She sat back in her seat with Emily’s dark head on her lap, wondering how he would view her tiny run-down inner city rented flat. It was all she could afford. Childcare cut into her budget and, with Stacey’s ongoing demands, she often sailed a little too close to the wind. There were few luxuries. Some weeks it was all she could do to keep food on the table.
‘I cannot believe you have kept this from me for all this time,’ he inserted into the stiff silence.
‘If you remember, I did tell you,’ she threw back. ‘But you refused to believe me. I tried phoning and emailing you, but you blocked all contact.’
‘You could have told me the first night I saw you at the museum! She’s my child!’ He glared at her furiously. ‘Do you have any idea of how much I have missed out on? Do you?’
Her eyes flashed at his, her tone unmistakably sarcastic. ‘So this is now all about you, is it, Damon? I’m sorry, but I thought it was about a little child who has suffered an injury. Pardon me for being so remiss in putting her needs over yours.’
His jaw tightened until she could see white tips at the edges of his mouth. ‘I should have been told. As soon as I saw you the other night, you should have told me.’
She sent him an embittered glance. ‘I would have told you if I hadn’t thought you would whip her away from me as soon as she was born.’
There was a deadly little pause.
‘I can still do that.’
Charlotte’s eyes flew back to his, her heart threatening to jump out of her chest. ‘You can’t do that! She’s my daughter.’
His eyes were like black diamonds. ‘She is my daughter as well. And, from what I have seen so far, you are not looking after her with any degree of competency.’
‘That’s not true!’
He gave her a cynical look. ‘How can you possibly say that when she is lying between us with a serious injury?’
‘She hurt her arm,’ Charlotte said. ‘It’s not the least bit life-threatening. Children hurt themselves all the time. It could have happened at crèche.’
His eyes burned with fury. ‘You send her to crèche to be looked after by strangers?’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘I’m a single mother, Damon, and just like any other single mother I have to work to put food on the table. And, as much as I would love to be with Emily full-time, I don’t have the luxury of that choice, so yes—I do allow strangers to look after her, but they are highly qualified strangers who each have a fully accredited childcare certificate.’
‘You will withdraw her from care immediately.’
Charlotte tightened her mouth. ‘I will do no such thing.’
‘You will cancel her childcare arrangements, for from now on you will be a full-time mother to her.’
‘I have a job!’ she reminded him heatedly. ‘I have commitments regarding the exhibition.’
‘Cancel them.’
‘I can’t cancel them! Julian is out of action and it’s all up to me to pull this off. I can’t pull out now, even if I wanted to.’
‘I will withdraw my sponsorship if you do not quit your job. I will also tell your employers of your history of theft. I was starting to believe you were innocent, but I can see now you were not. You have no trouble with lying; it comes to you so naturally.’
Charlotte felt the tension building to breaking-point. She could barely see for the white spots of it disturbing the line of her vision. She felt sick with dread in case he did as he threatened. He had so much power and she had so little…
‘Please…’ She turned to look at him, her eyes awash with unshed tears. ‘I know you are angry and I can understand how you must feel, but you will be hurting your daughter if you hurt me. I have only ever acted in her best interests. You have to believe that. I had no choice over seeing you again because you saw me as a thief. Do you know how many times I wished I could have picked up the phone in the last three years and told you of her existence? I wanted to every day of her life but I couldn’t. You made it impossible for me by labelling me the way you did. You shut me out of your life. You charged me with a crime I did not commit.’
‘You lie!’ He threw the words at her like stinging arrows. ‘You are lying now. You were never going to tell me of my daughter’s existence. I know that. I can see it in your eyes. You wanted this last hold of power over me. The ultimate revenge was to have stolen the most priceless thing of all—my child.’
Charlotte set her mouth. ‘I did not steal her,’ she said. ‘You threw her away when you threw me away.’
‘When did you suspect you were pregnant?’
‘I was late and started to worry. I know condoms aren’t foolproof and although I’d gone on the pill I wasn’t sure it had kicked in when…when we…’ She moistened her dry mouth and continued, ‘When you came to the gallery that afternoon I tried to tell you of my suspicions, but you had suspicions of your own.’
Damon struggled to listen without interrupting. He wanted to defend his actions but he was starting to see that Charlotte had been in a difficult situation.
‘I didn’t have the pregnancy confirmed until I was back in Sydney,’ she said in a subdued tone, her fingers brushing back the silky hair off Emily’s peacefully sleeping face.
Another tense silence tightened the air between them.
‘Was it deliberate?’ he asked. ‘As a way of snaring yourself a billionaire?’
She sent him a furious glance. ‘How can you ask that? I was halfway through my Honours degree. I had a chance to sidestep a Masters to have a go at a Ph.D. Why would I deliberately compromise that by getting pregnant on purpose? And, if I had, why then would I keep it a secret for all this time?’
Damon turned his head to look out at the city streets flashing by. It was raining, the cold sheets of icy moisture reminding him of how far away he was from home. He felt out of his depth, not just because of the climate change but because everything had changed.
He was a father.
He had responsibilities he had to face, even though the thought of tying himself to a woman who had exploited him and his family was anathema to him.
Yes, he still desired her. She was a fever beating in his blood and the fact that she had borne his child only made it a thousand times worse. They were connected in the most intimate way possible, their blood lines linked, their future enmeshed in the body of the small, exquisitely beautiful child lying between them.
He knew his mother would be beside herself with joy to find she had a grandchild, especially so soon after the tragic loss of Eleni. How much hurt would little Emily repair by meeting her grandmother for the first time?
‘Once the exhibition is over we will go to Santorini,’ he said.
Charlotte stared at him in shock. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
His eyes met hers with a challenge she knew was going to be hard to withstand. ‘You come with me, Charlotte, or I swear to God you will never see your daughter again.’
She swallowed convulsively. ‘You can’t do that…’
His expression was unmoved by her emotionally charged statement. ‘I can and I will. You have reared my child in an unsafe environment. She is daily exposed to danger. Tonight is a case in point. God knows what we will find at your flat.’
Charlotte felt her heart sink in despair. Stacey wasn’t to be trusted. She sat on the edge of her seat, the sharp teeth of terror gnawing at her insides as the cab driver pulled into her street…