Page 82 of The Billionaire's Accidental Legacy

That was all. And it had to be him, or it would be nothing and no one.

That isn’t true.

Even if he can’t do this, you’ll have your child. Even if he can’t do this, you’ll have Maren.

All the ways that you’ve changed.

It was true. She would.

It fortified her. It made her feel strong.

She grasped the railing on the bridge and looked out at the view, then tilted her head back. And took in a deep breath.

She didn’t connect the moment to memory; she didn’t go in and open up her files. She simply was. She simply felt.

And she smiled.

Because she could do that now. And somehow she knew that it would be okay. That it had to be.

A sliver of fear wound its way through her. Because perhaps, for a while, it would feel like it wasn’t okay.

Perhaps for a while, she would be broken.

And she would have to figure out how to put herself together again.

But she was strong.

She knew that she was.

She was Jessie Hargreave. And she wasn’t the con woman her father had made her.

She was the woman she had decided to make herself.

Looking at Jessie had become almost a physical pain. Ewan had never experienced such a thing before. He had never desired a woman and denied himself that woman. He had never desired anything and denied it. Because he had never allowed anything to become bigger than his pursuit of revenge.

And yet, it was gone. That revenge. The thing that had made him who he was. And he had experienced that moment of emptiness. Then he transferred it. To Jessie’s father. He was fine when he was being driven by a desire to destroy.

Hands that wanted nothing more than destruction could never touch Jessie.

And so he didn’t.

Apart from that kiss they had shared two weeks ago.

But it was killing him. Killing him to deny himself.

Because denial was associated with being controlled.

And somewhere in the middle of all this it had ceased to be about his control over himself and had begun to feel like the torture he had experienced as a child.

This need to make himself into something acceptable. Something different.

He walked across the bridge from the room he was using as his office, and into his bedroom, and stopped. Because Jessie was standing there in the middle of the room. Naked.

Her brown hair was loose around her shoulders, long enough just to brush the tops of her breasts, not long enough to conceal the tightened, dusky buds there.

Her belly was rounded from her pregnancy, and it aroused him deeply. Filled him with a sense of triumph to see her changed by him.

Her hips were generous and lovely; the dark triangle at the apex of her thighs made his mouth water.

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