Page 9 of 2 Books in One Bundle

They had. Once they’d got to her flat, they’d tested it on the console table in her hall. Her shower, her sofa and her bed, over and over again.

So much heat...

So much pleasure...

So irrelevant right now.

‘It’s a shock,’ she said, her voice muffled by the shrieking chaos swirling around inside him. ‘I get that. It was to me too when I found out. I thought I had food poisoning or a bug or something. Even when I’d worked out the dates, I didn’t want to believe it. It still doesn’t seem real, to be honest. I don’t expect anything from you, Zander. I just thought you should know, that’s all. If you want to be involved in this child’s life, that would be great. I never knew my own father and I wish I had. So I’d like us to do this together, however that works. I’m aware it wouldn’t be easy. Our lives are very different. There’d be compromises and sacrifices, which I’m willing to make.’

She paused, presumably to give him the opportunity to respond, but he had nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was sinking into quicksand, already up to his neck, and there was no rope to hand to pull himself free.

‘However, if none of that appeals,’ she continued after a moment, ‘then fine. It’s my choice to have this baby. The circumstances aren’t ideal, I admit, but I’ve always wanted children. I’m thirty and single and this might be my only chance. However, I’m perfectly capable of doing it on my own. I believe that having you around would be best for our child, but I don’tneedyou. You’re under no obligation from me to do anything. You could walk away right now, and that would be fine. Whatever you decide, Zander, it’s entirely up to you.’

It was unfortunate that the degree of his involvement in this was entirely up to him because right now he was utterly incapable of making a decision. He could barely think straight. He felt light-headed. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was tingling and his stomach was churning and all the blood in his body was rushing to his feet.

He needed a minute. He needed a drink. But the nearest bottle of industrial strength liquor was in his office, which was far too far away, so he had to make do with focusing on his breathing, in and out, deep and slow, until the threat of keeling over receded.

Theos.

How the hell could this have happened? He’d always been so careful. He didn’t want a kid. He never had. He wasn’t equipped to be a father. He’d be useless. He couldn’t even keep a houseplant alive. What hope would he have of successfully raising an actual human being?

It wasn’t as if he’d had a good role model. His own father had been cold and distant, so intolerant of tears and emotion of any kind that Zander had swiftly learned to suppress both. Support, interest, praise, affection—he’d had none of that, although there’d been plenty of criticism and discipline. His mother had been no better. Every time she’d looked at him, it was as if she were surprised to see him there, as if she’d forgotten he existed.

He knew nothing of emotional connection and communication, so what ifhisson or daughter needed something from him that he was simply unable to provide? Would the patterns of the past repeat themselves? Might no father be better than a bad one? Wouldn’t Mia ably fill both roles? Shouldn’t he take the escape route she’d given him, declare he wanted to have nothing do with them and leave them both better off?

On the other hand, Leo, his older brother, seemed to be doing all right withhisfamily. As the heir to the Stanhope Kallis empire, he’d received the lion’s share of their father’s attention growing up, but it hadn’t been warm, and their mother had been just as negligent with him. However, Leo was soppy as hell over his two daughters and madly in love with his wife.

What if he—Zander—decided he couldn’t turn his back on his child and subject him or her to the neglect and rejection he’d experienced as a youth and, against all the odds, the same thing happened to him? Not the loving a wife part—no one would ever get close enough for that because, if they did, the gaping lack of a soul they’d find would send them running for the hills—but the sentimentality over a child.

What if he decided to try and do better than his pathetic excuse for parents, learning from those of his siblings with offspring, perhaps, became invested in the pregnancy and the baby and then did something to mess it all up? If, in the course of their co-parenting, Mia decided he just wasn’t good enough—after all, as she’d pointed out, she didn’tneedhim—she could cut him out completely, and where would that leave him then?

No. He would not allow that to happen. Such vulnerability was unacceptable. He couldn’t abandon this child of his—that wasn’t the man he was or wanted to be—and he could hardly do a worse job than either of his parents had. Therefore, he had to secure his position. Lock this thing down on his terms. As he did day in, day out, at work. So that when he did screw things up, as he undoubtedly would, Mia couldn’t just take off with their child, leaving him broken, alone, with nothing for company but emptiness.

Quashing the doubts and thinking purely of his position, Zander set his jaw. He pulled himself up to his full height, looked directly at the woman who’d just tossed a grenade into his life and altered it for good, and said, ‘We’d better get married.’

Blurting out her news in the middle of the busy lunchtime lobby, even from behind a dense wall of foliage, had not been Mia’s intention when she’d decided to ambush Zander at his office. However, he hadn’t given her a choice. She’d spentdaystrying to get hold of him—she’d even contemplated hiring a private investigator if today’s efforts had proven fruitless—and it had been beyond stressful, so she had not been about to let him push her aside and stalk off without knowing the truth.

Understandably, he’d been stunned by her news. He’d inhaled as if winded and gone so white she’d feared he was about to faint. Once she’d finished explaining, she’d wondered whether she could have rendered him permanently speechless. But then he’d responded, with a proposal no less, and now it was her turn to be shocked.

What planet was he on? Marriage for the sake of a baby? Inthisday and age? Even she, with all her concerns about what might or might not happen in the future, didn’t think that necessary. Besides, he was the ultimate no-strings-attached wonder. Why on earth would he evenwantto get married?

‘I don’t think there’s any need to be quite so dramatic,’ she said, once she’d unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth.

‘I would like to guarantee my rights.’

Her heart gave a little leap of hope. ‘So you want to be involved?’

He nodded. ‘At every stage.’

Oh, thank God for that. ‘Well, that’s good,’ she said with what had to be the understatement of the century when he’d just allayed her greatest fear by indicating that if something happened to her he’d step up. ‘But marriage is unnecessary. I would never prevent you from being part of anything. I grew up without knowing my father and I would never deliberately do that to my child. You have my word.’

‘I don’t know if I can count on your word,’ he said curtly. ‘Not on this.’

Ouch. ‘You can count on the law.’

‘That’s not enough.’

Zander folded his arms across his broad, solid chest, which she’d once explored at length, his expression implacable, his dark gaze steely, and it occurred to her suddenly that the delicious wickedness she’d always associated with him was no longer there. In fact, she could see no hint of the playboy she’d become acquainted with while planning his party. Or the towering inferno she’d taken to bed. In front of her, pinning her to the spot from a deliberate position of dominance, was an altogether more dangerous sort of man, a man with a reputation for ruthlessness as well as seduction, who got what he wanted, whatever the cost, a force to be reckoned with.

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