Marion Lennox - Forbidden Desires - A Debt Paid in Passion / An Exception to His Rule / Waves of Temptation

“This.” She waved a trembling hand at her pathetic physical state. “Her complications were different so this wasn’t hereditary, but it was always in my mind that having a baby isn’t as simple for some as it is for others. I was only six when she died, so I don’t have a lot of memories, but that’s why losing her hurt so much. I can’t bear the idea of Lucy going through all her life markers of puberty and boyfriends and childbirth without her mother there for her.”

He stayed silent behind her, giving no indication whether her words had any impact. She wasn’t able to twist around and look and didn’t want to anyway. He might be interpreting her confession as a plea for sympathy when it was the kind of opening of her heart that left her feeling so raw and exposed she could hardly bear it.

She was grateful they entered the quiet warmth of the nursery at that point. Seconds later, as she cuddled Lucy into her chest, her world righted, becoming achingly perfect, even with Raoul’s commanding presence hovering over them. Maybe because he was here. Much as she resented him, she wanted Lucy to have her father.

After feeding and changing and getting an update on Lucy’s progress, Raoul returned Sirena to her room. She was quiet, visibly exhausted, their silence no longer hostile. When he helped her into bed, she only murmured, “Thank you,” before plummeting into sleep.

Such a ferocious scrapper and now he understood why. The way she’d talked about missing her mother had made something lurch in his chest. It was a renewed snag of guilt at not really knowing her. His resentful I never dreamed she was capable of stealing was shifting into still waters run deep.

The way his father had quit on him made him highly susceptible to exalting a woman who had fought so hard to give her child life and to be in it.

He didn’t like this shift in him. It made him wonder about her motives for stealing, and he didn’t want to develop compassion and forgiveness for that. Opportunists took advantage of weak emotions like affection and trust. Next thing you knew, you were on the streets with two dependents—a social pariah—and your path forward was a broken cliff into an abyss.

He couldn’t doubt Sirena’s love for their daughter, though. While in the nursery, the old Sirena had returned, all warm smiles and soft laughter, her expression open and her wit quick, making the nurses laugh. He’d had to bite back his own chuckle more than once, fighting a desire to let go of his defenses and fall under her spell again.

Scowling, he tried to imagine how this impossible situation would play out. A foolish idea was taking hold in the back of his mind, one that looked ridiculous as a thought bubble. It would be outrageous in real life. He needed distance, not more exposure to her, but they were both coming from the same place with regard to Lucy. He couldn’t ignore that. In fact, as the days passed, it was all he could think about.

* * *

Their truce lasted through the week as Raoul spent most of the day with them. Sirena stopped using the chair and started breast-feeding, even brought Lucy into her room with her overnight, which was a struggle she tried not to reveal, fearful of winding up in a fight with Raoul that she didn’t have the energy to win. The rapport between them might be guarded and impersonal, but it was safe. As long as she didn’t give him anything to criticize, they got along fine.

Meanwhile, the reality of taking a baby back to her flat when she couldn’t even properly care for herself ate at her. When her doctor cleared her for discharge, she should have been elated, but she was so overwhelmed she hardly contained her tears.

Of course Raoul arrived at that exact moment. He was wearing a suit and tie, the shoulders of his jacket speckled with damp spots of late-spring rain. No time to worry how she’d cope when she had bigger concerns confronting her from the foot of her hospital bed. Dark, handsome, vengeful concerns.

“I told you a week ago you I won’t let you take her to your flat,” he said unemotionally.

It was the fight she’d been dreading, but she still wasn’t prepared for it.

“And I’m pretty sure we signed an agreement that said I could,” she replied, trying not to let him stir her temper. “I have nights with Lucy. You can visit during the day, exactly as we’re doing here. Are we ignoring the panel of experts you hired?” Her quick sarcasm was a show of strength she didn’t have. She had just gotten back from walking down the hall and that snappy reply was the extent of the spunk in her.

“You have the stamina of a trampled daisy. What if something happened? No. You’re coming home with me,” Raoul pronounced.

For a few seconds, she couldn’t even blink. A tiny voice deep in her soul asked, Me? Not just Lucy? Her pulse tripped into a gallop and tingling excitement raced all the way to her nerve endings.

Get a grip, Sirena!

“I have staples, Raoul. It’s not nice to make me laugh,” she retorted, trying to gather thoughts that had scattered like shards of glass from a broken window. Stay in his house? With him? She already felt too vulnerable seeing him during the day. Living off him would decimate her pride and put her in his debt.

“You do,” Raoul agreed with edgy derision. “Staples and tubes and a unit of someone else’s blood. You’re on medications that make you light-headed and have appointments for follow-up and a baby to care for. You can’t do it alone.”

In her heart of hearts she’d been counting on a miracle with her sister, but of course that hadn’t panned out. Her father wasn’t working, so he couldn’t foot the bill for plane fare and God knew she couldn’t afford it. Besides, Ali was in her first semester at uni—that had been the whole point of Sirena sending the money so many months ago.

Sirena had friends she could call for the odd thing, but not the sort of steady help she needed these first weeks at home. Frustration made her voice strident.

“Why would you even suggest it? You don’t want anything to do with me,” she accused, voicing the fear that was a dark plague inside her.

He tilted his arrogant head to a condescending angle. “You may not be my ideal choice as the mother of my child, but I can’t overlook the fact that you are, or that you love her as much as I do. We both want to be with her and you need looking after. Bringing you into my home is clearly the most practical solution.”

That uncouched not be my ideal stung like mad. She knew she looked awful, hair flat and dull, no makeup. Her figure would remain a disaster until she could start on the treadmill again.

Was he seeing anyone, she wondered suddenly? It was the sort of thing she hadn’t been able to avoid knowing when she’d been working for him—and bizarrely, after being fired she’d found the not knowing even worse. How would she feel to learn he was with another woman while she was sleeping under his roof?

She broke their locked gazes, deeply repelled by the idea of him in bed with other women. “We don’t even like each other. It would be a disaster.”

“We’re going to have to get past that for Lucy’s sake, aren’t we?” he countered.

“And my being dependent on you will foster goodwill? I doubt it,” she argued, even as she mentally leaped to the pro of still being able to do her transcription jobs if he was on hand to care for Lucy for an hour here and there. That would mean she could keep her flat. The prospect of losing her home had become a genuine concern.

Raoul folded his arms as he put his sharp mind to work finding the argument that would clinch what he wanted. Not that he wanted her in his home, he reminded himself. It was his daughter he was after.

“If I were to have another child, I would look after the health of that child’s mother. Didn’t you tell me you expect me to offer Lucy the same considerations I would offer all my children?”