HELEN BIANCHIN - A Passionate Surrender

‘Order something else.’

She barely resisted the temptation to throw something at him. ‘Should I ask how you discovered my whereabouts?’

His gaze didn’t waver, and his eyes were cool, fathomless. ‘I would have thought the answer self-explanatory.’

‘You hired a private detective.’ Her voice rose a fraction. ‘And had me followed?’

‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’

Hadn’t this scenario haunted her for the past few days? Invading her sleep, unsettling her nerves?

The waitress delivered his coffee, and he requested the bill.

‘I’ll pay for my own meal.’

He shot her a hard glance. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

She checked her watch. ‘What do you want, Luc? I suggest you cut to the chase. I’m due back at work in ten minutes.’

Luc selected a paper tube of sugar and emptied it into his cup. ‘No, you’re not,’ he declared silkily.

Her gaze locked with his. ‘What do you mean…no?’

‘You no longer have a job, and your apartment lease has been terminated.’

She felt as if all the breath had suddenly left her body. Angry consternation darkened her eyes, and faint pink coloured her cheeks. ‘You have no right—’

‘Yes.’ His voice was deadly quiet. ‘I do.’

She badly wanted to hit him, and almost did. ‘No, you don’t,’ she reiterated fiercely.

‘We can argue this back and forth, but the end result will be the same.’

‘If you think I’ll calmly go back to Sydney with you,’ she began heatedly, ‘you can think again!’

His gaze seared hers. ‘This afternoon, tonight, tomorrow. It hardly matters when.’

Ana rose to her feet, only to have his hand close over her arm, halting her intention to leave.

Without pausing for thought she picked up the sugar container and hurled it at him, watching with a sense of horrified fascination as he fielded it neatly and replaced it on the table, then calmly gathered up the scattered tubes.

‘I intend to file for divorce.’ Dear heaven, where had that come from? Until now it had been a hazy choice she’d considered and discounted a hundred times during the sleepless night hours since fleeing Sydney.

His gaze seared hers. ‘Divorce isn’t an option.’

She stood trapped as the silence stretched between them, a haunting entity that became more significant with every passing second, and there was little she could do but comply as he exerted sufficient pressure to ensure she sank down onto the chair.

‘Don’t you have something to tell me?’ Luc prompted with deceptive mildness, and glimpsed her apprehension before she successfully masked it.

‘Go away and leave me alone?’ Ana taunted in return.

‘Try again.’

A muscle twisted painfully in her stomach, and she barely suppressed the instinct to soothe it with her hand.

He couldn’t possibly know. Could he? She went suddenly cold at the thought. For the past few weeks she’d alternated between joy and despair.

‘I’ll make it easy for you,’ Luc ventured with deadly softness. ‘You’re carrying my child.’

‘A child that is also mine,’ Ana said fiercely.

‘Ours.’ His silky tone sent shivers down her spine. ‘I refuse to be relegated to a weekend father, restricted to sharing my son or daughter on a part-time basis.’

‘Is that why you came after me? Because I suddenly have something you want?’ Her eyes darkened to the deepest sapphire, her anger very real at that precise moment. Yet inside she wanted to weep. For the child she’d conceived. For herself, for wanting the love of a man who she doubted would ever love her.

‘I’d rather be a single parent than attempt to raise a child in a household where its father divides his time between its mother and his mistress. How could the child begin to understand values, morals, and integrity?’

‘Mistress?’ His voice was quiet.

Too quiet, she perceived, and suppressed a faint shiver.

‘You accuse me of having an affair?’

‘Celine—’

‘Was someone with whom I shared a brief relationship three, four years ago.’

‘According to her, the affair is ongoing.’

‘Why would I need a mistress when I have you?’

Remembering their active sex life, the sheer delight they shared in bed, brought a tinge of colour to her cheeks. ‘For the hell of it?’ she ventured carelessly, adding, ‘Because you’re insatiable and one woman isn’t enough?’

His features hardened and assumed an implacable mask. ‘Don’t tempt me to say something I might regret.’

‘Go back to Sydney, Luc.’ She was like a runaway train that couldn’t stop. ‘There’s nothing you can say or do that’ll persuade me to return with you.’

‘No?’

She sensed the steel beneath the dangerously silky tone, and suppressed an illusory premonition.

‘The last time I heard, coercion carries no weight in a court of law.’

He held a trump card, and he had no hesitation in playing it. ‘However, embezzlement does.’ He paused, watching her expressive features in a bid to assess whether she had any prior knowledge William Stanford had indulged in creative accounting over a six-month time span.

‘Excuse me?’

Luc chose his words with care, weighing each for its impact. ‘The bank’s auditors have discovered a series of discrepancies.’

‘How can that involve me?’ she queried, genuinely puzzled.

‘Indirectly, it does.’

Even a naïve fool could do simple arithmetic, and she considered herself to be neither. ‘You’re implying my father is responsible?’ she demanded in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe you.’

He reached inside his jacket, withdrew a folded document and placed it in front of her. ‘A copy of the auditors’ report.’

Ana touched the paper hesitantly, then she opened the document and read the report.

It was conclusive and damning, the attached spreadsheet listing each transaction lengthy and detailed.

She felt herself go cold. Embezzlement, theft…they were one and the same, and a punishable crime.

Luc studied her expressive features, witnessed the fleeting emotions, and anticipated her loyalty.

‘It was very cleverly done,’ he revealed with a degree of cynicism. So much so, it had been missed twice. He wasn’t sure which angered him more…the loss of trust in one of his valued executives, or the fact William Stanford had relied on his daughter’s connection by marriage to avoid prosecution.

‘How long have you known?’ Ana queried with a sense of dread, unwilling to examine where this was going, yet desperately afraid her wildest suspicion would be proven true.

‘Nine days.’

Coincidentally the time she wrote him a note and took a flight north. Did he think that was the reason she left?

Men of Luc’s calibre always had a back-up plan. And this was personal. Very personal.

‘What do you want, Luc?’

‘No divorce. Our child.’ He waited a beat. ‘My wife in my home, my bed.’

‘Go to hell.’

One eyebrow rose in mockery. ‘Not today, agape mou.’

Pink coloured her cheekbones and lent her eyes a fiery sparkle. ‘You think you can make conditions and have me meekly comply?’

‘Meek wasn’t a descriptive I considered.’

Dear heaven, he was amused. She stood to her feet, gathered her bag and slung the strap over her shoulder, then she turned in the direction of the florist shop, aware that Luc fell into step at her side.

‘I intend explaining to the letting agent and my employer that you’re a presumptuous, arrogant bastard with no right to dictate my life.’

‘And your father will go to jail.’

Her step faltered as she threw him a look that would have felled a lesser man. ‘How come you get to make the rules?’