Virgin: Undone by the Billionaire. Jennie Lucas
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“Yes?” Mrs. O’Keefe inquired at the door.
“I’m here to see the countess.”
Roark’s voice! He couldn’t be here—couldn’t be!
With a gasp, Lia dropped the phone from her suddenly numb hands. It clattered on the hardwood floor.
The gray-haired widow looked at him, then glanced back at Lia. “Ah,” she said with a sudden grin. “So you’re what all the fuss is about. You’ll do well, I think. Come in.”
And she held open the door.
He took two steps inside the foyer. He filled Lia’s foyer with masculine energy, his black coat whirling around him as he came inside her house.
“What are you doing here?” Lia whispered. “You said you’d never contact me again. I thought you were gone for good….”
“Goodbye, then!” Mrs. O’Keefe sang as she left, closing the door behind her.
“I didn’t come here for you,” Roark said. He looked at the baby sitting on the expensive carpet in front of the marble fireplace, playing with wooden blocks. “I came for her.”
She sucked in her breath. “How did you find out?”
His jaw was hard as he turned on her savagely.
“Why did you tell the whole world that she’s the count’s baby? Why did you never tell me I had a child?”
Her mouth suddenly went dry. “I wanted to tell you.”
“You’re lying!” he said furiously. “If you’d wanted to tell me, you would have done it!”
“What was I supposed to do, Roark? You said you didn’t want a child! You said you never wanted to be a father! And I hated you. When you left me in Italy, I never wanted to see you again!”
“That was your excuse then. What about yesterday, at the wedding? This morning, when we had breakfast? When you showed me the park? When we made love at the hotel? Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have told you then. I was afraid you’d hate me.”
His dark eyes froze right through her.
“I do hate you.”
He went into the front room and got down on his knees. He handed a block to the baby, who smiled and chattered nonsense syllables, waving the block at him happily. He looked at her. And looked.
Then he picked the baby up in his arms.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“My plane is waiting to take me to Hawaii and Japan,” he said coolly. “And I don’t trust you.”
“You can’t think of taking her from me!”
He narrowed his eyes and his lips curved into a cold, cruel smile.
“No. You will come, as well. You will travel with me wherever I wish to go. You will remain in my bed until I am finished with you.”
“No,” she gasped. Be in his bed, have her body possessed by a man who hated her? “I’ll never marry you!”
“Marry?” He barked a laugh. “That was when I thought you were an honest woman with a good heart. Now I know you’re nothing more than a beautiful, treacherous liar. You aren’t worthy to be my wife. But you will be my mistress.”
“Why are you acting like this?” she whispered. “You never wanted to be a father. Why are you acting like I kept something precious from you, when we both know that all you’ve ever wanted is your freedom?”
He just drew his lips back into a snarl.
“You will agree to my demands, or I will take you to court. I will fight you for custody with every lawyer I possess.” He gave her a grim smile. “Believe me, you will run out of lawyers long before I will.”
A cold shiver went through her. She looked at her baby in Roark’s arms. Seeing them together, Roark tenderly holding his child, caused a crack in her heart. It was just what she’d always dreamed of.
Then he looked back at Lia, and all tenderness disappeared from his eyes. Instead she saw only hatred.
Hatred—and heat.
“Do you agree to my terms?”
She couldn’t let him win. Not like this. She wasn’t the kind of woman to surrender without a fight.
She lifted her chin. “No.”
“No?” he demanded coldly.
“I won’t travel with you as your mistress. Not with our child living with us. It’s not decent.”
“Decent?” His dark eyes swept through her like a storm. “You’ve never thought of decency before. In the rose garden. In the broom closet. In my hotel suite.”
“That was different.” Tears rose to her eyes, tears she despised as she glared at him. “If Ruby is with us, that changes things. I’m not going to set that kind of example for her, or give her that kind of unsettled home life. It’s marriage or nothing.”
“You’d rather show her the example of selling yourself in marriage without love—not just once, but twice?”
She flinched.
“I will accept your terms, Roark,” she said hoarsely. “I will sleep in your bed. I will follow you around the world. I will give myself up to your demands.” She swallowed. “But only as your wife.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he bared his teeth into a smile.
“Agreed.”
He put out his hand.
She reached out to shake on the bargain. The touch of his skin against her fingers sizzled her as he jerked her close.
“Just remember—becoming my wife was your choice,” he whispered in her ear. He reached his other hand to stroke her cheek, looking into her eyes. “It was your mistake.”
Roark married Lia in a drab little affair at city hall that evening. Mrs. O’Keefe held Ruby and acted as one of the witnesses; his assistant, Murakami, acted as the other witness. No family was in attendance. No friends. No flowers. No music.
Lia wore a cream-colored suit she’d pulled hastily out of her closet. Roark didn’t bother to change out of his black shirt and pants. Why should he act like this wedding meant anything to him at all?
He didn’t smile as they were married. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t even kiss her at the end. He just put a plain gold band on her finger as the judge proclaimed them man and wife.
And he would make his wife pay for what she’d done.
They left city hall for the downtown heliport in a Cadillac SUV. His assistant sat in the front passenger seat, next to the driver, with Roark directly behind him. As they discussed the current financial details of the Kauai and Tokyo build sites—the price of steel was going through the roof—Roark couldn’t stop glancing at Ruby, who was in the baby seat next to him.
He had a daughter.
He could still hardly believe it. As Murakami droned on about the rising costs of concrete, a situation that normally would have been of the utmost importance to Roark, he barely paid attention. He couldn’t take his eyes off his baby. She was yawning now, sucking sleepily from a bottle.
There could be no doubt she was his child. Her eyes were as dark as Roark’s, with the same coloring he’d inherited from his Spanish-Canadian father. She looked just like him.
But she also looked like Lia. She had the same full mouth, the bow-shaped lips. She had the same joyful laugh, holding nothing back.
Roark