Her Sinful Secret. Jane Porter

“Was I snoring?”

      “No.”

      “Was my mouth open, catching flies?”

      “I want a DNA test.”

      The words were so quietly spoken that it took Logan a moment to process them. He wanted a DNA test. He did suspect...

      Deflect, deflect, deflect. “That’s awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?”

      “You said you were a virgin. You made a big fuss earlier about how I manhandled your hymen—”

      “I did not say that.”

      “—which makes me doubt you were out getting laid by someone else in the following five to seven days.”

      “Your math is excellent. I commend you. Not just a skilled lover, but also a true statistician, except for the fact that Jax wasn’t due for another month. She arrived early.”

      “Your sweet girl was almost nine pounds, my love. She wasn’t early.”

      Logan’s stomach heaved. He knew how much Jax weighed. He knew her birth date. What else did he know? “She’s not yours,” she repeated stubbornly.

      “No, she hasn’t been, but she should be, shouldn’t she?”

      Logan held her breath.

      “We’ll test tomorrow, after we land.”

      “You’re not going to poke her with a needle—”

      “We’ll do a saliva swab. Painless.”

      “Rowan.”

      “Yes, Logan?”

      Logan’s heart was beating so fast she was afraid it’d wake Jax. “You don’t even like children. You don’t want them. And you despise girls—”

      “Is this what you’ve been telling yourself the past three years? Is this your justification for keeping Jax from me?”

      You called me a whore. You said the worst, most despicable things to me.

      And yes, those words hurt, but that wasn’t why she didn’t tell him. “I tried,” she said, her voice quiet but thankfully steady.

      “And when was that?”

      “When I called you. Remember that? I phoned to tell you, and instead of a ‘How are you? Everything okay?’ you demanded to know how I got your number.” She stared Rowan down, her gaze unwavering. “Even when I told you that Drakon had given it to me because it was important, you were hateful. You mocked me, saying you’d given me all you could.”

      Her voice was no longer quiet and calm. It vibrated with emotion, coloring the air between them. “After you hung up, I cried myself sick, and then eventually I pulled myself together and was glad. Glad you wanted nothing to do with me, glad you wanted nothing to do with us, glad that my daughter wouldn’t have to grow up as I did, with a selfish, uncaring father.”

      For a long moment Rowan said nothing. He just studied her from his seat, his big, lean, powerful body relaxed, his expression thoughtful. He seemed as if he didn’t have a care in the world, which put her on high alert. This was Rowan at his most dangerous, and she suspected what made him so dangerous was that he cared.

      He cared a great deal.

      Finally he shifted and sighed. “There are so many things I could say.”

      Logan’s heart raced and her stomach rolled and heaved. “Why don’t you say them?”

      “Because we are still hours away from Galway—”

      “Galway?” she interrupted.

      “—and I don’t feel like arguing all the way to Ireland.”

      She blinked at him, taken aback. “We can’t leave the US. I don’t have a passport with me, and Jax doesn’t even have one yet.”

      Rowan shrugged, unconcerned. “We’re landing on a private airstrip. There won’t be any customs or immigration officers on our arrival.”

      “And what about when we return? Don’t you think it will be problematic then?”

      “Could be. But Joe packed your passport when he packed for you, and he sent along Jax’s birth certificate, so we do have that.”

      That’s how Rowan knew Jax’s birth date. That’s how he knew what he knew. But how did Joe know where to find her legal documents? She’d never told him...