief slammed into me, so powerful that I had to sit down until it passed. “That’s what I thought.”

“Look, I’m not saying she’s not going to try, but we can’t stop her if that’s what she’s going to do. She has every right to approach the court, but she’d have to hire the best lawyers to even have a shot at unsupervised visitation at this point. Let alone custody.”

“As far as I know, she simply won’t be able to afford an army of lawyers.” She’d said she was doing well for herself, but I knew what these guys charged per hour, and I also knew there was no way she’d be able to pay for as much of their time as it would take to try and build a case for her.

“If she does take you to court, give me a call,” he said easily. “It would be pretty cut and dry to prove that her intention is not to reunite her family or whatever, but to try to stake some kind of claim on your inheritance. Why else would she show up now?”

“My thoughts exactly,” I murmured. “Thanks, Brandon. I owe you one.”

“No worries, man,” he said. “I might have to take you up on owing me one soon, though. I’ve got a client who’s in a bit of trouble with the law. I’m trying to sort it out for him, but if the deal I’m negotiating as part of the divorce falls through, I’ll let you know.”

“Any time,” I said. “Thanks again.”

We hung up and I stayed where I was for a long moment, just sitting behind Lucille’s old desk staring at the grandfather clock in the corner. It was good news that Brandon didn’t think she had a case either. At least it meant that my understanding of marital law wasn’t that rusty.

On the other hand, if she started by asking for visitation and agreed for it to be supervised at first, then she still had a shot at getting back into his life. My life. I’d fight it tooth and nail, but it wasn’t impossible she’d be granted the right to see him.

At the same time, that would raise questions of her having to pay child support, though. It wouldn’t take much for a judge to see that I didn’t need the money, but it was an argument I could make that might deter her.

Sighing heavily, I braced myself for the next conversation I’d have to have with Colten and got up, checking the time before I left. Since she’d been staying here, Jewel hadn’t cleaned the Manor despite it being Monday. She’d been keeping it sparkling since she’d moved in—even though I’d told her it wasn’t necessary—and as a result, she and Brittany had gone to do some of their other Monday clients’ homes.

After I left the study, I found Colten outside in the sun reading his chess book. I strode out to join him, taking a seat on the lounger beside his.

He kept his finger in the book but shut it, bringing his cautious gaze to mine. “What is it? What happened?”

“That was my friend on the phone,” I explained. “He’s a lawyer too, but he works with divorces and custody issues. That kind of thing.”

Colten’s eyes widened, his jaw tightening as he stared at me. “Custody issues?”

I reached out and squeezed his knee, giving him a reassuring smile. “I spoke to him just in case Kaitlin decides to take me to court.”

He got panicky then, his legs starting to bounce as he looked around like a caged hyena. “A court case? About me? Do you think she’s going to take you to court to get custody? Can she do that? Can she take me from you?”

Before I could even respond, he kept rambling, his hands trembling as he lifted them to his hair. “All the kids I know who have divorced parents stay with their mothers. I don’t know about many who live with their dads, but my mom is a stranger to me. I don’t want to live with her, Daddy. I don’t want to go to court either. I just want her gone again.”

So do I, bud.Getting up, I moved onto his lounger and wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight so he would know I wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m not going to let her get custody, kiddo. My friend doesn’t think she has a case and neither do I. I wanted to let you know what was going on, but I don’t want you to worry about it.”

Just then, Jewel walked out after her long workday. She was wearing bleach-stained clothes and her hair was up in a messy bun with damp tendrils of hair that had fallen out of it framing her face. I still hated knowing she’d been scrubbing other people’s toilets and floors all day, but I’d never been as happy to see someone as I was to see her right then.

It was clear she’d come straight back here after work, and as soon as Colten pulled away from me and saw her, he broke down. Like instantly.

Tears welled in his eyes and suddenly spilled over. His shoulders shook as he covered his face in his hands. She glanced at me with questions in her eyes, but I shook my head as she rushed over to him, sat down on his other side, and gathered him up in her arms.

Hugging him fiercely, she kissed his cheek and leaned back just a little, brushing his hair off his forehead. “What is it, Colt? What happened? What’s wrong?”

I felt her compassion coming off her in waves. Felt her worry about a child she hadn’t even known all that long, yet she was there for him, holding him like he was her own and waiting until he was ready to talk after asking him what was the matter.

In all the time I’d been a father, I’d never seen or felt anything like this. Usually, the only people who were there for him were Walter and me, but this was a woman, and judging by how he’d broken down as soon as he’d seen her, it was different.

Shit, I thought as I watched her holding him, hugging him tight and stroking his hair. She rested her head on top of his, her eyes closed. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, murmuring for him to breathe with her. I just fell in love right here on the spot.

It was massively inconvenient and it would be very much impossible to carry on an actual relationship with her, but things had been inching that way for a while now. This moment, however, her genuine compassion for my son and the fact that her heart was so big that she’d come to him without question had pushed me over the edge.

I was in love with Jewel Pendleton. She was the woman I’d been waiting for all my life without even knowing it. She was our missing piece. The one we needed to make our family complete.

But she lived and worked over four hundred miles away from us. She loved her town and all the people in it. Her life was here. Ours wasn’t.

Fuck. How the hell did I let it get this far?