Something shifts inside me, something unfamiliar, and once again I find myself reluctantly admiring her stubborn determination. She has a…strength of character that I wasn’t expecting, and the scientist in me is intrigued. It likes a puzzle. Still, what’s between us is merely physical, simple chemistry, and no matter how much of a puzzle she is, I won’t be following up on it.
However, I’m going to have to think about her demand. Because, while I’m sure Iamthe father, the test will prove it, and once it does I’ll have to make some decisions about what I want when it comes to the child. But I’m not going to do that until I have all the facts. There are too many variables to account for now.
‘I shall take that under advisement,’ I tell her testily, because I’m impatient to get going. ‘I need all the facts before I make you any promises.’
She lifts her chin. ‘I don’t care what you need. If you don’t give me your word that the baby stays with me, then I’m not going anywhere.’
Damn, stubborn woman. How she knows that giving my word is a sacred vow I have no idea, but she does. ‘You would trust my word?’ I ask, since, for all my protests, Iwillfollow up on this particular curiosity.
‘I trust your honesty,’ she says, ‘seeing as how it’s clearly important to you.’
She’s not wrong. People are sometimes difficult to read, which is why honesty is vital and why I demand it from my employees, colleagues, and from my lovers. I demand it from myself too, so giving my word now means I’ll have no choice but to keep it.
Allowing her to keep the child will cost you nothing.
It won’t and I know that intellectually. Yet something inside me, the strange, powerful and possessive urge that gripped me the moment I knew she was pregnant, is shifting inside me again. It’s angry, this thing, and it’s telling me that the child is mine too, and any decision about said child has to be made with my input.
I’m not a possessive man. Possessiveness implies want, which, apart from the sexual desire I have for Beatrix, I don’t feel. Of course, I want to solve the present difficulties we’re having with the propulsion system of a new rocket we’re developing, but that is ambition. I don’t want to own the breakthrough—that will be for the good of the world, not for my personal monetary gain—but I certainlywantto be the one who makes that breakthrough.
Except this is different. This possessiveness goes deeper than ambition or even desire. It’s a biological response, hard-wired into my DNA, and the scientist knows it’s impossible to ignore. Regardless of the fact that I never wanted children, Iwillbe a father, and Iwantthe child.Mychild.
But she won’t go willingly with you unless you promise her.
Furiously, I think once again about picking her up, tossing her over my shoulder and carrying her off. It would certainly end this ridiculous discussion once and for all. But dragging her kicking and screaming to the helicopter holds no appeal, and so I do the only thing I can.
‘Very well,’ I say. ‘The child will stay with you.’
‘Your word,Mr Veracruz,’ she says, enunciating my title in a way that gets under my skin like a burr. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I get it.’
‘Ipromisethe child will stay with you,’ I say, enunciating the word right back, and then, because I’m not giving up on this idea of getting rid of our mutual hunger once and for all, I add, ‘on one condition.’
Her eyes widen fractionally. ‘You don’t have the right to—’
‘This baby ismine,’ I interrupt. ‘And once the formalities have been completed and the results are clear without a shadow of a doubt, I will claim it. I won’t take it away from you, but if you want to stay with it, there is only one way you may do so: in my bed.’
Her temper glitters, angry sparks leaping in her eyes. ‘So that’s how you’re going to handle this? You’re going to blackmail me into bed?’
‘Is it really blackmail when you’re desperate to be there?’ I meet her gaze head-on. ‘One way or another, pretty Beatrix, that’s where you’re going to end up and we both know it.’
The colour in her cheeks has deepened, the blue of her eyes hot with fury, yet I can see the violet of her desire, it’s burning there too, making a liar out of all her protestations.
‘You just can’t stand him winning, can you?’ she says, low and furious. ‘Even now he’s gone.’
‘This has got nothing to do with him,’ I snap, because of course she means Antonio. ‘This is about you and me.’
She takes a breath. ‘I thought you didn’t want “sloppy seconds”?’
The way she throws my own ill-chosen words back at me does nothing for my temper. Especially when I did, in fact, want his sloppy seconds and still do.
‘Enough,’ I say in a hard voice. ‘I have no time for petty arguments. I have given you my promise; now I want yours.’
There is no sign of the ice maiden in her now, her eyes burning and her cheeks burning along with them. She’s furious with me, doesn’t want to give in, yet she wants the baby, and, whether she likes it or not, she wants me, too.
‘I hate you,’ she says flatly.
‘That’s the first honest thing you’ve said all day,’ I say in the same tone.
She mutters something vicious under her breath, then finally says, ‘Okay, I promise. Now, let’s get this over with.’
