Her Sinful Secret

скачать книгу бесплатно


Sleeping, Logan was a picture of maternal devotion.

Together they made his chest ache.

Rowan didn’t want his chest to ache. He didn’t want to care in any way, but it was difficult to separate himself when he kept running numbers in his head.

March 31 plus forty weeks meant a December birthday. Jax had a December birthday. December 22 to be precise. He knew because Joe had located Jax’s birth certificate at the house and put it in a file for Rowan. You couldn’t just whisk a baby out of a country without any legal documentation. If they were flying on a commercial plane, he’d have to go through government channels, which would have required a passport.

But since they weren’t flying on a private plane, his pilot had submitted a manifest—which had included Logan Copeland. The manifest had not included the baby as he hadn’t known there was a baby until just hours ago.

The baby could potentially be an issue, but as Rowan had diplomatic immunity, he wasn’t too worried for himself.

Logan was another matter. She could definitely find herself in hot water should various governments discover she’d smuggled a baby out of one country and into another.

Fortunately they would be landing on Rowan’s private airstrip on his private property, so there shouldn’t be guards or officers inspecting his jet, or interrogating his guests.

But if they did...what would he say about Jax?

The child born exactly forty weeks after March 31.

* * *

Aware that she was being studied, Logan opened her eyes. Rowan sat watching her in a leather chair opposite hers.

He wasn’t smiling.

She just held his cool green gaze, her heart sinking. She didn’t want to panic and yet there was something very quiet, and very thoughtful, in his expression and it made her imagine that he could see things he couldn’t see and know things he couldn’t possibly know.

He couldn’t possibly know that Jax was his.

He couldn’t possibly imagine that she would have slept only with him. Her one and only lover in twenty-seven years. That didn’t happen anymore. Women didn’t wait for true love...

And so she arched a brow, matching his cool expression, doing what she did best—deflect, deflect, deflect. “Was I snoring?”

“No.”

“Was my mouth open, catching flies?”

“I want a DNA test.”

The words were so quietly spoken that it took Logan a moment to process them. He wanted a DNA test. He did suspect...

Deflect, deflect, deflect. “That’s awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“You said you were a virgin. You made a big fuss earlier about how I manhandled your hymen—”

“I did not say that.”

“—which makes me doubt you were out getting laid by someone else in the following five to seven days.”

“Your math is excellent. I commend you. Not just a skilled lover, but also a true statistician, except for the fact that Jax wasn’t due for another month. She arrived early.”

“Your sweet girl was almost nine pounds, my love. She wasn’t early.”

Logan’s stomach heaved. He knew how much Jax weighed. He knew her birth date. What else did he know? “She’s not yours,” she repeated stubbornly.

“No, she hasn’t been, but she should be, shouldn’t she?”

Logan held her breath.

“We’ll test tomorrow, after we land.”

“You’re not going to poke her with a needle—”

“We’ll do a saliva swab. Painless.”

“Rowan.”

“Yes, Logan?”

Logan’s heart was beating so fast she was afraid it’d wake Jax. “You don’t even like children. You don’t want them. And you despise girls—”

“Is this what you’ve been telling yourself the past three years? Is this your justification for keeping Jax from me?”

You called me a whore. You said the worst, most despicable things to me.

And yes, those words hurt, but that wasn’t why she didn’t tell him. “I tried,” she said, her voice quiet but thankfully steady.

“And when was that?”

“When I called you. Remember that? I phoned to tell you, and instead of a ‘How are you? Everything okay?’ you demanded to know how I got your number.” She stared Rowan down, her gaze unwavering. “Even when I told you that Drakon had given it to me because it was important, you were hateful. You mocked me, saying you’d given me all you could.”

Her voice was no longer quiet and calm. It vibrated with emotion, coloring the air between them. “After you hung up, I cried myself sick, and then eventually I pulled myself together and was glad. Glad you wanted nothing to do with me, glad you wanted nothing to do with us, glad that my daughter wouldn’t have to grow up as I did, with a selfish, uncaring father.”

For a long moment Rowan said nothing. He just studied her from his seat, his big, lean, powerful body relaxed, his expression thoughtful. He seemed as if he didn’t have a care in the world, which put her on high alert. This was Rowan at his most dangerous, and she suspected what made him so dangerous was that he cared.

He cared a great deal.

Finally he shifted and sighed. “There are so many things I could say.”

Logan’s heart raced and her stomach rolled and heaved. “Why don’t you say them?”

“Because we are still hours away from Galway—”

“Galway?” she interrupted.

“—and I don’t feel like arguing all the way to Ireland.”

She blinked at him, taken aback. “We can’t leave the US. I don’t have a passport with me, and Jax doesn’t even have one yet.”

Rowan shrugged, unconcerned. “We’re landing on a private airstrip. There won’t be any customs or immigration officers on our arrival.”

“And what about when we return? Don’t you think it will be problematic then?”

“Could be. But Joe packed your passport when he packed for you, and he sent along Jax’s birth certificate, so we do have that.”

That’s how Rowan knew Jax’s birth date. That’s how he knew what he knew. But how did Joe know where to find her legal documents? She’d never told him...