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“YOU HAVE NEWS...?” He frowned, his fingers locked in a tight grip over hers. “What, princesa? Do you have a new man lined up now that your sister has stolen the last one? Do you think I give a damn?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. Not even a muscle twitched in his mobile face.
Hot satisfaction fueled her. She had wanted to shake his infuriating arrogance. She had. On its heels followed raking guilt.
Her knees buckled under her. Only Diego’s hold on her was keeping her upright.
God, she hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. She hadn’t even dealt with what it meant to her, what it implied...
What did it say about her that the only positive thing she felt about the pregnancy was that it could shock Diego like nothing else could?
After the way he had treated her she owed him nothing. And yet keeping him in the dark required a price higher than she was willing to pay.
He had provided her with the best opportunity to tell him, to get it done with. For all she knew he wouldn’t even care. He had wanted revenge, he’d got it—with little scruples—and now he had divorce papers ready. And he would keep on walking.
His gaze sliced to her, searching her face. Her composure unraveled at his silence.
The roguish arrogance was gone from his face, replaced by a resolute calm. Every inch of her quaked.
“Is it mine?”
Her gut started that dangerous fall again. She needed to get herself under control. Because Diego was a master at reading her. Whatever she wished, he would do the opposite. Just to make her life harder.
She needed to play it cool. “Why do you think I’m giving you the good news?”
“You slept with me mere hours after laying eyes on me again,” he said, his golden gaze betraying his fury, “while the man you were ready to marry still had his lapdog out looking for you and your twin was being your damned placeholder in his life.”
She trembled as he walked away from her, as though he couldn’t bear to breathe the same air as her.
“And you went back to him as soon as I left you. Except he was two-timing you just as you were doing him. So I repeat: is the baby mine?”
“That’s not true. Alex and I—”
She shut her mouth with a snap, leaned back against the soft leather, trembling from head to toe. Guilt hung heavy in her stomach. The media, her father—the whole world had crucified Liv, while Kim was the one responsible for it all.
Except Diego knew where she had been and what she had been up to while Liv had pretended to be her. And of course Diego thought Kim had quietly crawled back to Alex, that nothing had changed for her. That she had jumped into his bed from Alex’s and then jumped straight back.
That was untrue on so many levels.
Even before Diego had made his true intentions known Kim had broken it off with Alexander. Only Diego didn’t know that.
Her next breath filled her with his scent—dark and powerful. Her eyes flew open.
He raised a brow, watching her with hawklike intensity. “It’s a simple question, gatinha, and sadly one only a woman can answer.”
There was nothing in his tone—no nuance of sarcasm, no hint of anger or accusation—nothing that she could latch onto and feed her fury, her misery.
“Alex and I...” she whispered, feeling heat creep up her skin. “We—”
“All I need—” his words came through gritted teeth “—is your word. Not a day-by-day update on your sexual activity.”
Mortification spread like wildfire inside her. Really, she needed to get a grip on herself—needed to stop blurting out things Diego had no need to know.
More information on her non-existent sex-life fell into that category without a doubt. She already had a permanent reminder of how scandalously she had behaved. And now Alex and Liv, her father—the whole world was going to find out...
Her gut churned again with a vicious force. “Of course it’s yours.”
His jaw tight, he nodded. His easy acceptance, his very lack of a reaction, sent a shiver running down her spine. She had expected him to burst out, had braced herself for an attack.
Why did he trust her so easily? He had every right to demand a paternity test. Every right to question the truth of her claim. That was what she wanted from him. That was what she expected from him.
Instead his self-possession—something she usually prided herself on—grated on her nerves. She was still panicking. She had blurted out the news in a petty fit of pique. Whereas he didn’t even blink.
She laughed, the sound edging toward hysteria. “What? No accusations? No demands for proof? No talk of DNA tests? Just like that, Diego?”
He turned away from her to lean against the wall and closed his eyes. He ran his hand over the bump on his nose. Tension overflowed from him, filling up the huge suite, rattling like an invisible chain, reaching for her. His eyes flew open and her gaze was caught by his.
“DNA tests are for women to whom being pregnant with a rich man’s child means a meal ticket to a better life. An accusation my father threw at my mother every time she showed up with me on his doorstep, begging for support.”
His words vibrated with emotion. His very stillness, in contrast to the loathing in his words, was disquieting in the least. “However, with our history, I don’t think that’s what you’re going for.”
Kim tucked her head in her hands, wondering what she had started. A lump of something—she refused to call it gratitude—blocked her throat, making it harder for her to speak. He could have turned this into something ugly if he wished. He hadn’t.
Everything within her revolted at being obligated to him for even that small display of honor. It made her weak, plunged her into useless wishing.
She couldn’t let him put her in the wrong. She couldn’t forget that the very reason she was in this situation was because he had orchestrated payback.
She felt the hard wall of heat from his body and stiffened.
“For a woman who fairly blazes with confidence in every walk of life, your hesitation would be funny if it wasn’t the matter of a child. Are you not so sure who the father is yourself?” he whispered softly, something deadly vibrating in his tone.
“There’s no doubt,” she repeated.
Thinking with a rational mind, she knew she should just tell Diego the stupid truth. That she had never slept with Alexander. But then Diego would never leave the truth alone.
“Now that we have solved that particular puzzle, what do you need from me?”
It took her a moment to realize that he was waiting for an answer. A chill began to spread over her skin. “I...I don’t need anything from you.”
“Of course not.” An edge crept into his tone, his gaze devouring her. Something stormy rumbled under that calm now. “Then why tell me?”
“Honestly? I wasn’t thinking,” she said, wondering if she was destined always to make mistakes when it came to him. “You were gloating. You were...”
“Nice to know something touches you,” he said, a fire glinting in his gaze. She opened her mouth to argue and shut it just as quickly. “And if I hadn’t been here to gloat? Would you have called me then?”
“That’s a question I don’t have to answer, because you are here. And stop pretending as though this means something, Diego. You were ready to walk out of my life, and I say keep on walking.”
“Your arrogance in thinking that you know me is astounding, querida. Did I teach you nothing four weeks ago?”
His words rumbled around her, and images and sensations tumbled toward her along with them. But she refused to back down. “You take risks. Your business tactics are barely on this side of the law. The last thing you need in your life is a baby. If I had hidden this from you you would have only found more reason to hate me.”
“To think for a moment I assumed that you weren’t doing this for purely selfish reasons but for the actual wellbeing of the child you’re carrying...”
She flinched, the worst of her own fears crystallized by his cutting words. Her earlier dread intensified. That was what she should have immediately thought of. The child’s welfare. “I want nothing but a divorce and an exit from you.”
His laughter faded and shadowed intent filled his face. He grabbed the papers she had signed not five minutes ago and shredded them with his hands.
His calm movements twisted her gut. “Then what do you have in mind? We’ll kiss each other and make up? Play happy family—”
He came closer—until she could see the gold specks in his eyes, smell the dark scent of him that scrambled her wits.
“I’m not turning my back on my child.”
Panic unfurling in her stomach, she shot up from her seat. “You’re out of your mind. This is not what I planned for my life—”
“I’m sure you had a list of requirements that needed to be met in order to produce the perfect offspring,” he said, his words ringing with bitter satisfaction, “but it’s out of your hands now.”
“It is. But what I can control is what I do about it now. Being a mother is going to be hard enough. Dealing with you on a regular basis will just tip me over into...”
Perverse anger rose within her—perverse, irrational and completely useless. He could walk away from this. She needed him to walk away from this. But she...she had no such choice. She had a lifelong commitment. She was supposed to love this baby. She was supposed to...
“You don’t want this baby?”
“Of course I don’t. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me!” she shouted, the words falling off her trembling lips.
Shock flickered in his gaze, but she didn’t have the energy to wish them unsaid.
“This baby is going to be a walking, talking reminder of the biggest mistake of my life. You’ve achieved what you wanted, Diego. You’ve done your worst. You have changed my life in a way I can’t control. Now, please, leave me to get on with it.”
* * *
Diego breathed out through his teeth and hit the punching bag again with renewed force. His right hook was beginning to fall short again. The injury to the muscle in his bicep was making itself known. The same injury that had forced him to withdraw from financially lucrative street-fights. The injury that had forced him to reach out to his father for help when he had been sixteen and unable to pay for his mother’s treatment.
But he wouldn’t stop now. He breathed through the vicious pain, hating himself for even remembering.
The clock on the wall behind him chimed, reminding him he’d been at it for more than two hours now.
Sweat poured down from his forehead and he shook his head to clear it off. His T-shirt was drenched through and the muscles in his arms felt like stones. Adrenaline rushed through him in waves and he was beginning to hear a faint thundering in his ears. Probably his blood whooshing. But he didn’t stop.
Because even trying to drown himself in physical agony he couldn’t block out Kim’s words.
Stimulus and response!
Meu Deus, the woman reduced him to the lowest denominator with her infuriating logic. No one had ever got under his skin like she did. And she was carrying his baby. The resentment that had glittered in her brown eyes pierced even the haze of his pain.
Punch.
Of course it’s yours.
Thump.
It’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Punch.
This baby is going to be a walking, talking reminder of the biggest mistake of my life.
Thump.
Nausea whirled at the base of his throat, threatening to choke him with its intensity. He’d had enough rejection from his father to last him several lifetimes. He would be dead before he did the same to his child or became a stranger.
He took one last punch and pulled his gloves off. He picked up a bottle of water, guzzled half of it down and dumped the rest over his head. The water trickled over his face into his eyes. The biting cold did nothing to pacify the crazy roar in his head.
Because Kim had been right. He didn’t want to be a father.... He wasn’t fit to be a father...
He let a curse fly and went at the punching bag again, shame and disgust boiling over in his blood. Pain waves rippled up his knuckles. His skin started peeling at his continued assault.
He had no good in him. All he had was hatred, jealousy. He didn’t possess a single redeeming quality that said he should even be a part of a child’s life. He had chosen to walk the path he had with full clarity of thought—to take everything from his father that he deserved. He had known exactly what he was doing when he’d reached for that goal.
And that was what he wanted to do now, too. He wanted to take his child from Kim and walk away. Every nerve in him wanted to ensure he had full custody.
But he could not sink so low again.
He had let his hatred for his father lead him to destroy his half brother’s life in the process. If not for Diego’s blind obsession Eduardo would have been...
He shivered, a chill swamping him.
He couldn’t risk that happening with his child. If, because of his obsession with Kim, he hurt his child in any way he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He couldn’t let his anger at her drive him into making a mistake again—not anymore. Not when it could hurt his own child.
Playing happy family with Kim, seeing her every day, when she was the one weakness he had never conquered—every inch of him revolted at the very thought.
And yet he couldn’t escape his responsibility. He couldn’t just walk away and become a stranger to his own child.
He had a chance to change the vicious cycle of neglect and abuse he and Eduardo had gone through.
He would move mountains to make sure his child had everything he’d never had—two loving parents and a stable upbringing. Even if that meant tying himself to the woman who brought his bitterest fears to the surface.
CHAPTER THREE
KIM PULLED THE satin pillow over her head and groaned as her cell phone chirped. She hadn’t gotten into bed until three in the morning, after going over the new feature on The Daily Help with the design architect and writing her own feature for the career advice section she did every Tuesday.
Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was only seven. She felt a distinct lack of energy to attack the day. When her phone rang for the third time in a row she switched the Bluetooth on.
“Kim, are you okay?”
Liv.
