Page 13 of Tripped By Love

He hesitated but then brushed past me. I closed the door, stepping around him and turning to watch him absorb my house with the same scrutiny he gave to his students’ assignments. Full of disdain and condescension. Nothing ever good enough. I was grateful he’d never been my professor.

I tried not to see the room through his disapproving eyes, but it was hopeless. Toys from Chevelle were still scattered around the space that I hadn’t had a chance to pick up. The furniture was mostly secondhand because I’d been determined to fill my house with things I could afford rather than more money from Brady’s or my parents’ pockets. None of the pieces were in bad shape, but they clearly weren’t new, and they were in patterns I knew would drive him crazy. Mix-matched. Florals and paisleys and stripes in rainbow hues that made me think of more flower fields and blue skies.

Clayton’s house had been gray and white and black. Sterile. Modern. The interior had been a complete contrast to the exterior of the old home. It had been another reason he’d wanted to leave Grand Orchard. To escape the quaint feel of the town and the college, even though Harvard had its own old-school charm.

“What do you want, Clayton?” I repeated through gritted teeth.

He turned, schooling his expression and pushing up his glasses on his nose.

“You. The baby,” he said.

I laughed. Harshly. Not only because it was insane to think he’d come back after two years to try and resuscitate a relationship that had hardly existed to begin with, but also because I didn’t believe him. The Clayton Hardy I knew had no wish for relationships or children. He only cared about his name and the prestige it carried.

He looked away and then back at me, jaw clenching. “I’ve taken a summer professorship at Wilson-Jacobs just to have the chance to spend time with you and the baby.”

“What happened to Harvard?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’m still there. I’m on track for tenure, just like I planned.”

“But you decided to come back to Grand Orchard…for me?” I scoffed.

“You and the baby.”

“What did I have? Do you even know? Is it a boy or a girl?” I demanded.

He had the decency to look chagrinned. “I didn’t look far enough ahead, Cassidy. I didn’t see what I was giving up.”

I snorted. “You gave up an occasional fuck. That was all you lost.”

“Why are you being difficult? Isn’t it simple? I’m the father. I’m here. I want to make a go of it with you and the baby. Did you have a boy or a girl? Can I see him or her?”

He’d clearly expected to just show up and for me to go weak in the knees with relief at having Chevelle’s father there at last. As if I’d been pining away, miserable without him. As if I’d be grateful that he suddenly deemed me necessary in his life. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“What? Does Harvard expect you to be a family man in order to gain tenure? Too many female students clogging your office hours? Are there whispers about you there like there were here?”

“I can’t help it if I’m good-looking. I’ve never slept with a student,” he growled.

“You slept with me.”

“You weren’t my student. You’d graduated. It was completely different.”

I laughed sarcastically. “I’d literally just graduated. I’d walked across the stage that day and gotten my diploma.”

He stepped closer, and I stepped back. “Cassidy, give me a chance. Let me spend time with you and the…” He looked around at the toys littering the floor and the pile of baby clothes I hadn’t folded yet. “You and my boy.”

“Good deduction, Professor. But it isn’t going to happen. Not now. Not ever.”

“I’m just asking for a chance. Don’t be so…”

“Bitchy? Defiant? Angry? Which word would you like to use?”

His jaw was ticking repeatedly. He shoved his hands into his pockets as if to keep me from seeing how they’d tightened into fists. He turned away, toward the windows.

“Spending time with my son…with you…it’s the least you can give me.”

The least I could give him! Fury filled me, and I would have snapped back, but suddenly, a strong arm looped around my waist from behind, drawing me into a muscled chest. A chest I knew even if I’d never been tucked up against it in quite this way. As if I belonged to it. As if the arm was claiming me in a single, possessive scoop.

“I don’t think I like the idea of my girlfriend spending time with the shitty-ass man who left her with money for an abortion and nothing else,” Marco’s deep voice barreled through the room, coasting over my ear and my cheek and causing Clayton to flip around, startled.