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A day later Kat Valtinos had shown up at the bar and cornered her. ‘Jax is the ultimate playboy and you’re the British equivalent of trailer trash—’
‘Probably,’ Lucy had conceded, looking back on her troubled poverty-stricken past.
‘Obviously Jax will get bored fast and you look like the clingy sort.’
‘I haven’t had a chance to cling yet but I’m a quick learner. Does he like clingy women?’ Lucy had asked, wide-eyed. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’
‘No, a very good friend,’ Kat had declared. ‘But you’re wasting your time. I intend to marry him.’
‘Tell that to him, not to me,’ Lucy had advised and got back to work, ignoring the bitchy brunette until she’d finally stalked out in a snit at not being taken seriously.
*
The following morning, Lucy rose early after a sleepless night of wandering painfully through her mortifyingly fresh memories of being with Jax two years earlier. She watched her father and stepmother leave to attend the funeral. Over breakfast they had been too preoccupied with a sad and affectionate exchange of stories about their now deceased friend to notice how heavy-eyed and silent Lucy was.
But Lucy was also restless with anxiety and operating on pure adrenalin. Now that Jax knew about Bella she had to worry about how he would act on that information. She winced at the knowledge that Jax had power over her again. Certainly he had rights as a father that she could not deny. But would he choose to exercise those rights and seek an active parenting role?
Barely an hour later, Lucy received her first taste of Jax choosing to exercise his rights. A smartly dressed, fast-speaking lawyer arrived and asked her to agree to DNA testing and no sooner had she given consent, her face burning at the humiliating suspicion that Jax could doubt that he had fathered her child, than a lab technician arrived and took samples. That matter dealt with, the lawyer then settled a confidentiality agreement down in front of her. It seemed to be what Lucy had seen referred to as a ‘gagging order’ in the media and she refused to sign it, sticking to her guns when the older man persisted in his persuasions.
‘Mr Antonakos does not like what I shall describe as private matters broadcast in the public domain. If you sign this document, it will form a secure basis for good relations between you in the future.’
‘I can assure you that I have no intention of speaking to the press but I’m not prepared to sign anything that says I cannot talk about my own daughter,’ she told him quietly.
By the time the older man departed, Lucy fully understood that he had been engaged in a potential damage-limitation plan. And Lucy was utterly unnerved by Jax acting to protect himself and the reputation of the Antonakos family even before he had definitive proof that her child was his. She was appalled that he could distrust her so much that he suspected that she might sell nasty stories about him to the newspapers.
In truth she did have a very low opinion of Jax but she had every intention of keeping that low opinion to herself for her daughter’s sake. Whatever else Jax was, he was and always would be her daughter’s father and she didn’t want to do anything to damage that relationship. That meant, she registered with a sinking heart, that she would have to keep her personal feelings very much to herself. Airing her anger, resentment and bitterness would be destructive and the situation they were in where they shared a child but nothing else would be difficult enough to deal with.
An hour after the lawyer departed, Jax arrived and, for once, not in a limousine. He roared up outside on a motorbike and it was only as he doffed his helmet on the way to the front door that she realised it was him and not someone making a delivery. He was trying to be discreet, endeavouring to ensure that he wasn’t recognised, she realised. When she had first met Jax in Spain he had only recently stepped into his late brother’s role and as he had been relatively unknown there had been no paparazzi following him around then. Now that a kind of celebrity madness erupted around Jax’s every public appearance she was grateful that he was being careful because she did not want to see her face or her daughter’s appearing in articles full of embarrassing speculations.
Lucy opened the front door and stepped back. Jax strode in, bringing with him the scent of fresh air, leather and masculinity. In the narrow hall, he towered over her and she thrust the door quickly shut to walk into the spacious front room, which was sprinkled with colourful toys and baby equipment.
Jax slung his motorbike helmet down on a chair and raked impatient fingers through his black hair. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.
‘Bella’s having a nap. I’ll get her up in ten minutes. She wakes very early in the morning and then she gets tired again…’ Realising that she was gabbling, Lucy flushed, insanely conscious of Jax’s stare.
Lucy sported cropped jeans, a pink tee shirt and bare feet. She looked very young and cute and definitely hadn’t dressed up for his benefit. Jax was irritated that she had not made the effort. He hadn’t slept much the night before. The cold shower hadn’t worked any miracle and that sexual tension piled on top of the shocking announcement Lucy had made had done nothing to help. When he had a problem Jax liked a plan to work towards, a plan with firm boundaries. Unhappily there was no convenient plan available to tell him how a man behaved when he discovered he was a father even though he had never wanted that particular joy. But he had been reckless with Lucy in the birth-control department and in retrospect he could not forgive or excuse himself for that lack of responsibility. Of course, he reminded himself wryly, the kid might not be his, in which case he was dealing with nothing more than a storm in a teacup.
‘Stop staring at me,’ Lucy told him, cheeks burning from the intensity of his scrutiny.
‘Of course I’m staring. You dropped a bomb on me last night. I’m still reeling,’ Jax breathed in a raw undertone, green eyes glittering warily below curling ebony lashes.
‘Well, I’ve been mentally reeling from the minute I discovered I was pregnant,’ Lucy confided truthfully. ‘With time you get used to the idea. I couldn’t bear to imagine life without Bella now.’
Jax scanned the youthful glow of her unblemished skin and the luxuriant tumble of strawberry-blonde ringlets that merely highlighted her bright blue eyes. He acknowledged her beauty for there was no denying what was right in front of him. As his body began to react he clenched his teeth together hard and wandered back towards the front door, determined not to let his libido take over when there would soon be a child in the room.
‘Coffee?’ Lucy pressed as the awkward silence stretched when he reappeared in the doorway.
‘This is not a social visit,’ Jax answered.
A cry sounded out somewhere above them and Lucy scurried upstairs, her face flushed by his deflating statement.
Jax plonked himself down on a sofa and struggled to relax but it had been more years than he cared to recall since he had been around a baby. He was godfather to several but his role had never been hands-on, nor would it ever have been more because nobody expected a single man, who was also erroneously known as his actress mother’s only child, to be comfortable dealing with young children. Ironically Jax had learned the daily routine of how to look after a baby when he was only twelve years old. It had been the end of the summer before his mother had finally engaged a nanny because Jax was returning to boarding school.
He heard the creak of the stairs and vaulted upright. As he straightened his shoulders Lucy walked into the lounge and he immediately saw the child in her arms. He froze into a statue in the same moment that he saw the little girl’s black curly hair and the green eyes. That fast, that dramatically, Jax knew he didn’t need a DNA test to prove to anyone that the little girl was his. Lucy’s child was the living image of his kid sister, Tina, and that uncanny resemblance hit him like an avalanche. His mother had had very strong genes, he reckoned ruefully, for both he and the little sister who had died as a toddler had looked far more like Mariana than the men who had fathered her two children. He knew too that his striking likeness
to his mother had only been another nail in his coffin as far as his oversensitive father was concerned.
‘This is Bella…’ Lucy framed, kneeling down to settle the little girl gently on the floor.
A thumb planted in her rosebud mouth, Bella studied Jax fixedly, her green eyes full of curiosity.
Jax bent down and lifted a toy that broke straight into a catchy tune as soon as he pressed the right button. Bella grinned and came closer, steadying herself on one powerful thigh with a clutching little hand.
‘She’s not scared,’ Jax remarked, marvelling that he could still speak normally after being plunged without warning into some of his darkest memories. The remnants of that guilt, anger and pain still resonated powerfully with him.
‘No, she’s quite confident and she likes men. My father makes a fuss of her and spoils her. I suppose we all spoil her a bit,’ Lucy conceded, staring at the little tableau of Jax and his daughter as they each assessed the other. ‘She looks very like you—’
Jax skated a teasing forefinger off Bella’s determined little chin and swallowed thickly, struggling to master his almost overwhelming emotions. He should not cloud his first meeting with his daughter with such tragic memories, he censured himself fiercely. The past was the past and it would be wiser to leave the sad little ghost of Tina safely buried there.
‘What is it?’ Lucy prompted, troubled by the feverish glitter of Jax’s stunning eyes, their brilliance enhanced by the surround of spiky black lashes. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Jax insisted, his wide sensual mouth slashing into a sudden forced smile, for he had shared far too much private stuff with Lucy in the past and he had no plans to make himself vulnerable in that way again ‘But when she was born you should have moved heaven and earth to ensure that I knew I was a father.’
Unprepared for that criticism when she had tried every way she knew how to contact him, Lucy stiffened. ‘That’s not fair—’
‘What isn’t fair,’ Jax fielded as he accepted the little plastic doll that Bella brought him, ‘is that this little girl and I weren’t able to be in each other’s lives from the start.’
