Million-Dollar Love-Child

Her mouth dried. ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

‘A word of advice—’ His voice was suddenly soft and his eyes glittered, dark and dangerous. ‘When you’re trying to relieve someone of an indecent sum of money, don’t accuse them of being ridiculous.’

She swallowed. How could she ever have thought she was a match for this man? She was a different person around him. Her brain didn’t move and her tongue didn’t form the right words.

She should never have come, she thought helplessly. ‘If you won’t lend me the money then there’s no more to be said.’

She’d failed.

Panic threatened to choke her and she curled her fingers into her palms and walked towards the door.

‘Walk out of that door and you won’t be allowed back in,’ he informed her in silky tones. ‘Come back and sit down.’

Would he be ordering her to sit down if he had no intention of lending her the money?

Hope mingled with caution and she turned, her hand on the door handle and her heart in her mouth.

‘I said, sit down.’ His strong face was expressionless and, with barely any hesitation, she did as he ordered and then immediately hated herself for being that predictable. For doing exactly what he said.

Wasn’t that what her whole life had been like for that one month they’d spent together? He’d commanded and she’d obeyed, too much in love and in lust to even think of resisting. Completely overwhelmed by him in every way. And here she was, seven years on, in his company for less than an hour and still obeying his every command.

Well, it wasn’t going to happen that way again.

She wasn’t that person any more, and being in the same room as him didn’t make her that person.

Her expression was defiant as she looked at him. ‘It’s a simple question, Luc. Yes or no. It doesn’t matter whether I sit or stand and it doesn’t matter whether I leave the room. All the information you need is in that letter in front of you.’

The letter he clearly thought was a fake.

She watched in despair as he gave a casual shrug and pushed it away from him in a gesture of total indifference. ‘I have no interest in the letter or in your stories about phantom pregnancies. What does interest me, meu amorzinho, is the fact that you came to me.’

She froze. ‘I already told you, I—’

‘I heard—’ he interrupted her gently, ‘you came to me to tell me you would do absolutely anything for five million dollars and now I simply have to decide exactly what form absolutely anything is going to take. When I’ve worked it out, you’ll be the first to know.’

CHAPTER THREE

BACK in her hotel room, Kimberley dragged off the jacket of her suit and dropped on to the bed, fighting off tears of frustration and anxiety.

She’d blown it. She’d totally blown it.

She’d planned to be calm and rational, to tell him the facts and explain the reasons for having kept Rio’s birth a secret from him for so long. But from the moment he’d walked into the room her plans had flown out of the window.

She’d been catapulted back into the past.

And she had less than twenty-four hours before the deadline came and went. Less than twenty-four hours in which to persuade a man with no morals or human decency to deposit five million dollars into the blackmailer’s bank account.

The blackmailer he didn’t even believe existed.

She took several deep breaths, struggling to hold herself together emotionally. It had been the hardest thing in the world to leave her child at this point in time, when all her instincts as a mother told her to keep him close. But she had known that to bring him on this trip would have been to expose him to even greater danger. And she’d hoped that she would only be in Rio de Janeiro for two days at the most. And after that—

She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. She hadn’t dared think further than this meeting. Hadn’t dared think what would happen if Luc refused to lend her the money.

Even now, with the letter still lurking in her handbag, she couldn’t quite believe that this was happening. Couldn’t believe that someone, somewhere, had discovered the truth about her child’s parentage. She’d been so careful and yet somehow they knew.

And she’d left her son with the only person in the world that she trusted. The man who was a father figure to him.

As if by telepathy the phone in her bag rang and she answered it swiftly.

‘Is he all right?’

Jason’s voice came back, reassuringly familiar. ‘He’s fine. Stop fussing.’ They’d agreed not to discuss any details on the phone. ‘How are you? Any luck your end?’

Kimberley felt the panic rise again. ‘Not yet.’ She couldn’t bring herself to tell Jason that Luc didn’t believe her. Part of her was still hoping for a miracle.

‘But Luc agreed to see you this time? You met with him?’

Kimberley’s fingers tightened on the phone. ‘Oh, yes.’ And her whole body was still humming and tingling as a result of that encounter. ‘But he won’t give me an answer. He’s playing games.’

‘Did he fall on bended knee and beg your forgiveness for treating you so shoddily?’

Kimberley tipped her head back and struggled with tears as she recalled every detail of their explosive meeting. ‘Not exactly—’

‘I don’t suppose “sorry” is in his vocabulary.’ Jason gave a short laugh that was distinctly lacking in humour. ‘Hang in there. If he doesn’t come banging on your door in the next hour then he isn’t the man I think he is.’

Banging on her door? Why would he do that?

Kimberley gave a sigh. She knew only too well that Luc Santoro didn’t go round banging on women’s doors. Usually they fell at his feet and he just scooped them out of his path and dropped them in his bed until he’d had enough of them.

‘I wish I had your confidence. What if he refuses?’

‘He won’t refuse. Have courage.’ Jason’s voice was firm. ‘But I still think we should talk to the police.’

‘No!’ She sat bolt upright on the bed and swept her tangled hair out of her eyes. ‘Not the police. You saw the note. You know what that man threatened to do—’

‘All right. But if you change your mind—’

‘I won’t change my mind.’ She wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize the safety of her child. ‘All I want is to deposit the money in his account as he instructed. I don’t want to do anything that might upset him or give him reason to hurt Rio.’

Limp with the heat and exhaustion, Kimberley snapped the phone shut and lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. For a moment she questioned her decision to stay in this small hotel with no air-conditioning in a slightly dubious part of Rio de Janeiro. At the time it had seemed the right thing to do because she didn’t want to squander money, but now, with the perspiration prickling her skin and her head throbbing, she wished she’d chosen somewhere else. She was hot, she was miserable and she hadn’t eaten or slept since the letter had arrived two days previously.

Instead she’d spent the time pacing the floor of her London flat, planning strategy with Jason. It had been hard to act as if nothing was wrong in front of her little boy. Even harder to board a plane to Rio de Janeiro without him, because apart from the time he spent at school or playing with friends, they were hardly ever apart.

She’d stayed at home when he was little and, with the help of Jason, a top fashion photographer who she’d met when she was modelling, she’d started working from home, selling her own designs of jewellery. She’d managed to fit her working hours around caring for her new baby and she’d worked hard to push all thoughts and memories of Luc Santoro out of her system.

And she’d dealt with the enormous guilt by telling herself that there were some men who just weren’t cut out to be fathers and Luc was definitely one of them. He was a man like her father—a man who shifted his attention from one woman to the next without any thought of commitment—and she vowed that no child of hers was ever going to experience the utter misery and chronic insecurity that she’d suffered as a child.

Finding the heat suddenly intolerable, Kimberley sprang to her feet and stripped off the rest of her clothes before padding barefoot into the tiny bathroom in an attempt to seek relief from the unrelenting humidity.