Читать книгу Her Secret, His Child: A Night, A Secret...A Child / One-Night Love-Child / The French Aristocrat's Baby - Miranda Lee, Anne McAllister - Страница 13

NICOLAS knew—as one always knew deep down—that he’d just crossed a line; that line that you didn’t step over if you were a gentleman.

But then he’d never been a gentleman. And he never would be one, despite having smoothed away most of his rough edges over the years. He spoke like a gentlemen these days and dressed like one. His town house in London was the home of a gentleman. His NewYork apartment, however, reeked of new money, the kind made by men who hadn’t been born rich, but who’d made it in the world by talent and tenacity. Men who were winners, men who knew what they wanted and went after it.

What he’d just said to Serina had been provocative in the extreme, provocative and presumptuous.And risky. By speaking up so boldly, he’d ruined any chance of a romantic seduction.

But in that moment before she’d been able to hide the truth, when her body and mind had still been reeling from the shock of his words, he’d glimpsed her ongoing sexual vulnerability to him. What he’d just said had been right. She did want to go to bed with him.

Serina didn’t say a single word during the short time it took to steer her back to the car. But her body language reeked of rebellion. Nicolas’s own body was consumed by something else… .

Serina snatched her arm away from his hold before climbing up into the SUV and banging the door shut behind her. She refused to look at him as he got in behind the wheel, refused to speak. Instead, she stuffed her handbag at her feet and crossed her arms, glaring balefully out of the passenger window.

‘You’d better put your seat belt on,’ Nicolas advised as he did so himself then started up the engine.

She did so huffily, still not looking his way, Rocky Creek well behind them before her simmering fury found a path to her tongue.

‘I was right all along,’ she blustered, her head finally turning in his direction. ‘You didn’t come back out of kindness, or generosity. You came back for revenge!’

Her accusation produced a startling result, Nicolas’s eyes leaving the road at an inopportune time, since they were on a sharp corner at the time. The left-side wheels slid off the narrow strip of tar, spitting gravel out behind them. The back of the vehicle began to slide, Nicolas swearing as he struggled for control.

The adrenalin of fear and panic had Serina gripping her seat belt whilst visions of their careering off the road and into a steep gully—or the bone-crunching trunk of a gum tree—flashed before her mind.

‘And I was right,’ Nicolas snarled when he finally had them safely back on the road. ‘You’re going to be the death of me one day. I think I’ll find a place to stop before we continue this rather amazing conversation.’

Serina didn’t object. She was still shaking inside when he pulled over into a lay-by and turned off the engine.

‘Now,’ he said firmly as he undid his seat belt and turned towards her. ‘What’s all this nonsense about revenge?’

Serina stared into his beautiful blue eyes and saw nothing dark or deceptive. Only confusion. Which confused her.

‘Revenge for what?’ he demanded to know.

‘For… for what I did that night,’ she spluttered.

‘Ah,’ he said, and nodded. ‘You’re still feeling guilty about that, are you?’

‘Of course! What I did that night… it was very wrong.’

‘Are we talking about what you did to me? Or what you did to your husband?’

Serina stiffened. ‘Greg wasn’t my husband at that stage.’

‘That’s semantics, Serina, and you know it. You were unfaithful to your soon-to-be husband that night. And you deceived me.’

A guilty frustration swamped her, making her head whirl and her heart twist. ‘I didn’t mean to do either,’ she blurted out. ‘I… I just couldn’t help myself.’ Tears of dismay and despair filled her eyes. ‘It all happened by accident.’

Nicolas’s expression was sceptical. ‘You just happened to be at my concert. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No. Yes. I mean… I came to Sydney for a couple of days shopping for my wedding and I saw you being interviewed on television. One of those morning programs. I heard you were playing at the Opera House that night and I thought… what would be the harm? I just want to see him one more time,’ she choked out, as though she were talking to someone else. Confessing, perhaps, to a priest. ‘But then I watched you perform and I… I knew I had to do more than just see you… .’ The tears spilled over then and trickled down her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t help it, Nicolas. I’m not a bad person. And I’m sorry, truly sorry.’

He reached over and gently wiped the tears from her face. ‘I won’t say that what you did didn’t hurt me. It did. Terribly. But I can see that I hurt you, too, by staying away in the first place. I should have come back for you earlier.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ she said with a tormented groan.

‘Male pride, mostly. You said you didn’t want me.’

A small laugh escaped her lips. ‘And you believed me?’

Nicolas smiled a rather sad smile. ‘Yes, Serina, I believed you. But that’s water under the bridge now, isn’t it? We can’t go back and undo anything in the past. All we can control is the here and now. So let me redress something I told you a little while ago, about why I’m here. Yes, it was because of your daughter’s letter. But not for the reason I let you think. I haven’t come all this way to help Felicity raise money for your local bushfire brigade. I could have easily sent a cheque to do that. I came because your daughter told me that her father—your husband, Greg—is now dead. I came because of you, Serina. Let’s not have any misunderstandings about that.’

Serina tried to work some saliva into her suddenly dry mouth. It was what she both craved and feared.

‘But it’s too late,’ she told him.

‘Too late for what?’

‘For us… ’

‘It’s never too late, Serina. Not whilst we’re still alive.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Are you saying that you don’t want me anymore?’

She could not help the sensual shudder that rippled down her spine.

‘You have to give me another chance, Serina,’he proclaimed.

‘I won’t leave Rocky Creek,’ she insisted wildly. ‘I won’t, I tell you.’

‘I’m not asking you to,’ he said. ‘Just come back to Port Macquarie for the afternoon.’

She stared at him, her eyes wide.

‘I can’t!’ she protested huskily.

His smile was sexy. ‘Of course you can. We’re already going there for lunch.’

‘You’re not talking about lunch, though, are you?’

‘No. No, Serina, I’m not.’

The image his words evoked took her breath away. ‘You’re wicked. You were always wicked!’

‘Oh, come now, Serina, don’t go all holier-than-thou on me. I never did a single thing you didn’t want me to. Or beg me to.’

‘I never begged!’

‘Then perhaps it’s high time you did. Shall I make you beg this afternoon, my love?’

Serina knew she had to fight the insidious desires that were already invading her. For if she gave in to what he wanted…

She shuddered to think of the consequences, both to her life and her future happiness. Not to mention the happiness of her child.

‘How can you possibly put words like love and beg in the same sentence?’ she argued fiercely. ‘You have no idea what love is, Nicolas Dupre. You never really loved me. I meant no more to you than your piano. I was just an instrument to be mastered. You practised making love to me the way you used to practise your scales. Till your technique was perfect. But you never cared for me enough to make me any kind of priority. Your career always came first. When our relationship became difficult, you chose your career over me and moved on.You did the same thing when fate intervened and cut short your concert career.You moved on. Very successfully, too.Yet if you’d truly loved playing the piano, that accident would have come close to destroying you. But it didn’t, did it? You rose again, like the Phoenix, and made an even greater success of your life. Which is commendable in a way. But it shows a certain ruthlessness of character, which I know I can’t live with. Or love.’

Her stomach contracted a little at this last lie. Because, of course, she did love Nicolas. Always had and always would. But the other things she’d just said weren’t lies. He was not the kind of man a woman could rely on to make her happy. Serina hadn’t reached the age of thirty-six without becoming a reasonable judge of character.

Nicolas was selfish and self-centred. He might not have come back for revenge, but he had come back to win. She was the one who’d got away. That was why he’d been so angry with her at his mother’s funeral. Because she’d rejected him, not once but twice. A man like Nicolas didn’t take rejection lightly, a fact made obvious by the expression on his face.

‘So you won’t give me another chance,’ he said grimly.

‘I don’t see any point, Nicolas. Your life is in New York, or London, or wherever your latest show is being staged. My life is here, in Rocky Creek, with my daughter and my family. We have nothing in common anymore, not even the piano.’

‘We have this in common, Serina,’ he growled, and in the twinkling of any eye, he captured her startled face in his hands and swooped with his mouth.

No! She might have screamed aloud if she’d been able to scream. But actual screaming was impossible with his lips clamped to hers and his tongue already pushing past her teeth. All she could manage was a low groan, which sounded more like the sound of surrender than any kind of protest.

It was a brutal kiss, punishing and powerful, demanding and devouring, irrefutable and irresistible.

Serina knew, soon after Nicolas started kissing her, that she didn’t have a hope in Hades of resisting him. Her body had always had a mind of its own when it came to Nicolas. From the first moment he’d touched her, she’d been his. Whenever they’d made love, he’d evoked feelings in her—both physically and emotionally—that had both consumed and enthralled her. Being with him had quickly become an obsession and an addiction, which only the tyranny of distance had put a halt to. Whenever he’d come home, she’d been there, waiting for him.

So when his head finally lifted, she didn’t bother to voice any further protest. She just looked up into his eyes and said breathily, ‘All right, Nicolas. You win. I’ll go to bed with you one more time. But that will be the end of it,’ she added before he could look too triumphant. ‘The end of us. There will be no more.’

‘Are you quite sure of that, Serina?’ he murmured, his hands turning soft and seductive around her face.

‘Quite sure,’ she lied in steely tones…