by Dani Collins
“Lucy?” she prompted, looking past him.
“I gave her a bottle, but she didn’t take much. She’s down, but probably not for long.”
At least that gave her an excuse to avoid him while she disappeared to pump the ache out of her swollen breasts. He was still at the table when she returned. He wore his I’ve-got-all-day-so-don’t-bother-stalling face.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said flatly, veering her gaze from the way his muscled shoulders filled his ice-blue shirt. If only she wasn’t so hungry. She folded a leg under her as she took a seat and reached for a piece of cold, buttered toast, biting into it mutinously.
He set aside his tablet and leaned his forearms where his place setting had been cleared.
“I know you can’t make love yet. I wouldn’t have taken it that far. I didn’t have protection either and I sure as hell don’t want to get you pregnant again.”
The bite of toast in her mouth turned coarse and bitter. All the hurt she’d been bottling and ignoring rose in the back of her throat to make swallowing difficult. She rose up from her chair with what she hoped was enough indignation to cover her wounded core.
“Do you think I don’t wish every day that Lucy’s father was anyone but you?” She heard the cut of his breath and knew she’d scored a direct hit, but there was no satisfaction in it. She had zero desire to stick around and gloat.
She was almost to the door when he said with sharp force, “Because I don’t want to risk your life again. Given how dangerous I’ve learned childbirth can be, I don’t intend to put any woman through that ever again.”
The statement was shocking enough to make her hesitate. She glanced back, certain he couldn’t be as serious as he sounded. His still posture and set jaw told her he was incontrovertibly sincere.
“Millions of women sail through pregnancy and deliver without any trouble,” she pointed out. “You don’t know how you’ll feel in future, with a different woman.”
He only gave her that shuttered look that told her any sort of discussion on the matter was firmly closed. She was wasting her breath if she thought she could reason with him. His rigid expression was so familiar, his certainty that he was right so ingrained and obvious, she felt her lips twitch in amusement.
It was the last reaction she expected. Her body was still humming with unsatisfied arousal, which only increased her aggravation and trampled self-worth. Her heart had shriveled overnight into a self-protective ball, but for some reason his misplaced, oddly gallant statement uncurled it a bit. He was showing the protectiveness she so admired in him, and it was directed at her. Well, all women, maybe, but it still felt kind and yes, there was even a weak part of her that took comfort in knowing he wasn’t likely to fill his life with children by other women. The thought of him making babies with someone he actually loved had been quietly torturing her.
“What’s funny?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” she assured him, pressing a hand to her hollow stomach as it growled.
He rose with impatience to hold her chair. “Sit. Eat. You need the calories.”
She returned to slide into her chair as his housekeeper brought a plate of eggs and tomato.
To her consternation, Raoul sat down again.
The memory of last night blistered her as the housekeeper left them alone. She had tossed and turned after their rendezvous, trying to figure out how it had happened. For her it was simple: she still reacted to him. For him...convenience? It had to be. He wasn’t going into the city to work or to work out his kinks.
Blushing with anger and remembered excitement, she stared at her plate, picking at her food with the tines of her fork. That wild moment was going to sit between them like the wall of resentment over the missing money, filling all of their interactions with undercurrents. She needed her own space.
“I should be able to move into my flat after my next appointment,” she said.
He made a noise of negation.
She set her chin to disguise the leap in her heart. She was still processing that he hadn’t actually insulted the hell out of her a few minutes ago. Was he resisting her leaving because he wanted her here?
Pressing her knotted fists into her lap, she asked, “Sooner, then?”
“Never. I want Lucy full-time. That means you have to stay, too.”
The words went through her like a bomb blast, practically lifting the hair off her head and leaving her ears ringing. Unexpected yearning clenched in her and last night’s excitement flared like stirred coals reaching toward a conflagration. Warning bells in her head clanged danger, danger.
“There you go testing my incision again,” she said, and scooped eggs into her mouth as though the matter was closed. It was. “No,” she added in case he needed further clarification.
“Why not?” His challenge was almost like idle curiosity. Pithy and confident he’d eventually get his way.
She goggled at him. “That train wreck last night for starters,” she blurted, face seared with a mask of humiliated embarrassment. If he’d made a pass and she’d rejected him, that would be one thing, but the way she’d responded had been horribly revealing. She dropped her gaze, wishing she could take back her reaction, especially when it occurred to her he might use it to get what he wanted.
“So the chemistry between us is alive and well. We’ve successfully ignored it in the past. Maybe we’ll even look at resuming that side of our relationship once you’re fully recovered. It’s got nothing to do with my desire to raise my daughter.”
Sirena choked. “What relationship? What chemistry?” Incredulous, she leaped to her feet without being aware of it. Her entire being rejected everything he was saying. It was so cruel she couldn’t bear it. “I’m moving back to my flat as soon as the doctor clears me.” She threw her napkin on the table and started to walk out again.
“You’re going alone,” he said in an implacable tone that chilled her to her marrow. “Lucy is staying here.”
Slam. Here it was. The brick wall she had always known he would push between her and her child. Had she actually felt herself softening toward him? He was a bastard, through and through. And it hurt! He was hurting her by treating her this way and he was hurting her by not being the man she wanted him to be.
“That is not what our legally binding agreement says,” she whirled to state.
“Keep your lawyer on retainer, sweetheart. We’re going to rewrite it.”
He wasn’t bluffing. Her heart twisted while the rest of her, the part that had lost to a bully once before, put up her dukes. She had never wanted to physically harm anyone in her life, but at this moment a swelling wave of injustice pushed her toward him in aggressive confrontation, muscles twitching with the desire to claw him apart because he was striking at her very foundation.
He rose swiftly as she approached, surprised and instantly guarded, taking on a ready stance, his size the only thing that stopped her from lashing out with everything in her.
“Well, isn’t that like you,” she said with the only weapon available: a tongue coated with enough resentful hatred it wielded itself. “I want you, Sirena,” she mocked. “Touch me, Sirena. And the next morning it’s, take everything that matters to her and kick her to the curb. Go ahead. Send me into John’s office for another pile of legal bills I can’t afford. I’ll raise the stakes and take this to the court of public opinion. I’ll hurt you in every way I can find. I’ll take your daughter, because I will not let her be raised by someone who treats people the way you do.”
She wiped the back of her wrist across her lips, her incensed emotions deflating to despair as she heard her own words and knew that she was bravado against his arsenal of money, position and power. What did she have? Charges against her for theft.
She couldn’t continue to face him without breaking down.
“Where do you get the nerve to judge me?” she managed as a parting shot before she decamped to higher ground.
* * *
Raoul s
tood in astonished silence as he listened to Sirena’s retreat. He felt as though he’d just surprised a wounded lioness and barely escaped still clutching his vital organs. Adrenaline stung his arteries and he had to consciously tell his muscles to relax.
None of that closed what felt like a giant chasm in his chest. Touch me, Sirena. Kick her to the curb. Shame snaked through him, keeping his jaw clenched even though he wanted to shout back at her in defense. He was the one with the right to trust issues. Where did she get off accusing him of manipulation?
His housekeeper came through, startling him. “More coffee?” she asked, obviously surprised to see the table deserted.
“No,” he barked, then pulled himself together. “No, thank you,” he said with more control, rubbing his face then disheveling his hair. “Please make up some sandwiches for Sirena, since she didn’t finish her breakfast. I’ll be in my office.”
He went there for privacy, to work through their confrontation, not to make a dent in the work that piled up every minute he was distracted by this new family of his.
Just a daughter, he reminded himself. Not a partner.
Touch me. His gut tightened in remembered ecstasy as he felt again her light fingers encircling him. Desire had exploded in him last night. For her. Despite all his attempts to make excuses, the sad truth was no other woman tempted him. Even before conceiving Lucy, he’d been taking women to dinner without taking anything else.
He didn’t want Sirena to be the only one he wanted. He ought to have more control over himself. As he’d eschewed sleep this morning in favor of forming arguments to keep Sirena and Lucy living with him, he’d convinced himself it was a convenient solution to their custody battle, nothing to do with sexual attraction.
While he’d relived her soft mewling noises and passionate response to his kiss in the hallway, her body incapable of lying.
Sirena didn’t want anything to do with him, though. Maybe she was physically attracted, but her ferocity this morning warned him that she would rather smother him in his sleep than share his bed for lovemaking.
He stared blindly at the colorful gardens beyond his office window, his mind’s eye seeing her savaged expression the day at the gate, then again this morning. A hard hand closed around his heart, squeezing uncomfortably. A million times he’d told himself she was as jaded and detached as all the rest of his lovers, but today something admonished him. He feared he’d hurt her in a way he hadn’t realized he could. But how was his treatment of her any different than hers of him? She had gotten him depending on her, then backhanded him with theft. She’d ruined him for other women and was completely wrong for him at the same time.
Movement caught his eye. Sirena had brought Lucy into the garden. She wore a summer dress and bare feet. Her hair hung in a damp curtain down her back, its curls weighted into subtle waves that would spring up as the sun dried it. Folding one leg under herself the way she often did, she sat on the covered swing and kicked it into a gentle rock, head tilting back as she inhaled deeply.
She was pure woman in that moment, sensual yet maternal. Beautiful.
The want in him took on a new, disconcerting depth. It wasn’t just sexual. He remembered her efficiency, her smooth handling of difficult people, her quick smiles.
He wanted the Sirena he’d believed her to be before his dented bank balance had proved she wasn’t.
Damn it, he didn’t do complex relationships. Mother-son. Simple. Protective big brother. Easy. Boss and employee. Black-and-white.
With one noted exception.
His father’s suicide over what had seemed to be a sordid yet standard affair was earning some of his empathy. If his father had struggled with things like overstepping boundaries in the workplace and a lust that battled strength with his love for his child, Raoul could see where he’d felt torn in too many directions. Raoul wasn’t anywhere near killing himself over it, but he wasn’t getting much sleep.
But if he was about to be exposed for his perfidy, he might start thinking drastic thoughts. Sirena had threatened a publicity backlash and he believed her. He was learning there was a no-holds-barred quality when her basic rights were threatened and part of him respected her for it.
And if there was one thing he prided himself on, it was upholding his end of a bargain.
Cursing, he opened the French doors onto the patio and strolled across to Sirena, footsteps whispering across the grass. Her eyes opened, but only to slits.
“I’m floating down the river of denial. Don’t kill the mood,” she warned with a chilly edge to her soft tone.
The corner of his mouth quirked. She had always caught him off guard with her colorful expressions. There was a hidden poet in her, he suspected. A romantic.
He frowned, unable to fit that with the calculating vamp he knew her to be.
“Look,” he said, sweeping her multiple facets aside to work at keeping things simple. He’d been angry when he’d thrown his ultimatum at her, grumpily aware that he wanted her rather desperately while she thought he was trying to manipulate her. The manipulating factor was this infernal chemistry!
“I was wrong to say I’d go back on our agreement. You’re right. You negotiated in good faith and things between us will only get ugly if we don’t talk these things through without using Lucy as leverage.”
“Are you on drugs? I thought you said I was right.” Her eyes stayed shut, not revealing any of the willingness to compromise he was looking for.
“Where is all this sass coming from?” he demanded. “You never used to say things like that to me.”
“Sure I did. In my head. Now that you’ve fired me, I can use my outside voice.”
He accepted that with a disgruntled press of his lips, pushing his hands into his pockets as he rocked on his heels. The sun on his back was so hot he could feel the burn through his shirt. Sirena and the baby were in the shade, though, so he didn’t insist they go back into the house yet.
“Will you stay? You know what my workload is like. I have to travel and I don’t want to be half a globe from Lucy, not for weeks at a time.”
“So when you say stay, you mean follow you around like nomads?” Her eyes opened, lashes screening her thoughts, but the indignant lift of her brows said plenty.
“Why not? You liked the travel when you worked for me, didn’t you?”
Sirena pursed her lips. “When I got out of the hotels to see the sights.”
He frowned, sensing criticism when he was well aware she’d enjoyed visiting foreign cultures, welcoming new people and perspectives with excited curiosity, always ready with small talk full of well-researched questions about museums or local wonders, always craning her head at markets when they passed. She made good use of all she learned too, providing tidbits that informed his negotiations through foreign bureaucracy, but he wondered suddenly if he’d kept her too busy to actually experience all she’d wanted to.
They’d been there to work, though. That’s what he did and who he was.
He scowled as he contemplated how little of those countries he’d seen.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she sighed. “Lucy will have school—”
“Years down the road,” he argued, not letting her finish. “I’ll make allowances for that, but you know as well as I do it will take time to put things in place. For the next few years, as long as she has us, she’ll be happy anywhere. I’m not talking about leaving tomorrow. I realize you have medical checkups. We’ll stay here as long as you need, but later in the year I don’t see why we can’t take a few weeks in Milan. My mother is already asking when I’ll bring her to New York.”
“I can’t live with you permanently. How would we explain it to people? Your future bedmates sure wouldn’t like it, and what if one of us wants to get married?”
Irritated by the mention of bedmates and life mates, he dismissed both. “I’ve never been interested in marriage and see even less point now. As for bedmates, for Lucy’s sake, we should keep that in-house.�
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Sirena suddenly stopped the swing. Raoul sensed refusal so tangibly he bristled.
“Wow. For Lucy’s sake I ought to have sex with you? That’s the kind of reasoning even someone with my damaged morals has trouble following.”
“If we sleep together, it’ll be because we both want to,” he snapped, aware he was handling this badly, but she was frustrating the hell out of him. “That train wreck last night was a head-on crash from both sides. You want me and when you get cleared by the doctor, you’ll be cleared for sex. Think about that.”
CHAPTER SIX
SIRENA DIDN’T HAVE much choice about whether to think on it. Her body was enamored with the idea of falling into bed with her old boss. Her mind drifted in that direction at the least bit of encouragement. Asleep, awake... He was always nearby, smelling like manly aftershave or endearingly like baby powder, telling family secrets to Lucy or speaking in some sexy foreign language on the phone, the syllables drifting teasingly into her ears...
She got so she conjured reasons not to trust him in order to counter the attraction, which wasn’t healthy. I’ve never been interested in marriage and see even less point now. That certainly told her where his interest in her as a bedmate started and stopped.
They wound up having abbreviated conversations punctuated by glances of awareness and stubborn avoidances. She had to move back into her own flat.
The trouble was, her neighbor’s niece was still begging to take it over. Sirena began thinking that if she could find a decent job in a less-expensive part of London, she might be able to keep renting out her existing flat and take something smaller for herself. Her flat was an asset she didn’t want to lose and without a better income soon, she would. Even at that, she wasn’t sure how she’d pay for day care so she could work.
Which was the sort of worn path of worry that made her circle back to what Raoul was offering. But it would be so wrong. He had wronged her and continued to feel wronged by her. She might have drunk herself into oblivion out of frustration if she didn’t have a baby to think of. At least she could meet a friend for a small one.