He drew a breath and turned to face Lizzie.
‘Damon, I—’
He silenced her with a raised hand. ‘Please. Sit down.’
‘I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.’
The tension in Lizzie’s voice was like a taut band on the point of snapping. He felt no pity. Beyond knowing that if she broke down it would delay things and get them nowhere, he felt no empathy at all. He positioned himself with his back to the window while Lizzie remained by the door. He saw a flicker of fear in her eyes, but then it was gone. She was determined to stand up to him. But he held all the cards and she held none—they both knew that.
Although he hadn’t forgotten Lizzie’s determination to refuse him equal rights, and the fact that he wasn’t even mentioned on Thea’s birth certificate...
On reflection, it seemed that perhaps Lizzie held the trump card.
Her arms were ramrod-straight against her sides, her fists clenched so tight her knuckles were like polished ivory. The blood had drained from her cheeks and her eyes were huge in the ashen wasteland of her face. He had experienced emotion briefly, when Thea had played the violin, but whatever his daughter had unlocked was gone now. It was for Thea alone. He dealt with all problems the same way—by being incisive and emotion-free—and he would do that now.
‘You don’t know her,’ Lizzie told him quietly, as if anticipating what he might say. ‘Thea doesn’t know you. You can’t just walk into her life and claim her, Damon.’
‘You don’t know what I can do.’
Her lips had turned white. She knew the power he wielded.
Her brow pleated. ‘Are you trying to intimidate me?’
‘Never,’ he stated factually. ‘I am simply trying to reclaim what’s mine.’
‘And what then?’ she asked him tensely.
‘That’s what I have to find out. I have to find a solution.’
‘We have to find a solution,’ Lizzie argued quietly.
‘You’ve lost your chance,’ he said frankly. ‘It’s my turn now. I think you should sit down. We have to put our personal differences aside and consider what’s best for Thea.’
‘Thea is all I ever think about,’ Lizzie assured him, with a blaze of passion in her eyes.
‘I haven’t been given that chance,’ he pointed out with supreme restraint.
The disappointment he felt in Lizzie was acute. She was as shallow as the rest of them. Self-interest ruled her. She might never have told him that they had a daughter together if he hadn’t walked into that restaurant in London. She would have kept Thea to herself.
Pain stabbed him when he thought about the years that had been lost. He had to turn away for a few moments and pour them both a glass of iced water to give him something else to focus on while his rage subsided.
‘Why aren’t you angry?’ Lizzie demanded.
He almost laughed.
‘Are you incapable of feelings?’
‘Declara!’
He’d spilled the water on his desk. Incapable of feelings? This entire situation had rocked the foundations of his life.
Snatching up a cloth, he mopped up the spill before turning to face her. ‘Perhaps you can afford to be emotional, but I can’t. How would it look in business if I railed at my competitors and made every decision on a wave of passion?’
‘This isn’t a business decision,’ she fired back. ‘This is our daughter. Thea.’
‘I’m glad you’ve finally remembered,’ he countered with scorn.
‘So this is just another exercise in winning for you?’ Lizzie suggested.
‘Far from it.’
She had no idea of the turmoil inside him. He’d only ever known happy, uncomplicated love—love without boundaries, the type of love that a parent gave to a child, the style of unconditional love that his parents had given to him. It was love without demands, love that would sacrifice everything, and he hadn’t been given the chance to experience that same love with Thea.
The love he felt for Thea already was incalculable. It was as if eleven years had been compacted into a single day of knowing and loving his child. His head was reeling with love. Eleven years of Thea’s existence had been lost, never to be reclaimed. From the night of her conception to the night before her birth, when she’d been nothing more than a tiny light waiting to take a tilt at life, and on to this moment, here in his study, where he was talking about Thea to her mother.
All of those precious moments were lost. Everything that had been Thea before now had gone, never to be reclaimed.
CHAPTER TEN
HIS LOST TIME with Thea had lodged in his heart, where it was lashing around, demanding an explanation. Lizzie thought that because he was acting so contained he felt nothing, when for the first time in his life he didn’t know if he could trust himself to handle this meeting as well as he must. He only knew that for Thea’s sake he had to.
In order to bring himself to talk to Lizzie at all, he had listed the good things she had done. Thea had turned out well. Raising her as a single mother with no family couldn’t have been easy for Lizzie. Eleven years ago she had been just eighteen and pregnant, with no home, no money, no family—no one at all to rely on but herself. She hadn’t just cared for Thea, she loved Thea without boundaries, in the same way that he’d been loved as a child, and Lizzie had raised Thea without the good fortune his parents had enjoyed.
He couldn’t claim any credit for Thea beyond her existence. She was all Lizzie’s work. That was why he’d found Lizzie washing pots in London. It all made sense now. She’d kept nothing for herself and had put all her dreams on indefinite hold for Thea.
But Thea was his daughter too, and he had been denied every moment of her existence—even the knowledge of it—up to now. So, although he could rationalise the situation and give Lizzie some credit, things could not go on as they were.
‘I won’t let you take her, Damon.’
He stared at Lizzie. He’d seen flashes of her vulnerability, but it would be a mistake to think her vulnerable now. His mother had always told him that there was no stronger opponent a man could face than a mother fighting for her child.
‘No court would allow any man to walk into a child’s life and take her from the mother who has loved her from the instant she first felt her stir in the womb—who has loved her unreservedly ever since—unless that man could prove both that he was the father of the child and that the mother was unfit to care for her. And no one—not even you—can prove a lie, Damon.’
‘I’m not just any man,’ he argued tensely. ‘I’m a father. Thea’s father.’
‘I will fight you every step of the way,’ she warned him. ‘I’ll fight your money, your power, and your legal team too. Do you really think you can defeat a mother in defence of her child? Even you don’t have the weapons for that, Damon.’
His feelings were rising. He felt fury that she would deny him Thea even now—and yet he knew acceptance, however reluctant, that his own mother would have said the same.
He wasn’t as callous as Lizzie thought him. She had been in his thoughts too. She’d never left them, really. In the desert, when he’d been working with his team, she had intruded on his thoughts at night, and in the day he’d kept her in mind to ease some of the horrors he’d seen. But she’d kept the most important thing on earth from him, and he could never forgive her for that.
She had cheated him out of Thea, as her father had cheated his father. How could he ever trust her again after that?
‘You’ll have to—’ He’d been about to say, consult a lawyer, when Lizzie leapt ahead of him—but in the wrong direction.
‘I don’t have to do anything you tell me to,’ she assured him. ‘It’s up to you to launch your case—try to destroy me as you destroyed my father.’
‘Lizzie...’
he modulated his tone. ‘We’ve been over this ground several times. We both know that what happened in court that day was for the best.’
‘What I know is that my father was weak and you were strong. Is that what you plan to do now? Crush me?’
Grinding his jaw, he refused to be drawn, but Lizzie had the bit between her teeth.
‘Get this straight,’ she blazed at him. ‘Thea stays with me. We choose a time to tell her that you’re her father, and we do that together. Above all we try to be civilised about this.’
‘And then Thea makes her choice,’ he said mildly, employing all the reason he used in business. ‘Thea isn’t a baby. She’s a highly intelligent girl with a mind of her own. There isn’t a judge alive who wouldn’t want to hear what she has to say.’
* * *
Lizzie’s heart lurched. Closing her eyes briefly, she reeled through a new scene in court. Penniless mother. Billionaire father. What would the judge make of that?
It was a matter of trust, she concluded. It boiled down to her belief in the strength of the love that she and Thea shared. It was just the thought of that love being put to the test in front of strangers that made her feel terrible for Thea. Why should a ten-year-old child have to go through that? This was never what she’d wanted.
‘We’ll see,’ was all she could reply.
When it came down to it, love was all about trust, Lizzie reflected. Yes, love could be hurt and doubt, but it was also hope. She’d lost all hope of love with Damon, but Thea’s future was still untarnished—and it would remain that way if Lizzie had anything to do with it.
‘Tell me one thing,’ she said. ‘Did you never once feel guilty for walking away after casually destroying my life?’
‘You left with your friends, as I remember it.’
And her life had badly needed shaking up. She accepted that.
‘What happened to those friends?’ Damon probed.
‘When the money ran out, so did they,’ she admitted frankly. ‘Fair-weather friends, as you yourself called them. I made a clean start. I was lucky enough to make more friends—real friends—who couldn’t have cared less if I could afford to wear this label or that, or if my father gave the most lavish parties. Though in fairness to those old friends,’ she admitted, ‘their parents wouldn’t allow them to see me. First there was the shame of my father’s imprisonment, and then the fear that I might want a loan to see me through, and finally, to cap it all, I was pregnant, with no sign of a husband or partner.’
‘So, not really your friends at all, then?’ Damon said.
‘No,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘I know the difference now. Being pregnant with Thea gave me a very clear focus on life. Motherhood changed me for good. I grew up overnight. I had to, to make a go of things for Thea. I even found that I wasn’t so stupid after all.’ She shrugged wryly. ‘Being a mother was actually something I was good at.’
* * *
He couldn’t deny that. ‘But you should have contacted me.’
‘I did! I told you that I was blocked by your people.’
‘You should have kept trying until you reached me. I would have helped you if I’d known. I would have definitely wanted to be part of Thea’s life.’
‘Would you? Can you be so sure of how you would have reacted back then? You were a lot younger too, Damon, and you’ve had a long way to travel to reach this point. Domesticity would have hindered your progress. It might even have stopped you setting out.’
‘Domesticity?’ he queried with a frown.
‘Just a figure of speech,’ Lizzie said coolly. ‘Perhaps it’s all worked out for the best. One day I might show you the stack of unopened letters I sent to your office. They were all marked “Returned to sender”. I wrote to you as soon as I was settled,’ she explained, in answer to his unspoken question. ‘I did think about you and the part you should be playing in our lives. And not just because of your money, Damon. I was never interested in that.’
‘What part are you talking about, then? A full part?’
‘That would have had to be decided then—just as it has to be decided now. I can only tell you that your personnel team deserves a collective medal for protecting your privacy.’
He could believe that. He was never readily available to anyone outside his immediate family. Those who didn’t have him on speed dial—which was most of the world—had to jump through many hoops before they could even reach the assistant to his assistant PA. Reaching his PA was next to impossible.
‘I did want you to know about Thea,’ Lizzie insisted quietly, ‘but I didn’t want anything else from you—not in a material sense.’
She turned away from him and gazed off into the middle distance. He guessed she was reliving all the exultation, fear and hope of an expectant mother. She’d had no one to share those moments with...no family, no parents, no one at all. And then, when Thea had arrived, she must have been like a ray of sunshine, bringing happiness into every life she touched, just as she’d touched his already.
‘Where were you?’ Lizzie demanded angrily, perhaps taking his smile as he thought about Thea for scorn. ‘Where were you when I was being examined by the midwife and not knowing what to expect? Where were you when they were taking scans of Thea and I was scared half to death, thinking they might find something wrong with her because I couldn’t always afford the best food or to eat healthily? Where you were you when I was in labour and frightened? Where were you when your daughter was born? Where were you when they took blood from her heel and she cried with pain? Where were you when I needed you?’
As Lizzie’s voice tightened into a wordless scream he didn’t think about the past, the present or the future. He didn’t think about the rights and wrongs of the situation at all. He just grabbed her close and held her tightly to him as tears streamed down her face. And then he kissed her, and kept on kissing her, while she shuddered and then remembered to fight him—punching and shouting as she vented her frustration, until her passion veered onto a different track and she clung to him like a drowning man to a raft.
‘Hey, stop...stop...’ he insisted, kissing her face, her eyes, her lips, her brow. ‘Calm down, Lizzie—’
‘Calm down?’ she demanded, rallying enough to pull back. ‘Can’t you see what I stand to lose, you stupid man? Everything!’
Beautiful, tempestuous Lizzie. This was the woman who had bewitched him eleven years ago. He’d calmed her then, but could he calm her now? Even he didn’t know. He’d never seen a human being so distraught.
Sweeping her into his arms, he carried her into one of the bedrooms and kept on kissing her as he shouldered the door closed behind them. He kissed her as he carried her to the bed, and she made no attempt to move away when he put her down. She made no attempt to move at all beyond covering her eyes with her forearm as he kicked off his shoes.
Stretching out his length against her, he drew her into his arms with the intention of soothing her—but Lizzie was way ahead of him. Fingers flying over the buttons down the front of her dress, she whipped it over her head. When he attempted to take it from her she defended the cheap sundress like a lioness. Folding the soft yellow material neatly, she leaned across the bed to place it on a chair.
‘No, Lizzie...no.’
He’d planned to take things slowly, but the moment he turned to face her she sprang into his arms and, lacing her fingers through his hair, wrapped her legs around him, kissing him as if they were facing the end of the world.
He considered himself a just man, but he wasn’t a saint, and primal need soon overcame his finer feelings. Doubt, rage and resentment forgotten, he ripped off his clothes, only knowing that he’d missed her. Theos! How much!
* * *
Her hunger to blank everything out was all Lizzie could think about—that and claiming her mate, maybe for the last time. There was no chance for fo
replay, or for teasing advances. Delaying tactics of any type were barred. She needed oblivion now.
She exclaimed in triumph as Damon threw her on her back. Planting his fists either side of her head, he loomed over her—big, powerful, majestic and ultra-efficient when it came to mind-blanking.
Drawing her knees back, she locked her legs around his waist. She knew exactly what she was inviting, and she exulted in the shock of his possession as Damon plunged deep. She lost control immediately. She didn’t spare a thought for whether she should or not. There was no finesse, no manners at all.
Shrieking and bucking, she grabbed at him, driving him on with her fingers pressed mercilessly into the steel of his buttocks. She was determined to catch every last throb of pleasure, and when sensation robbed her of thought she exclaimed gratefully and noisily in time to each crashing wave.
‘More!’ she gasped as she dragged in some much-needed air.
She was laughing with excitement as Damon dragged her to the edge of the bed. Arranging her to his liking, with her hips balanced precariously on the edge, he pressed her legs back and stood between them.
‘You like it deep? You like it firm?’ he suggested, with the faintest of smiles on his mouth.
‘What do you think?’ she challenged.
Lifting her legs onto his shoulders, he rewarded her with a fierce, fast rhythm that had her plunging over the edge almost at once.
‘Greedy,’ he growled, sounding pleased.
Bringing her into his arms, he carried her across the room to the wall of windows. ‘Is this what you want?’ he said as he pushed her naked body against the glass. ‘Now the whole world can see the butterflies you’ve got tattooed on your backside.’
Dipping at the knees, he thrust deep and relentlessly, until she came apart in his arms, wailing and shrieking.
When she gasped, ‘Too good...’ he demanded to know if she had any more tattoos that required his attention.
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