The Secret Valtinos Baby: The Secret Valtinos Baby

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.