Scandal on the Sand (The Billionaires of Barefoot Bay #3)(14)
Author: Roxanne St. Claire

“Just Paulette,” she supplied. “And be prepared for half of the Gulf Shore Country Club to be waiting on the front lawn with cameras when we get back.”

And how long until one of those amateur paparazzi calls the professionals in and someone takes a look at the kid and Nate only to put two and two together and come up with a new Ivory scandal?

One look at Liza, and he knew she was thinking the same thing. “I should probably lie low,” he said.

“Ya think?”

“S-T-O-P! Stop!”

“Yep,” Nate agreed, tapping the brakes at the intersection and waiting for a second before they continued on. He should probably stop, too. Stop soaking up this child and already imagining…a relationship.

He put a hand on the tiny shoulder in front of him, a dark, hollow sensation in his gut, a lone question burning since this news first broke. Was it possible he really had a son?

He pulled back into the driveway and turned off the car, relieved not to see a bevy of local socialites waiting for him. “Here you go, Dylan,” he said, unlatching the seat belt and opening the door.

“Pauwette!” Dylan hollered, then ran toward the house, leaving them alone in the car.

After watching the boy disappear and leave behind a singularly confusing hole in Nate’s heart, he had to pose the question that had been haunting him.

“Why wouldn’t she find me and tell me?” he asked softly, knowing his voice was rich with pain and really not caring. The realization hurt.

“She did.”

“She did not,” he fired back. “I swear on anything and everything that journal she wrote is a lie. I never saw her again, and she…” A low anger seethed and bubbled in his veins. “What kind of person decides she has a right to keep that secret?”

He expected a defense of her dearly departed friend, but Liza lifted her shoulders and shook her head. “A person who wants to keep her child. She was afraid you and your family would want him.”

“That’s what she said in the notebook, which is riddled with lies.”

“No, she told me that from the beginning,” Liza said. “I always thought the father should have signed something, but she wouldn’t do that. She was convinced you’d take the baby or your family would.”

And she’d be right. Mimsy and the Colonel would pay whoever needed to be paid and sign whatever needed to be signed and weather whatever shitstorm the media threw at them, because Ivorys stuck together, no matter what.

“And would that have been a legitimate fear?” Liza asked when he didn’t answer.

Nate looked at her for a long time, debating exactly what to say. In the end, he chose a simple course of action—his other reason for coming here today.

“I want to find out more about her,” he said.

“I can tell you what you need to know.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think that girl I met and the one you knew were the same.”

“What?”

“I mean, they might be the same person, but she was obviously a chameleon or split personality or something.”

“Maybe she was,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t change this mess of a situation.”

“Liza, I didn’t go looking for this.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Oh, yes, you should have,” he corrected. “A man has a right to know if he’s had a child, and your friend was the one who made a huge mistake, not you.”

“I agree,” she said. “Except, she always said she’d told the father of her baby that she was pregnant and he told her to get lost.”

“That conversation never happened with me,” he said, a little tired of making this assertion. “Maybe Dylan’s not mine.”

“But her journal! She uses your name, describes your meeting exactly as you said it happened.”

“Liza, she wouldn’t be the first woman to fantasize about…” He realized how arrogant the statement sounded, and let his voice trail off. “I have some, I don’t know what you’d call them, admirers? Fans? Desperate women who like my last name and want it.”

She snorted softly. “Trust me, Carrie wasn’t that woman.”

“Like I said, I need to find out just who and what she was,” he said.

“I know who she was, Nate. She lived with me for three and a half years. We were close friends, we talked about everything, we raised her child together, we…what?” She’d finally seen his look.

“She didn’t tell you my name, though, right? She left it in some notebook that you found when she died? Did you ever meet her family?”

“Her parents were dead, and she was an only child.”

“You really know nothing about her except what she fabricated since she moved here.”

She closed her eyes, unable to deny that. “She never seemed anything but one hundred percent genuine.”

“Are you a good judge of character?”

She didn’t answer at first, then lifted a shoulder in admission. “I’m a better judge of things on paper, I’ll admit. I can spot a phony legal document a mile away, but…” She sighed. “I do things impulsively, and maybe I trust too easily.”

He put his hand over hers, a sympathy he didn’t quite understand but couldn’t deny taking hold. “Let’s do a little investigating, then. Maybe my friend who lives in Key West can help, too. We both deserve to know the truth.”

“Remember, I work in the County Clerk’s office, and that gives me access to a lot of official documents, from every county in the country. I can dig into that name, Bailey Banks, and of course, more about her parents and childhood in Arizona.”

“If she was even from there. Sorry, Liza, but everything about her is suspect. Is she even really dead?”

Liza closed her eyes. “I identified her body after the accident.”

“I’m sorry.” He added some pressure to her hand, wanting her to know he meant that. “How did Dylan handle that?”

“Not well,” she said. “He misses her, although I think he’s forgetting about her as each month passes. He’s always had me, and my mother, who adores him. I’ve been like a mother to him from the day he was born.” She slipped her hand out from underneath Nate’s, taking a second to nibble on her lip as she chose her next words carefully. “I need you to know something.”