Unwrapping the Playboy / The Playboy's Gift: Unwrapping the Playboy

“Mrs. Dalton called and asked if she could see Jonathan. She wanted me to bring him to the house so that she could meet him.”

He knew the answer before he asked, but he asked anyway. “And did you?”

Hindsight was completely useless—because there was no going back to rectify things. “In light of what she’d just been through, I thought turning her down would have been unnecessarily cruel.”

Lilli McCall really was too good to be true, Kullen thought. Careful, she ran out on you once—and obviously straight into the arms of her rich lover. Being played for a fool once is more than enough.

“So you went to see her with Jonathan,” he concluded for her.

Lilli suppressed the sigh that rose to her lips. Sighing wasn’t going to help, either. She had to do something, get aggressive and fight this woman on her own terms. “So I went with Jonathan.”

He’d started making notes to keep the events in their proper chronology. “And then what?”

“At first she seemed very nice. Her eyes literally lit up when she saw Jonathan. She said it was uncanny how much he looked like her own son at that age. That seeing Jonathan took her back, made her remember the past.” Lilli’s mouth hardened. “And then she talked about what she could do for Jonathan, how different his life would be if he lived with her. She started making plans as if I wasn’t even standing in the room. That’s when I panicked,” she confessed.

He didn’t blame her. Elizabeth Dalton was a statuesque, imposing woman who, he’d heard, enjoyed intimidating people. “How did the visit end?”

“Not well. Elizabeth asked me to leave Jonathan with her. I said no.” She lifted one shoulder in a semi-shrug. “She doesn’t like hearing that word.”

He just bet she didn’t. It probably surprised the hell out of her when someone as soft-spoken as Lilli stood up to her.

“She’s undoubtedly not used to hearing it,” he said. “So what happened after that?”

“The next afternoon, one of her lawyers got in contact with me. A very prim and proper little man who offered me money in exchange for giving up custody of my son. Offering me money,” she repeated with disgust. “As if Jonathan was some kind of a toy or inanimate commodity that was for sale.” Impassioned, her voice rose with each word. “Elizabeth Dalton ruined her son, I’m not going to let her ruin mine.”

He made a few more notes on the page, then turned to a fresh one. “I guess they’re right,” he observed.

“About what?” she wanted to know.

“That no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Do you think that if I hadn’t taken Jonathan over to meet her—?”

He cut her short by shaking his head. He put her mind at rest. This was not her fault. None of it. “Even if you hadn’t taken your son to meet his grandmother, I have a feeling the outcome would have been the same once she found out about Jonathan. And you’re right in your assessment. Elizabeth Dalton likes to pride herself on getting whatever she sets her mind to.”

Lilli could feel her stomach growing queasy. “Should I be worried?”

He gauged his answer slowly. “If you’re asking me if you should be getting your passports ready in order to flee the country, no. There’s no need to resort to drastic measures.” He took a guess at her next question and answered it before she could ask. “Do I think winning is going to be a piece of cake? No, I don’t. In general, a mother’s rights trump anything else that might be raised in a court of law.”

“In general,” she echoed. “But in this case?”

He wished he could tell her she had nothing to worry about. But he couldn’t, and she needed to be prepared. “In this case, Elizabeth Dalton has a lot of powerful friends. If she and her squadron of lawyers decide to win by fair means or foul, I want you to realize we’re going to have one hell of a fight on our hands.”

There was only one thing that she wanted to know. “Will we win?”

He didn’t deal in rainbows and fairy dust. He knew he should be prudent and cautiously tell her to be prepared for anything, because in this case they were up against a force of nature. A force of nature who numbered more than one judge in her inner circle of influential friends.

But he knew Lilli didn’t need cautious words. She needed hope. He couldn’t take that from her, couldn’t just dash any shred of hope she might have against the rocks of reality. No matter how much she’d hurt him, he couldn’t bring himself to be cruel to her.

So he gave her the most confident smile he had in his arsenal and nodded.

“Yes, Virginia,” he said, paraphrasing the famous line in the legendary Christmas story, “we’re going to win. It’s not going to be easy, or quick,” he predicted, “but we are going to win.”

Overwhelmed, Lilli hadn’t realized until just this moment how close she was to a complete meltdown. She was only a hair’s breadth away. The sense of relief, of hope, was huge. This time, she allowed the tears to flow. They slid fast and furiously down her cheeks, and registered in direct contrast to the smile that curved her lips.

“Thank you,” she cried, looking at him through eyes that had all but completely welled up. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned her. “You can save that for when the case is finally over and we walk out of the courthouse victorious.”

She knew he was right. That this was far too early in the game to allow her emotions to get the better of her. Knew that they had a hard and very possibly long fight ahead of them.

But she couldn’t help herself. She’d felt alone and isolated for far too long.

And she had missed him.

In one unguarded moment, Lilli let her feelings bubble up and get the better of her. She threw her arms around his neck.

“Thank you,” she cried again, burying her face against his shoulder.

He felt her breath along his neck.

His stomach tightened in anticipation.

Chapter Four

Old feelings came rushing back to Kullen with the speed and intensity of a runaway freight train barreling down a steep mountain path. The urge to close his arms around Lilli, to kiss her with all his bottled-up passion nearly overwhelmed him.

It would be so easy to give in, to let his guard down just for the smallest moment and permit desire to take over.

But he knew he couldn’t let himself do that.

He’d been through this before and was well aware of just how the story had ended. There was absolutely no way he would allow himself to be ripped apart again. Once was more than enough.

Once was a case of being blindsided. Twice would have meant that he was either an idiot—or a masochist. And he was neither. Moreover, he intended to remain that way. So although his heart was racing now, calling him seven kinds of a fool for not taking advantage of this opportunity shimmering before him, Kullen kept his arms rigidly at his side.

Embarrassed, feeling both self-conscious and extremely awkward, Lilli withdrew her arms and took a step back. Kullen all but radiated coldness. She succeeded in maintaining a smile on her lips, although how she was doing so was a mystery to her.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “I guess I got a little overwhelmed for a second. It won’t happen again.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he told her, doing his best to sound natural. Doing his best not to demand why she’d left him the way she had and then run headlong into an intimate relationship with someone else.

Someone who he knew couldn’t have loved her half as much as he had.

Kullen took a breath, then said, “Stop at Selma’s desk and ask her to give you a list of documents I’m going to need to see for this case. It’s a standard list,” he explained before she could ask how the administrative assistant would know what to give her. “Just tell her it’s a custody dispute.”

Dispute. What a civilized word for what was about to take place, Lilli thought.

“Selma’s the woman at the front desk?” she asked just to be certain.