Page 200 of Modern Romance Collection Books (5-8)

‘Yes. You are.’

Reaching out his hand, he extended two fingers under her chin and tilted her face up, baring to his gaze the sparkling moisture that sat on her lashes and blurred her vision.

Beneath her skin sensation pulsed where his fingers rested. It crackled through her, causing her pulse to leap, her blood to race, her skin to colour. But before the feelings could deepen, and she was forced to remember exactly how good it had felt to be touched and held by him, and before that hunger for him wrote itself across her face, she pulled herself free of his touch.

‘Fine.’ She braced herself to be honest. ‘You said that you never planned on being in this situation. Well, neither did I,’ she shared, her voice sounding as brittle as she felt. ‘When I pictured having a child, I planned on being married, or in a happy,committedrelationship at least, with someone who loved me and wanted to spend his life with me. So this is not the way I imagined it happening—separate homes, separate bedrooms, separate lives, with our child being shuffled back and forth between us. This is not what I wanted it to be.’

Damon was silent after she’d finished speaking, his fingers tapping out a slow beat on the table. Then, ‘Carrie, even if there wasn’t the obvious elephant in the room between us, I’m not sure it could be like that. I don’t have long-term relationships. They’re not what I want. And all you and I shared was one night.’

She held up a hand—a silent plea for him to stop. ‘Its fine, Damon, I get it. I’m aware that what we had was just a one-night thing—just as I’m aware that Randolphs and Meyers are right up there with the Montagues and Capulets for families who shouldn’t be together. I wasn’t asking for the impossible. I just wanted to explain that this is hard for me too. Please don’t misunderstand—I’m happy that you want to be involved, and we will find a way to make this work, but it is, nonetheless, hard.’ She sucked in a sharp breath. ‘One day Iwillfind what I’m looking for. For now, I just need to adjust.’

She pushed back her chair, keeping hold of it as she pressed herself to her feet on legs that trembled.

‘Thank you for dinner.’

His startled eyes followed her sudden upward movement. ‘You’re leaving? You’ve barely eaten anything.’

The last thing Carrie wanted to do was eat. Her stomach was twisted up in knots and the beats of her heart felt more like throbs.

Because she craved something that could never be. Belonging to a happy family unit had always been her dream, and when her parents’ marriage had fallen apart she had directed all her hopes to the future...to the family she would build with the man of her dreams. She’d never lost that fantasy, not even after Nate. It had been a comfort to her, something she’d clung to as a promise of better days to come.

And even though she’d known there could never be anything more with Damon, her feelings for him had anchored deep from the moment they’d met, and because of that there had been a tiny kernel of hope that somehow...maybe...

But no! She had been foolish to allow that fantasy to build, and going forward she needed to maintain better control over her heart and her head. Going forward she needed to think of Damon only as exactly what he was—the father of her child. Nothing more.

‘I’m all talked out and pretty tired—it’s been a long day. But I’ll see you tomorrow at the scan.’ She spared him a brief glance as she hooked her bag over her shoulder. ‘Goodnight.’

Damon rose to follow Carrie as she hastened to the door, his fists clenching as the impulse to reach out, catch her hand and stop her became stronger than the voice in his head screaming constant reminders that she was Sterling Randolph’s daughter.

But what good would come from doing that? he thought irritably. Stop her and then...what, exactly?

She was a romantic. She craved the promise of a fairy-tale. He could not offer the words she so longed to hear, nor the future she’d pinned her hopes on. Even if she wasn’t a Randolph his offerings would be limited. Relationships created an ever-present threat of loss and pain, neither of which he wanted. Therefore he could not act on the impulse heating his blood and making his heart thunder. It would be unfair to her.

He heard the door shut and stopped, cursing beneath his breath. Releasing a stressed huff of air, Damon wandered back out to the patio, looking up at the darkening sky and making every attempt to breathe through the longing that fogged up his head, to reorganise his thoughts into the correct order.

But ever since laying eyes on Carrie earlier that afternoon he’d thought of only one thing—losing himself in her once again. And every time he’d looked at her since, taking in the glossy waterfall of her ink-black hair, her luminous skin and glowing eyes and full lips—those damnably kissable lips—his mind had run wild with thoughts of surrendering himself to the delights of her body, to feeling how she arched beneath him as he found her sweet spot, to teasing her smooth skin with nips of his teeth and swipes of his tongue.

At one point it had become so unbearable he had been seconds away from shoving the table aside and pulling her out of her seat and into his arms. Only the last echoes of self-control had stopped him. Because he simply could not permit himself to do that. Taking her to bed once had been an act of betrayal. To do so again would be an even greater treachery.

Just because she was now carrying his heir, it didn’t change what they could be.

It just complicated it.

Because now, for the sake of his child, heneededto have a relationship with her.

His own childhood had been gloriously happy. He had been safe in the love of both his parents and the stability of their solid, faithful marriage. He wanted his child to know something as close to that as possible, and his plan to co-parent should ensure that. Carrie had already shown that she would do what was best for their child, but he wondered suddenly and startlingly if she would continue to be amenable to that arrangement once his plan to ruin Randolph had succeeded.

By her own admission she and her father did not share a close relationship, but she seemed to have some tender feelings for the man, so how would she react to her father’s downfall and Damon’s role in it? His stomach lurched as, for the first time, he considered the possibility that she might reconsider his involvement in their child’s life because of his actions.

The thought sat like a rock in his gut, even as he dismissed it as impossible. Carrie was not like his mother, who’d ignored his needs and flitted off with a new man to a new life that had no room for him. Carrie would put the needs and best interests of their child first, even if she was annoyed with him.

Wouldn’t she?

Then, with another lurch, he recalled Carrie’s words about one day finding a man to share her life with, and angry, scorching flames licked up the back of his throat. The thought of her lying in the arms of another man...of that same faceless nameless impostor taking his place in her life, in his child’s life...

But wasn’t it inevitable? Carrie was young, beautiful, vital. She deserved a loving partner. What right did he have to resent the future she would one day find when he was offering nothing? When he had nothing within him to offer.

His throat tightened painfully.

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