Melting Into You (Due South Book 2) (32 page)

His hand clenched the fridge’s metal handle.

“He ditched me a week ago—turns out he’s been banging someone else all along, and marrying her would further his career.” She laughed, a bitter, ragged sound. “Why saddle yourself with cheap trash if you can upscale to the boss’s precious daughter?”

Guilt pierced him—hadn’t he compared Marci to cheap wine earlier? He grabbed the milk bottle, nudging the fridge door shut with his hip. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”

She nodded. “It’s his loss. He’ll kick himself after he knocks up the new Mrs. Grainger, and she ends up with an ass as wide as a semi-trailer. She’s the type to let herself go.”

And…there went all his sympathy. “Milk?”

Her nose crinkled. “Not if it’s full cream.”

“Don’t drink the watered-down stuff, sorry.”

“Black then.”

He passed her the mug.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking in the last few days,” she said.

Ben picked up his coffee and sipped, the heat of the liquid stinging the roof of his mouth.

“About my kids.”

His mouth turned paper dry in seconds. “Your kids?”

“Uh-huh.” She traced a fingernail over the mug’s curved handle, keeping her eyes downcast. “
My
kids. Both of them.” She glanced up but didn’t meet his gaze. “I want them back. I’m
taking
them—starting with Jade.”

“No.” The word exploded out of him, scalding and strong and loaded with every single day spent learning to love a little girl who now held
his heart in her grubby hands.

White-hot heat burned his legs—but it wasn’t until he stepped forward and china crunched under his boot that he realized
he’d dropped the mug.

The coffee saturating his jeans meant nothing. The fire cremating his gut meant everything.

“Jade’s home is here with me,” he ground out, his voice pitched low. “You dumped her to marry some rich prick, and he found a better offer. Hard luck, lady. But the fuck you can change your mind and take my daughter.”

The super-heated blood pulverizing his brain shar
pened his senses until he could smell Marci’s anger, hear the tension crackling around the room, taste the thunder of his heartbeat.

Marci surged to her feet, stabbing a pink-
taloned nail at his nose. “I’m her
mother
. She’s
my
daughter, and she’s coming back with me to Auckland.”

Ben had never laid hands on a woman in his life. Never used his size and strength to intimidate or bully a female. But right now, he jammed his fingers into his pockets to stop them from shaking the heartless
bitch until her teeth rattled.

“You will not take her.” The words fell from his lips like cold, hard stones. “I’ll fight you every fucking inch of the way.”

Her lips curled into a sneer. “For God’s sake, Ben. Do you really think you can win a custody battle against me? You may be her father, biologically”—she said biologically like she meant embarrassingly insignificant—“but up until three months ago, you didn’t even know you had a child, while I’ve sacrificed nine years of my life looking after that kid.”

Sweat slicked Ben’s brow, and the hot boil of blood cooled to a simmer. Marci had a point. Could he really win in a court of law? He’d be lucky to be awarded joint custody.

The thought made him want to vomit. The woman was so self-centered he wouldn’t trust her to care for a pot plant—like hell would he leave his daughter in her care even part time. Jade was his. And one way or another, Ben Harland took care of his own.

“Her name is Jade, and looking after her is a priv
ilege, not a goddamn sacrifice—which if you were any kind of mother, you’d know.”

Her eyes n
arrowed to razor-sharp daggers.

He held out a palm. Time for a change of tactics b
efore he incinerated any more bridges. “Look, Marci, what’s this all about? You were happy to leave Jade with me when you planned to marry this accountant guy—”

“Jerome—Jerome-the-cheat. He bought me a ring and he told me—the slimy bastard—he’d pay for me to go to university, since I got pregnant at twenty and ne
ver went. He said he’d take care of me.” Her mood flipped a one-eighty, and a solitary tear leaked from her eye.

“You want a man to take care of you?”

“Is that so bad? Simon always called me his princess,” she said. “Simon loved doing everything for me.”

Bloody hell! Ben pressed his lips together to pr
event the top one from curling.

Marci slumped onto the bar stool and did the hair-toss-eyelash-flutter combination, her gaze zeroing in on him again, as if she was a scientist examining mold in a petri dish. “You know…We could get married—kind of a
you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours
deal. You’d stay Jade’s daddy, and I’d get someone to take care of me.”

If blood could literally freeze, his would be shre
dding his veins and arteries with jagged chunks of ice.

Marry Marci?

He dragged a hand out of his pocket and raked it through his hair. Opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. “
What?
”

She pointed the pink nail at him, then at herself. “You, me, Jade. We’d be a family.”

His head spun at the unexpected turns in this conversation. They’d be a
family
? Holy hell. Had the hair dye seeped into Marci’s skull and burned out half her brain cells?

“You don’t want to marry me and live in Oban—you don’t even
like
me, and you hate Stewart Island.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t live on Stewart Island, you big dummy.” She giggled, the high-pitched, nasally sound made him want to puncture his eardrums with a rusty screwdriver. “We’d live in Auckla
nd and you’d get a decent job.”

Resting her chin on her palm, she leaned forward. “And I like you well enough, cutie—men who talk a lot are overrated in my book. Your sullen, verbally const
ipated thing? Perfect. You’d take care of Jade the way Simon used to, while I go to university.” Another giggle, this time infused with suggestiveness. “I’d do things to you in the bedroom that’d make you want to be a house-husband.”

The idea of sleeping with this blonde-haired piranha made his nuts crawl up inside his bod
y. Ben sucked in a deep breath.

Be reasonable. Be calm. Don’t punch a hole through the fridge door.

Maybe he was a big dummy, but he had smarts enough not to tackle the issue of sex with her. Insulting Marci’s ego wouldn’t be in his best interests. “I have a decent job.”

“Running tourists around to stare at sharks? Picking your nose while a bunch of men go fishing? You’d get a real job in Auckland.”

“A real job, like a pencil-pushing drone in a government department? Or an accountant?”

She thrust out her chest and folded her arms. “Better pencil-pushing than ladling chum into the sea.”

He leaned a hip on the counter, tried to wrangle the multitude of thoughts stampeding through his brain. “I couldn’t do a desk job full time, it’d drive me insane. I’m dyslexic, Marci, like our daughter.” Funny how saying the words out loud now drained them of the insidious power they’d had over him for decades.

Marci’s lips pinched tight. “Jade is not dumb.”

Six months ago, the implication that dyslexia equaled lower intelligence would’ve nettled his temper. Now? Not so much. He had a gutsy little fighter as a daughter and a positive reflection of himself through Kezia’s eyes.

“She’s smart and talented, and she’s also dyslexic. She’s been tested, and I’ve gotten her help.”

Marci made a derogative noise in her throat and drummed her nails on the countertop. “I’ll get a second opinion in Auckland. I doubt she’s dyslexic at all.” She tossed her hair again. “We’ll leave on the Sunday-evening ferry. Jade can still have her birthday sleepover tomorrow—see? I’m not a monster.”

“You can’t be serious.” Asking him to choose b
etween his daughter, his life and family in Oban. And Kezia.

He’d never given marriage much thought; he’d never wanted a bar of it. Tied to one woman with even more responsibilities loaded on his plate? Ah, pass, and sod off. Then he’d found Kezia, and being with her seemed less like a responsibility and more like an opportunity. An opportunity to be happier than he’d ever dreamed.

Except caught up in this mess was a little girl who called him daddy.

“A good lawyer isn’t cheap. You could sell up ev
erything and you’d still lose. Jade’s coming with me, but because I can see you care for her, I’m giving you the option of continuing to be her daddy.”

Lawyer. Call his lawyer.
Ah, shit.
Ben didn’t dare check his watch, because Friday evening with a fine weekend forecast? His lawyer would’ve already left his office and headed for the mountains with his snowboard.

His palms sweated and he swiped them down his jeans.
Humor her then, dumbass
. Humor her to buy some time to sort out this fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition problem.

Ben peeled his lips into a smile. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

Marci shrugged and slid off the bar stool. “Good. You have until Sunday to make up your mind—Jade?” She called as she sauntered to the hallway door. “Show me your pretty bags, baby. I hope you used lots and lots of glitter.”

He stalked out of the kitchen and onto his deck. Sucking in gulps of brine-scented air, he stared over the choppy whitecaps to the
The Mollymawk. The boat his father always wanted Stewart Island Dive to have—the boat that almost cost him his home and business earlier in the year. The boat he’d sacrifice in an instant if it meant keeping Jade.

But keeping Jade just got complicated.

“Ben!”

He whirled at Marci’s shrill voice.

She stood hipshot in the doorway, her plucked eyebrows drawn together. “Jade’s not in her room.”

“Have you checked—?”

Yet another hair toss and eye roll. “Of course I checked the other rooms, I’m not thick.”

Thick-skinned, maybe. A thin stream of smoke sp
iraled out of Kezia’s chimney further down the hill.

Oh, hell. Kezia. Ben sighed, and he was pretty sure something splintered inside him. Something now irre
parably broken. “I know where she’s gone.”

Chapter
16

Kezia had just checked the tray of baking cheese scones when Jade and Sparky burst into her kitchen in a bawling, barking frenzy.

Zoe rushed over to wrap an arm around Jade’s shoulders. “What’s the matter, Jadey?”

Kezia glanced at the still swinging door. “
Cara
, does your mum or dad know you’re here?”

Sparky stuck close to her mistress’s ankles as Zoe led Jade farther into the kitchen. The dog’s normal h
yper-wagging tail was tucked low between her legs, so Kezia didn’t have the heart to order her outside.

Tears still trickled down Jade’s cheeks, and she shook her head. “They were”—her chest heaved—“fighti
ng.” A watery gulp. “About…me!”

Jade let out a raw, pain-filled cry that fist
ed around Kezia’s heartstrings.

No one—
no one
—hurt one of her
bambine.

Kezia sat at the dining table and gently tugged Jade into her lap. The girl curled close, like a small animal
seeking shelter, and wept. Smoothing silky stands of Jade’s hair, Kezia murmured to her in Italian.

Zoe darted away and then returned with the
tissue box. She pulled out two. “Here you go. They’re nice soft ones that won’t make your nose red.”

Jade blew her nose and sat up. “I’
m too big to sit on your knee.”

“Rubbish.” Kezia hugged her again. “You’re never too big to need someone to hold you while you get the sad out.”

Jade sniffed and slanted a glance at her. “It’s not all out though.” She scrunched the tissues into sodden balls. “Mum’s taking me back to Auckland with her—but I don’t wanna go, I don’t!”

Hurt for Ben, hurt for the
Harlands, and hurt for her and Zoe punched into Kezia, stealing her breath. Wrench Jade away from her family? Allow her to leave with the careless woman who’d abandoned her? Her heart howled, and she tightened her grip on Jade—then she realized the howl wasn’t only in her heart. Zoe had burst into noisy, sympathetic sobs, and Sparky pointed her muzzle to the ceiling, adding to the chorus.

Kezia held out her other arm, and Zoe flung herself against her. The three of them clung together like shi
pwreck survivors, floating aimlessly with no rescue on the horizon. What could she say?
I’ll fix this, Jade. I won’t let anyone take you away from your daddy, from your family
. Empty words. A promise she badly wanted to make but couldn’t.

“I’m sorry, Jade. We’ll miss you so much, and I know your Gran and aunties will too. And your daddy will miss you most
of all—” Kezia’s voice cracked.