A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite. Elizabeth Lane
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could be a father. Statistically speaking it was probable he was guilty of the crime that he had found it so easy to condemn his father for.
That it was possible to have a child, be a father and not know... He could have walked past his own daughter in the street and not guessed who she was. The idea utterly appalled him, but did fatherhood?
Running normally cleared his head. Facing the idea of being a father while covered in sweat and breathing hard, it still remained totally shocking but not the nightmare he had expected it to be. Was he feeling what his own father had the day that Lizzie’s aunt had turned up with the child and a stack of letters that the child’s dead mother had written but never sent, to dramatically inform the stunned man in front of a room full of party guests that it was his turn now to take responsibility for the child he had fathered?
At least he had some privacy to get his head around the concept and his big reveal would be at a time and place of his own choosing...if there was a reveal. After all, the question mark remained.
If he was right, why hadn’t Angel told him? Did she ever plan to tell him? As he felt his anger mount the sense of loss he experienced, thinking of the years he had missed and would never get back, made it tough to see the situation from her point of view...but he was trying.
She came across as confident, but how much of that was window dressing? Six years younger, alone and presumably scared out of her wits at finding herself pregnant, had she tried to find him? Thoughts of her in that state of mind increased the guilt that gnawed away at him like acid. On one level he recognised that she wouldn’t have known where to start to look for him, and in that case he knew that she hadn’t set out to deprive him of parenthood. But on another level, he wondered if she hadn’t been secretly relieved. Her opinion of him was so bad that she probably thought he would make a catastrophic parent.
His jaw clenched. For a man who rarely found himself not in a position of control to be forced to recognise that his position as an unmarried father gave him precious few rights, let alone control, was tough for Alex.
He was going to be part of his child’s life no matter what it took.... The thought of another man thinking access to Angel’s bed gave him the right to become a father to her child was a situation that he could not contemplate.
* * *
‘So why didn’t you complete your course?’
The question was casual but something in the way he was looking at her made her uneasy. Angel dodged his gaze and shrugged. Maybe she was getting paranoid but Angel responded to the alarm bells. ‘I had some distractions.’
A baby.
His baby?
It had been several hours now since he had faced the possibility; the emotional impact had felt like a ten-tonne truck landing on his chest. Three hours to run, pace, speculate and plan...the weight remained but his brain was now clearer. The solution was there and he would do whatever it took to get the information.
Information that was stored in one place—her beautiful little head.
Not for nothing had the business world named him the perfect poker player. There were no ‘tells’ to even hint at an agenda behind his casual invitation. ‘And how about now?’
She shook her head and gave a shrug of incomprehension.
‘Could you do with some distraction?’
She clamped her lips tight over an outraged gasp. ‘Well, no one could accuse you of subtlety, could they? Thanks for the offer but no, thanks.’
He gave a throaty laugh. ‘Actually I wasn’t propositioning you. Don’t be embarrassed.’
She stuck her chin out. Embarrassed did not cover the toe-curling mortification that made her want to literally bury her head in the sand. Anything was preferable to seeing his smug face. ‘This,’ she gritted, circling her face with a finger, ‘is relief.’
He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and with the other hand pushed her shades up into her hair. The action was casual, confident, as though he had the right to touch her. You’re not doing much to disabuse him of this massive misapprehension, are you, Angel, just sitting there like some sort of mesmerised rabbit? she thought to herself. When she ought to be... What...?
‘No, this is beautiful....’ he husked.
Trying to kick-start her brain felt like wading through warm syrup. This is not me.... Why does he make me act this way? Why do I let him do this to me?
Because you like it?
The crazy thought almost made her laugh. She pulled her sunglasses down again.
‘I’d love to discuss your idea but—’
Angel dug her fingernails into her palms, focusing on the pain to help her fight her way to control. She turned her head and his hand fell away.
Digging her heels into the sand, she said, ‘It wasn’t an idea.’ Her voice sounded very small, the scornful laugh weak— Well, actually, pathetically unconvincing.
‘Don’t sulk,’ he said, drawing an outraged gasp. ‘Obviously I want to have sex with you.’
He delivered this piece of information in a manner she associated more with ordering a pizza than propositioning. The violent lurch in her chest was possibly, Angel mused, her heart stopping. Despite the possibility of her imminent expiration she somehow—it was a miracle—kept her expression blank. Thank goodness for sunglasses.
‘I get that a lot.’
Not a lie, but she’d never felt in danger of requiring CPR before. Or...best to treat the comment as a joke—the alternative was not something she felt equipped to cope with.
She saw something flash in his eyes—anger?
‘I’m sure you do,’ he countered smoothly, ‘but on this occasion I was thinking more along the lines of lunch.’
Lunch with Alex Arlov? Now, that was a crazy idea.
Or was it? Wasn’t this an opportunity to get to know Jas’s father in the nonbiblical sense? She still needed to decide if he was a man she wanted to be involved in her daughter’s life. For that judgement she had to put her personal feelings aside.
And what were her personal feelings?
She gave her head a tiny shake and pulled her hat more firmly down on her dark hair, glad that he could not hear her thoughts or, thanks to the tinted lenses, see her confusion. Normally someone who had a head-on approach to life, she had been skirting around that question since he had reappeared in her life.
And with good reason. Feelings... It sounded so simple but how was she meant to analyse something so, so...visceral? It was easier to accept it. What was the point of delving deeper? At its most basic, she was attracted to him, but that hardly made her special. She had seen the way women looked at him...all women. He was a man who inspired lust and around him she dropped several IQ points; her brain just didn’t function at full capacity. In fact sometimes it just didn’t function full stop!
Well, they were welcome to him, she told herself. At least she had the maturity now to be able to differentiate between lust and deeper, more profound emotions.
Tell that to your nervous system!
‘Eating is not one of the things you are barred from doing, is it?’ He unscrewed the bottle of water he had been carrying. Halfway to his mouth he paused and extended it towards her. ‘Want some?’
‘No, thank you,’ she responded, primly polite.
‘Is it?’ he said, wiping his mouth with his hand.
She started guiltily—her eyes had been riveted on the muscles working in his brown throat as he swallowed. ‘What?’
‘They haven’t banned you from eating?’
‘That depends on the calorie count. They are worried