father’s identity was irrelevant, but Raoul was glaring from beyond John’s shoulder with all the relevance of an unforgiving sun on a lost soul in the desert—and he appeared about as sympathetic.
She had tried hard not to look at Raoul, former boss, brief lover, unsuspecting father. He was too...everything. Tall, dark, unabashedly urbane and sophisticated. Severe. Judgmental.
But of their own accord, her hungry eyes took in his appearance—her first opportunity to do so in weeks. She cataloged his razor-sharp charcoal suit, the solid black tie. His jaw was freshly shaved for his morning appointment, his dark hair recently cut into the sternly simple style of a successful businessman.
And there were his eyes, the gray irises stormy and full of condemnation as they snared hers in an unbreakable stare.
John asked, “Is there any pain? We’ve called an ambulance.”
Sirena flashed a terrified glance back at Raoul. It was a mistake. She realized immediately that he’d read it for what it was: an admission of guilt. A betrayal of truth.
Clenching her perfidious eyes closed, she willed him not to pick up on what had been revealed, but he was the most acutely intelligent person she’d ever met. He missed nothing.
If he knew she was carrying his baby, there’d be another fight. Considering what this current contest had taken out of her, she wasn’t ready for another. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, let him think he had a right to custody of her child.
“Sirena,” Raoul said in that dark chocolate voice of his.
Her skin rippled in a pleasurable shiver of recognition. Two years of hearing every intonation in that voice left her with the knowledge that her name on his lips right now was an implacable warning.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
Sirena reached blindly for John’s hand, clenching her icy fingers on his warm, dry ones. Beneath the oxygen mask, her voice was hollow and whisper thin.
“Tell him to leave me alone or I’ll take out a restraining order.”
THE FIRST VOLLEY of the second war was waiting when she got home from the hospital. More tests had been scheduled, but for the moment her doctor was putting her faint down to stress and low blood sugar resulting from her unrelenting nausea.
Sirena thought nothing could be more stressful than facing prison while dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, but Raoul knew no bounds when it came to psychological torture. She read the email John had forwarded:
My client has every reason to believe your client carries his baby. He insists on full involvement in the care through pregnancy and will take sole custody at birth.
Her blood congealed, even though this was no surprise. Raoul was possessive. She’d learned that. This reaction was fully expected, but having anyone try to take this baby from her was unthinkable.
Blinking the sting of desperation from her eyes, she typed, It’s not his, saying aloud, “And tell him to go to hell.”
She didn’t let herself dwell on the fact that Raoul wanted his baby. It would make her weaken toward a man she needed to believe was a monster—even though she’d spent two years falling into deep infatuation with not just a dynamic tycoon, but a man who was a caring son and protective older stepbrother. In some ways he was her mirror image, she’d often thought fancifully. They’d both lost a parent and both wanted the best for their younger siblings. She had come to believe him to be an admirable person with a dry wit and standards that put her learned habits of perfectionism to shame.
No, she reminded herself as she prepared a slice of toast she would force herself to eat. He was a cruel, angry, small person who felt nothing. For her, at least. He’d proven it when he’d made passionate love to her one day, then had her arrested the next.
A black hole of despair threatened to open beneath her feet, but she was safe now. That part was over. She’d made a horrible mistake and the judge had accepted her remorse, even if Raoul hadn’t. She had no idea how she would come up with six hundred pounds a month, but that was a minor worry against convincing Raoul the baby wasn’t his.
There was no way she could live with having another loved one wrenched from her life. The fear of her baby growing up without its mother, the way she had, had given her the strength to fight tooth and nail against Raoul’s determination to put her in jail. Somehow she would rally the strength to oust him from her life for good.
Which left her feeling incredibly bereft, but she ignored it.
Taking tea, toast and a tablet for nausea to the sofa, she scanned her laptop to see if any transcription jobs had come in. The legal bills were appalling and being fired three months ago had decimated her very modest savings.
If only she could take back that one awful moment when she had thought, Raoul will understand. She rubbed her brow where it crinkled in lament. Borrowing from him had seemed the most simple and obvious thing to do when her sister had been in tears, saying, I guess I’m not meant to be a teacher. Their father was expecting payment from a big customer any day. Ali had struggled so hard to get her marks up and be accepted into the specialized program. The tuition was due, but the cash was not in hand.
I can cover it, Sirena had assured her, confident the balance would move out and come back into Raoul’s account on the same statement. He probably wouldn’t even notice, let alone care. He paid her to worry about little details like that.
Then her father’s customer had gone insolvent.
Not overnight, of course. It started with a delay of a few more days. A week. Sirena had begun chasing it herself, right up to the monthly cutoff date, not wanting to mention her self-approved loan to her boss until she had the funds to repay it.
The money hadn’t appeared and the opportunity to explain hadn’t arisen, not before other events.
And since she didn’t want to involve her father when his livelihood was nose-diving, she had shouldered the fallout herself, keeping her motives from Raoul and not revealing to her family what she’d done or that she was facing jail time for it.
This had been the most crushingly lonely and frightening time of her life.
A muted beep announced an incoming email. From Raoul. Her heart leaped in misplaced anticipation. It was one word.
Liar.
He wasn’t buying that the baby wasn’t his.
Gritting her teeth against an ache that crushed her chest, she added Raoul to her email block list and sent a missive to John.
Tell him that contacting me directly is out of line. If the baby was his, I would sue for support. I would have asked for leniency when he was trying to put me in jail. This baby is not his and he must LEAVE ME ALONE.
Hitting send was like poking herself in the throat. She drew a pained breath, fighting the sense of loss. But life hit you with sudden changes and you had to roll with them. She had learned that when her mother had died, and again when her stepmother had whisked her father and half sister to Australia with brutal speed as soon as Sirena graduated and enrolled in business school.
People left, was what she’d learned. They disappeared from your life whether you wanted them to or not. Sometimes they even fired you and tried to lock you away in prison so they’d never have to see you again.
Making a disgusted noise at herself for indulging in what amounted to emotional self-harm, she turned her thoughts to the little being who wouldn’t leave her. With a gentle hand on her unsettled abdomen, she focused on the one person she’d do everything in her power to keep in her life forever. She didn’t intend to smother the poor thing, just be his or her mother. She couldn’t countenance anyone taking that role from her. And Raoul