Part 3His Heart

The party broke up in disarray. That night, Josh didn’t come home.

The housekeeper told me he had taken Sierra and her son home.

I didn’t call him. He didn’t send a single message.

When Josh returned the next morning, I was in the middle of breakfast. He handed his coat to a maid and pulled out a chair to sit down.

Halfway through my toast, my appetite vanished. I stood up to leave, not sparing him a glance or a word of greeting.

He suddenly called out behind me. “Don’t you have anything to ask me?”

What did he want me to ask? About the baby? About where he was last night?

The old me would have screamed at him, thrown a hysterical fit. And what would I have gotten for it?

Josh’s brow was knitted in a frown of impatience. “Stop being so unreasonable. Sierra and I just have a professional relationship.”

A professional relationship that produced a child. A professional relationship that, just last night, had resulted in a picture on Sierra’s social media of them kissing, wrapped in a passionate embrace.

Now that I was too tired to care, too exhausted to ask, he was demanding to know why.

I turned slowly. He was watching me, an expectant look in his eyes.

I averted my gaze, walked to the cabinet, and retrieved a manila envelope. I placed it on the table in front of him.

“Josh, let’s get a divorce.”

His face froze. “Over something this small, you want a divorce?”

He always did this—minimized everything, making it seem like I was the one at fault, the one being irrational.

My nails dug into my palms. I looked at his nonchalant expression. “The baby wasn’t adopted at all, was he? He’s your son with Sierra Thorne.”

The day the baby was born, I had just finished my last surgery when a colleague in the OB/GYN department told me Josh was there to pick me up. I didn’t even change out of my scrubs, rushing down, afraid of making him wait.

I found him outside the delivery room. A nurse was holding a newborn, congratulating him.

“Congratulations, Mr. Mason. It’s a healthy baby boy.”

Josh held the child, his eyes shining with a joy he couldn’t hide. Sierra lay weakly on a gurney, her eyes glistening with tears, the very picture of pitiable beauty.

“Josh…” she whispered.

He stroked her hair and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead.

“You did so well, Sierra. Thank you for giving me a son.”

I stood there, thunderstruck, convinced I had misheard.

One of the nurses couldn't help but ask, “Mr. Mason, didn’t you say she was your sister?”

His expression soured instantly. “If a word of this gets out,” he threatened, his voice dropping to a low growl, “you know the consequences.”

I tried to tell myself it was a mistake. Josh wasn’t that kind of person. But I was wrong. I had been wrong from the very first time he’d suggested we adopt a child.