November Harlequin Presents 1(155)

And then Andreas had forfeited the right to know anything more about her when he had declared that he had never loved her and their marriage was only for sex before throwing her out of the house.

‘I would have told my husband as soon as I could—but then you weren’t my husband long enough for that to matter at all.’

Andreas actually flinched as the barb she flung at him went home, and just for a moment some emotion that she didn’t understand flashed across his face. It was there and gone again before she had time to even try to interpret it and the stone-wall look was fully back in place again.

‘So Macy is the mother of this Daisy?’

‘Yes. And Daisy’s just eleven weeks old—’

‘And who is the father?’

The words seemed unnaturally loud in the silence of the sunny garden. The inevitable question. The obvious question. And one she would dodge if she could. She desperately wished that she could.

‘Does it matter?’ she hedged nervously, knowing as soon as she heard it that her voice gave her away, the way it broke in the middle, making it obvious that she had something to hide.

‘The look on your face tells me that it does,’ Andreas told her harshly, his tone as cold as ice. ‘So tell me—who is the father of this baby?’

Becca’s jaw seemed to have frozen stiff so that it was impossible to open her mouth to answer him, even if she had wanted to. And she didn’t want to. Every time she tried to force herself to speak, she looked into Andreas’ dark, shuttered face and a terrible sense of dread overwhelmed her. Bitter tears stung at the backs of her eyes and she blinked hard, trying to force them back. But she knew why they were there. Fear had put them there. Fear of what would happen as soon as she spoke.

She feared it for poor baby Daisy, who needed this man to help her so much—and yet who would probably be condemned not for anything she had done but for the simple biological fact of who her father was.

And she feared it for herself because she dreaded how she was going to feel if Andreas did reject her and walk away in a black, unforgiving fury as soon as she spoke the name that enraged him so much.

And she knew that he wouldn’t let go of this until he knew.

‘Becca…’ Andreas’ use of her name was a warning, but it was the fact that he had once more reverted to the shorter, more affectionate form of it that finished her completely. The tears she had struggled against wouldn’t be held back any longer but flooded her eyes and a single one spilled out and ran slowly down her cheek.

‘Don’t ask me…’ she whispered, and to her astonishment Andreas accepted her plea and didn’t push her any more. But only because he didn’t need to. Her response, the distress she couldn’t hide, had given him her answer.

‘Roy Stanton,’ he declared, hard and flat. ‘The baby’s father is Roy Stanton.’

It was a statement, not a question, but still Becca had to give him an answer, though all she could do was nod silently, the ability to speak having deserted her completely.

‘Roy Stanton,’ Andreas repeated, the other man’s name almost like a curse on his lips.

She couldn’t read his expression through the blur of tears but she didn’t have to. All she needed to know about his reaction was there in his voice, in the way he spat out the words.

And then it was as she had always dreaded it would be when, without another word, Andreas turned on his heel and walked away from her, striding fast and determinedly over the terrace and down the roughly carved steps that led from the cliff to the shore. Rejection and hostility were stamped into every line of his powerful body and she knew that if she tried to call him back he would refuse to even show that he had heard.

And besides, she couldn’t find the strength to do so. She didn’t know what she could say to change his mind, and even if she’d been able to think of anything her voice wouldn’t work. So all she could do was stand and watch through tear-drenched eyes, staring after him until he disappeared from view.





CHAPTER ELEVEN




DOWN in the bay, a lively breeze was whipping up the sea into unruly waves. The water whirled and swayed, rising up into foam-topped peaks and then hurling itself against the shore in a swirling rush before ebbing back out again fast, in a way that had it sucking at the sand, drawing it back with it.

The atmosphere suited Andreas’ mood perfectly. The restless movement all about him was in keeping with his own frame of mind, the way that he couldn’t make his thoughts settle into any balanced pattern. Instead they swung from burning rage to icy cold and back again in every second that passed.

Roy Stanton.