Maybe not calmly. But at least he wasn’t willing to shout and argue in public. Precisely why she’d chosen Drake’s to let him in on her little secret. “Thanks for coming.”
“Oh, are we being polite now?” He shook his head and let his gaze slide to the baby, now happily gumming the corner of a teething biscuit.
Casey knew what he was seeing. A beautiful little girl with a thatch of dark brown curls and big brown eyes. Her cheeks were rosy from the nap she’d taken on the drive to the diner and her smile was wide and delighted with the world.
But Jackson didn’t look so delighted. He looked more like he’d been hit over the head with a two-by-four. Casey could hardly blame him for being shocked. Her daughter was the best thing that had ever happened to Casey. But Jackson was being slapped with a reality that she had been living with for nearly two years.
It was a lot to take in.
Especially for someone like him.
According to her very detailed research into his background, he was a womanizer. Hence her seduction routine at the bar a week ago. She’d known that he’d respond to her if she showed the slightest interest. It was what he did. He was a man who couldn’t make a commitment that lasted more than a few weeks. He was dedicated to his own pleasure and living his life unencumbered.
Not exactly prime father material.
When his gaze shifted back to hers, Casey stiffened. Accusation and reproach shone in his eyes and were very hard to miss.
“Since we’re being so very civil, you want to explain to me just what exactly is going on here?”
“That’s why I called you. To explain.”
“Start with how you got my cell number,” he said and nodded when a waitress approached with a pot of coffee. She deftly turned the cup over on its saucer, poured the coffee, then drifted away again at his dismissive glance.
“I called your office at the King airfield,” she said once they were alone again. “The recording on the answering machine listed your cell number for emergencies. I thought this qualified.”
He blew out a breath, took a sip of his coffee, then set the cup down gingerly, as if he didn’t trust himself not to throw it against a wall. “All right. Now, how about you explain the rest. Starting with your full name.”
“Casey Davis.”
“Where you from?”
“I live just outside Sacramento. A little town called Darby.”
He nodded. “Okay. Now, about…” He glanced at the baby again.
Casey inhaled deeply, hoping to settle the jangle of nerves rattling around inside her. She’d known this was going to be hard. She just hadn’t expected to feel almost mute when the time came for her to speak.
Clearing her throat, she told herself to just say it. So she reached over and smoothed her palm over the back of her daughter’s head. “This is Mia. She’s almost nine months old—” she paused to look deeply into his eyes “—and she’s your daughter.”
“I don’t have children.” His eyes narrowed until they were nothing more than slits with dark brown daggers shining through. After several long seconds ticked past, he finally said, “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but it won’t work. I’ve never seen you before a week ago.”
“I know—”
He laughed shortly but there was no humor in the sound. The harsh overhead lights spilled down over him and weirdly cast his features more into shadow than illuminating them. “I came here wanting to find out who you were, why you slipped out on me and to find out if you were trying to set me up by getting pregnant deliberately…turns out you were way ahead of me.”
Casey straightened up, insulted to the bone. She was trying to do the right thing and he thought she’d—“I was doing no such thing.”
“You purposely set out to seduce me that night.”
“It wasn’t difficult,” she said reminding him easily that she hadn’t exactly kidnapped him, tied him to the bed and had her wicked way with him. But at the first memory of that night, her body stirred despite her best efforts.
“Not the point.” He waved one hand as if dismissing that argument. “You had an agenda and saw it through. What I want to know, iswhy? ”
Picking up a napkin, she leaned over, wiped Mia’s mouth despite her daughter’s efforts to pull free. Then Casey looked at Jackson again. “I went there to get a sample of your DNA.”
He laughed again. Louder. Harsher. “You went a hell of a long way to collect it!”
She flushed and she knew it. She could feel heat staining her cheeks and hated the fact that she’d never been able to keep from doing that when she was embarrassed. Glancing around the diner, she made sure the other customers weren’t paying them the slightest bit of attention before she said in a vicious whisper, “I took strands of yourhair. Remember when you kissed me—”
“You kissedme as I remember it,” he interrupted.
That’s right. She had. All part of the plan that had taken a seriously wrong turn almost instantly after her mouth had touched his. And there was the uncomfortable twist and burn inside her. “Fine. I kissed you. Remember I pulled on your hair?”
“Ah yes,” he said, leaning back into the seat and folding his arms over his chest. “You were feelingwild, you said.”
“Yes, well.” She shifted in her seat and wished she could get up and move around. She’d always thought better when she was walking. But she couldn’t very well spring out of the booth while Mia was there, strapped into a booster seat. “I needed a follicle of your hair so I could have it tested.”
“Why not simply ask?”
Now she laughed. “Sure. I’m going to go up to a strange man and ask for a sample of his DNA.”
“Instead, you went up to a strange man and kissed him?”
Frowning, she admitted, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And what about the rest of it?” he asked. “Was that part of your plan, too? Spend the night with me to what? Trap me into something somehow? Get me so wound up that neither one of us was considering any kind of protection?”
She cringed a little. She hadn’t even thought of protection that night. The way she remembered it, she’d been so hot, so needy, so completely over the edge with a kind of desire she’d never known before, the thought of condoms hadn’t even entered her head. And just how stupid wasthat?