Call Me By Your Heart novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Check

The guards reached us just as the sliding doors opened again.

A man in a navy suit walked in with a gold team pin on his lapel.

He moved like a man who had never once been stopped at a door.

Reginald Hargate.

Delilah ran to him.

"Daddy, she says she's Jamie's mother. She came here to take him."

Reginald looked at me.

He took his time.

I had seen him twice at the ballpark in three months, always from across a concourse, and each time I had gone cold.

Up close he had a pleasant, tired face.

"Ms. MacAleese," he said.

"I'm sorry for whatever you've been through. But you're upsetting a sick child's family. Gentlemen, please see her out."

"No," Scott said.

Reginald's eyes moved to him.

"Scott. Son. She's disturbed."

"She's staying."

"I won't ask twice."

"Then don't."

Scott didn't raise his voice.

"She stays in this hospital as long as Jamie does. I'm his father. I'm putting her on the visitor list in front of everyone here."

Several people in the waiting room had their phones up now.

I saw the red recording dots.

Reginald saw them too.

He smiled, very slightly, and lowered his voice.

"Your extension is on my desk, Scott. Forty million over four years. I haven't signed it. I'd hate for a scene like this to make me reconsider."

My stomach turned.

Forty million dollars.

I looked at Scott.

He looked at Reginald for a long moment, with the guards shifting beside him.

"Tear it up," he said.

Delilah gasped.

"I mean it."

Scott held the old man's stare.

"You've owned my signature since I was twenty-one. I'm done."

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