‘This isn’t about money!’
‘No, it’s about a hell of a lot more,’ he growled. ‘More than your selfish pride. So save me the poor and proud of it speech. My daughter is going to have all the advantages I can give her, so get used to it.’
‘You think you can just appear out of nowhere and take control?’ She managed to project scorn, but below the surface there was a strong steady pulse of fear feeding into her bloodstream.
He shrugged and gave a wolfish grin that left his blue eyes hard and cold. ‘Now you come to mention it, yes.’
Despite the sun beating down she shivered, suddenly icily cold. She recalled a recent article in which a rival had called Ben Warrender a ‘wolf in designer clothes, who wouldn’t even get a crease in his suit while he casually destroyed your life for profit’.
Even allowing for a certain degree of bias, there was no doubt that in the business world Ben was a predator. And not the sort of person who was accustomed to hearing people say no in his personal life either.
‘You’ve had a shock,’ she said, attempting to sound placatory. ‘You won’t mean any of this when you calm down—’
‘I know I’ve had a bloody shock! I don’t need you to tell me!’ His eyes narrowed as he added with bitter emphasis, ‘Except you didn’t, did you?’
‘I want nothing from you,’ she babbled, close to blind panic now. ‘We need nothing from you. What was the point in telling you? There was nothing to discuss then or now.’
Ben’s jaw clenched. ‘Did you hear nothing I just said?’
Her eyes flashed as she felt a sudden energising spurt of anger. He was acting as though it had been an easy choice, acting as if the thought of bringing up a child alone had not terrified her!
‘Yes, and the only thing you’re right about is that this is about Emmy and what is best for her. And a father who doesn’t want her isn’t.’ She’d reminded herself of this inescapable fact every time she’d found herself retreating into a fantasy happy-ever-after world where Ben would see his baby and be smitten; he would fall in love with her. Miracles happened—they’d made a baby and that was the greatest miracle of all.
‘It is not a question of wanting. It has happened.’
Lily found the awful grim tone of acceptance in his voice was a million times worse than his anger. ‘I didn’t do it on my own!’ she quivered back.
He reacted defensively to the guilt that felt like a stomach punch. ‘I took precautions!’
‘Well, they didn’t work!’
Something in her expression made him pause. He’d been so caught up with his own feelings...for the first time he found himself wondering how an unplanned pregnancy had made her feel. Had she been scared...angry...? Had she hated him?
Was keeping him in the dark her way of punishing him?
Why the hell was he feeling guilty? Maybe being irrational was contagious...
‘Well, you’ve got me there.’ His drawled response drew a wary look of suspicion from her gold-shot green eyes.
‘I don’t want to have you...’
He raised a sardonic brow.
‘Anywhere?’ She closed her eyes and thought, Shut up, Lily. ‘I need to get indoors.’ Half turning, she dropped her voice to an indistinctive mumble. ‘The sun... I burn.’ Her eyes lifted and connected with his. The searing heat from his blue stare was several thousand degrees more scorching than the morning sun beating down on her bare shoulders.
‘You think I’ll be an awful father.’ He hid his very real fear that this was the case under a casual shrug. ‘Maybe you’re right, but the fact is we’re going to find out.’
‘But you don’t want—’
Roughened with impatience, his deep voice drowned out the rest of her protest. ‘Don’t tell me what I want and don’t make this a fight, Lily, because you’ll lose. Save the mutual recriminations. The situation exists so let’s deal with it and move on.’
Where? ‘I can’t!’ she yelled wildly and began to run along the beach, the tears streaming down her face.
By the time she reached the bungalow Lily was out of breath. Chest heaving, she sat down on the bottom step covered by the shade of the canopy and waited.
There was nowhere to run.
A few moments later she heard his approach. She carried on staring at the sand until his feet appeared, the handmade leather dusted with sand. Her gaze travelled upwards until she reached his face. Despite everything her pulse leapt. She pressed her lips together to stop them quivering and held his gaze.
‘That was childish, sorry.’
Ben tried to hold on to his anger but the glimmer of tears in her big green eyes made it slip away. She looked so vulnerable that he had to fight down the urge to offer her words of comfort. Instead he dropped down onto the wooden step beside her and waited. None of this was turning out the way he’d imagined.
Lily stiffened as the painted wood creaked slightly. Though she stared straight ahead, in the periphery of her vision she was aware of him brushing sand from his trousers before resting his hands on his thighs.
‘I know we need to talk,’ she finally conceded, turning her head and angling a pleading look at his face. ‘But can it wait until later?’
There was no receptive softening in his face to her appeal. ‘I think I’ve waited long enough, don’t you? I haven’t been there for my kid because I didn’t know she existed.’ He dealt her a grim, twisted smile. ‘What’s your excuse?’
Her chin lifted as her cheeks heated with a combination of lust and guilt. She surged to her feet bristling with hostility as she stared down at him. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she tossed back in a low, throbbing voice.
He shrugged. ‘I’m not the one who dumped her baby on her mother to cavort half naked on a tropical beach.’ And she’s not the one who is struggling to focus past half-naked.
‘I didn’t dump... I’ve never spent a night away from Emmy before...’ A suspicious furrow appeared between her feathery brows. ‘Are you trying to make me out to be a bad mother? Are you trying to take Emmy away from me?’ Breathing hard, she pushed away, a paralysing stab of visceral fear hitting her. If he wanted a battle she would give him one, but she would never give him Emmy.
‘Don’t go paranoid on me.’ Ben roughed out his annoyance, giving way to admiration as he got to his feet and stood looking down at her.
Her determination to regard him as a threat continued to be maddening and frustrating, but her tigress-like reaction to a perceived threat to her child...he couldn’t help but admire that.
‘You love her,’ he conceded with a shrug.
‘Of course I do! I’m her mother!’
Ben found himself almost envying the fact that she took this as a given. What would Lily make of a mother who had no problem with her baby calling his nanny Mummy? A situation that his own mother had been quite happy with until the nanny had been caught in bed with her husband.
‘I can see that. And because you love her I’m assuming you agree that she needs stability.’
‘She has stability.’
‘So what happens when in the future—’ A future that would include men... His jaw clenched as he imagined a procession of faceless lovers drifting in and out of his daughter’s life—and Lily’s bed.
‘When what?’
‘My child—’
Lily