The Secret Baby Revenge

by Emma Darcy

  “If you’re sure…”

  “Yes.” She kissed his cheek and walked off alone.

  “I’m going to drive Nicole home now. I won’t be gone long. An hour at most,” he assured her.

  Was that it for tonight?

  Nicole sat in stunned disbelief, watching Quin watch his mother move to the hall leading to the bedrooms.

  Then it hit her.

  No sex on Monday night.

  No sex tonight.

  The deal had become irrelevant.

  Everything now centred on Zoe.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  NICOLE didn’t notice the class or the comfort of Quin’s Audi as he drove it through the city to link up with Parramatta Road which would take them directly to Burwood. She was far too acutely aware of the man sitting beside her and the burning issues that lay between them. They hadn’t spoken since leaving his apartment and the silence tore at her nerves.

  Having worked some moisture into her dry mouth she asked, “How long will your mother be staying?”

  “Until the wedding,” came the matter-of-fact reply.

  She looked sharply at him. “What wedding?”

  Quin flicked her a glittering glance that mocked the question. “The wedding that should have taken place five years ago,” he drawled, returning his attention to the road ahead.

  She gritted her teeth, barely containing a fierce wave of resentment at his assumption. When she could bring herself to speak again with some semblance of control, the words were grated out with biting emphasis. “We lived together for two years, Quin. Marriage was not on your agenda. I didn’t want and still don’t want a shotgun wedding because of an accidental pregnancy.”

  “It was accidental then?”

  “I certainly didn’t plan it,” she threw at him, shocked that he could think otherwise.

  “You were supposed to be taking a highly effective birth control pill,” he reminded her.

  “My doctor explained it can lose its effect if one has a bad stomach upset. You might recall the food poisoning I got from a party we attended,” she answered curtly, then shot him a puzzled look. “Why on earth would you think I’d deliberately get pregnant?”

  He shook his head. “I’m trying to understand why you didn’t tell me. Zoe is part of me, too, Nicole. Why couldn’t you share her with me? I’ve missed so much…”

  “Why couldn’t you share with me what your mother told me tonight?” she shot back at him, refusing to let guilt worm through her consciousness.

  “It had nothing to do with you,” he answered, instantly justifying the decisions she’d made five years ago.

  “You’re right!” she snapped. “I was only ever on the edge of your life, not at the heart of it. I couldn’t live like that with you any more. And I didn’t want it for Zoe, either.”

  “You were at the heart of pleasure for me, Nicole,” he said quietly. “The other was pain.”

  “Well let me tell you, Quin, love is about sharing both pain and pleasure, and you’d better start learning that if you intend to be a good father to Zoe.”

  Her voice shook with the strong emotions that had been coursing through her all evening, and she tried valiantly to clamp down on them, not wanting to reveal how much she wanted his love, how much she had always wanted it. His focus on their daughter was actually making her feel jealous of Zoe, and that couldn’t lead anywhere good.

  They stopped at a red traffic light and Quin turned to her, a deadly serious expression on his face, his eyes intensely concentrated on hers, making her heart thump in the helpless hope she was important to him—deeply, irrevocably important to him. Not just for the pleasure of the sexual intimacy they could so easily achieve. Not because she was the mother of his child. She needed to be the woman he loved above all others, the one he truly would share his life with. All of it. Not some piece he selected to give, excluding her from other parts.

  “What you heard from my mother tonight…it wasn’t only my life story, Nicole,” he said earnestly. “It was hers, too. A very private, painful story that drove her into exile from her home country. She didn’t want it told to anyone here. And that wasn’t ever going to end until I ended it, as I did when I paid back the money. I’m free of it now, free to take on other responsibilities and give them the attention they should have.”

  Responsibilities…was that how he thought of marriage and fatherhood? She didn’t want it to be a point of honour for him to marry her—a responsibility he had take on and carry for the rest of his life.

  “I understand you felt…sidelined…when we were together before,” he went on. “I can’t go back and change that, but I promise you it will be different this time.”

  “What? No sex?” she scoffed, the crass challenge spilling out of her own thwarted desire for him, heating her whole body with an instant wave of shame.

  For several seconds the air in the car was charged with steaming frustrations—his and hers. Then a car-horn behind them honked its driver’s frustration. The red traffic light had turned green. Quin switched his attention back to the road, put his foot on the accelerator and the Audi responded with a swift surge of speed.

  “As much sex as you like,” he growled, once they were travelling smoothly again.

  Nicole couldn’t stop herself from sniping, “Really? I thought that had been sidelined since you met your daughter.”

  “There’ve been other things to consider,” came the terse reply.

  “Like planning a wedding without bothering to get my consent?”

  “Like trying to clear up the past so we can build a future on mutual trust.”

  “We need more than trust to build a future.”

  “I thought great sex was a given, but if you need that reinforced…”

  “I wasn’t talking about sex.”

  “Yes, you were.” His eyes smoked anger at her. “If that’s the only thing I’m good for, as far as you’re concerned, I’ll make it so good you can’t live without it.”

  He deftly manoeuvred the Audi across traffic lanes as he spoke and suddenly took a left hand turn, startling Nicole into asking, “What are you doing?”

  “Going to a hotel where we’ll be assured of absolute privacy.”

  Her heart catapulted around her chest. She hadn’t been talking about sex. Love had been on her mind. Trust and love. Yet she couldn’t deny the adrenaline rush at the exciting thought of going to bed with Quin, having him to herself again, drowning out the confusion and conflicts of the past few days with sheer, mind-blasting physical chemistry.

  Though it wouldn’t solve anything, she told herself, and surrendering to this move without a protest would probably make Quin think he had the power to push her into whatever he wanted. “You told your mother you were taking me home and would soon be back,” she rattled out.

  It made no impact on him. He turned the car into Elizabeth Street, heading towards Circular Quay instead of out of the city centre. “My mother has my cell-phone number,” he stated reasonably. “I doubt she’ll worry about where I am but she can always call me to find out.”

  There was no answer to that.

  “And your mother won’t be expecting you home tonight,” he added, shooting her a derisive look. “Right?”

  He was referring to the deal.

  It was the thirteenth night—a night for which he’d paid an exorbitant amount of money and she had to deliver what had been promised. No argument. The weird part was she had wanted the deal back in place, resenting his involvement with their daughter and the intrusion of his mother, yet now that Quin was obliging her…why was she feeling so at odds with it?

  Because too much else was involved now.

  And as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t just forget how far he seemed determined to push himself into her life.

  They turned into the entrance driveway of a very grand hotel facing Hyde Park. As soon as the Audi halted, a doorman and a parking attendant offered their services. With the car taken care of, they wer
e ushered into a palatial lobby and Quin wasted no time in securing a suite. Within a few minutes, they were in a plush elevator, zooming up to their designated floor.

  “Amazing what having lots of money can accomplish,” Nicole remarked cynically, thinking of the speed with which Quin’s requirements had been met.

  “Yes, it wiped out my mother’s disgrace, your mother’s debts, got you back into bed with me…”

  The harshly cynical retort jerked her gaze up to his. Soul-searing anger looked back at her. It stirred all the fermenting emotions that had been plaguing her since he had found out about Zoe.

  “You’re trying to take more than your pound of flesh, Quin.”

  “I have a right to more than you agreed to give me.”

  “You want to be a father to our daughter…fine! But that doesn’t mean I have to be your wife.”

  The elevator doors opened. Quin grasped her arm, steering her out of the compartment, along a corridor, halting briefly to unlock and open the door to their suite, then pulling her inside and kicking the door shut behind them. The fierce turbulence emanating from him was all too evident when he swung her into his embrace for a close face to face confrontation. Stormy-grey eyes raged at her brittle defences.

  “Why not? Why not be my wife? You want this as much as I do.”

  His mouth crashed down on hers, igniting all the pent-up lust that should have been simple and straightforward and easily satisfied with Quin making himself sexually available for this thirteenth night. Nicole responded to his savage plundering with a passionate abandonment of every other concern, but she could not stop her heart yearning for more than a physical union.

  Her arms wound around his neck, holding him with a wanton possessiveness. Her body plastered itself to his, seeking its heat, its strength, wanting its rampant need to envelop her, seep into her, fill her with the sense that only she could be his life mate. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her stomach furrowed by the hard roll of his erection, her thighs quivering under the muscular power pressing against them. A wild chant was running through her mind—love me, love me, love me…

  He rained kisses on her face, her hair, her neck, her shoulders, and she gloried in the feeling that his mouth was branding her as his. His hands slid down and clutched her bottom, pressing her closer and she ground herself against him in a delirium of desire. He lifted her off her feet, keeping her pinned to him as he strode across the room. They landed on a bed, his body covering hers, their hands tearing at each other’s clothes in a frenzied need to be rid of all barriers between them.

  At last they were naked, panting from the wild haste to come together. Quin took her hands and slammed them above her head, assuming a domination she would not allow him to have. As he hovered over her, his face close to hers, his eyes blazing an arrogantly male ownership, she lifted her legs and locked them around his hips, her own eyes hotly defying him to deny the possession was mutual.

  “Tell me it’s never been like this with anyone else,” he demanded, his voice a harsh rasp, as though scraped from feelings he didn’t want to acknowledge, but they were bursting through him and couldn’t be contained.

  “You tell me the same thing,” she fiercely challenged.

  “There’s been no other woman in my life who could match you in any respect,” he conceded.

  “Well, you top the list, too,” she retorted, jealously wondering how many women that amounted to. “So far,” she added to stop him thinking he had it made with her and nothing more was required of him in the longer term.

  “Are you expecting to do better?” he growled.

  “Maybe the best is yet to come,” she answered, goading him to take their relationship to deeper levels.

  “You’re right,” he said unexpectedly, a wolfish grin breaking out on his darkly handsome face. “We haven’t got there yet. Just let me get a condom out ready.”

  “You don’t have to use one tonight.”

  “Then the best—” his lips brushed over hers in tantalisingly seductive play as he murmured “—can certainly be achieved.”

  And he kissed her so erotically, her mind spun with sensual excitement and every nerve in her body zinged with anticipation of the intense pleasure Quin would undoubtedly deliver. Which he did. Pure physical bliss. Her entire being hummed with delicious exultation as he drove her through climax after climax. Somehow it was like an ecstatic celebration of being a woman, feeling every part of her femininity being loved, adored, savoured, and she revelled in every moment of it.

  And she knew in her heart of hearts, that she would only ever respond to Quin like this. She didn’t understand why it was so, but in some deeply primitive way she belonged with him. Maybe it was wrong to expect him to think and feel as she did. He was a man with a strong hunter’s instinct, a man who would always go after what he wanted, letting nothing distract him from his prime target.

  Could she blame him for being what he was?

  Hadn’t that always been an integral part of his attraction?

  She let herself love him with her hands, her mouth, her legs—a sweet voluptuous loving as she moved in rhythm to the swift, concentrated drive towards his own climax, luxuriating in the fine tension of his body, knowing he was totally focused on reaching this final intimate union with her and nothing else mattered but the moment of spilling himself inside her, the hot fusion that made them one.

  She lifted her body in an arch of uninhibited giving as his release came, her inner muscles convulsing in pleasure around him, and her arms tightened their embrace as he collapsed on top of her, hugging the sweet intimacy for as long as she could. Good, better, best…they were meaningless words. It was heaven being with Quin like this. Always had been.

  He rolled onto his back, carrying her with him so they still lay entangled. She loved lying on top of him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing gradually slowed to normal. He played with the long tresses of her hair, stroked her back, every caress delightfully sensual, and she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to make love with anyone else.

  But sex was only one part of marriage.

  It hadn’t been enough to keep her happy with Quin in the past. Would he really share more of himself with her this time around?

  The memory of something her friend, Jade Zilic, had said on that fateful night at the Havana Club slid into her mind. It was in answer to her own comment about her previous relationship with Quin—I don’t live at that address anymore.

  Maybe he doesn’t, either, Jade had remarked, going on to say that time and timing were very tricky things…shifting sands, different circumstances, revolving doors.

  What had driven Quin back then was over, no longer holding any power to influence his behaviour or decisions. Maybe he could really focus on being a decent husband and father. In which case, shouldn’t marriage with him be given a chance? The sands had shifted. And Quin had opened the door to fatherhood and walked right in, committing himself to being Zoe’s daddy in a very real sense.

  The big question was…how far could she trust his commitment?

  “Did you buy the silver chain for the Ulysses butterfly?” she asked, testing if he’d remembered his promise to Zoe.

  The fingers feathering down her spine stopped their caress and pressed into her skin. “Yes, I did,” he answered emphatically. “I’ll bring it with me tomorrow.”

  So he wasn’t about to disappoint their daughter.

  But that didn’t necessarily mean he would keep the promises made at a wedding ceremony. Zoe was his flesh and blood. Nicole wasn’t. And Quin had never said he loved her.

  The fingers dug in. “What about my mother, Nicole? She would love to meet Zoe.”

  She sighed and he lightened his touch, not pressuring for a quick reply. It wasn’t easy to decide what to do about his mother. Everything felt so rushed. Yet the woman had flown all the way from Argentina to make amends for her rejection in the past. Though that might only have been because she wanted access to her
grand-daughter.

  Flesh and blood again.

  But to get to it, Nicole Ashton could not be ignored any more. Zoe was her flesh and blood, too.

  So it came down to sharing a child who not only belonged to herself and her own mother, but to Quin and his mother, too. Everything between herself and Quin came down to sharing and not sharing, she thought with bitter irony.

  It had to be conceded that he had taken forceful steps this week to redress their previous situation, and tonight’s revelations did explain a lot. They didn’t make her feel any better but at least she could understand where he’d been coming from, which made acceptance of his presence in her life a little easier. And if she accepted him, she probably had to accept his mother, too.

  Having come to a decision, she took a deep breath and cautiously lowered her hard-held barriers. “Not tomorrow, Quin. Zoe is expecting to have the day with you. I’ll need to speak to my mother about it but perhaps we could all have lunch together on Sunday.”

  His tense stillness was instantly broken. An audible intake of air expanded his chest, then whooshed out as he heaved himself up and rolled Nicole onto her back. Propped on his elbow, he grinned down at her, pleasure and triumph sparkling in his eyes.

  “Don’t think that means we’re going to talk about a wedding,” she shot at him, refusing to be manoeuvred all his way.

  His grin diminished into a wry little smile. “Thank you, Nicole. To my mind, there has been more than enough punishment for crimes committed. I’m glad you agree.”

  Punishment…she frowned over the term. Had she been punishing Quin for not loving her by keeping any knowledge of his child from him? Not consciously, though she certainly had to admit to many vengeful thoughts since meeting him again at the Havana Club.

  He lifted a hand and gently smoothed the creases from her forehead. “Don’t worry,” he murmured in his rich velvet voice. “It will be all right. I promise you.”

  It was an impossible promise, Nicole thought, but she didn’t want to think any more because Quin was kissing her again and stressing over the future could wait until tomorrow. Nothing was going to change between now and then.