Claiming his Secret Baby & Blackmailed by The Spaniard

by Connelly, Clare

  Addie’s eyes flew to his face, meeting his straight on for the first time since she’d arrived at his house. “Pregnant?”

  “You don’t look it, but then, I don’t know. Are you?”

  Despite the tension of the situation, Addie couldn’t help the smile that tingled on her lips. “Guy, we haven’t slept together in six months. Do I look like I’m six months pregnant?”

  The question was a mistake.

  Because it invited him to drag his gaze down her body and this time, it was no cursory inspection. He towered over her, and he let his attention linger on the vantage point of her cleavage, and lower still, to the nipped in waist, the slender hips, and with every stroke of his attention, her body responded. Her skin pricked and her blood heated, her nerve endings jangled with recognition. He roamed his gaze back up, his eyes once more indulging in a slow, sensual appreciation of her breasts, so that when his sardonic gaze returned to her face, it was to discover cheeks that were pink and lips that were parted as breath burned its way out of Addie’s mouth.

  “No,” he admitted finally, and with obvious relief. “You are not pregnant.” He took a step back, propping his shoulder against the doorframe with the appearance of indolent unconcern. “Which begs the question, why are you here?”

  Addie’s emotions zipped through her. She’d launched from desire to amusement and back to desire all in the space of a minute and her brain was having a hard time keeping up. What could she say to his question? Because I need help? Because you’re the only person I know who can help? Because you once told me you’d do anything in the world to make me happy, and I’m hoping you still feel the same?

  “I do not have all night, Ava.”

  “Please,” she shook her head, her expression distracted. “Call me Addie.”

  His eyes hardened with some of the legendary ruthlessness for which Guillem Rodriguez was renowned. In business, he was revered. Feared, even. His management of the Rodriguez empire had taken it from a position of considerable power to indomitable strength.

  “I would rather not have to call you anything, ever again. Do you not remember what I said to you, the last time we spoke?”

  Addie recoiled instinctively. His harsh invectives from that night were burned fiercely into her brain. “I remember everything you said.”

  Satisfaction crossed his features. “And yet you are here?”

  “It was a mistake to come,” she whispered.

  “You said that then,” he rejected, scathingly. “A mistake. You seem rather… mistake-prone.”

  Addie nodded slowly. He was right. She had made mistake after mistake after mistake where Guy was concerned.

  No more.

  How could she fulfill the accusation he’d laid at her feet – that she’d been using him for money? It would kill her to have that opinion confirmed.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, wishing she’d never come.

  He leaned imperceptibly closer. “Oh, I have not ‘worried’ about you since I left London. I have not thought of you, in fact, since that night. And yet, here you are…”

  His words cut deeply into her heart, because she didn’t doubt the truth of them for even a second. No doubt there’d been a succession of women in his life after her. She was ancient history.

  “Then you were lying to me as well,” she heard herself allege softly, as reality began to explode inside of her.

  His laugh was a harsh dismissal. “I? Lied to you?”

  “You told me you loved me,” she said softly, fixing him with a direct stare. “That you were in love with me. No man could simply forget about a woman he loved, as you claim to have done with me.”

  His eyes narrowed assessingly. “You killed what I felt for you. It died, instantly, when I realized that I never even knew you. I am not a fool, Ava, yet you would have turned me into one.”

  “You did know me,” Addie whispered urgently. “You knew everything about me except my damned name..!”

  He lifted his hand and tapped his fingers, as if to enumerate. “Your name, where you live, where you work, who you are. I knew nothing about you.” He took a step closer suddenly and his expression was one of barely-contained fury. “You deceived me every moment we spent together.”

  “It wasn’t like th…”

  “Suficiente!” The word was scathing. “No more! No more lies. No more excuses. No more discussing. We were over a long time ago and I have no interest in rehashing our failed relationship.”

  Addie had told herself she would be strong. That she would calmly explain, without giving away too much information, that she needed his help. That it would be a loan. She would repay him. She was banking everything she had on the rehab succeeding and her mother no longer proving to be such a dire strain on their meager resources. Within a couple of years, she hoped, she would be able to return the money to Guy.

  She had prepared for this like a business meeting. Hell, she’d even brought pay-slips so he could see that she did have a job. That she was working sixty hour weeks to try to get ahead. She’d budgeted what she could repay him per week and drawn it up in a table.

  But damn it, she’d been expecting Guy as he’d been then. Before that awful night when an inadvertent meeting had led to her secret being blown wide open.

  The sting of tears clawed at her throat and she looked away, her gaze falling intently on the street that ran to the right. Enormous trees, each decorated with dainty fairy lights, stood proud and green against the twilight sky.

  “I didn’t come to talk about us.”

  “I’m glad. I have no interest in wasting my time in meaningless conversations. So? What is it, Ava?”

  She winced at that name. How she’d come to hate it!

  “Dios mio! You have flown to Madrid and come to my home…” he paused, his eyes dragging over her speculatively. “How did you know where to come? Where I live?”

  Pink suffused her cheeks at the sense that she’d crossed an invisible line. That she’d not only lied to him, she’d stalked him.

  “I paid attention to things you said,” she muttered. “It wasn’t hard to work it out.”

  “Like the talented scammer you are,” he said with mock approval.

  She whipped her head around to face him. “No. Like a woman in love.”

  Colour drained from his features momentarily and then he laughed. “You must need something substantial from me, to be carrying on with your charade, even now.”

  She swallowed, her eyes giving away the truth of his statement when it was on the tip of her tongue to deny it.

  “Let me guess,” he crossed his arms over his broad, muscled chest. “You need money.”

  Addie’s breath was squeezing out of her. She met his eyes but couldn’t hold his gaze when she saw the derision bouncing back at her. The judgment. The disrespect.

  It physically pained her to have the man she’d loved looking at her in such a manner.

  “Well, Ava? Spit it out.”

  She had come so far. She’d used all her savings. And he was offering to give her a hearing, at least. Her pride was already in tatters. What point did she have for it now?

  “A loan,” she whispered.

  His lips compressed, his face angry. “What?”

  “I came to ask for a loan.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. She stared at a point over his shoulder, her blood gushing hard and fast through her slim frame, vibrating in her veins with its tsunami-like rush.

  He didn’t say anything. Not for a long time. Addie eventually had little choice but to look at him, to see if he’d even heard. To see what he was feeling.

  And the scathing derision in his face left her breathless.

  “Well then,” the words were drawled with ice-like detachment. “I suppose you had better come in.”

  “Come in?”

  “To discuss terms, Ava.”

  * * *

  She’d always been slim but now she was bordering on waif-like, her body slender beneath the barely-there
dress she wore. Guy studied her as she sipped her water, the column of her throat moving with the action. There was a very fine tremble in her fingertips, which she was trying to conceal. But Guy saw everything.

  Everything.

  He hadn’t back then.

  He’d seen only what she’d wanted him to see, but six months ago, he’d been stupid – at least where Ava was concerned. He’d bought her act, hook, line and sinker. He’d been the kind of fool he’d sworn he’d never be again. He’d let a woman lie to him. He’d eaten her lies up hungrily, one after the other.

  What an idiot!

  It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.

  He eyed her dispassionately now, and gave her full marks for effort. Her act was exceptional. She looked every bit the scared, worried beauty – it was a part she was playing perfectly. She exuded the kind of fragility that she, perhaps, was hoping would soften him towards her. Appealing to the masculine need he’d once had to protect her at any cost.

  But it had been a long time since he’d felt like that. Every day away from Ava had made him realise that their ‘love’ had just been a construct of his mind. An illusion.

  “Well, Ava?” He enjoyed the look of pain that covered her face when he used her fake name. It served her right. She’d seen fit to feed him the lie – he was simply sticking to it. “You would like to borrow money from me?”

  Her eyes skittered to him and then ran away again, like a kitten in a downpour. She was doing a terrific job of seeming uncomfortable, but Guy had witnessed her performances before. Knowledge of her prowess as an actress allowed him to remain completely unconcerned.

  “I’d pay you back,” she said quietly, nodding her head slowly.

  Sarcasm permeated his expression. “That is, generally, how a loan works.”

  “It would take me … well, years,” she said slowly. “But I have an installment plan worked out.”

  Guy’s brows shot up. “Years? How much do you intend to ask me for?”

  The fine pulse at the base of her neck was racing, beneath his impassioned scrutiny. Frantic and fast. Hell, she must need an enormous sum. Curiosity kept him still. He could afford whatever she needed. God knew he had more than enough money to buy several small countries. But what could she possibly need the money for?

  The lack of what he knew about her filled him with a sense of gladness. Gladness that he’d ended their relationship when he had. Gladness that he’d been strong and put her from his mind ever since.

  “A lot,” she whispered, standing suddenly, her fine frame jack-knifing off the sofa so that she could walk towards the windows overlooking the street. She stared down, her long dark hair pulled over one shoulder exposing a swan-like neck.

  “How much?” He prompted, studying the way her back moved as she breathed in and out.

  She whispered something, and he didn’t catch it, because she was facing away and the words were issued so softly.

  “I cannot hear you when you mumble,” he snapped, more caustically than he’d intended.

  Addie spun around, and again, he had the strangest sense that she was being pursued by wolves. That some unknown danger was eating at her. “Fifty thousand pounds.”

  Such a sum! He had been expecting hundreds of thousands at least, perhaps even a million! Fifty thousand pounds? Cristo! He frequently donated larger sums to the charities he supported.

  “What do you need it for?” He asked with a shake of his head, enjoying the way panic spread over her features. She thought he was going to say ‘no’. And she was doing a very good imitation of someone who was desperately afraid.

  She didn’t answer his question. There was a guarded secrecy in her features as she said, “I’d pay back every penny.”

  Guy nodded thoughtfully, his eyes assessing the woman he had once craved like none other. The woman who had formed the baseline for his fantasies.

  He’d been furious that night – the night he’d learned the truth. No. He’d never learned the truth. He still didn’t know anything about who she really was, and nor did he want to; he knew only that she’d lied to him. He knew she’d given him a fake name, a fake profession, been vague about where she lived.

  He’d spent a month sleeping with a perfect, sexy stranger. A liar. He’d fallen in love with a mirage.

  And now she wanted something from him. His eyes narrowed, taking in her pale skin, her wide-set eyes, the unmistakable impression that she was hanging on his every word.

  “Fifty thousand pounds,” he murmured, as though the amount was worthy of his solemn consideration. He paced across the room, staring out at the garden.

  “I know it’s a lot.” Her words stretched a harsh smile over his face, one she wouldn’t have seen for the way he stood, turned away from her. “Believe me, Guy, I wouldn’t be here, asking for your help, if there was any other option.”

  He didn’t believe her. Not for one second.

  Ava – Adeline – whatever the hell her name was – knew his worth. She knew the level of wealth he possessed. Why waste her one shot at fifty thousand pounds, when as his lover she would have access to the lifestyle she’d already experienced?

  Did she think she could win him back by playing the damsel in financial distress?

  Not likely. Having been foolish enough to be drawn in by Addie once, he wasn’t likely to be so ever again. He’d learned his lesson about the beautiful woman. She wasn’t to be trusted, not for a million pounds. Not for anything.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have some fun with her, did it?

  2

  “YOU’RE RIGHT. FIFTY THOUSAND pounds is a lot of money.” He spun around to face her and Addie froze, the full force of his strength lashing across the room like a cyclone.

  She knew him to be a powerful, influential man. She’d understood that the night they’d met, even before she’d known his name. Men like Guillem Rodriguez possessed in their very being a latent control that communicated itself in every gesture. In the way they spoke, the way they stood, the way they commanded the attention of a room simply by entering it.

  And Guy commanded Addie, in that moment. She stood, almost as if to attention, waiting with breath held, heart throbbing, blood rushing.

  “I would pay you back,” she heard herself say again, simply to fill the silence that was emanating from him, beating against the walls with its powerful nothingness.

  “Oh, that wouldn’t be necessary.” His eyes were rich with sardonic anger when they clashed to hers. “At least, not pound for pound.”

  Addie swallowed, trying not to let herself feel relief that they were moving closer to an agreement. Because his manner was confusing her now, suggesting complications she hadn’t – foolishly – anticipated.

  “What does that mean?”

  He moved closer, just a few steps, but her body began to thrum with a new awareness, to vibrate differently. “Before you arrived today, I was pondering a problem I have.”

  “A problem?” Addie responded, trying to keep up.

  He prowled closer. “And here you are: a perfect solution.”

  “To what?” She held her breath, her eyes glued to him as he closed the distance between them.

  Just the nearness of him was overpowering every single one of her senses. He lifted a finger, and ran it down her cheek, dropping it insolently to her shoulder, as though he had every right to touch her. She drew in a harsh breath, but didn’t move, didn’t look away.

  “Guy?” It was a plaintive whisper. A small cry for clarity in a whirlwind of confusion. In a million years, she hadn’t imagined he would touch her like this. Nor look at her as though he wanted to strip her naked and take her to his bed.

  “I was very angry at you that night.”

  She nodded, just a tiny jerk of her head. “I remember.” He had been scathing. Brutally so.

  “I am no longer angry.”

  Hope fluttered in her breast.

  “Anger requires an emotional investment I have ceased to feel for you
. I see you clearly now, as I should have all along. I see the kind of woman you are. It is important that you remember how I feel about you, if this is to work.”

  “Damn it, Guy,” she spoke quietly. “It was a mistake…”

  “You can say that again.” His smile was dismissive. Just a sharp twist of his lips. His handsome face was otherwise dispassionate. “You know, I’ve wondered what you wanted from me. Was it the prestige you thought I could provide? Money? Connections?” He shook his head.

  “It wasn’t like that,” she insisted. “Guy, I fell in love with you. Not because you’re richer than sin, or because you know a heap of important people. It was you.”

  His laugh was almost indulgent. “Do not insult me by lying now. Not when you are showing your true colours by coming to me and begging for cash.”

  “It’s a loan. I promise, I will pay you back.”

  “Out of curiosity, why do you think I’d want to help you, Ava?”

  “Addie,” she corrected automatically. “You told me you would do anything to make me smile. That my happiness meant everything to you. I thought that even after we… after we broke up, that maybe you would still care enough to want to help.”

  She held her breath, the innocence of her hopes seeming absurd now, standing face to face with Guy and his obvious disdain.

  “You were wrong.”

  Her heart stuttered. Hopes dropped.

  “I do not wish to help you. I certainly do not ‘care’ for you.”

  Addie sucked in a breath that burned all the way down to the pit of her stomach. “Guy…”

  He lifted his finger to her lips, pressing it against her, his eyes boring down on hers. “Nothing comes for free, Ava. You want me to give you money?”

  “Lend me,” she reminded him croakily.

  His expression was a swift rejection of her differentiation. “You came to my door, in need of my help. Did it not occur to you that I would expect something in exchange?”

  Her breath hitched in her throat and her knees suddenly felt weak and tingly. “What do you mean?”

  And then, the penny dropped. Was he actually suggesting that she sleep with him in exchange for money? Colour drained from her face and she stepped back in an instantaneous, silent rejection of any such notion.