‘You have to stop blaming me for everything that’s gone wrong,’ Lucy told him squarely. ‘In any relationship it takes two people to screw up. Remember that...’
As she spoke Bella fell flat on her face on the lawn and let out a yell, followed by frantic sobbing. Jax strode across a flower bed and snatched the little girl up into his arms, speaking softly to her, smoothing a lean brown hand gently over her shaking back to soothe her before getting down on his knees to show her something on the ground in the clear hope of distracting her from the fright she had sustained. Lucy stared at that seemingly effortless display of child management in sheer amazement, involuntarily impressed.
‘Jax...’ she muttered in a daze.
Once Bella was restored to calm again, Jax set her down. His lean, strong face taut, he glanced at Lucy, noting how the sunshine lit up the shades of red in her hair and illuminated her perfect skin. Lucy bent to pick up the pram and the shapely curve of her heart-shaped derriere pulled tight below the cropped jeans she wore. Jax remembered ripping her jeans off her, desperate to sink into the damp, welcoming heat of her, and fierce tension gripped him as he suppressed the hunger flaring through him like a dangerous burning brand. ‘In a couple of days I’d like to take Bella out. I’ll bring a nanny with me if that keeps you happy.’
‘I assumed you would be waiting for the DNA results before you did anything official,’ Lucy parried, thoroughly disconcerted by his request as she walked back to him.
‘The DNA tests will only confirm what I already know,’ Jax murmured. ‘Are you going to make me fight for access to her?’
Lucy winced and set her teeth together. If in doubt, weigh in with the threats. That was Jax. He could afford the very best lawyers. Ultimately he would be entitled to time with his daughter whatever she did or said and trying to ignore that reality would be foolish. In any case, didn’t she want Bella to have a father? Yes, she did, but she hadn’t expected to have to share her time with her daughter quite so immediately.
‘No, but I wouldn’t want her away from me for more than a couple of hours at a time,’ she admitted. ‘She’s still very young.’
‘I can agree to that,’ Jax traded. ‘Give me your phone number and I’ll be in touch.’
Bella cuddled to her, Lucy watched Jax swing back onto the motorbike, the lithe powerful lines of his big muscular body moulded by his designer jeans and leather jacket. Across the road a car started up and pulled out to follow him, his security team, she assumed.
When her father and stepmother returned from the funeral, Lucy sat them down and finally told them the truth.
Straight away her father erupted like a raging volcano. ‘Jax Antonakos? Are you serious?’
‘Please don’t get mad,’ Lucy pleaded. ‘It will only make this situation worse.’
‘You were only nineteen, Lucy,’ her father protested with pained condemnation. ‘He must be nearly ten years older than you!’
‘Well, he can’t be blamed for that. When he said I had to be over twenty-one to spend time with him I lied,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I said I was twenty-three—’
‘You lied to him?’ Kreon repeated censoriously.
‘Calm down, Kreon,’ Iola interposed gently. ‘She was a typical teenager and when a handsome young man approached her, she pretended to be older and more sophisticated than she was. A lot of girls that age would have done the same thing.’
‘Yes,’ Lucy admitted, her cheeks burning.
Iola dragged the rest of the story of those six weeks in Spain from Lucy while Kreon sat fuming, his anger unhidden. ‘I knew his father, you know,’ he told them abruptly. ‘And he was a selfish, arrogant thug of a man too.’
‘Jax’s father? You knew him? How?’ Lucy asked, astonished by that admission.
‘My parents worked for the family of Heracles Antonakos’s first wife, Sofia, in London. Sofia and I grew up together and we never lost that friendship even though she lived in a very different world. She was only thirty when she died,’ Kreon revealed gruffly.
‘I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you the truth from the start,’ Lucy confessed. ‘I didn’t want to upset you—’
‘Never you mind about me being upset,’ Kreon told her through compressed lips. ‘Be grateful I’m here to support you. Antonakos sending in the lawyers straight off is your first warning of his plans—’
‘What do you mean?’ Iola interjected worriedly.
‘Well, was what happened this morning a nice or considerate thing to do to the mother of your child? Demanding DNA testing? Trying to browbeat Lucy into signing a confidentiality agreement? As a first warning shot, it tells us all we need to know...’
‘Jax is trying to protect himself. I can’t blame him for that,’ Lucy muttered ruefully, troubled by her father’s angry gravity and all too conscious that she was the cause of the lines of stress that had appeared on his weathered face.
‘He can protect himself all he likes but not at your expense or Bella’s,’ Kreon replied.
Lucy was anxious and preoccupied when she went into work that evening and she struggled to remember the drinks orders and deliver them back to the correct tables. Her father’s genuine fear of what Jax might be planning had seriously scared her. Not for the first time she wished she had the ability to get inside Jax’s head.
Earlier that day he had been strangely distant with her but very different in his wholehearted response to Bella. In retrospect it was hard to credit that he had been kissing her, touching her only the night before. Of course, that made sense, she told herself squarely. Everything had changed the minute she’d told Jax about their daughter. She recalled his glacier cool when she had first told him at his house and barely restrained a shiver of apprehension. Her father’s concern had set off all her internal alarms and had left her on the edge of panic and thinking thoughts she had believed she would never think again...
What if she simply upped sticks and vanished? She had done it before and she could do it again. But it would be wrong, her inner voice warned her sternly. It would be wrong not to give Jax the opportunity to form a relationship with his daughter. It would be equally wrong for Lucy to run away from the life her father and stepmother had generously offered her. Running away from her problems would be the childish thing to do and she wasn’t a child any more...
‘SO, YOU ARE Lucy’s father,’ Jax commented, lounging back against his office desk with lethal cool, not a shade of what he was thinking revealed by his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Where were you all the years Lucy was growing up in the care system?’
Kreon straightened his shoulders. ‘That’s my business and Lucy’s. She’s welcome to tell you if she wants. But I’m here now to protect the welfare of my daughter and my granddaughter.’
‘I don’t understand how you plan to do that,’ Jax remarked.
‘Oh, that’s very simple,’ Kreon told him almost cheerfully. ‘I have access to secrets that your father would kill to keep out of the newspapers—’
Taken aback, Jax laughed. ‘My father fears nothing. Is this some sort of clumsy blackmail attempt? I advise you to back off now before I call the police.’
‘That will be your decision but it won’t stop me sharing your family secrets with the press. In fact having me arrested will only add legitimacy to my claims,’ Kreon pointed out calmly. ‘Your father hates me. I will tell you that for free. But why do you think he leaves me alone? He is afraid of what I might know.’
‘You’re talking a lot of nonsense