The Secret Valtinos Baby: The Secret Valtinos Baby
The Secret Valtinos Baby: The Secret Valtinos Baby
KIM LAWRENCE
LYNNE GRAHAM
The Secret Valtinos Baby by Lynne GrahamHis seduction had life-changing consequencesNow her boss is back—with marriage in mind!Personal assistant Merry Armstrong couldn’t resist Angel Valtinos’s sensual charisma. The Greek awakened her with his touch and left her pregnant! When Angel discovers his heir, duty compels him to act. Despite Merry’s independence, Valtinos’s legacy must be legitimised—and seducing her into becoming his wife will be his biggest challenge!The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest by Kim LawrenceThey shared a night of mindless passion……now he’ll take her once again!Reeling from his best friend’s death, Greek shipping magnate Nik Latsis found oblivion in the arms of a stunning stranger. Since then, her innocence has haunted his dreams. And now Nik knows only another taste will rid him of his burning desire. But Nik will need more than seductive charm if he’s to entice feisty Chloe back into his bed…
About the Authors (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, who knocks everything over, a very small terrier, who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in Anglesey with her university lecturer husband, assorted pets who arrived as strays and never left, and sometimes one or both of her boomerang sons. When she’s not writing she loves to be outdoors gardening, or walking on one of the beaches for which the island is famous—along with being the place where Prince William and Catherine made their first home!
Also By Lynne Graham
Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy
His Queen by Desert Decree
Brides for the Taking miniseries
The Desert King’s Blackmailed Bride
The Italian’s One-Night Baby
Sold for the Greek’s Heir
Vows for Billionaires miniseries
The Secret Valtinos Baby
And look out for the next book
Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess
Available April 2018
Also By Kim Lawrence
Maid for Montero
Captivated by Her Innocence
A Secret Until Now
The Heartbreaker Prince
One Night with Morelli
The Sins of Sebastian Rey-Defoe
Her Nine Month Confession
One Night to Wedding Vows
Surrendering to the Italian’s Command
A Ring to Secure His Crown
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Secret Valtinos Baby/The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest
The Secret Valtinos Baby
Lynne Graham
The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest
Kim Lawrence
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-09557-0
THE SECRET VALTINOS BABY/THE GREEK’S ULTIMATE CONQUEST
The Secret Valtinos Baby © 2018 Lynne Graham The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest © 2018 Kim Lawrence
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ufba65859-9463-545f-8bff-1cc77808da5d)
About the Authors (#ucbeabdf8-ed97-5331-b369-072b7defa9b2)
Booklist (#u5e068188-175e-51d1-9723-c17b0618c961)
Title Page (#u2a49a9aa-4b65-537b-8f77-fba4222f8ac0)
Copyright (#ud503f0ec-17ba-55e5-ac10-1006173c2c2d)
The Secret Valtinos Baby (#u137255de-c0d2-5984-a614-d387860d96a6)
Back Cover Text (#uf2c230b5-8636-51bf-af2f-95d178a667af)
CHAPTER ONE (#u9d5819ff-89c6-5c51-b5f8-228914fb38d2)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7aa9aa31-5ffc-5479-9afe-66887abf851b)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc4783474-731d-563f-b47f-9130202de3ea)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u60e74006-e124-5489-9b5c-c0a77f1b20c0)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ub38cd70b-f03d-5f0d-84e0-4577d8b8a913)
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)
The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest (#litres_trial_promo)
Back Cover Text (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
The Secret Valtinos Baby (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
Lynne Graham
His seduction had life-changing consequences
Now her boss is back—with marriage in mind!
Personal assistant Merry Armstrong couldn’t resist Angel Valtinos’s sensual charisma. The Greek awakened her with his touch and left her pregnant! When Angel discovers his heir, duty compels him to act. Despite Merry’s independence, Valtinos’s legacy must be legitimized—and seducing her into becoming his wife will be his biggest challenge!
CHAPTER ONE (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
THE GREEK BILLIONAIRE, Angel Valtinos, strode into his father’s office suite to find both his brothers waiting in Reception and he stopped dead, ebony brows skating up. ‘What is this? A family reunion?’
‘Or Papa is planning to carpet us for something,’ his Italian half-brother, Prince Vitale Castiglione, commented with perceptible amusement because they were all beyond the age where parental disapproval was a normal source of concern.
‘Does he make a habit of that?’ Zac Da Rocha demanded with a frown.
Angel met Vitale’s eyes and his jawline squared, neither passing comment. Zac, their illegitimate Brazilian sibling, was pretty much a wild card. As he was a new and rather mysterious addition to the family circle his brothers had yet to fully accept him. And trust came no more easily to the suspicious Angel than it did to Vitale.
Vitale grinned. ‘You’re the eldest,’ he reminded Angel. ‘You get top billing and first appearance.’
‘Not sure I want it on this occasion,’ Angel conceded, but he swiftly shrugged off the faint and comically unfamiliar sense of unease assailing his innately rock-solid confidence.
After all, Charles Russell had never played the heavy father in his sons’ lives, but even without exercising that authority he had still been a remarkably decent father, Angel conceded reflectively. Charles had not stayed married to either his or Vitale’s mother for very long but he had taken a keen interest post-divorce in fostering and maintaining a close relationship with his sons. Angel had often had cause to be grateful for his father’s stable approach to life and the shrewd business brain he suspected he had inherited from him. His mother was a thoroughly flighty and frivolous Greek heiress, whose attitude to childcare and education would have been careless without his father’s stipulations on his son’s behalf.
Charles Russell crossed his office to greet his eldest son. ‘You’re late,’ he told him without heat.
‘My board meeting ran over,’ Angel told him smoothly. ‘What’s this all about? When I saw Zac and Vitale in Reception I wondered if there was a family emergency.’
‘It depends what you call an emergency,’ Charles deflected, studying his very tall thirty-three-year-old eldest son, who topped him in height by several inches.
A son to be proud of, Charles had believed until very recently when the startling discovery of certain disquieting information had punctured his paternal pride. To be fair, Angel also carried the genes of a fabulously wealthy and pedigreed Greek family, more known for their self-destructiveness than their achievements. Even so, Charles had prided himself on Angel’s hugely successful reputation in the business world. Angel was the first Valtinos in two generations to make more money than he spent. A very astute high-achiever and a loyal and loving son, he was the very last child Charles had expected to disappoint him. Nonetheless, Angel had let him down by revealing a ruthless streak of Valtinos self-interest and irresponsibility.
‘Tell me what this is about,’ Angel urged with characteristic cool.
Charles rested back against his tidy desk, a still handsome man with greying hair in his early fifties. His well-built frame was tense. ‘When do you plan to grow up?’ he murmured wryly.
Angel blinked in bewilderment. ‘Is that a joke?’ he whispered.
‘Sadly not,’ his father confirmed. ‘A week ago, I learned from a source I will not share that I am a grandfather...’
Angel froze, his lean, extravagantly handsome features suddenly wiped clean of all animation, while his shrewd dark eyes hardened and veiled. In less than a split second, though, he had lifted his aggressive chin in grim acknowledgement of the unwelcome shock he had been dealt: an issue he had hoped to keep buried had been unexpectedly and most unhappily disinterred by the only man in the world whose good opinion he valued.
‘And, moreover, the grandfather of a child whom I will never meet if you have anything to do with it,’ Charles completed in a tone of regret.
Angel frowned and suddenly extended his arms in a very expansive Greek gesture of dismissal. ‘I thought to protect you—’
‘No, your sole motivation was to protect you,’ Charles contradicted without hesitation. ‘From the demands and responsibility of a child.’
‘It was an accident. Am I expected to turn my life upside down when struck by such a misfortune?’ Angel demanded in a tone of raw self-defence.
His father dealt him a troubled appraisal. ‘I did not consider you to be a misfortune.’
‘Your relationship with my mother was on rather a different footing,’ Angel declared with all the pride of his wealthy, privileged forebears.
A deep frown darkened the older man’s face. ‘Angel... I’ve never told you the whole truth about my marriage to your mother because I did not want to give you cause to respect her less,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But the fact is that Angelina deliberately conceived you once she realised that I wanted to end our relationship. I married her because she was pregnant, not because I loved her.’
Angel was startled by that revelation but not shocked, for he had always been aware that his mother was spoilt and selfish and that she could not handle rejection. His luxuriant black lashes lifted on challenging and cynical dark golden eyes. ‘And marrying her didn’t work for you, did it? So, you can hardly be suggesting that I marry the mother of my child!’ he derided.
‘No, marrying Angelina Valtinos didn’t work for me,’ Charles agreed mildly. ‘But it worked beautifully for you. It gave you a father with the right to interfere and with your best interests always at heart.’
That retaliation was a stunner and shockingly true and Angel gritted his even white teeth at the comeback. ‘Then I should thank you for your sacrifice,’ he said hoarsely.
‘No thanks required. The wonderful little boy grew up into a man I respect—’
‘With the obvious exception of this issue,’ Angel interjected tersely.
‘You have handled it all wrong. You called in the lawyers, those Valtinos vulture lawyers, whose sole motivation is to protect you and the Valtinos name and fortune—’
‘Exactly,’ Angel slotted in softly. ‘They protect me.’
‘But don’t you want to know your own child?’ Charles demanded in growing frustration.
Angel compressed his wide, sensual mouth, his hard bone structure thrown into prominence, angry shame engulfing him at that question. ‘Of course, I do, but getting past her mother is proving difficult.’
‘Is that how you see it? Is that who you are blaming for this mess?’ the older man countered with scorn. ‘Your lawyers forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for financial support and you made no attempt at that point to show enough interest to arrange access to your child.’
Angel went rigid, battling his anger, determined not to surrender to the frustrating rage scorching through him. He was damned if he was about to let the maddening baby business, as he thought of it, come between him and the father he loved. ‘The child hadn’t been born at that stage. I had no idea how I would feel once she was.’
‘Your lawyers naturally concentrated on protecting your privacy and your wealth. Your role was to concentrate on the family aspect,’ Charles asserted with emphasis. ‘Instead you have made an enemy of your child’s mother.’
‘That was not my intention. Using the Valtinos legal team was intended to remove any damaging personal reactions from our dealings.’
‘And how has the impersonal approach worked for you?’ Charles enquired very drily indeed.
Angel very nearly groaned out loud in exasperation. In truth, he had played an own goal, getting what he’d believed he wanted and then discovering too late that it wasn’t what he wanted at all. ‘She doesn’t want me to visit.’
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘Mine,’ Angel acknowledged fiercely. ‘But she is currently raising my child in unsuitable conditions.’
‘Yes, working as a kennel maid while raising the next Valtinos heiress isn’t to be recommended,’ his father remarked wryly. ‘Well, at least the woman’s not a gold-digger. A gold-digger would have stayed in London and lived the high life on the income you provided, not stranded herself in rural Suffolk with a middle-aged aunt while working for a living.’
‘My daughter’s mother is crazy!’ Angel bit out, betraying his first real emotion on the subject. ‘She’s trying to make me feel bad!’
Charles raised a dubious brow. ‘You think so? Seems to be a lot of sweat and effort to go to for a man she refuses to see.’
‘She had the neck to tell my lawyer that she couldn’t allow me to visit without risking breaching the non-disclosure agreement!’ Angel growled.
‘There could be grounds for that concern,’ his father remarked thoughtfully. ‘The paparazzi do follow you around and you visiting her would put a spotlight on her and the child.’
Angel drew himself up to his full six feet four inches and squared his wide shoulders. ‘I would be discreet.’
‘Sadly, it’s a little late in the day to be fighting over parental access. You should have considered that first and foremost in your dealings because unmarried fathers have few, if any, rights under British law—’
‘Are you suggesting that I marry her?’ Angel demanded with incredulity.
‘No.’ Charles shook his greying head to emphasise that negative. ‘That sort of gesture has to come from the heart.’
‘Or the brain,’ Angel qualified. ‘I could marry her, take her out to Greece and then fight her there for custody, where I would have an advantage. That option was suggested at one point by my legal team.’
Charles regarded his unapologetically ruthless son with concealed apprehension because it had never been his intention to exacerbate the situation between his son and the mother of his child. ‘I would hope that you would not even consider sinking to that level of deceit. Surely a more enlightened arrangement is still possible?’
But was it? Angel was not convinced even while he assured his concerned father that he would sort the situation out without descending to the level of dirty tricks. But was an access agreement even achievable?
After all, how could he be sure of anything in that line? Merry Armstrong had foiled him, blocked him and denied him while subjecting him to a raft of outrageous arguments rather than simply giving him what he wanted. Angel was wholly unaccustomed to such disrespectful treatment. Every time she knocked him back he was stunned by the unfamiliarity of the experience.
All his life he had pretty much got what he wanted from a woman whenever he wanted it. Women, usually, adored him. Women from his mother to his aunts to his cousins and those in his bed worshipped him like a god. Women lived to please Angel, flatter him, satisfy him: it had always been that way in Angel’s gilded world of comfort and pleasure. And Angel had taken that enjoyable reality entirely for granted until the very dark day he had chosen to tangle with Merry Armstrong...
He had noticed her immediately, the long glossy mane of dark mahogany hair clipped in a ponytail that reached almost to her waist, the pale crystalline blue eyes and the pink voluptuous mouth that sang of sin to a sexually imaginative male. Throw in the lean, leggy lines of a greyhound and proximity and their collision course had been inevitable from day one in spite of the fact that he had never before slept with one of his employees and had always sworn not to do so.
* * *
Merry’s fingers closed shakily over the letter that the postman had just delivered. A tatty sausage-shaped Yorkshire terrier gambolled noisily round her feet, still overexcited by the sound of the doorbell and another voice.
‘Quiet, Tiger,’ Merry murmured firmly, mindful that fostering the little dog was aimed at making him a suitable adoptee for a new owner. But even as she thought that, she knew she had broken her aunt Sybil’s strict rules with Tiger by getting attached and by letting him sneak onto her sofa and up onto her lap. Sybil adored dogs but she didn’t believe in humanising or coddling them. It crossed Merry’s mind that perhaps she was as emotionally damaged as Tiger had been by abuse. Tiger craved food as comfort; Merry craved the cosiness of a doggy cuddle. Or was she kidding herself in equating the humiliation she had suffered at Angel’s hands with abuse? Making a mountain out of a molehill, as Sybil had once briskly told her?
Sadly the proof of that pudding was in the eating as she flipped over the envelope and read the London postmark with a stomach that divebombed in sick dismay. It was another legal letter and she couldn’t face it. With a shudder of revulsion laced with fear she cravenly thrust the envelope in the drawer of the battered hall table, where it could stay until she felt able to deal with it...calmly.
And a calm state of mind had become a challenge for Merry ever since she had first heard from the Valtinoses’ lawyers and dealt with the stress, the appointments and the complaints. Legally she seemed mired in a never-ending battle where everything she did was an excuse for criticism or another unwelcome and intimidating demand. She could feel the rage building in her at the prospect of having to open yet another politely menacing letter, a rage that she would not have recognised a mere year earlier, a rage that threatened to consume her and sometimes scared her because there had been nothing of the virago in her nature until her path crossed that of Angel Valtinos. He had taught her nothing but bitterness, hatred and resentment, all of which she could have done without.
But he had also, although admittedly very reluctantly, given her Elyssa...
Keen to send her thoughts in a less sour direction, Merry glanced from the kitchen into the tiny sitting room of the cottage where she lived, and studied her daughter where she sat on the hearth rug happily engaged with her toys. Her black hair was an explosion of curls round her cherubic olive-toned face, highlighting striking ice-blue eyes and a pouty little mouth. She had her father’s curls and her mother’s eyes and mouth and was an extremely pretty baby in Merry’s opinion, although she was prepared to admit that she was very biased when it came to her daughter.
In many ways after a very fraught and unhappy pregnancy Elyssa’s actual birth had restored Merry to startling life and vigour. Before that day, it had not once occurred to her that her daughter’s arrival would transform her outlook and fill her to overflowing with an unconditional love unlike anything she had ever felt before. Nowadays she recognised the truth: there was nothing she would not do for Elyssa.
A light knock sounded on the back door, announcing Sybil’s casual entrance into the kitchen at the rear of the cottage. ‘I’ll put on the kettle...time for a brew,’ she said cheerfully, a tall, rangy blonde nearing sixty but still defiantly beautiful, as befitted a woman who had been an international supermodel in the eighties.
Sybil had been Merry’s role model from an early age. Her mother, Natalie, had married when Merry was sixteen and emigrated to Australia with her husband, leaving her teenaged daughter in her sister’s care. Sybil and Merry were much closer than Merry had ever been with her birth mother but Sybil remained very attached to her once feckless kid sister. The sanctuary had been built by her aunt on the proceeds of the modelling career she had abandoned as soon as she had made enough money to devote her days to looking after homeless dogs.
In the later stages of her pregnancy, Merry had worked at the centre doing whatever was required and had lived with her aunt in her trendy barn conversion, but at the same time Merry had been carefully making plans for a more independent future. A qualified accountant, she had started up a small home business doing accounts for local traders and she had a good enough income now to run a car, while also insisting on paying a viable rent to Sybil for her use of the cottage at the gates of the rescue centre. The cottage was small and old-fashioned but it had two bedrooms and a little garden and perfectly matched Merry and Elyssa’s current needs.
In fact, Sybil Armstrong was a rock of unchanging affection and security in Merry’s life. Merry’s mother, Natalie, had fallen pregnant with her during an affair with her married employer. Only nineteen at the time, Natalie had quickly proved ill-suited to the trials of single parenthood. Right from the start, Sybil had regularly swooped in as a weekend babysitter, wafting Merry back to her country home to leave her kid sister free to go out clubbing.
Natalie’s bedroom door had revolved around a long succession of unsuitable men. There had been violent men, drunk men, men who took drugs and men who stole Natalie’s money and refused to earn their own. By the time she was five years old, Merry had assumed all mothers brought different men home every week. In such an unstable household where fights and substance abuse were endemic she had missed a lot of school, and when social workers had threatened to take Merry into care, once again her aunt had stepped in to take charge.
For nine glorious years, Merry had lived solely with Sybil, catching up with her schoolwork, learning to be a child again, no longer expected to cook and clean for her unreliable mother, no longer required to hide in her bedroom while the adults downstairs screamed so loudly at each other that the neighbours called the police. Almost inevitably that phase of security with Sybil had ended when Natalie had made yet another fresh start and demanded the return of her daughter.
It hadn’t worked, of course it hadn’t, because Natalie had grown too accustomed to her freedom by then, and instead of finding in Merry the convenient little best friend she had expected she had been met with a daughter with whom she had nothing in common. By the time Keith, who was younger than Natalie, had entered her life, the writing had been on the wall. Keen to return to Australia and take Natalie with him, he had been frank about his reluctance to take on a paternal role while still in his twenties. Merry had moved back in with Sybil and had not seen her mother since her departure.
* * *
‘Did I see the postman?’ Sybil asked casually.
Merry stiffened and flushed, thinking guiltily of that envelope stuffed in the hall table. ‘I bought something for Elyssa online,’ she fibbed in shame, but there was just no way she could admit to a woman as gutsy as Sybil that a letter could frighten and distress her.
‘No further communication from He Who Must Not Be Named?’ Sybil fished, disconcerting her niece with that leading question, for lately her aunt had been very quiet on that topic.
‘Evidently we’re having a bit of a break from the drama right now, which is really nice,’ Merry mumbled, shamefacedly tucking teabags into the mugs while Sybil lifted her great-niece off the rug and cuddled her before sitting down again with the baby cradled on her lap.
‘Don’t even think about him.’
‘I don’t,’ Merry lied yet again, a current of self-loathing assailing her because only a complete fool would waste time thinking about a man who had mistreated her. But then, really, what would Sybil understand about that? As a staggeringly beautiful and famous young woman, Sybil had had to beat adoring men off with sticks but had simply never met one she wanted to settle down with. Merry doubted that any man had ever disrespected Sybil and lived to tell the tale.
‘He’ll get his comeuppance some day,’ Sybil forecast. ‘Everyone does. What goes around comes around.’
‘But it bothers me that I hate him so much,’ Merry confided in a rush half under her breath. ‘I’ve never been a hater before.’
‘You’re still hurting. Now that you’re starting to date again, those bad memories will soon sink into the past.’
An unexpected smile lit Merry’s heart-shaped face at the prospect of the afternoon out she was having the following day. As a veterinary surgeon, Fergus Wickham made regular visits to the rescue centre. He had first met Merry when she was offputtingly pregnant, only evidently it had not put him off, it had merely made him bide his time until her daughter was born and she was more likely to be receptive to an approach.
She liked Fergus, she enjoyed his company, she reminded herself doggedly. He didn’t give her butterflies in her tummy, though, or make her long for his mouth, she conceded guiltily, but then how important were such physical feelings in the overall scheme of things? Angel’s sexual allure had been the health equivalent of a lethal snakebite, pulling her in only to poison her. Beautiful but deadly. Dear heaven, she hated him, she acknowledged, rigid with the seething trapped emotion that sent her memory flying inexorably back sixteen months...
CHAPTER TWO (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
MERRY WAS FULL of enthusiasm when she started her first job even though it wasn’t her dream job by any stretch of the imagination. Having left university with a first-class honours degree in accountancy and business, she had no intention of settling permanently into being a front-desk receptionist at Valtinos Enterprises.
Even so, she had badly needed paid employment and the long recruitment process involved in graduate job applications had ensured that she was forced to depend on Sybil’s generosity for more months than she cared to count. Sybil had already supported Merry through her years as a student, helping her out with handy vacation jobs at the rescue centre while always providing her with a comfortable home to come back to for weekends and holidays.
Her job at Valtinos Enterprises was Merry’s first step towards true independence. The work paid well and gave her the breathing space in which to look for a more suitable position, while also enabling her to base herself in London without relying on her aunt’s financial help. She had moved into a room in a grotty apartment and started work at VE with such high hopes.
And on her first day Angel strode out of the lift and her breath shorted out in her chest as though she had been punched. He had luxuriant black curls that always looked messy and that lean, darkly beautiful face of his had been crafted by a creative genius with exotic high cheekbones, a narrow, straight nose and eyes the colour of liquid honey. Eyes that she had only very much later discovered could turn as hard and cutting as black diamonds.
‘You’re new,’ he commented, treating her to the kind of lingering appraisal that made her feel hot all over.
‘This is my first day, Mr Valtinos,’ she confided.
‘Don’t waste your smiles there,’ her co-worker on the desk whispered snidely as Angel walked into his office. ‘He doesn’t flirt with employees. In fact the word is that he’s fired a couple of his PAs for getting too personal with him.’
‘I’m not interested,’ Merry countered with amusement, and indeed when it came to men she rarely was.
Growing up watching her mother continually search for the man of her dreams while ignoring everything else life had to offer had scared Merry. Having survived her unsettled childhood, she set a high value on security and she was keen to establish her own accountancy firm. She didn’t take risks...ever. In fact she was the most risk-averse person she had ever met.
That innate caution had kept her working so hard at university that she had taken little part in the social whirl. There had been occasional boyfriends but none she had cared to invite into her bed. Not only had she never felt passion, but she had also never suffered from her mother’s blazing infatuations. Watching relationships around her take off and then fail in an invariably nasty ending that smashed friendships and caused pain and resentment had turned Merry off even more. She liked a calm, tidy life, a quiet life, which in no way explained how she could ever have become intimate with a male as volatile as Angel, she acknowledged with lingering bewilderment.
But it was the truth, the absolute truth, that on paper she and Angel were a horrendous match. Angel was off-the-charts volatile with a volcanic hot temper that erupted every time someone did or said something he considered stupid. He wasn’t tolerant or easy to deal with. In the first weeks of her employment she regularly saw members of his personal staff race out of his office as though they had wings on their feet, their pale faces stamped with stress and trepidation. He was very impatient and equally demanding. He might resemble a supermodel in his fabulously sophisticated designer suits, but he had the temperament of a tyrant and an overachiever’s appetite for work and success. The only thing she admired about him in those initial weeks was his cleverness.
Serving coffee in the boardroom, she heard him dissect entire arguments with a handful of well-chosen words. She noticed that people listened when he spoke and admired his intellect while competing to please and impress him. Occasionally beautiful shapely blondes would drift in to meet him for lunch, women of a definite type, the artificial socialite type, seemingly chosen only for their enviable faces and figures and their ability to look at him with stunned appreciation. Those who arrived without an invite didn’t even get across the threshold of his office. He treated women like casual amusements and discarded them as soon as he got bored, and the procession of constantly changing faces made it obvious that he got bored very quickly and easily.
In short, nothing about Angel Valtinos should have attracted Merry. He shamelessly flaunted almost every flaw she disliked in a man. He was a selfish, hubristic, oversexed workaholic, spoiled by a life of luxury and the target of more admiration and attention than was good for him.
But even after six weeks in his radius, dredging her eyes off Angel when he was within view had proved impossible. He commanded a room simply by walking into it. Even his voice was dark, deep and smoulderingly charismatic. Once a woman heard that slumberous accented drawl she just had to turn her head and look. His dynamic personality suffused his London headquarters like an energy bolt while his mercurial moods kept his employees on edge and eager to please. Valtinos Enterprises felt dead and flat when he was abroad.
When one of Angel’s personal assistants left and the position was offered internally, Merry applied, keen to climb the ladder. Angel summoned her to his office to study her with frowning dark golden eyes. ‘Why is a candidate with your skills working on Reception?’ he demanded impatiently.
‘It was the first job I was offered,’ Merry admitted, brushing her damp palms down over her skirt. ‘I was planning to move on.’
Rising to his feet, making her uneasily aware of his height, he extended a slim file. ‘Find somewhere quiet to work. You’re off Reception for the morning. Check out this business and provide me with an accurate assessment of its financial history and current performance. If you do it well, I’ll interview you this afternoon.’
That afternoon, he settled the file back on the desk and surveyed her, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. ‘You did very well but you’re a little too cautious in your forecasts. I enjoy risk,’ he imparted, watching with amusement as she frowned in surprise at that admission. ‘You’ve got the job. I hope you can take the heat. Not everyone can.’
‘If you shout at me, I’ll probably shout back,’ Merry warned him warily.
And an appreciative grin slashed his shapely lips, making him so powerfully attractive that for a split second she simply stared, unable to look away. ‘You may just work out very well.’
So began the most exciting phase of Merry’s working life. Merry was the most junior member of Angel’s personal staff but the one he always entrusted with figures. Sybil was thrilled by the promotion her niece had won but would have been horrified by the long hours Merry worked and the amount of responsibility she carried.
‘The boss has got the hots for you,’ one of her male co-workers told her with amusement when she had been two months in the job. ‘Obviously you have something all those long tall blondes he parades through here don’t, because he’s always watching you.’
‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ she said firmly, reluctant to let that kind of comment go unchallenged.
But even as she spoke she knew she was very carefully impersonal and unobtrusive in Angel’s vicinity because she was conscious of him in a way she had not been conscious of a man before. If she was foolish enough to risk a head-on collision with his spectacular liquid honey eyes, her tummy somersaulted, her mouth dried and she couldn’t catch her breath. Feeling like that mortified her. She knew it was attraction and she didn’t like it, not only because he was her boss, but also because it made her feel out of control.
And then fate took a hand when Merry firmly believed that neither of them would ever have made any sort of a move. A highly contagious flu virus had decimated the staff and as his employees fell by the wayside Merry found herself increasingly exposed to working alone with Angel. At the office late one evening, he offered her a drink and a ride home. She said no thanks to the drink, deeming it unwise, and yes to the ride because it would get her home faster.
In the lift on the way down to the underground car park, Angel studied her with smouldering dark golden eyes. She felt dizzy and hot, as if her clothes were shrink-wrapped to her skin, preventing her from normal breathing. He lifted a long-fingered brown hand and traced his fingertips along the full curve of her lower lip in a caress that left her trembling, and then, as though some invisible line of restraint had snapped inside him, he crushed her back against the mirrored wall and kissed her, hungrily, feverishly, wildly with the kind of passion she was defenceless against.
‘Come home with me,’ he urged in a raw undertone as she struggled to pull herself back together while the lift doors stood open beside them.
Her flushed face froze. ‘Absolutely not. We made a mistake. Let’s forget about it.’
‘That’s not always possible,’ Angel breathed thickly. ‘I’ve been trying to forget about the way you make me feel for weeks.’
Disconcerted by that blunt admission as he stepped out of the lift, Merry muttered dismissively, ‘That’s just sex. Ignore it.’
Angel stared back at her in wonderment. ‘Ignore it?’
As the lift doors began to close with her still inside it, he reached in and held them open. ‘Come on.’
‘I’ll get the Tube as usual.’
‘Don’t be childish,’ Angel ground out. ‘I am fully in control.’
Merry wasn’t convinced, remembering that mad, exciting grab and the slam of her body back against the lift wall, but that instant of hesitation was her undoing because without hesitation Angel closed a hand over hers and pulled her out of the lift. ‘I’ll drop you home.’
‘There are boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed,’ she told him with precision on the way to his car.
‘Don’t preach at me,’ Angel sliced back in a driven undertone. ‘I don’t have a history of making moves on my staff. You are a one-off.’
‘And it won’t happen again now that we’re both on our guard so let’s forget about it,’ Merry counselled, sliding breathlessly into a long silver low-slung bullet of a vehicle that she suspected was worth many times more than her annual salary. ‘I prevented you from making a mistake.’
‘You’re preaching again,’ Angel derided. ‘If I hadn’t stopped kissing you we’d still be in the lift!’
‘No. I would’ve pushed you away,’ she insisted with cool assurance.
She gave him her address, although he didn’t seem to need it, and the journey through heavy traffic was silent, tense and unnerving. He pulled up at the kerb outside the ugly building where she lived. ‘You could afford to live in a better area than this,’ he censured.
‘I have a healthy savings account,’ she told him with pride, releasing her seat belt at the same time as he reached for her again.
His wide sensual mouth crushed hers with burning hunger and no small amount of frustration. Her whole body leapt as though he had punched a button detonating something deep down inside her, releasing a hot surge of tingling awareness in her pelvis that made her hips squirm and her nipples pinch painfully tight.
Angel lifted his tousled dark head. ‘I’m still waiting on you pushing me away. You’re all talk and no action,’ he condemned.
‘I don’t think you’d appreciate a slap,’ Merry framed frigidly, her face burning with mortification.
‘If it meant that you ditched the icy control I’d be begging for it,’ Angel husked suggestively, soft and low, the growl of his accent shaking her up.
Merry launched out of his sports car as though jet-propelled, uncharacteristically flustered and shaken that she had failed to live up to her own very high principles on acceptable behaviour. She should’ve pushed him away, slapped him, thumped him if necessary to drive her message home. Nothing less would cool his heels. He was a highly competitive, aggressive male, who viewed defeat as an ongoing challenge.
His car stayed at the kerb until she stalked into the building and only then did she breathe again, filling her compressed lungs and shivering as though she had stepped out of a freezing snowstorm. She felt all shaken up, shaken up and stirred in a way she didn’t appreciate and almost hated him for.
The feel of his mouth on hers, the taste of it, the explosive charge of heat hurtling at breakneck speed down into her belly and spreading to other, more intimate places she never ever thought about. How dared he do that to her? She would lodge a complaint of sexual harassment! Didn’t he know what he was risking? But being Angel, he wouldn’t care, wouldn’t even stop to consider that he was playing with fire. Indeed, the knowledge would only energise and stimulate him because he loved to push the limits.
She curled up tight in her bed that night, overwhelmed by her first real experience of sexual temptation. When he kissed her she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. A kiss had never had that effect on her before and she was unnerved by the discovery that a kiss could be that influential. She toyed with the idea of complaining about sexual harassment, pictured Angel laughing fearlessly in the face of such a threat and finally decided that she didn’t want the embarrassment of that on her employment record. Particularly when such a claim would fail because she hadn’t pushed him away, hadn’t given him an immediate rejection.
The next day she was very nervous going into work, but Angel didn’t do or say anything that was different and she was strangely irritated by that reality: that he could act as though he had never offered to take her home to bed for the night and, afterwards, simply treat her like everyone else. But those same moments of intimacy had carried a higher price for her. It was as though he had stripped away her tough outer layer and chipped her out of her cautious shell to ensure that she began feeling physical and emotional responses she had comfortably held at bay until she’d met him.
During the week that followed she was feverishly aware of Angel to a degree that sent her temperature rocketing. When he looked at her, it was as if a blast of concentrated heat lit her up inside and her bra would feel scratchy against her tender nipples and a dull ache would stir between her thighs, her every tiny reaction in his presence like a slap in the face that shamed her. It was a terrible destructive wanting that wouldn’t go away. He had lit the spark and she seemed stuck with the spread of the fire licking away at her nerves and her fierce pride.
At the end of that week, Angel asked her to stay behind after everyone else had left to go for drinks.
‘Next on the agenda...us,’ Angel murmured sibilantly.
Merry shot him a withering appraisal. ‘There is no us.’
‘Exactly,’ Angel pronounced with satisfaction. ‘Scratch the itch and it goes away and dies, ignore it and it festers.’
‘Your seduction vocabulary needs attention,’ Merry quipped, standing straight in front of him, grudging amusement dancing in her crystalline eyes.
Angel grimaced. ‘I don’t do seduction.’
‘I don’t do one-night stands.’
‘So if I make it dinner and sex I’m in with a chance?’ A sardonic ebony brow elevated.
‘No chance whatsoever,’ Merry contradicted with pleasure. ‘I’m a virgin and I’m not trading that for some sleazy night with my boss.’
‘A virgin?’ Angel was aghast. ‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously,’ Merry traded without embarrassment, reflecting on how her mother had fallen pregnant with her and determined to make every choice that took her in the opposite direction. ‘Sex should mean something more than scratching an itch.’
Angel sprang upright behind his desk, all supple, graceful motion, the fine, expensive fabric of his suit pulling taut over powerful thigh muscles and definable biceps. Her mouth ran dry, her eyes involuntarily clinging to his every movement. ‘It’s never been anything more for me,’ he admitted drily. ‘But I take offence at the word “sleazy”. I am never sleazy and... I don’t do virgins.’
‘Good to know,’ Merry breathed tightly, watching his shirt ripple ever so slightly over his muscular chest as he exhaled while cursing her intense physical awareness of him. ‘May I go home now?’
‘I’ll drop you back.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ she told him coolly.
‘I decide what’s necessary around here,’ Angel pronounced, throwing the door wide and heading for the lift. ‘You realise you’re as rare as a unicorn in my world? Are you holding out for marriage?’
Involuntarily amused by his curiosity, Merry laughed. ‘Of course not. I’m just waiting for something real. I’m not a fan of casual or meaningless.’
Angel lounged back fluidly against the wall of the lift, all naked predator and jungle grace. ‘I’m casual but I’m very real,’ he told her huskily, his deep dark drawl roughening and trickling down her taut spine like a spectral caress.
‘Oh, switch it off,’ Merry groaned. ‘We’re like salt and pepper except you can’t mix us.’
‘Because you’ve got too many rules, too many barriers. Why is that?’
‘Like you are actually interested?’ Merry jibed.
‘I am interested,’ Angel growled, dark golden eyes flashing as the lift doors sprang back. ‘I want you.’
‘Only because you can’t have me,’ Merry interposed drily, her skin coming up in gooseflesh as he flashed her a ferocious appraisal capable of flaying her skin from her bones. ‘That’s how basic you are.’
‘You’re becoming rude.’
‘Your persistence is making me rude,’ Merry told him.
‘I want to see your hair loose,’ Angel bit out impatiently. ‘It’s unusually long.’
‘My mother kept on cutting it short when I was little because it was easier to look after. Now I grow it because I can,’ she said truthfully, her stomach flipping as he shot a sudden charismatic smile at her, his lean, darkly beautiful face vibrant with amusement.
‘You’re a control freak,’ he breathed lazily. ‘Takes one to know one, glikia mou.’
‘That’s why we don’t get on,’ Merry pointed out.
‘We don’t get on because you have a very annoying sort of pious vibe going,’ Angel contradicted. ‘You’re smug.’
‘No, I’m not,’ she argued instantly as they crossed the half-empty car park.
‘You think you’re superior to me because you’re not at the mercy of your hormones...but you were when I touched you,’ Angel breathed, caging her in against the passenger door of his car, the heat of his lean, powerful body perceptible even through the inches separating them and the rich, evocative scent of husky male and exotic cologne filling her nostrils. His hands braced either side of her, not actually touching her quivering length, and her knees turned weak at the thought that he might touch her. ‘You can hardly breathe when I’m this close to you. I see that, I know that...every time I try to step back, it sucks me back in.’
He was like an impenetrable force field surrounding her. She knew she could push him away, she knew he wouldn’t fight, she knew he wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want him to do and a weird sense of unexpected power engulfed her. He was still coming back at her because he couldn’t resist the pull between them and she couldn’t resist it either. It was a weakness deep down inside her that she couldn’t suppress. Nobody had ever made her feel the way he was making her feel and that was a thrill on its own, a shot of adrenalin in her veins to match the feverish pound of her heartbeat. She wanted him. The knowledge ploughed through her like a battering ram, casting everything she had thought she knew about herself into a broken jumble of messy pieces.
‘You’re not my type,’ she whispered in dry-mouthed protest.
‘You’re not my type either,’ Angel admitted thickly. ‘But I’d still have sex in a car park with you any time you cared to ask.’
‘Not about to ask,’ Merry confided shakily. ‘Take me home...back off.’
‘You’re making a major production of this again,’ Angel accused, flashing his key fob to open the car. ‘Stop doing that. It’s...it’s bizarrely unnerving.’
She climbed into his car in a daze, the throb between her legs angry and unsettling, the sensual smoulder in the air almost unbearable, every nerve ending painfully aware of it. She didn’t know how he did that using only words and looks. It was terrifying. He had wiped her mind clean, made her feel stuff she didn’t want to feel, rocked the foundations of her security.
‘I don’t like you,’ she admitted.
‘Thee mou...you don’t have to like me, you only have to want me...and you do.’
And it was agonisingly true, she registered in dismay. Her brain didn’t seem to have anything to do with the equation. She thoroughly disapproved of everything he was and yet the chemistry between them was wild and dominant.
‘We have one night together and sate the craving. Then we put it away and bury it,’ Angel intoned in a driven undertone.
‘I thought you didn’t do virgins.’
‘Evidently you were born to be my single exception.’
‘Is this an actual negotiation?’ Merry enquired incredulously.
‘We have to sort this out. You’re taking my mind off work,’ Angel complained. ‘I can’t handle watching you all day and fantasising about you all night. It’s bad for business.’
‘What’s in it for me?’ Merry whispered unevenly.
‘I’m superlative at sex.’
‘Oh...’ Her lashes fluttered, her tummy somersaulting again as she wondered if she really was about to do what he wanted her to do, what she herself wanted to do. And that was the answer there and then when she was least expecting to see or understand it.
He would make a great introduction to sex for her, she thought dizzily. It would end the insane craving he had awakened inside her and maybe then she could return to her normal tranquil self. That prospect had huge appeal for her. The need would be satisfied, the intolerable longing ended. All right, it wasn’t the big romance with hearts and flowers that she had dimly envisioned, but then possibly that had never been a very practical aspiration. What he was offering was basic and honest even if it was casual and uncommitted and everything she had once sworn she would never participate in. It was not as though she had been saving herself for a wedding ring. She had been saving herself for love, but love hadn’t happened.
‘So, you’re suggesting that I just use you,’ Merry remarked grittily as he pulled into another underground car park.
‘We use each other,’ Angel exhaled in a rush and, killing the engine, stretched out a long powerful arm to enclose her in almost the same moment.
His mouth crashed down on hers with a hunger that blew her away. Somehow he made it that she didn’t remember getting out of the car, didn’t remember getting into a lift or emerging from it. There was only that insane, greedy melding of their mouths and the frantic impatient activity of their hands in a dimly lit hall. Her coat fell off or maybe he helped it. His jacket disappeared at similar speed. She kicked off her shoes. He wrenched off his tie and cannoned into a door as he lifted her off her feet.
‘We have to slow down,’ he told her roughly, dark golden eyes shimmering like gold ingots, his sexual excitement patent. ‘Or I’ll screw this up for you.’
He laid her down on a wide, comfortable mattress and stood over her, stripping without inhibition. All she wanted was his mouth on hers again, that magical escape from the limits of her own body that sent her flying higher than she had ever known she could fly. He shed his trousers and her attention locked warily on the very obvious bulge in his boxers while she struggled to accept that she could, even briefly, be with a man who was chronically untidy and dropped clothes in a heap on the floor. Not her type, not her type; she rhymed it like a mantra inside her head, her bulwark against getting attached in any way. It was sex and she didn’t want to regard it as anything else.
He unzipped her dress and flipped her over to remove it with deft precision and release her bra, before pausing to carefully unsnap the clasp in her hair and let his skilled mouth roam across her pale shoulders. He tugged her round and up to him then, long fingers lifting to feather her curtain of dark coffee-coloured hair round her shoulders, thready shimmers of lighter caramel appearing in the light filtering in from the hall.
‘You have amazing hair,’ he muttered intently, gazing down into blue eyes as pale as an Arctic sky.
‘Is that a fetish of yours?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed, but that prissy little smile of yours turns me on no end,’ Angel confided, disconcerting her.
‘I do not have a prissy smile.’
‘Talking too much,’ Angel growled, crushing her ripe mouth beneath his again, running his hands down the sides of her narrow ribcage to dispose of her bra and let his hands rise to cup the small delicate mounds of her breasts.
As his thumbs grazed her sensitive nipples a gasp parted Merry’s lips, and when his hungry mouth followed there she fell back against the pillows and dug her fingers into his thick tangle of curls. Heat arrowed in stormy flashes right to her core, leaving her insanely conscious of how excited she was becoming. Her thighs pressed together, her hips dug into the mattress as she struggled to get a grip on herself, but it was as if her body were streaking ahead of her and no matter how hard she tried to catch it, she couldn’t.
He shifted position, ran his tongue down over her straining midriff to her navel, parted her from her knickers without her noticing, traced her inner thighs with a devil’s expertise until she was splayed out like a sacrifice. And then the flood of crazy pleasure came at her in breathless, jolting stabs that shocked and roused her to a level that was almost unbearable. She was shaken by what she was allowing him to do and how much her body craved it and how very little she could control her own reactions. She twisted and turned, hauled him back to her at one point and kissed him breathless, wanting, needing, trembling on the edge of something she didn’t understand.
The tight bands in her pelvis strained to hold in the wild searing shots of pleasure gripping her and then her control broke and she writhed in a wild frenzy of release. The sound of her own gasping cry startled her, her eyes flying wide, and Angel grinned shamelessly down at her like a very sexy pirate, a dark shadow of stubble merely accentuating his fantastic bone structure.
‘You’re staying the whole night,’ he told her thickly.
‘No,’ Merry muttered, head rolling back on the pillows as he crawled up her body like the predator he truly was. ‘Once it’s done, it’s over.’
‘You are so stubborn,’ Angel groaned in frustration, nipping up her slender throat to find her swollen lips again, teasing and tasting and letting his tongue plunge and twin with hers until she was beyond thought and argument again. He donned protection.
He eased into her slowly, very slowly, and impatience assailed her. She didn’t want or need to be treated like fine china that might shatter or like that rare unicorn he had mentioned. Her body was slick and eager again, the pulse at the heart of her racing with anticipation. She tilted under him, angling up her hips, and the invitation was too much for his control and he jerked over her and plunged deep. A brief burning sting of pain made her stiffen and gasp.
‘That’s your own fault,’ Angel growled in exasperation. ‘If you would just lie still.’
‘I’m not a blow-up doll.’
‘I was trying not to hurt you.’
‘I’m not breakable either,’ Merry argued, every skin cell on red alert as she felt her body slowly stretch to enclose his, tiny little shimmers of exquisite sensation flying through her as he began to move, hinting that the best was yet to come. ‘Don’t stop.’
And he didn’t. He sank deep into her with a shuddering groan of pleasure and the pace picked up, jolting her with waves of glorious excitement. She arched her body up, suddenly needy again, hungry again, marvelling at the limitless capacity of her body to feel more and yet more. But this time the climb to pleasure was slower and she writhed, blue eyes lighting up with impatience and a need she had never expressed before. Her heart raced, her pulses pounded and that sweet, seductive throb of delight grew and grew inside her until she could contain it no longer. Every barrier dropped as her body exploded into an ecstatic climax that left her limp and stunned.
Angel released her from his weight but made a move to pull her under his arm and retain a hold on her. Quick as a flash Merry evaded him, her whole being bent on immediate escape. They had had sex but she didn’t want to hang around for the aftermath. Dignity, she told herself staunchly, dictated an immediate departure. She slid out of the other side of the bed, bending down to scoop up her discarded clothes.
‘I asked you to stay,’ Angel reminded her.
‘I’m going home,’ she said as he vaulted out of bed and headed into what she presumed was a bathroom, his lean, powerful body emanating impatience and annoyance in perceptible waves.
She would have liked a shower but she was determined not to linger. With a grimace, she pulled her clothes back on and was out in the hall cramming her feet back into her shoes and hurriedly calling a taxi when Angel reappeared, bronzed and still unashamedly naked in the bedroom doorway. ‘I don’t want you to leave.’
‘I’ve already ordered a taxi.’ Merry tilted her chin, her long hair streaming untidily round her flushed heart-shaped face. ‘We agreed and it’s better like this.’
‘I asked for one night—’
‘You can’t have everything your way,’ Merry declared flatly. ‘I enjoyed myself but all good things come to an end.’
Angel swore in Greek. ‘You drive me insane.’
‘What’s your problem? According to your forecast, we’re done and dusted now,’ she pointed out helplessly.
Yet for all her proud nonchalance in front of him, Merry travelled home in a daze of mounting panic. Back at her apartment she had to wait until the shower was free. She felt shell-shocked by what she had done. Her body ached but her brain ached almost as much, trying to rationalise the fleeting madness that had overtaken her. She tried to examine it from Angel’s unemotional point of view, but that didn’t work for her when her own emotions were throwing tantrums and storming about inside her as much as if she had killed someone. Done and dusted, forget about it now, she reminded herself doggedly. He had much more experience in such encounters than she had, had to know what he was talking about. The curiosity and that unnatural hunger had been satisfied and now it would all die a natural death and become an embarrassing memory that she’d never ever share with anyone, she told herself with determination.
Only in the days that followed Merry slowly came to appreciate that, for all his evident experience, Angel Valtinos had got it badly wrong. Feed a cold, starve a fever was a saying she had grown up with, and before very long had passed she knew that it had been a serious mistake to feed the fever. She saw it in the way Angel’s stunning dark eyes locked on her like magnets, heard it in the terseness of his instructions to her and she felt the pull of him inside herself as if he had attached a secret chain to her. Excitement crashed over her when he was close by, her temperature climbing, her heart thumping. Slowly, painfully, she came to appreciate that she was infatuated with him and very nearly as giddy and mindless as a silly schoolgirl in his vicinity. The suspicion that she was more her mother’s daughter than she had ever dreamt she could be appalled her.
Was that the real explanation of why she had slept with Angel Valtinos? She had asked herself again and again why she had done that, why she had made such an impulsive decision that went against everything she believed, and now she was being faced with an answer that she loathed. At some point in their relationship she had begun getting attached to him, possibly around the time she had started admiring his intellect and shrewd business instincts. That attachment was pitiful, she decided with angry self-loathing, and in haste she began to look for another job, desperate to leave Angel and Valtinos Enterprises behind her.
Two weeks after their first encounter, Angel showed up at her apartment one evening without the smallest warning. The same angry frustration that powered him was running through her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, far from pleased to be surprised in her cotton pyjamas, fresh from the shower and bare of make-up.
Angel grimaced, his lean, darkly handsome features taut and troubled as he leant back against her bedroom door to close it. ‘My car brought me here.’
‘What on earth—?’ she began, disconcerted by his sudden appearance in a place where she had never imagined seeing him.
Angel settled volatile dark golden eyes on her angrily. ‘I can’t stay away,’ he grated rawly, his beautiful mouth compressing.
‘B-but...we agreed,’ she stammered.
‘Massive fail,’ Angel framed darkly. ‘Biggest bloody mistake of my life!’
Merry almost laughed and fortunately killed the urge. It was simply that Angel’s innate love of drama not only amused her, but somehow touched her somewhere down deep inside, somewhere where she was soft and emotional and vulnerable even though she didn’t want to be. He had come to her even though he didn’t want to. He resented his desire for her, had tried to stamp it out and failed. She grasped immediately that that weakness for her infuriated him.
‘I want to be with you tonight.’
‘Angel—’
He came down on the bed beside her and framed her face with long, cool brown fingers. ‘Say my name again,’ he demanded.
‘No,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I don’t do what you tell me to do outside working hours.’
‘Thee mou...stop challenging me,’ he groaned, tilting her head back to follow the long, elegant column of her throat down to the slope of her shoulder, nipping and kissing a tantalising path across her sensitised skin while she quivered. ‘This isn’t me. This isn’t what I’m about.’
‘Then why are you here?’ she whispered weakly.
‘Can’t stay away.’ He carried her hand down to where he was hot and hard and wanting and groaned without inhibition as she stroked him through the fine, crisp fabric of his well-cut trousers.
Heat coursed through her in molten waves, the hunger unleashed afresh. Simply touching him inflamed her. She tried to fight it, she tried to fasten it down and ground herself, but Angel smashed any hope of control by welding dark golden eyes to hers and kissing her with barely contained ferocity. Not a single thought passed her mind beyond the thrillingly obvious reality that he needed her and couldn’t stay away. That knowledge vanquished every other consideration. She kissed him back with the same uncontrollable, desperate passion.
‘I intended to take you out to dinner,’ Angel admitted breathlessly as he fought with her pyjamas, his sleek, deft skills with feminine clothing deserting him.
‘You hungry?’ she gasped, almost strangling him with his own tie in her struggle to loosen it.
‘Only for you,’ he growled fiercely against her swollen mouth. ‘Watching you round the office all day, being unable to touch, even to look.’
And then they were naked in her bed, naked and frantic and so tormentingly hungry for each other that she writhed and squirmed and he fought to hold her still. He produced a condom, tore it from the wrapper with his teeth. ‘We don’t want an accident,’ he said unevenly.
‘No, no accidents,’ she agreed helplessly, lying there, shocked by what she was doing but participating all the same, quite unable to deny him. Their clothes lay festooned all around them and she didn’t care. Angel had come to her and she was happy about that, there in her pin-neat room made messy by his presence.
He drove into her yielding flesh with a heartfelt sound of satisfaction and she wrapped her legs round him, arching up and gasping at every fluid stroke. The excitement heightened exponentially, the pulsing pound of intolerable desire driving them off the edge fast into a hot, sweaty tangle of limbs and shuddering fulfilment.
Angel pressed his sensual mouth against her brow and eased back, only to grate out a curse in Greek. ‘I broke the condom!’ he growled in harried explanation as she stared up at him, recognising the stress and anxiety in his expressive gaze.
As if a simultaneous alarm bell had sounded, Angel flipped back from her and slid fluidly out of bed while Merry hurriedly hid her fast-cooling body under the duvet they had lain on. Her eyes were wide with consternation.
‘This has never happened to me before,’ Angel assured her, hastily getting back into his clothes.
Merry pondered the idea of mentioning that dinner invite and discarded it again. She had nothing comforting to say to him, nothing likely to improve his mood. She wasn’t on the pill, wasn’t taking any contraceptive precautions, a reality that now made her feel very foolish. Why hadn’t she rethought her outlook the minute she’d ended up in bed with Angel Valtinos? Wasn’t a woman supposed to look after herself?
‘I’m not on anything,’ she admitted reluctantly.
Angel dug out his wallet and flipped out a card. ‘Come in late tomorrow. See this doctor first. He’s a friend of mine. He’ll check you out,’ he told her, setting the card down by the bed.
And within a minute he was gone. Wham-bam—no, thank you, ma’am, she acknowledged with a sinking heart and a strong need for a shower.
If only she could shower the thoughts out of her head and the feelings in her heart as easily, she concluded wretchedly. She felt sick, humiliated and rejected. She also hated herself. A contraceptive accident had sent Angel into a nosedive, his horror unconcealed. Did she hold that against him when trepidation had seized her by the throat as well?
But luckily, that night she had no grasp at all of the nightmare that was waiting to unfold and the many months of unhappiness that would follow as punishment for her irresponsibility. In effect, she was still a complete innocent then. She was hopelessly infatuated with a man who only lusted after her and with a lust that died the instant a condom failed. That was why she had held herself back from casual sex, seeking the feelings and the certain amount of safety that came with them...
Her first wake-up call to what she was truly dealing with came early the next morning. She went, as instructed, to see the suave private doctor, who ran a battery of tests on her and then casually offered her the morning-after pill. She didn’t want it, hadn’t ever even thought about whether or not she approved of that option, but when it was suggested to her, it grated on her, and even though she could see the doctor’s surprise at her refusal she saw no reason to explain her attitude. Had such a possibility been available to her mother, she reckoned that she herself would never have been born and that was a sobering acknowledgement. Had Angel sent her to that doctor quite deliberately to ensure that she was offered that option? She planned to have that out with him the instant she got a moment alone with him.
Unfortunately what she didn’t know then was that it would be many, many weeks before she had the opportunity of a moment alone with Angel again and even then she only finally achieved that meeting by stalking him to one of his regular retreats.
When she finally arrived at work after seeing the doctor she was sent straight into one of the meeting rooms where a senior HR person and a company lawyer awaited her. There she was presented with a compromise agreement by which, in return for substantial compensation, she would immediately cease working for Valtinos Enterprises and leave without disclosing her reasons for doing so to anyone.
The shock and humiliation of that meeting marked Merry long after the event. As soon as she realised that Angel wanted her out of the building and away from him, no matter what it cost him, she felt sick inside. Had he assumed that she would make a nuisance of herself in some way? His ruthless rejection and instant dismissal of what they had briefly shared shook her rigid and taught her a hard lesson. Angel always put himself first and evidently her continued presence at the office would make him uncomfortable. That she did not deserve such harsh treatment didn’t come into it for him.
In disgust and mortification Merry took the money she was offered because she felt she had no better alternative and she had to live until she found another job. But that was the day the first seed of her hatred had been sown...
CHAPTER THREE (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
‘FERGUS ASKED ME where he should take you tomorrow,’ Sybil volunteered, shooting Merry straight back into the present with that surprising announcement. ‘I thought that was a bit wet of him. I mean, doesn’t he have any ideas of his own? But obviously he wants you to enjoy yourself.’
A bit wet sounded all right to Merry, who was still reeling from the consequences of Angel’s me-me-me approach to life. A macho, self-assured man was hugely impressive and sexy only until he turned against you and became an enemy, armed to the teeth with legal sharks.
‘I suggested a trip to the seaside for you and Elyssa. I know you love the beach,’ Sybil mused. ‘Fergus does like children.’
‘Yes,’ Merry agreed quietly, scooping Elyssa off the older woman’s lap to feed her while wondering what it would have been like to have a father for her daughter. Would he have helped out with their child? Taken a real interest? She suppressed the thought, knowing it probably came from the reality that she had had to grow up without a father. She had, however, visited her father once, but his enraged betrayed wife had been present as well and the visit had been a disaster. Her father had only asked to see her on that one occasion and then never again.
The next morning, Merry finished drying her hair and took the time to apply a little make-up because Elyssa was having her morning nap. Pulling on skinny jeans and a vibrant cerise tee, she dug her feet into comfy shoes. She was heading downstairs again with Elyssa anchored on her hip when the phone rang. Breathless, she tucked it under her chin while she lowered her daughter to the hearth rug.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m in the office,’ her aunt told her curtly. ‘Elyssa’s father is here demanding to see her. I’ll keep him here with me until you come.’
Shock and disbelief engulfed Merry in a dizzy tide. She snatched Elyssa back off the rug and wondered frantically what to do with her daughter while she dealt with Angel, because she didn’t want him to see her. Her mind was a chaotic blur because she couldn’t imagine Angel travelling down to Suffolk just to see the child he had once done everything possible to avoid and deny. It was true that since he had been informed of Elyssa’s birth he had made repeated requests to meet his daughter, but Merry had seen no good reason to cater to his natural human curiosity and she herself wanted nothing more to do with him.
After all, as soon as Angel had learned that she was pregnant he had brought his lawyers in to handle everything. They had drawn up a legal agreement by which Merry was paid a ridiculous amount of money every month but only for as long as she kept quiet about her daughter’s parentage. Merry currently paid the money into a trust she had set up for Elyssa’s future, reckoning that that was the best she could do for her daughter.
She left the cottage with Elyssa tucked into her well-padded pushchair, her toy bunny clutched between her fingers. Walking into the rescue centre, she saw a long black limousine sitting parked and she swallowed hard at the sight of it. Angel didn’t flaunt the Valtinos wealth but even at the office she had seen occasional glimpses of a world and lifestyle far different from her own. He wore diamond cufflinks and his shirts had monograms embroidered on the pockets. Every garment he wore was tailored by hand at great expense and he thought nothing of it because from birth he had never known anything else.
She pushed the buggy into the barn, where the kennel staff hung out when they took a break. ‘Will you watch Elyssa for me for ten minutes?’ she asked anxiously of the three young women, chattering over mugs of coffee.
‘Can we take her out of the pram and play with her?’ one of them pressed hopefully.
A smile softened Merry’s troubled face. ‘Of course...’ she agreed, hastening out again to head for the rescue centre office.
What on earth was Angel doing here? And how could she face him when the very idea of facing him again made her feel queasy with bad memories? They had last met the day she’d tracked him down to tell him that she was pregnant. Those liquid-honey eyes had turned black-diamond hard, his shock and distaste stark as a banner.
‘Do you want it?’ he had asked doubtingly, earning her hatred with every syllable of that leading question. ‘Scratch that. It was politically incorrect. Naturally I will support you in whatever choice you make.’
How could she come back from that punishing recollection and act normally? She thought of Elyssa’s innocent sweetness and the reality that her father didn’t want her, had never wanted her, and the knowledge hurt Merry, making her wonder if her own father had felt the same about her. Even worse, she was convinced that allowing any kind of contact between father and daughter would only result in Elyssa getting hurt at some later stage. In her opinion, Angel was too selfish and too spoiled to be a caring or committed parent.
As she rounded the corner of the tiny office building a startling scene met her eyes. Poised outside the door, Sybil had her shotgun aimed at Angel, who was predictably lounging back against the wall of the kennels opposite as though he had not a care in the world.
‘Will you call this madwoman off me?’ Angel demanded with derisive sibilance when he heard her footsteps and without turning his arrogant dark head. ‘She won’t let me move.’
‘It’s all right, Sybil,’ Merry said tautly. ‘Elyssa is in the barn.’
Angel’s arrogant dark head flipped, the long, predatory power of his lean, strong body suddenly rippling with bristling tension. ‘What’s my daughter doing in a barn? And who’s looking after her?’ he demanded in a driven growl.
Sybil lowered her shotgun and broke it open to safely extract the cartridges. ‘I’ll take her back home with me,’ she declared, entirely ignoring Angel.
‘Come into the office and we’ll talk,’ Merry framed coldly as his dark eyes locked on her tense face.
‘I’m not very good at talking,’ Angel acknowledged without embarrassment as he straightened. ‘That’s why I use lawyers.’
In an angry defensive movement, Merry thrust wide the door of the little office before spinning back round to say, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I warned you that I intended to visit,’ Angel bit out impatiently.
Merry thought about the letter she had bottled out of opening and uneasily looked at him for the first time in months. The sheer power of his volatile presence made her tummy turn hollow and her legs wobble. He was still so wickedly beautiful that he made her teeth clench with fierce resentment. It wasn’t fair that he should look so untouched by all that had passed between them, that he should stand there perfectly at his ease and glossily well groomed, sheathed in his elegant charcoal-grey designer suit. It was especially unfair that he should still have the nerve to voice a demand for a right he had surrendered entirely of his own volition before their daughter was even born. ‘And I’ve already told your lawyers that I won’t accept any kind of visit from you!’
‘I won’t accept that, not even if I have to spend the rest of my life and yours fighting you.’ Angel mapped those boundaries for her, wanting her to know that there would be no escape from his demands until he got what he wanted. He would not accept defeat, regardless of what it cost him. He had lost his father’s respect and he was determined to retrieve it and get to know his child.
Frowning, black brows lowering, he studied Merry, incredulous at her continuing defiance while marvelling at the quiet inner strength he sensed in her, which he had never noticed in a woman before. She had cut her hair, which now fell in glossy abundance to just below her shoulders. He was ridiculously disappointed by that fashion update. There had been something ultra-feminine about that unusually long hair that he had liked. She was also thinner than she had been and there had not been much of her to begin with, he conceded reflectively. She looked like a teenager with her long, coltish legs outlined by distressed denim and with her rounded little breasts pushing at the cotton of her top so that he could see the prominent points of her lush nipples. He went hard and gritted his teeth, furious with himself for that weakness but... Thee mou, shorn of her conservative office apparel, she looked ridiculously sexy.
‘Why can’t you simply move on from this and forget we exist?’ Merry demanded in fierce frustration. ‘A year ago, that’s what you wanted and I gave it to you. I signed everything your legal team put in front of me. You didn’t want to be a father. You didn’t want to know anything about her and you didn’t want her associated with your precious name. What suddenly changed?’
Angel’s lean, hard jaw line took on an aggressive slant. ‘Maybe I’ve changed,’ he admitted, sharply disconcerting her.
Merry’s tense face stiffened with suspicion. ‘That’s doubtful. You are what you are.’
‘Everyone is capable of change and sometimes change simply happens whether you want it to or not,’ Angel traded, his lean, dark features taut. ‘When you first told me that you were pregnant a year ago, I didn’t think through what I was doing. Gut instinct urged me to protect my way of life. I listened to my lawyers, took their advice and now we’ve got...now we’ve got an intolerable mess.’
Merry forced herself to breathe in deep and slow and stay calm. He sounded sincere but she didn’t trust him. ‘It’s the way you made it and now you have to live with it.’
Angel threw back his broad shoulders and lifted his arrogant dark head high, effortlessly dominating the small cluttered room. Even though Merry was a comfortable five feet eight inches tall, he was well over six feet in height and stood the tallest in most gatherings. ‘I can’t live with it,’ he told her with flat finality. ‘I will continue to fight for access to my daughter.’
The breath fluttered in Merry’s drying throat, consternation and fury punching up through her, bringing a flood of emotion with it. ‘I hate you, Angel! If you make any more threats, if you bombard me with more legal letters, I will hate you even more! When is enough enough?’ she hurled at him with bitter emphasis.
‘When I can finally establish a normal relationship with my daughter,’ Angel responded, his lean, strong face set with stubborn resolve. ‘It is my duty to establish that relationship and I won’t shirk it.’
‘The way you shirked everything else that went with fatherhood?’ Merry scorned. ‘The responsibility? The commitment? The caring? I was just a pregnant problem you threw money at!’
‘I won’t apologise for that. I was raised to solve problems that way,’ Angel admitted grittily. ‘I was taught to put my faith in lawyers and to protect myself first.’
‘Angel...you are strong enough to protect yourself in a cage full of lions!’ Merry shot back at him wrathfully. ‘You didn’t need the lawyers when I wasn’t making any demands!’
A ton of hurt and turbulent emotion was sucking Merry down but she fought it valiantly. She was trying so hard not to throw pointless recriminations at him. In an effort to put a physical barrier between them she flopped down in the chair behind the desk. ‘Did you ever...even once...think about feelings?’ she prompted involuntarily.
Angel frowned at her, wondering what she truly wanted from him, wondering how much he would be willing to give in return for access to his daughter. It wasn’t a calculation he wanted to do at that moment, not when she was sitting there, shoulders rigid, heart-shaped face stiff and pale as death. ‘Feelings?’ he repeated blankly.
‘My feelings,’ Merry specified helplessly. ‘How it would feel for me to sleep with a man one night and go into work the next day and realise that he couldn’t even stand to have me stay in the same building to do my job?’
Angel froze as if she had fired an ice gun at him, colour receding beneath his bronzed skin, his gorgeous dark eyes suddenly screened by his ridiculously luxuriant black lashes. ‘No, I can’t say I did. I didn’t view it in that light,’ he admitted curtly. ‘I thought separation was the best thing for both of us because our relationship had crossed too many boundaries and got out of hand. I also ensured that your career prospects were not damaged in any way.’
Merry closed her eyes tight, refusing to look at him any longer. He had once told her that he didn’t do virgins and it seemed that he didn’t do feelings either. He was incapable of putting himself in her shoes and imagining how she had felt. ‘I felt...absolutely mortified that day, completely humiliated, hurt,’ she spelt out defiantly. ‘The money didn’t soften the blow and I only took it because I didn’t know how long it would take for me to find another job.’
Angel saw pain in her pale blue eyes and heard the emotion in her roughened voice. Her honesty unnerved him, flayed off a whole layer of protective skin, and he didn’t like how it made him feel. ‘I had no desire to hurt you, there was no such intent,’ he countered tautly. ‘I realised that our situation had become untenable and in that line I was guiltier than you because I made all the running.’
It was an acknowledgement of fault that would once have softened her. He had created that untenable situation and brutally ditched her when he had had enough of it but his admission didn’t come anywhere near soothing the tight ball of hurt in her belly. ‘You could have talked to me personally,’ she pointed out, refusing to drop the subject.
‘I’ve never talked about stuff like that. I wouldn’t know where to begin,’ Angel confessed grimly.
‘Well, how could you possibly forge a worthwhile bond with a daughter, then?’ Merry pressed. ‘The minute she annoys you or offends you will you turn your back on her the way you turned your back on me?’
Angel flashed her a seethingly angry appraisal. ‘Not for one minute have you and that baby been out of my mind since the day you told me you were pregnant! I did not turn my back on you. I made proper provision for both of you.’
‘Yeah, you threw money at us to keep us at a safe distance, yet now here you are breaking your own rules,’ Merry whispered shakily.
‘What is the point of us wrangling like this?’ Angel questioned with rank impatience. ‘This is no longer about you and I. This involves a third person with rights of her own even if she is still only a baby. Will you allow me to meet my daughter this afternoon?’
‘Apart from everything else—like it being immaterial to you that I hate and distrust you,’ Merry framed with thin restraint, ‘today’s out of the question. I’ve got a date this afternoon and we’re going out.’
Angel tensed, long, powerful muscles pulling taut. He could not explain why he was shocked by the idea of her having a date. Maybe he had been guilty of assuming that she was too busy being a mother at present to worry about enjoying a social life. But the concept of her enjoying herself with another man inexplicably outraged and infuriated him and the vision of her bedding another man when he had been the first, the only, made him want to smash something.
His lean brown hands clenched into fists. ‘A date?’ he queried as jaggedly as if he had a piece of glass in his throat.
Merry stood up behind the desk and squared her slim shoulders. ‘Yes, he’s taking us to the beach. You have a problem with that as well?’
Us? The realisation that another man, some random, unknown stranger, had access to his daughter when he did not heaped coals of fire on Angel’s proud head. He snatched in a stark breath, fighting with all his might to cage his hot temper and his bitterness. ‘Yes, I do. Can’t you leave her with your aunt and grant me even ten minutes with my own child?’ he demanded rawly.
‘I’m afraid there isn’t time today.’ Merry swallowed the lump in her throat, that reminder that Elyssa had rights of her own still filtering back through her like a storm warning, making her appreciate that every decision she made now would have to be explained and defended to satisfy her daughter’s questions some years down the road. And just how mean could she afford to be to Angel before her daughter would question her attitude? Question whether her mother had given her daughter’s personal needs sufficient weight and importance? Her tummy dive-bombed, her former conviction that she was totally in the right taking a massive dent.
Nobody was ever totally in the right, she reminded herself reluctantly. There were always two sides to every story, every conflict. She was letting herself be influenced by her own feelings, not looking towards the future when Elyssa would demand answers to certain tough questions relating to her father. And did she really want to put herself in the position of having refused to allow her daughter’s flesh and blood to even see her? Dully it dawned on her that that could well be a step too far in hostilities. Angel had hurt her, but that was not indisputable proof that he would hurt his daughter.
‘Pick another day this week,’ she invited him stiffly, watching surprise and comprehension leap like golden flames into his vivid eyes. ‘But you make your arrangements with me, not through your lawyers. You visit for an hour. Let’s not raise the bar too high, let’s keep it simple. I won’t let you take her out anywhere without me and I don’t want you arriving with some fancy nanny in tow.’
His dramatic dark eyes shone bright, a tiny muscle jerking taut at the corner of his wide, sensual mouth. He swung away, momentarily turning his back on her before swinging back and nodding sombrely in agreement with her strictures. But in those revealing few seconds she had recognised the stormy flare of anticipation in his stunning gaze, finally registering that he had been serious in his approach and that he did genuinely want to meet his infant daughter.
‘Tomorrow morning, then,’ Angel pronounced decisively. ‘We’ll take it from there.’
Take what from where? she almost questioned but she ducked it, worn out by the sheer stress of dealing with him. Inside herself she was trembling with the strain of standing straight and unafraid and hiding her fearful anxiety from him because she knew that Angel would pounce on weakness like a shark catching the scent of blood. ‘About ten,’ she suggested carefully. ‘I have someone to see at half eleven.’
Angel gritted his even white teeth, wanting to ask if she was seeing the boyfriend again, but he had no intention of being foolish enough to ask questions he had no right to demand answers to. She had been under covert surveillance for weeks and he would soon identify the boyfriend from the records he had yet to examine. His mouth quirked because he knew she would be outraged if she knew he was paying a private firm to watch her every move.
But, when it came to protecting a member of the Valtinos family, Angel had no inhibitions. Hired security was as much a part of his life as it was for his mother. Safety came first and his daughter would be at risk of kidnapping were anyone to work out who had fathered her. It was his duty to safeguard his child and he would not apologise for the necessity.
Merry opened the office door to urge him out and followed him to where the limousine sat parked. ‘I live in the cottage at the front gate,’ she informed him.
‘I thought you lived with your aunt,’ Angel admitted with a frown.
‘When I became a mother I thought it was time for us to get our own space. Sybil practically raised me. I didn’t want her to feel that she had to do the same for my daughter,’ Merry confided ruefully.
In the summer sunlight she studied Angel’s lean, strong face, marvelling at the sleek symmetry of the hard cheekbones and hollows that enhanced his very masculine features. He was a literal work of art. It was little wonder that she had overreacted to his interest and refused to accept how shallow that interest was, she told herself squarely, struggling to calm the stabs of worry that erupted at the prospect of having any further dealings with him.
She would cope. She had to cope. So far she had contrived to cope with everything Angel Valtinos had thrown at her, she reminded herself with pride. As long as she remembered who and what he was, she would be fine...wouldn’t she?
CHAPTER FOUR (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
‘LETTING ELYSSA’S FATHER visit is the right way to go,’ Fergus opined, scrutinising her troubled face with concern before turning to gaze out to sea. ‘He treated you badly but that doesn’t automatically mean he’ll be a bad father. Only time will answer that.’
Merry went pink. As Fergus had combined picking her up with an examination of the latest arrival at the rescue centre, he had heard about the fuss created by Angel’s visit earlier in the day and had naturally asked her about it. She looked up at Fergus, drawn by his calm and acceptance of her situation, wondering if it was possible to feel anything or even trust a man again. Fergus stood about an inch under six feet. He had cropped brown hair and cheerful blue eyes and she had never heard him so much as raise his voice while she had already witnessed his compassion and regret when he was treating abused animals.
‘Are you over him?’ Fergus asked her bluntly.
Merry vented a shaken laugh. ‘I certainly hope so.’
And then he kissed her, wrapping her close in the sea breeze, and she froze only momentarily in surprise. Suddenly she found herself wanting to feel more than she actually felt because he was a good guy, ostensibly straightforward and as different from Angel as day was to night. Angel was all twists and turns, dark corners and unpredictability and she had never had any genuine hope of a future with him. Furthermore, Angel had never been her type. He wasn’t steady or open or even ready to settle down with conventional expectations. Feelings were foreign and threatening to Angel yet he bristled with untamed emotion. As Fergus freed her mouth and kept an arm anchored to her spine she realised in horror-stricken dismay that she’d spent their entire kiss thinking about Angel and her face burned in shame and discomfiture.
* * *
Angel sat in his limo and perused the photo that had been sent to his phone while he angrily wondered if he was a masochist or, indeed, developing sad stalker tendencies. But no, he had to deal with the situation as it was, not as he would’ve preferred it to be. Even worse, Merry had just upped the stakes, ensuring that Angel had now to raise his game. He wanted to stalk down to that beach and beat the hell out of the opposition. Because that was what Fergus Wickham was: opposition, serious opposition.
And naturally, Angel was confident that he was not jealous. After all, with only one exception, he had never experienced jealousy. He had, however, once cherished a singularly pathetic desire for his mother to take as much of an interest in him as she took in her toy boys. He had only been about seven years old at the time, he reminded himself forgivingly, and a distinctly naïve child, fondly expecting that, his having spent all term at boarding school, his mother would make him the centre of her loving attention when he finally came home.
Well, he wasn’t that naïve now, Angel acknowledged grimly. From his earliest years he had witnessed how fleeting love was for a Valtinos. A Valtinos bought love, paid well for its upkeep, got bored in exactly that order. His mother ran through young men as a lawnmower ran through grass. By the time Angel was in his twenties he was dealing with blackmail attempts, compromising photos and sordid scandals all on his mother’s behalf. His mother had tremendous charm but she remained as immature and irresponsible as a teenager. Even so, she was the only mother he would ever have and at heart he was fond of her.
But he didn’t get jealous or possessive of lovers because he didn’t ever get attached to them or develop expectations of them. Expectations always led to disappointment. Merry, however, was in a different category because she was the mother of his daughter and Angel didn’t want her to have another man in her life. That was a matter of simple good sense. Another man would divide her loyalties, take her focus off her child and invite unflattering comparisons...
‘You heard the pitter patter of tiny feet and literally ran for the hills,’ his brother Vitale had summed up a week earlier. ‘Not a very promising beginning.’
No, it wasn’t, Angel conceded wrathfully while endlessly scrutinising that photo in which his daughter appeared only as a small indistinct blob anchored in a pram. He had screwed up but he was a terrific strategist and unstoppable once he had a goal. He didn’t even need an angle because his daughter was all the ammunition he required. Was Merry sleeping with that guy yet? Angel smouldered and scowled, beginning for the first time to scroll through the records he had studiously ignored to respect Merry’s privacy. To hell with that scruple, he thought angrily. He had to fight to protect what was his.
* * *
‘So, how are you planning to play it with Elyssa’s father tomorrow?’ Sybil asked that evening, having tried and failed to get much out of her niece concerning the date with Fergus.
Merry shrugged. ‘Cool, calm...’
‘He’s impossibly headstrong and obstinate,’ her aunt pronounced with disapproval. ‘I only cocked the gun because I didn’t want him landing on your doorstep unannounced but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘He isn’t familiar with the word no,’ Merry mused ruefully. ‘I do wish I’d treated him to it last year.’
‘Do you really wish you didn’t have Elyssa?’
Merry flushed and, thinking about that, shook her head in dismissal. ‘I thought I would when I was pregnant but once she was here, everything changed.’
‘Maybe it changed for Angel as well. Maybe he wasn’t lying about that. He does value family ties,’ Sybil remarked.
Merry frowned. ‘How do you know that?’
Sybil reddened, her eyes evasive. ‘Well, you told me he meets up with his father twice a month and never cancels...and naturally I’ve read about his mother, Angelina’s exploits in the newspapers. She’s a real nut-job—rich, stupid, fickle. If he’s still close to her, he has a high tolerance threshold for embarrassment. She’s not far off my age and the men in her bed are getting younger by the year.’
Merry’s eyes widened. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Shallow sexual relationships are all he saw growing up, all he’s ever had as an example to follow. It’s hardly surprising that he is the way he is. I won’t excuse him for the way he treated you but I do see that he doesn’t know any better,’ Sybil completed, recognising Merry’s surprise. ‘But you could teach him different.’
‘I don’t think you can domesticate a wild animal.’
Sybil rolled her eyes. ‘Elyssa has enough charisma to stop a charging rhinoceros.’
* * *
Merry tossed and turned in her bed, despising herself for her nervous tension. Angel had cast a long shadow over her afternoon with Fergus, depriving her of relaxation and appreciation. She had made hateful, unforgivable comparisons. On some secret, thoroughly inexcusable level, she still craved the buzz of excitement that Angel had filled her with and that unsettled and shamed her. After all, once the excitement had gone she had been left pregnant and alone and now her memory trailed back fifteen months...
Discovering that she was pregnant had proved a real shock for Merry because she had not seriously considered that that single accident was likely to result in conception and had hoped for the best. She had barely settled into a new and very challenging job, and falling pregnant had seemed like the worst possible news. She had suffered from severe morning sickness and at one stage had even feared she was on the brink of having a miscarriage. She had waited until she was over three months along before she’d even tried to contact Angel to tell him that she was carrying his child. She had never had his personal mobile number and had never got to speak to him when she’d phoned the office, suspecting that calls from her were on some discreet forbidden list. The prospect of sending a letter or an email that would probably be opened and read by a former colleague had made her cringe. In the end she had used her working knowledge of Angel’s diary and had headed to the hotel where he met his father for lunch twice a month.
That unwise but desperate move had put in motion the most humiliating, wounding encounter of Merry’s life. Angel had had a very tall and beautiful blonde with him when he entered the bar, a blonde with bare breasts on display under a gauzy see-through dress. She had looked like the sort of woman who didn’t ever wear underwear and every man in the place had stared lustfully at her, while she’d clung to Angel’s arm and giggled and touched him with easy confidence. Just looking at her, Merry had felt sick and ugly and plain and boring because pregnancy had not been kind to her. Her body had already been swelling and thickening, her eyes had been shadowed because she couldn’t sleep and the smell of most foods had made her nauseous. She had stayed concealed in the bar behind a book and round a corner while Angel, his companion and eventually his father had sat down to lunch on an outside terrace.
If Angel had not reappeared at the bar alone, she would probably simply have gone back to work without even trying to achieve her goal. But when she’d seen him she had forced herself up out of her seat and forward.
‘I have to speak to you in private,’ she had said. ‘It’s very important. It will only take five minutes.’
He had spun back from the bar to appraise her with cool, guarded eyes. ‘I’m listening.’
‘Could we go out into the foyer?’ she had pressed, very conscious of the number of people around them. ‘It would be more private.’
He had acquiesced with unconcealed reluctance. ‘What is this about?’ he had demanded as soon as they’d got there.
And then she had made her announcement and those expressive beautiful eyes of his had glittered like cold black diamonds, his consternation and annoyance obvious.
‘Do you want it?’ he had asked doubtingly, earning her hatred with every syllable of that leading question. ‘Scratch that. It was politically incorrect. Of course, I will support you in whatever choice you make.’ He had drawn out a business card and thrust it into her unwilling hand. ‘I will inform my lawyers. Please provide them with contact details and I will make provision for you.’
And that had been Angel’s knee-jerk response to unexpected fatherhood: brief and brutal and wholly unemotional and objective. Go away and I’ll give you cash to keep you quiet and at a distance.
Remembering that encounter, Merry shuddered and tears stung her eyes afresh. That was the final moment when she had faced the reality that she had given her body to a ruthlessly detached man without a heart. How could she let such a man come within ten feet of her precious, loving daughter? That question kept her awake until dawn. Suddenly keeping the peace and giving Angel another chance seemed the stuff of stupidity.
* * *
Having done his baby research diligently before his visit, Angel believed he was prepared for all eventualities. His second cousin had six-month-old twins and a toddler and lived in London. It was hard to say who had been most startled by his interest: his cousin at the shock of his curiosity or Angel at finding himself festooned in wriggling babies, who cried, pooped and threw up while poking and pulling at him. There were loads of babies in his extended family circle but Angel had always given them a very wide berth.
He put on his oldest jeans for the occasion and, after consulting his cousin, he purchased only one modest gift. Merry wouldn’t be impressed by a toyshop splurge. She was already saving every penny he was giving her into a trust for their daughter. Merry and her endless rainy-day fund, he thought incredulously, deeming her joyless, fearful attitude to spending money depressing. She was a natural-born hoarder of cash. If only his mother suffered from the same insecurity, he conceded wryly.
From upstairs, Merry watched the sleek, expensive car pull into the driveway. She had dressed smartly that morning. After all she had a potential new client coming at half eleven and she needed to look professional, so her hair was freshly washed, her make-up was on and she wore a summer dress that clung to her slender curves. What she wore had nothing whatsoever to do with Angel’s visit, except in so far as looking smart lifted her confidence, she told herself soothingly.
Angel sprang fluidly out of his car, his lean, powerful body clad in black jeans and a green sweater that was undoubtedly cashmere. He found English summers cold. She carried Elyssa downstairs. Her daughter wore one of the fashionable baby outfits that Sybil often bought her, a pretty blue floral tunic and leggings that reflected her eyes. The door knocker rapped twice and she hastily settled Elyssa down on the rug before rushing breathlessly back to the door, scolding herself for the unmistakeable sense of anticipation gripping her.
Angel stepped in and his stunning dark golden gaze locked to her with the most electrifying immediacy. Tension leapt through Merry along with a growing unease about the decision she had made. He looked amazing. He always looked amazing, she reminded herself mockingly, striving not to react in any way. But it was impossible. Her breath shortened in her tightening throat and her breasts tingled and a sensual warmth made her thighs press together.
Angel’s scrutiny roamed from the glossy bell of her dark hair, down to the modest neckline of the dress that clung to the delectably full swell of her breasts, before skimming down over her waist to define the feminine swell of her hips. He didn’t let himself look at her legs because she had fantastic legs and the heat pooling in his groin didn’t need that added encouragement. He didn’t know how she had contrived to get skinnier and at the same time more interestingly curvy but he especially didn’t like the feeling of being sexually drawn against his will.
‘Elyssa’s in here,’ she framed stiffly.
‘That’s a Greek name.’
‘Yes, she’s entitled to a Greek name,’ Merry proclaimed defensively.
‘I wasn’t...criticising.’ Angel registered the white-knuckled grip she had on the edge of the door and recognised that he would be treading on eggshells every time he spoke. He gritted his teeth on the awareness but as Merry pushed the door fully open he finally saw his daughter and for several timeless moments stayed rigid in the doorway drinking in the sight of her.
‘She’s got my hair,’ he almost whispered, moving forward and then dropping down onto the rug a couple of feet from his daughter. ‘But curls look cute on her...’
Merry watched him closely, registering that he had enough sense not to try to get too familiar too fast with a baby that didn’t know him. No, Angel was far too clever to make an obvious wrong move, she reflected bitterly, before catching herself up on that suspicious but hardly charitable thought and crossing the room to go into the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Don’t go all polite on me,’ she said drily.
‘What do you expect?’ Angel shot her a sardonic glance of rebuke. ‘I know you don’t want me here.’
Merry paled at that blunt statement. ‘I’m trying not to feel like that.’
She put on the kettle and watched him remove a toy from his pocket, a brightly coloured teething toy, which he set on the rug at his feet. It was a strategic move and Elyssa quickly fulfilled his expectations by extending the toy she held to him in the hope of gaining access to the new and more interesting one. Angel accepted it and handed over his gift. Elyssa chortled with satisfaction and bestowed a huge smile on him before sticking the new toy into her mouth and chewing happily on it.
‘She has your eyes,’ Angel remarked. ‘She’s incredibly pretty.’
In spite of her desire to remain unmoved, Merry flushed with pride. ‘I think so too.’
‘She’s also unmistakeably mine,’ Angel intoned with unashamed approval.
‘Well, you already knew that,’ Merry could not resist reminding him. ‘She was DNA tested after she was born.’
Angel winced. ‘I never once doubted that the child you were carrying was mine but in view of inheritance rights...and us not being married...it was best to have it legally confirmed.’ He hesitated before turning his classic bronzed profile to study her levelly. ‘But I let the lawyers take over and run the whole show and that was a mistake. I see that now.’
Merry jerked her chin in acknowledgement, not trusting herself to speak.
‘I didn’t know any other way to handle it,’ Angel admitted grimly. ‘I took the easy way out...unfortunately the easy way turned out to be the wrong way.’
Taken aback by that admission, Merry dragged in a ragged breath and turned away to make the coffee. A fat burst of chuckles from her daughter made her flip back and she saw Elyssa bouncing on the rug, held steady by Angel’s hands and revelling in both the exercise and the attention.
When Elyssa tired of that, Angel turned out her toy box for her. Tiger slunk out from under the chair where he had been hiding since Angel’s arrival and moved hesitantly closer to investigate.
‘Diavolos!’ Angel exclaimed in surprise. ‘Where did the dog come from?’
Startled by Angel’s deep voice, Tiger shot back under the chair.
‘He’s been here all along. His name’s Tiger.’
‘Kind of nervous for a dog called Tiger and hardly a stream-lined predator.’
‘OK. He’s fat, you can say it. He’s addicted to food and he wasn’t socialised properly when he was young. He came from a puppy farm that was closed down,’ Merry volunteered, extending a cup of black coffee to Angel as he vaulted lithely upright, suddenly dominating the small room with his height and the breadth of his shoulders.
‘I didn’t know you were keen on dogs.’
‘I practically grew up helping in the rescue centre.’ Merry could hear herself gabbling because her heart was pounding wildly in her chest as Angel moved towards her and even breathing was a challenge beneath the onslaught of his gleaming dark golden eyes. ‘I—’
‘Tell it like it is,’ Angel urged sibilantly.
Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You still want me as much as I want you,’ he breathed huskily, sipping his coffee as if he were merely making casual conversation.
‘I don’t want to have that sort of discussion with you,’ Merry told him curtly, colour burnishing her cheeks as she wondered if he really could tell that easily that she was still vulnerable around him. Not that she would do anything about it or let him do anything about it, she reasoned with pride. Attraction was nothing more than a hormonal trick and, in her case, a very dangerous misdirection.
‘Avoid? Deny?’ Angel derided, his beautiful wilful mouth curling, his smouldering gaze enhanced by unfairly long black lashes welded to her fast-reddening face. ‘What’s the point?’
‘If you continue this I’m going to ask you to leave,’ Merry warned thinly.
And genuine amusement engulfed Angel and laughter lit up his lean, dark features. ‘I’m not about to pounce on you with our daughter watching! Believe me, while she’s around, you’re safe,’ he assured her smoothly.
Inexplicably that little exchange made Merry feel foolish and rather as though she had ended up with egg on her face, which was burning like a furnace. Even now, many months after the event, she couldn’t laugh about what had happened between them. Looking back, it was as if blinding sunlight overlaid and blurred the explosive passion she couldn’t begin to explain and never wanted to experience again. Unfortunately for her, her body had a different ambition. One glimpse of Angel’s darkly handsome face and long, sleek, muscular frame and she was as tense as a bowstring, caught between forbidden pleasure at his sheer physical beauty and angry self-loathing at her susceptibility to it.
‘I brought lunch with me,’ Angel revealed, startling her.
Her eyes widened. ‘But I have a client due.’
‘I’ll return in an hour. You know we need to talk about Elyssa and how we move on from here,’ Angel pointed out as if it were the most reasonable and natural thing in the world when in truth they had never ever talked about anything.
‘Yes...yes, of course,’ she muttered uneasily, because she could see that a talk made sense and it was surely better to get it all over in one go and in one day, she told herself soothingly. ‘I should be free in an hour, but—’
‘I’ll make it an hour and a half,’ Angel cut in decisively as he moved towards the door.
Merry skimmed his arm with an uncertain finger to attract his attention. ‘I’m afraid Elyssa has...er...stained your sweater,’ she told him awkwardly.
His amused grin flashed perfect white teeth and enhanced the sculpted fullness of his wide, sensual mouth. ‘It’s not a problem. I brought a change of clothes with me.’
‘My goodness, you were organised,’ she mumbled in surprise as he strode down the path and leant down into his car, straightening to peel off the offending sweater and expose the flexing muscles of his bronzed and powerful torso. Her mouth ran dry and she stared, watching him pull on another sweater, black this time, before she closed the door.
She ignored her reeling senses to concentrate on what was truly important. Angel was unpredictable, she reminded herself worriedly, devious to a fault and dangerously volatile. What did he truly want from her? Why was he putting himself to so much trouble? Lunch? All of a sudden he was bringing her lunch? Merry was stunned by the concept and the planning that must have gone into that. Did Angel really want access to his daughter that badly? Did he have sufficient interest and staying power to want a long-term relationship with his daughter? And where did that leave her when she really didn’t want Angel to feature anywhere in her life?
You should’ve thought of that before you let him visit, Merry told herself in exasperation. Possibly Angel was only trying to smooth over the hostilities between them. And possibly she was a suspicious little shrew, still bitter and battered from her previous encounters with him. At the very least she ought to acknowledge that she would never ever second-guess Angel Valtinos and that he would always take her by surprise. After all, that was how he did business and how he thrived in a cut-throat world.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
MERRY SHOOK HANDS with her new client, who had got into a mess with his tax returns, and promised to update him on the situation within the week. Soon she would have to try to fit in a refresher course to update her knowledge of recent legislative changes, she reflected thoughtfully, incredibly keen to think of anything other than the awareness that Angel was sliding supple as a dancer out of his car as her visitor departed.
Sybil had swooped in to take enthusiastic charge of Elyssa soon after Angel’s earlier departure. Hearing of the lunch plan, she had laughed and drily observed, ‘He’s treating you to a charm offensive. Well, if you must have a serious talk with him, it’ll be easier not to have Elyssa grizzling for her lunch and her nap in the midst of it. Phone me when you want to steal her back.’
And once again, Merry had reflected how very, very lucky she had always been to have Sybil in her life, standing by her when life was tough, advising and supporting her, in short being the only caring mother figure that she had ever known. Sybil had cured the hurts inflicted by her kid sister’s lack of interest in and impatience with her child and, although Merry knew her aunt had been disappointed when she became pregnant without being in a serious relationship, she had kept her disappointment to herself and had instead focused her attention on how best to help her expectant niece.
‘Lunch,’ Angel told her carelessly, carting a large luxurious hamper in one hand.
‘I’ve got a terrace out the back. Since it’s sunny, we might as well eat there,’ Merry suggested, preferring the idea of that casual setting in which she thought Angel would be less intimidating.
‘This is unexpectedly pleasant,’ Angel remarked, sprawling down with innate grace on a wrought-iron chair and taking in the pleasant view of fields and wooded hills visible beyond the hedge.
‘This was Sybil’s Christmas surprise for us,’ Merry explained. ‘Her last tenant was elderly and the garden was overgrown. Sybil hired someone to fix it up and now Elyssa will have somewhere safe to play when she’s more mobile.’
‘You’re very close to your aunt,’ Angel commented warily. ‘She doesn’t like me.’
Crystalline blue eyes collided with his in challenge. ‘What did you expect?’ she traded.
Angel had not been prepared to meet with a condemnation that bold and unapologetic and his teeth clenched, squaring his aggressive jaw, the faint dark shadow of stubble already roughening his bronzed skin accentuating the hard slant of his shapely mouth.
‘Yes, you ensured I had enough money to survive but that was that,’ Merry stated before he could remind her of the reality.
Angel sidestepped that deeply controversial issue by ignoring it. Instead he opened the hamper and stacked utensils and dishes on the table and asked where his daughter was. After all, what could he say about his treatment of Merry? The facts were the facts and he couldn’t change them. He knew he had done everything wrong and he had acknowledged that. Didn’t his honesty and his regret lighten the scales even a little? Was she expecting him to grovel on hands and knees?
‘Wow...this is some spread,’ Merry remarked uneasily as she set out the food and he uncorked the bottle of wine and filled the glasses with rich red liquid. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘From one of my hotels,’ Angel responded with the nonchalance that was the sole preserve of the very rich.
Merry placed a modest selection of savoury bites on her plate and said tensely, ‘What did you want to discuss?’
‘Our future,’ Angel delivered succinctly while Tiger sat at his feet with little round pleading eyes pinned to the meat on his fork.
‘Nobody can foretell the future,’ Merry objected.
‘I can where we’re concerned,’ Angel assured her, every liquid syllable cool as ice. ‘Either we spend at least the next ten years fighting it out over Elyssa in court or...we get married and share her.’
Merry studied him over the top of her wine glass with steadily widening pale blue eyes, and then gulped in more wine than she intended and coughed and spluttered in the most embarrassing manner as she struggled to get a grip on her wildly fluctuating emotions. First he had frightened the life out of her by mentioning a court battle over her beloved daughter, and then he’d sent her spinning with a suggestion she had never dreamt that she would hear from his lips.
‘Married?’ she emphasised with a curled lip. ‘Are you crazy or just trying to unnerve me?’
Having forced himself to pull the pin on the marriage grenade straight away, Angel coiled back in his chair and savoured his wine. ‘It’s an unnerving idea for me as well. Apart from my mother, who wanders in and out of my properties, I’ve never lived with a woman before,’ he admitted curtly. ‘But we do need to think creatively to solve our current problems.’
‘I don’t have any problems right now. I also can’t believe that you want Elyssa so much after one little meeting that you would sink to what is virtually blackmail,’ Merry framed coldly, eyes glinting like chipped ice in the sunlight.
‘Oh, I would sink a lot lower than that and I think you know it,’ Angel traded without shame, unyielding dark golden eyes steady with stubborn resolve. ‘I will do whatever I have to do to get what I want...or in this case to ensure that my daughter benefits from a suitable home.’
‘But Elyssa already has a suitable home,’ Merry pointed out, working hard to stay calm and appear untouched by his threat of legal intervention. ‘We’re happy here. I have work that I can do at home and we have a decent life.’
‘Only not by my standards. Elyssa is my heir and will one day be a very wealthy woman. When you’re so prejudiced against spending my money, how do you expect her to adapt to my world when she becomes independent?’ he demanded with lethal cool.
Merry compressed her sultry mouth and lifted angrily out of her seat. ‘I’m not prejudiced!’ she protested. ‘I didn’t want to depend on your money. I simply prefer to stand on my own feet.’
Angel dealt her a perceptive appraisal that made her skin tighten uneasily over her bones. ‘Like me, you have trust issues and you’re very proud.’
‘Don’t you tell me that I have trust issues when you know absolutely nothing about me!’ Merry practically spat back at him in her fury. ‘Newsflash, Angel...we had two sexual encounters, not a relationship!’
Angel ran lingering hooded dark eyes over her slender figure and her aggressive stance, remembering that fire in bed, how it had stoked his own and resulted in a conflagration more passionate than anything he had ever known. As a rule, she kept that fire hidden, suppressed beneath her tranquil, prissy little surface, but around him she couldn’t manage that feat and he cherished that truth. Anger was much more promising than indifference.
Merry planted her hands on her curvy hips and flung him a fierce look of censure. ‘And don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she warned him, helplessly conscious of that smouldering sexual assessment. ‘It’s rude and inappropriate.’
Angel shifted lithely in his chair, murderously aware of his roaring arousal and the tightness of his jeans and marvelling at the reality that he could actually be enjoying himself in her company, difficult though she was. A slow-burning smile slashed his lean, strong face. ‘The burn is still there, glyka mou,’ he told her. ‘But let’s concentrate our energies on my solution for our future.’
‘That wasn’t a solution, that was fanciful nonsense!’ Merry hissed back at him. ‘You don’t want to marry me. You don’t want to marry anybody!’
‘But I’ll do it for Elyssa’s benefit because I believe that she needs a father as much as she needs a mother,’ Angel asserted levelly. ‘A father is not expendable. My father was very important in my life, even though he wasn’t able to be there for me as much as he would have liked.’
Unprepared for that level of honesty and gravity from a man as naturally secretive and aloof as Angel, Merry was bemused. ‘I never said you were expendable, for goodness’ sake,’ she argued less angrily. ‘That’s why I let you finally visit and meet her.’
‘How much of a relationship did you have with your own father?’ Angel enquired lethally.
Merry’s face froze. ‘I didn’t have one. My mother, Natalie, fell pregnant by her boss and he was married. I met him once but his wife couldn’t stand the sight of me, probably because I was the proof of his infidelity,’ she conceded uncomfortably. ‘He never asked to see me again. When it came to making a choice between me and his wife, naturally he chose his wife.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Angel disconcerted her with a look of sympathy that hurt her pride as much as a slap would have done.
‘Well, I’m not. I got by fine without him,’ Merry declared, lifting her chin.
‘Maybe you did.’ Angel trailed out the word, letting her know he wasn’t convinced by her face-saving claim. ‘But others don’t do so well without paternal guidance. My own mother grew up indulged in every financial way, but essentially without parents who cared enough about her to discipline her. She’s well past fifty now, although she doesn’t look it, but she’s still a rebellious teenager in her own head. I want my daughter to have stability. I don’t want her to go wild when she becomes an adult with the world at her feet along with every temptation.’
Involuntarily impressed by that argument, Merry shook her head. ‘That’s a long way off and if I don’t stand in the way of her having a relationship with you now, you’ll still be around.’
Angel lounged back in his chair and crossed an ankle over one knee, long, powerful thigh muscles flexing below tight, faded denim. He looked outrageously relaxed, as if he were posing for a publicity shot, and drop-dead gorgeous from the spill of glossy black curls to the golden caramel brilliance of his eyes. Merry dragged her guilty gaze from his thighs and his crotch, sudden heat rising inside her and burning her cheeks. His hard-boned, thoroughly raunchy masculine beauty broke through her defences every time she looked at him and it made her feel like a breathless fan girl.
‘But the bottom line is that unless we marry I won’t be around enough,’ Angel intoned with grim emphasis. ‘I spend at least fifty per cent of the year abroad. I want her to meet my relatives and learn what it means to be a Valtinos...’
He could have said nothing more calculated to cool Merry’s fevered response to him. Dismay filled her because she understood the message he was giving her. As soon as Elyssa was old enough, Angel would be spiriting her out to Greece, taking her away from her mother, leaving Merry behind, shorn of control of what happened in her child’s life. It was a sobering prospect.
‘Did you mean it...what you said about fighting me in court?’ Merry prompted angrily.
‘For once in my life I was playing it straight,’ Angel declared.
‘But where the heck did all this suddenly come from?’ Merry demanded in heated denial. ‘You didn’t want anything to do with us last winter!’
‘It took time for me to come to terms with how I felt about fatherhood. At first I thought the most important objective was to conserve my world as it was. I thought I could turn my back on you and my child but I found that I couldn’t,’ Angel breathed in a roughened undertone as though the words were being extracted forcibly from him. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about her...or you.’
‘Me?’ Merry gasped in sharp disbelief. ‘Why would you have been thinking about me?’
Angel lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in questioning doubt. ‘So, I’m human. Learning that a woman is carrying your child is an unexpectedly powerful discovery—’
‘Angel,’ Merry cut in without hesitation, ‘let’s come back down to earth here. Learning that I was pregnant sent you into retreat so fast you left a smoke trail in your wake!’
‘And all I learned was that there was no place to run from reality,’ Angel countered with sardonic bite. ‘I fought my curiosity for a long time before I finally gave way to it and asked to see her. You said no repeatedly but here we are now, supposedly acting like adults. I’m trying to be honest... I’m trying not to threaten you but I’ve come to see marriage as the best option for all three of us.’
‘You threatened me quite deliberately!’ Merry slung at him furiously.
‘You need to know that I’m serious and that this is not some whim that will go away if you wait for long enough. I’m here to stay in your lives,’ Angel intoned harshly.
‘Well, that’s going to be rather awkward when it’s not what I want and I will fight you every step of the way!’ Merry flung back at him. ‘You wanted me out of your life and I got out. You can’t force me back.’
‘If it means my daughter gets the future she deserves, I will force you,’ Angel bit out in a raw, wrathful undertone as he plunged upright, casting a long dark shadow over the table. ‘You need to accept that this is not just about you and me any more, it’s about her!’
Merry paled. ‘I do accept that.’
‘No, you don’t. You’re still set on punishing me for the selfish decisions I made and that approach isn’t going to get us anywhere. I don’t want to go to court and fight but I will if I have no alternative!’ Angel shot at her furiously, dark golden eyes scorching, his Greek accent edging every vowel with piercing sibilance in the afternoon stillness. ‘When I asked you to marry me I was trying to show respect!’
‘You wouldn’t know respect if it bit you on the arse!’ Merry flamed back at him with helpless vulgarity. ‘And I am so sorry I didn’t grovel with gratitude at the offer of a wedding ring the way you obviously expected.’
‘No, you’re not sorry!’ Angel roared back at her equally loudly. ‘You enjoyed dragging me over the coals, questioning my motivation and commitment, and not for one minute did you seriously consider what I was offering...’
‘Stop shouting at me!’ Merry warned him, reeling in shock from that sudden volatile surge of anger from him, not having appreciated that that rage could lie so close to his seemingly cool surface.
‘I’ve said sorry every damn way I know how but you’re after revenge, not a way forward, and there’s nothing I can do to change that!’ Angel growled, throwing open the back door to go back into the house and leave.
There was sufficient truth in that stormy welter of accusations to draw Merry up short and make her question her attitude. ‘I’m not after revenge...that’s ridiculous!’ she protested weakly, closing a staying hand over his arm as he shot her yet another murderous smouldering glance before turning back to the door.
Sorry every damn way I know how rang afresh in her ears and tightened her grip on his muscular forearm. ‘Angel, please...let’s calm down.’
‘For what good reason would I calm down?’ Angel raked down at her. ‘This was a pointless attempt on my part to change things between us.’
Her teeth were chattering with nerves. ‘Yes, I can see that but you storming off in a rage is only going to make things worse,’ she muttered ruefully. ‘Maybe I haven’t been fair to you, maybe I haven’t given you a decent hearing, but you came at me with this like a rocket out of nowhere and I don’t adapt quickly to new ideas the way you do!’
‘You adapted fast enough to me in bed!’ Angel husked with sizzling clarity.
‘That’s your massive ego talking!’ Merry launched back at him irately.
‘No, it’s not,’ Angel growled, yanking her up against him, shifting his lithe hips, ensuring she recognised how turned-on he was. ‘You make me want you.’
‘It’s my fault?’ Merry carolled in disbelief even as her whole body tilted into his, as magnetised by his arousal as a thirsty plant suddenly placed within reach of water. Little tremors were running through her as she struggled to get a grip on the prickling tightness of her nipples and the heat building between her thighs. An unbearable ache followed that she positively shrank from reliving in his vicinity. She wanted to slap herself, she wanted to slap him, she wanted to freeze the moment and replay it her way, in which she would draw back from him in withering disgust and say something terribly clever and wounding that would hold him at bay.
‘You just can’t bring yourself to admit that you’re the same,’ Angel gritted, bending his arrogant dark head, one hand meshing into the tumble of her hair to drag her head back and expose her throat. His mouth found that slender corded column and nipped and tasted up to her ear, awakening a shower of tingling sensation, and she was electrified and dizzy with longing, wanting what she knew she shouldn’t, wanting with a hunger suppressed and denied for too many months, craving the release he could give.
And then he kissed her, crushing her ripe mouth, his tongue plunging and retreating, and she saw stars and whirling multicoloured planets behind her lowered lids while her body fizzed like a firework display, leaving her weak with hunger. She kissed him back, hands rising to delve into the crisp luxuriance of his hair, framing, holding, needing. It was frantic, out of control, the way it always was for them.
Angel wrenched her back from him, long brown fingers biting into her slim shoulders to keep her upright and gazing up into his blazing liquid-honey eyes. ‘No, I’m not a one-trick pony or a cheap one-night stand. You’ll have to marry me to get any more of that,’ he told her with derision as he slapped a business card down on the table. ‘My phone number...should you think better of your attitude today.’
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KIM LAWRENCE
LYNNE GRAHAM
The Secret Valtinos Baby by Lynne GrahamHis seduction had life-changing consequencesNow her boss is back—with marriage in mind!Personal assistant Merry Armstrong couldn’t resist Angel Valtinos’s sensual charisma. The Greek awakened her with his touch and left her pregnant! When Angel discovers his heir, duty compels him to act. Despite Merry’s independence, Valtinos’s legacy must be legitimised—and seducing her into becoming his wife will be his biggest challenge!The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest by Kim LawrenceThey shared a night of mindless passion……now he’ll take her once again!Reeling from his best friend’s death, Greek shipping magnate Nik Latsis found oblivion in the arms of a stunning stranger. Since then, her innocence has haunted his dreams. And now Nik knows only another taste will rid him of his burning desire. But Nik will need more than seductive charm if he’s to entice feisty Chloe back into his bed…
About the Authors (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, who knocks everything over, a very small terrier, who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in Anglesey with her university lecturer husband, assorted pets who arrived as strays and never left, and sometimes one or both of her boomerang sons. When she’s not writing she loves to be outdoors gardening, or walking on one of the beaches for which the island is famous—along with being the place where Prince William and Catherine made their first home!
Also By Lynne Graham
Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy
His Queen by Desert Decree
Brides for the Taking miniseries
The Desert King’s Blackmailed Bride
The Italian’s One-Night Baby
Sold for the Greek’s Heir
Vows for Billionaires miniseries
The Secret Valtinos Baby
And look out for the next book
Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess
Available April 2018
Also By Kim Lawrence
Maid for Montero
Captivated by Her Innocence
A Secret Until Now
The Heartbreaker Prince
One Night with Morelli
The Sins of Sebastian Rey-Defoe
Her Nine Month Confession
One Night to Wedding Vows
Surrendering to the Italian’s Command
A Ring to Secure His Crown
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Secret Valtinos Baby/The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest
The Secret Valtinos Baby
Lynne Graham
The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest
Kim Lawrence
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-09557-0
THE SECRET VALTINOS BABY/THE GREEK’S ULTIMATE CONQUEST
The Secret Valtinos Baby © 2018 Lynne Graham The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest © 2018 Kim Lawrence
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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Table of Contents
Cover (#ufba65859-9463-545f-8bff-1cc77808da5d)
About the Authors (#ucbeabdf8-ed97-5331-b369-072b7defa9b2)
Booklist (#u5e068188-175e-51d1-9723-c17b0618c961)
Title Page (#u2a49a9aa-4b65-537b-8f77-fba4222f8ac0)
Copyright (#ud503f0ec-17ba-55e5-ac10-1006173c2c2d)
The Secret Valtinos Baby (#u137255de-c0d2-5984-a614-d387860d96a6)
Back Cover Text (#uf2c230b5-8636-51bf-af2f-95d178a667af)
CHAPTER ONE (#u9d5819ff-89c6-5c51-b5f8-228914fb38d2)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7aa9aa31-5ffc-5479-9afe-66887abf851b)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc4783474-731d-563f-b47f-9130202de3ea)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u60e74006-e124-5489-9b5c-c0a77f1b20c0)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ub38cd70b-f03d-5f0d-84e0-4577d8b8a913)
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)
The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest (#litres_trial_promo)
Back Cover Text (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
The Secret Valtinos Baby (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
Lynne Graham
His seduction had life-changing consequences
Now her boss is back—with marriage in mind!
Personal assistant Merry Armstrong couldn’t resist Angel Valtinos’s sensual charisma. The Greek awakened her with his touch and left her pregnant! When Angel discovers his heir, duty compels him to act. Despite Merry’s independence, Valtinos’s legacy must be legitimized—and seducing her into becoming his wife will be his biggest challenge!
CHAPTER ONE (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
THE GREEK BILLIONAIRE, Angel Valtinos, strode into his father’s office suite to find both his brothers waiting in Reception and he stopped dead, ebony brows skating up. ‘What is this? A family reunion?’
‘Or Papa is planning to carpet us for something,’ his Italian half-brother, Prince Vitale Castiglione, commented with perceptible amusement because they were all beyond the age where parental disapproval was a normal source of concern.
‘Does he make a habit of that?’ Zac Da Rocha demanded with a frown.
Angel met Vitale’s eyes and his jawline squared, neither passing comment. Zac, their illegitimate Brazilian sibling, was pretty much a wild card. As he was a new and rather mysterious addition to the family circle his brothers had yet to fully accept him. And trust came no more easily to the suspicious Angel than it did to Vitale.
Vitale grinned. ‘You’re the eldest,’ he reminded Angel. ‘You get top billing and first appearance.’
‘Not sure I want it on this occasion,’ Angel conceded, but he swiftly shrugged off the faint and comically unfamiliar sense of unease assailing his innately rock-solid confidence.
After all, Charles Russell had never played the heavy father in his sons’ lives, but even without exercising that authority he had still been a remarkably decent father, Angel conceded reflectively. Charles had not stayed married to either his or Vitale’s mother for very long but he had taken a keen interest post-divorce in fostering and maintaining a close relationship with his sons. Angel had often had cause to be grateful for his father’s stable approach to life and the shrewd business brain he suspected he had inherited from him. His mother was a thoroughly flighty and frivolous Greek heiress, whose attitude to childcare and education would have been careless without his father’s stipulations on his son’s behalf.
Charles Russell crossed his office to greet his eldest son. ‘You’re late,’ he told him without heat.
‘My board meeting ran over,’ Angel told him smoothly. ‘What’s this all about? When I saw Zac and Vitale in Reception I wondered if there was a family emergency.’
‘It depends what you call an emergency,’ Charles deflected, studying his very tall thirty-three-year-old eldest son, who topped him in height by several inches.
A son to be proud of, Charles had believed until very recently when the startling discovery of certain disquieting information had punctured his paternal pride. To be fair, Angel also carried the genes of a fabulously wealthy and pedigreed Greek family, more known for their self-destructiveness than their achievements. Even so, Charles had prided himself on Angel’s hugely successful reputation in the business world. Angel was the first Valtinos in two generations to make more money than he spent. A very astute high-achiever and a loyal and loving son, he was the very last child Charles had expected to disappoint him. Nonetheless, Angel had let him down by revealing a ruthless streak of Valtinos self-interest and irresponsibility.
‘Tell me what this is about,’ Angel urged with characteristic cool.
Charles rested back against his tidy desk, a still handsome man with greying hair in his early fifties. His well-built frame was tense. ‘When do you plan to grow up?’ he murmured wryly.
Angel blinked in bewilderment. ‘Is that a joke?’ he whispered.
‘Sadly not,’ his father confirmed. ‘A week ago, I learned from a source I will not share that I am a grandfather...’
Angel froze, his lean, extravagantly handsome features suddenly wiped clean of all animation, while his shrewd dark eyes hardened and veiled. In less than a split second, though, he had lifted his aggressive chin in grim acknowledgement of the unwelcome shock he had been dealt: an issue he had hoped to keep buried had been unexpectedly and most unhappily disinterred by the only man in the world whose good opinion he valued.
‘And, moreover, the grandfather of a child whom I will never meet if you have anything to do with it,’ Charles completed in a tone of regret.
Angel frowned and suddenly extended his arms in a very expansive Greek gesture of dismissal. ‘I thought to protect you—’
‘No, your sole motivation was to protect you,’ Charles contradicted without hesitation. ‘From the demands and responsibility of a child.’
‘It was an accident. Am I expected to turn my life upside down when struck by such a misfortune?’ Angel demanded in a tone of raw self-defence.
His father dealt him a troubled appraisal. ‘I did not consider you to be a misfortune.’
‘Your relationship with my mother was on rather a different footing,’ Angel declared with all the pride of his wealthy, privileged forebears.
A deep frown darkened the older man’s face. ‘Angel... I’ve never told you the whole truth about my marriage to your mother because I did not want to give you cause to respect her less,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But the fact is that Angelina deliberately conceived you once she realised that I wanted to end our relationship. I married her because she was pregnant, not because I loved her.’
Angel was startled by that revelation but not shocked, for he had always been aware that his mother was spoilt and selfish and that she could not handle rejection. His luxuriant black lashes lifted on challenging and cynical dark golden eyes. ‘And marrying her didn’t work for you, did it? So, you can hardly be suggesting that I marry the mother of my child!’ he derided.
‘No, marrying Angelina Valtinos didn’t work for me,’ Charles agreed mildly. ‘But it worked beautifully for you. It gave you a father with the right to interfere and with your best interests always at heart.’
That retaliation was a stunner and shockingly true and Angel gritted his even white teeth at the comeback. ‘Then I should thank you for your sacrifice,’ he said hoarsely.
‘No thanks required. The wonderful little boy grew up into a man I respect—’
‘With the obvious exception of this issue,’ Angel interjected tersely.
‘You have handled it all wrong. You called in the lawyers, those Valtinos vulture lawyers, whose sole motivation is to protect you and the Valtinos name and fortune—’
‘Exactly,’ Angel slotted in softly. ‘They protect me.’
‘But don’t you want to know your own child?’ Charles demanded in growing frustration.
Angel compressed his wide, sensual mouth, his hard bone structure thrown into prominence, angry shame engulfing him at that question. ‘Of course, I do, but getting past her mother is proving difficult.’
‘Is that how you see it? Is that who you are blaming for this mess?’ the older man countered with scorn. ‘Your lawyers forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for financial support and you made no attempt at that point to show enough interest to arrange access to your child.’
Angel went rigid, battling his anger, determined not to surrender to the frustrating rage scorching through him. He was damned if he was about to let the maddening baby business, as he thought of it, come between him and the father he loved. ‘The child hadn’t been born at that stage. I had no idea how I would feel once she was.’
‘Your lawyers naturally concentrated on protecting your privacy and your wealth. Your role was to concentrate on the family aspect,’ Charles asserted with emphasis. ‘Instead you have made an enemy of your child’s mother.’
‘That was not my intention. Using the Valtinos legal team was intended to remove any damaging personal reactions from our dealings.’
‘And how has the impersonal approach worked for you?’ Charles enquired very drily indeed.
Angel very nearly groaned out loud in exasperation. In truth, he had played an own goal, getting what he’d believed he wanted and then discovering too late that it wasn’t what he wanted at all. ‘She doesn’t want me to visit.’
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘Mine,’ Angel acknowledged fiercely. ‘But she is currently raising my child in unsuitable conditions.’
‘Yes, working as a kennel maid while raising the next Valtinos heiress isn’t to be recommended,’ his father remarked wryly. ‘Well, at least the woman’s not a gold-digger. A gold-digger would have stayed in London and lived the high life on the income you provided, not stranded herself in rural Suffolk with a middle-aged aunt while working for a living.’
‘My daughter’s mother is crazy!’ Angel bit out, betraying his first real emotion on the subject. ‘She’s trying to make me feel bad!’
Charles raised a dubious brow. ‘You think so? Seems to be a lot of sweat and effort to go to for a man she refuses to see.’
‘She had the neck to tell my lawyer that she couldn’t allow me to visit without risking breaching the non-disclosure agreement!’ Angel growled.
‘There could be grounds for that concern,’ his father remarked thoughtfully. ‘The paparazzi do follow you around and you visiting her would put a spotlight on her and the child.’
Angel drew himself up to his full six feet four inches and squared his wide shoulders. ‘I would be discreet.’
‘Sadly, it’s a little late in the day to be fighting over parental access. You should have considered that first and foremost in your dealings because unmarried fathers have few, if any, rights under British law—’
‘Are you suggesting that I marry her?’ Angel demanded with incredulity.
‘No.’ Charles shook his greying head to emphasise that negative. ‘That sort of gesture has to come from the heart.’
‘Or the brain,’ Angel qualified. ‘I could marry her, take her out to Greece and then fight her there for custody, where I would have an advantage. That option was suggested at one point by my legal team.’
Charles regarded his unapologetically ruthless son with concealed apprehension because it had never been his intention to exacerbate the situation between his son and the mother of his child. ‘I would hope that you would not even consider sinking to that level of deceit. Surely a more enlightened arrangement is still possible?’
But was it? Angel was not convinced even while he assured his concerned father that he would sort the situation out without descending to the level of dirty tricks. But was an access agreement even achievable?
After all, how could he be sure of anything in that line? Merry Armstrong had foiled him, blocked him and denied him while subjecting him to a raft of outrageous arguments rather than simply giving him what he wanted. Angel was wholly unaccustomed to such disrespectful treatment. Every time she knocked him back he was stunned by the unfamiliarity of the experience.
All his life he had pretty much got what he wanted from a woman whenever he wanted it. Women, usually, adored him. Women from his mother to his aunts to his cousins and those in his bed worshipped him like a god. Women lived to please Angel, flatter him, satisfy him: it had always been that way in Angel’s gilded world of comfort and pleasure. And Angel had taken that enjoyable reality entirely for granted until the very dark day he had chosen to tangle with Merry Armstrong...
He had noticed her immediately, the long glossy mane of dark mahogany hair clipped in a ponytail that reached almost to her waist, the pale crystalline blue eyes and the pink voluptuous mouth that sang of sin to a sexually imaginative male. Throw in the lean, leggy lines of a greyhound and proximity and their collision course had been inevitable from day one in spite of the fact that he had never before slept with one of his employees and had always sworn not to do so.
* * *
Merry’s fingers closed shakily over the letter that the postman had just delivered. A tatty sausage-shaped Yorkshire terrier gambolled noisily round her feet, still overexcited by the sound of the doorbell and another voice.
‘Quiet, Tiger,’ Merry murmured firmly, mindful that fostering the little dog was aimed at making him a suitable adoptee for a new owner. But even as she thought that, she knew she had broken her aunt Sybil’s strict rules with Tiger by getting attached and by letting him sneak onto her sofa and up onto her lap. Sybil adored dogs but she didn’t believe in humanising or coddling them. It crossed Merry’s mind that perhaps she was as emotionally damaged as Tiger had been by abuse. Tiger craved food as comfort; Merry craved the cosiness of a doggy cuddle. Or was she kidding herself in equating the humiliation she had suffered at Angel’s hands with abuse? Making a mountain out of a molehill, as Sybil had once briskly told her?
Sadly the proof of that pudding was in the eating as she flipped over the envelope and read the London postmark with a stomach that divebombed in sick dismay. It was another legal letter and she couldn’t face it. With a shudder of revulsion laced with fear she cravenly thrust the envelope in the drawer of the battered hall table, where it could stay until she felt able to deal with it...calmly.
And a calm state of mind had become a challenge for Merry ever since she had first heard from the Valtinoses’ lawyers and dealt with the stress, the appointments and the complaints. Legally she seemed mired in a never-ending battle where everything she did was an excuse for criticism or another unwelcome and intimidating demand. She could feel the rage building in her at the prospect of having to open yet another politely menacing letter, a rage that she would not have recognised a mere year earlier, a rage that threatened to consume her and sometimes scared her because there had been nothing of the virago in her nature until her path crossed that of Angel Valtinos. He had taught her nothing but bitterness, hatred and resentment, all of which she could have done without.
But he had also, although admittedly very reluctantly, given her Elyssa...
Keen to send her thoughts in a less sour direction, Merry glanced from the kitchen into the tiny sitting room of the cottage where she lived, and studied her daughter where she sat on the hearth rug happily engaged with her toys. Her black hair was an explosion of curls round her cherubic olive-toned face, highlighting striking ice-blue eyes and a pouty little mouth. She had her father’s curls and her mother’s eyes and mouth and was an extremely pretty baby in Merry’s opinion, although she was prepared to admit that she was very biased when it came to her daughter.
In many ways after a very fraught and unhappy pregnancy Elyssa’s actual birth had restored Merry to startling life and vigour. Before that day, it had not once occurred to her that her daughter’s arrival would transform her outlook and fill her to overflowing with an unconditional love unlike anything she had ever felt before. Nowadays she recognised the truth: there was nothing she would not do for Elyssa.
A light knock sounded on the back door, announcing Sybil’s casual entrance into the kitchen at the rear of the cottage. ‘I’ll put on the kettle...time for a brew,’ she said cheerfully, a tall, rangy blonde nearing sixty but still defiantly beautiful, as befitted a woman who had been an international supermodel in the eighties.
Sybil had been Merry’s role model from an early age. Her mother, Natalie, had married when Merry was sixteen and emigrated to Australia with her husband, leaving her teenaged daughter in her sister’s care. Sybil and Merry were much closer than Merry had ever been with her birth mother but Sybil remained very attached to her once feckless kid sister. The sanctuary had been built by her aunt on the proceeds of the modelling career she had abandoned as soon as she had made enough money to devote her days to looking after homeless dogs.
In the later stages of her pregnancy, Merry had worked at the centre doing whatever was required and had lived with her aunt in her trendy barn conversion, but at the same time Merry had been carefully making plans for a more independent future. A qualified accountant, she had started up a small home business doing accounts for local traders and she had a good enough income now to run a car, while also insisting on paying a viable rent to Sybil for her use of the cottage at the gates of the rescue centre. The cottage was small and old-fashioned but it had two bedrooms and a little garden and perfectly matched Merry and Elyssa’s current needs.
In fact, Sybil Armstrong was a rock of unchanging affection and security in Merry’s life. Merry’s mother, Natalie, had fallen pregnant with her during an affair with her married employer. Only nineteen at the time, Natalie had quickly proved ill-suited to the trials of single parenthood. Right from the start, Sybil had regularly swooped in as a weekend babysitter, wafting Merry back to her country home to leave her kid sister free to go out clubbing.
Natalie’s bedroom door had revolved around a long succession of unsuitable men. There had been violent men, drunk men, men who took drugs and men who stole Natalie’s money and refused to earn their own. By the time she was five years old, Merry had assumed all mothers brought different men home every week. In such an unstable household where fights and substance abuse were endemic she had missed a lot of school, and when social workers had threatened to take Merry into care, once again her aunt had stepped in to take charge.
For nine glorious years, Merry had lived solely with Sybil, catching up with her schoolwork, learning to be a child again, no longer expected to cook and clean for her unreliable mother, no longer required to hide in her bedroom while the adults downstairs screamed so loudly at each other that the neighbours called the police. Almost inevitably that phase of security with Sybil had ended when Natalie had made yet another fresh start and demanded the return of her daughter.
It hadn’t worked, of course it hadn’t, because Natalie had grown too accustomed to her freedom by then, and instead of finding in Merry the convenient little best friend she had expected she had been met with a daughter with whom she had nothing in common. By the time Keith, who was younger than Natalie, had entered her life, the writing had been on the wall. Keen to return to Australia and take Natalie with him, he had been frank about his reluctance to take on a paternal role while still in his twenties. Merry had moved back in with Sybil and had not seen her mother since her departure.
* * *
‘Did I see the postman?’ Sybil asked casually.
Merry stiffened and flushed, thinking guiltily of that envelope stuffed in the hall table. ‘I bought something for Elyssa online,’ she fibbed in shame, but there was just no way she could admit to a woman as gutsy as Sybil that a letter could frighten and distress her.
‘No further communication from He Who Must Not Be Named?’ Sybil fished, disconcerting her niece with that leading question, for lately her aunt had been very quiet on that topic.
‘Evidently we’re having a bit of a break from the drama right now, which is really nice,’ Merry mumbled, shamefacedly tucking teabags into the mugs while Sybil lifted her great-niece off the rug and cuddled her before sitting down again with the baby cradled on her lap.
‘Don’t even think about him.’
‘I don’t,’ Merry lied yet again, a current of self-loathing assailing her because only a complete fool would waste time thinking about a man who had mistreated her. But then, really, what would Sybil understand about that? As a staggeringly beautiful and famous young woman, Sybil had had to beat adoring men off with sticks but had simply never met one she wanted to settle down with. Merry doubted that any man had ever disrespected Sybil and lived to tell the tale.
‘He’ll get his comeuppance some day,’ Sybil forecast. ‘Everyone does. What goes around comes around.’
‘But it bothers me that I hate him so much,’ Merry confided in a rush half under her breath. ‘I’ve never been a hater before.’
‘You’re still hurting. Now that you’re starting to date again, those bad memories will soon sink into the past.’
An unexpected smile lit Merry’s heart-shaped face at the prospect of the afternoon out she was having the following day. As a veterinary surgeon, Fergus Wickham made regular visits to the rescue centre. He had first met Merry when she was offputtingly pregnant, only evidently it had not put him off, it had merely made him bide his time until her daughter was born and she was more likely to be receptive to an approach.
She liked Fergus, she enjoyed his company, she reminded herself doggedly. He didn’t give her butterflies in her tummy, though, or make her long for his mouth, she conceded guiltily, but then how important were such physical feelings in the overall scheme of things? Angel’s sexual allure had been the health equivalent of a lethal snakebite, pulling her in only to poison her. Beautiful but deadly. Dear heaven, she hated him, she acknowledged, rigid with the seething trapped emotion that sent her memory flying inexorably back sixteen months...
CHAPTER TWO (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
MERRY WAS FULL of enthusiasm when she started her first job even though it wasn’t her dream job by any stretch of the imagination. Having left university with a first-class honours degree in accountancy and business, she had no intention of settling permanently into being a front-desk receptionist at Valtinos Enterprises.
Even so, she had badly needed paid employment and the long recruitment process involved in graduate job applications had ensured that she was forced to depend on Sybil’s generosity for more months than she cared to count. Sybil had already supported Merry through her years as a student, helping her out with handy vacation jobs at the rescue centre while always providing her with a comfortable home to come back to for weekends and holidays.
Her job at Valtinos Enterprises was Merry’s first step towards true independence. The work paid well and gave her the breathing space in which to look for a more suitable position, while also enabling her to base herself in London without relying on her aunt’s financial help. She had moved into a room in a grotty apartment and started work at VE with such high hopes.
And on her first day Angel strode out of the lift and her breath shorted out in her chest as though she had been punched. He had luxuriant black curls that always looked messy and that lean, darkly beautiful face of his had been crafted by a creative genius with exotic high cheekbones, a narrow, straight nose and eyes the colour of liquid honey. Eyes that she had only very much later discovered could turn as hard and cutting as black diamonds.
‘You’re new,’ he commented, treating her to the kind of lingering appraisal that made her feel hot all over.
‘This is my first day, Mr Valtinos,’ she confided.
‘Don’t waste your smiles there,’ her co-worker on the desk whispered snidely as Angel walked into his office. ‘He doesn’t flirt with employees. In fact the word is that he’s fired a couple of his PAs for getting too personal with him.’
‘I’m not interested,’ Merry countered with amusement, and indeed when it came to men she rarely was.
Growing up watching her mother continually search for the man of her dreams while ignoring everything else life had to offer had scared Merry. Having survived her unsettled childhood, she set a high value on security and she was keen to establish her own accountancy firm. She didn’t take risks...ever. In fact she was the most risk-averse person she had ever met.
That innate caution had kept her working so hard at university that she had taken little part in the social whirl. There had been occasional boyfriends but none she had cared to invite into her bed. Not only had she never felt passion, but she had also never suffered from her mother’s blazing infatuations. Watching relationships around her take off and then fail in an invariably nasty ending that smashed friendships and caused pain and resentment had turned Merry off even more. She liked a calm, tidy life, a quiet life, which in no way explained how she could ever have become intimate with a male as volatile as Angel, she acknowledged with lingering bewilderment.
But it was the truth, the absolute truth, that on paper she and Angel were a horrendous match. Angel was off-the-charts volatile with a volcanic hot temper that erupted every time someone did or said something he considered stupid. He wasn’t tolerant or easy to deal with. In the first weeks of her employment she regularly saw members of his personal staff race out of his office as though they had wings on their feet, their pale faces stamped with stress and trepidation. He was very impatient and equally demanding. He might resemble a supermodel in his fabulously sophisticated designer suits, but he had the temperament of a tyrant and an overachiever’s appetite for work and success. The only thing she admired about him in those initial weeks was his cleverness.
Serving coffee in the boardroom, she heard him dissect entire arguments with a handful of well-chosen words. She noticed that people listened when he spoke and admired his intellect while competing to please and impress him. Occasionally beautiful shapely blondes would drift in to meet him for lunch, women of a definite type, the artificial socialite type, seemingly chosen only for their enviable faces and figures and their ability to look at him with stunned appreciation. Those who arrived without an invite didn’t even get across the threshold of his office. He treated women like casual amusements and discarded them as soon as he got bored, and the procession of constantly changing faces made it obvious that he got bored very quickly and easily.
In short, nothing about Angel Valtinos should have attracted Merry. He shamelessly flaunted almost every flaw she disliked in a man. He was a selfish, hubristic, oversexed workaholic, spoiled by a life of luxury and the target of more admiration and attention than was good for him.
But even after six weeks in his radius, dredging her eyes off Angel when he was within view had proved impossible. He commanded a room simply by walking into it. Even his voice was dark, deep and smoulderingly charismatic. Once a woman heard that slumberous accented drawl she just had to turn her head and look. His dynamic personality suffused his London headquarters like an energy bolt while his mercurial moods kept his employees on edge and eager to please. Valtinos Enterprises felt dead and flat when he was abroad.
When one of Angel’s personal assistants left and the position was offered internally, Merry applied, keen to climb the ladder. Angel summoned her to his office to study her with frowning dark golden eyes. ‘Why is a candidate with your skills working on Reception?’ he demanded impatiently.
‘It was the first job I was offered,’ Merry admitted, brushing her damp palms down over her skirt. ‘I was planning to move on.’
Rising to his feet, making her uneasily aware of his height, he extended a slim file. ‘Find somewhere quiet to work. You’re off Reception for the morning. Check out this business and provide me with an accurate assessment of its financial history and current performance. If you do it well, I’ll interview you this afternoon.’
That afternoon, he settled the file back on the desk and surveyed her, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. ‘You did very well but you’re a little too cautious in your forecasts. I enjoy risk,’ he imparted, watching with amusement as she frowned in surprise at that admission. ‘You’ve got the job. I hope you can take the heat. Not everyone can.’
‘If you shout at me, I’ll probably shout back,’ Merry warned him warily.
And an appreciative grin slashed his shapely lips, making him so powerfully attractive that for a split second she simply stared, unable to look away. ‘You may just work out very well.’
So began the most exciting phase of Merry’s working life. Merry was the most junior member of Angel’s personal staff but the one he always entrusted with figures. Sybil was thrilled by the promotion her niece had won but would have been horrified by the long hours Merry worked and the amount of responsibility she carried.
‘The boss has got the hots for you,’ one of her male co-workers told her with amusement when she had been two months in the job. ‘Obviously you have something all those long tall blondes he parades through here don’t, because he’s always watching you.’
‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ she said firmly, reluctant to let that kind of comment go unchallenged.
But even as she spoke she knew she was very carefully impersonal and unobtrusive in Angel’s vicinity because she was conscious of him in a way she had not been conscious of a man before. If she was foolish enough to risk a head-on collision with his spectacular liquid honey eyes, her tummy somersaulted, her mouth dried and she couldn’t catch her breath. Feeling like that mortified her. She knew it was attraction and she didn’t like it, not only because he was her boss, but also because it made her feel out of control.
And then fate took a hand when Merry firmly believed that neither of them would ever have made any sort of a move. A highly contagious flu virus had decimated the staff and as his employees fell by the wayside Merry found herself increasingly exposed to working alone with Angel. At the office late one evening, he offered her a drink and a ride home. She said no thanks to the drink, deeming it unwise, and yes to the ride because it would get her home faster.
In the lift on the way down to the underground car park, Angel studied her with smouldering dark golden eyes. She felt dizzy and hot, as if her clothes were shrink-wrapped to her skin, preventing her from normal breathing. He lifted a long-fingered brown hand and traced his fingertips along the full curve of her lower lip in a caress that left her trembling, and then, as though some invisible line of restraint had snapped inside him, he crushed her back against the mirrored wall and kissed her, hungrily, feverishly, wildly with the kind of passion she was defenceless against.
‘Come home with me,’ he urged in a raw undertone as she struggled to pull herself back together while the lift doors stood open beside them.
Her flushed face froze. ‘Absolutely not. We made a mistake. Let’s forget about it.’
‘That’s not always possible,’ Angel breathed thickly. ‘I’ve been trying to forget about the way you make me feel for weeks.’
Disconcerted by that blunt admission as he stepped out of the lift, Merry muttered dismissively, ‘That’s just sex. Ignore it.’
Angel stared back at her in wonderment. ‘Ignore it?’
As the lift doors began to close with her still inside it, he reached in and held them open. ‘Come on.’
‘I’ll get the Tube as usual.’
‘Don’t be childish,’ Angel ground out. ‘I am fully in control.’
Merry wasn’t convinced, remembering that mad, exciting grab and the slam of her body back against the lift wall, but that instant of hesitation was her undoing because without hesitation Angel closed a hand over hers and pulled her out of the lift. ‘I’ll drop you home.’
‘There are boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed,’ she told him with precision on the way to his car.
‘Don’t preach at me,’ Angel sliced back in a driven undertone. ‘I don’t have a history of making moves on my staff. You are a one-off.’
‘And it won’t happen again now that we’re both on our guard so let’s forget about it,’ Merry counselled, sliding breathlessly into a long silver low-slung bullet of a vehicle that she suspected was worth many times more than her annual salary. ‘I prevented you from making a mistake.’
‘You’re preaching again,’ Angel derided. ‘If I hadn’t stopped kissing you we’d still be in the lift!’
‘No. I would’ve pushed you away,’ she insisted with cool assurance.
She gave him her address, although he didn’t seem to need it, and the journey through heavy traffic was silent, tense and unnerving. He pulled up at the kerb outside the ugly building where she lived. ‘You could afford to live in a better area than this,’ he censured.
‘I have a healthy savings account,’ she told him with pride, releasing her seat belt at the same time as he reached for her again.
His wide sensual mouth crushed hers with burning hunger and no small amount of frustration. Her whole body leapt as though he had punched a button detonating something deep down inside her, releasing a hot surge of tingling awareness in her pelvis that made her hips squirm and her nipples pinch painfully tight.
Angel lifted his tousled dark head. ‘I’m still waiting on you pushing me away. You’re all talk and no action,’ he condemned.
‘I don’t think you’d appreciate a slap,’ Merry framed frigidly, her face burning with mortification.
‘If it meant that you ditched the icy control I’d be begging for it,’ Angel husked suggestively, soft and low, the growl of his accent shaking her up.
Merry launched out of his sports car as though jet-propelled, uncharacteristically flustered and shaken that she had failed to live up to her own very high principles on acceptable behaviour. She should’ve pushed him away, slapped him, thumped him if necessary to drive her message home. Nothing less would cool his heels. He was a highly competitive, aggressive male, who viewed defeat as an ongoing challenge.
His car stayed at the kerb until she stalked into the building and only then did she breathe again, filling her compressed lungs and shivering as though she had stepped out of a freezing snowstorm. She felt all shaken up, shaken up and stirred in a way she didn’t appreciate and almost hated him for.
The feel of his mouth on hers, the taste of it, the explosive charge of heat hurtling at breakneck speed down into her belly and spreading to other, more intimate places she never ever thought about. How dared he do that to her? She would lodge a complaint of sexual harassment! Didn’t he know what he was risking? But being Angel, he wouldn’t care, wouldn’t even stop to consider that he was playing with fire. Indeed, the knowledge would only energise and stimulate him because he loved to push the limits.
She curled up tight in her bed that night, overwhelmed by her first real experience of sexual temptation. When he kissed her she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. A kiss had never had that effect on her before and she was unnerved by the discovery that a kiss could be that influential. She toyed with the idea of complaining about sexual harassment, pictured Angel laughing fearlessly in the face of such a threat and finally decided that she didn’t want the embarrassment of that on her employment record. Particularly when such a claim would fail because she hadn’t pushed him away, hadn’t given him an immediate rejection.
The next day she was very nervous going into work, but Angel didn’t do or say anything that was different and she was strangely irritated by that reality: that he could act as though he had never offered to take her home to bed for the night and, afterwards, simply treat her like everyone else. But those same moments of intimacy had carried a higher price for her. It was as though he had stripped away her tough outer layer and chipped her out of her cautious shell to ensure that she began feeling physical and emotional responses she had comfortably held at bay until she’d met him.
During the week that followed she was feverishly aware of Angel to a degree that sent her temperature rocketing. When he looked at her, it was as if a blast of concentrated heat lit her up inside and her bra would feel scratchy against her tender nipples and a dull ache would stir between her thighs, her every tiny reaction in his presence like a slap in the face that shamed her. It was a terrible destructive wanting that wouldn’t go away. He had lit the spark and she seemed stuck with the spread of the fire licking away at her nerves and her fierce pride.
At the end of that week, Angel asked her to stay behind after everyone else had left to go for drinks.
‘Next on the agenda...us,’ Angel murmured sibilantly.
Merry shot him a withering appraisal. ‘There is no us.’
‘Exactly,’ Angel pronounced with satisfaction. ‘Scratch the itch and it goes away and dies, ignore it and it festers.’
‘Your seduction vocabulary needs attention,’ Merry quipped, standing straight in front of him, grudging amusement dancing in her crystalline eyes.
Angel grimaced. ‘I don’t do seduction.’
‘I don’t do one-night stands.’
‘So if I make it dinner and sex I’m in with a chance?’ A sardonic ebony brow elevated.
‘No chance whatsoever,’ Merry contradicted with pleasure. ‘I’m a virgin and I’m not trading that for some sleazy night with my boss.’
‘A virgin?’ Angel was aghast. ‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously,’ Merry traded without embarrassment, reflecting on how her mother had fallen pregnant with her and determined to make every choice that took her in the opposite direction. ‘Sex should mean something more than scratching an itch.’
Angel sprang upright behind his desk, all supple, graceful motion, the fine, expensive fabric of his suit pulling taut over powerful thigh muscles and definable biceps. Her mouth ran dry, her eyes involuntarily clinging to his every movement. ‘It’s never been anything more for me,’ he admitted drily. ‘But I take offence at the word “sleazy”. I am never sleazy and... I don’t do virgins.’
‘Good to know,’ Merry breathed tightly, watching his shirt ripple ever so slightly over his muscular chest as he exhaled while cursing her intense physical awareness of him. ‘May I go home now?’
‘I’ll drop you back.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ she told him coolly.
‘I decide what’s necessary around here,’ Angel pronounced, throwing the door wide and heading for the lift. ‘You realise you’re as rare as a unicorn in my world? Are you holding out for marriage?’
Involuntarily amused by his curiosity, Merry laughed. ‘Of course not. I’m just waiting for something real. I’m not a fan of casual or meaningless.’
Angel lounged back fluidly against the wall of the lift, all naked predator and jungle grace. ‘I’m casual but I’m very real,’ he told her huskily, his deep dark drawl roughening and trickling down her taut spine like a spectral caress.
‘Oh, switch it off,’ Merry groaned. ‘We’re like salt and pepper except you can’t mix us.’
‘Because you’ve got too many rules, too many barriers. Why is that?’
‘Like you are actually interested?’ Merry jibed.
‘I am interested,’ Angel growled, dark golden eyes flashing as the lift doors sprang back. ‘I want you.’
‘Only because you can’t have me,’ Merry interposed drily, her skin coming up in gooseflesh as he flashed her a ferocious appraisal capable of flaying her skin from her bones. ‘That’s how basic you are.’
‘You’re becoming rude.’
‘Your persistence is making me rude,’ Merry told him.
‘I want to see your hair loose,’ Angel bit out impatiently. ‘It’s unusually long.’
‘My mother kept on cutting it short when I was little because it was easier to look after. Now I grow it because I can,’ she said truthfully, her stomach flipping as he shot a sudden charismatic smile at her, his lean, darkly beautiful face vibrant with amusement.
‘You’re a control freak,’ he breathed lazily. ‘Takes one to know one, glikia mou.’
‘That’s why we don’t get on,’ Merry pointed out.
‘We don’t get on because you have a very annoying sort of pious vibe going,’ Angel contradicted. ‘You’re smug.’
‘No, I’m not,’ she argued instantly as they crossed the half-empty car park.
‘You think you’re superior to me because you’re not at the mercy of your hormones...but you were when I touched you,’ Angel breathed, caging her in against the passenger door of his car, the heat of his lean, powerful body perceptible even through the inches separating them and the rich, evocative scent of husky male and exotic cologne filling her nostrils. His hands braced either side of her, not actually touching her quivering length, and her knees turned weak at the thought that he might touch her. ‘You can hardly breathe when I’m this close to you. I see that, I know that...every time I try to step back, it sucks me back in.’
He was like an impenetrable force field surrounding her. She knew she could push him away, she knew he wouldn’t fight, she knew he wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want him to do and a weird sense of unexpected power engulfed her. He was still coming back at her because he couldn’t resist the pull between them and she couldn’t resist it either. It was a weakness deep down inside her that she couldn’t suppress. Nobody had ever made her feel the way he was making her feel and that was a thrill on its own, a shot of adrenalin in her veins to match the feverish pound of her heartbeat. She wanted him. The knowledge ploughed through her like a battering ram, casting everything she had thought she knew about herself into a broken jumble of messy pieces.
‘You’re not my type,’ she whispered in dry-mouthed protest.
‘You’re not my type either,’ Angel admitted thickly. ‘But I’d still have sex in a car park with you any time you cared to ask.’
‘Not about to ask,’ Merry confided shakily. ‘Take me home...back off.’
‘You’re making a major production of this again,’ Angel accused, flashing his key fob to open the car. ‘Stop doing that. It’s...it’s bizarrely unnerving.’
She climbed into his car in a daze, the throb between her legs angry and unsettling, the sensual smoulder in the air almost unbearable, every nerve ending painfully aware of it. She didn’t know how he did that using only words and looks. It was terrifying. He had wiped her mind clean, made her feel stuff she didn’t want to feel, rocked the foundations of her security.
‘I don’t like you,’ she admitted.
‘Thee mou...you don’t have to like me, you only have to want me...and you do.’
And it was agonisingly true, she registered in dismay. Her brain didn’t seem to have anything to do with the equation. She thoroughly disapproved of everything he was and yet the chemistry between them was wild and dominant.
‘We have one night together and sate the craving. Then we put it away and bury it,’ Angel intoned in a driven undertone.
‘I thought you didn’t do virgins.’
‘Evidently you were born to be my single exception.’
‘Is this an actual negotiation?’ Merry enquired incredulously.
‘We have to sort this out. You’re taking my mind off work,’ Angel complained. ‘I can’t handle watching you all day and fantasising about you all night. It’s bad for business.’
‘What’s in it for me?’ Merry whispered unevenly.
‘I’m superlative at sex.’
‘Oh...’ Her lashes fluttered, her tummy somersaulting again as she wondered if she really was about to do what he wanted her to do, what she herself wanted to do. And that was the answer there and then when she was least expecting to see or understand it.
He would make a great introduction to sex for her, she thought dizzily. It would end the insane craving he had awakened inside her and maybe then she could return to her normal tranquil self. That prospect had huge appeal for her. The need would be satisfied, the intolerable longing ended. All right, it wasn’t the big romance with hearts and flowers that she had dimly envisioned, but then possibly that had never been a very practical aspiration. What he was offering was basic and honest even if it was casual and uncommitted and everything she had once sworn she would never participate in. It was not as though she had been saving herself for a wedding ring. She had been saving herself for love, but love hadn’t happened.
‘So, you’re suggesting that I just use you,’ Merry remarked grittily as he pulled into another underground car park.
‘We use each other,’ Angel exhaled in a rush and, killing the engine, stretched out a long powerful arm to enclose her in almost the same moment.
His mouth crashed down on hers with a hunger that blew her away. Somehow he made it that she didn’t remember getting out of the car, didn’t remember getting into a lift or emerging from it. There was only that insane, greedy melding of their mouths and the frantic impatient activity of their hands in a dimly lit hall. Her coat fell off or maybe he helped it. His jacket disappeared at similar speed. She kicked off her shoes. He wrenched off his tie and cannoned into a door as he lifted her off her feet.
‘We have to slow down,’ he told her roughly, dark golden eyes shimmering like gold ingots, his sexual excitement patent. ‘Or I’ll screw this up for you.’
He laid her down on a wide, comfortable mattress and stood over her, stripping without inhibition. All she wanted was his mouth on hers again, that magical escape from the limits of her own body that sent her flying higher than she had ever known she could fly. He shed his trousers and her attention locked warily on the very obvious bulge in his boxers while she struggled to accept that she could, even briefly, be with a man who was chronically untidy and dropped clothes in a heap on the floor. Not her type, not her type; she rhymed it like a mantra inside her head, her bulwark against getting attached in any way. It was sex and she didn’t want to regard it as anything else.
He unzipped her dress and flipped her over to remove it with deft precision and release her bra, before pausing to carefully unsnap the clasp in her hair and let his skilled mouth roam across her pale shoulders. He tugged her round and up to him then, long fingers lifting to feather her curtain of dark coffee-coloured hair round her shoulders, thready shimmers of lighter caramel appearing in the light filtering in from the hall.
‘You have amazing hair,’ he muttered intently, gazing down into blue eyes as pale as an Arctic sky.
‘Is that a fetish of yours?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed, but that prissy little smile of yours turns me on no end,’ Angel confided, disconcerting her.
‘I do not have a prissy smile.’
‘Talking too much,’ Angel growled, crushing her ripe mouth beneath his again, running his hands down the sides of her narrow ribcage to dispose of her bra and let his hands rise to cup the small delicate mounds of her breasts.
As his thumbs grazed her sensitive nipples a gasp parted Merry’s lips, and when his hungry mouth followed there she fell back against the pillows and dug her fingers into his thick tangle of curls. Heat arrowed in stormy flashes right to her core, leaving her insanely conscious of how excited she was becoming. Her thighs pressed together, her hips dug into the mattress as she struggled to get a grip on herself, but it was as if her body were streaking ahead of her and no matter how hard she tried to catch it, she couldn’t.
He shifted position, ran his tongue down over her straining midriff to her navel, parted her from her knickers without her noticing, traced her inner thighs with a devil’s expertise until she was splayed out like a sacrifice. And then the flood of crazy pleasure came at her in breathless, jolting stabs that shocked and roused her to a level that was almost unbearable. She was shaken by what she was allowing him to do and how much her body craved it and how very little she could control her own reactions. She twisted and turned, hauled him back to her at one point and kissed him breathless, wanting, needing, trembling on the edge of something she didn’t understand.
The tight bands in her pelvis strained to hold in the wild searing shots of pleasure gripping her and then her control broke and she writhed in a wild frenzy of release. The sound of her own gasping cry startled her, her eyes flying wide, and Angel grinned shamelessly down at her like a very sexy pirate, a dark shadow of stubble merely accentuating his fantastic bone structure.
‘You’re staying the whole night,’ he told her thickly.
‘No,’ Merry muttered, head rolling back on the pillows as he crawled up her body like the predator he truly was. ‘Once it’s done, it’s over.’
‘You are so stubborn,’ Angel groaned in frustration, nipping up her slender throat to find her swollen lips again, teasing and tasting and letting his tongue plunge and twin with hers until she was beyond thought and argument again. He donned protection.
He eased into her slowly, very slowly, and impatience assailed her. She didn’t want or need to be treated like fine china that might shatter or like that rare unicorn he had mentioned. Her body was slick and eager again, the pulse at the heart of her racing with anticipation. She tilted under him, angling up her hips, and the invitation was too much for his control and he jerked over her and plunged deep. A brief burning sting of pain made her stiffen and gasp.
‘That’s your own fault,’ Angel growled in exasperation. ‘If you would just lie still.’
‘I’m not a blow-up doll.’
‘I was trying not to hurt you.’
‘I’m not breakable either,’ Merry argued, every skin cell on red alert as she felt her body slowly stretch to enclose his, tiny little shimmers of exquisite sensation flying through her as he began to move, hinting that the best was yet to come. ‘Don’t stop.’
And he didn’t. He sank deep into her with a shuddering groan of pleasure and the pace picked up, jolting her with waves of glorious excitement. She arched her body up, suddenly needy again, hungry again, marvelling at the limitless capacity of her body to feel more and yet more. But this time the climb to pleasure was slower and she writhed, blue eyes lighting up with impatience and a need she had never expressed before. Her heart raced, her pulses pounded and that sweet, seductive throb of delight grew and grew inside her until she could contain it no longer. Every barrier dropped as her body exploded into an ecstatic climax that left her limp and stunned.
Angel released her from his weight but made a move to pull her under his arm and retain a hold on her. Quick as a flash Merry evaded him, her whole being bent on immediate escape. They had had sex but she didn’t want to hang around for the aftermath. Dignity, she told herself staunchly, dictated an immediate departure. She slid out of the other side of the bed, bending down to scoop up her discarded clothes.
‘I asked you to stay,’ Angel reminded her.
‘I’m going home,’ she said as he vaulted out of bed and headed into what she presumed was a bathroom, his lean, powerful body emanating impatience and annoyance in perceptible waves.
She would have liked a shower but she was determined not to linger. With a grimace, she pulled her clothes back on and was out in the hall cramming her feet back into her shoes and hurriedly calling a taxi when Angel reappeared, bronzed and still unashamedly naked in the bedroom doorway. ‘I don’t want you to leave.’
‘I’ve already ordered a taxi.’ Merry tilted her chin, her long hair streaming untidily round her flushed heart-shaped face. ‘We agreed and it’s better like this.’
‘I asked for one night—’
‘You can’t have everything your way,’ Merry declared flatly. ‘I enjoyed myself but all good things come to an end.’
Angel swore in Greek. ‘You drive me insane.’
‘What’s your problem? According to your forecast, we’re done and dusted now,’ she pointed out helplessly.
Yet for all her proud nonchalance in front of him, Merry travelled home in a daze of mounting panic. Back at her apartment she had to wait until the shower was free. She felt shell-shocked by what she had done. Her body ached but her brain ached almost as much, trying to rationalise the fleeting madness that had overtaken her. She tried to examine it from Angel’s unemotional point of view, but that didn’t work for her when her own emotions were throwing tantrums and storming about inside her as much as if she had killed someone. Done and dusted, forget about it now, she reminded herself doggedly. He had much more experience in such encounters than she had, had to know what he was talking about. The curiosity and that unnatural hunger had been satisfied and now it would all die a natural death and become an embarrassing memory that she’d never ever share with anyone, she told herself with determination.
Only in the days that followed Merry slowly came to appreciate that, for all his evident experience, Angel Valtinos had got it badly wrong. Feed a cold, starve a fever was a saying she had grown up with, and before very long had passed she knew that it had been a serious mistake to feed the fever. She saw it in the way Angel’s stunning dark eyes locked on her like magnets, heard it in the terseness of his instructions to her and she felt the pull of him inside herself as if he had attached a secret chain to her. Excitement crashed over her when he was close by, her temperature climbing, her heart thumping. Slowly, painfully, she came to appreciate that she was infatuated with him and very nearly as giddy and mindless as a silly schoolgirl in his vicinity. The suspicion that she was more her mother’s daughter than she had ever dreamt she could be appalled her.
Was that the real explanation of why she had slept with Angel Valtinos? She had asked herself again and again why she had done that, why she had made such an impulsive decision that went against everything she believed, and now she was being faced with an answer that she loathed. At some point in their relationship she had begun getting attached to him, possibly around the time she had started admiring his intellect and shrewd business instincts. That attachment was pitiful, she decided with angry self-loathing, and in haste she began to look for another job, desperate to leave Angel and Valtinos Enterprises behind her.
Two weeks after their first encounter, Angel showed up at her apartment one evening without the smallest warning. The same angry frustration that powered him was running through her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, far from pleased to be surprised in her cotton pyjamas, fresh from the shower and bare of make-up.
Angel grimaced, his lean, darkly handsome features taut and troubled as he leant back against her bedroom door to close it. ‘My car brought me here.’
‘What on earth—?’ she began, disconcerted by his sudden appearance in a place where she had never imagined seeing him.
Angel settled volatile dark golden eyes on her angrily. ‘I can’t stay away,’ he grated rawly, his beautiful mouth compressing.
‘B-but...we agreed,’ she stammered.
‘Massive fail,’ Angel framed darkly. ‘Biggest bloody mistake of my life!’
Merry almost laughed and fortunately killed the urge. It was simply that Angel’s innate love of drama not only amused her, but somehow touched her somewhere down deep inside, somewhere where she was soft and emotional and vulnerable even though she didn’t want to be. He had come to her even though he didn’t want to. He resented his desire for her, had tried to stamp it out and failed. She grasped immediately that that weakness for her infuriated him.
‘I want to be with you tonight.’
‘Angel—’
He came down on the bed beside her and framed her face with long, cool brown fingers. ‘Say my name again,’ he demanded.
‘No,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I don’t do what you tell me to do outside working hours.’
‘Thee mou...stop challenging me,’ he groaned, tilting her head back to follow the long, elegant column of her throat down to the slope of her shoulder, nipping and kissing a tantalising path across her sensitised skin while she quivered. ‘This isn’t me. This isn’t what I’m about.’
‘Then why are you here?’ she whispered weakly.
‘Can’t stay away.’ He carried her hand down to where he was hot and hard and wanting and groaned without inhibition as she stroked him through the fine, crisp fabric of his well-cut trousers.
Heat coursed through her in molten waves, the hunger unleashed afresh. Simply touching him inflamed her. She tried to fight it, she tried to fasten it down and ground herself, but Angel smashed any hope of control by welding dark golden eyes to hers and kissing her with barely contained ferocity. Not a single thought passed her mind beyond the thrillingly obvious reality that he needed her and couldn’t stay away. That knowledge vanquished every other consideration. She kissed him back with the same uncontrollable, desperate passion.
‘I intended to take you out to dinner,’ Angel admitted breathlessly as he fought with her pyjamas, his sleek, deft skills with feminine clothing deserting him.
‘You hungry?’ she gasped, almost strangling him with his own tie in her struggle to loosen it.
‘Only for you,’ he growled fiercely against her swollen mouth. ‘Watching you round the office all day, being unable to touch, even to look.’
And then they were naked in her bed, naked and frantic and so tormentingly hungry for each other that she writhed and squirmed and he fought to hold her still. He produced a condom, tore it from the wrapper with his teeth. ‘We don’t want an accident,’ he said unevenly.
‘No, no accidents,’ she agreed helplessly, lying there, shocked by what she was doing but participating all the same, quite unable to deny him. Their clothes lay festooned all around them and she didn’t care. Angel had come to her and she was happy about that, there in her pin-neat room made messy by his presence.
He drove into her yielding flesh with a heartfelt sound of satisfaction and she wrapped her legs round him, arching up and gasping at every fluid stroke. The excitement heightened exponentially, the pulsing pound of intolerable desire driving them off the edge fast into a hot, sweaty tangle of limbs and shuddering fulfilment.
Angel pressed his sensual mouth against her brow and eased back, only to grate out a curse in Greek. ‘I broke the condom!’ he growled in harried explanation as she stared up at him, recognising the stress and anxiety in his expressive gaze.
As if a simultaneous alarm bell had sounded, Angel flipped back from her and slid fluidly out of bed while Merry hurriedly hid her fast-cooling body under the duvet they had lain on. Her eyes were wide with consternation.
‘This has never happened to me before,’ Angel assured her, hastily getting back into his clothes.
Merry pondered the idea of mentioning that dinner invite and discarded it again. She had nothing comforting to say to him, nothing likely to improve his mood. She wasn’t on the pill, wasn’t taking any contraceptive precautions, a reality that now made her feel very foolish. Why hadn’t she rethought her outlook the minute she’d ended up in bed with Angel Valtinos? Wasn’t a woman supposed to look after herself?
‘I’m not on anything,’ she admitted reluctantly.
Angel dug out his wallet and flipped out a card. ‘Come in late tomorrow. See this doctor first. He’s a friend of mine. He’ll check you out,’ he told her, setting the card down by the bed.
And within a minute he was gone. Wham-bam—no, thank you, ma’am, she acknowledged with a sinking heart and a strong need for a shower.
If only she could shower the thoughts out of her head and the feelings in her heart as easily, she concluded wretchedly. She felt sick, humiliated and rejected. She also hated herself. A contraceptive accident had sent Angel into a nosedive, his horror unconcealed. Did she hold that against him when trepidation had seized her by the throat as well?
But luckily, that night she had no grasp at all of the nightmare that was waiting to unfold and the many months of unhappiness that would follow as punishment for her irresponsibility. In effect, she was still a complete innocent then. She was hopelessly infatuated with a man who only lusted after her and with a lust that died the instant a condom failed. That was why she had held herself back from casual sex, seeking the feelings and the certain amount of safety that came with them...
Her first wake-up call to what she was truly dealing with came early the next morning. She went, as instructed, to see the suave private doctor, who ran a battery of tests on her and then casually offered her the morning-after pill. She didn’t want it, hadn’t ever even thought about whether or not she approved of that option, but when it was suggested to her, it grated on her, and even though she could see the doctor’s surprise at her refusal she saw no reason to explain her attitude. Had such a possibility been available to her mother, she reckoned that she herself would never have been born and that was a sobering acknowledgement. Had Angel sent her to that doctor quite deliberately to ensure that she was offered that option? She planned to have that out with him the instant she got a moment alone with him.
Unfortunately what she didn’t know then was that it would be many, many weeks before she had the opportunity of a moment alone with Angel again and even then she only finally achieved that meeting by stalking him to one of his regular retreats.
When she finally arrived at work after seeing the doctor she was sent straight into one of the meeting rooms where a senior HR person and a company lawyer awaited her. There she was presented with a compromise agreement by which, in return for substantial compensation, she would immediately cease working for Valtinos Enterprises and leave without disclosing her reasons for doing so to anyone.
The shock and humiliation of that meeting marked Merry long after the event. As soon as she realised that Angel wanted her out of the building and away from him, no matter what it cost him, she felt sick inside. Had he assumed that she would make a nuisance of herself in some way? His ruthless rejection and instant dismissal of what they had briefly shared shook her rigid and taught her a hard lesson. Angel always put himself first and evidently her continued presence at the office would make him uncomfortable. That she did not deserve such harsh treatment didn’t come into it for him.
In disgust and mortification Merry took the money she was offered because she felt she had no better alternative and she had to live until she found another job. But that was the day the first seed of her hatred had been sown...
CHAPTER THREE (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
‘FERGUS ASKED ME where he should take you tomorrow,’ Sybil volunteered, shooting Merry straight back into the present with that surprising announcement. ‘I thought that was a bit wet of him. I mean, doesn’t he have any ideas of his own? But obviously he wants you to enjoy yourself.’
A bit wet sounded all right to Merry, who was still reeling from the consequences of Angel’s me-me-me approach to life. A macho, self-assured man was hugely impressive and sexy only until he turned against you and became an enemy, armed to the teeth with legal sharks.
‘I suggested a trip to the seaside for you and Elyssa. I know you love the beach,’ Sybil mused. ‘Fergus does like children.’
‘Yes,’ Merry agreed quietly, scooping Elyssa off the older woman’s lap to feed her while wondering what it would have been like to have a father for her daughter. Would he have helped out with their child? Taken a real interest? She suppressed the thought, knowing it probably came from the reality that she had had to grow up without a father. She had, however, visited her father once, but his enraged betrayed wife had been present as well and the visit had been a disaster. Her father had only asked to see her on that one occasion and then never again.
The next morning, Merry finished drying her hair and took the time to apply a little make-up because Elyssa was having her morning nap. Pulling on skinny jeans and a vibrant cerise tee, she dug her feet into comfy shoes. She was heading downstairs again with Elyssa anchored on her hip when the phone rang. Breathless, she tucked it under her chin while she lowered her daughter to the hearth rug.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m in the office,’ her aunt told her curtly. ‘Elyssa’s father is here demanding to see her. I’ll keep him here with me until you come.’
Shock and disbelief engulfed Merry in a dizzy tide. She snatched Elyssa back off the rug and wondered frantically what to do with her daughter while she dealt with Angel, because she didn’t want him to see her. Her mind was a chaotic blur because she couldn’t imagine Angel travelling down to Suffolk just to see the child he had once done everything possible to avoid and deny. It was true that since he had been informed of Elyssa’s birth he had made repeated requests to meet his daughter, but Merry had seen no good reason to cater to his natural human curiosity and she herself wanted nothing more to do with him.
After all, as soon as Angel had learned that she was pregnant he had brought his lawyers in to handle everything. They had drawn up a legal agreement by which Merry was paid a ridiculous amount of money every month but only for as long as she kept quiet about her daughter’s parentage. Merry currently paid the money into a trust she had set up for Elyssa’s future, reckoning that that was the best she could do for her daughter.
She left the cottage with Elyssa tucked into her well-padded pushchair, her toy bunny clutched between her fingers. Walking into the rescue centre, she saw a long black limousine sitting parked and she swallowed hard at the sight of it. Angel didn’t flaunt the Valtinos wealth but even at the office she had seen occasional glimpses of a world and lifestyle far different from her own. He wore diamond cufflinks and his shirts had monograms embroidered on the pockets. Every garment he wore was tailored by hand at great expense and he thought nothing of it because from birth he had never known anything else.
She pushed the buggy into the barn, where the kennel staff hung out when they took a break. ‘Will you watch Elyssa for me for ten minutes?’ she asked anxiously of the three young women, chattering over mugs of coffee.
‘Can we take her out of the pram and play with her?’ one of them pressed hopefully.
A smile softened Merry’s troubled face. ‘Of course...’ she agreed, hastening out again to head for the rescue centre office.
What on earth was Angel doing here? And how could she face him when the very idea of facing him again made her feel queasy with bad memories? They had last met the day she’d tracked him down to tell him that she was pregnant. Those liquid-honey eyes had turned black-diamond hard, his shock and distaste stark as a banner.
‘Do you want it?’ he had asked doubtingly, earning her hatred with every syllable of that leading question. ‘Scratch that. It was politically incorrect. Naturally I will support you in whatever choice you make.’
How could she come back from that punishing recollection and act normally? She thought of Elyssa’s innocent sweetness and the reality that her father didn’t want her, had never wanted her, and the knowledge hurt Merry, making her wonder if her own father had felt the same about her. Even worse, she was convinced that allowing any kind of contact between father and daughter would only result in Elyssa getting hurt at some later stage. In her opinion, Angel was too selfish and too spoiled to be a caring or committed parent.
As she rounded the corner of the tiny office building a startling scene met her eyes. Poised outside the door, Sybil had her shotgun aimed at Angel, who was predictably lounging back against the wall of the kennels opposite as though he had not a care in the world.
‘Will you call this madwoman off me?’ Angel demanded with derisive sibilance when he heard her footsteps and without turning his arrogant dark head. ‘She won’t let me move.’
‘It’s all right, Sybil,’ Merry said tautly. ‘Elyssa is in the barn.’
Angel’s arrogant dark head flipped, the long, predatory power of his lean, strong body suddenly rippling with bristling tension. ‘What’s my daughter doing in a barn? And who’s looking after her?’ he demanded in a driven growl.
Sybil lowered her shotgun and broke it open to safely extract the cartridges. ‘I’ll take her back home with me,’ she declared, entirely ignoring Angel.
‘Come into the office and we’ll talk,’ Merry framed coldly as his dark eyes locked on her tense face.
‘I’m not very good at talking,’ Angel acknowledged without embarrassment as he straightened. ‘That’s why I use lawyers.’
In an angry defensive movement, Merry thrust wide the door of the little office before spinning back round to say, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I warned you that I intended to visit,’ Angel bit out impatiently.
Merry thought about the letter she had bottled out of opening and uneasily looked at him for the first time in months. The sheer power of his volatile presence made her tummy turn hollow and her legs wobble. He was still so wickedly beautiful that he made her teeth clench with fierce resentment. It wasn’t fair that he should look so untouched by all that had passed between them, that he should stand there perfectly at his ease and glossily well groomed, sheathed in his elegant charcoal-grey designer suit. It was especially unfair that he should still have the nerve to voice a demand for a right he had surrendered entirely of his own volition before their daughter was even born. ‘And I’ve already told your lawyers that I won’t accept any kind of visit from you!’
‘I won’t accept that, not even if I have to spend the rest of my life and yours fighting you.’ Angel mapped those boundaries for her, wanting her to know that there would be no escape from his demands until he got what he wanted. He would not accept defeat, regardless of what it cost him. He had lost his father’s respect and he was determined to retrieve it and get to know his child.
Frowning, black brows lowering, he studied Merry, incredulous at her continuing defiance while marvelling at the quiet inner strength he sensed in her, which he had never noticed in a woman before. She had cut her hair, which now fell in glossy abundance to just below her shoulders. He was ridiculously disappointed by that fashion update. There had been something ultra-feminine about that unusually long hair that he had liked. She was also thinner than she had been and there had not been much of her to begin with, he conceded reflectively. She looked like a teenager with her long, coltish legs outlined by distressed denim and with her rounded little breasts pushing at the cotton of her top so that he could see the prominent points of her lush nipples. He went hard and gritted his teeth, furious with himself for that weakness but... Thee mou, shorn of her conservative office apparel, she looked ridiculously sexy.
‘Why can’t you simply move on from this and forget we exist?’ Merry demanded in fierce frustration. ‘A year ago, that’s what you wanted and I gave it to you. I signed everything your legal team put in front of me. You didn’t want to be a father. You didn’t want to know anything about her and you didn’t want her associated with your precious name. What suddenly changed?’
Angel’s lean, hard jaw line took on an aggressive slant. ‘Maybe I’ve changed,’ he admitted, sharply disconcerting her.
Merry’s tense face stiffened with suspicion. ‘That’s doubtful. You are what you are.’
‘Everyone is capable of change and sometimes change simply happens whether you want it to or not,’ Angel traded, his lean, dark features taut. ‘When you first told me that you were pregnant a year ago, I didn’t think through what I was doing. Gut instinct urged me to protect my way of life. I listened to my lawyers, took their advice and now we’ve got...now we’ve got an intolerable mess.’
Merry forced herself to breathe in deep and slow and stay calm. He sounded sincere but she didn’t trust him. ‘It’s the way you made it and now you have to live with it.’
Angel threw back his broad shoulders and lifted his arrogant dark head high, effortlessly dominating the small cluttered room. Even though Merry was a comfortable five feet eight inches tall, he was well over six feet in height and stood the tallest in most gatherings. ‘I can’t live with it,’ he told her with flat finality. ‘I will continue to fight for access to my daughter.’
The breath fluttered in Merry’s drying throat, consternation and fury punching up through her, bringing a flood of emotion with it. ‘I hate you, Angel! If you make any more threats, if you bombard me with more legal letters, I will hate you even more! When is enough enough?’ she hurled at him with bitter emphasis.
‘When I can finally establish a normal relationship with my daughter,’ Angel responded, his lean, strong face set with stubborn resolve. ‘It is my duty to establish that relationship and I won’t shirk it.’
‘The way you shirked everything else that went with fatherhood?’ Merry scorned. ‘The responsibility? The commitment? The caring? I was just a pregnant problem you threw money at!’
‘I won’t apologise for that. I was raised to solve problems that way,’ Angel admitted grittily. ‘I was taught to put my faith in lawyers and to protect myself first.’
‘Angel...you are strong enough to protect yourself in a cage full of lions!’ Merry shot back at him wrathfully. ‘You didn’t need the lawyers when I wasn’t making any demands!’
A ton of hurt and turbulent emotion was sucking Merry down but she fought it valiantly. She was trying so hard not to throw pointless recriminations at him. In an effort to put a physical barrier between them she flopped down in the chair behind the desk. ‘Did you ever...even once...think about feelings?’ she prompted involuntarily.
Angel frowned at her, wondering what she truly wanted from him, wondering how much he would be willing to give in return for access to his daughter. It wasn’t a calculation he wanted to do at that moment, not when she was sitting there, shoulders rigid, heart-shaped face stiff and pale as death. ‘Feelings?’ he repeated blankly.
‘My feelings,’ Merry specified helplessly. ‘How it would feel for me to sleep with a man one night and go into work the next day and realise that he couldn’t even stand to have me stay in the same building to do my job?’
Angel froze as if she had fired an ice gun at him, colour receding beneath his bronzed skin, his gorgeous dark eyes suddenly screened by his ridiculously luxuriant black lashes. ‘No, I can’t say I did. I didn’t view it in that light,’ he admitted curtly. ‘I thought separation was the best thing for both of us because our relationship had crossed too many boundaries and got out of hand. I also ensured that your career prospects were not damaged in any way.’
Merry closed her eyes tight, refusing to look at him any longer. He had once told her that he didn’t do virgins and it seemed that he didn’t do feelings either. He was incapable of putting himself in her shoes and imagining how she had felt. ‘I felt...absolutely mortified that day, completely humiliated, hurt,’ she spelt out defiantly. ‘The money didn’t soften the blow and I only took it because I didn’t know how long it would take for me to find another job.’
Angel saw pain in her pale blue eyes and heard the emotion in her roughened voice. Her honesty unnerved him, flayed off a whole layer of protective skin, and he didn’t like how it made him feel. ‘I had no desire to hurt you, there was no such intent,’ he countered tautly. ‘I realised that our situation had become untenable and in that line I was guiltier than you because I made all the running.’
It was an acknowledgement of fault that would once have softened her. He had created that untenable situation and brutally ditched her when he had had enough of it but his admission didn’t come anywhere near soothing the tight ball of hurt in her belly. ‘You could have talked to me personally,’ she pointed out, refusing to drop the subject.
‘I’ve never talked about stuff like that. I wouldn’t know where to begin,’ Angel confessed grimly.
‘Well, how could you possibly forge a worthwhile bond with a daughter, then?’ Merry pressed. ‘The minute she annoys you or offends you will you turn your back on her the way you turned your back on me?’
Angel flashed her a seethingly angry appraisal. ‘Not for one minute have you and that baby been out of my mind since the day you told me you were pregnant! I did not turn my back on you. I made proper provision for both of you.’
‘Yeah, you threw money at us to keep us at a safe distance, yet now here you are breaking your own rules,’ Merry whispered shakily.
‘What is the point of us wrangling like this?’ Angel questioned with rank impatience. ‘This is no longer about you and I. This involves a third person with rights of her own even if she is still only a baby. Will you allow me to meet my daughter this afternoon?’
‘Apart from everything else—like it being immaterial to you that I hate and distrust you,’ Merry framed with thin restraint, ‘today’s out of the question. I’ve got a date this afternoon and we’re going out.’
Angel tensed, long, powerful muscles pulling taut. He could not explain why he was shocked by the idea of her having a date. Maybe he had been guilty of assuming that she was too busy being a mother at present to worry about enjoying a social life. But the concept of her enjoying herself with another man inexplicably outraged and infuriated him and the vision of her bedding another man when he had been the first, the only, made him want to smash something.
His lean brown hands clenched into fists. ‘A date?’ he queried as jaggedly as if he had a piece of glass in his throat.
Merry stood up behind the desk and squared her slim shoulders. ‘Yes, he’s taking us to the beach. You have a problem with that as well?’
Us? The realisation that another man, some random, unknown stranger, had access to his daughter when he did not heaped coals of fire on Angel’s proud head. He snatched in a stark breath, fighting with all his might to cage his hot temper and his bitterness. ‘Yes, I do. Can’t you leave her with your aunt and grant me even ten minutes with my own child?’ he demanded rawly.
‘I’m afraid there isn’t time today.’ Merry swallowed the lump in her throat, that reminder that Elyssa had rights of her own still filtering back through her like a storm warning, making her appreciate that every decision she made now would have to be explained and defended to satisfy her daughter’s questions some years down the road. And just how mean could she afford to be to Angel before her daughter would question her attitude? Question whether her mother had given her daughter’s personal needs sufficient weight and importance? Her tummy dive-bombed, her former conviction that she was totally in the right taking a massive dent.
Nobody was ever totally in the right, she reminded herself reluctantly. There were always two sides to every story, every conflict. She was letting herself be influenced by her own feelings, not looking towards the future when Elyssa would demand answers to certain tough questions relating to her father. And did she really want to put herself in the position of having refused to allow her daughter’s flesh and blood to even see her? Dully it dawned on her that that could well be a step too far in hostilities. Angel had hurt her, but that was not indisputable proof that he would hurt his daughter.
‘Pick another day this week,’ she invited him stiffly, watching surprise and comprehension leap like golden flames into his vivid eyes. ‘But you make your arrangements with me, not through your lawyers. You visit for an hour. Let’s not raise the bar too high, let’s keep it simple. I won’t let you take her out anywhere without me and I don’t want you arriving with some fancy nanny in tow.’
His dramatic dark eyes shone bright, a tiny muscle jerking taut at the corner of his wide, sensual mouth. He swung away, momentarily turning his back on her before swinging back and nodding sombrely in agreement with her strictures. But in those revealing few seconds she had recognised the stormy flare of anticipation in his stunning gaze, finally registering that he had been serious in his approach and that he did genuinely want to meet his infant daughter.
‘Tomorrow morning, then,’ Angel pronounced decisively. ‘We’ll take it from there.’
Take what from where? she almost questioned but she ducked it, worn out by the sheer stress of dealing with him. Inside herself she was trembling with the strain of standing straight and unafraid and hiding her fearful anxiety from him because she knew that Angel would pounce on weakness like a shark catching the scent of blood. ‘About ten,’ she suggested carefully. ‘I have someone to see at half eleven.’
Angel gritted his even white teeth, wanting to ask if she was seeing the boyfriend again, but he had no intention of being foolish enough to ask questions he had no right to demand answers to. She had been under covert surveillance for weeks and he would soon identify the boyfriend from the records he had yet to examine. His mouth quirked because he knew she would be outraged if she knew he was paying a private firm to watch her every move.
But, when it came to protecting a member of the Valtinos family, Angel had no inhibitions. Hired security was as much a part of his life as it was for his mother. Safety came first and his daughter would be at risk of kidnapping were anyone to work out who had fathered her. It was his duty to safeguard his child and he would not apologise for the necessity.
Merry opened the office door to urge him out and followed him to where the limousine sat parked. ‘I live in the cottage at the front gate,’ she informed him.
‘I thought you lived with your aunt,’ Angel admitted with a frown.
‘When I became a mother I thought it was time for us to get our own space. Sybil practically raised me. I didn’t want her to feel that she had to do the same for my daughter,’ Merry confided ruefully.
In the summer sunlight she studied Angel’s lean, strong face, marvelling at the sleek symmetry of the hard cheekbones and hollows that enhanced his very masculine features. He was a literal work of art. It was little wonder that she had overreacted to his interest and refused to accept how shallow that interest was, she told herself squarely, struggling to calm the stabs of worry that erupted at the prospect of having any further dealings with him.
She would cope. She had to cope. So far she had contrived to cope with everything Angel Valtinos had thrown at her, she reminded herself with pride. As long as she remembered who and what he was, she would be fine...wouldn’t she?
CHAPTER FOUR (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
‘LETTING ELYSSA’S FATHER visit is the right way to go,’ Fergus opined, scrutinising her troubled face with concern before turning to gaze out to sea. ‘He treated you badly but that doesn’t automatically mean he’ll be a bad father. Only time will answer that.’
Merry went pink. As Fergus had combined picking her up with an examination of the latest arrival at the rescue centre, he had heard about the fuss created by Angel’s visit earlier in the day and had naturally asked her about it. She looked up at Fergus, drawn by his calm and acceptance of her situation, wondering if it was possible to feel anything or even trust a man again. Fergus stood about an inch under six feet. He had cropped brown hair and cheerful blue eyes and she had never heard him so much as raise his voice while she had already witnessed his compassion and regret when he was treating abused animals.
‘Are you over him?’ Fergus asked her bluntly.
Merry vented a shaken laugh. ‘I certainly hope so.’
And then he kissed her, wrapping her close in the sea breeze, and she froze only momentarily in surprise. Suddenly she found herself wanting to feel more than she actually felt because he was a good guy, ostensibly straightforward and as different from Angel as day was to night. Angel was all twists and turns, dark corners and unpredictability and she had never had any genuine hope of a future with him. Furthermore, Angel had never been her type. He wasn’t steady or open or even ready to settle down with conventional expectations. Feelings were foreign and threatening to Angel yet he bristled with untamed emotion. As Fergus freed her mouth and kept an arm anchored to her spine she realised in horror-stricken dismay that she’d spent their entire kiss thinking about Angel and her face burned in shame and discomfiture.
* * *
Angel sat in his limo and perused the photo that had been sent to his phone while he angrily wondered if he was a masochist or, indeed, developing sad stalker tendencies. But no, he had to deal with the situation as it was, not as he would’ve preferred it to be. Even worse, Merry had just upped the stakes, ensuring that Angel had now to raise his game. He wanted to stalk down to that beach and beat the hell out of the opposition. Because that was what Fergus Wickham was: opposition, serious opposition.
And naturally, Angel was confident that he was not jealous. After all, with only one exception, he had never experienced jealousy. He had, however, once cherished a singularly pathetic desire for his mother to take as much of an interest in him as she took in her toy boys. He had only been about seven years old at the time, he reminded himself forgivingly, and a distinctly naïve child, fondly expecting that, his having spent all term at boarding school, his mother would make him the centre of her loving attention when he finally came home.
Well, he wasn’t that naïve now, Angel acknowledged grimly. From his earliest years he had witnessed how fleeting love was for a Valtinos. A Valtinos bought love, paid well for its upkeep, got bored in exactly that order. His mother ran through young men as a lawnmower ran through grass. By the time Angel was in his twenties he was dealing with blackmail attempts, compromising photos and sordid scandals all on his mother’s behalf. His mother had tremendous charm but she remained as immature and irresponsible as a teenager. Even so, she was the only mother he would ever have and at heart he was fond of her.
But he didn’t get jealous or possessive of lovers because he didn’t ever get attached to them or develop expectations of them. Expectations always led to disappointment. Merry, however, was in a different category because she was the mother of his daughter and Angel didn’t want her to have another man in her life. That was a matter of simple good sense. Another man would divide her loyalties, take her focus off her child and invite unflattering comparisons...
‘You heard the pitter patter of tiny feet and literally ran for the hills,’ his brother Vitale had summed up a week earlier. ‘Not a very promising beginning.’
No, it wasn’t, Angel conceded wrathfully while endlessly scrutinising that photo in which his daughter appeared only as a small indistinct blob anchored in a pram. He had screwed up but he was a terrific strategist and unstoppable once he had a goal. He didn’t even need an angle because his daughter was all the ammunition he required. Was Merry sleeping with that guy yet? Angel smouldered and scowled, beginning for the first time to scroll through the records he had studiously ignored to respect Merry’s privacy. To hell with that scruple, he thought angrily. He had to fight to protect what was his.
* * *
‘So, how are you planning to play it with Elyssa’s father tomorrow?’ Sybil asked that evening, having tried and failed to get much out of her niece concerning the date with Fergus.
Merry shrugged. ‘Cool, calm...’
‘He’s impossibly headstrong and obstinate,’ her aunt pronounced with disapproval. ‘I only cocked the gun because I didn’t want him landing on your doorstep unannounced but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘He isn’t familiar with the word no,’ Merry mused ruefully. ‘I do wish I’d treated him to it last year.’
‘Do you really wish you didn’t have Elyssa?’
Merry flushed and, thinking about that, shook her head in dismissal. ‘I thought I would when I was pregnant but once she was here, everything changed.’
‘Maybe it changed for Angel as well. Maybe he wasn’t lying about that. He does value family ties,’ Sybil remarked.
Merry frowned. ‘How do you know that?’
Sybil reddened, her eyes evasive. ‘Well, you told me he meets up with his father twice a month and never cancels...and naturally I’ve read about his mother, Angelina’s exploits in the newspapers. She’s a real nut-job—rich, stupid, fickle. If he’s still close to her, he has a high tolerance threshold for embarrassment. She’s not far off my age and the men in her bed are getting younger by the year.’
Merry’s eyes widened. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Shallow sexual relationships are all he saw growing up, all he’s ever had as an example to follow. It’s hardly surprising that he is the way he is. I won’t excuse him for the way he treated you but I do see that he doesn’t know any better,’ Sybil completed, recognising Merry’s surprise. ‘But you could teach him different.’
‘I don’t think you can domesticate a wild animal.’
Sybil rolled her eyes. ‘Elyssa has enough charisma to stop a charging rhinoceros.’
* * *
Merry tossed and turned in her bed, despising herself for her nervous tension. Angel had cast a long shadow over her afternoon with Fergus, depriving her of relaxation and appreciation. She had made hateful, unforgivable comparisons. On some secret, thoroughly inexcusable level, she still craved the buzz of excitement that Angel had filled her with and that unsettled and shamed her. After all, once the excitement had gone she had been left pregnant and alone and now her memory trailed back fifteen months...
Discovering that she was pregnant had proved a real shock for Merry because she had not seriously considered that that single accident was likely to result in conception and had hoped for the best. She had barely settled into a new and very challenging job, and falling pregnant had seemed like the worst possible news. She had suffered from severe morning sickness and at one stage had even feared she was on the brink of having a miscarriage. She had waited until she was over three months along before she’d even tried to contact Angel to tell him that she was carrying his child. She had never had his personal mobile number and had never got to speak to him when she’d phoned the office, suspecting that calls from her were on some discreet forbidden list. The prospect of sending a letter or an email that would probably be opened and read by a former colleague had made her cringe. In the end she had used her working knowledge of Angel’s diary and had headed to the hotel where he met his father for lunch twice a month.
That unwise but desperate move had put in motion the most humiliating, wounding encounter of Merry’s life. Angel had had a very tall and beautiful blonde with him when he entered the bar, a blonde with bare breasts on display under a gauzy see-through dress. She had looked like the sort of woman who didn’t ever wear underwear and every man in the place had stared lustfully at her, while she’d clung to Angel’s arm and giggled and touched him with easy confidence. Just looking at her, Merry had felt sick and ugly and plain and boring because pregnancy had not been kind to her. Her body had already been swelling and thickening, her eyes had been shadowed because she couldn’t sleep and the smell of most foods had made her nauseous. She had stayed concealed in the bar behind a book and round a corner while Angel, his companion and eventually his father had sat down to lunch on an outside terrace.
If Angel had not reappeared at the bar alone, she would probably simply have gone back to work without even trying to achieve her goal. But when she’d seen him she had forced herself up out of her seat and forward.
‘I have to speak to you in private,’ she had said. ‘It’s very important. It will only take five minutes.’
He had spun back from the bar to appraise her with cool, guarded eyes. ‘I’m listening.’
‘Could we go out into the foyer?’ she had pressed, very conscious of the number of people around them. ‘It would be more private.’
He had acquiesced with unconcealed reluctance. ‘What is this about?’ he had demanded as soon as they’d got there.
And then she had made her announcement and those expressive beautiful eyes of his had glittered like cold black diamonds, his consternation and annoyance obvious.
‘Do you want it?’ he had asked doubtingly, earning her hatred with every syllable of that leading question. ‘Scratch that. It was politically incorrect. Of course, I will support you in whatever choice you make.’ He had drawn out a business card and thrust it into her unwilling hand. ‘I will inform my lawyers. Please provide them with contact details and I will make provision for you.’
And that had been Angel’s knee-jerk response to unexpected fatherhood: brief and brutal and wholly unemotional and objective. Go away and I’ll give you cash to keep you quiet and at a distance.
Remembering that encounter, Merry shuddered and tears stung her eyes afresh. That was the final moment when she had faced the reality that she had given her body to a ruthlessly detached man without a heart. How could she let such a man come within ten feet of her precious, loving daughter? That question kept her awake until dawn. Suddenly keeping the peace and giving Angel another chance seemed the stuff of stupidity.
* * *
Having done his baby research diligently before his visit, Angel believed he was prepared for all eventualities. His second cousin had six-month-old twins and a toddler and lived in London. It was hard to say who had been most startled by his interest: his cousin at the shock of his curiosity or Angel at finding himself festooned in wriggling babies, who cried, pooped and threw up while poking and pulling at him. There were loads of babies in his extended family circle but Angel had always given them a very wide berth.
He put on his oldest jeans for the occasion and, after consulting his cousin, he purchased only one modest gift. Merry wouldn’t be impressed by a toyshop splurge. She was already saving every penny he was giving her into a trust for their daughter. Merry and her endless rainy-day fund, he thought incredulously, deeming her joyless, fearful attitude to spending money depressing. She was a natural-born hoarder of cash. If only his mother suffered from the same insecurity, he conceded wryly.
From upstairs, Merry watched the sleek, expensive car pull into the driveway. She had dressed smartly that morning. After all she had a potential new client coming at half eleven and she needed to look professional, so her hair was freshly washed, her make-up was on and she wore a summer dress that clung to her slender curves. What she wore had nothing whatsoever to do with Angel’s visit, except in so far as looking smart lifted her confidence, she told herself soothingly.
Angel sprang fluidly out of his car, his lean, powerful body clad in black jeans and a green sweater that was undoubtedly cashmere. He found English summers cold. She carried Elyssa downstairs. Her daughter wore one of the fashionable baby outfits that Sybil often bought her, a pretty blue floral tunic and leggings that reflected her eyes. The door knocker rapped twice and she hastily settled Elyssa down on the rug before rushing breathlessly back to the door, scolding herself for the unmistakeable sense of anticipation gripping her.
Angel stepped in and his stunning dark golden gaze locked to her with the most electrifying immediacy. Tension leapt through Merry along with a growing unease about the decision she had made. He looked amazing. He always looked amazing, she reminded herself mockingly, striving not to react in any way. But it was impossible. Her breath shortened in her tightening throat and her breasts tingled and a sensual warmth made her thighs press together.
Angel’s scrutiny roamed from the glossy bell of her dark hair, down to the modest neckline of the dress that clung to the delectably full swell of her breasts, before skimming down over her waist to define the feminine swell of her hips. He didn’t let himself look at her legs because she had fantastic legs and the heat pooling in his groin didn’t need that added encouragement. He didn’t know how she had contrived to get skinnier and at the same time more interestingly curvy but he especially didn’t like the feeling of being sexually drawn against his will.
‘Elyssa’s in here,’ she framed stiffly.
‘That’s a Greek name.’
‘Yes, she’s entitled to a Greek name,’ Merry proclaimed defensively.
‘I wasn’t...criticising.’ Angel registered the white-knuckled grip she had on the edge of the door and recognised that he would be treading on eggshells every time he spoke. He gritted his teeth on the awareness but as Merry pushed the door fully open he finally saw his daughter and for several timeless moments stayed rigid in the doorway drinking in the sight of her.
‘She’s got my hair,’ he almost whispered, moving forward and then dropping down onto the rug a couple of feet from his daughter. ‘But curls look cute on her...’
Merry watched him closely, registering that he had enough sense not to try to get too familiar too fast with a baby that didn’t know him. No, Angel was far too clever to make an obvious wrong move, she reflected bitterly, before catching herself up on that suspicious but hardly charitable thought and crossing the room to go into the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Don’t go all polite on me,’ she said drily.
‘What do you expect?’ Angel shot her a sardonic glance of rebuke. ‘I know you don’t want me here.’
Merry paled at that blunt statement. ‘I’m trying not to feel like that.’
She put on the kettle and watched him remove a toy from his pocket, a brightly coloured teething toy, which he set on the rug at his feet. It was a strategic move and Elyssa quickly fulfilled his expectations by extending the toy she held to him in the hope of gaining access to the new and more interesting one. Angel accepted it and handed over his gift. Elyssa chortled with satisfaction and bestowed a huge smile on him before sticking the new toy into her mouth and chewing happily on it.
‘She has your eyes,’ Angel remarked. ‘She’s incredibly pretty.’
In spite of her desire to remain unmoved, Merry flushed with pride. ‘I think so too.’
‘She’s also unmistakeably mine,’ Angel intoned with unashamed approval.
‘Well, you already knew that,’ Merry could not resist reminding him. ‘She was DNA tested after she was born.’
Angel winced. ‘I never once doubted that the child you were carrying was mine but in view of inheritance rights...and us not being married...it was best to have it legally confirmed.’ He hesitated before turning his classic bronzed profile to study her levelly. ‘But I let the lawyers take over and run the whole show and that was a mistake. I see that now.’
Merry jerked her chin in acknowledgement, not trusting herself to speak.
‘I didn’t know any other way to handle it,’ Angel admitted grimly. ‘I took the easy way out...unfortunately the easy way turned out to be the wrong way.’
Taken aback by that admission, Merry dragged in a ragged breath and turned away to make the coffee. A fat burst of chuckles from her daughter made her flip back and she saw Elyssa bouncing on the rug, held steady by Angel’s hands and revelling in both the exercise and the attention.
When Elyssa tired of that, Angel turned out her toy box for her. Tiger slunk out from under the chair where he had been hiding since Angel’s arrival and moved hesitantly closer to investigate.
‘Diavolos!’ Angel exclaimed in surprise. ‘Where did the dog come from?’
Startled by Angel’s deep voice, Tiger shot back under the chair.
‘He’s been here all along. His name’s Tiger.’
‘Kind of nervous for a dog called Tiger and hardly a stream-lined predator.’
‘OK. He’s fat, you can say it. He’s addicted to food and he wasn’t socialised properly when he was young. He came from a puppy farm that was closed down,’ Merry volunteered, extending a cup of black coffee to Angel as he vaulted lithely upright, suddenly dominating the small room with his height and the breadth of his shoulders.
‘I didn’t know you were keen on dogs.’
‘I practically grew up helping in the rescue centre.’ Merry could hear herself gabbling because her heart was pounding wildly in her chest as Angel moved towards her and even breathing was a challenge beneath the onslaught of his gleaming dark golden eyes. ‘I—’
‘Tell it like it is,’ Angel urged sibilantly.
Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You still want me as much as I want you,’ he breathed huskily, sipping his coffee as if he were merely making casual conversation.
‘I don’t want to have that sort of discussion with you,’ Merry told him curtly, colour burnishing her cheeks as she wondered if he really could tell that easily that she was still vulnerable around him. Not that she would do anything about it or let him do anything about it, she reasoned with pride. Attraction was nothing more than a hormonal trick and, in her case, a very dangerous misdirection.
‘Avoid? Deny?’ Angel derided, his beautiful wilful mouth curling, his smouldering gaze enhanced by unfairly long black lashes welded to her fast-reddening face. ‘What’s the point?’
‘If you continue this I’m going to ask you to leave,’ Merry warned thinly.
And genuine amusement engulfed Angel and laughter lit up his lean, dark features. ‘I’m not about to pounce on you with our daughter watching! Believe me, while she’s around, you’re safe,’ he assured her smoothly.
Inexplicably that little exchange made Merry feel foolish and rather as though she had ended up with egg on her face, which was burning like a furnace. Even now, many months after the event, she couldn’t laugh about what had happened between them. Looking back, it was as if blinding sunlight overlaid and blurred the explosive passion she couldn’t begin to explain and never wanted to experience again. Unfortunately for her, her body had a different ambition. One glimpse of Angel’s darkly handsome face and long, sleek, muscular frame and she was as tense as a bowstring, caught between forbidden pleasure at his sheer physical beauty and angry self-loathing at her susceptibility to it.
‘I brought lunch with me,’ Angel revealed, startling her.
Her eyes widened. ‘But I have a client due.’
‘I’ll return in an hour. You know we need to talk about Elyssa and how we move on from here,’ Angel pointed out as if it were the most reasonable and natural thing in the world when in truth they had never ever talked about anything.
‘Yes...yes, of course,’ she muttered uneasily, because she could see that a talk made sense and it was surely better to get it all over in one go and in one day, she told herself soothingly. ‘I should be free in an hour, but—’
‘I’ll make it an hour and a half,’ Angel cut in decisively as he moved towards the door.
Merry skimmed his arm with an uncertain finger to attract his attention. ‘I’m afraid Elyssa has...er...stained your sweater,’ she told him awkwardly.
His amused grin flashed perfect white teeth and enhanced the sculpted fullness of his wide, sensual mouth. ‘It’s not a problem. I brought a change of clothes with me.’
‘My goodness, you were organised,’ she mumbled in surprise as he strode down the path and leant down into his car, straightening to peel off the offending sweater and expose the flexing muscles of his bronzed and powerful torso. Her mouth ran dry and she stared, watching him pull on another sweater, black this time, before she closed the door.
She ignored her reeling senses to concentrate on what was truly important. Angel was unpredictable, she reminded herself worriedly, devious to a fault and dangerously volatile. What did he truly want from her? Why was he putting himself to so much trouble? Lunch? All of a sudden he was bringing her lunch? Merry was stunned by the concept and the planning that must have gone into that. Did Angel really want access to his daughter that badly? Did he have sufficient interest and staying power to want a long-term relationship with his daughter? And where did that leave her when she really didn’t want Angel to feature anywhere in her life?
You should’ve thought of that before you let him visit, Merry told herself in exasperation. Possibly Angel was only trying to smooth over the hostilities between them. And possibly she was a suspicious little shrew, still bitter and battered from her previous encounters with him. At the very least she ought to acknowledge that she would never ever second-guess Angel Valtinos and that he would always take her by surprise. After all, that was how he did business and how he thrived in a cut-throat world.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ubf70d473-7f76-55dc-acf7-a65ac9c804cf)
MERRY SHOOK HANDS with her new client, who had got into a mess with his tax returns, and promised to update him on the situation within the week. Soon she would have to try to fit in a refresher course to update her knowledge of recent legislative changes, she reflected thoughtfully, incredibly keen to think of anything other than the awareness that Angel was sliding supple as a dancer out of his car as her visitor departed.
Sybil had swooped in to take enthusiastic charge of Elyssa soon after Angel’s earlier departure. Hearing of the lunch plan, she had laughed and drily observed, ‘He’s treating you to a charm offensive. Well, if you must have a serious talk with him, it’ll be easier not to have Elyssa grizzling for her lunch and her nap in the midst of it. Phone me when you want to steal her back.’
And once again, Merry had reflected how very, very lucky she had always been to have Sybil in her life, standing by her when life was tough, advising and supporting her, in short being the only caring mother figure that she had ever known. Sybil had cured the hurts inflicted by her kid sister’s lack of interest in and impatience with her child and, although Merry knew her aunt had been disappointed when she became pregnant without being in a serious relationship, she had kept her disappointment to herself and had instead focused her attention on how best to help her expectant niece.
‘Lunch,’ Angel told her carelessly, carting a large luxurious hamper in one hand.
‘I’ve got a terrace out the back. Since it’s sunny, we might as well eat there,’ Merry suggested, preferring the idea of that casual setting in which she thought Angel would be less intimidating.
‘This is unexpectedly pleasant,’ Angel remarked, sprawling down with innate grace on a wrought-iron chair and taking in the pleasant view of fields and wooded hills visible beyond the hedge.
‘This was Sybil’s Christmas surprise for us,’ Merry explained. ‘Her last tenant was elderly and the garden was overgrown. Sybil hired someone to fix it up and now Elyssa will have somewhere safe to play when she’s more mobile.’
‘You’re very close to your aunt,’ Angel commented warily. ‘She doesn’t like me.’
Crystalline blue eyes collided with his in challenge. ‘What did you expect?’ she traded.
Angel had not been prepared to meet with a condemnation that bold and unapologetic and his teeth clenched, squaring his aggressive jaw, the faint dark shadow of stubble already roughening his bronzed skin accentuating the hard slant of his shapely mouth.
‘Yes, you ensured I had enough money to survive but that was that,’ Merry stated before he could remind her of the reality.
Angel sidestepped that deeply controversial issue by ignoring it. Instead he opened the hamper and stacked utensils and dishes on the table and asked where his daughter was. After all, what could he say about his treatment of Merry? The facts were the facts and he couldn’t change them. He knew he had done everything wrong and he had acknowledged that. Didn’t his honesty and his regret lighten the scales even a little? Was she expecting him to grovel on hands and knees?
‘Wow...this is some spread,’ Merry remarked uneasily as she set out the food and he uncorked the bottle of wine and filled the glasses with rich red liquid. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘From one of my hotels,’ Angel responded with the nonchalance that was the sole preserve of the very rich.
Merry placed a modest selection of savoury bites on her plate and said tensely, ‘What did you want to discuss?’
‘Our future,’ Angel delivered succinctly while Tiger sat at his feet with little round pleading eyes pinned to the meat on his fork.
‘Nobody can foretell the future,’ Merry objected.
‘I can where we’re concerned,’ Angel assured her, every liquid syllable cool as ice. ‘Either we spend at least the next ten years fighting it out over Elyssa in court or...we get married and share her.’
Merry studied him over the top of her wine glass with steadily widening pale blue eyes, and then gulped in more wine than she intended and coughed and spluttered in the most embarrassing manner as she struggled to get a grip on her wildly fluctuating emotions. First he had frightened the life out of her by mentioning a court battle over her beloved daughter, and then he’d sent her spinning with a suggestion she had never dreamt that she would hear from his lips.
‘Married?’ she emphasised with a curled lip. ‘Are you crazy or just trying to unnerve me?’
Having forced himself to pull the pin on the marriage grenade straight away, Angel coiled back in his chair and savoured his wine. ‘It’s an unnerving idea for me as well. Apart from my mother, who wanders in and out of my properties, I’ve never lived with a woman before,’ he admitted curtly. ‘But we do need to think creatively to solve our current problems.’
‘I don’t have any problems right now. I also can’t believe that you want Elyssa so much after one little meeting that you would sink to what is virtually blackmail,’ Merry framed coldly, eyes glinting like chipped ice in the sunlight.
‘Oh, I would sink a lot lower than that and I think you know it,’ Angel traded without shame, unyielding dark golden eyes steady with stubborn resolve. ‘I will do whatever I have to do to get what I want...or in this case to ensure that my daughter benefits from a suitable home.’
‘But Elyssa already has a suitable home,’ Merry pointed out, working hard to stay calm and appear untouched by his threat of legal intervention. ‘We’re happy here. I have work that I can do at home and we have a decent life.’
‘Only not by my standards. Elyssa is my heir and will one day be a very wealthy woman. When you’re so prejudiced against spending my money, how do you expect her to adapt to my world when she becomes independent?’ he demanded with lethal cool.
Merry compressed her sultry mouth and lifted angrily out of her seat. ‘I’m not prejudiced!’ she protested. ‘I didn’t want to depend on your money. I simply prefer to stand on my own feet.’
Angel dealt her a perceptive appraisal that made her skin tighten uneasily over her bones. ‘Like me, you have trust issues and you’re very proud.’
‘Don’t you tell me that I have trust issues when you know absolutely nothing about me!’ Merry practically spat back at him in her fury. ‘Newsflash, Angel...we had two sexual encounters, not a relationship!’
Angel ran lingering hooded dark eyes over her slender figure and her aggressive stance, remembering that fire in bed, how it had stoked his own and resulted in a conflagration more passionate than anything he had ever known. As a rule, she kept that fire hidden, suppressed beneath her tranquil, prissy little surface, but around him she couldn’t manage that feat and he cherished that truth. Anger was much more promising than indifference.
Merry planted her hands on her curvy hips and flung him a fierce look of censure. ‘And don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she warned him, helplessly conscious of that smouldering sexual assessment. ‘It’s rude and inappropriate.’
Angel shifted lithely in his chair, murderously aware of his roaring arousal and the tightness of his jeans and marvelling at the reality that he could actually be enjoying himself in her company, difficult though she was. A slow-burning smile slashed his lean, strong face. ‘The burn is still there, glyka mou,’ he told her. ‘But let’s concentrate our energies on my solution for our future.’
‘That wasn’t a solution, that was fanciful nonsense!’ Merry hissed back at him. ‘You don’t want to marry me. You don’t want to marry anybody!’
‘But I’ll do it for Elyssa’s benefit because I believe that she needs a father as much as she needs a mother,’ Angel asserted levelly. ‘A father is not expendable. My father was very important in my life, even though he wasn’t able to be there for me as much as he would have liked.’
Unprepared for that level of honesty and gravity from a man as naturally secretive and aloof as Angel, Merry was bemused. ‘I never said you were expendable, for goodness’ sake,’ she argued less angrily. ‘That’s why I let you finally visit and meet her.’
‘How much of a relationship did you have with your own father?’ Angel enquired lethally.
Merry’s face froze. ‘I didn’t have one. My mother, Natalie, fell pregnant by her boss and he was married. I met him once but his wife couldn’t stand the sight of me, probably because I was the proof of his infidelity,’ she conceded uncomfortably. ‘He never asked to see me again. When it came to making a choice between me and his wife, naturally he chose his wife.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Angel disconcerted her with a look of sympathy that hurt her pride as much as a slap would have done.
‘Well, I’m not. I got by fine without him,’ Merry declared, lifting her chin.
‘Maybe you did.’ Angel trailed out the word, letting her know he wasn’t convinced by her face-saving claim. ‘But others don’t do so well without paternal guidance. My own mother grew up indulged in every financial way, but essentially without parents who cared enough about her to discipline her. She’s well past fifty now, although she doesn’t look it, but she’s still a rebellious teenager in her own head. I want my daughter to have stability. I don’t want her to go wild when she becomes an adult with the world at her feet along with every temptation.’
Involuntarily impressed by that argument, Merry shook her head. ‘That’s a long way off and if I don’t stand in the way of her having a relationship with you now, you’ll still be around.’
Angel lounged back in his chair and crossed an ankle over one knee, long, powerful thigh muscles flexing below tight, faded denim. He looked outrageously relaxed, as if he were posing for a publicity shot, and drop-dead gorgeous from the spill of glossy black curls to the golden caramel brilliance of his eyes. Merry dragged her guilty gaze from his thighs and his crotch, sudden heat rising inside her and burning her cheeks. His hard-boned, thoroughly raunchy masculine beauty broke through her defences every time she looked at him and it made her feel like a breathless fan girl.
‘But the bottom line is that unless we marry I won’t be around enough,’ Angel intoned with grim emphasis. ‘I spend at least fifty per cent of the year abroad. I want her to meet my relatives and learn what it means to be a Valtinos...’
He could have said nothing more calculated to cool Merry’s fevered response to him. Dismay filled her because she understood the message he was giving her. As soon as Elyssa was old enough, Angel would be spiriting her out to Greece, taking her away from her mother, leaving Merry behind, shorn of control of what happened in her child’s life. It was a sobering prospect.
‘Did you mean it...what you said about fighting me in court?’ Merry prompted angrily.
‘For once in my life I was playing it straight,’ Angel declared.
‘But where the heck did all this suddenly come from?’ Merry demanded in heated denial. ‘You didn’t want anything to do with us last winter!’
‘It took time for me to come to terms with how I felt about fatherhood. At first I thought the most important objective was to conserve my world as it was. I thought I could turn my back on you and my child but I found that I couldn’t,’ Angel breathed in a roughened undertone as though the words were being extracted forcibly from him. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about her...or you.’
‘Me?’ Merry gasped in sharp disbelief. ‘Why would you have been thinking about me?’
Angel lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in questioning doubt. ‘So, I’m human. Learning that a woman is carrying your child is an unexpectedly powerful discovery—’
‘Angel,’ Merry cut in without hesitation, ‘let’s come back down to earth here. Learning that I was pregnant sent you into retreat so fast you left a smoke trail in your wake!’
‘And all I learned was that there was no place to run from reality,’ Angel countered with sardonic bite. ‘I fought my curiosity for a long time before I finally gave way to it and asked to see her. You said no repeatedly but here we are now, supposedly acting like adults. I’m trying to be honest... I’m trying not to threaten you but I’ve come to see marriage as the best option for all three of us.’
‘You threatened me quite deliberately!’ Merry slung at him furiously.
‘You need to know that I’m serious and that this is not some whim that will go away if you wait for long enough. I’m here to stay in your lives,’ Angel intoned harshly.
‘Well, that’s going to be rather awkward when it’s not what I want and I will fight you every step of the way!’ Merry flung back at him. ‘You wanted me out of your life and I got out. You can’t force me back.’
‘If it means my daughter gets the future she deserves, I will force you,’ Angel bit out in a raw, wrathful undertone as he plunged upright, casting a long dark shadow over the table. ‘You need to accept that this is not just about you and me any more, it’s about her!’
Merry paled. ‘I do accept that.’
‘No, you don’t. You’re still set on punishing me for the selfish decisions I made and that approach isn’t going to get us anywhere. I don’t want to go to court and fight but I will if I have no alternative!’ Angel shot at her furiously, dark golden eyes scorching, his Greek accent edging every vowel with piercing sibilance in the afternoon stillness. ‘When I asked you to marry me I was trying to show respect!’
‘You wouldn’t know respect if it bit you on the arse!’ Merry flamed back at him with helpless vulgarity. ‘And I am so sorry I didn’t grovel with gratitude at the offer of a wedding ring the way you obviously expected.’
‘No, you’re not sorry!’ Angel roared back at her equally loudly. ‘You enjoyed dragging me over the coals, questioning my motivation and commitment, and not for one minute did you seriously consider what I was offering...’
‘Stop shouting at me!’ Merry warned him, reeling in shock from that sudden volatile surge of anger from him, not having appreciated that that rage could lie so close to his seemingly cool surface.
‘I’ve said sorry every damn way I know how but you’re after revenge, not a way forward, and there’s nothing I can do to change that!’ Angel growled, throwing open the back door to go back into the house and leave.
There was sufficient truth in that stormy welter of accusations to draw Merry up short and make her question her attitude. ‘I’m not after revenge...that’s ridiculous!’ she protested weakly, closing a staying hand over his arm as he shot her yet another murderous smouldering glance before turning back to the door.
Sorry every damn way I know how rang afresh in her ears and tightened her grip on his muscular forearm. ‘Angel, please...let’s calm down.’
‘For what good reason would I calm down?’ Angel raked down at her. ‘This was a pointless attempt on my part to change things between us.’
Her teeth were chattering with nerves. ‘Yes, I can see that but you storming off in a rage is only going to make things worse,’ she muttered ruefully. ‘Maybe I haven’t been fair to you, maybe I haven’t given you a decent hearing, but you came at me with this like a rocket out of nowhere and I don’t adapt quickly to new ideas the way you do!’
‘You adapted fast enough to me in bed!’ Angel husked with sizzling clarity.
‘That’s your massive ego talking!’ Merry launched back at him irately.
‘No, it’s not,’ Angel growled, yanking her up against him, shifting his lithe hips, ensuring she recognised how turned-on he was. ‘You make me want you.’
‘It’s my fault?’ Merry carolled in disbelief even as her whole body tilted into his, as magnetised by his arousal as a thirsty plant suddenly placed within reach of water. Little tremors were running through her as she struggled to get a grip on the prickling tightness of her nipples and the heat building between her thighs. An unbearable ache followed that she positively shrank from reliving in his vicinity. She wanted to slap herself, she wanted to slap him, she wanted to freeze the moment and replay it her way, in which she would draw back from him in withering disgust and say something terribly clever and wounding that would hold him at bay.
‘You just can’t bring yourself to admit that you’re the same,’ Angel gritted, bending his arrogant dark head, one hand meshing into the tumble of her hair to drag her head back and expose her throat. His mouth found that slender corded column and nipped and tasted up to her ear, awakening a shower of tingling sensation, and she was electrified and dizzy with longing, wanting what she knew she shouldn’t, wanting with a hunger suppressed and denied for too many months, craving the release he could give.
And then he kissed her, crushing her ripe mouth, his tongue plunging and retreating, and she saw stars and whirling multicoloured planets behind her lowered lids while her body fizzed like a firework display, leaving her weak with hunger. She kissed him back, hands rising to delve into the crisp luxuriance of his hair, framing, holding, needing. It was frantic, out of control, the way it always was for them.
Angel wrenched her back from him, long brown fingers biting into her slim shoulders to keep her upright and gazing up into his blazing liquid-honey eyes. ‘No, I’m not a one-trick pony or a cheap one-night stand. You’ll have to marry me to get any more of that,’ he told her with derision as he slapped a business card down on the table. ‘My phone number...should you think better of your attitude today.’
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Линн Грэхем и Ким Лоренс
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The Secret Valtinos Baby by Lynne GrahamHis seduction had life-changing consequencesNow her boss is back—with marriage in mind!Personal assistant Merry Armstrong couldn’t resist Angel Valtinos’s sensual charisma. The Greek awakened her with his touch and left her pregnant! When Angel discovers his heir, duty compels him to act. Despite Merry’s independence, Valtinos’s legacy must be legitimised—and seducing her into becoming his wife will be his biggest challenge!The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest by Kim LawrenceThey shared a night of mindless passion……now he’ll take her once again!Reeling from his best friend’s death, Greek shipping magnate Nik Latsis found oblivion in the arms of a stunning stranger. Since then, her innocence has haunted his dreams. And now Nik knows only another taste will rid him of his burning desire. But Nik will need more than seductive charm if he’s to entice feisty Chloe back into his bed…