Книга - A Debt Paid in Passion

A Debt Paid in Passion
Dani Collins


A beautiful thief…?Raoul Zesiger has everything a man could want – including Sirena Abbott, the perfect PA, who keeps his life in order. Or so it seems – until their professional relationship gives way to one hot, impassioned night…and then he has her arrested for embezzlement!She might have escaped a prison sentence, but Sirena knows she’ll be shackled to Zesiger by more than just the past. With Raoul determined to recover the debt she owes him Sirena is torn between guilt and an impossible attraction. But what will happen when Raoul uncovers the truth behind her theft?‘Dani Collins has gone from strength to strength; she’s now the first author I look for!’ – Deborah, Hospitality, LondonderryDiscover more at www.millsandboon.co.uk/danicollins









Look at me, Raoul silently commanded again.


Sirena’s lips drained of color and her hand trembled as she reached out, trying to find the gate. She stared straight ahead, eyes blinking and blinking—

“She’s fainting!” He shoved past his lawyers and toppled chairs to reach her even as her own lawyer turned and reacted.

Raoul shouted for First Aid.

Someone appeared with oxygen in a blessedly short time. He let himself be pushed back a half-step, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the way Sirena’s cheeks had gone hollow, her skin gray. Everything in him—breath, blood, thought—ground to a halt as he waited for a sign that she would be okay.

Distantly he heard the attendant asking about pre-existing conditions and Raoul racked his brain. She wasn’t diabetic, had never taken any medication that he’d seen. He’d reached for the phone he’d turned off while court was in session, intent on accessing her personnel file, when he heard her lawyer answer in a low murmur.

“She’s pregnant.”

The words burst like shattered glass in his ears.


DANI COLLINS discovered romance novels in high school and immediately wondered how a person trained and qualified for that amazing job. She married her high school sweetheart, which was a start, then spent two decades trying to find her fit in the wide world of romance writing, always coming back to Harlequin Mills & Boon


.

Two children later, and with the first entering high school, she placed in Harlequin’s Instant Seduction contest. It was the beginning of a fabulous journey towards finally getting that dream job.

When she’s not in her Fortress of Literature, as her family calls her writing office, she works, chauffeurs children to extra-curricular activities, and gardens with more optimism than skill. Dani can be reached through her website at www.danicollins.com





Recent titles by the same author:

MORE THAN A CONVENIENT MARRIAGE?

PROOF OF THEIR SIN

(One Night With Consequences) NO LONGER FORBIDDEN?

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk


A Debt Paid

in Passion

Dani Collins






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Generous readers, you’re my Valentines.

Thank you for making

all those hours in my stuffy attic writing room worth it.


Contents

CHAPTER ONE (#uad59270b-eda5-5725-86cf-1e0a32c0c6ee)

CHAPTER TWO (#u24d05c59-bee3-5e66-9fe6-08aaa7a5aa90)

CHAPTER THREE (#u55661a2b-e326-5995-bec9-859805e67443)

CHAPTER FOUR (#ubde6d52f-9553-5218-894a-cf43176e7f23)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE

LOOK AT ME, Raoul Zesiger willed Sirena Abbott.

He had to lean back in his chair to see her past the three men between them. He should have been looking at the judge, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Sirena.

She sat very still, face forward, her profile somber. Her absurdly long gypsy lashes had stayed downswept as his lawyer had risen to speak. She didn’t even flick a glance in his direction when her own lawyer stood to plead that jail time was counterproductive, since she needed to work to pay back the stolen funds.

Raoul’s lawyers had warned him this wouldn’t result in incarceration, but Raoul had pressed hard for it. He would see this treacherously innocent-looking woman, with her mouth pouted in grave tension and her thick brunette locks pulled into a deceptively respectful knot, go to jail for betraying him. For stealing.

His stepfather had been a thief. He had never expected to be taken advantage of again, especially by his reliable PA, a woman he’d come to trust to be there, always. But she had dipped her fingers into his personal account.

Then she had tried to manipulate him into going easy by being easy.

He didn’t want the flash of memory to strike. His ears were waiting for the judge to state that this would progress to a sentence, but his body prickled with heat as he recalled the feel of those plump lips softening under his. Her breasts, a lush handful, had smelled of summer. Her nipples were sun-warmed berries against his tongue, succulent and sweet. The heart-shaped backside he’d watched too often as it retreated from his office had been both taut and smooth as he had lifted her skirt and peeled lace down. Thighs like powdered sugar, an enticing musky perfume between that pulled him to hard attention as he remembered how tight—almost virginal—she’d been. But so hot and welcoming.

Because she’d known her criminal act was about to come to light.

His gut clenched in a mixture of fury and unparalleled carnal hunger. For two years he’d managed to keep his desire contained, but now that he’d had her, all he could think about was having her again. He hated her for having such power over him. He could swear under oath that he’d never hurt a woman, but he wanted to crush Sirena Abbott. Eradicate her. Destroy her.

The clap of a gavel snapped him back to the courtroom. It was empty save for the five of them behind two tables, both facing the judge. His lawyer gave Raoul a resigned tilt of his head and Raoul realized with sick disgust that the decision had gone in Sirena’s favor.

At the other table, partly obscured by her lawyer, Sirena’s spine softened in relief. Her wide eyes lifted to the heavens, shining with gratitude. Her lawyer thanked the judge and set a hand under Sirena’s elbow to help her rise, leaning in to say something to her.

Raoul felt a clench of possessiveness as he watched the solicitous middle-aged lawyer hover over her. He told himself it was anger, nothing else. He loathed being a victim again. She shouldn’t get away with a repayment plan of six hundred pounds a month. That wasn’t reparation. That was a joke.

Why wouldn’t she look at him? It was the least she could do: look him in the eye and acknowledge they both knew she was getting away with a crime. But she murmured something to her lawyer and left the man packing his briefcase as she circled to the aisle. Her sexy curves were downplayed by her sleek jacket and pencil skirt, but she was still alluring as hell. Her step slowed as she came to the gate into the gallery.

Look at me, Raoul silently commanded again, holding his breath as she hesitated, sensing she was about to swing her gaze to his.

Her lips drained of color and her hand trembled as she reached out, trying to find the gate. She stared straight ahead, eyes blinking and blinking—

“She’s fainting!” He shoved past his two lawyers and toppled chairs to reach her even as her own lawyer turned and reacted. They caught her together.

Raoul hated the man anew for touching her as they both eased her to the floor. She was dead weight. He had to catch her head as it lolled. She hadn’t been this insubstantial the last time he’d held her. She hadn’t been fragile.

Raoul barked for first aid.

Someone appeared with oxygen in blessedly short time. He let himself be pushed back a half step, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the way Sirena’s cheeks had gone hollow, her skin gray. Everything in him, breath, blood, thought, ground to a halt as he waited for a new verdict: that she would be okay.

It was his father all over again. The lack of response, the wild panic rising in him as he fought against helplessness and brutal reality. Was she breathing? She couldn’t be dead. Open your eyes, Sirena.

Distantly he heard the attendant asking after preexisting conditions and Raoul racked his brain. She wasn’t diabetic, had never taken medication that he’d seen. He reached for the phone he’d turned off while court was in session, intent on accessing her personnel file, when he heard her lawyer answer in a low murmur.

“She’s pregnant.”

The words burst like shattered glass in his ears.

* * *

Sirena became aware of something pressed to her face. Clammy sweat coated her skin and a swirl of her ever-present nausea turned mercilessly inside her.

She lifted a heavy hand to dislodge whatever was smothering her and a voice said, “You fainted, Sirena. Take it easy for a minute.”

Opening her eyes, she saw John, the highly recommended lawyer who’d been perfunctory until she’d almost vomited in his wastebasket. She’d told him the father’s identity was irrelevant, but Raoul was glaring from beyond John’s shoulder with all the relevance of an unforgiving sun on a lost soul in the desert—and he appeared about as sympathetic.

She had tried hard not to look at Raoul, former boss, brief lover, unsuspecting father. He was too...everything. Tall, dark, unabashedly urbane and sophisticated. Severe. Judgmental.

But of their own accord, her hungry eyes took in his appearance—her first opportunity to do so in weeks. She cataloged his razor-sharp charcoal suit, the solid black tie. His jaw was freshly shaved for his morning appointment, his dark hair recently cut into the sternly simple style of a successful businessman.

And there were his eyes, the gray irises stormy and full of condemnation as they snared hers in an unbreakable stare.

John asked, “Is there any pain? We’ve called an ambulance.”

Sirena flashed a terrified glance back at Raoul. It was a mistake. She realized immediately that he’d read it for what it was: an admission of guilt. A betrayal of truth.

Clenching her perfidious eyes closed, she willed him not to pick up on what had been revealed, but he was the most acutely intelligent person she’d ever met. He missed nothing.

If he knew she was carrying his baby, there’d be another fight. Considering what this current contest had taken out of her, she wasn’t ready for another. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, let him think he had a right to custody of her child.

“Sirena,” Raoul said in that dark chocolate voice of his.

Her skin rippled in a pleasurable shiver of recognition. Two years of hearing every intonation in that voice left her with the knowledge that her name on his lips right now was an implacable warning.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

Sirena reached blindly for John’s hand, clenching her icy fingers on his warm, dry ones. Beneath the oxygen mask, her voice was hollow and whisper thin.

“Tell him to leave me alone or I’ll take out a restraining order.”


CHAPTER TWO

THE FIRST VOLLEY of the second war was waiting when she got home from the hospital. More tests had been scheduled, but for the moment her doctor was putting her faint down to stress and low blood sugar resulting from her unrelenting nausea.

Sirena thought nothing could be more stressful than facing prison while dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, but Raoul knew no bounds when it came to psychological torture. She read the email John had forwarded:



My client has every reason to believe your client carries his baby. He insists on full involvement in the care through pregnancy and will take sole custody at birth.



Her blood congealed, even though this was no surprise. Raoul was possessive. She’d learned that. This reaction was fully expected, but having anyone try to take this baby from her was unthinkable.

Blinking the sting of desperation from her eyes, she typed, It’s not his, saying aloud, “And tell him to go to hell.”

She didn’t let herself dwell on the fact that Raoul wanted his baby. It would make her weaken toward a man she needed to believe was a monster—even though she’d spent two years falling into deep infatuation with not just a dynamic tycoon, but a man who was a caring son and protective older stepbrother. In some ways he was her mirror image, she’d often thought fancifully. They’d both lost a parent and both wanted the best for their younger siblings. She had come to believe him to be an admirable person with a dry wit and standards that put her learned habits of perfectionism to shame.

No, she reminded herself as she prepared a slice of toast she would force herself to eat. He was a cruel, angry, small person who felt nothing. For her, at least. He’d proven it when he’d made passionate love to her one day, then had her arrested the next.

A black hole of despair threatened to open beneath her feet, but she was safe now. That part was over. She’d made a horrible mistake and the judge had accepted her remorse, even if Raoul hadn’t. She had no idea how she would come up with six hundred pounds a month, but that was a minor worry against convincing Raoul the baby wasn’t his.

There was no way she could live with having another loved one wrenched from her life. The fear of her baby growing up without its mother, the way she had, had given her the strength to fight tooth and nail against Raoul’s determination to put her in jail. Somehow she would rally the strength to oust him from her life for good.

Which left her feeling incredibly bereft, but she ignored it.

Taking tea, toast and a tablet for nausea to the sofa, she scanned her laptop to see if any transcription jobs had come in. The legal bills were appalling and being fired three months ago had decimated her very modest savings.

If only she could take back that one awful moment when she had thought, Raoul will understand. She rubbed her brow where it crinkled in lament. Borrowing from him had seemed the most simple and obvious thing to do when her sister had been in tears, saying, I guess I’m not meant to be a teacher. Their father was expecting payment from a big customer any day. Ali had struggled so hard to get her marks up and be accepted into the specialized program. The tuition was due, but the cash was not in hand.

I can cover it, Sirena had assured her, confident the balance would move out and come back into Raoul’s account on the same statement. He probably wouldn’t even notice, let alone care. He paid her to worry about little details like that.

Then her father’s customer had gone insolvent.

Not overnight, of course. It started with a delay of a few more days. A week. Sirena had begun chasing it herself, right up to the monthly cutoff date, not wanting to mention her self-approved loan to her boss until she had the funds to repay it.

The money hadn’t appeared and the opportunity to explain hadn’t arisen, not before other events.

And since she didn’t want to involve her father when his livelihood was nose-diving, she had shouldered the fallout herself, keeping her motives from Raoul and not revealing to her family what she’d done or that she was facing jail time for it.

This had been the most crushingly lonely and frightening time of her life.

A muted beep announced an incoming email. From Raoul. Her heart leaped in misplaced anticipation. It was one word.



Liar.



He wasn’t buying that the baby wasn’t his.

Gritting her teeth against an ache that crushed her chest, she added Raoul to her email block list and sent a missive to John.



Tell him that contacting me directly is out of line. If the baby was his, I would sue for support. I would have asked for leniency when he was trying to put me in jail. This baby is not his and he must LEAVE ME ALONE.



Hitting send was like poking herself in the throat. She drew a pained breath, fighting the sense of loss. But life hit you with sudden changes and you had to roll with them. She had learned that when her mother had died, and again when her stepmother had whisked her father and half sister to Australia with brutal speed as soon as Sirena graduated and enrolled in business school.

People left, was what she’d learned. They disappeared from your life whether you wanted them to or not. Sometimes they even fired you and tried to lock you away in prison so they’d never have to see you again.

Making a disgusted noise at herself for indulging in what amounted to emotional self-harm, she turned her thoughts to the little being who wouldn’t leave her. With a gentle hand on her unsettled abdomen, she focused on the one person she’d do everything in her power to keep in her life forever. She didn’t intend to smother the poor thing, just be his or her mother. She couldn’t countenance anyone taking that role from her. And Raoul would try. He was that angry and ruthless.

She shivered as she recalled seeing that side of him for the first time, after making bail. The only thing that had gotten her through the humiliating process of being arrested, fingerprinted and charged was the certainty that Raoul didn’t know what was happening to her. Some accountant had done this. A bank official. They didn’t understand that Raoul might be gruff on the outside, but she was his best PA ever. His right hand. They’d become intimate. He would be furious that she was being treated this way.

She had believed with all her heart that as soon as she told him what had happened, he’d make it right.

He hadn’t. He’d made her wait in the rain at the gate of his mansion outside London, eventually striding out with hard-hearted purpose, his severe expression chilly with distaste as he surveyed her.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Sirena had said through the rungs of the security gate, frightened by how unreachable he seemed. “I was arrested today.”

“I know,” Raoul replied without a shred of concern. “I filed the complaint.”

Her shock and stunned anguish must have been obvious, but his mouth had barely twitched in reaction. Cruel dislike had been the only emotion in his scathing expression. Sirena’s stepmother had been small and critical, but she hadn’t outright hated Sirena. In that second, she realized Raoul reviled her, and that was more painful than anything.

Guilt and remorse had made her want to shrivel up and die, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe she’d ruined her career and her budding relationship with the man of her dreams over one tiny misstep.

“But...” Everything she wanted to say backed up in her throat. They’d developed friendship, reliance and respect over two years of working together and just yesterday they’d taken that relationship to a new level. He’d been tender and teasing and...

God, she had believed he’d been loving.

“But what?” he challenged. “You thought sleeping with me would make a difference to how I’d react when I found out you had stolen from me? I was bored. You were there. That’s all yesterday was. You ought to know better than to think it would make me go easy on someone who was cheating me. Get a lawyer. You need one.”

Swallowing the rock that her crust of toast had become, Sirena pushed the betrayal firmly away. Raoul was in her past and somehow she had to make a future for herself and her baby. She turned her attention to putting out more feelers for work.

But over the next several weeks, the attacks from Raoul kept coming. Settlement offers that increased in size. Demands for paternity tests. Time limits.

Pacing John’s office, she bit back a rebuke at him for revealing her pregnancy that day in the courtroom. She hadn’t admitted to anyone that Raoul was the father and she was determined she never would.

“Here’s what I would like to know, John. How am I supposed to pay more legal bills I can’t afford when it’s not even my wish to be talking to you about this?”

“Your wish may be coming true, Sirena. He’s stated clearly that this is his final offer and you’re to accept it by Monday or forever go empty-handed.”

She stopped and stilled. Loss again. Like watching the final sands drifting through the neck of an hourglass, unable to stop them. Pain in her lip made her aware she was biting it to keep from crying out in protest. Rubbing her brow with a shaking hand, Sirena told herself it was what she wanted: Raoul gone from her life.

“Look, Sirena, I’ve told you several times this isn’t my area of expertise. So far that hasn’t mattered because you’ve refused to admit the baby is his—”

“It’s not,” she interjected, keeping her back to him. She wasn’t a great liar and didn’t like doing it, but she justified it because this baby was hers. Full stop.

“He obviously thinks it’s possible. You and he must have been involved.”

“Involvement comes in different levels, doesn’t it?” she snapped, then closed her mouth, fearful she was saying too much.

“So you’re punishing him for bringing less to the relationship than you did?”

“His mistresses spend more on an evening gown and he tried to send me to prison for it!” she swung around to blurt. “What kind of relationship is that?”

“You’re punishing him for his legal action, then? Or not buying you a dress?”

“I’m not punishing him,” Sirena muttered, turning back to the window overlooking a wet day in Hyde Park.

“No, you’re punishing your child by keeping its father out of the picture—whether that father is Raoul Zesiger or some other nameless man you’ve failed to bring forward. I’m a father, so even though I don’t practice family law, I know the best interests of the child are not served by denying a parent access just because you’re angry with him. Do you have reason to believe he’d be an unfit parent?”

Completely the opposite, she silently admitted as a tendril of longing curled around her heart. She had seen how Raoul’s stepsister adored him and how he indulged the young woman with doting affection while setting firm boundaries. Raoul would be a supportive, protective, exceptional father.

Her brows flinched and her throat tightened. She was angry with him. And secretly terrified that her child would ultimately pick its father over its mother, but that didn’t justify keeping the baby from knowing both its parents.

“Have you thought about your child’s future?” John prodded. “There are certain entitlements, like a good education, inheritances...”

She had to get this baby delivered first. That’s where her focus had really been these last several weeks.

Sirena’s fists tightened under her elbows as she hunched herself into a comfortless hug. Her mother had died trying to give birth to the baby who would have been Sirena’s little brother. Sirena’s blood pressure was under constant monitoring. Between that and the lawyer meetings, she was barely working, barely making the bills. The stress was making the test results all the more concerning.

She tried not to think of all the bad things that could happen, but for the first time she let herself consider what her child would need if she couldn’t provide it. Her father and sister were all the way in Australia. It would be days before they could get here—if her stepmother let either of them come at all. Right now Faye was taking the high ground, sniffing with disapproval over Sirena’s unplanned, unwed pregnancy. No one would be as emotionally invested as the baby’s father...

“Sirena, I’m not trying to—”

“Be my conscience?” she interjected. He was still acting as one. “I have a specialist appointment on Monday. I don’t know how long it will take. Tell him I will give his offer my full attention after that and will be in touch by the end of next week.”

John’s demeanor shifted. “So he is the father.”

“That will be determined by the paternity test once the baby is born, won’t it?” Sirena retorted, scrambling to hold onto as many cards as she could because she was running out of them, fast.

* * *

Raoul’s mind had been going around in circles for weeks, driving him mad. If Sirena was pregnant with his child, she would have used that to keep him from trying to incarcerate her. Since she hadn’t, it must not be his. But she could have used her condition for leniency during the proceedings and hadn’t. Which meant she wanted to keep the pregnancy from him. Which led him to believe the baby was his.

Most troubling, if he wasn’t the father, who was?

Raoul sent baleful glances around his various offices as he traveled his circuit of major cities, aware there were a plethora of men in his numerous office towers with whom Sirena, with her voluptuous body and warm smile, could easily have hooked up.

The thought grated with deep repugnance. He’d never heard the merest whisper of promiscuity about his PA, but she’d obviously led a secretive life. It wasn’t as if she’d been a virgin when he’d made love to her.

She’d been the next thing to it, though, with her shy hesitancy that had turned to startled pleasure.

Biting back a groan, he tried not to think of that afternoon in a house he’d toured as a potential real estate investment. Every day he fought the recollection of their passionate encounter and every night she revisited him, her silky hair whispering against his skin, her soft giggle of self-consciousness turning to a gasp of awe as she stroked him. The hum of surrender in her throat as he found the center of her pleasure nearly had him losing it in his sleep.

Every morning he reminded himself he’d used a condom.

One that had been in his wallet so long he couldn’t remember when or for whom he’d placed it there. He’d only been grateful to find it when a downpour had turned Sirena from the open front door into his arms. A stumbling bump of her pivoting into him, a gentlemanly attempt to keep her on her feet, a collision of soft curves against a body already charged with sexual hunger.

When she’d looked up at him with wonder as her abdomen took the impression of his erection, when she’d parted her lips and looked at his mouth as though she’d been waiting her whole life to feel it cover her own...

Swearing, Raoul rose to pace his Paris office. It was as far as he was willing to get from London after trying to settle with Sirena once and for all. The remembered vision of her passion-glazed eyes became overlaid with a more recent one: when her lawyer had mentioned her pregnancy and she had shot that petrified look at Raoul.

The baby was his. He knew it in his gut and if he’d been ruthless with her for stealing money, she had no idea the lengths he’d go for his child.

Doubt niggled, though. If the baby was his, and she was the type to embezzle, then try to sleep her way out of it, why wasn’t she trying to squeeze a settlement out of him?

None of it added up and he was losing his mind trying to make sense of it. If she’d only talk to him. They used to communicate with incredible fluidity, finishing each other’s sentences, filling in gaps with a look...

Lies, he reminded himself. All an act to trick him into trusting her, and it had worked. That’s what grated so badly. He’d failed to see that she was unreliable, despite his history with shameless charlatans.

And how the hell had he turned into his father? Was it genetic that he should wind up sexually infatuated with his secretary? He’d successfully ignored such attractions for years. His father had killed himself over an interoffice affair, so he’d made it a personal rule to avoid such things at all costs. It was a matter of basic survival.

His surge of interest in Sirena had been intense right from the beginning, though. He’d hired her in spite of it, partly because he’d been sure he was a stronger man than his father. Maybe he’d even been trying to prove it.

It galled him that he’d fallen into a tryst despite his better intentions. But he might have come to terms with that failing if she hadn’t betrayed him. Suddenly he’d been not just his father, but his mother, naively watching the bank account drain while being fed sweet, reassuring words to excuse it.

I was going to pay it back before you found out.

He tried to close out the echo of Sirena’s clear voice, claiming exactly what any dupe would expect to hear once she realized her caught hands were covered in red. That he’d seen her as steadfast until that moment left him questioning his own judgment, which was a huge kick to his confidence. People relied on him all over the world. His weakness for her made him feel as though he was misrepresenting himself, and more than anything he hated being let down. It galled him. Mere repayment wasn’t good enough to compensate for that. People like her needed to be taught a lesson.

Staring at his desktop full of work, he cursed the concentration he’d lost because of all this, the time wasted on legal meetings that could have been spent on work.

And the worst loss of production was because he was trying to replace the best PA he’d ever had!

Seemingly the best. His only comfort was that he hadn’t given her the executive title he’d been considering. The damage she could have done in a position like that was beyond thinking. She was doing enough harm to his bottom line no longer employed by him at all.

It couldn’t go on. He’d finally, reluctantly, sent her a strongly worded ultimatum and his palms were sweating that she would reject this one, too. She knew him well enough to believe that when he said final, he meant final, but he’d never had anything so valuable as his flesh and blood on the table. If she refused again...

She wouldn’t. Sirena Abbott was more avaricious than he’d given her credit for, but she was innately practical. She would recognize he’d hit his limit and would cash in.

As if to prove it, his email blipped with a message from his lawyer.

Sirena Abbott had an appointment on Monday and wanted the rest of the week to think things through.

Raoul leaned on hands that curled into tight fists. His inner being swelled with triumph. Silly woman. When he said Monday, he meant Monday.

* * *

As Sirena entered the alcove that housed the front of her building, she was still preoccupied by the lecture from the obstetrician about taking time to relax. She needed to read up on side effects of the medication he’d prescribed, too.

Distracted, she didn’t notice anyone until a lean, masculine body stepped out of the shadows. Her pulse leaped in excited recognition even as she jerked in alarm.

Her keys dropped with a clatter. Pressing herself into the glass door, she pulled her collar tighter to her throat. His familiar scent overwhelmed her, spicy and masculine beneath a layer of rain. The late-afternoon gloom threw forbidding shadows into the angles of his features and turned his short, spiky lashes into sharp blades above turbulent eyes. He was compelling as ever and she was as susceptible as always.

“Hello, Sirena.”

That voice.

“What are you doing here?” Her knuckles dug into her neck where her pulse raced with dangerous speed. She was supposed to be avoiding this sort of elevation of her heart rate, but Raoul had always done this to her. Thank God she’d spent two years perfecting how to hide her girlish flushes of awareness and awestruck admiration. With a tilt of her chin she conveyed that he didn’t intimidate her—even though she was in danger of cracking the glass at her back, she was pressed so hard against it.

“You didn’t really think I’d wait until Friday,” he said, uncompromising and flinty.

“I didn’t think you’d be waiting at my door,” she protested, adding with admirable civility, “I’ll review the documents tomorrow, I promise.”

Raoul shook his head in condescension. “Today, Sirena.”

“It’s been a long day, Raoul. Don’t make it longer.” Her voice was weighted with more tiredness than she meant to reveal.

His eyes narrowed. “What sort of appointment did you have? Doctor?”

A little shiver of premonition went through her. Something told her not to let him see how unsettling the news had been, but the reality of all those tests and personal history forms had taken a toll. If she had thought she could avoid signing a shared custody agreement with Raoul, today she’d learned it was imperative she do so.

“Is the baby all right?” Raoul demanded gruffly. The edgy concern in his tone affected her, making her soften and stiffen at the same time.

“The baby is fine,” she said firmly. If the mother could keep herself healthy enough to deliver—and ensure there was at least one parent left to rear it—the baby was in a great position for a long and happy life.

“You?” he questioned with sharp acuity. Damned man never missed a thing.

“I’m tired,” she prevaricated. “And I have to use the loo. It’s only five o’clock. That gives me seven hours. Come back at eleven fifty-nine.”

Raoul’s jaw hardened. “No.” Leaning down, brushing entirely too close to her legs, he picked up her keys and straightened. “No more games, no more lawyers. You and I are hammering this out. Now.”

Sirena tried to take her keys, but Raoul only closed his hand over them, leaving her fingers brushing the hard strength of his knuckles.

The contact sent an electric zing through her nervous system, leaving her entire body quivering over what was a ridiculously innocuous touch.

She’d been too stressed and nauseous to have sexual feelings these last months, but suddenly every vessel in her body came alive to the presence of this man, the avenging god who had never had any genuine respect for her in the first place.

Tamping down on the rush of hurt and disappointment that welled in her chest, Sirena found her spine, standing up to him as well as a woman in flats could to a man who was head and shoulders taller than she was.

“Let’s get something clear,” she said, voice trembling a bit. She hoped he put it down to anger, not weak, stupid longing for something that had never existed. “Whatever agreement we come to is contingent on paternity tests proving you’re the father.”

Raoul rocked back on his heels. His negotiation face slid into place over his shock. In the shadowed alcove, Sirena wasn’t sure if his pupils really contracted to pinpoints, but she felt his gaze like a lance that held her in place. It made her nervous, but she was proud of herself for taking him aback. She couldn’t afford to be a pushover.

“Who else is in the running?” he gritted out.

“I have a life beyond your exalted presence.” The lies went up like umbrellas, but she had so few advantages.

He stood unflinching and austere, but there was something in his bearing that made her heart pang. She knew he was the father, but by keeping him guessing she was performing a type of torture on him, keeping him in a state of anxious inability to act. It was cruel and made her feel ashamed.

Don’t be a wimp, Sirena. He could take care of himself. The only thing she needed to worry about was her baby.

“Let’s get this done,” she said.


CHAPTER THREE

RAOUL HAD NEVER been in Sirena’s flat. When he entered he was surprised to immediately feel as though he was returning to a place both familiar and comfortable. It was so her.

She was a tidy person with simple taste, but her innate sensuality came through in textures and easy blends of color. The open-plan lounge-kitchen was tiny, but everything had a place, houseplants were lush and well tended. Family snapshots smiled from walls and shelves. He had time while she was in the powder room to take in the miniscule bedroom kept as scrupulously neat as the rest, the bed notably a single.

Sirena cast him a harried glance as she emerged and shrugged from her coat, draping it over the back of a dining chair.

Her figure, voluptuous as ever, had a new curve that made him draw in a searing breath. Until this moment, pregnant had been a word bandied through hostile emails and legal paperwork. As he cataloged the snug fit of leggings and a stretchy top over a body that hadn’t filled out much except in the one place, he felt his scalp tighten.

Sirena was carrying a baby.

Her pale, slender hand opened over the small bump. Too small? He had no idea about these things.

Yanking his gaze to her face, he saw defensive wariness and something else, something incredibly vulnerable that triggered his deepest protective instincts.

Thankfully she glanced away, thick hair falling across her cheek to hide her expression. Raoul regrouped, reminding himself not to let her get to him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off that firm swelling. He’d spent two years fighting the urge to touch this woman, had given in to a moment of weakness once, and it took all his self-discipline not to reach for her now. His hands itched to start at that mysterious bump then explore the rest of her luscious shape. He shoved his fists into his overcoat pockets and glared with resentment.

“I’m having ice water and an orange. Do you want coffee?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he bit out. No more foot dragging. He was still reeling from her coy remark about paternity, played out so well he was entertaining a shred of uncertainty. He couldn’t begin to consider what he’d do if he wasn’t the father.

The not knowing made him restless, especially because he couldn’t understand why she was tormenting him. Yes, his position would be strengthened if she admitted he was the father, but so would hers. He would do anything for his child. One glimpse of a pregnant belly shouldn’t affect him this deeply, but all he could think was that his entire life had changed. Every decision from now on would be weighed against its effect on that tiny being in Sirena’s center.

She took her frosted glass and plate of sectioned orange to the table, opening a file as she sat down. One glance invited him to take the chair across from her. They didn’t stand on ceremony. He didn’t hold her chair; this wasn’t a date. It was reminiscent of the times they’d planted themselves on either side of a boardroom table and worked through projects and tasks until he’d cleared his plate and loaded hers full, confident it would all be completed to his exacting specifications.

He tightened his mouth against a blurted demand for answers. Why? If she had needed money, why hadn’t she asked him for a loan? A raise? The salary he’d been paying her was generous, but he’d seen she was ready for more responsibility and the compensation that went with it. Had this been her plan all along? Pregnancy and a custody settlement?

The thought occurred as she opened the file and he glimpsed a copy of a contract filled with notations and scribbles.

“You have read it,” he said with tight disgust.

“I do my homework, same as you,” she retorted, ice clinking as she sipped. Her skin, fine grained as a baby’s, was pale. Weren’t pregnant women supposed to glow? Sirena didn’t look unhealthy, but there were shadows under her eyes and in them. She touched her brow where she used to complain of tension headaches. He could see the pulse in her throat pounding as if her heart would explode.

The precariousness of his position struck him. He wanted to be ruthless, but not only was he facing a woman in a weakened condition, her condition affected a baby. As he absorbed the raised stakes, his tension increased. The scent of the fresh orange seemed overly strong and pungent.

“I want medical reports,” he said with more harsh demand than he would typically use at the opening of a negotiation.

Sirena flinched and laced her fingers together. Without looking at him, she said, “I don’t have a problem sharing the baby’s health checkups. So far it’s been textbook. I have a scan on my laptop I can email you once we’ve signed off.” Now her eyes came up, but her gaze was veiled. She was hiding something.

“Who are you?” he muttered. “You’re not the Sirena I knew.” His PA had been approachable and cheerful, quick to smile, quick to see the humor in things. This woman was locked down, serious and more secretive than he’d ever imagined.

Like him, which was a disturbing thought.

“What makes you think you ever knew me, Raoul?” The elegant arches of her dark brows lifted while bitter amusement twisted her doll-perfect lips. “Did you ever ask about my life? My plans? My likes or dislikes? All I remember is demands that revolved around your needs. Your intention to work late. Your bad mood because you hadn’t eaten. You once snapped your fingers at me because you wanted the name of the woman you’d taken to dinner, maybe even bed, the night before. She needed flowers as a kiss-off. On that note, as your former PA I’m compelled to point out that your new one dropped the ball. I didn’t get my lilies.”

Her audacity tested Raoul’s already dicey mood. His inner compass swung from contempt to self-disgust that he’d slept with her at all to a guilty acknowledgment that no, he hadn’t spent much time getting to know her on a personal level. He’d wanted too badly to take things to an intimate level, so he’d kept her at a distance.

Not that he had any intention of explaining when she was coming out swinging with two full buckets of scathing judgment and brutal sarcasm.

“That ice water seems to have gone directly into your veins,” he remarked with the smoothness of a panther batting a bird from the air.

“Yes, I’m a kettle and so much blacker than you.” She pivoted the file and pushed it toward him. “You might as well read my notes and we’ll go from there.”

Cold. Distant. Unreachable. She wasn’t saying those words, but he’d heard them from enough women to know that’s what she was implying.

Oddly, he hadn’t thought Sirena saw him that way, and it bothered him that she did. Which made no sense, because he hadn’t cared much when those other women said it and he hadn’t once put Sirena in the same category as his former lovers. She was never intended to be his lover at all. When he took women to his bed, it was without any sort of expectation beyond an affair that would allow him to release sexual tension. Sirena had already been too integral a part of his working life to blur those lines.

Yet he had. And she seemed to be holding him to account for his callous treatment of her—when she had only slept with him for her own gain! Possibly for the very baby they were fighting over.

Drawing the papers closer, he began taking in her notations. The first was a refusal to submit to paternity tests until after the birth, at which point this contract would come into effect if he was proven to be the father.

He didn’t like it, but in the interest of moving forward he initialed it.

Things quickly became more confusing and audacious. Distantly he noted that she’d circled a formatting error—one more eagle-eyed skill he regretted losing from his business life.

“Why the hell is everything to be held in trust for the baby?”

“I don’t want your money,” she said with such flatness he almost believed her.

Don’t get sidetracked, he warned himself. Obviously she had wanted his money or she wouldn’t have stolen from him, but arguing that point was moot. Right now all that mattered was getting paternity resolved and his right to involvement irrevocable.

He lowered his gaze to the pages in front of him, trying to make sense of her changes when they all favored the baby’s financial future and left her taking nothing from him. Raoul cut her a suspicious glance. No one gave up this much...

“Ah,” he snorted with understanding as he came to the codicil. “No.”

“Think about it. You can’t breast-feed. It makes sense that I have full custody.”

“For five years? Nice try. Five days, maybe.”

“Five days,” she repeated through her teeth, flashing an angry emotion he’d never seen in her. Her eyes glazed with a level of hatred that pierced through his shell with unexpected toxicity, leaving a fiery sting.

And was that fear? Her generous mouth trembled before she pressed it into a firm line. “If you’re not going to be reasonable, leave now. You’re not the father anyway.”

She rose and so did he, catching her by the arms as she tried to skirt past him. The little swell at her belly nudged into him, foreign and disconcerting, making his hands tighten with a possessive desire to keep her close. Keep it close, he corrected silently.

“Don’t touch me.” Fine trembles cascaded through her so he felt it as if he grasped an electric wire that pulsed in warning.

“Sure you don’t want to try persuading me into clemency again?” he prodded, recognizing that deep down he was still weakly enthralled by her. If she offered herself right now, he would be receptive. It would change things.

“I didn’t sue you for sexual harassment before, but I had every right to.”

Her words slapped him. Hard.

Dropping his hold, he reared back, offended to his core. “You wanted me every bit as much as I wanted you,” he seethed. His memories exploded daily with the way her expression had shone with excitement. The way she’d molded herself into him and arched for more contact and cried out with joy as the shudders of culmination racked them both.

“No, you were bored,” she shot back with vicious fury that carried a ring of hurt.

It shouldn’t singe him with guilt, but it did. He’d been saving face when he’d said that, full of whiskey and brimming with betrayal. The news that she had been released had been roiling in him like poison. Having her show up at the end of his drive had nearly undone him.

Now he teetered between a dangerous admission of attraction and delivering his brutal set-down for a second time.

“Get out, Raoul,” Sirena said with a pained lack of heat. She sounded defeated. Heartbroken. “I’m sorry I ever met you.”

The retort that the feeling was mutual hovered on his tongue, but stayed locked behind teeth clenched against a surprising lash of...hell, why would he suffer regret?

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he reminded himself the woman he’d thought he’d known had never existed. He threw himself back into his chair. “We’ll hire a panel of experts to work out the schedule of the baby’s first five years based on his or her personal needs. At four years we’ll begin negotiating the school years.”

“A panel of experts,” she repeated on a choking laugh. “Yes, I’ve got your deep pockets. Let’s do that.”

“If you’re worried about money, why are you refusing a settlement?”

Her response was quiet and somber, disturbingly sincere. “Because I don’t want money. I want my baby.” She moved to the window. It was covered in drizzle that the wind had tossed against the glass. Her hand rested on her belly. Her profile was grave.

Raoul dragged his eyes off her, disturbed by how much her earnest simplicity wrenched his gut. It made him twitch with the impulse to reassure her, and not just verbally. For some reason, he wanted to hold her so badly his whole body ached.

That wasn’t like him. He had his moments of being a softy when it came to his mother or stepsister. They were beloved and very much his responsibility even though they weren’t as helpless these days as they’d once been. He still flinched with guilt when he remembered how he’d been living it up his first year of college, drinking and chasing girls, completely oblivious to what was happening at home. Then, despite how brutal and thoughtless his stepfather’s gambling had been, the man’s death had shattered the hearts of two people he cared for deeply. Faced with abject poverty, it had been easy for Raoul to feel nothing but animosity toward the dead man, but the unmitigated grief his mother and Miranda had suffered had been very real. He’d hated seeing them in pain. It had been sharply reminiscent of his agony after his father’s suicide.

But as supportive as he’d tried to be while he took control and recovered their finances, he’d never been the touchy-feely sort who hugged and cuddled away their pain.

Why he craved to offer Sirena that sort of comfort boggled him.

Forcing himself to ignore the desire, he scanned the changes she’d made to the agreement, thinking that perhaps he was more self-involved than he’d realized since he had been focused this entire time on what the child meant to him, how his life would change, how he’d make room for it and provide for his progeny. What he wanted.

Suddenly he was seeing and hearing what Sirena wanted and it wasn’t to hurt him. She had ample ways to do that, but her changes to this document were more about keeping the baby with her than keeping it from him.

“Did you think about termination at all?” he asked with sudden curiosity.

“Yes.”

The word struck him like a bullet, utterly unexpected and so lethal it stopped his heart. Until his mind caught up. Obviously she’d decided to have the baby or they wouldn’t be here.

He rubbed feeling back into his face, but his ears felt filled with water. He had to strain to hear her as she quietly continued.

“I was only a few weeks along when I found out. There’s a pill you can take that early. You don’t have to go into hospital, there are fewer complications... There seemed to be a lot of good reasons not to go through with the pregnancy.” Her profile grew distressed and her fingertips grazed the pulse in her throat.

Reasons like the threat of prison and having a man she didn’t want in her life demanding access to her baby. Raoul’s sharp mind pinned up the drawbacks as quickly as her own must have. His blood ran cold at how close he’d come to not knowing about this baby at all.

“I couldn’t bring myself to...expel it from my life like that. I want this baby, Raoul.” She turned with her hand protectively on her middle again, her eyes glittering with quiet ferocity. “I know it’s foolish to let you see how badly I want it. You’ll find a way to use it against me. But I need you to believe me. I will never let anyone take my baby from me.”

His scalp tightened with preternatural wariness and pride and awe. Sirena was revealing the sort of primal mother instinct their caveman ancestors would have prized in a mate. The alpha male in him exalted in seeing that quality emanating from the mother of his child.

While the cutthroat negotiator in him recognized a tough adversary.

“You’re trying to convince me I can’t buy you off,” he summed up, trying not to let himself become too entranced by her seeming to possess redeeming qualities. She had fooled him once already.

“You can’t. The only reason I’m speaking to you at all is to give my baby the same advantages its father might provide its future siblings, whether that’s monetary or social standing or emotional support. Consider what those things might be as you work through the rest of that.” She nodded at the contract and slipped into the powder room again.

Future siblings? Raoul’s mind became an empty whiteboard as he bit back a remark that he hadn’t expected this child; he certainly wasn’t ready to contemplate more.

* * *

Three months later, Raoul was taking steps to ensure he was prepared for the birth, looking ahead to clear his calendar in six weeks. He rarely took time off and found even Christmas with his mother an endurance test of agitation to get back to work. Anticipation energized him for this vacation, though.

Because it was a new challenge? Or because he would see Sirena?

He shut down the thought. The baby was his sole interest. He was eager to find out the sex, know it was healthy and have final confirmation it was his.

Not that he had many doubts on any of that. True to their agreement, Sirena had sent him updates on the baby’s progress. Nothing concerning her own, he had noted with vague dissatisfaction, but he expected he would be informed if there were problems. The second scan later in the pregnancy had not revealed an obvious male, so he’d assumed the baby was female and found himself taken with the vision of a daughter possessing dark curls and beguiling green eyes.

As for paternity, to his mind, the fact Sirena had signed made the baby his. The final test after the birth was a formality that would activate the arrangements, that was all.

But that was a month and a half from now and he had people to organize. People who were abuzz with the news that the driven head of their multinational software corporation was taking an extended absence.

Only a handful of his closest and most trusted subordinates knew the reason, and even they didn’t know the mother’s identity. The scandalous circumstances of his father’s infidelity and suicide had made Raoul a circumspect man. Nothing about his involvement with Sirena, their affair, her being fired for embezzlement or her pregnancy was public knowledge. When people asked—and she’d made enough of an impression on associates and colleagues that many did—he only said she was no longer with the company.

Part of him continued to resent that loss, especially when the assistants he kept trying out turned out to be so trying. The highly recommended Ms. Poole entered the meeting with a worried pucker in her magic-marker brows.

“I said life or death, Ms. Poole,” he reminded, clinging to patience.

“She’s very insistent,” the spindly woman said, bringing a mobile phone to him.

“Who?” He tamped down on asking, Sirena? Her tenacity was something he’d come to respect, if not always appreciate.

“Molly. About your agreement with Ms. Abbott.”

He didn’t know any Molly, but something preternatural set an unexpected boot heel on his chest, sharp and compressing, causing pressure to balloon out in radiant waves. Odd. There was no reason to believe this was bad news. Sirena hadn’t contacted him directly since he’d left her looking wrung out and cross at her flat that day, neither of them particularly satisfied with the outcome of their negotiations, but possessing a binding document between them.

“Yes?” He took the phone in a hand that became nerveless and clumsy. As he stood and moved from the table, he was aware of the ripple of curiosity behind him. At the same time, despite everything that had passed between them, he experienced a flick of excitement. His mind conjured an image of Sirena in one of those knitted skirt-and-sweater sets she used to wear.

“Mr. Zesiger? I’m Sirena Abbott’s midwife. She asked me to inform you that the baby is on its way.”

“It’s early,” he protested.

“Yes, they had to induce—” She cut herself off.

He heard muffled words and held his breath as he strained to hear what was said.

She came back. “I’ve just been informed it will be an emergency cesarean.”

“Where is she?” he demanded while apprehension wrapped around him like sandpaper, leaving him abraded and raw.

“I understood you were only to be informed and that a paternity test be ordered, not that you would attend—”

“Save me the phone calls to find her so I can come directly,” he bit out.

A brief pause before she told him. “But the results won’t be known for days.”

“Tell her I’m on my way,” he said, but she was already gone.


CHAPTER FOUR

A WOMAN MET him in the hospital reception area. She wore red glasses and a homespun pullover. Her ditch-water hair was in one thick plait, her expression grave.

“Raoul? Molly.” She held out a hand and offered a tight smile. “Sirena told me I’d know you when I saw you. The baby is a girl. They’ve taken the samples and should have the results in a few days.” Her manner was disconcertingly strained.

Because she didn’t want to get his hopes up? The baby was here, the moment of truth at hand. He shouldn’t be so stunned given the nature of the call or the time it had taken to fight traffic to get here, but the swiftness of the procedure surprised him. At the same time, he was aware of a gripping need to see the infant and know she was his.

A girl. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted one. And safely delivered. The abruptness of the call and lack of details had unsettled him, but they were fine. Everything was fine.

“Good,” he heard himself say, finally able to breathe. “I’m pleased to hear they came through all right.” He gestured for her to lead the way, assuming she’d show him to their room.

Molly didn’t move. “Premature babies always have certain hurdles, but the pediatrician is confident she’ll progress as well as the best of them.” She seemed to ponder whether to say more.

“And Sirena?” he prompted. Some unknown source of telepathy made him brace even as the question left him. A kind of dread that was distant but gut-churningly familiar seeped into his bloodstream like poison, unwanted and tensing him with refusal and denial before he even knew what she would say.

Molly’s eyes became liquid. “They’re doing all they can.”

For a long moment nothing happened. No movement, no sound, nothing. Then, from far off, he heard a torn inhale, like a last gasp of life.

No. Her words didn’t even make sense. He suddenly found himself bumping into a wall and put out a hand to steady himself. “What happened?”

“I wondered if she had told you about her condition.” Molly moved closer. Her touch was a biting grasp on his upper arm, surprisingly strong and necessary as he wondered if he’d stay on his feet. “It’s been a risky pregnancy from the start. High blood pressure, then early-onset preeclampsia. She’s been managing that condition these last few weeks, trying to buy the baby more time. Today they couldn’t wait any longer without risking both their lives, so the doctors induced. After she had a seizure, they stopped the labor and took her for surgery. Now she’s lost a lot of blood. I’m sorry. I can see this is hard for you to hear.”

Hard? All his strength was draining away, leaving him cold and empty. Clammy with fear. Her life was about to snap free of his and she hadn’t even told him. She might as well have swallowed a bottle of pills and left herself for him to find when he got home from school. Suddenly he was nine again, barely comprehending what he was seeing, unable to get a response out of the heavy body he was shaking with all his might. Not there soon enough. Helpless to make this right.

“Why the hell didn’t she say something?” he burst out, furious that she’d given him no indication, no warning, just left him tied to the tracks to be hit with a train.

Molly shook her head in bafflement. “Sirena didn’t talk about the custody agreement, but it’s been my impression things have been hostile.”

So hostile she kept from him that her life was on the line?

“I don’t want her to die!” The word was foul and jagged in his throat. He spoke from the very center of himself, flashing a look at Molly that made her flinch. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like, but his world was screeching to a halt and everything in it was whirling past him.

“No one does,” she assured him in the guarded tone developed by people who dealt with victims. It was the same prudent nonengagement with explosive emotions that the social worker had used as she had steered his young self from his father’s body.

“Take me to her,” he gritted out. A horrible avalanche of fear like he’d never known crushed him. He wanted to run shouting for her until he found her. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

“I can’t. But—” She seemed to think twice, then gave him a poignant smile. “Maybe they’ll let us into the nursery.”

He forced one foot in front of the other, walking as if through a wall of thick, suffocating gelatin as he followed Molly to the preemie clinic, ambivalence writhing like a two-headed snake inside him. Was it his fault Sirena hovered on the brink? Or another man’s? He adamantly wanted his child, but the idea that one life could cost another appalled him.

He came up to the tiny, nearly naked being in the incubator, her bottom covered in an oversized nappy, her hair hidden by a cap. Wires extended from her bare fragile body and her miniature Sirena mouth briefly pursed in a kiss.

He couldn’t see anything of himself in her, but a startlingly deep need to gather and guard the infant welled in him. Pressing his icy hands to the warm glass, he silently begged the little girl to hang on. If this was all that would be left of Sirena...

He brutally refused to entertain such a thought, turning his mind to sending a deep imperative through the walls of the hospital to the unknown location of this baby’s mother. Hang on, Sirena. Hang on.

* * *

Sirena had the worst hangover of her life. Her whole body hurt, her mouth was dry and nausea roiled in her stomach. In her daze, she moved her hand to her middle, where the solid shape of her baby was gone, replaced with bandages and a soft waistline.

A whimper of distress escaped her.

“Lucy is fine, Sirena.” His voice was unsweetened cocoa, warm and comforting despite the bitter taint.

“Lucy?” she managed, blinking gritty eyes. The stark ceiling above her was white, the day painfully bright. Slowly the steel-gray of Raoul’s gaze came into focus.

“Isn’t that what you told Molly? That you wanted your daughter named for your mother, Lucille?”

You don’t mind? she almost said, but wasn’t sure where the paternity test was. When she had signed the consent forms, they’d told her the kind of proof he’d requested, the kind admissible in court, was a more complex test that would take several days. She wondered if waiting on that had been the only thing keeping him from whisking Lucy from this hospital before she woke.

She didn’t ask. She could barely form words with what felt like a cotton-filled mouth. It took all her concentration to remain impassive. Seeing him gave her such a bizarre sense of relief she wanted to burst into tears. She reminded herself not to read anything into the shadow of stubble on his jaw or the bruises of tiredness under his eyes. The man was a machine when it came to work; he could have been at the office late and dropped by on his way to his penthouse.

Still, that scruff of light beard gave her a thrill. She’d seen him like this many times and always experienced this same ripple of attraction. The same desire to smooth a hand over his rough cheek. He would be overworked yet energized by whatever had piqued his ambition, his shirt collar open, his sleeves rolled back and soon, a smile of weary satisfaction.

But not today. Today he was sexily rumpled, but his demeanor was antagonistic, making a shiver of apprehension sidle through her as he spoke in a rough growl. “You should have told me you weren’t well.”

The harsh accusation in his tone was so sharp she flinched. All she could think about were those harrowing moments when they’d told her the baby had to come out. Not for Lucy’s sake, but her own. The fear in her had been so great, she’d been on the verge of begging Raoul to come to her. The Raoul she had once imagined him to be anyway. He was so strong and capable and she’d instinctively known she’d feel safe if he was near.

He hated her, though. He wouldn’t care. Like always, she’d been on her own.

She’d gone through the induction and the beginning of pains without anyone at her side, only calling Molly when the nurse confirmed that yes, labor was properly started. That was when she’d been required to notify Raoul. She had been explaining that to Molly when something went wrong.

She didn’t even know what had happened. Having a huge blank like that was frightening. His blaming her for not advising him it was a possibility added insult to injury, putting her on the defensive.

“Why would I tell you anything?” she challenged from her disadvantaged position, flat on the bed, tied down with wires, voice like a flake of yellowed onionskin. “You can’t be happy I pulled through.”

“You haven’t yet,” he said, snapping forward in a way that made her heart jump. He set his big hands on either side of her and leaned over her, promising reprisal despite her pathetic condition. “And don’t ever accuse me of anything so ugly again.”

Sirena tried to swallow and couldn’t even feel her dry tongue against her arid lips. “Can I have some water?” she begged in a whispered plea. “Please? I’m so thirsty.”

“I don’t know if you’re allowed to have anything,” he said with a scowl, something avid and desperate flickering through his eyes before he bent with the sudden swoop of a hawk going for a kill.

His mouth covered hers for the briefest second. His damp tongue licked into the parched cavern of her mouth to moisten the dry membranes. The relief was incredible, the act surprising and intimate beyond measure.

“I’ll tell the nurse you’re awake.” He walked out, leaving her speechless and tingling with the return of life to her entire body, mind dazed and wondering if she was still unconscious and hallucinating.

* * *

Sirena had thought nothing could make her melt so thoroughly as the vulnerable sight of her premature daughter. Then she began hearing the stories of Raoul learning to diaper and feed her. Raoul, who didn’t even know for sure he was the father, had paced a path between Lucy and Sirena, talking unceasingly to Sirena when they had feared she would slip into a coma. He’d only gone home for a shower and sleep now that Sirena had woken, nearly seventy-two hours after the birth.

She told herself not to read it as a sign of caring. If Raoul was tending to Lucy, he was only stamping a claim while trying to prove Sirena was dispensable. To some extent she was. She quickly learned she could hold her baby, but she was too sick and weak for anything else. She was pumping her breasts, but only to keep her thin milk supply going while she waited for the cocktail of medications to leave her system. She couldn’t feed Lucy or do anything else a mother ought to do.

Dejected, she was fretting over how useless she was as she headed back to bed the next morning, wiped out by the tiny act of brushing her teeth.

Raoul walked in on her attempt to scale the bed, finding her with one hip hitched on the edge, bare legs akimbo as she quickly tried to stay decent under her hospital gown.

Aside from faint shadows under his heavy eyes, he looked fantastic in casual pants and a striped shirt. He brought a wonderfully familiar scent with him, too. For a second she was back in the office welcoming her freshly shaved boss, sharing coffee with him as they discussed how they’d tackle the day.

He eyed her balefully, but that might have been a reaction to the ferocious scowl she threw at him. She hadn’t been allowed coffee since early in the pregnancy and he was sipping from a travel mug tagged with a ProZess Software logo. He was a picture of everything she couldn’t have.

“Why are you here?” she asked, struggling to use her severed stomach muscles to heft herself onto the bed.

He smoothly moved to her side, set down his coffee and helped her.

“I don’t—” She stiffened in rejection, but he bundled her into his crisp shirt anyway. The press of his body heat through the fabric burned into her as he used a gentle embrace to lift her. His free hand caressed her bare, dangling leg, sliding it neatly under the sheet as he slid her into bed as if she weighed no more than a kitten.

Shaken, she drew the sheet up to her neck and glared at him.

He picked up his coffee and sipped, staring back with his poker face. “Your doctor said he’d have the paternity results when he did his rounds this morning.”

Her heart left her body and ran down the hall to bar the door of the nursery.

She wasn’t ready to face this. Last night had been full of sudden jerks to wakefulness that had left her panting and unable to calm herself from the nightmare that Raoul would disappear with their daughter.

That he would disappear from her life again.

Why did it matter whether he was in her life? She felt nothing but hatred and mistrust toward him, she reminded herself. But the weeks of not seeing him while she waited out her pregnancy had been the bleakest of her life, worse even than when her family had left for Australia.

Logic told her he wasn’t worth these yearning feelings she still had, but she felt a rush of delight that he kept showing up. When he was in the room, the longing that gripped her during his absences eased and the dark shadows inside her receded.

She couldn’t forget he was the enemy, though. And she was running out of defenses.

He must have seen her apprehension, because he drawled, “Scared? Why?” The question was like a throwing star, pointed on all sides and sticking deep. “Because I might be the father? Or because you know I am?”

The stealthy challenge circled her heart like a Spanish inquisitor, the knife blade out and audibly scraping the strop.

She noticed her hands were pleating the edge of the sheet into an accordion. What was the use in prevaricating? She licked her numb lips.

“Are you going to try to take her from me if you are?” she asked in a thin voice.

If? You bitch, he thought as the tension of not knowing stayed dialed high inside him. The last three days had been hellish as he’d grown more and more attached to that tiny tree frog of a girl while cautioning himself that she might belong to another man.

Just like her mother.

“I could have taken her a dozen times by now,” he bit out. “I should have.”

It wasn’t completely true. The hospital had accommodated his visiting the baby, but only because he was the kind of man who didn’t let up until he got what he wanted. They wouldn’t have let him leave with her, though.

If Sirena believed he could have, however, great. He wanted to punish her for the limbo she’d kept him in.

Her hands went still and pale. All of her seemed to drain of color until she was practically translucent, her already wan face ashen. Fainting again? He shot out a hand to press her into the pillows against the raised head of the bed.

She tried to bat away his touch, but in slow motion, her tortured expression lifting long enough to let him glimpse the storm of emotions behind her tangled lashes and white lips: frustration at her weakness, a flinch of physical pain in her brow, defensiveness that he had the audacity to touch her and terror. Raw terror in the glimmering green of her eyes.

Rolling her head away, she swallowed, her fear so palpable the hair rose on the back of his neck.

Advantage to me, he thought, trying to shrug off the prickling feeling, but guilty self-disgust weighed in the pit of his stomach. All he could think about was the hours he’d spent right here, telling her how unfair it was for a child to grow up missing a parent. The questions Lucy would have, the empty wedge in the wholeness of her life, would affect the child forever.

Blood ties hadn’t mattered at that point. He and Lucy had been linked by the prospect that she would suffer his pain—an unthinkable cruelty for an infant just starting her life. The whole time he’d been urging Sirena to pull through, he’d been mentally cataloging everything he knew about her, wanting to be Lucy’s depository of information on her mother.

While all he’d heard in the back of his mind had been Sirena’s scathing, What makes you think you ever knew me, Raoul?

His heart dipped. She wanted her baby. He knew that much. As he’d gleaned all the details of this pregnancy that had nearly killed her, he’d wondered about her feelings for the father. Did the lucky man even know how stalwartly determined she’d been to have his child?

If that man was him... His abdomen tensed around a ripple of something deep and moving, something he didn’t want to acknowledge because it put him in her debt.

The specialist swept in, taking in the charged tension with a somber look. “Good morning. I know you’ve been waiting, Raoul. Let me put you at ease. You are Lucy’s biological father.”

Relief poured into him like blood returning after a constriction, filling him with confidence and pride in his daughter, the little scrap with such a determined life force.

No reaction from Sirena. She kept her face averted as though he and the doctor weren’t even in the room.

“I don’t have plans to take her from you,” Raoul blurted. The impatient words left him before he realized they were on his tongue, leaving him irritated by how she weakened him with nothing but terrified silence.

She gave him a teary, disbelieving look that got his back up.

The physician distracted her, asking after her incision and leaving Raoul to face a cold, stony truth: he couldn’t separate mother from daughter.

Her accusation when she’d woken yesterday that he would have wished her dead had made him so sick he hadn’t had words. His own father’s absence had been self-inflicted—he’d left Raoul and his mother—but it didn’t make the idea of Sirena’s baby accidentally being motherless any less horrific. Raoul wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he was the instrument that divided a parent from a child.

“When can I take her home?” he heard Sirena ask the doctor.

An image flashed into Raoul’s mind of her collapsing the way she had at the courthouse, but without anyone to catch her or the baby in her arms.

“You’re not taking her to your flat,” he stated bluntly, speaking on instinct from the appalled place that was very much aware of how ill and weak she was.

Sirena’s gaze swung to his, persecuted and wild. “You just said—”

“I said I wasn’t so low I’d steal your baby from you. But you’re more than prepared to keep Lucy from me, aren’t you?” That reality was very raw. “You’re the one who steals, Sirena, not me.”

A humiliated blush rolled into her aghast face.

The physician broke in with, “Let’s get you and Lucy well first, then we’ll talk about where she’s going.” It was a blatant effort to defuse their belligerent standoff.

The doctor departed a few minutes later, leaving Sirena trying to decide which was worse: having Raoul in the room, where his presence ratcheted her tension beyond bearing, or out of the room, where she didn’t know what he was up to.

“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.





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