‘Lovers?’ She barked out a laugh, but there was no amusement in it. ‘Don’t you mean I was your mistress?’
Although she’d never said so, Alex had sensed on more than one occasion that Katrina hadn’t been entirely happy with the role she’d played in his life. Like most women, she’d wanted a wedding ring and children, despite the fact he’d warned her up front that neither of those things was on offer.
They weren’t on offer to any woman. And never would be.
‘I’m not going to argue semantics with you. The point is we were together for almost a year. If that doesn’t earn me the right to be told you were leaving Sydney, then what does?’
Katrina tried to shrug out from under his touch. When he refused to let her go she glared up at him. ‘The operative word is were, Alex: we were lovers. We’re not any more. The last time I saw you, you told me our relationship was over. Or have you forgotten that?’
‘No, I haven’t forgotten.’
He hadn’t forgotten a thing.
Not what she tasted like.
Or smelled like.
Or how she looked when she fell apart in his arms.
And certainly not what she’d told him on that last fateful day they’d been together. Each and every word was indelibly carved into his brain as if someone had put them there with a hammer and chisel.
Releasing Katrina, Alex stalked to the window where he stood staring out at the Sydney skyline, fists shoved deep in his trouser pockets, tension drawing his shoulders up towards his ears.
‘You had to know that wasn’t the end of it,’ he said quietly. ‘You were pregnant, for goodness’ sake!’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she asked, still sounding as cool as a cucumber, her eyes boring a pair of twin holes between his shoulder blades.
‘What has that got to do with anything…?’ Alex spun around to face her, blue eyes wide and incredulous. His fists clenched and unclenched against the silk lining of his pockets. ‘Did you really think you could drop that kind of bombshell and not expect me to contact you again?’
She cleared her throat, and for the first time since bursting unannounced into the boardroom she didn’t look quite so sure of herself; the challenge in her eyes was replaced by uncertainty. ‘I’m not sure what to say. You were so cold that day. I honestly thought I’d never see you again.’
‘Of course I was cold. I was in shock, damn it!’
‘And do you think I wasn’t?’ Katrina demanded, voice rising.
Her words hung in the air like the residue of rifle fire, bouncing off one wall and then another.
Her mouth twisted. ‘Oh, that’s right!’ She slapped an open palm against the centre of her forehead. ‘How could I forget? You claimed you weren’t the father.’
She looked at him as if she half-expected him to contradict her.
Alex stared stonily back, his silence answering for him.
‘How can you believe that? We made love all the time. I could have become pregnant on any of those occasions, and you know it.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting one little thing?’ he asked, dangerously quiet.
‘And that is?’
‘Protection,’ he issued in a hard voice. ‘I took care of our precautions. Too many women have tried to catch themselves a rich husband by getting pregnant deliberately.’
That was obviously what Katrina was trying to do. But what made it worse, so, so much worse, was that she was trying to do it with another man’s child.
She had to be.
Because Alex had an even better reason than the precautions he’d just referred to for believing the child wasn’t his—a reason that was so strong it put that belief almost beyond question.
Her treachery bit deep, gouging at him with hungry teeth.
It had been there like a thorn in his side, slowly leeching its poison into his system and raising all sorts of questions in his mind.
When she’d taken him to the heights of passion had it merely been a means to an end? Had she been there with him on the journey, feeling what he was feeling, or had she been putting on an act while her brain had clinically thought about her forthcoming plan?
The realisation that what he had thought was real and beautiful might just have been a sham left him feeling empty inside—and angry outside.
She gasped. ‘Are you accusing me of being a gold-digger?’
He shrugged. ‘If the shoe fits.’
‘Well, the shoe doesn’t fit. I wouldn’t have you even if…even if…’ She waved her hands through the air. ‘Even if you were served up to me on a platter with a million-dollar cheque in your mouth!’
Alex laughed; he couldn’t help it. The suggestion was so ludicrous he couldn’t believe she’d actually had the gall to make it.
She lunged at him, hand arcing through the air. ‘You cold-hearted…!’
Alex caught her hand and forced it back to her side before pulling her close. He’d never seen her lose her temper before. Her eyes were glittering with emerald fire, streaks of colour striping razor-sharp cheek bones. An incredible energy was emanating from her, so powerful he felt he could reach out and touch it with his hands.
A surge of lust—a lust he knew he should not be feeling—sent his blood roaring through his veins. He put his face close to hers. ‘Don’t push me, Katrina. I’m this close—’ he held up thumb and forefinger with barely a hair’s breadth separating them ‘—to doing something we’ll both regret.’
‘Don’t push you?’ she shouted, eyes so wide they dominated her face. ‘Are you out of your mind? It’s the other way around—don’t you push—’
Alex silenced her with his mouth.
He hadn’t planned on doing it; it just happened.
He kissed her savagely, his mouth hard and uncompromising.
Katrina stiffened until it felt as if he was holding an ironing board in his arms; her hands were like steel braces pressing forcefully against his chest. Alex fed a hand into her hair and cupped the back of her head, the other clamping around her waist at the base of her spine.
She tasted sweet, like the nectar from sun-warmed peaches, and as intoxicating as the finest wine. Something stirred inside him, something he hadn’t felt since he’d last been with her. Something that not one of the women he’d slept with in the last seven months had evoked in him.
His mouth softened on hers and he began kissing her as if those months had never existed. As if she’d never told him she was pregnant and he’d never told her it was over.
His head spun.
His body stirred.
He was rock hard in under three seconds flat.
Katrina was the only woman who’d ever been able to do that to him. After all this time, and everything that had happened between them, Alex hadn’t expected her appeal to still be so strong. But her effect on him was as powerful as it had ever been, if not more so.
Heart pounding, he ran the tip of his tongue over her lower lip then nibbled on it with his teeth, his hands relaxing until he was cradling her against him.
And slowly, oh, so slowly, the resistance melted out of her body. She sighed, her hands clutching at his shirt front, her lips softly parting.
Then