“I did.”
“Really? Why?”
“Her diaper blew out.”
“You changed her diaper?”
“Why is that so astonishing?” He looked affronted.
“I didn’t think you would know how.”
“I called the chief engineer to walk me through it.”
“Oh. Does she have kids?”
“I was being sarcastic,” he said with exasperation. “He’s an unmarried man who probably hasn’t seen a kid since he was one. No, Tanja, I managed it all by myself. It’s not rocket science. Take off the dirty one, swab the deck, put on a clean one. Her pajama thing was stained so I changed that, too. What did I miss?”
Diaper cream, but they’d run out ages ago. Thankfully, Illi’s rash hadn’t been too bad lately.
“I didn’t expect you to be such a natural is all,” Tanja said, mildly defensive since he was taking to caring for a baby like it was the easiest thing in the world. She and Brahim had had quite a few misadventures in the early days.
“It’s all online,” Leon muttered, then abruptly changed the subject with a nod toward her smoothie. “Were you hungry? You didn’t have to leave the room. Dial zero for anything you need.”
“When you didn’t bring her back, I wanted to know where she was.” She craned her neck to avoid Illi’s grab for her nose.
He narrowed his eyes. “What did you think? That I gave her to the doctor to leave on a church doorstep or something? Didn’t you trust me?”
She pinched her lips, wondering why that was so astonishing. “Can you blame me?”
She sank into a chair, still very weak, especially with Illi so energetic and wiggly. She was happily bouncing her legs in frog kicks while twisting and grabbing for anything she could touch.
“But I’m her father, Tanja.” Leon’s tone was so serrated, he could have sliced bread with it. “Surely you believe I could only have her best interests at heart?”
“So do I,” she said, guilty of involving him without his consent, but he would wait the rest of his life for her to apologize for that. “You saw how difficult things have become on Istuval. Do you think I should have left her behind at an orphanage? Should I have asked Kahina to raise her when she can’t work to support herself and will be living on her brother’s generosity for the foreseeable future?”
He glanced away, grimly admitting, “No.” He rose and brought her smoothie across, leaving it on a table within reach. “But you’ve put me in a difficult position.”
“Have I? Gosh, that’s a shame.” She met his gaze. She could speak sarcasm, too.
Leon didn’t move, only stood over her, hands pushed into the pockets of his jeans, not a whiff of humor about him.
She crossed her legs, reminded by his cold, steely stare that she wasn’t wearing a stitch of her own clothing and was only off Istuval thanks to him. Her baby was dry and fed when she was in no shape to care for her. Illi was hers, also thanks to him.
“I’ll quit taking cheap shots,” she conceded begrudgingly. “But an explanation would be nice. You quit taking my calls. Did I do something to make you drop me cold like that?”
She subtly braced herself, having convinced herself long ago that his abandonment was somehow her fault and she was too dumb to see it.
“Are we doing this now? All right.” He paced away a few restless steps, hands still pushed into his pockets. “You must have seen the reports on how my father’s empire collapsed when he did?”
“And that you had to restructure, yes. I understand you were busy, Leon. I’m talking about five minutes to write an email so I wasn’t left wondering why you didn’t want to come back.” Or want to be married to her anymore. He hadn’t wanted to even talk to her.
She had thought about climbing on a plane to confront him, but she’d been as broke as her brother and father. Leon clearly hadn’t wanted to see her, so she had moved on with her life. More or less. She had focused on attaining her degree to avoid dwelling on the happily-ever-after dream she had lost. The money was one thing, the blow to her inner belief system and self-esteem quite another.
“The reports that were made public were the tip of the iceberg.” His shoulders became a tense line. “I was doing everything I could to keep the worst of it out of the news. Things were happening very quickly and there was no bottom to the well. Each time I thought about calling you, my situation was worse than it had been an hour before. I couldn’t risk revealing any of it and having it become public.”
“And you have the nerve to question my lack of trust in you? I wouldn’t have said a word if you’d asked me not to. What can you tell me now? Because silence leaves me making up stories and, believe me, you do not come off well in any of them.”
“No?” he asked with derision, but his cheek ticked. “What terrible things have I done?”
“You bankrupted my father’s marina.”
“Your brother bankrupted it,” he responded swiftly and firmly.
“You promised Zach you would invest with him.”
“And then I told him I had no money and he should find someone else.”
“No money?” she scoffed, looking wildly around at the polished brass and leather upholstery and grand piano. “Zach partnered with you, Leon. In good faith because he trusted you. And you completely screwed him over. All of us.”
“I had every intention of working on the expansion when he proposed it. Once I realized how bad things were with Dad’s finances, I had to stage a fire sale. That’s business, Tanja. It wasn’t personal and he knew that.”
Tanja could only stare at him while Illi did squats in her lap, babbling against her fist.
“Zach took it personally,” she finally managed to choke out. “We all did. I thought your defection was pretty personal, considering we were married. I was your wife, Leon.”
“For a week,” he scoffed. “Not even. And it wasn’t a real marriage.”
That hit her so hard she recoiled into the chair, quickly hugging the baby so she didn’t let Illi slide right out of her arms since they seemed to have turned to rubber.
Leon flashed a scowl and moved toward her.
She looked away, blindly staring at the horizon of blue on blue through the huge picture windows. “Silly me, coming all this way to ask for a divorce when we only needed to clap three times and wish it away like a bad dream.”
“The marriage was legal. Obviously,” he said tersely. “And we are overdue to discuss divorce, I agree with you on that. But it’s not as if we were in love, Tanja. We got married because your brother found out I’d slept with you. He said your father would expect it if I was buying into the marina.”