Dani Collins – Hot Picks: Secrets And Lies: His Mistress with Two Secrets (The Sauveterre Siblings) / More than a Convenient Marriage? / A Debt Paid in Passion (страница 16)

Perhaps it was true, since Cinnia’s new partner running her London office was having phone and network issues. She was forwarding all the office calls and emails to Cinnia today. Cinnia had asked her tech guy to check both, but he was stuck in traffic. Again, thanks to a certain planet traveling backward, apparently.

Dorry, bless her, had something going on at school. She was doing most of her learning online these days, accelerating to finish early. She usually sat at the desk in the parlor across the hall, answering the handful of calls Cinnia typically received, allowing Cinnia to concentrate on the piles of work in front of her.

Not today. Nope. Today Dorry was out and their mother was “pitching in.” Which meant rather than screen calls and take a message, or look up a price and answer a simple question, she said things like, “Sorry to interrupt, love, but they want to set up a video chat. How do I do that again?”

When her mother knocked for the billionth time, and pushed in without waiting for an invitation, and the phone hadn’t even rung this time, Cinnia snapped, “Mum. I’m working.”

“Well, he wasn’t going away, was he?”

Cinnia glanced up and the sight of Henri struck her like an asteroid. Like an atomic bomb that had been packed with nuclear energy bottled up by the weeks of being apart from him. Instantly she shattered into a million pieces—and had to sit there trying not to show it. Her entire body stung with the force.

He was painfully gorgeous. Cutting-edge dark blue suit, a narrow line of ruthless red in his striped tie, clean shaven, tall and trim and larger than life, as always. His intense personality honed in on her with that piercing quality that made her insides twist with joyful reunion.

It was quickly choked off with a quake of abject fear.

She wasn’t ready for this.

Because the flutters in her belly were not just the butterflies of excitement he always inspired. They were the movement of his offspring.

She said a word that was very unladylike.

“Lovely to see you, too.” His mouth curled in something that was the furthest thing from a smile.

“You called him?” she accused her mother, because that’s what one did in times of deep stress: attack the people who loved you unconditionally.

She couldn’t believe it, though. She’d been so careful to hide her pregnancy, practically living like a shut-in since she had begun to show. In the most uncompromising of terms, she had bribed and cajoled and threatened her family into silence. How had he found out?

“I did not.” Her mother chucked up her chin in offense, silver coif trembling. “But it’s long past time you did, isn’t it? Shall I hold your calls?”

“Oh, thanks, Mum. That would be great.” Cinnia rolled her eyes as her mother closed the door, locking Henri into the library with her.

“Trella told you?” She lowered the angle of her laptop screen to see him better over it, but quavered behind it.

“Trella?” His sister’s name came out with the weight of grim consideration. “I was wondering which one of them it was. How the hell does my sister—” He held up a hand. “We will come back to that.”

“You haven’t talked to her?” Oh, damn. Sorry, Trell.

Cinnia glanced at her phone, wanting to warn her friend that big brother was on the warpath, but she had to survive his wrath first.

She took in the way he looked like a caged lion, tail flicking and muscles bunched, ready to pounce. They had argued in the past, but he’d never been this angry. He’d never looked at her like this—as though whatever he’d felt for her was completely gone.

Their breakup had been agony for her, but it was nothing compared to the raw squirming torment that accosted her under that accusatory glare of his.

“How, um…” Wait. If Trella hadn’t told him, did he even know she was pregnant?

She scooched her chair a little tighter to the desk and tugged her lapels over her noticeably more ample breasts, adjusting the angle of her laptop one more inch, hoping to hide what was pressing up against the edge of her desk.

“Why are you here?” she asked shakily.

“You know damned well why I’m here.” He planted his hands on the two-hundred-fifty-year-old Chippendale masterpiece that her mother refused to sell. “Stand up.”

“You came to school me on my manners?” She pretended she wasn’t torn to shreds inside and lifted haughty brows. “Sorry I didn’t rush around to greet you like a long-lost relative!”

He made a choked noise.

“Yes, chérie. I think there is a certain courtesy concerning relatives that you have grossly overlooked.” His hazel-green eyes were stainless steel. Chop-chop, his gaze warned. Prepare to be sliced and diced.

She had known he would be angry, but this was so unfair. Her hand wanted to go protectively to the bump that had sent him away and was now bringing him back, but not with so much as a hint of pleasure at seeing her again.

She had been trying to work up the courage to call him. Her ego had held her back. Pride and ego. Pride because she was still devastated that he had let her go, obviously feeling nothing toward her despite the fact they’d essentially been living together, and ego because she looked ridiculous.

She gathered her courage and stood, bracing to take it on the chin.

He slid his gaze down and jerked, pushing off the desk, clearly taken aback by the small planet that shot straight out of her middle and arrived a full minute before she did in any room she entered.

“Thanks,” she said acerbically, but couldn’t blame him. While she was a little plumper in the face and chest, she really hadn’t gained much weight except in her middle, where she looked like she’d stuffed a sofa cushion under her shirt. The whole sofa, actually, and she was only midway through this pregnancy!

Henri took a long inhale, cheeks hollowing as he stared at her belly with such laser focus she was compelled to block his fierce stare with her hand.

His own hand went into his hair. His nostrils flared as that cutting glance swung up to pierce hers. “Why would you do this?”

He was gray beneath his swarthy skin. Obviously he was shocked.

She had expected this accusation. It was precisely the reason why she had left him and had worked so hard to put in place a means to do this alone. It still went into her like a knife. Nearly two years, two years of never asking him for one damned thing except “do you love me?”

“I did this to you?” she said, barely managing to keep a level tone. Oh, she felt so discarded and misused in that moment, worse even than when he’d shrugged off their breakup. “I suggest you take a hard look at which one of us is carrying three stone of our combined DNA.” It was closer to five, but shut up, bathroom scale.

“You were supposed to be taking your pill.”

“And I had the flu for a week last fall.”

“I used condoms after,” he reminded her, stabbing the top of the desk with his finger.

“I thought we were fine, too. What am I? A reproductive scientist? I don’t know how it happened! Sometimes when people have sex, they make babies. Super weird that it could happen to us, right? ’Cause we hardly ever had sex.”

Every night. All the time. She wanted to have sex with him right now, the bastard, coming in here smelling all yummy with that aftershave that drove her crazy and not having gained an ounce. If anything, he was sculpted into an even harder, sharper version of the man she had lusted after without reserve.

She looked away, hating her cheeks for flushing with awareness and her body for remembering.

If her eyes began to tear, she would throw herself through the curtain-cloaked window behind her.

“I never wanted this responsibility!” Henri blurted, like he’d been saving that statement for miles and miles. All his life. “You knew that.”

“Then you should have kept your pants on,” she hissed back at him.

He glared at her like he was furious with her for forever tempting that beast from behind his zipper. Like he resented her and her pregnancy and everything they’d shared.

Well, she was as volatile as any pregnant woman. Probably twice as emotional as the average. Salty tears rushed up to sting her eyes. Her throat closed with emotion and her inner mercury shot up so high it bounced off the inside of her skull.

“Don’t feel you have to accept any responsibility today.” She rounded the desk and headed for the door. “This is all my fault. You’re completely innocent and have no obligation. I am more than capable of parenting without you.” She pulled the door inward and waved an arm to invite him to exit. “Fly. Be free.”

He folded his arms, such a filthy glare on his face she should have been turned to stone.

“I’m serious,” she said, not caring if her mother was in earshot. She’d heard it all and the rest of the house was empty. “I’m one hundred percent ready to do this on my own. As you can see, I’ve started working here, where Mum and Dorry have agreed to help with child care. The London office is paying for itself and turning a small profit. So is my flat. Nell and her friends are renting it, but I give what I make on that to Mum since I’ve kicked out all her boarders. This place has been outfitted with a security system—”