Chapter 3 - The Window
It was a crisp Tuesday morning in downtown Seattle. I was sitting inside a high-end corner café, sipping an espresso and reviewing the Ashford acquisition files, while Harper and Hazel sat across from me in their stroller, happily eating blueberry muffins.
I glanced up from my tablet, and my blood instantly turned to ice.
Walking down the sidewalk, holding a briefcase and looking ten years older than the man I remembered, was Daniel. He was in Seattle for the preliminary merger meeting scheduled for that afternoon.
He stopped on the pavement to check his phone, standing directly outside the massive glass window of the café. As he pocketed his phone, he glanced up.
His eyes locked directly onto the stroller on the other side of the glass.
I watched the exact moment his world stopped spinning. He stared at Harper and Hazel. They looked up at him, their cheeks covered in muffin crumbs, blinking back at him with the exact same piercing, icy-blue eyes that stared back at him in the mirror every morning. The genetic resemblance was so violent, so undeniable, that Daniel physically staggered backward.
His mouth opened. He looked from the toddlers, up to the woman sitting across from them.
He saw me.
The color completely drained from his face. The expensive briefcase slipped from his fingers, hitting the wet pavement with a loud thud. He stood paralyzed on the other side of the glass, the ghost of his past and the terrifying reality of his present colliding in a single, breathless second. He realized, looking at those two little girls, that a beautiful, vibrant life had existed just out of his reach while he was suffocating in New York.
He lunged toward the café door, pushing his way inside, his chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon.
"Claire?" he choked out, walking toward my table, his eyes darting frantically between me and the twins. "Claire... oh my god. Are they...?"
I calmly set my espresso cup down. I didn't tremble. I didn't cry. I looked at the man who had abandoned me to the wolves, feeling absolutely nothing but pity.
"Hello, Daniel," I said, my voice smooth and cold.
"They have my eyes," he whispered, a tear actually spilling over his lashes as he took a step closer to the stroller. "Claire, you have to tell me. Are they mine? Why didn't you tell me?!"
I stood up, stepping smoothly between him and my daughters, blocking his view.
"They are my daughters, Daniel," I stated, my voice echoing with an absolute, uncompromising authority that made him flinch. "And you don't get to ask me questions. You lost that right two years ago when you looked at me across a dinner table and told me I didn't belong."
"I was a coward!" he pleaded, completely abandoning his public dignity in the middle of the coffee shop. "My father threatened everything! I have regretted it every single day since you walked out that door! Please, Claire, let me talk to you."
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"I am entirely too busy to talk to you, Daniel," I said, signaling my security detail, who had been sitting quietly at the next table. "I have a very important corporate merger to attend to this afternoon. Enjoy your trip to Seattle."
I turned my back on him, walking out of the café with my daughters, leaving Daniel Ashford hyperventilating on the floor of a coffee shop, utterly destroyed by the realization of what he had thrown away.
