The Blackmail Baby. PENNY JORDAN

chosen to sell the business and utilise the profits from that sale on your own behalf…’

      ‘What?’

      For a moment Dracco looked almost as though she had shocked him.

      ‘If you are trying to imply that I married you for financial gain then let me tell you you’re way off the mark. In fact, I am wealthier now than your father ever was—thanks, I have to admit, to everything he taught me.’

      He was speaking to her as though he were admonishing a child, Imogen decided angrily.

      ‘So why exactly did you marry me, then?’ she asked him sharply.

      ‘You know why.’ He started to turn away from her so that she couldn’t see his face, his voice becoming curt.

      Imogen could sense that her question had made him uneasy in some way. Because he felt guilty? Well he might!

      ‘Yes, I do, don’t I?’ Imogen agreed acerbically. ‘My father—’

      ‘Your father was a man I admired more than any other man I have ever met.’ Dracco cut across what she had been about to say, his tone warning her against questioning the truth of his words. ‘In fact, in the early years of our friendship, I often wished that he had been my father. I have never met a man I have respected or loved as much as I did John Atkins, Imogen. I felt proud to have his friendship and his trust. He was everything I myself most wanted to be. He was everything that my own father was not.’

      He paused, whilst Imogen silently swallowed the huge lump of emotion in her throat.

      Dracco’s father had left his mother whilst Dracco had still been a baby; a gambler and a womaniser, he had been killed in a drunken brawl when Dracco had been in his early teens.

      ‘I have never lost either my admiration or my love for your father, Imo, nor the wish that he and I might share a closer, more personal tie.’ He paused meaningfully whilst Imogen fidgeted with anxiety. Whatever conditions Dracco imposed on his agreement to hand over her inheritance, Imogen knew that somehow she would have to meet them. There was no way she wanted to disappoint the nuns now, nor did she intend to do anything that would prevent her being able to improve the lot of those who were dependent on the shelter.

      ‘Your father could never be my father, Imo, but he could be the grandfather of my son—our son,’ Dracco told her meaningfully.

      His son…their son. Stupefied, Imogen gaped at him. She couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly.

      ‘No!’ she protested frantically. ‘You can’t mean it.’ But she could see from his expression that he did, and her heart somersaulted inside her ribcage and then banged dizzyingly against her ribs themselves.

      ‘No,’ she whispered painfully. ‘I can’t. I won’t! This is blackmail, Dracco,’ she accused him. ‘If you want a child so much—’

      ‘I don’t want “a” child, Imo,’ he cut across her coolly. ’Haven’t you been listening to what I said? What I want is your father’s grandchild. My blood linked to his, and only you can provide me with that.’

      ‘You’re mad,’ Imogen gasped. ‘This is like something out of the Dark Ages…it’s…I won’t do it!’ she told him fiercely.

      ‘Then I won’t give you your money,’ Dracco informed her in a voice that was dangerously soft.

      ‘You’ll have to… I’ll take you to court. I’ll…’ Imogen began wildly, but once again Dracco stopped her, shaking his head as he told her unkindly,

      ‘Somehow I don’t think a court would agree to you giving away your birthright. Especially if it was to be implied that part of the reason your father set up his will as he did was because he feared that you were not financially astute enough to protect your own interests.’

      Imogen glared furiously at him. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she began, but Dracco was smiling at her, a mocking smile that didn’t touch his eyes as he told her softly, ‘Try me!’

      Imogen shook her head in angry disbelief. This was emotional manipulation at its worst. How on earth could she ever have loved Dracco? Right now she positively hated him.

      ‘You can’t do this,’ she protested, her face raw with emotion as she told him shakily, ‘If you could see these children—they have nothing, Dracco. Less than nothing. They need help so badly!’

      ‘And they can have it, Imo,’ Dracco told her calmly, ‘but not from your inheritance. As your trustee, I cannot allow that, but—’ he paused and looked at her, his penetrating gaze holding her own and refusing to let her look away ‘—but,’ he repeated coolly, ‘as your husband,’ Dracco continued with a pseudo-gentleness that made her tense her stomach muscles against whatever it was he was going to say, ‘as your husband,’ he stressed with deliberate emphasis, ‘I would be quite prepared to promise to pay one million pounds to the shelter now, and another one million when you give birth to our child.’

      If Imogen hadn’t already decided she hated Dracco she knew she would have done so now. How could he be so cynical, so cruel, so corrupt? Two million pounds! He must be rich indeed if he could afford to part with so much money so easily and just so that… He had loved and revered her father, she knew that, and she could even see too why he might want to have a child who carried her father’s blood. But to go about it in such a way, when he knew that he would be forcing her to have sex with him and when he knew too that he didn’t love her… Imogen couldn’t stop herself from shuddering with angry loathing.

      ‘I…I need time to think,’ she told him defiantly.

      ‘To think, or to run away again? I thought this charity was all-important to you, Imo, but it seems…’

      ‘Stop it.’ Covering her ears with her hands, Imogen turned away from him.

      His cruelty appalled her but she couldn’t stop herself from acknowledging the truth of what he was saying. When she thought about the difference his money would make to Rio’s homeless street children Imogen knew that she could not possibly put her own needs before theirs.

      ‘So do we have a deal—two million for your charity, a wife and, hopefully, your father’s grandchild for me?’

      Somehow Imogen managed not to show how desperately tempted she was to refuse. Summoning all her courage, she took a deep breath and agreed huskily, ‘Yes.’

      Bleakly Imogen stared out of the window of Dracco’s car—a sleek silver BMW now and not the Daimler she remembered him driving—as they sped through the uniquely green English countryside. She had not asked Dracco where they were going, had not addressed any questions or conversation to him at all, in fact, since she had woken up in his city apartment earlier on in the day. His apartment but thankfully not his bed; no, she had been spared that at least for now, having slept alone in his guest room.