A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite

‘Not very well,’ she inserted sourly.

‘The answer to your question is, yes, I do, when the answer interests me.’

‘I was bored and hungry.’

‘You haven’t eaten much.’

‘I’m watching my weight.’

‘Do you ever worry about your part in the message that the media sends out to young girls?’ His tone was deceptively casual but the eyes that met hers were anything but.

‘Message?’

‘The pressure to achieve an impossible level of perfection, like the women they see in the magazines. The message that equates beauty with happiness. Of course, I was forgetting you have a daughter of your own. I’m sure you are well aware of the pressures facing young women.’

She stiffened, her heart beating fast as she twisted the linen napkin between her fingers. He knew, somehow he knew! Or he thought he knew....

‘Jasmine is not a woman. She’s a child.’

‘True, but they grow up so quickly and I believe that anorexia sufferers are getting younger and younger.’

She shook her head, angry now, and got to her feet. Looking down at him lessened the feeling of being a mouse being toyed with by a large feline. ‘Why are you suddenly so interested in my daughter?’

He laid his own napkin down with slow deliberation, holding her eyes as he got to his feet. ‘Because I had this idea... It’s crazy, but in my experience those are the ones that it pays not to ignore. So I did a little research and a few surprising things came up, like the fact that your daughter was born eight months to the day after we spent the night together and there was no one before.’

‘Or after.’ Did I really say that?

He didn’t react, but she could feel the emotions rolling off him.

Angel didn’t blink; she didn’t breathe. She shrugged and struggled to hold on to her manufactured calm.

‘So you want to know if you’re Jasmine’s father? Couldn’t you just have come out and asked? Did it really require all this elaborate stage-managing?’

‘It occurred to me that you might be waiting for the right moment to tell me...?’ He had really tried hard to think of this from her point of view but her expression was not saying she appreciated the effort. He had been her only lover.... Only... He experienced a stab of sheer primitive possessive satisfaction, and breathed out, letting the air escape in a slow, measured sigh.

‘I thought I’d provide it.... I thought if you were relaxed—’

‘You thought you’d get me drunk,’ she countered, pointing to the second bottle in the ice bucket. ‘And trick me into saying things!’

The comment hit a raw nerve. First she threw his consideration back in his face, now she tried to make herself the victim. ‘I shouldn’t have to trick you into anything. If I’ve got a bloody child I have a right to know.... I have a right to know her!’ It was the first time she had heard him use Russian but she was guessing she wouldn’t find the translation of what he snarled in any phrase book.

As angry now as he was, she heaved in a taut, angry breath of her own. What did he know? Parenthood wasn’t a right—it was a privilege!

‘Rights? You have no rights! You see Jasmine only if I say so, and I don’t. I came here wanting to find out if you were the sort of person I want in Jasmine’s life, the sort of person who would be good for her to know. Well, now I do know, and you’re not. I wouldn’t have you near my daughter...for...for...anything! You’re a manipulative bastard who treats people like chess pieces... You’re the last father I’d choose for my daughter.’

Breathing hard like duelists, they stood either end of the table facing one another, firing angry words, not bullets, though the words could inflict considerable damage and once they were out there they were impossible to retract.

Even though she was still furious Angel was already beginning to regret the things she had said.

He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table, and fixed her with an icy blue arctic stare. When he spoke it was in a voice that was several decibels lower than the hot words shouted in the heat of the moment. Cold, considered and chosen to inflict the maximum level of fear.

Angel was seeing the man that made powerful men tremble with fear.

‘You have picked the wrong man to challenge. You will not keep my daughter from me. Attempt to prevent me seeing her and it will be me you come begging to for visitation rights. If you have a skeleton... If you have a bone fragment in your cupboard I will find it and my lawyers will use it.’ He hardened his heart against her pale, stricken expression and added, ‘You started this, but I will finish it. That much is a promise.’

Without another word he walked away.

Angel didn’t react. She just stood there, frozen. She roused only at the sound of an engine and she turned in time to see him vanishing in a cloud of dust.

He had driven away, leaving her stranded.

Not quite able to believe the situation she found herself in, she looked from the dust cloud to the food and wine spread out and with a laugh she slumped down into the chair.

‘At least I won’t starve.’

She was still sitting there twenty minutes later when one of the men who had earlier been laying out the food appeared. If he found the situation strange nothing in his manner suggested it as he framed his meticulously polite question.

‘Are you ready to return to the mainland?’

She was ready to kiss the feet of her rescuer but she was much more circumspect in her icy state, and responded to the respectful enquiry with a nod and a smile.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#uf9ff38c7-3705-5089-92cf-ce5ad2294efa)

ALEX PULLED THE car over after a mile, leaning his elbows across the steering wheel. He thought he knew every inch of the island but he struggled to get his bearings as he pushed his head back into the padded headrest and looked up through the open roof at the trees that blocked out the sun.

‘Well, that worked out well, Alex.’

He’d had it all planned. While he had rejected all Angel’s charges at the time, had she been so wrong?

Driving like a lunatic, while satisfying, was not going to solve anything. He had blown it; he had acted while the emotive impact of discovering he was a father was still fresh. When she hadn’t said what he’d wanted to hear he had launched into attack mode and made a tough situation ten times worse.

* * *

Back at the bungalow the only thing she wanted to do was... Actually there were two things she wanted to do: throw herself on the bed and weep, and break something. The first she didn’t do because she was due to have her prearranged chat via the internet with her daughter in less than half an hour, and the second... Well, she was supposedly a grown-up and grown-ups did not throw their rattles out of the pram, unless of course the supposed grown-up was Alex Arlov!

Things hadn’t gone his way and he’d simply gone off in a strop. Admittedly, a pretty magnificently broody strop, but the fact remained that she had refused to play by his rules so he’d walked away, issuing threats that had made her blood turn to ice. Not to mention that they revealed what a truly ruthless man lurked beneath the urbane exterior.

Would he adopt the same sort of parenting style? When the going got tough would he opt out?

Her hands balled into clawed fists at her side as she paced the room. The man made her so mad! She took a deep breath and reminded herself that this was not about her or her feelings, or, for that matter, Alex. It was about Jas and she was not going to run the risk of laying her precious girl open to hurt or rejection.

It was after her chat with Jas that Angel did cry—tears of regret more than anger. Her little girl was so lovely. She deserved a father, someone who would take her as she was, and not weigh her down with unrealistic expectations. Did Alex even know what having a child involved? Or would Jas just be another possession to him?

Had he meant those threats?

Should she get legal advice? The thought of anyone trying to take away her daughter... She shuddered as she recalled his lethally soft-voiced threat, aimed with dagger-like accuracy to inflict the maximum fear and panic.

She wouldn’t panic; she would fight!