Page 88 of The Billionaire's Demand

‘I don’t think we’d be entering into this marriage if we hadn’t both experienced a rough start to life,’ she said uneasily.

‘Which means?’

He was asking for specifics and Libby knew it was only fair that she should give them. After all, he had. At least, a brief enough outline for her to gain more of an understanding of him.

‘My mother was single,’ Libby said, sipping her tea, forcing herself to meet Raul’s eyes. ‘Except when she wasn’t. The only thing is, she never met a man she wanted to be with for more than a few months.’ Libby rushed through the explanation. ‘I had a lot of stepdads,’ she added with a grimace.

Raul was very still across from her, his eyes glittering when they met hers with a hardness that took her breath away. ‘It takes a lot more than biology to be a good parent.’

She nodded her agreement. She’d seen that first-hand.

‘Libby.’ His voice was gruff, deep. ‘What we’re doing here, this is who we are. We will do right by our child, in a way no one ever did for us.’ The determination in his voice, the pride, took her breath away.

Tears sparkled on her lashes as she nodded, not sure she could trust her voice to speak.

‘This is all that matters,’ he said quietly.

Libby knew then that they’d made the right decision. This was all about their baby, and always would be.

He had been careful not to touch her as they entered the lift to his penthouse. He’d been careful not to touch her since collecting her from her place in Sydney, and a strange swelling of something had begun to stretch in his chest.

Protectiveness.

It was the sight of Libby with her bashed-up old suitcase and a look in her eyes that was pure determination and strength. As if to say, ‘Show me everything you’ve got; I’m ready for it.’

She was a fighter. He recognised that quality; he understood it. He didn’t doubt she could take care of herself, and their child.

But she didn’t have to.

Raul hadn’t wanted this. It was the antithesis of what he wanted, in fact, and yet here he was, ready to protect the mother of his child with his life.

Despite her air of strength, he felt her nervousness, her anxieties about the step she was taking away from the familiar, and he’d wanted to reach across and put a hand on her knee as the car had pulled out from the kerb.

But he hadn’t.

Just as he hadn’t put his hand in the small of her back to guide her up the stairs when they’d reached his plane. Nor had he reached out and placed his hand over hers when they’d spoken on the plane and realised how similar their goal was, to protect their child from the sort of childhood they’d had. But he’d wanted to.

The longer he’d sat opposite Libby, watching as she flicked through the document and then fell asleep, highlighter with the lid off, small body curled up in the too-big armchair—they’d never felt too big for him—his fingers had tingled with a want to simply feel. Just one stroke of her soft cheek, to remind himself...to remember.

The air in the lift hummed with a sultry, seductive pulse, urging him to move closer to her. To brush against her, almost as if by accident. But there was a warning there too, because he suspected whatever incendiary spark had flared between them on the boat was still ignited, and they’d be all kinds of stupid to let it burn out of control.

If there wasn’t a child involved.

If they weren’t getting married.

But this was a serious, lifelong commitment to do right by their infant. He wouldn’t let biological impulses complicate everything, so he stood firm on the other side of the lift, staring straight ahead, barely breathing until the doors opened and he waited for the release of the pent-up tension, the energy.

The relief didn’t come.

Grinding his teeth, he stood at the doors to the lift, holding his hand across them and waiting for Libby to precede him.

Her eyes flashed nervously to his then looked straight ahead.

‘Oh,’ she murmured, lips parting.

The lift opened directly into the foyer of his apartment—a large space that was decorated as it had been when he’d bought the place, all in beige and white, with a big mirror above a hallstand that had a decorative bowl and nothing else.

Raul lived a minimalistic life, despite his wealth. He’d learned as a teenager to need only a few small things, to be ready to leave at any point. He hadn’t consciously kept that habit but, now that he thought about it, he had very little connection to anything in his apartment. There were only a few things in here he’d want to take if he left. Which was why it had been easy to buy the place and keep it basically as it had been.

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