Page 205 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

She was silent, biting her lip. Then she said simply, ‘I love the forest here. It feels like...like...home. Like... I belong here. The baby was conceived in the forest and so the forest is connected to it. I know that sounds strange and I don’t expect you to understand, but that connection to nature is important. I feel very strongly that this child needs to be born here and that he or she needs to grow up here.’

She was right, he didn’t understand. That she, who had no connections to this place, should feel so passionately about it, while he, who’d actually grown up here...

For years he’d put Darkfell to the back of his mind, visiting it only in midsummer, for the bacchanal. He never thought about it when he wasn’t here—it was very much a case of out of sight, out of mind. But it had always felt like a millstone around his neck, dragging him down.

It wasn’t so much the place itself, though that was part of it.

It was what it represented.

His father, Jacob Lancaster. Who’d made him beg for everything he’d needed. Or rather, not so much beg—the distinction was important—but explain why he’d needed it. List the pros and cons, present a case for payment, ‘sell the idea’, as Jacob had put it. Dominic had had no money with which to pay for it, and so everything he’d made a case for had had to be put on his ‘tab’, a growing debt that he could never pay off.

When he was thirteen, his father had presented him with a full accounting of that debt, expenses incurred throughout his childhood, including food, clothing, schooling and the wages of a nanny when he was very young.

To Dominic back then the debt had seemed astronomical. He’d had no hope of paying it back, or so he’d told his father, weeping. But Jacob hadn’t cared. It was a lesson in how to do business and was it unfair? Yes. But life was unfair. Life was also open to negotiation, so state your case, negotiate the costs, cut them down, change my mind and on and on. Stop crying. Harden up. Figure out the deal.

So Dominic had. He’d hardened up, had figured out the deal, and had cut the costs of his upbringing in half by the time he was fifteen.

At seventeen, when his father had died of a heart attack, Dominic hadn’t expected to inherit Lancaster Developments. He’d been sure his father had put one last obstacle in his way and, indeed, Jacob had. The will had specified that, since Dominic still owed him for his upkeep and hadn’t proven himself adequately, the company would instead go to Jacob’s second in command.

But Dominic had been waiting for this moment, planning, and doing deals just as his father had taught him. He’d used those lessons to wrestle the company back under his control and then, once he’d had it, he’d broken it up into tiny little pieces and sold every last one.

Now, he owed his fathernothing.

Darkfell was the last of it.

‘How strongly?’ he asked, his brain turning over.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, what would you do to stop me from selling it?’ He arched a brow. ‘What would you give me?’

She looked puzzled. ‘Are you asking about money? Because I don’t have—’

‘It’s not money I’m talking about.’

‘But... I don’t have anything else.’

With another woman he might have suggested sex, since it was clear that she wanted him every bit as badly as he wanted her. But she wasn’t another woman and he didn’t play such games with innocents like her. She was far too sincere, too honest, and, apart from anything else, he’d lost control of himself so completely the last time they’d had sex, he had no desire to do it again. Especially given the severity of the consequences the last time it had happened.

That didn’t mean she had nothing to give him though.

‘Yes, you do.’ He allowed his gaze to settle on her stomach, where their child rested. ‘You have plenty to give me, nymph.’

Instantly fire leapt in her eyes, and she put a hand protectively over her little bump. ‘You’d really use our child as a bargaining chip?’

Both the gesture and the sharply worded question sent an unexpected arrow of discomfort through him, and he found himself brought up short by a sudden realisation.

This game they were playing together, he’d just fallen into it. The game of negotiation and bargaining, of making a deal, was as natural to him as breathing. He did it all the time, in his work and when he was with a woman, bartering and negotiating for money or pleasure, it was all the same to him.

But this, with a child in the mix and a woman who didn’t play games...

You can’t do that with her. It’s wrong and, worse, it’s no better than what your father did with you.

The arrow of discomfort turned cold and sharp.

How lowering. To be like his father in any way, shape or form. Especially when he’d always seen himself as the very opposite.

‘Of course not,’ he said coldly, drawing himself up. ‘I would never use the child. The bargaining chip is Darkfell, the manor and the forest. If you don’t want me to sell it, then I’ll hold off until the child is born. You can also continue to live in the groundskeeper’s cottage. But in return you will make no argument about any obstetric care I see fit to employ or any discussions about custody arrangements once the child is born.’

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