by Dani Collins
“The contract is in effect now,” she reminded him in a mutter. “I’ll adhere to it.”
“Will you? Because you’ve done everything possible to keep me from even knowing she’s mine.” His temper snapped. “How could you do that? I lost my father, Sirena. I know how it feels to grow up without one.”
“And I lost my mother,” she cried, then cringed as the force of such harsh speech sliced pain across her abdomen. “Why do you think I stood up to the most pitiless man in the world?” she asked in a thick voice, clenching her eyes shut as she fought for control, so emotional from everything that she verged on breaking down. “You really know how to put a woman through hell, Raoul. I can’t even get myself down the hall to her and you’re playing stupid mind games. I won’t take her, but you can’t have her. Maybe you would deserve a place in her life if you just once showed an ounce of compassion.”
Silence.
She threw her heavy arm over her closed eyes, pressing back weak tears, concentrating on her breathing to pull herself together. The worst part was, she felt horrible about trying to keep him from Lucy. He had a right to be angry about that—along with the stealing—but she couldn’t undo any of it. Her life was a giant mess and she had no idea how she was going to fix it and carry on.
“Let’s go,” Raoul said in a gruff tone that was too close to the bed.
Sirena lowered her arm to eye him, startled to see he’d brought the wheelchair to her side.
“I’ll take you to see Lucy. We’ll both calm down and maybe start communicating like adults.”
“Don’t be nice,” she groaned. “It makes me feel awful.”
“You should feel awful.” He braced her as she slid off the bed and into the chair.
She slumped into it and dropped her face into her hands. “I love her more than you can know, Raoul. And you’ve been horrid, trying to take her from me the instant you heard I was pregnant. What else could I do except lie about paternity?”
The chair moved and she lifted her head, glad she didn’t have to face him, especially when he said with quiet sincerity, “You’re wrong. I do know how much you love her. I feel the same way. That’s why I’ve been so tough about it. I didn’t know about your mother. I thought this was all payback for the court case.”
“No,” she breathed, shoulders slumping. “I’m angry about that, but—” her voice hitched with yearning “—I just want to be her mum.”
“What happened to yours?” His voice sounded deeper and quieter than she’d ever heard it, making her feel small for trying to cut him from his daughter’s life. She didn’t know how he’d lost his father, but that nascent connection she’d always felt toward him over their shared grief extended from within herself, like a strand of spiderweb drifting behind her, searching to anchor itself to him.
“This.” She waved a trembling hand at her pathetic physical state. “Her complications were different so this wasn’t hereditary, but it was always in my mind that having a baby isn’t as simple for some as it is for others. I was only six when she died, so I don’t have a lot of memories, but that’s why losing her hurt so much. I can’t bear the idea of Lucy going through all her life markers of puberty and boyfriends and childbirth without her mother there for her.”
He stayed silent behind her, giving no indication whether her words had any impact. She wasn’t able to twist around and look and didn’t want to anyway. He might be interpreting her confession as a plea for sympathy when it was the kind of opening of her heart that left her feeling so raw and exposed she could hardly bear it.
She was grateful they entered the quiet warmth of the nursery at that point. Seconds later, as she cuddled Lucy into her chest, her world righted, becoming achingly perfect, even with Raoul’s commanding presence hovering over them. Maybe because he was here. Much as she resented him, she wanted Lucy to have her father.
After feeding and changing and getting an update on Lucy’s progress, Raoul returned Sirena to her room. She was quiet, visibly exhausted, their silence no longer hostile. When he helped her into bed, she only murmured, “Thank you,” before plummeting into sleep.
Such a ferocious scrapper and now he understood why. The way she’d talked about missing her mother had made something lurch in his chest. It was a renewed snag of guilt at not really knowing her. His resentful I never dreamed she was capable of stealing was shifting into still waters run deep.
The way his father had quit on him made him highly susceptible to exalting a woman who had fought so hard to give her child life and to be in it.
He didn’t like this shift in him. It made him wonder about her motives for stealing, and he didn’t want to develop compassion and forgiveness for that. Opportunists took advantage of weak emotions like affection and trust. Next thing you knew, you were on the streets with two dependents—a social pariah—and your path forward was a broken cliff into an abyss.
He couldn’t doubt Sirena’s love for their daughter, though. While in the nursery, the old Sirena had returned, all warm smiles and soft laughter, her expression open and her wit quick, making the nurses laugh. He’d had to bite back his own chuckle more than once, fighting a desire to let go of his defenses and fall under her spell again.
Scowling, he tried to imagine how this impossible situation would play out. A foolish idea was taking hold in the back of his mind, one that looked ridiculous as a thought bubble. It would be outrageous in real life. He needed distance, not more exposure to her, but they were both coming from the same place with regard to Lucy. He couldn’t ignore that. In fact, as the days passed, it was all he could think about.
* * *
Their truce lasted through the week as Raoul spent most of the day with them. Sirena stopped using the chair and started breast-feeding, even brought Lucy into her room with her overnight, which was a struggle she tried not to reveal, fearful of winding up in a fight with Raoul that she didn’t have the energy to win. The rapport between them might be guarded and impersonal, but it was safe. As long as she didn’t give him anything to criticize, they got along fine.
Meanwhile, the reality of taking a baby back to her flat when she couldn’t even properly care for herself ate at her. When her doctor cleared her for discharge, she should have been elated, but she was so overwhelmed she hardly contained her tears.
Of course Raoul arrived at that exact moment. He was wearing a suit and tie, the shoulders of his jacket speckled with damp spots of late-spring rain. No time to worry how she’d cope when she had bigger concerns confronting her from the foot of her hospital bed. Dark, handsome, vengeful concerns.
“I told you a week ago you I won’t let you take her to your flat,” he said unemotionally.
It was the fight she’d been dreading, but she still wasn’t prepared for it.
“And I’m pretty sure we signed an agreement that said I could,” she replied, trying not to let him stir her temper. “I have nights with Lucy. You can visit during the day, exactly as we’re doing here. Are we ignoring the panel of experts you hired?” Her quick sarcasm was a show of strength she didn’t have. She had just gotten back from walking down the hall and that snappy reply was the extent of the spunk in her.
“You have the stamina of a trampled daisy. What if something happened? No. You’re coming home with me,” Raoul pronounced.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t even blink. A tiny voice deep in her soul asked, Me? Not just Lucy? Her pulse tripped into a gallop and tingling excitement raced all the way to her nerve endings.
Get a grip, Sirena!
“I have staples, Raoul. It’s not nice to make me laugh,” she retorted, trying to gather thoughts that had scattered like shards of glass from a broken window. Stay in his house? With him? She already felt too vulnerable seeing him during the day. Living off him would decimate her pride and put her in his debt.
“You do,” Raoul agreed with edgy derision. “Staples and tubes and a unit of someone else’s blood. You’re on medications that make you light-headed
and have appointments for follow-up and a baby to care for. You can’t do it alone.”
In her heart of hearts she’d been counting on a miracle with her sister, but of course that hadn’t panned out. Her father wasn’t working, so he couldn’t foot the bill for plane fare and God knew she couldn’t afford it. Besides, Ali was in her first semester at uni—that had been the whole point of Sirena sending the money so many months ago.
Sirena had friends she could call for the odd thing, but not the sort of steady help she needed these first weeks at home. Frustration made her voice strident.
“Why would you even suggest it? You don’t want anything to do with me,” she accused, voicing the fear that was a dark plague inside her.
He tilted his arrogant head to a condescending angle. “You may not be my ideal choice as the mother of my child, but I can’t overlook the fact that you are, or that you love her as much as I do. We both want to be with her and you need looking after. Bringing you into my home is clearly the most practical solution.”
That uncouched not be my ideal stung like mad. She knew she looked awful, hair flat and dull, no makeup. Her figure would remain a disaster until she could start on the treadmill again.
Was he seeing anyone, she wondered suddenly? It was the sort of thing she hadn’t been able to avoid knowing when she’d been working for him—and bizarrely, after being fired she’d found the not knowing even worse. How would she feel to learn he was with another woman while she was sleeping under his roof?
She broke their locked gazes, deeply repelled by the idea of him in bed with other women. “We don’t even like each other. It would be a disaster.”
“We’re going to have to get past that for Lucy’s sake, aren’t we?” he countered.
“And my being dependent on you will foster goodwill? I doubt it,” she argued, even as she mentally leaped to the pro of still being able to do her transcription jobs if he was on hand to care for Lucy for an hour here and there. That would mean she could keep her flat. The prospect of losing her home had become a genuine concern.
Raoul folded his arms as he put his sharp mind to work finding the argument that would clinch what he wanted. Not that he wanted her in his home, he reminded himself. It was his daughter he was after.
“If I were to have another child, I would look after the health of that child’s mother. Didn’t you tell me you expect me to offer Lucy the same considerations I would offer all my children?”
He was pleased to recall the demand she’d thrown at him weeks ago. It justified taking her into his home. He didn’t need a volatile mix of leftover attraction and betrayal confronting him with his eggs every morning, but Lucy’s needs trumped his.
Sirena heard the logic, but couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge it. His dispassionate reasoning was exactly that: lacking in feeling, practical. Cold.
It was also a perfect out, allowing her to accept a crazy arrangement for sensible reasons, but she feared she was only giving in to temptation. She knew why, too. Deep down, a grossly foolish part of herself believed that if she could just have his attention long enough, she could explain and earn his forgiveness.
The loss of his good opinion crushed her, not abating despite the months that had passed since the lawsuit. Experience with her stepmother told her that imagining she could earn Raoul’s admiration was pure self-delusion, but that didn’t alter the fact that she desperately wanted him to stop hating her.
While he wanted unfettered access to his daughter. That’s all that motivated him and he was trying to make it happen with his typical brook-no-arguments leadership and infinite resources, standing there casually impeccable and vaguely bored, certain he had the entire thing sewn up.
“Did I ever tell you how annoyingly bigheaded you can be when you think you’ve had the last word?” she muttered while casting for a suitable reason to refuse.
“I don’t think I’ve had it, I know it. The doctor won’t release you unless you have a care plan in place. I’m it.”
“You’re my get-out-of-jail card? When you put it like that...”
Every muscle in his body seemed to harden. “Be careful, Sirena. I’m taking into account you’re still only half-alive. Once you’re back to full strength, I won’t be nearly so charitable. I’ve forgotten nothing.”
A futile yearning swelled in her chest and burned in the back of her throat. He had every right to be angry, but to have her arrested when she’d been like an appendage for him for two years, then had given herself to him without hesitation...?
“You know I can’t have sex for another five weeks, right?” she threw at him. “If you’re thinking to have a convenient outlet on hand, it won’t happen.”
He swept her with one pithy glance that reminded her she was far beneath her best. She hated both of them in that second. Why did she care whether he was attracted to her or ever had been? He hadn’t. He’d been horny and she’d been handy. He’d told her so. Apparently having her underfoot wouldn’t be handy enough to tempt him again. That should be a comfort, not a knife in the heart.
“Just until the doctor clears me to live alone,” she muttered, bolstering her humiliated blush with a level glance into his implacable face. “I’m only staying until I’m back to full strength. Then Lucy comes to my flat with me.”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
* * *
Despite the welcome of blooming gardens at the house in Ascot, Sirena was icy cold as they drove past the gates where she’d stood waiting for Raoul in the rain, begging him over the intercom to speak to her.
Finding him here that day had been a matter of calling in a favor with an out-of-the-know workmate. After that she’d been shut out completely, her personal items from her desk returned and her keys, company ID, equipment and expense cards taken back.
Unable to look at him, she set a light hand on the warm shape of the baby between them and rocked numbly with the car when the chauffeur halted under the portico. As she reached to unclip the child seat, Raoul’s adept fingers brushed hers away.
“I’ll bring her.” He relayed the diaper bag to his chauffeur and lifted Lucy out the opposite door, coming around to meet Sirena where the chauffeur had opened her door.
She tried to climb from the low-slung car and was more resentful than grateful when Raoul reached to help, offering his arm so she could cling to it with a shaky grip. Her muscles burned at the strain of pulling up and steadying herself on her weak legs. Pain sliced across her middle where her incision was healing.
As they went up the steps, he slipped his arm around her and half carried her.
She made a noise of protest, but couldn’t help leaning into his support, both bolstered and weakened by his lean hardness. She finally gave in to the pull of attraction and let her head loll into his shoulder for just a second before he spoke, his tone flatly shoving her back to reality.
“You shouldn’t have been discharged.”
“I don’t want to be this feeble,” she grumbled, pulling away as they crossed the threshold. The loss of his touch made her feel weak and sorry for herself. “Even that time in Peru I managed to keep going. I’ll get better. I have to.” She sank down on the velvet-upholstered bench in the foyer and cupped her swimming head in her hands.
“When were you sick in Peru? That time half the conference came down with food poisoning? You didn’t get it.”
“I did! But someone had to take charge, extend the arrangements with the hotel and rebook the flights. I didn’t hear you volunteering.”
He grew an inch in height and his mouth opened, but she waved a hand against whatever scathing response he was on the verge of making.
“It was my job. I’m not complaining, just saying that’s the most wretched and useless I’ve ever felt, but this is worse. I hate being like this.”
“You should have told me. This time and then.”
“It was my job,” she repeated, ignoring his admonition in favor of reminding him her work ethi
c had been rock solid. She looked up at him and he met her gaze with an inscrutable frown and a tic in his cheek.
“I expect you to tell me what your needs are, Sirena. I’m not a mind reader. We’ll go to your room now so you can rest. Can you manage these stairs with me or shall I have a room prepared down here?”
“Upstairs is fine, but Lucy will need a feed before I lie down.” She deliberately kept her gaze on the baby and not on these beloved surroundings. Silly, naive fool that she was, she used to host fantasies about one day being mistress here. She loved everything about its eclectic style.
The lounge where she moved to nurse was one of her favorite rooms, with its Mediterranean colors, contemporary furniture and view to the English garden. Raoul had a lot of worldly influences in his life, from his Spanish mother’s ancestry of warmth and sensuality to his father’s Swiss precision. He had been educated in America, so he brought those modern, pop-culture elements into his world with contemporary art and futuristic electronics. All of his homes were classy, comfortable and convenient.
And all contained the one ingredient to which she was drawn inexorably: him.
He stood in profile to her, lean and pantherish, thumb sweeping across the screen of his mobile as he dealt with all the things she used to do for him. Her heart panged. She had loved working for him, loved the job that challenged her. Transcribing had put her through business school and kept her fed these last months, so she couldn’t knock it, but it didn’t take her off her steno chair, let alone around the world.
“Are you going in to the office this afternoon?” she asked, of two minds whether she wanted him to leave. Being on guard against him drained her, but another secret part of her drank up his nearness like a cactus in a rare rain.
“They’re asking the same. Things are in disarray. When you delivered, I had only starting to put things in place for an absence I thought would happen next month.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the habitual words leave her lips and thinking, Why are you apologizing? It’s not your fault!