From Sydney With Love: With This Fling... / Losing Control / The Girl He Never Noticed. Kelly Hunter

answer.

      ‘Mine,’ he said.

      ‘Yes.’ He could hardly hear her for the thundering of his heart. ‘There’s tests we can do if that’s what you want,’ she offered. ‘But there’s been no one else.’

      ‘Forget the tests.’ Satisfaction flooded through him, as unexpected as it was savage.

      Mine.

      In which case … ‘Shouldn’t you be putting on weight?’ he said silkily.

      ‘I’m working on it,’ she said in a low raw voice. ‘I’ve also been thinking about what we might do. Greyson, I don’t want to raise this child all by myself. It’s not enough. I’m not enough. A child should have more than that. More family. More security.’

      ‘You want a termination?’ Hard to keep his jaw from clenching or his dislike of that notion from colouring his words. ‘Is that what you brought me here to tell me? Because it’s not going to enamour you to me, Charlotte. Not by a long shot.’

      Mine.

      ‘That’s not why I asked you here,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve not considered that course of action. I don’t think it’s for me.’

      ‘Good.’

      The waiter approached them again, took one look at Grey and kept right on walking.

      ‘I’m not asking for marriage or monetary support either,’ she said earnestly.

      ‘Tough.’ From one have-it-my-way child to another. ‘You’re getting both. And food. We’re ordering food now. Pick something.’

      ‘I’ll have the chef’s salad.’

      ‘Now pick something else.’

      ‘And the teriyaki chicken kebabs,’ she said with a roll of her eyes. ‘But only because I’m humouring you.’

      Grey glared at her. Better that than leaning across the table and kissing her senseless. Or was it?

      In the end he did lean across and kiss her, terrified that she wouldn’t respond to him, equally terrified when she did because it was still there, this all-consuming need to lose himself in her. ‘Pick a date,’ he murmured when his lips left hers. ‘Any date.’

      ‘I’m not marrying you, Greyson. There’s no need for that. Not in this day and age.’

      ‘If you really think I’m going to let my child be raised a bastard, you really don’t know me very well,’ he said grimly.

      ‘My point exactly,’ countered Charlotte. ‘Greyson, we hardly know one another. What I do know of you suggests that marriage is the last thing on your mind, and that you’d start to feel trapped within five minutes of taking that step. You’ve already broken one engagement because you weren’t prepared to settle for a life based in Sydney.’

      Grey stared at Charlotte broodingly. He couldn’t deny it. He liked his freedom, and he loved to travel, but, dammit, was it so wrong to want this child to be born within marriage?’

      ‘The baby could still have your name,’ said Charlotte. ‘Access wouldn’t be a problem. I want you in this baby’s life. But we don’t have to get married for that to happen.’

      ‘You think I’ll take it, don’t you?’ he said bleakly. ‘The easy way out. The half measure. You think I’ll be content to stand at the periphery of this child’s life, never quite giving or getting enough.’

      ‘Greyson, I—’

      ‘You’re wrong.’

      ‘Lofty words for a man who intends to spend the next three years of his life in Borneo.’

      ‘I didn’t take that job,’ he said tightly. ‘Something you would have discovered weeks ago had you thought enough of me to stick around.’

      ‘I thought enough of you to bring you back, didn’t I?’ She looked mutinous, and scared, and sorry, and she made his heart bleed.

      ‘No. You’re scared enough of your inadequacies as a single parent to bring me back. You’re looking for a back-up plan for this child in case something happens to you, and, unfortunately, I’m all you’ve got.’

      If Charlotte had looked wan before, she now looked positively waxy. ‘This is never going to work,’ she said faintly.

      ‘Are you going to faint?’ Dear heaven, she looked fragile, and anxious, and perilously close to tears. ‘Don’t you dare faint!’

      ‘I’m not going to faint.’

      ‘Or cry.’

      ‘Or cry,’ she said in a voice that threatened exactly that.

      Greyson eyed her grimly. ‘You should know something about me, Charlotte. I never give up. I make things work. It’s what I do.’ He cupped her neck in his hand and touched his lips to hers again, hard and fast and ruthless. ‘I’m free next Tuesday. What say we get married then?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

      DINNER wasn’t going well. Charlotte hadn’t anticipated that Greyson would see straight through to her fear of leaving this child all alone in the world should something happen to her. She hadn’t planned on his kisses reducing her to jelly and she certainly hadn’t anticipated that his heated insistence on marriage would wash over her like a panacea, or that the thought of marriage to this man would be so very tempting.