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This Christmas and Forever: A heartwarming anthology of billionaire holiday romances...

Page 47

by Clare Connelly


  “Which means there’s really only one option.”

  He continued to stare at her.

  She drew in a breath, stilling her nerves in that moment, before speaking words she was certain she’d come to regret. “We find a way to raise him together.”

  Fiero shook his head. “Impossibile.”

  “It can’t be impossible,” she responded tautly. “You’re angry with me, fine. But we’re his parents, and we owe it to him to find a way to do this. I’m willing to make concessions, to meet you in the middle. I can move to Italy, Jack and I can find a place near your home –,”

  “No.” His eyes were loaded with grim determination. “My son is living with me.”

  The edge of the world seemed very close, and just over that edge, there was a pit of despair she was close to tumbling into. “He’s too young. He needs his mother.”

  “He has a nanny,” Fiero shrugged.

  Elodie had never hit anyone in her life, but she threw herself across the room now and pushed at his chest, hard, and when he didn’t so much as flinch, she pushed him again. And then her hands, shaped into small fists, were raining down on him, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. The pit of despair had claimed her.

  “Don’t you dare say you can replace me with a nanny!” She threw the words at him. “I’m his mother and I am going to raise him. I will fight you, I will fight you with everything I have.”

  He grabbed her hands, holding them against his chest, his nostrils flaring as he looked down at her. “You would lose.”

  “No! I have money, I could hire a great lawyer –,”

  “And I will hire ten for every one of yours, and I will drown them in paperwork, and I will win, Elodie, because that’s what I do. And meanwhile, our son will grow up to read stories about how his mother wanted to take him away from his own father—,”

  “He’ll grow up to see how much I loved him and wanted him.”

  Fiero kept her hands pressed to his chest, his eyes locked to hers. “You will not be able to fight me and win.”

  “I have to. I can’t let him go. And he can’t live without me.”

  “But he could live without me?”

  She gasped, his words so filled with grief, and damn it, she felt a twist of sympathy for him even then, when he was threatening to take Jack from her. He had missed so much, and he’d learned of his son’s existence in the most painful of ways. Fiero was living some kind of nightmare, trying to make sense of it as he went along, and his reactions were proof of that. Knee jerk and rash.

  “I made a mistake.”

  “Christo, si, you made a mistake. And now you’re asking me to forgive and forget.”

  She swept her eyes shut, knowing what a monumental task that would be for him. “For Jack.”

  “Yes, for Jack.” He ground his teeth together, and she was conscious, out of nowhere, of how close they were to one another. His long fingers were curled around her wrists, and every time he sucked in a breath his chest moved forward to brush against her nipples.

  The last thing she’d expected to feel for this man ever again, and especially in that moment, was desire, but there it was, turning her blood to lava and her knees to jelly.

  Something in the air around them shifted, changing so that she was conscious of him in a way that was all-consuming and definitely not one-sided. She saw the way his eyes changed, his pupils flexing, his lids lowering; she saw his lips part and felt his warm breath fan her temples and her own lips mirrored his, separating and pushing a soft breath from her lungs.

  “You should have told me about him.” And despite the anger he’d thrown at her, the fury, the threats, her stomach looped because she felt what was at the root of everything he’d said and done: devastation.

  He was devastated.

  She sobbed, but he lifted a finger to her lips, and she gasped in surprise, the touch totally unexpected.

  “Stop crying.”

  She shook her head a little. “I can’t.”

  His hands cupped her face then, holding her completely still, and her hands, now free, dropped to her side. “I will never forgive you for keeping my son away from me.”

  His words were like acid and his touch was like silk. She couldn’t fathom how she felt.

  “But it appears I cannot make the same decision you did. I will not push you out of his life.” Her heart turned over in her chest.

  His thumb padded over her lower lip and her heart rabbited against her ribs for another reason now. Despite the seriousness of this conversation, she could barely concentrate.

  “You and Jack will move into my house.” The words were devoid of emotion. “For six months, you will live with me, to see if we can do it your way – and raise him together.”

  It was more than she’d expected. Different to what she’d hoped and yet it made a strange kind of sense. “We’ll live together?”

  His eyes flashed. “For Jack’s sake, yes, but you and I will remember the truth, Elodie. We will know what we think and feel, no matter how much effort we go to for the happiness of our son.”

  His head dropped a little lower, his eyes scanning hers. “You will know that when I smile, it means nothing. That my anger and hatred for your decisions are still inside of me, weighing down on me with the pressure of every single day of Jack’s life I have missed.”

  Salty tears clogged her eyes.

  “You will know, when we look at Jack and laugh, like normal parents, that it’s a lie.”

  Her lips parted on a gasp, or perhaps the start of a plea, a desire to make him stop talking like this. “And you will know that if I kiss you, Elodie, it is because of the same chemistry that drove us together that night, and nothing more. You will know that I will never like you as a person, that I will never forgive you for your decisions.”

  She didn’t get a chance to speak. His lips claimed hers and she moaned, knees that had been jelly for long, aching minutes giving way so she would have collapsed to the ground if it weren’t for his arm clamped vice-like around her back, holding her to his body, binding them together.

  And they were bound together. By their son, and by something else, something that lodged inside Elodie and refused to let go.

  REGRET ME NOT is available now!

  Books By Clare Connelly

  HARLEQUIN TITLES

  Bought for the Billionaire’s Revenge

  Innocent in the Billionaire’s Bed

  Off Limits

  Her Wedding Night Surrender

  Burn Me Once

  Bound by the Billionaire’s Vows

  The Season to Sin

  His Innocent Seduction

  Bound by their Christmas Baby

  Her Guilty Secret

  Shock Heir for the King

  The Greek’s Billion-Dollar Baby

  Spaniard’s Baby of Revenge

  The Bride Behind the Billion-Dollar Veil

  Dare Continuity

  Cross my Hart (Notorious Harts Bk 1)

  SINGLE TITLES

  Her Guardian’s Christmas Seduction

  Stolen by the Desert King

  In the Hands of the Sheikh

  His Nine Month Seduction

  The Sheikh’s Contract Bride

  Seduced by the Vengeful Tycoon

  The Sheikh’s Stolen Bride

  The Sheikh’s Secret Baby

  The Sheikh’s Million Dollar Bride

  The Tycoon’s Virgin Mistress

  The Sheikh’s Virgin Hostage

  Bartered to the Sheikh

  The Sheikh’s Arranged Marriage

  Marrying for his Royal Heir

  The Greek’s Marriage Revenge

  The Velasco Love Child

  The Sultan’s Virgin Bride

  Bound to the Sheikh

  The Medici Mistress

  His Loving Deception

  The Sheikh’s Convenient Mistress

  The Princess’s Forbidden Lover

  Marrying her Enemy

  Rakanti’s Ind
ecent Proposition

  Seducing the Spaniard

  The Italian’s Innocent Bride

  The Greek Tycoon’s Forbidden Affair

  The Terms of their Affair

  A Second Chance at Love

  The Sheikh’s Christmas Mistress

  At the Sheikh’s Command

  The Billionaire’s Christmas Revenge

  Seduced by the Italian Tycoon

  Raising the Soldier’s Son

  Warming the Sheikh’s Bed

  The Tycoon’s Christmas Captive

  The Brazilian’s Forgotten Lover

  Betrayed by the CEO

  The Billionaire’s Ruthless Revenge

  The Italian Billionaire’s Betrayal

  The Sultan’s Reluctant Princess

  Love in the Fast Lane

  Bought by the Sheikh

  The Tycoon’s Summer Seduction

  All She Wants for Christmas

  One Night with the Sheikh

  A Bed of Broken Promises

  Tempted by the Billionaire

  The Sheikh’s Christmas Wish

  To the Highest Bidder

  The Tycoon’s Secret Baby

  Bedding His Innocent Mistress

  The Sheikh’s Baby Bargain

  The Greek’s Virgin Captive

  The Sheikh’s Inherited Bride

  Claiming His Secret Baby

  Blackmailed by the Spaniard

  Her Surprise Baby Christmas

  COMPENDIUMS

  Casacelli Brides

  Mediterranean Tycoons

  Desert Rulers

  Billionaire Bad Boys

  Too Hot to Handle

  Desert Kings

  Happily Ever After

  The Darling Buds of May Café

  Royal Weddings

  The Evermore Series

 

 

 


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