Claiming His Love-Child

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“I’m still waiting. Where do you live?”

“None of your business. How many times do I have to tell you that? Take me back to the Chiliburger.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet your boss would like that. What’s he do, work you twelve hours a day?”

“Tony agreed to give me extra hours, yes.”

“What a prince,” Cullen said sarcastically. “Hasn’t he noticed you look like you’re going to fall on your face any minute?”

Marissa almost laughed. Tony probably had no idea what she looked like. She was a waitress, a commodity about as invisible in a place like the Chiliburger as the film of old grease on the griddle.

But she wasn’t going to tell that to Cullen. She wasn’t going to tell him anything. She’d made that decision months ago.

She could take care of herself. She always had…except for that night. How could it have happened? Hadn’t she learned anything, growing up?

Some girls’ mothers taught them to cook or sew.

Hers had taught her the truth about men, and life.

The day she got her first period, her mother handed her a box of tampons and a bucket of advice.

“You’re a woman now, Mari,” she’d said. “Men will look at you, but don’t you let ’em come near you. They’re all like the son of a bitch planted you inside me, gruntin’ between your legs, then zippin’ up their pants and walkin’ away. The rest is your problem. You remember that, girl. Nothin’ lasts, especially if you’re dumb enough to hope it will.”

She always had remembered, until Cullen. How come? Was it because her mother had omitted one salient bit of advice, that when a man took your breath away, he took away your ability to think?

That’s what had happened to her. Cullen had taken her breath away. One look, and she’d been lost. He was so ruggedly handsome, so funny, so smart…and each time their hands accidentally brushed, it seemed as if a bolt of electricity sizzled straight through her bones.

No matter. She wasn’t her mother, despite what had happened. She wouldn’t confront a man who was little more than a stranger with a truth he wouldn’t want to hear. She wouldn’t beg him to believe her. She knew how things would go if a woman named Perez tried to tell a man like Cullen O’Connell that he’d played a role in a sad little tragedy that was really of her own making.

Her fault, all of it.

She should have been strong enough to ignore the hot attraction between them instead of melting into his kiss. And when he’d asked if she had protection just before he undressed her, she should have remembered that though she took the pill to regulate her period, she’d been off it the start of the month because she had the flu.