The bellboy left to do her bidding and almost simultaneously a waiter arrived to clean up the accident.
‘You should check that the cut is minor, Nick,’ Tess advised, her gaze skating away from his to fix on the handkerchief, now bound around the injury.
She was nervous, he realised, frightened of dealing with a man who was so out of control he broke glasses and didn’t even know it. She was sitting back on the booth seat, hands on her lap, keeping still, trying to look cool, calm and collected, but the scarlet staining her cheekbones was evidence enough of a highly heated inner agitation—a cauldron of worries boiling behind her smooth brow.
Nick checked the wound to appease any more concern. ‘Needs a Band-Aid. Nothing more,’ he said dismissively, then sat back himself while the clean-up waiter did his job. Adrenaline was pumping aggression through his entire body. The hands in his lap were clenched ready to fight, wanting to fight. But reason kept telling him it was Enrique he wanted to fight, not Tess.
Tess was his solution, not his problem.
He had to deal fairly with her, kindly with her, win her compliance to what he needed, and above all, he needed to prove his bed-hopping Brazilian father was wrong about him. Deeply, essentially wrong!
‘Another drink, sir?’
‘No. Thank you.’
This was a time to be stone-cold sober, to have all his wits about him, channelling them into treading gently, because he had no legal rights here. Tess had his child. Tess had the Steele fortune behind her to fight any claim he might make on their son should he cross what she decided was a reasonable line. The power was all hers right now.
He had to get her to marry him.
That was absolutely paramount.
It wasn’t about getting to his brothers any more.
It was about getting it right for his own son!
The clean-up waiter left.
‘So…’ Nick opened up as calmly as he could. ‘…you met me tonight to tell me this, Tess?’
She shook her head. ‘More to test the waters, find out why you suddenly wanted to meet me. It made me wonder if you had somehow discovered…’ A heavy sigh acknowledged her mistake in blabbing what could still have been kept hidden.
Nick could not soften the razor edge of his voice as he cut to the core of the situation. ‘Why didn’t you tell me when you first found out you were going to have my child, Tess?’
The question lay between them, loaded with currents of accusation and criticism. He saw Tess bristling, calming herself, her vivid blue eyes going hot and cold. It was impossible for him to retract the question, impossible for her to evade answering it.
‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ she finally stated—flat, unequivocal, bluntly honest.
‘Why not?’ he bored in again.
She shrugged, obviously reluctant to give him any further reply. Her lashes lowered to half-mast. She lifted her hands from her lap and wrapped them around her drink, probably feeling the need for a slug of brandy.
Nick frowned over her possible motives as she raised the glass to her lips. ‘Did you think I’d deny the baby could be mine?’
She sipped, set the glass down, concentrated on tipping the cinnamon pattern on top of the creamy drink from side to side. ‘You were using condoms that night,’ she reminded him.
‘They’re not one hundred percent safe, Tess, and in actual fact, one broke. That’s why I asked if you were on the pill.’
Her lashes lifted, her eyes shooting a blue blaze of self-derision at him. ‘I lied.’
‘You lied?’
‘Yes. I didn’t know you were worried about a condom breaking. If you’d told me I could have taken a morning-after pill.’
‘But why lie about it?’
‘Because I didn’t want you to know I hadn’t been with anyone for so long that taking a contraceptive pill was irrelevant to my life,’ she threw at him with an air of exasperation. ‘You’d already cast me as an ice maiden, which I wasn’t. It just seemed more…normal…if I said I was on the pill.’ She rolled her eyes mockingly. ‘I’m sure every other woman you’ve been with has taken care of such things. I just wasn’t prepared for you. Okay?’
‘And that’s why you didn’t want to tell me we’d made a baby?’ he pressed.
Her chin came up belligerently this time, eyes flashing daggers that had clearly wounded her. ‘It was a one night stand for you, remember? You didn’t want any consequences flowing from it.’
‘I just didn’t want sex messing up our business relationship,’ he hastily excused, hearing the passion of deeply hurt feelings building in her voice, not wanting to contribute more to them, yet unable not to press his point. ‘Having a baby is something else, Tess.’
Emotion exploded from her. ‘Yes, having a baby is the most essential part of being a woman and you rejected me as a woman, Nick. You rejected that part of me that made our baby, so why would I share him with you?’
Why, indeed?
Rejection hurt. He knew how badly it hurt. He hadn’t realised Tess had felt that way over what he’d tried to write off as a brilliant sexual experience—one worth having by both of them.
‘By the time I discovered I was pregnant…’ she plunged on, her volatile tone gathering an acid note, ‘…you’d already plunged into an affair with another woman—an affair that went on for months—beyond the time when I dropped out of your life on the business level.’
The picture was very clear to him now. Shamingly clear. He’d run from getting into a far too heavy involvement with Tess and sought a distraction from the lure of it, caring only about what he felt, what he wanted. He’d been every bit as self-centred as his mother, choosing to be a kingpin in the battle of the sexes, not a smitten courtier.
King Rat.
That’s how Tess must have seen him.
‘I’m sorry.’ The apology spilled off his tongue, sincerely felt yet sounding too facile even to his ears.
What else could he say?
He gestured an appeal for forgiveness, realising that he’d put her in an impossible position. Pride alone would have dictated that no intimate bond be established with him. But for the letter from Brazil and his decision to use a marriage with Tess to get to his half-brothers, his son would have been brought up without knowing a father. Which proved Enrique more right than Nick cared to acknowledge, yet acknowledge it he must.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, even more anguished by having done so much wrong to Tess whom he truly liked and wanted to keep in his life.