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I’ll figure it out, Ruby told herself as she got into clean pajamas. I just need a plan. Grabbing a box of saltines, a notebook and a pen, she went to the couch. Breathing deeply, she drank some water and ate crackers to settle her stomach. She stared hard at the blank page. She just had to come up with a plan…a plan…
Hours later, she woke up, sleepy and disoriented. The living room was totally dark. Someone was banging the front door in the middle of the night. She exhaled. Ivy had come back!
Pushing her blanket aside, Ruby rushed to the front door, nearly tripping over her own feet. She flung it open.
But it wasn’t Ivy.
Ares Kourakis stood at her doorway, all hard edges and hulking shoulders. Parked behind him was the gleaming outline of a black sports car, and behind that, a black SUV with a large man standing beside it, arms folded.
“Hello, Ruby.”
Staring up at Ares, she stammered, “What are you doing here?”
His sensual lips curved. “You called me.”
“I never expected—”
“What?” he bit out. “You never expected I would want to provide for my child?”
Glowering, he strode past her into the trailer. Shocked, she fell back, facing him in her shadowy kitchen.
Ares. Here. Now. Ruby couldn’t look away from him, so tall and broad, handsome and sleek in his well-cut dark clothes. His presence overwhelmed her. “I th-thought you were in Paris.”
“You think I could have been anywhere in the world and not have tracked you down after you hung up on me?”
“I…”
He was close enough to touch, looking down at her in the enclosed space of the tiny kitchen. His dark hair was slightly longer than she remembered, adding a hint of wave, of wild unpredictability, to his civilized appearance. As if beneath the tailored clothes, he was a barbarian who might do anything.
Which was exactly what he was. A barbarian who used his money like a weapon to get what he wanted.
He moved closer. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“Of course I have!” she said, then added softly, “Once.”
“Just once?”
“It’s expensive,” she said defensively. “But I got the vitamins and everything…”
“Have you been taking them?”
She bit her lip. “I’ve had morning sickness. Sometimes it’s hard to keep vitamins down. There’ve been a few times I’ve had to call in sick from work…”
“That stops now.”
“Calling in sick?”
“Working. I’ve already phoned your employers and informed them that you will no longer be working for any of them.”
Ruby drew back with a savage intake of breath before she exploded, “You did what?”
He glowered down at her. “Did you really think I would just disappear?”
“So you made it impossible for me to provide for my baby?”
“From now on, that’s my job.”
“You bastard!” she raged. Angry tears lifted to her eyes. “How could you?”
“Easily. Now you are pregnant with my child…” His gaze traced over her swollen breasts and the hint of her belly beneath her pajamas. Reaching out, he cupped her cheek as he growled, “You no longer have the right to deny me.”
Even panting with rage, Ruby felt his fingertips against her skin and shivered with humiliating desire. She’d tried so hard to hate him since their night together. She nearly succeeded during daylight hours, when she was busy with work and could remind herself of good reasons to despise him. The coldhearted way he’d said that her mother’s death would be a good thing. How he’d actually tried to pay Ruby to abandon her family.
But at night, dreams of Ares still haunted her, hot memories of his hard body against hers, of his voice, husky in the darkness, telling her he wanted her. And now his baby was growing deep inside her.
“You don’t understand.” Ruby’s voice cracked. “I’m barely getting by. My mother’s medical bills wiped us out. I had to borrow money for her funeral—”
“Funeral?”
Ruby closed her eyes. “She died the night you and I were together. I only found out after…after it was too late.”
