Last Stop Marriage

‘Do you think she would do the same again, knowing what her fate is now?’

‘Yes. It was a matter of survival.’

‘Perhaps it would have been an easier solution if she’d simply killed off the king. Wiped him out.’ He swung his gaze back to her, his eyes glittering with hard purpose. ‘That way she’d never have to see him, hear from him, or think of him again, and she could live as she pleased, free of any burdens he’d piled on her. Don’t you prefer that scenario?’

‘I think self-sacrifice makes for a better legend,’ she answered warily, realising that he was lashing out at her for having completely cut him out of her life as though he had never mattered.

The truth was, he had mattered too much. She had been afraid of weakening if she kept in touch with him, torn between the need for the intensely passionate feelings that had tied them together and the compulsion to find her own feet apart from him.

‘How much are you prepared to sacrifice in order to keep your precious job with Monty Castle, Jayne?’

So the gauntlet was down with a vengeance!

He wanted satisfaction.

The critical question was, what would satisfy him?

She could walk away from this job, just as she had walked away from him two years ago. That option was certainly open to her. But she didn’t want to take it. There was more at stake here than a job. She wasn’t sure she wanted to walk away from Dan again. Perhaps there was some other solution that she had been blind to in her desperation for a settled existence within an ambit she had some personal control over.

Her gaze slid down to the child, contentedly propped against his broad shoulder. Could she accept a baby that was his and not hers?

‘What is her name?’ she asked gruffly.

‘Baby.’

‘Not your pet name for her. Her Christian name.’

‘I never thought of any other name but Baby.’

‘For God’s sake, Dan! She has to have a proper name.’

‘What’s wrong with Baby? She likes it. She responds to it. I’m not going to confuse her by calling her something else.’

‘What about when she goes to school? Grows up? You can’t expect her to live with a name like Baby,’ Jayne cried in exasperation at his stubborn obtuseness.

‘The only nickname she can get is Babe. She’ll be fine.’

‘Only a man could think like that!’

‘So I’m a man. She hasn’t got a mother to give finer female consideration to a name.’

‘Any mother would be tossing around names while she was pregnant. You must know what her mother wanted,’ Jayne fired at him.