The Secret Valtinos Baby: The Secret Valtinos Baby

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.