Page 17 of Modern Romance Collection May 2024 Books 1-4

She flushed even darker now.

Ajax found it beyond satisfying to see this evidence of emotion. Satisfying and arousing. He cursed his weakness.

‘I have other means,’ she divulged, a little hesitantly.

Ajax arched a brow.

With obvious reluctance she elaborated. ‘My mother sent me a monthly allowance until I was eighteen. I put every cent into savings. I never intended to use them unless absolutely necessary, but they’re there. I own my apartment outright. I’m not here to look for anything outside of fair maintenance, and to establish some ground rules for custody and visitation.’

Ajax heard the pride in her voice and thought of the fact that her mother had left her. Against his better intentions he felt a tug of empathy. His parents might have been more physically present than her absentee mother, but they might as well have been absent for all the actual parenting they’d done.

This woman had intrigued him from the very first moment he’d seen her. She still intrigued him. The fact that he couldn’t say in any moment what she would do was...refreshing, when he was used to people contorting themselves into pretzels to do what they thought he wanted.

What wasnotrefreshing, though, was how she affected him. He was used to being surrounded by the most beautiful women in the world, and yet it was this one—uniquely—who seemed to have infiltrated his body and mind in such a compelling, comprehensive way that he only wanted her. Even now, after the bombshell discovery of the daughter she’d kept from him.

He said, ‘Obviously I’ll have to go through this with my legal team.’

‘Of course. I’d expect nothing less. But I think you’ll find it very reasonable.’

Curious now, he said, ‘Give it to me in broad strokes...what you’ve set out.’

‘Once your paternity is confirmed, I’ve proposed a child maintenance payment system until Ashling is an adult, depending on whether or not she goes to university, until such time as she’s graduated.’

That prospect made Ajax feel slightly winded for a moment. He had an image of a tall, slim, dark-haired woman, smiling, with a mortarboard cap on her head. He hadn’t even imagined that for Theo.

‘Go on,’ he bit out, regretting having asked the question now.

‘Her life will be here, with me, and I will be her primary carer. But you will be permitted access regularly. Holidays can be negotiated too. I recognise that she will have family in Greece. I want her to have a relationship with you, and the other side of her family. Both my parents were only children. I don’t have aunts, uncles or cousins.’

Ajax turned and walked to the window, taking in the vast view of downtown Manhattan without really seeing it. He had legions of cousins and aunts and uncles, but they might as well have been inanimate statues for all the warmth or affection he and his brother had ever received from any of them. Cousins had been pitted against one another in annual get-togethers that had had more resembledThe Hunger Gamesthan a fun family occasion. Rivalries had been fostered, not friendships.

He knew from what Erin was saying that that wasn’t what she envisaged at all. She had no idea what his family were like. He’d told her he wasn’t royalty, but in many aspects, when it came to marriages and bloodlines, his family behaved as if they were.

She said from behind him, ‘One thing is non-negotiable. If you don’t intend to foster a relationship with her—arealrelationship, with regular meaningful meetings—then I must ask that you simply provide financial support and step back. I will not allow inconsistency—it’s not fair. You’re either in, or out.’

Meaningful meetings.

Like his relationship with Theo.

As someone who had never really known love, and certainly not unconditional love, having a child had taken Ajax unawares, and before he’d had time to protect himself it had been too late. He’d fallen in love with his son. Who hadn’t even been his son. Loving Theo had broken Ajax wide open, leaving him exposed and vulnerable.

If that was what love was, he had a better understanding now of why generations of his family had had arranged marriages and kept their distance from their children. Because the pain of losing Theo had destroyed him.

It had killed something fragile and nascent inside him. It had mocked him for believing he was deserving of love...that he might experience something so pure.

The toxicity of generations of calcified emotions was what he knew. Not something as unbridled and outrageous as actual real emotion. He’d learnt that lesson the hardest way possible.

And yet here he was, being offered another chance to destroy himself all over again. His daughter might not suffer a tragic accident—Ajax knew instinctively that Erin was a conscientious mother, unlike his deceased wife—and that she would do her utmost to protect her child.Theirchild. But no power on earth could promise that no harm would come to her.

The thought of embarking on a relationship with his daughter and living with the terror of losing her every day almost made Ajax’s legs buckle. He broke out in a sweat. His heart started to thump irregularly. Panic filled his veins.

He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t put himself back in that place of losing himself to a greater force only to have it snatched away from him like a punishment. He’d seen the child. She would be impossiblenotto love. Cherish. Protect.

She would do far better without him. Without this terrifying strangulating fear in his veins. After Theo, Ajax knew he couldn’t endure such pain again. Loving or losing. That was why he’d vowed to himself that he would never try to have another family.

‘Ajax?’

He forced down the panic. The fear. He said, to his own reflection in the window, ‘I had a child and I lost him. I won’t go through that again.’

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