Chapter Fourty Six
He turned to face her again. "You father? Is that what you are really wanting worried about, or yourself? Have you stopped to think of what your father wants…instead of what you want?"
"He won't accept your help or your money" she insisted.
He pounced on that statement, inflamed by her antagonism towards him. "I'm sure he will when I talk to him, especially with the current situation right now... And the baby too. He and I may have had our differences, but we have worked together for a long time. I'm sure we can come up with something. You are the one who is being unnecessarily stubborn. So why do you refuse my help?" he challenged.
Intriguing to watch the flush come again, sweeping into her cheeks with blazing heat. She dropped her gaze and fiercely claimed,"I can manage on my own. With the mortgage reduced, I can…"
"What if you can’t? Why risk it?" He paused, sure now in his own mind that he was the problem. "Is your dislike of me so great that you can’t bear to let me help? I didn't know you felt this way towards me"
He hated that he felt hurt because she wouldn't accept his help.
"I don’t dislike you, Dimitri! I just..... I just... I don't know okay" she burst out, banging her own hands on the desk as she leaned forward to deliver this declaration with vehemence.
"Then what would make it right for you, Kelly?" he asked. The storm of feeling in her eyes gave way to a dull bleakness. Dimitri read the answer in her mind—Nothing.
"I don’t know. I don’t know," she muttered, shaking her head over the wretched admission, shoulders slumped in defeat. "I'm just so confused. So much is happening so fast and I feel so overwhelmed"
She looked so miserable, for the second time, Dimitri felt the urge to pick her up, but not to shake her, to wrap her in a comforting embrace and promise her he would make everything better.
He loved this woman. He knew that. He loved Raymond Darcy's daughter. He wanted to take care of her. But how was he to do it when she wouldn't even let him? His gaze dropped to the table.
He still couldn't believe that she was pregnant.... Carrying his baby. And he knew that his idea that they get married was crazy. It was totally wild. Absurdly quixotic. Yet the more he thought about it the more it appealed to him. On many levels. Especially the prospect of wearing down Kelly's resistance to it, winning her over. Though that mission could well prove impossible.
Still, something was needed to break this hopeless impasse and the shock of his offer might open Kelly up more, give him an understanding of how she viewed him. He certainly had nothing to lose by putting it on the table. In heaping more scorn on him, she would have to give reasons for it, reasons he could work on.
He pasted an ironic little smile on his mouth and aimed it at her. "You know, Kelly, you’d have the right to all I could provide…if you just married me. We could be fixing all these by just doing that"
"We can't just get married, Dimitri" she began again, "You didn't want....."
"....Things are different now, damn it." he said, his voice louder. "Don’t tell me what I want, Kelly. More than anything I want to be a good father. I didn't plan to be one right now, but it's happened and I can't do anything about it, but the last I'm going to do is to be absent from my kids life."
"You don’t have to be married to fulfil that role, Dimitri" Kelly replied.
"You’d prefer us to be single parents?" Dimitri asked. His mind buzzed around what advantage Kelly might see in that situation and zeroed in on the worst possible scenario.
"If I have to fight you for custody rights, I will. Don't think that I won't do it" he fired at her in grim challenge. "Just because you’re the mother doesn’t make you the arbiter of what’s best for our child."
She looked appalled. "You wouldn’t even have time for him—her—with the way you concentrate on just work all the time"
"Why not? I can change all that without blinking. I'm sure a fair judge will agree with me. If you don’t want to be my wife and work at being a harmonious couple…"
"A good father would want a stable life for his child," she fiercely argued.
"Yes. And also want the child to feel loved by both parents. Not one cutting out the other. Was that what you intended to do with me, Kelly? Cut me out? It's what you are doing already. I understand now why you have been so occupied lately to see me. You have known about the baby for a while now and decided not to tell me.... Because you were thinking of ways to push me away "
"No!" She paced around, pumped up with too much turbulent energy to remain still, though her arms folded across her chest again, projecting a need for self-containment, excluding him by action if not by word.
Dimitri kept his distance, watching her deal with the pressure he had mounted for the outcome he wanted. Anger was still burning through him. If she had imagined he’d just waltz off about his business and leave her to bring up their child any way she wanted, she could certainly dismiss that idea right now.
She paused, shooting him a measuring look. "I want my baby to be happy. I don't want the kind of childhood I had for our baby"
"So why not make us a family, Kelly? The child would be happy. What objection do you have to marrying me?".
"If I marry you…will you leave our son or daughter here with me when you take on your.... career commitments"
Dimitri knew that being a hands-on father would always come first with him.
"Should I take on work that requires me to be elsewhere, I would want my family to go with me."
"No!" Scarlet pride in her cheeks. "I will not compete with…" Her mouth clamped shut, but her eyes held a violent storm of feeling.
"Compete with what?" he probed.
"I don't know.... The women in your world," she flung at him, hating having to say it yet unable to hold it in.
