Nobody's Baby but Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page B

hell can’t touch mine. My financial responsibility is to the kid.”
    “I don’t want your money! Why won’t you listen? I happen to be able to take care of this child all by myself. I don’t want anything from you.”
    He ignored her. “I have to be back in North Carolina soon, so we’re getting this over with right away. By this time next week, the two of us are going to be married, and after that, we’ll use my lawyer to communicate about the kid and set up transfers back and forth.”
    He was destroying all her wondrous plans. What a mess she’d made of everything. How could she hand her child over to this barbarian, even for short visits?
    She was going to fight him. He had no right to stake a claim to her baby! She didn’t care how many millions of dollars he had or how expensive a court fight would be—this child was hers. She wouldn’t let him barge in and take over. He had no right—
    Her indignation slammed headlong into her conscience. He did have a right. He had every right. Thanks to her deviousness, he was the child’s father, and whether she liked it or not, that gave him a say about the future.
    She made herself face the truth. Even if she could afford a lengthy court battle with him, she wouldn’t do it. She had gotten into this situation by turning her back on her principles, convincing herself that the end justified the means, and look where that had led her. She couldn’t do it any longer. From this point on, she must base every decision on only one criterion: what was best for this child?
    She grabbed her notes from the lectern and made her way to the door. “I’ll think about it.”
    “You do that. You’ve got until four o’clock Friday afternoon.”
     
    “Dr. Darlington barely made the deadline.” Brian Delgado, Cal’s lawyer, tapped the prenuptial agreement that lay in the center of his desk. “She didn’t get here until nearly four, and she was very upset.”
    “Good.” Even after a week, Cal couldn’t contain his rage over what she’d done to him. He could still see her standing in the classroom wearing that dark orange dress with a double row of gold buttons fastening her up tight. For a moment he hadn’t recognized her. Her hair had been swept back into one of those efficient hairdos, and big glasses covered up her green eyes. She’d looked more like the CEO of a company than any woman he’d ever had in his life.
    He stalked over to the windows, where he stared blindly down at the parking lot. In two more days he’d be a married man. Son of a bitch . Everything inside him rebelled, everything except the moral code he’d been raised with that told him a man didn’t abandon his kid, even a kid he didn’t want.
    The idea of this kind of permanence made him feel as if he were strangling. Permanence was for after his career, for the time when was too damned old to throw a ball, not for now, while he was still in his prime. He’d do his duty by this kid, but Dr. Jane Darlington was going to pay the price for manipulating his life. He didn’t let anybody push him around. Never had and never would.
    He ground out the words. “I want her punished for this, Brian. Find out everything you can about her.”
    “What exactly are you looking for?”
    “I want to know where she’s vulnerable.”
    Delgado was still young, but he had the eyes of a shark, and Cal knew he was the right man for the job. Delgado had been representing Cal for the past five years. He was smart, aggressive, and no leaks had ever come out of his office. Sometimes Delgado could be overeager in his desire to please his most valuable client—a few times he’d gone off half-cocked—but Cal figured there were worse faults. So far he’d handled this mess with speed and efficiency, and Cal didn’t doubt that he’d handle the rest of it equally well.
    “She’s not going to get away with this, Brian. I’m marrying her because I have to, but that’s not the end of it. She’s going to discover she