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Bex fought the urge to swear. Michael Briggston was a sneak, and she was going to tell him her opinion in excruciating detail. Pulling up in her parents’ driveway, she thrust the car into park and jogged up the front stairs to hammer on the door.
“I’m coming!” A moment later, it swung inward, revealing her mother, Lita, in tailored pants and a blouse—her piano teaching uniform.
“Do you have a student?” Bex asked, getting straight to the point.
Lita’s eyes widened in concern, and Bex guessed she must look a little wild. “Yes, but only for another ten minutes.”
“Great. Do you mind if I leave Izzy here for a while? Something has come up. It’s urgent.”
Lita clucked. “Of course Isobel can stay here.”
“Thanks, Mum.” She bent and kissed her mother’s cheek, then hurried back to the car. Now wasn’t the time to be up front with them about what was going on. That could come later. She flopped into the driver’s seat and looked over at her daughter. “Izzy, honey, I need you to stay with Nana, okay? Be super quiet because she has a student, but when they’re finished I’m sure she’ll make you hot chocolate if you ask nicely.”
Izzy frowned. “Why?”
“Mummy has a job to take care of.”
“When will you be back?”
“Soon.” She unsnapped Izzy’s belt, clipped herself in, and shooed her daughter out of her booster seat. “I’ll see you soon, baby.”
When Izzy heaved an overly dramatic sigh and climbed out, Bex reached over to yank the door shut, waited until her daughter was safely on the front steps, and then reversed down the drive. She didn’t know where Michael lived, so she needed to catch him before he left the school. He probably didn’t clock out until five on the dot—if not later—but she didn’t want to take any chances. The drive only took a few minutes, and she parked in the staff parking lot, paused to touch up her appearance, then stalked to the office block. The principal’s door was shut, but she rapped on it three times and waited.
Michael opened it and stepped back, eyes wide. Bex pushed past him into the room and watched while he closed the door. Good call. What she wanted to say was best not overheard by any of the busybodies nearby.
Her hands went to her hips and she drew herself up to her full height. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He met her gaze and replied, calm as could be, “Isobel is Wesley’s child.”
Icy cold permeated every inch of Bex’s being like a hoar frost. The kind of crawling chill that left not a single cell untouched. He’d figured it out. Had he called his family already?
Please don’t let him have called his family.
“Izzy is my child.” Her voice shook, and she cursed it. “Mine, and no one else’s.”
Wesley hadn’t wanted her. In the end, he hadn’t wanted either of them. And if she sometimes wondered whether she’d done her daughter an injustice by keeping her secret, well, no one was infallible.
“I raised her,” she spat. “I take care of her. I’m the one who hugs her when she needs comforting. Izzy is mine, and nobody else has the right to consider themselves her parent. You need to back the fuck off.”
Wasit wrong that Michael found Bex in mother-bear mode to be terribly attractive?
Hell, yeah. It was demented.
Did that stop him? Not one bit.
It seemed he had a thing for women in yoga pants with the promise of Armageddon in their eyes.
He chose his words carefully. “Regardless of who raised Izzy, she’s Wesley’s biological daughter, and it isn’t fair of you to keep her from him.” Just like it wouldn’t be fair for him to keep their secret because of the shameful way he’d felt about her in the past.
She snorted, but the sound held no humor. “Not fair? Wesley wanted nothing to do with her. ‘Not fair’ would be giving him the opportunity to hurt her.” She lowered her voice. “You know what Wes is like. He’s a politician through and through, just like your parents raised him to be. The last thing he’s going to want is the scandal of a secret daughter hitting the news. Especially one with a mother like me.”
He couldn’t fault her logic for the most part, but the last sentence confused him. “What do you mean by ‘a mother like me’?”
She shrugged, and glanced away. “A biracial yoga-instructing artist. You know how that would look.”
Her assessment of herself annoyed him. “No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”
She huffed, and rolled her eyes. “The gossip rags would love it. I’d make him look like a hypocrite. The right-wing golden boy who hooked up with a flake.”
