Maureen Child - Falling for King's Fortune / Seduction, Westmoreland Style - Falling for King's Fortune

“You kissed me as I remember it,” he interrupted.

That’s right. She had. All part of the plan that had taken a seriously wrong turn almost instantly after her mouth had touched his. And there was the uncomfortable twist and burn inside her. “Fine. I kissed you. Remember I pulled on your hair?”

“Ah yes,” he said, leaning back into the seat and folding his arms over his chest. “You were feeling wild , you said.”

“Yes, well.” She shifted in her seat and wished she could get up and move around. She’d always thought better when she was walking. But she couldn’t very well spring out of the booth while Mia was there, strapped into a booster seat. “I needed a follicle of your hair so I could have it tested.”

“Why not simply ask?”

Now she laughed. “Sure. I’m going to go up to a strange man and ask for a sample of his DNA.”

“Instead, you went up to a strange man and kissed him?”

Frowning, she admitted, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And what about the rest of it?” he asked. “Was that part of your plan, too? Spend the night with me to what? Trap me into something somehow? Get me so wound up that neither one of us was considering any kind of protection?”

She cringed a little. She hadn’t even thought of protection that night. The way she remembered it, she’d been so hot, so needy, so completely over the edge with a kind of desire she’d never known before, the thought of condoms hadn’t even entered her head. And just how stupid was that?

“I didn’t plan any of that,” she said firmly. “The rest of that night just…happened.” Her gaze snapped to his. “And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to assure you that I’m perfectly healthy. I hope you can say the same.”

“Yes. I am.”

One worry taken care of, she told herself.

“That’s good.”

“And what about the other concern?” He asked the question slowly, as if judging her reaction.

“You mean pregnancy?”

He tipped his head toward Mia. “You seem to be fertile enough, it’s a reasonable question.”

“You don’t have to worry,” she told him. “The doctors say I would have a difficult time conceiving in the usual way.”

One dark eyebrow lifted and she squirmed a little. Her personal history was just that. Personal. It wasn’t something she discussed with just anyone.

“And yet…”

Again, he nodded toward Mia, gurgling and now slapping that teething biscuit against the tabletop.

“Look,” he said, capturing her attention again, “let’s leave everything else for the moment and go back to the real matter at hand.” He glanced at Mia and Casey wanted to hide her daughter from his appraising gaze. “You needed my DNA. Why? We’d never met. How could you think I’m the father of your child?”

More personal history that she would prefer not to discuss. Yet, she’d come here tonight because she’d felt she didn’t have a choice.

“Nearly two years ago,” she said, her voice low enough that no one could possibly overhear her, “I went to the Mandeville clinic…”

She saw understanding dawn on his features. His eyes opened, his firm mouth relaxed a little and his gaze, when it shifted to Mia, was this time, more stunned than angry or suspicious.

“The sperm bank,” he muttered.

“Yes.” Casey shifted in her seat a little, uncomfortable discussing this with anyone, let alone the “donor” who’d made her daughter’s birth possible.

He shook his head, scrubbed one hand across his face and said, “That’s just not possible.”

“Clearly,” she said, “it is.”

“No, you don’t understand.” His gaze locked on hers again, silently demanding an explanation for how this could have happened. “Yes, in college, I admit, I went to the clinic with a friend of mine. We’d lost a bet and—”

“A bet?”

He frowned at her. “Anyway, I went, made the donation and didn’t think about it again until about five years ago. I realized that I didn’t want a child of mine, unknown to me, growing up out there somewhere. I told them I wanted that sample destroyed.”

A chill swept through her at those words. She glanced at her daughter and as a wave of love rushed through her, she tried to imagine a life without Mia in it. And couldn’t. Somehow, through some bureaucratic mishap, Jackson’s order had gotten lost in the shuffle, overlooked and ignored. She could only be grateful. Knowing how close she’d come to never having Mia only made her treasure her daughter even more.

She smiled. “Well, I’m glad to say they didn’t do as you requested.”

“Obviously.”

It wasn’t hard to judge his current feelings. He was now avoiding looking at Mia at all. And that was fine with Casey. She didn’t want him interested in her daughter. Mia was hers . Her family. Casey was only here because she’d felt that Jackson had a right to know he had a child.

“I thought sperm banks were anonymous,” he said a moment later.

“They’re supposed to be.” When she’d gone to the Mandeville clinic, she’d specifically made sure that she would never know the identity of her child’s father. She wasn’t looking for a relationship, after all. She didn’t need a partner to help her raise a child. All she’d wanted was a baby to love. A family of her own.

When she was assured that their donors’ identities were very strictly protected, Casey’d been relieved. And that relief had stayed with her until about a month ago.

“I got an e-mail almost four weeks ago,” she said softly. “From the Mandeville clinic. It listed my name, the donor number I’d selected and identified you as the man who’d made the original deposit.”

He winced a little at that.

“Naturally, I was furious. This whole thing was supposed to be anonymous, remember. I called the clinic to complain,” she told him and with the memories flooding her mind, she felt again that helpless sense of betrayal she’d experienced when she first read that e-mail. “They were in a panic. It seems someone hacked into their computers and sent out dozens of e-mails to women identifying the fathers of their children. It wasn’t supposed to happen, of course, but it was too late to change anything.”

“I see.”

Two words, said so tightly it was a wonder he’d been able to squeeze them out of his throat. Well, fine. Casey understood that this was a surprise. But he had to understand that she wasn’t happy about this, either.

“I didn’t want to know the name of my daughter’s father,” she said firmly. “I wasn’t interested in the man then and I’m not interested now. I didn’t go to a sperm bank looking for a lasting connection, after all. All I wanted was a baby.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched and an emotional shutter was down over his eyes, preventing her from getting the slightest impression of what he was thinking. “And you found this out a month ago.”

“Yes.”

He tapped his fingertips against the table. “Why’d you wait so long to tell me?”

Though his tone was even, his voice quiet, Casey had no problem identifying the anger behind that statement.

She took a gulp of her now cold coffee and grimaced as it slid down her throat. “Frankly, I’d considered not telling you at all at first.”

His eyebrows arched.

“But soon enough, I realized you had the right to know if you actually were Mia’s father.”

“You doubted it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” she countered. “Just because some hacker got into the clinic’s computer system doesn’t mean he did a good job of it.” Then she looked him straight in the eye. “Besides, you are definitely not the kind of father I wanted for my baby. When I went to Mandeville, I specifically requested the sperm of a scientist .”