‘You could look at it that way.’ She dipped her head slowly. ‘And perhaps there has been a bit of revenge in the mix, but I don’t believe that is what really spurs you.’
‘And how do you figure that?’ he grated out. But the very fact that he was asking was enough for Oti to feel encouraged.
‘I believe that what really drives you is love, Lukas. Love for your mother. And yes, that means you hated the way your father treated her, but you’ve just been nursing it for so long—ever since you were twelve—that you’ve let it get turned upside down in your head.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘I don’t think I am,’ she pressed on earnestly, desperate to make him see it from where she stood. ‘You’re trapped in this suit of armour because you made it for yourself when you were a twelve-year-old, and you’d long since outgrown it and moved on, but Rockman shoved you back into it when he went after your company. Just because he could. Because that’s the kind of ignoble man that he is. Believe me, Lukas, I understand. Your father is no better than mine. But that isn’t who you are. I know that for a fact.’
She needed him to see the man she—and everyone back in that medical camp—saw. Probably the same man that most of his business partners and employees saw, given the way she’d seen him treat them. He knew them all by name. How many times had she heard him ask after their families, always taking the time to really stop and listen to them?
She took a chance and crossed the room again, lifting her arms to press her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her.
‘Lukas, you’re a good man. You show this ruthless side to the world, but you sacrifice yourself for those you care about. That’s how I know you love me, because you sacrificed what you wanted to go out to Sudan with me, just because you wanted to understand why I love my work so much.’
‘I was curious.’
‘You cared,’ she corrected. ‘You always care. And that’s what will make you a good father. Because you’ll put your child first in a way that neither of our fathers ever put us—or their other kids—first. You are your own man, Lukas. You’re not Rockman. You never were.’
All she could hear was their breathing—shallow and slightly fast. He was silent for so long after that, but he didn’t remove her hands. Slowly, so slowly, he dropped his forehead so that it was almost touching hers.
And then, abruptly, he straightened up again.
‘You’re describing the man you want me to be, Oti. An idealistic version of me. But that isn’t who I am.’ The agony in his voice made her heart ache. ‘I’m damaged and damaging. He once said that I would ruin you, just as he ruined my mother. And he’s right. How could I be anything other when I have Rockman blood running through my veins?’
‘You’re nothing like him.’ She thumped her fist against his chest, but Lukas just grabbed it and held it still, his large hand tight around hers, and she wished he would hold on to her for ever.
‘I am like him. And nowhere was it clearer than the day I married you. I didn’t just choose you because I could buy off your father. I targeted you because I could manipulate you, Oti. I used you.’
‘And, once again, you conveniently forget the fact that you gave me a choice. No one forced me. You dismissed my father that night and asked if I really understood what I was doing. And what of me, Lukas? Am I a bad person? I could have refused but, instead, I asked you for even more money.’
‘For a noble reason,’ he snorted. ‘For your brother.’
‘Yet I still used you.’ She slid her hand from his cheek to the back of his head. ‘Yet what you’re saying is that I’m more than just that one action? That I deserve to be judged on more than that one less than honourable decision.’
‘You’re twisting things to suit your argument. Are you so blind to the truth, when I’ve shown you the man I really am?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve told me who you think you are, but almost the entire time I’ve known you, you’ve shown me a completely different person. He’s the man I fell in love with. And he’s the man my baby needs for a father.’
‘It was a lie, Oti. Everyone lies. I’m not cut out to be a husband, and I’m sure as hell not cut out to be a father. I won’t do to my child the things...he did to me.’
‘Like abandoning them, you mean?’
Lukas’s head snapped back as his eyes met hers. Black and furious again.
‘I’m nothing like him. And it isn’t the same thing.’
‘A moment ago, you were telling me that you were just like him,’ she pointed out. ‘Now you’re saying that you’re nothing like him. Which is it to be, Lukas?’
‘Does it matter?’ he roared. ‘You seem determined to twist my words, no matter what.’
‘Only because I don’t think you know the truth for yourself. You’ve been in the middle of this fight for so long now that you aren’t sure whether you’re honouring your vow as a twelve-year-old or seeing it as the good, rounded man you’ve become. Despite all the odds.’
‘I’m trying to save you here, Oti.’
‘By turning your back on your child, just as he turned his back on you? So what’s the difference between you and him?’
He looked at her as though she’d just driven a knife through his ribs. In a way, given her experience with the Earl, she felt as though she might have done just that.
But she was battling for her baby. For their baby. And if she had to shock him into realising the truth, then she was prepared to do it.
‘The difference—’ his fury practically simmered ‘—is that I’m sending you away to protect you.’
‘How does that protect me?’ she demanded.
‘Because when I take Rockman down for good, when I prove how he lied all these years, he’s going to want revenge, Oti. But I’m relatively protected. There’s very little the world doesn’t already know about me. So who do you think he’ll go after?’
‘So you think sending me away will keep me safe?’
‘Because it will. But I’ll still provide for you financially—whatever you both need, it’ll be yours. And I will never, never deny my child.’
‘Don’t be an Icarus,’ she begged, ‘flying too close to the sun.’
‘This isn’t about ambition, Oti. This is about revenge. I want to take the man down. He deserves to be destroyed.’
‘I understand,’ she said quietly, her heart and soul aching for him. For the man he was now, but especially for the little boy he’d been back then. ‘Believe me, I know. But you know if you do that you’ll end up destroying yourself too.’
‘I know. And that’s why I’m divorcing you.’ He moved to the door, turning back only once as he stood, holding it open for her. And the look he shot her was nothing short of bleak. ‘I need you to leave.’
‘But I love you,’ she pleaded. As if that could somehow solve everything.
She thought he hesitated for a brief moment, as though a part of him desperately wanted to believe her but he couldn’t quite let himself. And then he went cold again, his expression almost forbidding.
‘Then, believe me, Oti, you’re the only one who ever has. Now, leave.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OTI STARED OUTSIDE. The rain lashed against the windows, the wind screaming around the building. A perfect storm to match the one howling inside her, just as it had been for the last two days, since Lukas had thrown her out of his office.
But she was going to let it roar and rage for as long as it took, because it couldn’t go on for ever. And when it eventually blew itself out, she would pick up the pieces of her shattered heart and she would move on, just as she’d told Lukas he needed to do where his father was concerned, and she would make a life for herself, and this precious baby she carried inside her.
Lukas’s baby.
And no matter how much he’d hurt her—because
she had sobbed for hours and hours when he’d sent her away—or how much she’d tried to tell herself that she was better off without him, she couldn’t bring herself to hate him.
He had given her this inestimable gift, which meant she could never regret a moment of their time together. No matter that she was humbled by it, whilst he was immune to it.
The knock at the door caught her off guard.
Unfolding herself from the sofa, she moved across the room. She knew it was him even as her hand reached for the handle.
Hesitating for a fraction of a second, she closed her fingers around the cold metal and carefully opened the door to see him braced against her door frame. A bleak expression that she didn’t think she’d ever seen before clouded his face.
It was a small comfort that he looked as drawn and drained as she felt. Perhaps worse.
He didn’t move at first, and she didn’t speak. And then, without waiting for an invitation, he moved past her into her apartment. Belatedly, she realised that she had stepped aside enough to allow it, her guard down.
A mistake she wouldn’t make again.
Those granite-grey eyes seemed to root her to the spot, made her skin pull tight.
Jerking herself back to the moment, she would never know how she managed to galvanise her legs into action, carrying her away from him as though mere physical distance could somehow protect her heart.
‘Did you mean it when you said you love me?’ he demanded.
She drew in a deep breath. ‘I love the man I saw in Sudan. The one who was full of life and fun. Not this version of you, mired in the past and weighed down by revenge that is, frankly, beneath you.’
It wasn’t a complete answer, yet Lukas nodded, as though this was enough for him.
‘I contacted your brother the other day, Oti.’
The heavy door slipped from her fingers as she turned to look at Lukas. Neither of them heard the loud bang as it slammed closed in the breeze.
‘You spoke to Edward?’
‘I did. I asked him how he was doing after his operation, and then I told him that he was getting his company back.’
‘You’re returning Sedeshire International to him?’
She wanted to ask more. She needed to understand. But her entire body felt numb. Paralysed. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth, as if she’d just eaten one of her brother’s infamous peanut butter sandwiches.
‘It was his company, his baby. Edward’s hard work built it into what it was. And he only lost it all because the board lost faith in him after the accident. And because your father is too weak and incompetent to make a business decision if it killed him.’
‘Sedeshire International was Edward’s baby. Just like LVW Industries is yours,’ she managed.
‘Not any more.’ Lukas shocked her by shaking his head. ‘Not now I know what it’s like to be expecting a different kind of baby. Our baby.’
Her heart stuttered and leapt. He’d said ‘our baby.’
‘What about taking down the Rockman family?’
‘I think Edward can do that all by himself. Turns out your brother may hate them even more than I do.’
He didn’t add that it was because of Louis Rockman attacking her. He didn’t need to.
‘He does,’ she agreed quietly. ‘You know, in many ways we are the same, you and I.’
‘You are the daughter of an earl. And I am the son of a single, unwed mother. I hardly think that makes us the same.’
‘We both had mothers who loved bad men, oblivious to their faults. Mothers who couldn’t see the truth even though it was staring them in the face. The only difference was that you had to see your mother worship your father from afar, whilst I had to watch mine do it right before my eyes.’
There was sheer torment in Lukas’s eyes just then. But he simply pulled his jaw taut, took a breath and then released it.
‘In any case, I should go.’
‘So...that is what you came here to say?’ Oti asked in disbelief.
‘It is.’
‘That is all you came here to say? Nothing more?’
‘Nothing more. I just wanted to tell you that you were right,’ Lukas acknowledged with a rueful upturn of his mouth. ‘And to thank you.’
‘To thank me?’
‘For showing me a different way to be. For seeing past the demons in me, to the good, I guess. If someone as gentle and good as you can love even a little bit of me, it gives me hope.’
‘Hope?’ she echoed again.
‘Yes.’ He cast her an odd look. ‘Anyway, I’ve had an account set up in your name. Tell me how much you need for you, and for our baby. It will be in there.’
‘I don’t want your money, Lukas,’ she choked out. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’
She couldn’t have said what that expression was that twisted his features. Or perhaps it was more that she didn’t want to identify it. It made his words echo too loudly around her head.
That if she loved him, then she was the only one who ever had.
It tore her up, and yet simultaneously made her more determined.
His situation was heartbreaking, and it made his rejection of her all the more understandable, even if it didn’t make it hurt any less. But she refused to allow him to throw it all away, just because he didn’t understand it.
She’d helped him see a better way once. Surely she could do it again.
‘Is that all you really came here to say?’ she challenged. ‘You’re going to throw away the fact that I love you? The fact that you love me?’
‘I don’t even know what love is, Oti. I wish I did. I wish I was that kind of man. But you wouldn’t want whatever half-baked idea of love that I could offer.’
‘You know how to love, as determined as you might be to pretend otherwise.’
‘And you’re determined to ignore what’s right in front of your face,’ he growled, misery etched into his ridiculously handsome face, which looked all the more beautiful to her right at that moment.
‘You do,’ she urged him softly. ‘You’ve already shown me you do, several times. You just can’t bring yourself to see it. But I can help you...if you’ll let me.’
She watched him hesitate, those grey eyes shot through with uncertainty, but also with a kind of longing that pulled at her heart.
She had him. For better or worse, she had him. Relief and triumph punched through her.
‘I want you, Oti, with every fibre of my being,’ he told her fiercely. ‘And I don’t believe that feeling will ever diminish. More than that, I don’t want it to. But I also want what’s best for you and for our baby, and I don’t believe that’s me.’
Subconsciously, his eyes dropped to her belly, and she took the opportunity to close the gap between them. Then, taking his large hands in her own, she placed them over her stomach.
‘It is what’s best for us,’ she confirmed softly. ‘And what you’ve just described is the very definition of love.’
It felt as though her heart was lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.
‘You love me, Lukas, and I love you. It really is as simple as that.’
‘I still don’t know what that is,’ he told her, but this time his voice was softer. Awed. ‘I don’t know if I can be what you need.’
‘You can,’ she assured him. ‘I know you can make me happy, Lukas.’
‘If you truly believe that, then I’ll willingly spend my whole life trying to make it so.’
She patted his hand where it still lay over her belly.
‘What’s more, you will make our baby happy.’
He watched her for a moment, speechless. And then, at long last, he kissed her.
It poured through her, wild, and hot, and perfect. As if she—and their baby—were the only things that mattered to him.
; It said all the things that he couldn’t yet say, and it spoke of for ever. And as Oti wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, she decided happily that was more than enough to be getting on with.
EPILOGUE
MAXIMILIAN CHARLES WOODS roared into the world seven months later. A gloriously bawling eight-pound bundle who sounded as fiercely determined as his father had always been.
He wrapped his fingers around his father’s large thumb and squeezed mightily, and Lukas was besotted.
So was Edward, who had wheeled himself to the hospital as soon as Lukas had called him. He had taken his young nephew in his arms and held him in the way he would never have believed possible nine months earlier.
And later that night, when Lukas and Oti were alone again, their cherished baby in their arms, Lukas lifted his eyes to his wife, those granite-grey depths spilling over with emotion.
‘I never knew my heart could feel so full,’ he told her huskily.
‘You love us.’ She nodded solemnly.
‘I love you,’ he confirmed, as he had so many times before. It had come hesitantly at first, but then, as if that first time was all he’d needed, she’d heard it again and again.
More than that, he had shown her he loved her, wholly and thoroughly, each and every day. He’d applied himself to it with the same drive and focus that he applied to everything that he did.
He had turned out to be an even better husband than Octavia had dreamed, and already he had proved that he would never be the kind of father that his, or hers, had been.
Max would never want for love, and he was going to have the role model that Lukas had never had. She had known that Lukas would make her happy, but she hadn’t appreciated just how much he would make her heart swell.
‘I never dreamed that I could have a wife. A family,’ he marvelled. ‘People who want me for me. Not for the billionaire, or the knighthood. Yet you looked past all that. You looked past the broken man inside, empty and unfulfilled, and you saw who I could be.’
Tempted by Her Convenient Husband Page 17