Page 86 of Mistletoe Mistake
~Cole~
Samantha followed me down the hall, both of us looking for somewhere private where we could talk while the words she had whispered in my ear continued to ring in my head. I didn't want to believe they were true, but I had to admit they could be. Would she really risk coming to the party and showing her face to me again if they weren't?
Either way, I didn't want Gemma exposed to whatever new scheme Samantha had up her sleeve. Gemma had enough on her own plate without dumping my baggage onto it. By agreeing to speak to Samantha in private, I hoped I could cut through all the garbage, find out exactly what she wanted and get back to Gemma as quickly as possible.
Finally, we reached an open door leading into a small sitting room that appeared to be empty, the lights off. We both stepped inside and I flipped the switch to illuminate the room. As soon as I'd closed the door behind us, I turned around and got straight to the point. “What the hell do you want from me, Samantha?”
She took a step back, clearly not accustomed to my anger. I never raised my voice to her when we were together, but any tender feelings I'd once had towards her were long gone.
“I told you,” she repeated, blinking at me in the way she always had, which I'd always taken for innocence. When she did it then, it just seemed ridiculously fake. “We need to talk about your daughter.”
“I don't have a daughter.” My voice was low and filled with warning. The days when she could manipulate me were over. Nothing she said would be taken at face value.
“I told you I was pregnant before you proposed,” she reminded me.
She actually had the gall to stand in front of me and talk about our engagement? Was she really that shameless?
“You also said you loved me,” I pointed out. “You said a lot of things that weren't true. Why should I believe this is any different?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but I cut her off, changing my mind.
“Actually, the first question I want answered is: what are you doing here? At this party? How do you know Annabel?”
“I've been trying to get in touch with you, but none of your friends will talk to me.”
If that was true, I owed a debt of gratitude to any of the friends that Samantha might have approached.
“I found Annabel on Instagram, posting about how she was spending time with you. I sent her a message and she said she could arrange for us to meet.”
Annabel claimed to be spending time with me? That was quite a stretch. I couldn’t see what she had to gain from helping Annabel, other than getting more attention for herself, or maybe just causing trouble for Gemma. Maybe that was all she wanted.
“And this sudden interest in finding me? What brought that on?”
“Our child,” she stated once again. “As I already said. You have a daughter, Cole.”
She planned to stick to that story, apparently. “If that were true, it's not something that happened recently. Why would you just be telling me now?”
She pursed her lips, clearly not getting the reaction from me that she wanted. As I tried to figure out what reaction she expected, it suddenly became clear to me.
“You want money.”
Of course she did. It always came down to that.
Samantha winced, but she didn't deny it. “It's not for me. It's for your daughter."
“And what happened to the ten million you took from me?” My anger began to fade as I grasped the game, and my usual calm control returned to me.
“Cole, I never meant to...”
I didn't know where she was going with that, and I didn't care. “Don't insult my intelligence. We both know what you meant to do.”
I didn't want to hear anything else, and certainly not any excuses she might have come up with to try to explain what she'd done. If she had come to me two weeks earlier, it might have sent me into a tailspin, making me question everything and doubt myself. But that evening, having spent the last two weeks with Gemma, I could see Samantha for exactly what she was.
Finally, it had become crystal clear to me: the Samantha I thought I loved never existed. I had always been so careful with her, eager to please her, because part of me always felt like she might slip away. With Gemma, I felt none of that. Gemma gave herself to me completely; not just her body, but her spirit and her wit and her laughter and her support. She withheld nothing. What we had together, that was real, the most real thing I'd ever experienced.
No matter what the truth turned out to be, whether I had a child or not, I wouldn’t let Samantha control me or affect my relationship with Gemma. She didn't have any power over me anymore.
“Is there really a child?”
