Читать книгу Pregnant by the Billionaire - Ким Лоренс, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 12

‘IT’S settled, then.’ Sin nodded decisively. ‘We’re getting married.’

‘The fact that you have made a decision does not make it settled, Sin!’ Luccy told him exasperatedly. ‘You have just insulted me in the worst possible way, seem to think that I deliberately planned this pregnancy for mercenary reasons, and now you calmly assume we’re getting married!’ She gave a determined shake of her head. ‘I don’t think so, Sin.’

He gave a rueful shrug. ‘Do you have any other suggestions—viable ones,’ he added harshly as Luccy would have spoken.

‘My having the baby and continuing to live and work in London is a viable suggestion.’

‘Not to me.’

Luccy felt as if she were going round and round in ever-decreasing circles—with no way out of the labyrinth! ‘People—even pregnant ones—who take a big step like marrying each other should be in love when they do.’

‘Who’s to say that we won’t learn to love each other, given time?’

‘I somehow doubt that very much!’ Luccy muttered.

Sin shrugged. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Not to me, they haven’t!’ she growled.

‘In that case, as I fully intend for us to be married before the baby is born, it would appear I have seven months in which to convince you otherwise, doesn’t it?’ he pointed out. ‘I’ll try to make those months as pleasurable for both of us as possible.’

‘If you think you can seduce me into falling in love with you, then all I can say is you must have a very inflated opinion of the effect your lovemaking has on me!’ Luccy was breathing hard in her agitation.

Sin slowly crossed the room, his movements all feline stalking. ‘I’ll probably have to work pretty hard at it,’ he acknowledged dryly. ‘But as I said, I’ll endeavour to make sure that you enjoy the experience…’ He stood in front of her now, those grey eyes gleaming like molten steel as he looked down at her.

Sin’s eyes were like heated mercury, Luccy thought inconsequentially as she found herself unable to look away from the warmth of that gaze as it moved slowly over her slightly flushed features. And just as lethal if she got too physically close!

If Sin set out to deliberately break down her defences, then she wouldn’t stand a chance. She gave a determined shake of her head as she tried to evade the spell that heated gaze was weaving about her senses. ‘I have a plane to catch—’

‘Not today, I’m afraid, Luccy,’ Sin told her softly.

‘I’ve already warned you not to presume to tell me what I can and can’t do, Sin,’ she retorted.

He didn’t bother to reply as he moved to pick up the telephone receiver before pressing a single button. ‘Reception?’ His gaze held Luccy’s as he spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Could you call the airport and cancel Miss Harper-O’Neill’s flight to England later today? Thanks,’ he added decisively before replacing the receiver to look at her challengingly.

‘Damn it! I’ll simply rebook!’ Luccy told him with angry impatience. ‘You really are the most arrogant man it has ever been my misfortune to meet!’ She glared at him.

‘Was meeting me really so unfortunate, Luccy?’ he prompted huskily even as he reached out and curved his hand about her cheek before running the pad of his thumb caressingly across her bottom lip.

A caress Luccy felt from the hair on top of her head to the skin on the soles of her feet as it completely eradicated every other thought in her head.

Her lips tingled from the caress, the whole of her body becoming sensitised, breasts firming, nipples tightening, a warm clenching sensation in the pit of her stomach, that familiar heat between her thighs.

Luccy was still furious with Sin for the insulting remarks he had made to her earlier. Even more so for his high-handedness in cancelling her flight just now.

Obviously, just not furious enough to prevent herself from physically responding to him…

Before meeting Sin she had never thought of herself as a particularly sensual person, hadn’t found her previous physical experience particularly stimulating, and had only mildly enjoyed the few kisses she had received at the end of other dates over the years. Yet Sin only had to look at her in a certain way, to touch her however lightly, and she felt that caress all the way from her head down to her toes.

‘Was it, Luccy?’ Sin persisted huskily, the lure of her parted lips proving almost too much of a temptation to him as he touched their softness, his whole body having tensed with awareness.

She swallowed hard. ‘Can you doubt it when it’s resulted in an unwanted pregnancy?’

Her breath was like a light caress across the tops of his fingers, totally distracting him from the sting of her words. ‘It isn’t unwanted by me.’

Her eyes widened. ‘How can you say that when you’re insisting on marrying a woman you don’t even like?’

‘Who says I don’t like you?’

Luccy stared up at him exasperatedly. ‘Of course you don’t like me! You can’t possibly like someone you don’t trust.’

Sin didn’t answer her in words, his hand dropping back to his side before he slowly lowered his head and captured her lips with his own, not touching her in any other way now as he sipped and tasted their pouting softness and he felt her quiver in response beneath the gentle onslaught.

Sin knew when a woman responded to his kisses. Just as he knew that Luccy’s response to him the night they had made love had been completely genuine. As had his own response to her.

Even if they never felt more for each other than that physical desire, surely, for the sake of their child, it would be enough to sustain a marriage?

Sin raised his head slightly to look directly into the dark blue of her eyes. ‘Now do you believe me when I say I don’t dislike you?’ he prompted gruffly.

Luccy didn’t know what to believe any more!

But she couldn’t marry a man who didn’t love her just because he physically aroused her every time he so much as touched her. That sort of heated passion didn’t last, and once that had died what would they have left? The same disastrous mess as Abby and Rory’s marriage had been.

She drew in a ragged breath. ‘I believe that at the moment, because of the baby, you think that marriage is what you want,’ she conceded huskily. ‘But—’ Sin placed silencing fingertips over her lips.

‘I want our baby to grow up with two parents, Luccy,’ he told her emotionally. ‘The same way that I did. The same way that you did.’

‘And once this baby has grown up, where would that leave the two of us?’

‘As grandparents, possibly?’

He really was serious about her marrying him!

It was tempting, oh-so-tempting, to accept his offer of marriage and to hell with what happened later. To lay down the mantle of responsibility and let Sin take charge.

But even for the sake of the baby she carried Luccy knew that without that magic ingredient of a shared love—something Sin would never, ever feel for her!—they didn’t stand a chance of making a marriage between them succeed.

Sin had watched the flickering emotions on Luccy’s expressive face, had seen that brief flare of doubt quickly followed by one of firm resolve. ‘Let’s just forget about the whole idea of marriage for the moment and concentrate on getting to know each other, instead,’ he suggested. ‘I doubt it’s good for you, or the baby, if you continue to upset yourself in this way.’

‘You aren’t going to be one of those overprotective prospective fathers who attempts to wrap the pregnant woman in cotton wool until after the birth, are you?’ she challenged. ‘Because if you are I think I should tell you right now that I’m pregnant, not ill. I also intend to continue working until the moment they wheel me into the delivery-room!’ Her eyes sparkled like twin sapphires as she glared at him rebelliously.

‘Sinclair wives don’t work,’ Sin told her arrogantly. ‘And especially not when they’re pregnant,’ he added firmly.

‘This one will!’

Sin knew that there would have to be a lot of adjusting, by both of them, over the next seven months and beyond, but he was determined not to be goaded into arguing with Luccy before they had even begun.

He took a deep breath. ‘If you insist, I’ll just come along and carry your equipment for you.’

Luccy eyed him frustratedly. ‘Sin, I don’t think you’re taking what I have to say seriously.’

‘Sure I am,’ he said briskly. ‘Is your luggage downstairs in your room?’

‘How did you know—? How long have you known it was this hotel I’ve been staying at?’

Sin’s smile was wicked. ‘I made it my business to know once I realised you couldn’t be relied upon to keep our luncheon appointment. Reception had strict instructions to let me know if you tried to book out.’

Luccy should have known. He was a Sinclair, after all. Besides, he owned the damned hotel!

‘Your luggage, Luccy?’ he prompted.

‘Yes, of course it’s in my room, ready for when I book out,’ she said. ‘But—where are we going?’ she demanded as he opened the door out into the corridor before waiting for her to precede him out of the suite.

‘First to get your luggage, and then home,’ he informed her.

‘Home?’ she echoed sharply, her eyes widening. ‘Your home?’

‘Well, of course my home,’ Sin said.

‘But—I thought—’

‘Yes?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought you lived here…’

‘In a hotel?’ Sin raised dark brows. ‘Hardly.’

Luccy still hung back. ‘You don’t live with your grandfather, do you?’

Luccy had been apprehensive and, yes, a little scared, when only she knew of her pregnancy, as she’d wondered how she was going to continue working once the baby was born, amongst other things. But having Sin just step in and take over in this way was even more frustrating. She certainly didn’t intend going to stay with his grandfather!

Sin shot her a mocking glance. ‘I’m thirty-five, Luccy, not five! I’ve had my own home for fifteen years or so,’ he added dryly.

Luccy continued to protest at Sin’s high-handedness even as she followed him down to her room, scowling at him as he stood to one side to allow her to unlock the door.

‘This is unbelievable,’ she complained, having no choice but to continue following him as he strode off to the lift with her two bags. One of them only had her clothes in, but the other one contained her camera and other equipment, expensive equipment she wasn’t willing to let out of her sight. ‘You can’t just kidnap someone against their will!’ she muttered even as she stepped into the lift beside him.

Sin glanced at her. ‘I’m not kidnapping you, Luccy—I’m kidnapping your camera!’ he teased.

Her eyes narrowed in warning. ‘I could always call the police.’

‘And tell them what, precisely? That I’ve stolen your camera? Yeah, they’re really going to believe that!’ Sin gave her an evil grin.

Of course the police wouldn’t believe her if she said Sin had stolen her camera and equipment; Sin was rich enough to buy himself a thousand—a million!—cameras like hers. She doubted the accusation of kidnapping would be believed, either…

This really was incredible.

Unbelievable.

And, Luccy realised belatedly, completely inevitable the moment Sin had known that she was pregnant with his baby…

‘I know we have some tea bags somewhere,’ Sin muttered with his head in one of the kitchen cupboards.

The meticulously clean and tidy kitchen cupboards. In fact, the whole house was so neat and tidy that Luccy felt she should have taken her shoes off before she entered.

She had been more than a little surprised when, instead of driving to some luxurious penthouse apartment in Manhattan, Sin had driven his foreign sports car out of New York completely and into the suburbs to this rambling single-storey ranch-style house surrounded by its own acres of forest and parkland set behind a high wall and huge iron security gates.

The inside of the house was even more surprising, the hallway alone big enough to be one of the rooms in her own London flat.

There were pale cream marble floors and comfortable brocade furniture throughout the whole of the house as Luccy followed Sin through to the kitchen. The paintings on the walls were obviously originals—even the Monet—and the huge kitchen itself was like something out of a glossy magazine, with its green and cream tiled floor, cream units, an array of copper pans suspended along one wall, and a huge picture window at one end that looked out over the forest and rolling parkland.

Luccy stood hesitantly in the doorway. ‘Do you live here alone?’ It was a very large house for one man.

Ideal for a family, of course, and an ideal setting in which to bring up a child…

Sin straightened to look at her knowingly. ‘There’s no other woman in residence, if that’s what you’re asking,’ he drawled. ‘Nor has there ever been,’ he added as she didn’t look convinced.

‘Is it always this neat and tidy?’ Luccy grimaced as she stepped tentatively onto the cream and green tiled floor.

Sin took the tea bags from the cupboard then looked about the kitchen. He rarely came in here as it happened, but he could see now that the copper pots shone along one wall, with not a single item left out on the green marble work surfaces to spoil its neat symmetry, the cream wood units gleaming spotlessly.

He turned back to her with a frown. ‘You don’t like neat and tidy?’

‘Well… yes, of course I like neat and tidy,’ she protested. ‘It’s just that I’m notoriously the opposite.’

Ah, she was looking for reasons as to why the two of them would never be able to live together…

‘No problem.’ Sin shrugged as he took a cereal packet from one of the cupboards and scattered its contents over one of the worktops before taking a carton of milk from the fridge and tipping that on top of the cereal. ‘I can drop an egg or two on the floor too if that would make you feel more comfortable?’ He quirked dark brows.

‘I said I was untidy, not a slob!’ Luccy gave him an exasperated glare even as she moved to pick up a cloth and clean up the mess he had made.

Sin leant back against one of the units as he watched her. ‘Would you like to see the study where I work when I’m at home?’ he offered once she had cleaned up to her satisfaction.

She eyed him warily. ‘Is that some sort of obscure sexual invitation? Like another man asking me if I would like to see his etchings or even the family jewels?’

Having Luccy as a possible constant in his life was already turning out to be a lot more enjoyable than Sin had expected. He had already accepted that he was deeply sexually attracted to her, as he knew she was to him, and he had certainly never been bored in her company to date, but somehow he hadn’t expected to have fun with her, too…

‘And if it were a sexual invitation…?’

‘I would tell you I’ve already seen them!’

Sin found himself grinning at her waspish tone. ‘No doubt you will see them again, too.’

She eyed him challengingly. ‘You think so?’

‘I live in hopes of that being the case, yes,’ he said wryly. ‘But my invitation to come and look at my study was exactly that,’ he continued briskly as he saw a light of rebellion creeping back into those incredible blue eyes.

He had done very well by succeeding in getting her to the house in the first place without too much resistance on her part—he certainly didn’t want to push his luck.

Luccy frowned her puzzlement. ‘And why would I want to see your study?’

‘Just come and look, Luccy, hmm?’ He didn’t wait for her to prevaricate further, but took hold of her by the arm, striding out of the kitchen and through to the back of the house before throwing open another door.

If the kitchen was so neat and pristine it looked almost unused, then this room was in chaos! The huge oak desk was overflowing with papers and files and several cups of half-drunk coffee; the bin beside the desk was completely full too, and several drawers had been left open in the filing cabinets along one wall.

Luccy turned to look at Sin as he leant against the wall of the hallway outside, arms crossed over the broadness of his chest as he waited for her reaction. ‘This is a mess,’ she exclaimed, remembering belatedly that when she had visited him in his hotel suite that evening two months ago it hadn’t been particularly tidy, either.

He smiled. ‘I’m glad you approve. Wallace is under strict instructions never to enter or touch anything in this room unless he finds himself with a masochistic desire to be parted from a certain part of his anatomy!’

Luccy gave a rueful smile at the unmistakable reference. ‘And who is Wallace?’

‘Wallace is my—ah, here’s the man himself.’ He turned as a door opened further down the hallway to admit an elderly gentleman dressed in black trousers and a black waistcoat worn over a snowy white shirt, a grey tie tied meticulously at his throat.

‘You have been in the kitchen again, Master Sin,’ the elderly man—as English as Luccy was, surprisingly—tutted reprovingly.

A rebuke Sin seemed completely unconcerned by. ‘Wallace, come and say hello to Luccy Harper-O’Neill,’ he invited warmly.

‘Luccy, this is Wallace,’ he introduced once the older man had joined them.

‘Mr Wallace.’ She shook his hand, instinctively liking the kind blue eyes in the elderly man’s lined face.

‘He insists on just Wallace,’ Sin told her ruefully. ‘Apparently it isn’t the done thing in an English household to call a butler by the title of Mr,’ he confided with a gently mocking glance at the older man.

Luccy raised surprised brows. ‘You’re a butler?’

‘I consider myself more in the nature of a nursemaid, Miss Harper-O’Neill,’ the elderly man confided dryly. ‘Master Sin may be able to run a business empire with aplomb, but without my presence here I doubt that he would even be able to find a clean shirt to put on to go to work in the morning, let alone feed himself.’

‘You see what happens when someone has known you since you were two years old—you get absolutely no respect!’ Sin said good-humouredly.

Luccy found herself smiling at the obvious affection that existed between the two men.

Sin enjoyed seeing Luccy’s obvious bemusement at the addition of Wallace to his household. Maybe persuading her to stay awhile wasn’t going to be quite as difficult as he had thought it was going to be…?

He turned to Wallace. ‘I was only in your precious kitchen earlier because I was about to make some tea for Miss Harper-O’Neill.’

‘Really?’ the elderly man said. ‘Believe me, Miss Harper-O’Neill, you will be much safer if I make it. Master Sin has been known to give even boiled water a strange taste!’

‘There was something wrong with the water supply that particular day,’ Sin protested.

‘Of course there was, Master Sin,’ the manservant murmured. ‘If you would care to take Miss Harper-O’Neill out onto the terrace I will serve tea to you both directly.’

‘Luccy?’ Sin prompted as he saw she was still rather bemused by Wallace’s complete irreverence towards him. But having known the elderly butler for thirty-three of his thirty-five years, Sin considered Wallace as part of his family rather than a servant, and he knew that the affection was returned; the Sinclairs were Wallace’s family.

‘Sorry.’ Luccy grimaced at her own distraction before smiling at the elderly manservant. ‘Tea on the terrace would be lovely, thank you,’ she accepted.

‘Semi-skimmed milk would be healthier than full-fat, Wallace,’ Sin put in decisively. ‘And perhaps you could add some of your wholesome home-made biscuits, too. Anything else you would like, Luccy?’ he asked lightly.

As an afterthought, Luccy felt sure! ‘No, you seem to have it pretty well covered,’ she answered tartly.

‘What did I do this time?’ Sin asked once the two of them were outside seated at the green marble table on the terrace, the view incredible, the air warm and clear.

Her eyes flashed as she looked across at him. ‘You are going to be one of those overprotective prospective fathers!’

He gave an unapologetic shrug. ‘I just thought you should eat healthily.’

‘I know what I have to do, Sin!’

‘Then why are we arguing about it?’ he pointed out mildly.

Luccy almost growled in frustration. ‘I thought I had already made it plain that I don’t like being told what to do.’

‘Even when it’s in your own best interests?’

‘Even then!’

Sin relaxed back in his chair as he looked across at her between narrowed lids. ‘I think you’re just trying to provoke another argument…’

Maybe she was. But Luccy had seen another side of him since coming to the house, especially since meeting Wallace, and she didn’t want to actually start liking Sin. She could even fall in love with him if she allowed herself to do that!

She was only here at all because she was expecting his baby, Luccy reminded herself firmly. Sin only wanted the baby, not her.

And she would do well not to forget that!

‘Never mind,’ she dismissed. ‘I’m sure that Wallace’s tea will be wonderful.’ It was also obvious that Wallace was the reason the house looked so neat and tidy. ‘Have you lived here very long?’

Sin continued to look at her through those narrowed lids, his expression unreadable. ‘A couple of years,’ he said. ‘I got tired of living in the city.’

Luccy nodded. ‘It’s very peaceful here.’ She had often thought she might like to move out of the noise and bustle of London, but as her studio was in London it just hadn’t seemed practical.

That might have to change after the baby was born, of course…

‘I like it,’ Sin said in answer to her comment. ‘But I’m quite willing to sell up and move to a different house, either here or in England, if that’s what you decide you would like to do.’

She drew in a sharp breath. ‘Sin—’

‘Luccy?’ He quirked dark brows.

This was all going too fast for her!

Way too fast. She was barely used to the fact that she was expecting this man’s child, let alone being able to deal with the obvious repercussions of Sin knowing about it too.

‘I’m not going to be rushed into making any decisions I might regret, Sin,’ she told him firmly.

‘Of course not. Obviously we still have at least six months or so before we need to make any definite decision about where we’re going to live. But one thing I’m pretty definite on, Luccy…’ He sat forward, those grey eyes once again seeming like shimmering mercury. ‘I fully intend for you to have my wedding ring safely on your finger before they wheel you into that delivery-room, as you so daintily put it!’

As Luccy looked into those glittering grey eyes she was left in absolutely no doubt that Sin meant every word he said…