Читать книгу The Holiday Escapes Collection - Сандра Мартон - Страница 50

‘IS SHE asleep?’ Charlotte asked when Damon joined her in the main suite some time later.

‘Yes.’ He pushed his hand through his hair and began to pace the room, anger and tension visible in each and every stride.

She twisted her hands together, her mouth drying in anguish. ‘Damon…’

He turned to glare at her. ‘I have missed out on so much. Do you have any idea what that feels like? I have nothing! No memories of her as a baby—nothing. You have taken that from me.’

‘I tried to tell you.’

‘You should have kept trying.’

‘For how long?’ she asked, her tone bordering on despair. ‘My mother was dying, my sister was going off the rails and I was juggling my studies with a difficult pregnancy. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I felt I had no choice but to leave you to your life while I did my best to get on with mine. The words you said to me that last day…’ She stumbled over the memory and continued, her voice ragged with emotion. ‘I was so hurt. The way you spoke made me worried that if by some chance you did come around to believe me you might force me into having a termination. I couldn’t take the risk. That’s why I didn’t try and contact you again until I had passed the point of no return.’

‘I would not have asked that of you.’ His voice sounded as if it was coming from very deep inside him.

She gave him an embittered look. ‘Wouldn’t you? Come on, Damon, don’t you remember what you said to me? You told me I wasn’t to be believed, that I was a slut who had her eye on snaring herself a billionaire. Not exactly the words I wanted to hear when I was trying to do the right thing by telling you.’

He let out a heavy sigh. ‘I deeply regret how I handled the situation. But if you had persisted in trying to contact me I would have come around eventually.’

‘Yes and whipped her away from me as you’re threatening to do now.’

‘I want her in my life. I am not leaving without her. You have the choice of marrying me and coming with us or letting her go.’

‘That’s not what I call a choice. It’s blackmail.’

‘I do not care what you call it, Charlotte. I want my daughter and I am prepared to marry you to have her.’

‘Well, thanks very much for the romantic proposal,’ she said with a cutting edge to her voice.

‘What do you expect me to say?’ He glowered at her. ‘I am still so angry with you I can barely think straight.’

‘You should be angry at yourself, not me. If you hadn’t been so arrogantly assured of my guilt you wouldn’t have missed out on Emily at all. Have you considered that, Damon? What if I wasn’t guilty? What then?’

His throat moved up and down convulsively and it was a moment or two before he answered. ‘You have to be guilty.’

‘Why?’ She looked at him coldly. ‘So you can still be the good guy, the injured one, the one with victim written all over your face?’

‘There have been no thefts since,’ he said. ‘And certainly none before you came.’

‘So that somehow makes me automatically responsible?’ She looked at him incredulously. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Damon, surely you’re not that blindsided?’

‘I do not wish to talk about that incident.’ He turned away from her and began to pace again. ‘I wish to discuss how we will manage things from now on.’

‘I can’t leave until the exhibition is launched,’ she said. ‘I can’t let Julian down like that.’

‘All right.’ He turned to face her once more. ‘We will stay for you to complete your commitments to the exhibition, but in the meantime we will formalise our relationship. I will see to it tomorrow.’

‘It takes a month to procure a marriage licence,’ she pointed out.

‘I can apply for a special licence.’

‘Emily doesn’t have a passport.’

He frowned at her. ‘Why the hell not?’

She rolled her eyes scathingly. ‘Strange as it may seem to someone with the disgusting wealth you have taken for granted all of your life, other people, especially single mothers, do not have the money to travel the length and breadth of the globe. I have had to put food on the table and pay for childcare so I could work, even though I didn’t want to when Emily was a baby. It broke my heart leaving her with strangers while my breasts ached and leaked all day.’

His features twisted with anguish. ‘You struggled like that without once trying again to contact me?’

She turned away in disgust. ‘What would have been the point? I was sick of beating my head against a brick wall. Look at the way you treated me the first day you were here. You’ve made it pretty clear how low your opinion of me was.’

A tense little silence tightened the air.

‘I admit I left you with little choice that first night, but why did you agree to see me again?’ he asked. ‘You could have told me you were not interested and left it at that.’

‘I did tell you I wasn’t interested but you kept dangling threats over my head,’ she reminded him coldly. ‘Then when you said you wanted us to meet as friends…I thought it would be good for us to establish a relationship based on mutual respect…I thought that it would be a better way of revealing the truth about Emily. I didn’t want to spring it on you; neither did I want you to find out some other way.’

His hand carved another rough pathway through his hair. ‘I want to believe you, Charlotte, but everything in me warns me against lowering my guard. You ripped my heart from my chest four years ago and you have done it again by keeping my daughter from me. How can I trust you?’

Tears burned in her eyes. ‘More to the point, how can I trust you?’ she asked. ‘You have threatened me from the word go, blackmailing me into a relationship and leaving me no choice but to lie to protect Emily and myself. I hated lying to you. I loathe all forms of deceit. I grew up with my father’s lies and I have enough on my plate with my sister’s without making up my own.’

‘Charlotte…’

He took a step towards her but she held up her hand to ward him off. ‘No, don’t. Please. I can’t bear it. I hate what’s happened to us. We had such a lovely relationship…You were the most wonderful man I’d ever met…so warm and vibrant. I loved you with all of my heart. I would never have done anything to hurt you, but you’ve destroyed it all. You’re angry at missing out on Emily’s life so far, but what about what I’ve missed out on?’ Tears were running down her cheeks and she brushed at them angrily. ‘Have you ever stopped to think of that? Have you?’

Damon swallowed back the raw pain in his throat. He wasn’t used to so much emotion overloading his system. Four years ago he had shut off his feelings; only the loss of Eleni had resurrected them before he had locked them away again behind a bolted door in his brain. But he felt now as if Charlotte was picking the lock, her own emotions seeping under the door to reach his…

‘What have you missed out on, Charlotte?’ he asked hollowly. ‘Tell me.’

He saw her chest lift and fall in a ragged sigh. ‘I felt so alone when I came back to Australia…My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer the same week I had the pregnancy confirmed. I was so torn. There were so many people depending on me. Stacey was devastated by Mum’s diagnosis and began to experiment with drugs to blunt the pain. She never really got over my father’s suicide while he was in prison. She adored him and, being so young, she didn’t quite understand why he would do that. I threw myself into my studies, knowing I would have to provide for my child and possibly Stacey as well. I had no one to turn to, no one to tell how scared I was. I hadn’t even held a baby before and suddenly I was expecting one.’

Damon felt his chest tighten to the point of pain. How had he been so blind and unfeeling? Even if she was as guilty as he believed her to be, it did not excuse his treatment of her since. ‘I do not know what to say…’

She gave him a bleak look. ‘I guess sorry is out of the question. You’re too proud to admit you got it wrong.’

‘I am sorry you have had to deal with this alone. But you will no longer have to do so. We will be together from now on to give Emily all that she deserves as a much loved daughter.’

‘But she won’t have two parents who love each other,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s what every child deserves.’

‘In this day and age it is rare for both parents to remain together, let alone maintain that level of affection. We will no doubt become friends over time.’

‘We didn’t do so well on the friends thing before,’ she reminded him.

‘Yes, well, I am perhaps to blame for that,’ he admitted. ‘I cannot seem to help myself around you. I am still fiercely attracted to you.’

‘Which you hate yourself for, remember?’

‘You have said much the same, Charlotte.’

She shifted her gaze. ‘So you’re expecting our marriage to be normal…as in sex and all that.’

‘I am a little intrigued as to what exactly you are referring to as “all that” but yes—I would hope that we will maintain as normal a relationship as possible. It will be good for Emily to grow up in a family atmosphere.’

Charlotte looked down at her hands for a moment. ‘She likes you…Emily, I mean…In fact, I think she already loves you…’

He cleared his throat. ‘She is a beautiful child. I cannot believe she is really mine.’

Her eyes sprang back to his defensively. ‘If you feel the need to have a paternity test done I won’t stop you.’

He frowned at her expression. ‘I was not for the moment suggesting—’

‘Yes, you were, go on—admit it. I can see the flicker of doubt in your eyes. What if she’s lying again, foisting some other man’s brat on me to get more money? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’

He let out a frustrated breath. ‘This is a going nowhere discussion. I can see Emily is mine. I do not need a test to confirm it.’

‘What if she didn’t look like you?’ she asked with an accusing glare. ‘I bet you’d be swabbing her mouth with a dip stick and rushing it off to the nearest DNA laboratory as soon as you could.’

‘Is there some doubt in your own mind as to who is her father?’ he asked.

Her eyes turned to twin points of angry blue flame. ‘How can you ask that?’ she choked.

‘It is a reasonable question, I would have thought. It’s been four years; surely there have been other men in your life.’

‘There hasn’t been anyone since you.’

He raised his brows cynically. ‘For someone who claims to abhor being deceitful, you show a remarkable talent for it.’

Charlotte swung away in fury. ‘Here we go again. You refuse to believe a single word I say. This is never going to work.’

‘It will work because we will make it work,’ he said. ‘We are both committed to Emily. She is my biggest priority now. I want to spend time getting to know her, catching up on all I missed out on before.’

She held her arms close to her body without turning around. ‘I have photos and film footage of her first steps and words. I’ve kept everything…even all of her baby clothes…’

‘I would like to see them some time.’

‘I’ll collect them from my flat.’

‘About your flat…’ Damon paused before continuing. ‘Does your sister live there with you permanently?’

Charlotte turned back to look at him. ‘No…she comes and goes a bit but I’ve never encouraged her to move in with us.’

His expression was thoughtful as he watched her for a moment.

‘I think she’s beyond help,’ she added in a defeated tone, her eyes falling away from his. ‘I’ve done everything I can…I only agreed to your terms so I could help her but she used that money to pay back her dealer.’ Her shoulders dropped another level as she continued. ‘I would have even slept with you that first night if it would have brought her back. I would have done anything, but sometimes anything and everything is just not enough…’

‘You look exhausted.’ Somehow Damon got his voice into gear. ‘You can have the bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.’

‘Are you sure?’

Her grateful look was like an arrow to his heart. He stretched his mouth into the semblance of a smile. ‘Go to bed, Charlotte. You have no need to fear my attentions tonight.’ He moved towards the door.

‘Damon?’

He brought his gaze back to hers. ‘I am going out for a short while. I would like to spend the next few days with Emily, if I may. You will have a full three weeks ahead with the launch of the exhibition. Emily and I can spend the time getting to know one another. With her arm so tender I would not like to have her bumped by other children at childcare.’

Fresh tears washed into Charlotte’s eyes at his concern for his little daughter, but before she could assemble the words to tell him how touched she was he had already left.