Branded. Annette Broadrick

The divorce was final before I discovered the truth.”

      Which still didn’t explain why he didn’t know about it. Knowing Tiffany, as soon as she found out, she would’ve been screaming for his head…or other, more delicate parts of his anatomy…to be removed from his body.

      “Why didn’t you tell me once you found out?”

      “Because I didn’t want to have anything more to do with you, that’s why! I decided to raise her on my own. There are lots of single mothers who raise their children alone. You’d been so hateful during the divorce proceedings I decided you didn’t deserve to know you were going to be a father!”

      “So you decided to punish me by not letting me know, is that it?”

      “Yes!”

      “The only problem with your logic, Tiffany,” he said wearily, “is that it isn’t punishment if I didn’t know about her.”

      If what she said was true—and it would be easy enough for him to find out—then he really was the father of the little girl upstairs.

      His stomach knotted at the thought and he broke into a cold sweat. For more than three years he’d had a child that he never knew existed.

      “Why tell me now? Did you figure I’d been punished enough after all this time? You’ve kept her very existence from me for all these years, Tiffany, including the pregnancy itself. Care to explain to me why, after all this time, you brought her here tonight?”

      She shifted and appeared to be trying to decide how to answer him, clasping and unclasping her hands.

      Uh-huh. This was going to be good, watching her squirm. If he could find any pleasure in this encounter, which was certainly doubtful, it would be watching Tiffany as she tried to figure a way to justify her actions, which were inexcusable. He knew she was self-absorbed and permanently immature, but he never thought she would stoop so low as to keep a child from her father in order to get revenge.

      She looked away from him, chewing her bottom lip. Finally, as though answering his question, she said, “Soon after Heather was born, my schedule became so hectic that my grandmother offered to keep her for me, which worked out great for everyone. Gram had someone to entertain and play with, and I was able to spend time with Heather as often as possible without disrupting her schedule.” She paused and rubbed her forehead, as though she had a headache. “The thing is, Gram had a stroke two weeks ago and she’s now bedridden. She won’t be able to care for Heather.”

      “So much for raising a child on your own, right, Tiffany? But having your grandmother raise her for you has nothing to do with why you’re just now telling me about her.” He raised his brow. “Or does it? Without your permanent babysitter you don’t know what else to do with her, is that it?”

      “No, that is not it!” Her calm demeanor fell away and her anger took over. “Certain things have recently changed in my life, for your information. Ed loves and respects me—something you never did—and he wants to marry me! We had all our plans made—we wanted to get married in Vegas and honeymoon in Hawaii, and then visit Japan and Australia. Everything would have worked out perfectly if Gram hadn’t had her stroke. The timing couldn’t have been worse!”

      Jake stared at her in amazement. Did this woman care about anyone other than herself? There was no sign that her grandmother’s illness was anything more to her than an inconvenience.

      “Let me get this straight. You planned to go off for months and leave Heather with your grandmother?”

      She lifted a shoulder. “She would have been fine with Gram. They got along well together. Besides, I’ve taken trips before. I doubt she even misses me when I’m gone.”

      “You must have considered the situation desperate for you to break your silence to bring her to me.”

      Tiffany ran her hand through her carefully coiffed hair, another indication that this meeting wasn’t going the way she’d planned. He wondered what she’d expected he would do when she showed up? Welcome her and the child with open arms? Be so thrilled to discover he was a father that he’d ignore the fact she’d kept the knowledge from him for all this time?

      If so, she was even shallower than he’d always thought.

      In a quieter voice, she said, “I thought I’d worked everything out just fine. I told Ed that we’d have to take Heather with us.”

      He dropped his head to hide a smile. After a moment he looked at her and said, “I somehow doubt he was thrilled with that particular idea. Most men expect to have their bride all to themselves at that stage of their marriage.”

      “I thought he had accepted the idea, although taking a three-year-old on your honeymoon is certainly not what either of us planned or wanted!”

      “Couldn’t your mother have looked after her?”

      “That’s another problem, entirely. Heather won’t behave for Mother.”

      Another proof that she was probably his. He had to admire Heather’s discrimination. Tiffany’s mother was just an older, even more spoiled, version of her daughter. Too bad he hadn’t recognized the similarity sooner. If he had, none of this would be happening.

      On the other hand, if Mrs. Rogers and her granddaughter—and boy, he would have loved to have seen her face when she found out she was going to be a grandmother!—had gotten along, he would never have known about Heather.

      Funny how life worked sometimes.

      “We left Dallas this morning,” Tiffany continued, intent on her story. “I thought everything had worked out just fine. Ed never said a word to make me believe he hadn’t accepted the situation until we were on the road. That’s when he told me he wasn’t interested in raising someone else’s child. He hadn’t expected to become a full-time parent when he proposed to me. He assured me that he wouldn’t mind if she visited us occasionally, but he didn’t want her around all the time.”

      Tiffany appeared to have run out of steam and just sat there looking at him.

      After a moment, he said in a neutral tone, “And you still plan to marry him.”

      She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Please understand, Jake. I love him, really love him. He’s older, more mature. I’ve known who he was for years but I never expected him to show any interest in me. When he did, it never occurred to me that accepting Heather would be a problem for him. He knew about her, he’d even met her once, and I thought he would adore her as much as I do.” She pulled a handkerchief from her purse and carefully blotted beneath her eyes. “When he told me that, once he realized I wasn’t going to leave her in Dallas, he’d arranged for Heather to stay with a professional sitter in Las Vegas while we were overseas, I was horrified. I really was. He made it clear he didn’t intend for Heather to go with us and I didn’t want her to stay with a stranger. I didn’t know what to do.”

      Jake didn’t know what to say. If she still intended to marry this weasel, he figured they deserved each other.

      She sighed and said, “That’s when I thought about you. I remembered how you were always talking about wanting children. I decided to forgive you for being so mean to me back then. I knew that Heather would be better off with her own flesh and blood for a few months, instead of with some stranger in Vegas.”

      Maybe the child was better off with him, if this was the way she was being treated. He was still having a little trouble absorbing the fact that people could be so callous to their offspring.

      He leaned back in his chair, his gaze steady, and said, “You need to understand something before this conversation goes any further, Tiffany. If you intend to leave that little girl with me after not having the decency to tell me she even existed until tonight, I refuse to allow you to bounce her between us in order to suit your convenience.”

      She frowned at him. “I don’t know what you mean, Jake. She’s your child, after all. If we can make an arrangement where