Secrets 0f His Forbidden Cinderella (One Night With Consequences)

by Caitlin Crews

  “I am the Duke of Marinceli. The doings of regular people do not concern me.”

  She rolled her eyes. At him.

  Teo was so astonished at her temerity that he could only stare back at her.

  “Noted,” she said, in that bored, rude way that he remembered distinctly from her teen years. Though it seemed far more pointed now. “You are now informed. When you receive the legal documents, you can sign them happily and in private, and we can pretend this never happened.”

  “I beg your pardon? Legal documents?”

  Amelia folded her arms, and regarded him steadily, as if he was challenging her in some way. And Teo was beginning to suspect that what beat in him was not strictly temper.

  “Of course, legal documents,” she chided him. She chided him. “What did you think? That I would trust you to let this go?”

  “Let this go?” he repeated. And then he actually laughed. “Miss Ransom. Do you have any idea how many enterprising women, whether they have enjoyed access to my charms or not, take it upon themselves to claim that I have somehow fathered their child?”

  “You’re welcome to treat me like one of them. In fact, I’d be perfectly happy if you thought I was lying.”

  Teo hadn’t really made a determination, not yet. He hadn’t let himself connect his mysterious redhead to this...disaster. Or he hadn’t wanted to let himself. But there was something about the way she said that that kicked at him. As if she really, truly wanted him to dismiss her. And that was so different from the other women who had turned up over the course of his life to make their outlandish claims that it made something deep inside him...slide to the left. A simple, subtle shift.

  But it changed everything.

  “We will determine if you are lying the same way we determine any other claim,” he managed to say despite that...shift.

  “What does that mean? Ritual sacrifices? Forced marches? The dungeons?”

  He lifted a brow. “A simple paternity test, Miss Ransom. The dungeons haven’t been functional for at least a hundred years.”

  “I can take any test you like,” she said after a moment. “Though that seems like a waste.”

  “Funnily enough, to me it doesn’t seem like a waste at all. It seems critical.”

  She shrugged. “We can prove that you’re the father if you like, but I’m only going to want you to sign documentation giving up your parental rights.”

  And something in him stuttered, then slammed down. Like the weight of the whole of this monstrous house he called his home, loved unreservedly and sometimes thought might well be the death of him.

  “Miss Ransom,” he said, making her name yet another icy weapon. “You cannot possibly believe that if you are indeed carrying my child—the firstborn child of the Nineteenth Duke of Marinceli—that I would abdicate my responsibilities. Perhaps your time here as a child—”

  “Hardly a child. I was a teenager.”

  But Teo did not want to think about the teenager she’d been, too curvy and unconsciously ripe.

  Had he noticed her then? He didn’t think he had, but it was all muddled now. The girl he’d tried to ignore and the redheaded witch who had beguiled him into losing his head were tangled around each other and thrust, somehow, into this pale woman who stood before him with her blond hair flowing about her shoulders, not the faintest trace of makeup on her hauntingly pretty face, and eyes the color of bougainvillea.

  He was forced to accept that it was not merely his temper that seethed in him.

  But he kept speaking, as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “Whatever age you were, we clearly failed to impress upon you the simple fact that the members of my family take their bloodlines very seriously indeed.”

  “I’m well aware.” And there was something in her gaze then, and in the twist of her lips. It dawned on him, though he could hardly credit it, that the august lineage of his family was not, in fact, impressive to her. “But if I recall correctly, you’re the person who, upon the occasion of our parents’ wedding, loudly proclaimed your deep and abiding joy that my mother was too old to—how did you put it?—oh, yes. ‘Pollute the blood with her spawn.’ I can only assume that any child of mine would be similarly polluted at birth. You should disavow us both now, while you can still remain pristine.”

  It took Teo a long moment to identify the hot, distinctly uncomfortable sensation that rolled in him then. At twenty-six he’d had a sense of his own importance, but had imagined his own father would be immortal. His recollection of their parents’ wedding—evidence that his once irreproachable father had lost it completely, a deep betrayal of everything Teo had ever been taught, and a slap against his mother’s memory—was that he had been quietly disapproving. Not that he had actually said the things he’d thought out loud.

  “I don’t recall making such a toast,” he said now. Stiffly. “Not because such sentiments are anathema to me, of course. But because it would be impolite.”

  “You didn’t make a toast. Heaven forbid. But you did make sure I heard you say it to one of the other guests.” And he might have thought that it hurt her feelings, but she disabused him of that notion in the next moment by aiming that edgy smile of hers at him. “In any case, I thought it would be impolite not to tell you about this pregnancy.”

  Teo didn’t care for the way she emphasized that word.

  “But it can end here,” Amelia said, merrily. “No legal pollutants to the grand Marinceli line. I’m sure that in time, you’ll find an appropriately inbred, blue-blooded heiress to pop out some overly titled and commensurately entitled heirs who will suit your high opinion of yourself much better.”

  Teo had never heard his duties to his title and his family’s history broken down quite so disrespectfully before. It was...bracing, really. Like a blast of cleansing winter air after too long cooped up in an overheated room.

  She claimed she was pregnant, and he couldn’t dismiss the claim, because it seemed likely—however impossible and no matter how he wished it untrue—that she really had been the redheaded woman he had sampled the night of the Marinceli Masquerade.

  More than sampled. He had been deep inside her, sunk to the hilt, and had woken the following morning wanting much, much more—another unusual sensation.

  But this was not the time to lapse off into that cloud of lust—a cloud he now knew was deeply inappropriate and, if she was telling the truth about her pregnancy and his paternity, might well have already changed the course of his meticulously plotted life. It didn’t matter why she’d come here or what game she was playing.

  Teo wanted answers.

  He prowled away from the desk, moving toward the chairs that sat before the fire. “Come in. Remove your coat. Sit, for a moment, as you deliver these little atom bombs of yours.”

  He made that sound like an invitation. A request. It was neither.

  Amelia did not move. She stood where she was, still just inside the door, and...scowled at him.

  Teo was certainly not used to people contorting their face into any but the most obsequious and servile expressions, but that, too, was not the issue here. He reached one of the chairs, and waved his hand at it.

  “Sit, please,” he said, and this time, it sounded far more like the order it was.

  Amelia continued to scowl at him in obvious suspicion. But despite that, she moved closer. With obvious reluctance. In itself another insult.

  “Most people consider it an honor to be in my presence,” he told her drily.

  She sniffed. “They must not know you.”

  And Teo’s memory was returning to him, slowly but surely. He normally preferred to pretend those years hadn’t happened. Those embarrassing, American years, when Marie French had draped herself over the priceless furniture, and laughed in that common, coarse way of hers. But now he had the faintest inklings of recollection where the daughter was concerned, and not
only about those problematic curves.

  Amelia had not faded quietly into the background, as would have been expected of any other girl her age. Not Marie French’s daughter. He had the sudden, surprisingly uncomfortable memory of the uppity little chit mouthing off. Not only to him, which was unaccountable, but on occasion to his father, as well.

  Which was unacceptable.

  He couldn’t say he much cared for either the recollection or a repeat of it now.

  Amelia took her time moving across the floor, and then even more time shrugging out of her coat. Then, not to be outdone—and not to obey him totally under any circumstances—she then held it to her as if it was a shield as she sat down in the armchair Teo had indicated.

  He took his time seating himself opposite her, putting together the pieces. If he squinted, he could see the pieces of the wild redhead who had made the tedious Masquerade that tradition insisted he throw far more entertaining than usual. He wished his body wasn’t so delighted at her return. It could only cloud the issue all over again.

  Amelia gripped that coat against the front of her, so hard he could see her hands become fists. “Do you need me to tell you how babies are made, Teo?”

  “What possessed you to disguise yourself?” he asked coolly, choosing not to rise to her bait. Or choosing not to show her any reaction, anyway. “And not only disguise yourself, but as I recall, taking it upon yourself to make certain you got my attention. I would assume this was all part of an entrapment bid, but you claim you do not want my name, my money or any link to me whatsoever. Explain yourself.”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  “And yet, Miss Ransom, you came to find me in my private home. One assumes to offer explanations, at the very least.”

  “I came to give you information. That’s all. How many times do I have to say the same thing?”

  Teo smiled, something raging in him, deep and dark. It wasn’t as simple as temper. It was thick with that same lust, and wrapped around it, the possibility that the last person he had ever wished to see again might actually have managed to trap him. Him.

  A man raised to know better than to ever allow such a fate to befall him.

  “Unfortunately for you,” he told her, his voice a low lick of fury that rivaled the heat of the fire, “I don’t believe a single thing you’ve said so far. Shall we start testing these claims of yours?”

  “Test away,” she said, daring to sound bored.

  But he could see the heat in her gaze. She likely expected him to summon someone to administer a paternity test—and he’d get there.

  First, he wanted to address that heat. And the redheaded woman he’d tried to dismiss from his mind—but hadn’t.

  “Wonderful,” he said silkily. “Why don’t we start with a reenactment of that night in September?”

  “What?”

  And he should likely not have felt triumphant that he’d finally managed to get a reaction from her.

  But he did. And he was only getting started.

  “Come over here, cariña,” Teo said, and it was less an invitation than a command. “Straddle me the way you did then. Kiss me, this time without your mask. Let us see what truths there are to find without all these words, shall we?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HE DIDN’T THINK she would do it.

  Amelia could see the certainty she would not in that dark gaze of his, threaded through with a hint of gold-plated skepticism. It was to be distinguished from his usual expression, which was far too haughty and aristocratic and above it all to actually be challenging—no matter how personally challenging she might have found it.

  Teo clearly expected her to back off, or maybe he thought she would start flushing and stammering. Perhaps he expected her to start throwing things at him. Or to dissolve into a pool of tears.

  She had the urge to do any number of those things, but didn’t.

  Because it hadn’t escaped Amelia’s notice that he still hadn’t indicated that he believed her. Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of belief, as far as he was concerned. It sounded as if she’d convinced him that she had been in disguise the night of the Masquerade. But she should have realized that a man of Teo’s stature would never believe a pregnancy claim unless and until he saw it bolstered by cold, hard scientific evidence.

  That meant that all of this—letting her into the house, allowing her into his presence—was all part and parcel of whatever game it was he’d thought he was playing when the butler had given him her name and announced her arrival. He could have had her tossed out with a snap of his fingers. He hadn’t.

  Whatever else was going on here, including her unfortunate reaction to him that she clearly hadn’t exorcized at all, there was no doubt at all that he was playing a game. It allowed her to feel all the more ripe with the righteousness of her trip here, conducted beneath the mantle of her honesty.

  If, that was, Amelia ignored the fact that she was the one who’d played games first. She was the one who had come here, taken what she’d wanted and disappeared. She’d left him none the wiser. The only reason he knew now was because she’d chosen to tell him.

  She was the one who had chosen this. She was the one who controlled this.

  The last time you felt that way when Teo was involved, you ended up pregnant, a voice inside her pointed out.

  Amelia ignored that inconvenient fact, too.

  She shoved her peacoat off her lap, then stood. Back in September, she’d worn a daringly cut gown that had been all about her cleavage and the glimpses each step offered of her thigh. Almost all of her thigh. She’d worn the highest heels she could walk in without killing herself, and because she wasn’t her—because, for once, no one would look at her and make all the usual comparisons to her mother—she’d allowed herself to vamp it up.

  Amelia had strutted around, welcoming the looks thrown her way when normally she would have gone to great lengths to make sure she blended, and as inoffensively as possible. She’d stood in provocative poses. She’d smiled recklessly and suggestively. She’d tried to channel her favorite screen sirens from way back as if she was trying out for one of those old movies she and her mother had loved to watch together, late at night in the many far-flung cities they’d flitted in and out of over the years.

  It had been a delight, if she was honest.

  She’d gotten Teo’s attention, too. Then a whole lot more than his attention, and that had been...life-altering. Even before she’d learned that she was carrying his child. It had been a heavenly crucible, a stunning test of sensation and need, and she didn’t regret a single second of it. She couldn’t—not when she’d dreamed about what it would be like to touch him for so long.

  But she also had his attention now.

  Today she was resoundingly herself. She was wearing nothing but jeans, boots and the so-soft-it-was-basically-a-hug sweater her mother had given her for a birthday one year. She knew that rather than looking vampishly over the top, like an old movie, she looked as if she’d stayed up for far too many hours, packed into the middle seat of an overstuffed airplane.

  But that look on Teo’s face, for all its challenge and skepticism, was the same. As if he saw the same woman who had made him smile almost four months ago.

  The day you understand that sensuality is strength, sweet girl, is the day you will finally be free, Marie had always told her.

  But Amelia had never understood it. Not until right now.

  She shook her hair back from her face, and that, too, was different today. She’d spent hours creating her glossy waterfall of bright red curls for the Masquerade. This morning, all she’d bothered to do was take her hair down from the knot she’d tied it into for the flight. A glance in the rearview mirror of her hired car had suggested that it was a flat, lifeless disaster, and she’d felt unequal to the task of fixing it.

  But still, Teo loo
ked at her as if she was edible.

  Amelia had the distinct impression that he didn’t know it. And the man could make kings and topple governments with a phone call, but she was pretty sure that gave her the power here. Or at least some power, and with a man as effortlessly commanding as Teo, that was revolutionary.

  She smoothed her hands over her sweater, molding it to her hips, in unconscious imitation of a sly little move she’d seen her mother make about forty thousand times. An unconscious move that became conscious the moment she did it, because she understood it now. Amelia had always liked to roll her eyes at her mother’s various shenanigans around men, but it was different, here.

  There was something about running her hands over her own curves while he watched. She could feel the heat spark and dance between them.

  Amelia told herself that she could use it.

  She picked her way across yet another thick, undoubtedly priceless rug. The only sound in the study was the crackle of the fire. The faint hint of winter outside when the windows rattled now and again.

  And, of course, the deep kettle drum of her heartbeat—but she was hoping only she could hear that.

  It could only have taken a moment to step across the space between their two chairs, but to Amelia, it seemed like one or two forevers, stitched together while the flames danced in the grate. And then she forgot about the fire, because she was standing before him, and Teo’s black gaze was no longer simmering. It was a blast of fire.

  “What was it you wanted me to do?” she asked, and she wasn’t trying to sound sultry. Throaty.

  But she did.

  “I think you know.” His voice was more silk than rough, and still, it seemed to have ridges as it smoothed its way over her.

  And worse, she remembered.

  First the dance. She’d affected a German accent, spicing up her Spanish. She’d dared him to ask her to dance, he’d acquiesced with that dangerous half smile, and it had really been all over then and there. The dance itself had been decorous enough. His hand had seemed so large splayed there at her lower back. And the way he’d held her fingers in his had made butterflies dance and swirl deep in her belly, as if they were performing their own daring waltz.