AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh my God,” she groaned. “I can’t believe this.”
“Can’t you?” Leandro prompted, running a hand over her hair. She shivered. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
By the time they arrived at Leandro’s spacious penthouse, two men in suits were waiting in the lounge room.
“Bradley and Michael,” Leandro introduced. “Family lawyers. We’re going to have a chat to them about your situation,” he said. “And this,” he gestured to a woman that Skye hadn’t seen at first. “Is Jane. She’s a very qualified nanny, highly recommended by a friend of mine. She’s going to play with Harper while we have this meeting.”
Skye’s eyes went wide. Now she knew what he’d been doing on the phone. But how could he have organized all this so quickly? Her head was spinning.
She looked down at Harper, who was a little tremulous after the day she’d had. Skye picked her up and hugged her tight, carrying her towards the nanny—a pretty woman in perhaps her thirties with red hair and matching lipstick.
“Hello, honey,” Jane’s smile encompassed both Skye and Harper. “How are you?”
“Actually, she’s a little fragile. I’m not sure she’ll want to leave me.”
“I understand.” Jane crouched down. “Harper, I’ve been trying to build a tower in the other room, but I can’t make the blocks fit together. Do you think you could come help me?”
Harper looked up at Skye, who smiled encouragingly and squeezed her hand. After a moment, Harper nodded. “Okay then.”
“Great,” Jane said, putting her hand down to take Harper’s. She said to Skye, “I’ll take good care of her, I promise.”
“Thank you,” Skye whispered, her heart hurting. She watched Jane and Harper wander off together and was pleased to hear Harper talking by the time they turned into one of the guest rooms.
She turned her attention then to the meeting with the lawyers, and she was glad beyond measure for Leandro’s presence at her side. Just having him there was reassuring, but it was more than that.
He asked questions she wouldn’t have thought to ask, he seemed to know things about the law that she hadn’t expected, like ways to expedite things and whether the emotional abuse she’d endured would have any sway on custody.
By the end of it, they were in agreement that their first approach would be to come in all guns blazing and try to scare Jay into giving up any custodial claim on Harper. It wasn’t something Skye had ever contemplated, but having seen the way his anger today morphed into something physical, the thought of sending Harper to him scared her senseless. He needed professional help. Badly.
“Do you think it will work?” Skye asked no one in particular, as the lawyers packed up their documents and stood.
Leandro spoke softly, just to her. “Bullies like him think they can get away with it because no one stands up to them. We’re going to stand up to him, Skye.” And then, “Si, I think it will work.”
She closed her eyes on a wave of intense hope and relief. When they were alone again, she kept a careful distance from Leandro, needing to say something, to get her thoughts in order.
“I’m so sorry about all of this,” she whispered.
“Why should you be sorry?”
“This isn’t what you signed up for.”
His voice was measured. “I chose to get involved in your life.”
“You chose to sleep with me. You didn’t know what my life looked like,” she pointed out a little sharply, her frustration all at Jay.
He brushed aside her concerns. “As I said, I’m spoiling for a fight. You’ve given me one.”
“Why?” She asked, simply. “What’s the fight you really want to have but can’t?”
His eyes shuttered and she realized that for all she’d become an open book to him, she still didn’t have any idea what he was trying to forget, what had put him in such a bad mood the night they’d met.
She shook her head, slowly, changing the subject. “How do you know so much about this?” She gestured towards the table.
“About…?”
“The legal stuff.”
“I’m a lawyer.”
