Page 22 of The Heir Affair

The last of his temper faded, as the ludicrousness of her promise occurred to him. She didn’t even reach his collarbone and was half his weight despite her pregnancy.

‘That is a good choice,’ he murmured, stroking her wrists with his thumbs before he was forced to do as she asked and release her. ‘You would have broken your hand on my jaw.’

She stared up at him through moist lashes and let out an unsteady breath. ‘Fair point,’ she said, the wary concession almost as disturbing to his equilibrium as the defeated expression.

He had not intended to bully her. Or break her.

He tensed against the brutal—and far too persuasive—urge to run his tongue over the lush bow on her top lip, then delve into her mouth again, capturing the heady sobs that had kept him awake—and aroused—most of the night.

Perhaps his own sleepless night was responsible for his inability to control his temper and manage her angry reaction.

Was he required to apologise now? When he had only been acting in her best interests? And how did he do that, when he had not apologised to anyone since he was a boy?

He was still puzzling over how to proceed when she let out a sob of surprise—or was that distress? And pressed her palms to her rounded belly.

‘Poppy?’ Panic ripped through him as he took her arm. ‘Is something wrong?’

She was trembling, breathing too fast, cradling her belly.

Had they harmed their child? With their pointless argument?

‘Is it the baby?’ he rasped as guilt clawed at his throat. He couldn’t see her face. Why wasn’t she saying anything? ‘Should I call an air ambulance?’

Poppy raised her head, finally registering the fear in Xander’s voice over the leap of joy inside her—from the distinctive tickle of sensation in her belly.

An air ambulance? What?

Her confusion cleared as she noticed the visible pulse in his neck, and the ashen pallor beneath the tanned skin. But before she could respond she felt the little kick again, deep in her abdomen. And grinned.

‘No… It’s…’ She couldn’t seem to formulate the right response or process the conflicting emotions bombarding her.

She’d been so furious with him. His arrogance, his high-handedness, his innate ability to dismiss her feelings and ride roughshod over her choices without a qualm had triggered memories of living in her father and stepmother’s home.

She’d always known she was an inconvenience to Daniel Brown, the man who had fathered her but had never had any real interest in her life. Because he’d run off almost as soon as her mum had told him she was pregnant and had a whole other family by the time Poppy had been forced to go and live with him at fourteen—because he was the only relative she had.

She hadn’t been able to get out of that expensive house in Islington fast enough—which had never been her home. Not like the ramshackle but cosy cottage in Kent where she and her mum had lived, and which had been boarded up ever since her mum’s death, because Poppy didn’t want to sell it, but nor did she want to live there again with all the memories.

Her father had never been cruel, never been deliberately unkind, he’d insisted on paying for an expensive private school for her—even after she’d told him she’d be much more at home at the local comprehensive. But his indifference to her, and the inability of him and his new wife, Sarah, to hide the fact their two kids—her half-siblings, Jacob and Ellie—were their pride and joy, and Poppy an afterthought, had made her feel so alone and insignificant as she’d tried to navigate the horrendous grief.

As soon as Poppy had turned eighteen, she’d secured a place at university, got a bursary and a student loan, and declared herself financially independent by working nights and weekends while doing her degree.

Her father had continued to check up on her occasionally, out of duty. But she’d ignored the messages, and eventually he’d stopped calling. She hadn’t seen any of them since.

Maybe she didn’t have any blood relatives who she was close to and who cared about her. And thanks to her nomadic existence since college, she hadn’t kept in close touch with any of her friends. But the most important thing was she had herself. And now she had this baby.

She was strong, she was smart, and her independence mattered, because her ability to make decisions for herself meant no one got to make her feel less than ever again.

And in one fell swoop, he’d tried to make her feel like a burden again.

Her fury ebbed away though at the stricken look on his face. And the panic in those cool blue eyes.

However arrogant and entitled and autocratic this man was—which was a lot—he was also emotionally invested in this baby’s well-being. Or he wouldn’t look so terrified.

‘It’s okay, Alex,’ she said, forgetting to use his correct name, but suddenly not caring any more about the deceit, the lies. Maybe they were completely incompatible as individuals. Maybehe wasn’t and had never been her ‘Alex’. But what they did have now, which they hadn’t had then, was a shared purpose—to keep their baby safe. Something she had resisted acknowledging up to now—because she didn’t want to risk letting Xander Caras anywhere near her heart again.

Was that the real reason she didn’t want to accept his money? Not because she wanted to maintain her financial independence, but because she was terrified she still had feelings for the man she had met on the beach that day? The man who had intrigued and excited her?

Grow up, Poppy, and face the truth. That man never existed.