“I should be able to move into my flat after my next appointment,” she said.
He made a noise of negation.
She set her chin to disguise the leap in her heart. She was still processing that he hadn’t actually insulted the hell out of her a few minutes ago. Was he resisting her leaving because he wanted her here?
Pressing her knotted fists into her lap, she asked, “Sooner, then?”
“Never. I want Lucy full-time. That means you have to stay, too.”
The words went through her like a bomb blast, practically lifting the hair off her head and leaving her ears ringing. Unexpected yearning clenched in her and last night’s excitement flared like stirred coals reaching toward a conflagration. Warning bells in her head clanged danger, danger.
“There you go testing my incision again,” she said, and scooped eggs into her mouth as though the matter was closed. It was. “No,” she added in case he needed further clarification.
“Why not?” His challenge was almost like idle curiosity. Pithy and confident he’d eventually get his way.
She goggled at him. “That train wreck last night for starters,” she blurted, face seared with a mask of humiliated embarrassment. If he’d made a pass and she’d rejected him, that would be one thing, but the way she’d responded had been horribly revealing. She dropped her gaze, wishing she could take back her reaction, especially when it occurred to her he might use it to get what he wanted.
“So the chemistry between us is alive and well. We’ve successfully ignored it in the past. Maybe we’ll even look at resuming that side of our relationship once you’re fully recovered. It’s got nothing to do with my desire to raise my daughter.”
Sirena choked. “What relationship? What chemistry?” Incredulous, she leaped to her feet without being aware of it. Her entire being rejected everything he was saying. It was so cruel she couldn’t bear it. “I’m moving back to my flat as soon as the doctor clears me.” She threw her napkin on the table and started to walk out again.
“You’re going alone,” he said in an implacable tone that chilled her to her marrow. “Lucy is staying here.”
Slam. Here it was. The brick wall she had always known he would push between her and her child. Had she actually felt herself softening toward him? He was a bastard, through and through. And it hurt! He was hurting her by treating her this way and he was hurting her by not being the man she wanted him to be.
“That is not what our legally binding agreement says,” she whirled to state.
“Keep your lawyer on retainer, sweetheart. We’re going to rewrite it.”
He wasn’t bluffing. Her heart twisted while the rest of her, the part that had lost to a bully once before, put up her dukes. She had never wanted to physically harm anyone in her life, but at this moment a swelling wave of injustice pushed her toward him in aggressive confrontation, muscles twitching with the desire to claw him apart because he was striking at her very foundation.
He rose swiftly as she approached, surprised and instantly guarded, taking on a ready stance, his size the only thing that stopped her from lashing out with everything in her.
“Well, isn’t that like you,” she said with the only weapon available: a tongue coated with enough resentful hatred it wielded itself. “I want you, Sirena,” she mocked. “Touch me, Sirena. And the next morning it’s, take everything that matters to her and kick her to the curb. Go ahead. Send me into John’s office for another pile of legal bills I can’t afford. I’ll raise the stakes and take this to the court of public opinion. I’ll hurt you in every way I can find. I’ll take your daughter, because I will not let her be raised by someone who treats people the way you do.”
She wiped the back of her wrist across her lips, her incensed emotions deflating to despair as she heard her own words and knew that she was bravado against his arsenal of money, position and power. What did she have? Charges against her for theft.
She couldn’t continue to face him without breaking down.
“Where do you get the nerve to judge me?” she managed as a parting shot before she decamped to higher ground.
* * *
Raoul stood in astonished silence as he listened to Sirena’s retreat. He felt as though he’d just surprised a wounded lioness and barely escaped still clutching his vital organs. Adrenaline stung his arteries and he had to consciously tell his muscles to relax.
None of that closed what felt like a giant chasm in his chest. Touch me, Sirena. Kick her to the curb. Shame snaked through him, keeping his jaw clenched even though he wanted to shout back at her in defense. He was the one with the right to trust issues. Where did she get off accusing him of manipulation?
His housekeeper came through, startling him. “More coffee?” she asked, obviously surprised to see the table deserted.
“No,” he barked, then pulled himself together. “No, thank you,” he said with more control, rubbing his face then disheveling his hair. “Please make up some sandwiches for Sirena, since she didn’t finish her breakfast. I’ll be in my office.”
He went there for privacy, to work through their confrontation, not to make a dent in the work that piled up every minute he was distracted by this new family of his.
Just a daughter, he reminded himself. Not a partner.
Touch me. His gut tightened in remembered ecstasy as he felt again her light fingers encircling him. Desire had exploded in him last night. For her. Despite all his attempts to make excuses, the sad truth was no other woman tempted him. Even before conceiving Lucy, he’d been taking women to dinner without taking anything else.
He didn’t want Sirena to be the only one he wanted. He ought to have more control over himself. As he’d eschewed sleep this morning in favor of forming arguments to keep Sirena and Lucy living with him, he’d convinced himself it was a convenient solution to their custody battle, nothing to do with sexual attraction.
While he’d relived her soft mewling noises and passionate response to his kiss in the hallway, her body incapable of lying.
Sirena didn’t want anything to do with him, though. Maybe she was physically attracted, but her ferocity this morning warned him that she would rather smother him in his sleep than share his bed for lovemaking.
He stared blindly at the colorful gardens beyond his office window, his mind’s eye seeing her savaged expression the day at the gate, then again this morning. A hard hand closed around his heart, squeezing uncomfortably. A million times he’d told himself she was as jaded and detached as all the rest of his lovers, but today something admonished him. He feared he’d hurt her in a way he hadn’t realized he could. But how was his treatment of her any different than hers of him? She had gotten him depending on her, then backhanded him with theft. She’d ruined him for other women and was completely wrong for him at the same time.
Movement caught his eye. Sirena had brought Lucy into the garden. She wore a summer dress and bare feet. Her hair hung in a damp curtain down her back, its curls weighted into subtle waves that would spring up as the sun dried it. Folding one leg under herself the way she often did, she sat on the covered swing and kicked it into a gentle rock, head tilting back as she inhaled deeply.
She was pure woman in that moment, sensual yet maternal. Beautiful.
The want in him took on a new, disconcerting depth. It wasn’t just sexual. He remembered her efficiency, her smooth handling of difficult people, her quick smiles.
He wanted the Sirena he’d believed her to be before his dented bank balance had proved she wasn’t.
Damn it, he didn’t do complex relationships. Mother-son. Simple. Protective big brother. Easy. Boss and employee. Black-and-white.
With one noted