Page 16 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

My son rushes towards me and tugs at my hand. “Can I go outside?”

I nod. “Make sure you stay in sight of the staff. Mr. Reid will take you, unless he has an opinion on that as well.”

The butler’s face stiffens. “Come along, young master.”

It takes me a while to find the study. I turn left where I should have gone right and end up pushing open a door onto an indoor swimming pool with the underwater lights on, nobody in it, green light going across the ceiling. Then I back out and try the other corridor. It finally takes one of the maids guiding me to get there.

The study is dark wood from floor to ceiling with books on three walls. Callum is at the desk with his back half turned, his coat gone, and his jacket over the arm of a chair, his sleeves rolled to the elbow. He’s still in the waistcoat, forearms bare, collar open one button, and it pulls tight across his back every time he reaches for something. Heat drops through me before I can stop it, and I immediately look at the bookshelf, mortified that I find this man attractive.

“What is it?” He glances over. “Is something not to your liking?”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

I make myself look at him. “It’s about Luca’s room.”

He raises one brow, comes around the desk, and drops into the chair by the fire with one leg folded over the other, an arm along the back of it, watching me without blinking until the heat climbs my neck. “Well?”

“He’s six years old.” I stay by the door. “I’ve never let him have video games. They’re not good for a child that age.”

“Every boy his age has them. I checked.”

“I’m sure they do. That doesn’t make it right for him.” My chin comes up. “He builds things, and he reads with me at night, badly, out loud. Put a console in front of him and I lose both of those inside a month. He’s at that age where he should be playing outside, exploring, not confined in front of a screen. These things are addictive.”

He looks at me without answering for four or five seconds. “Then get rid of them.”

“I tried. Reid told me I can’t interfere in Luca’s upbringing and that I needed your permission.” I don’t hide my anger, but I don’t blast him with it.

Callum is quiet for a second or two. “I’ll speak to Reid,” he says at last. “Inside this house, on the subject of raising him, you have as much say as I do. I’m the only person permitted to overrule you.”

I part my lips and then look away. I don’t exactly love that either, but I’m going to have to compromise.

“Is there anything else?”

“No.”

I get to the door with his eyes on my back the whole way. My hand is on the handle before I stop and turn around. “I want to know something.”

He waits, so I gesture at the room, the house, all of it. “Why are you doing this much? You could have taken him this morning with the paper signed and the lawyers in the room. Why let me anywhere near him? You think my sister stole from you.”

“She did steal from me.” He doesn’t blink. “I still believe she took the money. Nothing says you had any part in it because I checked. You’d had no contact with her for years before he was born.”

My stomach turns over. “You had me investigated.”

“Of course.” He doesn’t apologize for it and clearly doesn’t intend to. “You’re the woman who had my son for six years.”

“Right,” I mutter slowly.

“I also looked at how you raised him.” He glances at the fire and back. “When you were dancing, everything you earned went to him. It still does. You’re the one who goes without.”

I stand there with my hand on the door handle, and my throat closes up. Nobody has ever once acknowledged all the sacrifices I’ve made since I took Lucas as my own. I never needed it, but to hear it makes my chest tighten.

“You matter to him.” He looks away, toward the fire. “I won’t do anything that damages his ability to take my seat.”

I don’t know what he means by his seat. It goes onto the pile with everything else about this man I can’t explain.

“I still have to go to work,” I tell him. “I’m not quitting my job.”