Bound by Their Scandalous Baby

by Heidi Rice

  The direct question—and the abrupt change of subject—left her reeling. The blush became radioactive. ‘No,’ she blurted out.

  His gaze narrowed, as if he could see right through the show of bravado. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘You’re not exactly the most experienced woman I’ve ever slept with.’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m sure,’ she said, feeling defensive—and hopelessly gauche and unsophisticated. ‘Just because I’m a virgin, it doesn’t make me an imbecile,’ she added, protesting a little too much.

  ‘Were a virgin,’ he corrected, that tiny smile curving his lips again. ‘So you’re using contraceptive pills?’ he reiterated.

  ‘I said it won’t be a problem,’ she replied, not entirely truthfully. But she felt hideously exposed, her feelings raw and tender when they had no right to be. Especially in the face of his pragmatism.

  She forced her pride to the fore, to cover the erratic beat of her heart.

  She’d rather die than admit she wasn’t on the Pill, that she hadn’t even considered contraception. But she was so close to the end of her cycle, an accidental pregnancy had to be highly unlikely. And if any problems did arise, she told herself staunchly, she’d handle them. Alone. She might be inexperienced, but she wasn’t naïve. She wasn’t about to risk having another child. And especially not with a man like Lukas.

  I don’t make love.

  She gripped the towel tighter around her, the chill in the room prickling over her skin. If there was one thing she’d learned from her father—and Darcy’s brief but catastrophic affair with Lukas’s brother—you couldn’t make a man love you. And you certainly couldn’t change him. Nor should you try to. It was far too much work, and it was bound to fail. Leaving you deluded, like Darcy, or destroyed, like their mother.

  Maybe she’d lost sight of that in the heat of the moment. But she wasn’t going to forget it again. She didn’t need or want any man’s love. She had Nico. And she had herself. And that was more than enough.

  He watched her, as if he were trying to assess whether to quiz her further. She knew she’d never been a very accomplished liar, so she drew her knees up to her chest, keeping the towel wrapped firmly around her. Not that it made her feel any less naked under that searing gaze.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be going to your event?’ she prompted, suddenly desperate to escape from him, and all the feelings still churning inside her that had no right to be there. ‘You’re late already.’

  ‘I want you here when I get back,’ he said. Or rather demanded.

  She bristled, not just at the dictatorial tone but the underlying suggestion—that somehow because she’d slept with him she was now his to command.

  But she held on to the curt reply. She didn’t have the energy to have a stand-off with him. Not only that, but she was naked while he was fully clothed, and the heat had begun to pulse in her sex again, as soon as he’d walked back into the room in that tux. She couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t dissolve into another puddle of lust if he pushed. And she didn’t want to make love—correction, have sex with him again—until she’d got over the emotional fallout from their first encounter.

  Of course, it hadn’t meant anything to him—he’d had a ton of girlfriends. And he’d already told her he had a lot of experience separating sex from emotion. But he was her first. And it had been...well, pretty mind-blowing—in a purely physical sense. However pragmatic and practical and not naïve she was, losing your virginity to a man like Lukas Blackstone was bound to take a little while to process. And get in perspective.

  Her skin flushed pink again. He stood up to leave, his big body towering over her.

  Okay, make that a lot of time to process and get in perspective.

  ‘I’ll be back in half an hour at the most,’ he said, as if she were a puppy who was expected to be obedient.

  ‘I won’t be here. I can’t stay,’ she said.

  He frowned, his displeasure clear. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have to get back to Nico. I always kiss him goodnight.’ It wasn’t a lie, she told herself. She needed to see Nico tonight, now more than ever. The little boy would keep her grounded, stop her making too much of what had happened. Stop her wanting it to happen again, which would be catastrophic. She could see that already.

  His frown deepened—he didn’t like her excuse—but after what felt like several millennia he gave a brief nod. ‘Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.’

  She felt the muscles in her abdomen loosen with relief.

  ‘I’ll come to the house. But I want to see you in private before I see the boy.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  His gaze raked down to where she held the towel too tightly against her chest. Her nipples throbbed and peaked in a predictable response.

  ‘I think you can guess why, Bronte. You’re not innocent any more.’

  She wanted to be disgusted by his implication—that now they’d slept together once, she’d be happy to sleep with him again simply because he expected her to. But the only one she was disgusted with was herself. And her instinctive response to him.

  She bristled, and clutched the towel tighter. ‘All right,’ she said, while planning to make sure she did not let Nico leave her side every moment Lukas was in the house.

  Forget taking time to process the sex and get it into perspective. No time would be long enough to mitigate the erotic power he wielded over her.

  Lukas was just too... Well, too everything. He was coming to the house to see Nico, not her—and once he left he was going to the Maldives. It would be weeks before he returned, by which time he would have forgotten about her and this...this thing between them. And, hopefully, with time and distance she would have too. And the erotic power he wielded would no longer be an issue. And all these raw, runaway emotions, the inexplicable yearning, would be gone too. Because they would both have moved on.

  ‘Take the elevator down when you’re ready,’ he said, still ordering her about. ‘I’ll tell Lisa to arrange a car and have a couple of security guards standing by to usher you out the back entrance to avoid the press.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, grateful that he’d considered the fallout if the press got hold of what had just happened. And adding it to the long list of reasons why having an affair with Lukas Blackstone would be a very bad idea.

  But as he leant down to kiss her forehead his thumb lingered on the pulse in her collarbone. Her breath got trapped in her lungs, the hammering pulse in her neck matching the beating pulse in her clitoris as he stroked the soft skin with deliberate purpose.

  ‘Later,’ he murmured, the hunger in his eyes unmistakable, the sensual smile a come-on that told her he was well aware of the effect he had on her.

  As he left the room longing seared her insides, and she knew Lukas’s arrogant assumptions weren’t going to be the only problem when it came to putting an end to this liaison.

  Because by far the biggest problem was her own body’s traitorous flash-fire response to him. And those volatile emotions that couldn’t seem to accept this thing for what it was—which was nothing of any importance.

  * * *

  Lukas strode through the apartment lobby. He shouldn’t have touched her, shouldn’t have given in to the promise of those wide pouting lips, those sparkling emerald eyes, that artlessly responsive body—and that open and forthright spirit that had captivated him right from the start. If he’d known she was a virgin he wouldn’t have gone near her.

  But now he had there was no going back.

  Because he couldn’t un-touch her, or un-know her, or un-taste her—and the memory of the clasp of her sex, the sweetness of her nipples tightening beneath his tongue, the shuddering pants as he thrust inside her—even that sassy little reply when he’d asked her if she was a virgin...

  Not any more.

  ...was already driving him nuts to have her again.


  It was just sex, even if it was like no sex he’d ever had before. Nothing more than insane hormones and great chemistry. It would burn itself out eventually but, until it did, he wasn’t risking going madder than he was already.

  Bypassing the penthouse elevator as he always did, he shoved open the door to the emergency stairs. Jogging down twenty flights to the eleventh floor ballroom would go some way towards calming the heavy feeling in his guts.

  Unfortunately, it couldn’t make him forget the sight of her on his bed, wrapped in nothing but a towel, her huge eyes confused and wary, her pale, ethereal skin flushed with pleasure.

  Her relationship with and devotion to the boy was a complication, of course, not to mention her virginity. Luckily, he had become an expert at keeping his feelings and his emotional needs—if he even had them any more, which was doubtful—strictly compartmentalised ever since he was a boy himself.

  He never let people get too close because that just gave them the power to hurt and disappoint him. Opening the emergency exit, he stepped into the lobby. As he crossed the thick carpeting towards the ballroom entrance, he was soon spotted. Reporters and bloggers rushed towards him firing questions.

  ‘Hey, Lukas, what’s happening with your long-lost nephew? Any chance he’ll be visiting the new resort with you?’

  ‘Why the move into the family market when you don’t have a family yourself, Lukas? Is there something you’re not telling us?’

  He stopped, and the young female vlogger who had asked the question stuck her phone in his face.

  ‘You’ll hear the reason why when you watch the presentation,’ he said smoothly, although he was grateful when his well-trained security detail surrounded him because his blood pressure—and his irritation—was rising.

  But as he continued into the ballroom, flanked by bodyguards, the flash and flare of camera phones and VT lights exploding in his face, the press of bodies, didn’t bother him as much as they usually did because his mind was focused on Bronte again—the sobs of her arousal, that smart seductive mouth, that ripe responsive body, the firm set of her chin when he’d demanded she stay and she’d defied him.

  A wry smile broke over his face at the thought of seeing her again tomorrow morning.

  Keeping their affair secret from the press, getting Bronte to cooperate despite her obvious reluctance, and figuring out how to curb his involvement with the boy was going to be a tough juggling act. But having Bronte O’Hara as his mistress for the next little while would be worth the effort.

  No obstacle was going to be big enough to stop him from getting what he wanted. Because he now knew exactly how hot they were together. All he had to do was remind her of that—which wouldn’t be a hardship. And make sure she understood that sex was all he could offer her. But really that shouldn’t be a problem. For all her inexperience, Bronte was a realist, not a romantic.

  He spotted his executive assistant in the melee as he approached the stage. His smile widened at Lisa’s sheepish expression. If Bronte agreed to the proposition he was going to make to her tomorrow, the details of which he was already milling over in his mind, he might well have to give the woman a bonus.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BY EIGHT-TEN THE next morning, Lukas wasn’t feeling quite so magnanimous.

  He’d woken early and after consulting with one of his estate managers he’d taken an unmarked SUV to the back entrance of the house in Regent’s Park. He’d texted Bronte before he left to inform her he would be arriving in ten minutes and wanted an hour alone with her before he saw Nico. He had hoped to catch her in bed, the wintry dawn only an hour off daybreak.

  Entering from the mews, he’d walked through the house’s gardens to the kitchen door, eager to see Bronte, and take care of the ache that had kept him awake most of the night.

  He had an email on his phone with links to a series of mews cottages in Chelsea for Bronte to choose from. Obviously he couldn’t come here to see her—it would only confuse the boy and, anyway, for what he planned they would need complete privacy. But he was paying her friend Maureen a generous salary for her childcare expertise and the boy was four now and well again. It would do both Bronte and the child good to spend some time apart.

  He knew this might be a sticking point for her because she was so devoted to the boy. But he was prepared to make concessions—limiting their liaison to one or two nights a week. They could do a lot in that time, given the right incentive.

  The unbidden smile curled his lips again as he tapped on the back door. Instead of Bronte’s slender frame, though, a middle-aged woman with warm grey eyes pulled it open. She looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Mr Blackstone, I’m so pleased to meet you at last,’ she said. ‘I’m Maureen Fitzgerald,’ she added, reaching for his coat. ‘Let me take your jacket. It’s miserable weather out there this morning.’ She carried on chatting about the rain—which he hadn’t even noticed—as she placed his coat on a hook next to a tiny red raincoat and the jacket he had watched Bronte shrug out of yesterday. Equally tiny boots with a pink pig-like creature on them stood next to the battered leather boots he remembered yanking off Bronte the evening before.

  The evidence of the child’s existence and his attachment to Bronte gave Lukas an unpleasant jolt.

  ‘Where’s Bronte?’ he asked—maybe she was still in bed, waiting for him. Was that why she hadn’t greeted him?

  ‘She’s in the front parlour with Nico,’ the woman said cheerfully, dashing his hopes as she guided him through the kitchen towards a staircase.

  ‘The boy’s awake already?’ he said.

  And why was the child with Bronte? Hadn’t he specifically told her he wanted some time alone with her first?

  ‘We’ve been up for several hours—it’s past eight o’clock,’ the woman said, leading him through the quiet house, the smell of fresh baking and lemon polish giving him a strange pang in his chest. ‘Boys of four don’t generally sleep past daybreak,’ she added with a friendly smile that didn’t quite hide the note of condescension. ‘Even if they hardly slept a wink last night,’ she added, still smiling at what had to be a private joke because he wasn’t finding any of this remotely funny. ‘Poor Bronte had to get up twice in the night to get him back into bed.’

  ‘Why? Is the boy ill?’ he asked, concern for the child’s welfare taking him unawares. While he had no emotional attachment to his nephew, he didn’t want the child to look as distressed and fragile as he had when Lukas had first met him.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Maureen chuckled. ‘He’s just over-excited.’

  ‘What about?’ he said as she opened a door and he heard the hum of voices—one high and childlike, the other smoky and feminine and very familiar.

  ‘About your visit, of course,’ the woman said as she ushered him into the room.

  He located Bronte immediately. She sat cross-legged on a hearthrug, busy putting together a puzzle of what looked like a red sports car with a face. Her flaming hair and those tantalising freckles were gilded by the fire in the room’s marble hearth as she turned her head towards him.

  Everything seemed to slow inside him and then smack into a brick wall. The punch of lust hit like a lightning strike. Colour suffused her cheeks, making the freckles flicker like the flames in the grate—and he had to stop himself from marching across the room and flinging her over his shoulder, to take her back to the bed she should still have been in.

  Three thoughts hit him at once.

  Why the heck did the spark of defiance in her eyes turn him on even more? How was he going to curb this hunger? Because he already knew no way in hell was two nights a week going to be enough. And why did it feel as if it wasn’t just the prospect of having sex with her again that was causing that deep throbbing ache in his gut?

  But before he could even attempt to answer any of those questions, or demand to know why she hadn’t met him alone as he’d req
uested, a dark head popped up from behind her.

  ‘You came! You came! He came, Bronte. You said he would.’

  High with excitement, the boy’s shouts were followed by the pounding of his feet as he leapt up and ran towards Lukas at full pelt, scattering the puzzle pieces and every one of Lukas’s thoughts, before thudding into him.

  Lukas grunted, the child’s head just narrowly missing butting him right in the crotch.

  The sturdy body felt warm and alive against his legs but as Lukas bent, trying to grab hold of the wriggling figure before he did any serious damage, the boy’s head lifted and he got his first good look at the child’s face.

  The shock made him stiffen.

  Gone was the pallor and fragility of three months ago. Thank God. But now the resemblance to Alexei—probably to himself too—was that much more startling and unnerving. A thousand memories bombarded him.

  Of Alexei hooting with laughter as they raced each other, sliding down the bannisters of their father’s town house in Manhattan. Alexei’s screams echoing off the sidewalk as hard hands gripped Lukas’s arm and wrenched it so hard he passed out. Alexei crying, his fingers touching the bandages on Lukas’s face, as his brother snuggled next to him on his hospital bed.

  Darker, more dangerous memories lurked at the edge of his consciousness—searing pain, the acrid smell of vomit and blood and urine, and the impenetrable terrifying darkness closing in on him.

  He drew away from the boy, the fight to keep the memories back almost as huge as the gaping hole in his heart where his brother had once been.

  ‘Lukas, is everything okay?’ Bronte’s voice, gentle and thick with concern, beckoned him out of the darkness.

  She came forward, the worry on her face reflecting his own shattered thoughts. Her hand rose, reaching out. And for one terrifying moment all he wanted was to grab hold of her fingers and have her pull him back towards the light.

  But instead she gripped the boy’s shoulder and tugged him back, away from Lukas. He felt the loss of warmth, of connection, like a blow.