by Lynne Graham
A day later Kat Valtinos had shown up at the bar and cornered her. ‘Jax is the ultimate playboy and you’re the British equivalent of trailer trash—’
‘Probably,’ Lucy had conceded, looking back on her troubled poverty-stricken past.
‘Obviously Jax will get bored fast and you look like the clingy sort.’
‘I haven’t had a chance to cling yet but I’m a quick learner. Does he like clingy women?’ Lucy had asked, wide-eyed. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’
‘No, a very good friend,’ Kat had declared. ‘But you’re wasting your time. I intend to marry him.’
‘Tell that to him, not to me,’ Lucy had advised and got back to work, ignoring the bitchy brunette until she’d finally stalked out in a snit at not being taken seriously.
*
The following morning, Lucy rose early after a sleepless night of wandering painfully through her mortifyingly fresh memories of being with Jax two years earlier. She watched her father and stepmother leave to attend the funeral. Over breakfast they had been too preoccupied with a sad and affectionate exchange of stories about their now deceased friend to notice how heavy-eyed and silent Lucy was.
But Lucy was also restless with anxiety and operating on pure adrenalin. Now that Jax knew about Bella she had to worry about how he would act on that information. She winced at the knowledge that Jax had power over her again. Certainly he had rights as a father that she could not deny. But would he choose to exercise those rights and seek an active parenting role?
Barely an hour later, Lucy received her first taste of Jax choosing to exercise his rights. A smartly dressed, fast-speaking lawyer arrived and asked her to agree to DNA testing and no sooner had she given consent, her face burning at the humiliating suspicion that Jax could doubt that he had fathered her child, than a lab technician arrived and took samples. That matter dealt with, the lawyer then settled a confidentiality agreement down in front of her. It seemed to be what Lucy had seen referred to as a ‘gagging order’ in the media and she refused to sign it, sticking to her guns when the older man persisted in his persuasions.
‘Mr Antonakos does not like what I shall describe as private matters broadcast in the public domain. If you sign this document, it will form a secure basis for good relations between you in the future.’
‘I can assure you that I have no intention of speaking to the press but I’m not prepared to sign anything that says I cannot talk about my own daughter,’ she told him quietly.
By the time the older man departed, Lucy fully understood that he had been engaged in a potential damage-limitation plan. And Lucy was utterly unnerved by Jax acting to protect himself and the reputation of the Antonakos family even before he had definitive proof that her child was his. She was appalled that he could distrust her so much that he suspected that she might sell nasty stories about him to the newspapers.
In truth she did have a very low opinion of Jax but she had every intention of keeping that low opinion to herself for her daughter’s sake. Whatever else Jax was, he was and always would be her daughter’s father and she didn’t want to do anything to damage that relationship. That meant, she registered with a sinking heart, that she would have to keep her personal feelings very much to herself. Airing her anger, resentment and bitterness would be destructive and the situation they were in where they shared a child but nothing else would be difficult enough to deal with.
An hour after the lawyer departed, Jax arrived and, for once, not in a limousine. He roared up outside on a motorbike and it was only as he doffed his helmet on the way to the front door that she realised it was him and not someone making a delivery. He was trying to be discreet, endeavouring to ensure that he wasn’t recognised, she realised. When she had first met Jax in Spain he had only recently stepped into his late brother’s role and as he had been relatively unknown there had been no paparazzi following him around then. Now that a kind of celebrity madness erupted around Jax’s every public appearance she was grateful that he was being careful because she did not want to see her face or her daughter’s appearing in articles full of embarrassing speculations.
Lucy opened the front door and stepped back. Jax strode in, bringing with him the scent of fresh air, leather and masculinity. In the narrow hall, he towered over her and she thrust the door quickly shut to walk into the spacious front room, which was sprinkled with colourful toys and baby equipment.
Jax slung his motorbike helmet down on a chair and raked impatient fingers through his black hair. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.
‘Bella’s having a nap. I’ll get her up in ten minutes. She wakes very early in the morning and then she gets tired again…’ Realising that she was gabbling, Lucy flushed, insanely conscious of Jax’s stare.
Lucy sported cropped jeans, a pink tee shirt and bare feet. She looked very young and cute and definitely hadn’t dressed up for his benefit. Jax was irritated that she had not made the effort. He hadn’t slept much the night before. The cold shower hadn’t worked any miracle and that sexual tension piled on top of the shocking announcement Lucy had made had done nothing to help. When he had a problem Jax liked a plan to work towards, a plan with firm boundaries. Unhappily there was no convenient plan available to tell him how a man behaved when he discovered he was a father even though he had never wanted that particular joy. But he had been reckless with Lucy in the birth-control department and in retrospect he could not forgive or excuse himself for that lack of responsibility. Of course, he reminded himself wryly, the kid might not be his, in which case he was dealing with nothing more than a storm in a teacup.
‘Stop staring at me,’ Lucy told him, cheeks burning from the intensity of his scrutiny.
‘Of course I’m staring. You dropped a bomb on me last night. I’m still reeling,’ Jax breathed in a raw undertone, green eyes glittering warily below curling ebony lashes.
‘Well, I’ve been mentally reeling from the minute I discovered I was pregnant,’ Lucy confided truthfully. ‘With time you get used to the idea. I couldn’t bear to imagine life without Bella now.’
Jax scanned the youthful glow of her unblemished skin and the luxuriant tumble of strawberry-blonde ringlets that merely highlighted her bright blue eyes. He acknowledged her beauty for there was no denying what was right in front of him. As his body began to react he clenched his teeth together hard and wandered back towards the front door, determined not to let his libido take over when there would soon be a child in the room.
‘Coffee?’ Lucy pressed as the awkward silence stretched when he reappeared in the doorway.
‘This is not a social visit,’ Jax answered.
A cry sounded out somewhere above them and Lucy scurried upstairs, her face flushed by his deflating statement.
Jax plonked himself down on a sofa and struggled to relax but it had been more years than he cared to recall since he had been around a baby. He was godfather to several but his role had never been hands-on, nor would it ever have been more because nobody expected a single man, who was also erroneously known as his actress mother’s only child, to be comfortable dealing with young children. Ironically Jax had learned the daily routine of how to look after a baby when he was only twelve years old. It had been the end of the summer before his mother had finally engaged a nanny because Jax was returning to boarding school.
He heard the creak of the stairs and vaulted upright. As he straightened his shoulders Lucy walked into the lounge and he immediately saw the child in her arms. He froze into a statue in the same moment that he saw the little girl’s black curly hair and the green eyes. That fast, that dramatically, Jax knew he didn’t need a DNA test to prove to anyone that the little girl was his. Lucy’s child was the living image of his kid sister, Tina, and that uncanny resemblance hit him like an avalanche. His mother had had very strong genes, he reckoned ruefully, for both he and the little sister who had died as a toddler had looked far more like Mariana than the men who had fathered her two children. He knew too that his striking likeness
to his mother had only been another nail in his coffin as far as his oversensitive father was concerned.
‘This is Bella…’ Lucy framed, kneeling down to settle the little girl gently on the floor.
A thumb planted in her rosebud mouth, Bella studied Jax fixedly, her green eyes full of curiosity.
Jax bent down and lifted a toy that broke straight into a catchy tune as soon as he pressed the right button. Bella grinned and came closer, steadying herself on one powerful thigh with a clutching little hand.
‘She’s not scared,’ Jax remarked, marvelling that he could still speak normally after being plunged without warning into some of his darkest memories. The remnants of that guilt, anger and pain still resonated powerfully with him.
‘No, she’s quite confident and she likes men. My father makes a fuss of her and spoils her. I suppose we all spoil her a bit,’ Lucy conceded, staring at the little tableau of Jax and his daughter as they each assessed the other. ‘She looks very like you—’
Jax skated a teasing forefinger off Bella’s determined little chin and swallowed thickly, struggling to master his almost overwhelming emotions. He should not cloud his first meeting with his daughter with such tragic memories, he censured himself fiercely. The past was the past and it would be wiser to leave the sad little ghost of Tina safely buried there.
‘What is it?’ Lucy prompted, troubled by the feverish glitter of Jax’s stunning eyes, their brilliance enhanced by the surround of spiky black lashes. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Jax insisted, his wide sensual mouth slashing into a sudden forced smile, for he had shared far too much private stuff with Lucy in the past and he had no plans to make himself vulnerable in that way again ‘But when she was born you should have moved heaven and earth to ensure that I knew I was a father.’
Unprepared for that criticism when she had tried every way she knew how to contact him, Lucy stiffened. ‘That’s not fair—’
‘What isn’t fair,’ Jax fielded as he accepted the little plastic doll that Bella brought him, ‘is that this little girl and I weren’t able to be in each other’s lives from the start.’
Lucy’s bright blue eyes hardened. ‘As you said though, when you dumped me, you didn’t want me making a nuisance of myself,’ she reminded him thinly. ‘If you didn’t want to hear from me ever again, how was I supposed to tell you?’
Not trusting himself to speak in the mood he was in, Jax shrugged a muscular shoulder in brooding silence.
‘Didn’t think you’d have an answer for that,’ Lucy sniped, leaning down to clasp Bella’s hand and guide her into the kitchen where she set about filling a toddler cup with milk.
Bella pushed against the back door, keen to get out onto the patio and play. Lucy opened it and watched her daughter toddle out into the sunlight to retrieve the little plastic pram she loved.
His child, his daughter, a new generation in the Antonakos family, Jax acknowledged, watching Bella swig her milk and then set down the cup with exaggerated care before pushing the little pram out onto the small lawn. Somehow, he didn’t know how, he didn’t care, Lucy should have contacted him, he thought angrily.
‘I have missed out on over a year of my daughter’s life,’ Jax intoned grimly. ‘That is not acceptable—’
Under sudden attack, Lucy spun. ‘No, what was unacceptable back then was the way you treated me!’ she condemned with spirit.
Jax thought about the contents of the investigative file he had been given. He saw no point in throwing the contents of that file in Lucy’s face now. Likewise her little session in that alleyway. His reaction had been all too human. He had let his anger and aggression take over and dictate his moves. ‘I’m afraid it never occurred to me that you could be pregnant,’ he admitted in a harsh undertone. ‘I should’ve acknowledged that possibility and made provision for it but I didn’t. That was a serious oversight on my part.’
A little of the tension in Lucy’s slender shoulders eased. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘Then let us not waste time stating the obvious and rehashing a past we both prefer to forget,’ Jax countered impatiently.
‘We can’t forget it when Bella was born from it,’ Lucy argued helplessly. ‘We may not like each other but we’ll just have to live with that. I’ll make coffee, and not because this is a social occasion but because we need to learn how to act civilised.’
As Lucy left the doorway to switch on the kettle Jax strode out onto the patio, unable to let his newly discovered daughter out of his sight and reach. It crossed his mind that he had no intention of living with his distaste of Lucy and forging a civilised alliance with her as a co-parent. With what he knew about her past, he didn’t, couldn’t possibly trust her to be a caring decent mother. Bella’s well-being came first and nobody would ever persuade him that his child could be safe with a mother who had once dealt in drugs and sold her body. It didn’t matter that to all intents and purposes Lucy appeared to have turned over a new leaf.
Jax, after all, was the son of a drug addict. He had heard too many promises, seen all too many fresh starts and witnessed the subsequent falls from grace. Bella would always be at risk of harm if she remained with her mother, he decided cynically. He would have to fight Lucy through the courts for custody of their daughter. He was sure that she loved Bella to the best of her ability but with her fatal weakness for substance abuse he couldn’t trust her to always put their daughter’s needs first.
‘Are we capable of behaving like friends?’ Lucy asked Jax hopefully as she hovered in the doorway.
Jax glanced at her in astonishment, questioning how she contrived to still look so young and innocent in spite of her misspent past. Friends? Never, he conceded wryly. And once Lucy received the first official communication from the Antonakos legal team and realised what he planned to do friendship would be the last thing on her mind. But what other choice did he have?
‘You have to stop blaming me for everything that’s gone wrong,’ Lucy told him squarely. ‘In any relationship it takes two people to screw up. Remember that…’
As she spoke Bella fell flat on her face on the lawn and let out a yell, followed by frantic sobbing. Jax strode across a flower bed and snatched the little girl up into his arms, speaking softly to her, smoothing a lean brown hand gently over her shaking back to soothe her before getting down on his knees to show her something on the ground in the clear hope of distracting her from the fright she had sustained. Lucy stared at that seemingly effortless display of child management in sheer amazement, involuntarily impressed.
‘Jax…’ she muttered in a daze.
Once Bella was restored to calm again, Jax set her down. His lean, strong face taut, he glanced at Lucy, noting how the sunshine lit up the shades of red in her hair and illuminated her perfect skin. Lucy bent to pick up the pram and the shapely curve of her heart-shaped derriere pulled tight below the cropped jeans she wore. Jax remembered ripping her jeans off her, desperate to sink into the damp, welcoming heat of her, and fierce tension gripped him as he suppressed the hunger flaring through him like a dangerous burning brand. ‘In a couple of days I’d like to take Bella out. I’ll bring a nanny with me if that keeps you happy.’
‘I assumed you would be waiting for the DNA results before you did anything official,’ Lucy parried, thoroughly disconcerted by his request as she walked back to him.
‘The DNA tests will only confirm what I already know,’ Jax murmured. ‘Are you going to make me fight for access to her?’
Lucy winced and set her teeth together. If in doubt, weigh in with the threats. That was Jax. He could afford the very best lawyers. Ultimately he would be entitled to time with his daughter whatever she did or said and trying to ignore that reality would be foolish. In any case, didn’t she want Bella to have a father? Yes, she did, but she hadn’t expected to have to share her time with her daughter quite so immediately.
‘No, but I wouldn’t want her away from me for more than a couple of hours at a time,’ she admi
tted. ‘She’s still very young.’
‘I can agree to that,’ Jax traded. ‘Give me your phone number and I’ll be in touch.’
Bella cuddled to her, Lucy watched Jax swing back onto the motorbike, the lithe powerful lines of his big muscular body moulded by his designer jeans and leather jacket. Across the road a car started up and pulled out to follow him, his security team, she assumed.
When her father and stepmother returned from the funeral, Lucy sat them down and finally told them the truth.
Straight away her father erupted like a raging volcano. ‘Jax Antonakos? Are you serious?’
‘Please don’t get mad,’ Lucy pleaded. ‘It will only make this situation worse.’
‘You were only nineteen, Lucy,’ her father protested with pained condemnation. ‘He must be nearly ten years older than you!’
‘Well, he can’t be blamed for that. When he said I had to be over twenty-one to spend time with him I lied,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I said I was twenty-three—’
‘You lied to him?’ Kreon repeated censoriously.
‘Calm down, Kreon,’ Iola interposed gently. ‘She was a typical teenager and when a handsome young man approached her, she pretended to be older and more sophisticated than she was. A lot of girls that age would have done the same thing.’
‘Yes,’ Lucy admitted, her cheeks burning.
Iola dragged the rest of the story of those six weeks in Spain from Lucy while Kreon sat fuming, his anger unhidden. ‘I knew his father, you know,’ he told them abruptly. ‘And he was a selfish, arrogant thug of a man too.’
‘Jax’s father? You knew him? How?’ Lucy asked, astonished by that admission.
‘My parents worked for the family of Heracles Antonakos’s first wife, Sofia, in London. Sofia and I grew up together and we never lost that friendship even though she lived in a very different world. She was only thirty when she died,’ Kreon revealed gruffly.
‘I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you the truth from the start,’ Lucy confessed. ‘I didn’t want to upset you—’