LITMIR.BIZ

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he needed to establish some ground rules for them.

      “If I’m going to be any use at all to you, Lilli,” he said, cupping her elbow and ever so subtly guiding her back to his desk, “I’m going to have to know everything.” He pulled out the chair for her but Lilli remained standing, in silent, stubborn defiance of his request. “Any lawyer will need all the details in order to properly represent you and your case.”

      Her case.

      That made it sound so austere, so clinical. It wasn’t a case, she silently insisted. It was a boy. A beautiful, sweet-tempered, innocent, blond-haired little boy. A little boy who was her reason for getting up in the morning, for her very existence. And she would die to protect him, to keep him safe and out of Elizabeth Dalton’s clutches.

      Lilli was still silent. Kullen sighed, attempting another approach. He sat down. “All right, I’ll fill in the blanks. Stop me if I’m wrong. Elizabeth’s son is the boy’s father.”

      He paused a moment for her to contradict him, even though he was certain that, given the circumstances, she couldn’t. Lilli sat down, but the uncomfortable silence continued.

      “And now, out of the blue,” Kullen went on, “he and his mother want custody of the boy.”

      Lilli looked down at her hands. “Not ‘he,’ just his mother,” she corrected woodenly.

      Kullen went with the tide. “Okay, so the boy’s father doesn’t want him—”

      “His father didn’t want him,” she said tersely, changing the tense that he’d used.

      Kullen paused. “Did something happen to make Dalton change his mind?”

      “No,” Lilli answered. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears, stripped of emotion. It was the only way, even after all this time, that she could bring herself to talk about the man who had so savagely changed her life. “He’s dead.”

      The moment she mentioned Dalton’s death, Kullen vaguely recalled hearing a sound bite on the news one evening summarizing Erik Dalton’s shallow life. If he remembered correctly, that was about six months ago. Thinking, he tried to summon up the details of the incident.

      “It was a skiing accident, wasn’t it?” he asked.

      Lilli shook her head. “Boating,” she corrected, then added, “From what I heard, he liked people thinking of him as some kind of a daredevil.” She used the impersonal pronoun he, unable to make herself even say Erik Dalton’s name.

      Kullen continued studying her. There was so much she wasn’t saying, he thought. “And that daredevil image didn’t include being a father,” he guessed.

      Lilli could feel hateful, disparaging words rising to her lips. She’d never hated anyone, but she hated Erik Dalton with the last fiber of her being. But she had always been a truthful person and, in all fairness, in this particular situation Dalton didn’t technically deserve to be called a self-centered scum.

      She shrugged, trying to seem indifferent. “I never gave him the chance to turn that role down.”

       Damn it, Lilli, I loved you. I would have put the world at your feet if you’d married me. Was this why you left? To run into this soulless jerk’s Armani-covered arms?

      Kullen struggled to keep the anger out of his voice but he couldn’t help asking, “Exactly what was it that you did give him?”

      Here come the tears again, she thought, fighting to will them back. Despite her mental pep talk to the contrary, she felt terribly vulnerable and exposed. She didn’t know why she felt that way, but she did.

      Maybe it had to do with seeing Kullen after all these years.

      Even so, Lilli absolutely refused to allow herself to cry, refused to come across as some helpless little waif, the hapless victim of a spoiled, overly privileged, rich narcissist who thought he was entitled to everything and anything he wanted.

      “A note,” she replied. “I wrote him a note when Jonathan was born, telling him that I thought he had a right to know that he had a son. I also told him that I didn’t want anything from him. I intended to raise Jonathan on my own.”

      She couldn’t read Kullen’s expression and waited for him to say something.

      When he finally spoke, it wasn’t what she expected to hear. “That was rather foolish, don’t you think?” he asked. “By having nothing to do with Dalton, you were denying your son a life of privilege.”

      His assumption made her angry. “No,” she contradicted firmly, “I was protecting my son and giving him a life filled with love.” She fisted her hands in her lap.

      “I want Jonathan to be someone, to make something of himself and give a little back to the world. I want his life to count,” she told him with passion. “I didn’t want him to learn how to use people, how to treat them all as if they were beneath him.”

      His eyes never left hers. “Still, Jonathan could have had every need seen to. He can still have that,” he pointed out.

      Lilli watched him for a moment, heartsick and disappointed. Who was this person? The Kullen Manetti she remembered had a nobility about him. During one of their study sessions, he’d confided that he wanted to fight for the underdog. His father expected him to join his firm, but the thought of doing that left him feeling empty. After graduation he intended to go to work for a nonprofit organization, helping people who had nowhere else to turn.

      Obviously somewhere along the line, he’d changed. He still looked like Kullen, but he no longer was that man.

      Gripping the armrests on either side of her, Lilli pushed herself up to her feet again. “I guess you’re not the one to help me after all.” She steeled herself. “Sorry I wasted your time.”

      “You’re repeating yourself,” he told her mildly. “I’ll be the one who tells you if my time’s being wasted.” She looked at him, perplexed. “Right now, I’m just playing devil’s advocate,” he continued.

      “I don’t need a devil’s advocate,” she informed him tersely. “If anything, I need an angel, because I am up against the devil in this. Elizabeth Dalton has a battalion of razor-sharp lawyers on her side.” She might as well be up-front with him. “I can’t afford a battalion of lawyers.”

      “I’m guessing,” he said kindly, “that you don’t have the kind of money it takes to hire one lawyer.”

      She wanted to protest his assumption, but couldn’t. He was right and there was no point in pretending otherwise. Squaring her shoulders, she avoided looking into his eyes. If she saw pity there, it would destroy her. “I was hoping that I could pay the bill in installments.”

      Kullen took no delight in watching her squirm, physically or mentally. “The firm takes a few cases pro bono—”

      Her head shot up. “I’m not asking for charity,” she informed him, offended by the suggestion.

      He knew he had to tread lightly in order not to crush her self-esteem—or insult her. “Nobody says you were. It’s up to our accountant to decide whether or not taking a certain case is the right thing to do. Doing a pro bono case helps with the tax forms,” he quickly interjected to keep her from protesting again. “It makes us look good. And from what I hear, the firm hasn’t taken on a pro bono case this year. When you come right down to it, you might actually be doing us a favor,” he told her.

      Lilli sincerely doubted that. But she was desperate and she did need someone with legal expertise in her corner. She had no time to waltz around semantics. She needed to engage a lawyer soon if she had any hope of keeping her son.

      So for now, she played along and pretended that she believed this fabricated story of his. “All right, if you put it that way—”

      He smiled. “I do.”

      She

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