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‘I’m looking forward to you meeting my grandmother,’ he said before he could process the wisdom of it.
‘You have family there?’ she burst out, the napkin she’d picked up suspended in the air. Then she frowned, possibly because, like his, the statement had slipped out without permission. ‘Of course, you do,’ she muttered a moment later. ‘Do they condone kidnapping too?’
The last of his humour washed away. ‘I would rather you don’t air our personal business in front of the staff or my grandmother.’
‘I think you havepersonal businessconfused with cross-border crime.’
‘You think taking my seed into your body and growing our child in your womb isn’t as personal as it gets?’
He’d intended to be earthy enough to remind her of their frenzied coupling, and he knew he’d succeeded when blood rushed into her face. Her eyes grew a little dazed, as if recollecting how they’d got here was as sensually visceral to her as it was to him.
He reached forward, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then drifted his knuckle down her heated cheek. ‘You wanted a clinical conception. Instead you got a mind-altering experience that is set to change both our lives. No one needs to know the details of how this baby was conceived or how we plan to raise it.’
‘We?’ The word shook out of her. There was sceptical curiosity in the question, but he didn’t blame her. He had a million anxiety-laced questions too.
There was a reason he chose to battle Cardosia’s problems from afar. A reason he hadn’t come face to face with his uncle for half a decade.
Until now.
Too much hung in the balance. Not least of all his unborn child.
‘Oh, yes. We.’ He didn’t elaborate beyond that. There would be more than enough time to unveil his further plans once they were in Cardosia. ‘Eat your meal. Then come join me in the lounge. We land in forty-five minutes.’
Genie ate more out of necessity than appetite.
Sleep had done nothing to calm her roiling nerves. She was still lugging them like unwanted baggage when she set the tray aside and went into the bathroom to refresh herself. Once again she met her gaze in her mirror. This time she looked poleaxed with a peculiar shine to her eyes she couldn’t explain.
Shock, maybe? Anticipation of the fight ahead?
Because she wasn’t going to just lie down and take Seve’s diktat on what the next months of her pregnancy were going to be, was she?
No, she assured herself forcefully when her brain dared to ponder the answer. She hadn’t come this far just to hand the reins of her life to someone else.
Not even a man who had such strong possessive feelings about his child? Feelings that if honed right could benefit their chi—?
Dear God, she wasn’t making excuses for him, was she? When he’d all but proclaimed her an unfit mother?
She turned around and marched out of the bathroom and suite and down the narrow corridor that led to the main lounge.
Whatever fighting words brewed on her tongue vanished at the sight of him.
He was staring out of the window of the plane, lost in thought. It gave her valuable seconds to examine him unnoticed, although in the next breath she realised her thoughts were severely lacking in value when her senses obsessed over tracing his astounding, almost formidable good looks. With the sun’s angle beaming worshipfully on his profile, picking out the dark gold flecks in his brown hair, he was almost too profoundly beautiful.
The strong forehead, the aquiline perfection of his nose and—just as arresting as it’d been weeks ago—the sensually potent curve of his lips all served to deliver a potion kick to her senses.
There was also no value in daydreaming about whether their son—if their child turned out to be male—would inherit his father’s magnetising good looks and overpowering personality, but she found herself doing so anyway. Found herself speculating if, by dallying with this man, she’d saddled herself with a life-long reminder of him in her child.
Of course, you have. This exceptional DNA wouldn’t allow for anything less than total domination.
His head swung around, hawk-sharp eyes zeroing in on her with a ferocity that snatched her breath. It said he could read her every thought; knew his impact on her. Probablyrevelledin it.
That real possibility paralysed her for a second before Genie forced herself to move.
To pretend his effect on her wasn’t alarming. ‘I can’t force you to get your pilot to turn this plane around. And for the sake of this pregnancy, I don’t intend to zip across time zones with gleeful abandon. I will stay in Cardosia for twenty-four hours only. Anything beyond that and I will report you to the authorities for abduction. Are we clear?’ she snapped with, she hoped, enough bite to distract her from noticing everything sinfully attractive about her captor.
But as one corner of his mouth quirked with amusement at her ultimatum, an inner voice was echoing one question across her brain.
Just how do you plan to stop him?
