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Oh, God! She knew the delay with coming clean was not making things better, quite the opposite, in fact. With a sigh she dropped her head into her hands and began to scrub her eyes with the heels of her palms. She felt a surge of despairing disgust as she asked herself where was the woman who never avoided an awkward issue but met it head on?
As she tilted her head to look at him her hair fell back, revealing the beginning of a bruise on her temple. Staring at the discoloration, Alex felt his stomach muscles lurch and tighten with an emotion as strong as his previous anger and totally inexplicable.... Only a madman would feel protective towards this provocative witch with her smart mouth and her combative attitude.
He was not a madman. It was her sanity that was the issue here; her insane behaviour was what he was here to challenge, although the conversation had drifted somewhat. Time to refocus, Alex, he thought.
‘That was a crazy thing you did.’ Also brave; the private concession was made reluctantly. It was hard not to admire this woman’s fearlessness—at least from a distance. For those close to her it must make life hell, he thought grimly. ‘You could have killed yourself....’
He closed his eyes, seeing the scene again and experiencing the same awful sense of helplessness. The memory remained like an icy fist in his chest as he glared at her and spelt out the fact she seemed incapable of grasping. ‘You could be dead.’
‘I can’t die. I have Jasmine,’ she asserted confidently. It was a simple fact. Jasmine would have been without a mother and that couldn’t happen.... It nearly had!
Like a tower of cards her confidence slipped away. Oh, God, he was right. She was a mother—she couldn’t go around leaping in without thinking.
‘I’m a terrible mother!’
Hearing the anguished wail and seeing the tears rolling silently down her cheeks cut through the righteous anger that gripped him like a hot blade through butter. He was unable and unwilling to identify the emotion that tightened in his chest as tenderness, but he dropped back down beside her. His time when he touched her she did not pull away as though he were poison. Instead she leaned into him, melted into him softly, shaking her head on his chest.
One moment he was fighting the urge to throttle her, the next he was fighting an equally primal desire to comfort her. His emotions did one of those three-hundred-and-sixty-degree shifts that seemed to happen around her.
‘What if—?’
‘You have lived to tell the tale. There is no point in what ifs. So how old is she, your daughter... Jasmine?’ He spoke not out of genuine interest but a need to distract her. At the same time he ran a soothing hand over her wet hair, lifting it off her neck; the texture of her warm, damp skin beneath fascinated him.
‘She’s started school. Well, she had.’
‘Had?’
‘She was off a term as she wasn’t well, but she’s having some home tutoring and she’ll soon catch up. She’s smart.’
The audible pride in her muffled response caused his hand to still, though the dark strands of her wet hair remained coiled around his fingers. It was difficult for him to see her as a mother but, he thought to himself, You don’t have the exclusive on family feeling, Alex.
‘She’s better now?’ he asked, giving her time to regain control.
Angel nodded into his chest. ‘I took some time off but this opportunity was too good—’ He felt her stiffen before she pulled away from him. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she regarded him with a defiance that was echoed in her addition. ‘I suppose you don’t think mothers should work?’
She clearly expected his judgement. And why not, Alex? You’ve done little else but judge so far.
Quick to judge and slow to forgive. The words of his mother, a sad observation that he had lived to understand the meaning of but that had meant little to him when she’d spoken them soon after his half-sister had appeared like a disruptive whirlwind in their lives.
‘I know nothing of the pressures of being a mother...or a parent.’ His brow creased as he admitted, ‘I still struggle to think of you as one.’
‘A mother or an actual person, not a body that looks good in a bikini?’ Before he could respond to the bitter accusation she added wearily, ‘Being a mother is one job where experience is not a prerequisite.’
‘There’s nothing on your website that mentioned you have a daughter. Is that a professional thing?’
‘You’re not the only one who likes their privacy.’ She blinked her sooty lashes over wide emerald eyes as her voice dropped an astonished husky octave. ‘You looked me up?’
‘I was curious.’
So was she, and maybe it was the hint of evasiveness in his manner but she suddenly heard herself asking the question that she’d heard many people voice, but that as yet had no satisfactory answer. Everyone had theories but nobody could really understand why they were being allowed access to the private island.
‘Why are you giving us access to Saronia?’ The moment the words left her lips she regretted them, but it was too late to back off. ‘They say you’ve refused royal requests.’ Why would a man who’d refused honeymooning royals open his doors—or at least a restricted area of his shoreline—to them?
‘Do they?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘You know they do.’
‘So what is your theory?’
She lifted a hand to shade her eyes. It was a bit late in the day to make out that she hadn’t thought about it, but she tried anyway. ‘I don’t have one, but if I had to guess I’d go with those who think it’s a bored, rich man’s whim, unless you really are thinking of expanding into cosmetics?’ Apparently the rumour had gone viral.
‘Are you asking for insider information?’
‘Hardly. The rumour has already sent the firm’s shares through the ceiling. Even we mere models have been known to read the financial pages,’ she observed, quite pleased to have surprised him. Her smug grin vanished as he hitched a brow and, holding her eyes with his, touched the sole of her foot with his finger. The light, barely there contact made her stomach dissolve and her toes curl of their own volition.
‘Has no one suggested that it is because I wanted to have you at my mercy?’
She fought against the seductive quality of his deep voice, hating that he was mocking her. ‘Now, that really would make me feel special.’
He shrugged and grinned. ‘No mystery. My nephew asked me to further his career.’
‘And you’re a very nice uncle who does favours for your nephew?’
‘It has been known, but I am an adequate uncle. It isn’t hard—Nico is a nice kid, and it pays to keep on the right side of my sister, Adriana.’
‘Do you have much family?’ she asked, thinking to herself, You have one more than you think.
‘My parents died some time ago in a car accident. I have two sisters.... There is Adriana—she’s ten years older than me.’ His mobile lips twisted into a half smile as he surprised her by confiding, ‘I was an afterthought.’
‘This is Nico’s mother?’
He tipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘Her husband, Gus, was an international lawyer based in Geneva, but now he runs the Greek operation. They have just the one son.’
‘You said you had two sisters?’
There was a long pause.
‘Lizzie is your age.’
Lizzie did not strike Angel as a very Greek or Russian name. ‘I thought you said you were the youngest?’
‘Lizzie is my half-sister, the result of an affair—actually a one-night stand.’ The small shocked sound that escaped her throat awoke him to the fact that he had just revealed more private details in the past thirty seconds than he had in the past... Actually ever. ‘The details are not important.’ Just the sort of thing that blew a family apart. ‘As I said, she is my half-sister, the baby of the family.’
‘And you resent her existence?’
The speculation drew a heavy frown and a flash of anger. ‘Nobody in the world could resent Lizzie.’ Except his mother, who could have but had not.
The softening in his expression when he spoke of his half-sister could not have been feigned. It could be envied, though she was dismayed to discover she did not envy this girl who brought the warmth to his eyes. One thing Angel did not want to be was his sister!
‘So your parents’ marriage broke down.’ Angel, who knew how that felt, was sympathetic.
Being taken away from the only home she had ever known and the father she had adored at age eight had been a trauma that had stayed with Angel. In her youthful eyes it had seemed as if she was being punished. What other explanation could there be? Her feelings had alternated between guilt for some unknown sin she must have committed and anger at her father for sending her away.
She had been acting up during one of their short visits to their father when her big brother had sat her down and spelled a few facts out.
‘You can act like a spoilt brat and ruin our time here or you can enjoy it. This isn’t Dad’s fault or mine or yours.’
‘But Mum doesn’t want us!’
‘Sure.’ Her brother had held the fists that were punching him in sheer frustration and explained quietly, ‘But she doesn’t want Dad to have us more than she doesn’t want us. Do you get it, kiddo?’
Angel had, sort of, in her childish way. ‘I think I hate her, Cesare.’ She had whispered the confession because she knew this was a bad thing.
Cesare hadn’t said she was bad; he had simply shrugged and retorted, ‘Why bother? She’s not worth it. Just remember when we’re old enough she can’t keep us and then we can live where we like.’
‘Here at the castle with Dad?’
‘Sure,’ her brother had agreed, handing her a tissue and advising her to wash her face and brush her hair because she looked like a banshee.
‘My father betrayed my mother, she forgave him, there was no divorce.’ Angel sighed a sad smile, curving her lips as she dragged her thoughts back to the present. They had gone back to the Scottish castle of their childhoods but there had been no Dad. He had died and Cesare had inherited the ailing highland estate along with responsibility for its debts.
‘You were lucky.’
His astonished stare fastened on her face as he sneered, ‘How do you figure that one?’
‘Divorce is not a good thing and a mother who forgives is...’ Head tilted a little to one side, she studied his face. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’
‘What?’
‘Forgive him.’ He was quick to hide it but Angel saw the shock move at the back of his eyes, followed by a cold, closed look.
‘It was not my place to forgive.’ And now it was too late to tell the father he had idolised that he understood the weakness... How could he not when he was staring at his own in the face? ‘Though, yes, with the arrogance of youth I did judge. Having indulged in a one-night stand, I am in the classic glass-house-stone-throwing position.’
There was a delicious dark irony that he had blamed his father for not taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions.... Unprotected sex—how stupid is that? He heard the scornful words of his younger self and they still had the power to make him flinch.
The only reason he had not found himself in a similar situation was not down to higher moral standards or even basic common sense, but pure luck!
‘So it isn’t normal— You...you don’t—’ She broke off, flushing.
‘Sleep with women I have just met? Actually no. Though I can understand why you made that assumption given how we met. That makes you unique on two levels—my only virgin and my only one-night stand,’ he remarked bleakly. ‘How about you?’
‘I thought you’d already decided that a model is an easy lay.’
He winced and frowned at the crudity while uneasily accepting its factual accuracy. ‘I was not enquiring about your sexual history.’
‘Oh, I see, you just want to know the real me?’ She widened her eyes. ‘Where do I begin? My political views or my favourite author? Let’s see, I’m a Pisces, I drink too much coffee and my favourite colour is green....’
‘Do you always make a joke when things get too personal?’
Shocked that he had recognised the self-defence mechanism so easily, she shook her head in an angry negative motion, but before she could follow up with a firm denial he asked a question that, even though she knew was inspired by idle curiosity not suspicion, almost tipped her over into outright panic.
‘Where is she, your daughter, now?’
Not here, thank goodness.... Angel shuddered to imagine how she would have reacted if fate had thrown this man in her path when Jas had been with her.
‘At home, in Scotland, with Ce...’ She stopped, remembering that he knew Cesare and not wanting him to make the link between her and her brother until she was ready. ‘I always know she’s safe with him.’
The mention of the other man and the perceptible loosening of the tension in her body language when she mentioned him caused muscles along Alex’s taut jaw to clench.
He rarely found himself taken by surprise but he was. Having established that the father was not involved in the upbringing of the child, it had not occurred to him to question whether another man was. And considering he was a man who was justifiably famed for factoring in all possibilities when he approached a project, in retrospect it seemed astonishing that he had not foreseen any other outcome, when engineering a situation where their paths would cross, other than them falling into bed together. He had not been willing to contemplate failure.
It had genuinely not once crossed his mind that Angel might be with someone. He struggled to readjust to these facts.
While he recognised it was totally irrational, he could not shake the feeling of being cheated.
So what did you expect, Alex—that she’d spent the past six years waiting for you to reappear? The glaring immaturity of his reaction annoyed him, and, continuing in the immature mindset, he found himself blaming her for the situation.
His slightly narrowed eyes went to her left hand, but the long tapering fingers were bare of everything but sand. To leave a child with someone implied a great deal of trust but there was no ring. He half closed his eyes but he could still see her fingers on his skin. He inhaled and fought his way through a rush of hot lust...a virgin!
He still could not get his head round the fact that the best sex in his life had been with a virgin! Everything was successfully conspiring to up his guilt levels: the wife he had watched suffer barely in the ground and he had jumped into bed with a green-eyed witch...then that temptress had turned out not to be a siren but a virgin! Effectively making him feel like some sort of predatory sleaze. What was it they said—ignorance was no excuse in the eyes of the law?
It was certainly no excuse in his eyes.
He had been staring so long at her hands that Angel had to fight an impulse to hide them. Instead she dug them into the sand before rubbing them against her thighs and dragging them through her wet hair.
‘You’re with someone?’
This was good, he told himself. It was always good to focus on a known quantity. A partner meant there was no chance of becoming involved once more with her. That was one line in the sand he did not cross.... Unlike virginity, Alex?
‘Does the child’s father mind her being brought up by another man?’
‘Would you?’ she countered.
He thought about it—but not for long as it was a no-brainer. ‘Yes, I would.’ Little Lizzie—not so little these days—had spent the first few years of her life farmed out to relatives and friends before her father had claimed her and given her the home that had always been hers by rights. To allow that to happen to a child of his...?
It would never happen! His child would not suffer an identity crisis. She would always know where she belonged, she would always feel safe, loved and secure.
The instant response sent a flurry of panic through Angel. She brought her lashes down in a concealing sweep to hide her response. Exhaling a slow, measured, calming breath, she told herself there was no way he could know—and he didn’t.
She looked up. There was no shocked realisation, not even a shade of suspicion in his bright eyes.
‘I am bringing my daughter up alone.’
‘So you make the calls and your boyfriend of the moment acts as a childminder, providing he has no problem with your work taking you away from your family?’ It amazed him that any man trusted her enough to let her out of his sight, let alone halfway across the globe.
An energising rush of anger surged through her body as, with lush lips compressed in an angry rose-tinted line, she retorted, ‘I would never ever farm my daughter out!’
‘Why do you constantly assume I’m judging you?’
