Chapter 4

My mother met him at the door. I couldn't hear the words, only the shape of them—low, clipped, the tone she used when she was already angry.

He listened with his hands in his pockets.

Then he looked past her, at Mason on his knees in the courtyard. Just a glance. Not long enough to be called a look.

Which was how I knew he had already made up his mind.

He barely looked at Mason before waving the matter aside.

"Let them up," Richard said. "If this reaches the press, they'll turn it into another story about us abusing its staff."

He nodded toward Tessa—briefly, the way a man nods at a tool he has used before.

"She says Mason is Vivian's friend. This is probably a misunderstanding."

The guards released her.

Tessa seized her opening. "Mason isn't just her friend. He's Vivian's boyfriend."

Every face turned toward me.

"She told me to bring him here," she continued. "Then Mrs. Foster found out, and Vivian let me take the blame."

Mason didn't need a second cue. "Tell them we love each other, Vivian. Your parents will accept us once they know you're carrying my baby."

The baby exploded in my head. "I'm not his! Mom, what did you ever see in him?"

My mother stepped between us. "You're lying to destroy my daughter's reputation. Get out before I have you arrested for trespassing."

"Ask her if she's pregnant," Mason shouted. "Ask her!"

"The test is still in her bathroom trash," Tessa said. Her voice was gentle. It was the voice she used when she was winning.

"She can't deny it."

Richard faced me. "Vivian, is that true?"

There was no point denying the pregnancy. I nodded. "Yes."

A word. One word, and I had just handed Tessa the thing she had been waiting for.

I felt the baby turn inside me, as if it had felt the ground move.

Triumph sharpened Tessa's smile.

Mason stepped forward. "Sir, I'll take care of her. I can put up a hundred thousand dollars to prove I'm serious."

My mother laughed once, without humor. "Vivian's allowance is more than that. You cannot support her, and you do not get to buy her. You will never marry my daughter."

"Stop," Richard snapped.

My mother turned to him. I saw her hand come up—half a gesture, half an instinct, the way she had touched him for twenty years when she wanted him to listen.

He stepped back before her fingers found him.

Her hand stayed in the air for a second. Then it dropped.

He pointed at me. "She is pregnant with another man's child while engaged to Adrian Bennett. Do you understand what she has done to this family?"

"She is our daughter," my mother said. "You don't get to speak about her as if she's a stain on your name."

Richard shoved her hand away when she reached for him.

"If the child is Mason's, they can marry and settle it before it becomes public."

He said it the way he said everything—evenly, as if he were reading a contract.

He did not look at me, but looked at the guards, at the courtyard, at the open door.

Anywhere the cameras were not.

He paused, then looked at Tessa. "And Tessa can marry Adrian in her place."

The first life opened up beneath me again.

Then the front doors hit the wall hard enough to rattle the frame.

Every head in the room turned, including mine.

Adrian Bennett stood in the doorway, his face flat and cold.

"My fiancée will only ever be Vivian," he said. "And my child will not call another man Dad."