Her mother looked distractedly at Quin, not understanding the strict parameters attached to his idea of a relationship. “Why? It’s not fair!” she cried. “You didn’t want my daughter enough to marry her when it counted.”
“At the time, I didn’t know how much it counted, Mrs. Ellis,” he replied in a tone of quiet gravity.
Didn’t want to know, Nicole thought.
“You carry no blame for anything to do with me and Zoe, Mum,” she quickly asserted. “You’ve been wonderfully supportive all along. So please don’t fret over this. It’s up to me to sort it out with Quin. If you’ll just leave us alone…”
Her mother heaved a ragged sigh, rubbed her forehead in agitation, then picked up her mug of hot chocolate and moved to leave the kitchen, looking totally dispirited.
Quin spoke. “This probably won’t mean much to you, Mrs. Ellis, but I’m sorry I wasn’t here for Nicole and Zoe, and I thank you very sincerely for supporting them throughout my absence.”
She stopped beside him, looked sharply into his eyes, shook her head as though the situation was completely beyond her, then walked off without another word, heading for her bedroom.
Nicole moved briskly to the refrigerator, intending to get out the milk to make a hot comfort drink for herself and gain some fighting distance from Quin. When her mother’s bedroom door closed loudly enough to punctuate their privacy in the kitchen she turned on him, spitting mad.
“Sorry? You aren’t sorry about one damned thing, Quin! Nothing was ever going to stop you from doing what you wanted. Not back then. And not now, either. You just don’t care how what you want affects other people.”
He was still just inside the kitchen, his immobility radiating the air of a powerful animal, watching and waiting for the moment to move into attack. “I would have made adjustments if you’d told me you were pregnant, Nicole,” he stated unequivocally, his eyes burning that truth into hers.
She glared her own truth straight back at him. “You didn’t make any for me, Quin.”
“I did, actually.” His mouth twisted with irony. “It cost me quite a bit to set up an apartment so we could live together.”
“Money!” she retorted with blistering scorn.
“Money that wouldn’t have been spent, but for you.”
“Because you wanted me.”
“And I would have wanted our daughter, too,” he returned as quick as a whip.
“Well, I chose for us not to be your possessions, Quin,” she flashed back at him. “That was all I was to you, and all our daughter would have been, too. Possessions you had to pay for.”
In a fury of resentment she jerked the refrigerator door open, removed the bottle of milk, slammed the door shut, turned to the sink, got a mug from the overhead cupboard and started spooning in chocolate powder from the tin her mother had left on the bench. Her hands were shaking.
“I’m sorry I made you feel that.”
She gritted her teeth. No way would she let the soft tone of his apology get to her. Empty words. All too easy to say when the past was the distant past. She willed her hands to be steady for pouring the milk over the chocolate powder.
“I thought we were two single adults, making careers for ourselves, and lucky enough to have something good and mutual going,” he added ruefully, then had the hide to say, “I was as much your possession as you were mine, Nicole.”
She swung around to shoot him down. “Only when we shared a bed! Out of it you had your own agenda, which possessed you far more strongly than I ever did.” Her eyes stabbed any possible protest from him. “Don’t deny it, Quin. I lived with how it was for you. And how it was for me. I know.”
His face visibly tightened at the hit.
He said nothing.
She turned back to shove the mug into the microwave and set the timer. The seconds on the digital clock started ticking down. It was a terribly slow countdown compared to the galloping beat of her heart, but she watched it obsessively, willing time away because she wasn’t ready to face what Quin’s knowledge of Zoe might mean to their lives.
“If you don’t want me in your life, Nicole,” he said slowly, quietly, “why did you risk coming to me that night in The Havana Club?”
“To make you pay,” she blurted out.
“Pay for what? I never did anything to you that you didn’t want.”
“It was what you didn’t do,” she muttered fiercely, then braced herself to swing around and directly argue her case. “I used the sex, which was all you wanted me for, to pay for this roof over our heads, to pay for the dance school to keep going so it could support us. So you’ve done your paternal duty, Quin. You don’t have to put yourself out to be a father to Zoe. We can manage just fine without you.”
The timer on the microwave beeped.
Quin’s gaze was locked on hers and she could feel him gearing up to use every atom of power he had to fight the position she’d just taken. It had better not be just pride driving him, she thought savagely. Zoe would be expecting more than that from her new daddy.
“I guess I deserve that,” he said, finally acknowledging he had put limitations on their relationship in the past.
Unaccountably a rush of tears blurred her eyes. Rather than let him see them, she swiftly turned to the microwave oven, taking out the mug of steaming hot chocolate and nursing it in her trembling hands.
“But the punishment for my crimes of omission stops here, Nicole.” The ruthless determination in his voice battered her frayed defences. “I didn’t come tonight to claim what you owe me. I came to prove that being with you was more important than anything else. To show that I didn’t want to miss any minute that you would grant me.” Then more softly, “To make it different for you this time.”
She shook her head, desperately trying to ignore the painful strike at her heart. “I don’t believe you’ve changed, Quin.”
“The circumstances have changed.”
A bubble of hysteria burst through her brain with the recognition of how drastically they had changed. “Yes, you’ve found out you have a daughter. And you’ve put your foot into fatherhood before thinking of what that might mean to a little girl who doesn’t know any better than to believe you.”
“I won’t give her any reason not to believe me,” he blasted back without a moment’s hesitation.
Anger spurted through her, stiffening her spine and putting a stop to her shakiness. She banged the mug down on the sink and spun to face him, flinging out a mocking gesture as she cried, “Oh sure! Daddy will be on hand whenever Zoe wants him, not just when Daddy finds it convenient to him.”