Lone Star Valentine (McCabe Multiples) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to one side. “Thanks for doing your best to keep my mother out of trouble today.”
    Still feeling frazzled and on edge, Lily admitted, “It was some morning.”
    He nodded in mute agreement, his own eyes somber.
    Lily gave him his choice of turkey and provolone or ham and cheese. He took the latter. Then she pulled out two bottles of sparkling water, two bags of chips and several napkins. She had zero appetite but also knew she had to eat. “So what do you think?” she asked, inclining her head at the thick file.
    “Looks like Bode’s attorneys buried you in motions when this all started.”
    Lily nodded. The fact she was a lawyer, too, had helped her understand a lot of what was going on—then and now. But she had never practiced family law or become an expert in child custody, and that hurt her ability to deal with any of this strictly on her own.
    The empathy in his expression encouraged her to go on.
    “His legal team wanted me to just go away. But with Bode assassinating my character in the press and publicly questioning my integrity, I had to do something to protect my reputation.”
    Especially since Bode and his legal team had been making veiled threats behind the scenes to not only countersue her in civil court for any and all damages done to Bode’s reputation, but to bring her up on ethics charges before the State Bar of Texas for knowingly bringing a false paternity suit.
    They couldn’t have won; they’d all known that. But they could have done untold damage to her career anyway. Luckily, Bode had come to his senses, called his attorneys off at the last minute and consented to the court-ordered paternity test he’d claimed would free him.
    Only it hadn’t. At that point, once the indisputable facts were brought to light, it had become all about damage control. And money, of course.
    Not that Lily had asked for one red cent from him...
    Gannon’s gaze roved over her features. He regarded her for a long careful moment. “And if you hadn’t had so much at stake professionally back then?”
    Lily shrugged, not bothering to hide the humiliation and pain she had suffered. “I probably still would have fought him—reluctantly. Not for child support, but for the truth, for Lucas’s sake. Better Lucas know from the get-go who his parents are.” Than always wonder and have his mother called a liar.
    “Even if one of them doesn’t seem to want him very much,” Gannon remarked, sitting back in his chair.
    Lily tore her eyes from the hard sinew of his chest beneath the starched cotton of his shirt. It had been years since the two of them had been friends, never mind meant anything at all to each other, and yet he still amped her pulse. It was so unfair. For so many reasons, he’d been off-limits then. Still was now.
    She sighed, doing her best to focus on the situation at hand instead of the ruggedly handsome man opposite her. “So you think taking me to court is a pressure tactic on their part?”
    Gannon gave her a barely perceptible nod, ripped open his chips and unwrapped his sandwich. “They want you to know they’re going to play hardball unless you immediately give them everything they want.”
    She studied the disheveled strands of Gannon’s dark brown hair. The cool appraisal in his midnight-blue eyes. “You don’t think I should,” she observed.
    “I don’t compromise in situations like this,” he told her. “I go full throttle, and I advise my clients to do the same.” He took a bite of sandwich. She forced herself to eat a little, too.
    Her glance fell to the court summons she’d faxed over earlier. “Did you have a chance to read the petition?”
    Another nod and grim narrowing of his eyes.
    Lily pushed her mostly untouched lunch to the side. Stated unhappily, “He’s alleging that I have prevented him from seeing Lucas more than once a year for the past fifty-two months.” She knotted her hands into fists and leaned toward him, her fury mounting. “It’s not true. All