A Touch of Temptation

“What’s was the point of all this, Diego?” she said, feeling incredibly tired. “Would it make you feel better if I begged you for help? Leeched money off you in the name of child support?”

“Yes.”

She blinked at the vehemence in his answer.

“What I wanted was to scare away all your other investors so that you have no one else to turn to but me.”

“Why?”

“It seems putting your company in crisis is the only way for me to get your attention.”

Her temper flared again. “That’s the second time you have mentioned my success, my company, as though it’s something to be sneered at—when you pursued your own success with ruthless ambition. And wasn’t that why you married me six years ago? Because I was smart, ambitious? Now that I’m pregnant you’re asking me to put all that aside and suddenly morph into your vision of everything maternal? I never thought you would tout double standards.”

Diego ran a hand over his nape. Just the mention of their short-lived marriage was like throwing a punch in his face. She was doing it again—getting under his skin. And it would end in only one way.

“Do you really want to go down the rabbit hole of the past, gatinha?”

He didn’t want to argue with her. He could see very well that something about her pregnancy was stressing her out. So why didn’t she make it easy on herself? If she didn’t know how to, he would do it. He would drag her kicking and screaming back into his life and force her to slow down if that was what he had to do to take care of her.

He stepped over the coffee table and joined her on the couch. She scooted to the other corner. He sighed. It seemed either they argued or they screwed, and neither was what he wanted to do. Even if one option had infinitely more appeal than the other.

“I’m not asking you to give up your work. I’m asking you to acknowledge that pregnancy changes things.”

Her feet tucked under her, her arms wrapped around herself, she scrunched farther into the corner. She looked absolutely defeated. “And what does that entail? Throwing myself a conception party and inviting the whole world?”

“You have no friends, you don’t talk to your sister and you’re a workaholic. You live in a fortress isolated from anyone else. That cannot continue.”

“Keeping myself idle for hours on end with nothing to do is not going to turn me into mother of the year when the baby comes. In fact it would just...”

His patience was thinning, but there was something in her voice—a note of desperation—that snagged his attention. “Just what?”

Her stubborn silence was enough to drive his control to the edge again. Was this what he was signing up for a lifetime of?

“I will invest in your company.”

Her gaze widened. Her head shook from left to right. “I’ll bounce back from this.”

“No, you won’t.” He leaned toward her, and the scent of her caressed him. “Things are different from what they were a week ago.”

“Because you manipulated them to your advantage.”

“I would have been dead in a ditch years ago if I didn’t push things to my advantage.” He smiled, enjoying her stupefied silence. “Now I’ve got you hooked, haven’t I? I can see the gears already spinning in your head.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Aah... Look at us, gatinha. We’re like an old married couple, reading each other’s minds without words. If that’s not a true, abiding love, then I don’t know what is.”

“Stop it, Diego. Why the investment now?”

“Perhaps I don’t want to see your hard work go to waste? Or I’m overcome by a consuming need to help you? I still have a soft spot for my wife?”

Kim shivered as though someone had trickled an ice cube over her spine. His taunts were painful reminders of things she had cherished once and then realized to be false. He was mocking feelings she held close to her heart, emotions she had locked up forever.

“Not funny.” With each cheeky retort her anxiety spiraled higher and higher. There had to be a huge price to pay for this. “What do you want from me?”

“We make our marriage work. For good.”

She jumped from the couch, a chill descending into her veins. He couldn’t be serious. It was a twisted joke. That was all it had to be...

She swallowed at the calm in his gaze. “Now I get it. No one is allowed to say no to you, to walk away from you, without you going all revenge of the ninja on them. I’m not a task you failed at once and are determined to conquer.”

“Let’s be very clear about something, princesa.” The dark humor faded from his gaze, replaced by something hard and flinty. “Putting up with you, tying my life to yours again, is like signing up for a lifetime of torment. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for my child. To provide a stable home, to give it everything I didn’t have. Nothing more. I plan to be a hands-on parent and I will accept nothing less from you.”

Bile snuck up Kim’s throat. Everything within her rebelled at the thought of being tied to him. It was no better now than it had been six years ago. Then she had been his prize, his trophy, to parade before his father in his victory over a horrible childhood. Now her significance was the fact that she was going to be the mother of his child.

It shouldn’t hurt. But it did. And the hurt was followed by the same raking guilt that had taken up permanent residence in her gut.

She couldn’t think about what this meant for her. She had to think of the baby. She had to do what was right.

Whether she wanted to be a mother or not, whether or not she felt anything for the life growing inside her, it didn’t matter. Unconditional love. She had never received it, she didn’t know it, but responsibility and being strong for someone else—that she understood.

“Is this another trick so you can taunt me for the rest of my life? I won’t let you use the child as some kind of pawn.”

“Every inch of me wants to walk away from you. Every cell in me regrets sleeping with you. I told myself I would not waste another minute on you. But what we did has had consequences. All this is motivated by the fact that we’re having a child together. A child who will have a proper father—not one who will just drop in for birthdays and pose for pictures—and a proper mother. A family. I will do everything in my power to ensure my child has everything I never had.”