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As she stroked his chest, Nick was engulfed in the endless, misty depths. He felt himself sinking…drowning.
“Candace.”
She blinked. But instead of the spell breaking, she came to life. Her fingers feathered down beneath his shirt…across his stomach…until lightning forked through him. Nick swallowed, his mouth parched dry.
“I can’t think,” he muttered hoarsely. “All I can do is…feel.”
Sensation, wave on wave, broke over him as her fingertips swept lightly across his skin. His hands closed on her hips, the denim of her well-washed cotton jeans soft under his thumbs. Rising high on his knees in front of her, he yanked her off the sofa into his arms and hauled her up against him. Hard. He hugged her to him and claimed her mouth, and kissed her deeply.
When he’d finished, he loosened his arms a little until his hands rested on her shoulders. He sat back on his heels as they both gulped in air, their breathing audible in the overheated room.
“Wow.” She sounded awed.
Nick suddenly felt about thirty feet tall. He gave a husky half laugh and let his fingers caress the rounds of her shoulders where her sweater had fallen away to expose tempting creamy skin.
“Again?”
“I’m not sure I’ll survive if you keep kissing me like that,” she said honestly. “My knees are weak.”
“So what was it like with…him?”
The eyes that met him were wide and suddenly very, very wary. “Who?”
“Jennie’s father.”
She tore out of his arms with a force that caught him off guard. “Stop this, Nick. It’s not funny!”
Her reaction startled him. “Hey…”
Perhaps his morbid curiosity had freaked her out. But he’d wanted to know, dammit. A surge of unfamiliar possessiveness swept through him.
Hell, he couldn’t stop thinking about her—and he couldn’t remember when last he’d had the hots like this over a woman.
He’d certainly never felt this way about Jilly in the seven years’ famine that had been their marriage.
Candace was on her feet, rebuttoning the knit top, her color high, her gaze averted.
“Tell me about him.” Nick stood. “I need to know.”
She raised her head. Her mouth was set, her eyes flashed. “C’mon, Mr. Valentine. Stop playing games. You must know you’re Jennie’s father.”
Seven
Nick looked pole-axed.
“I need a Scotch,” he said, and crossed over to the liquor cabinet to pour two fingers of amber liquid into a heavy crystal glass. “Can I get you one, too?”
Candace shook her head and suppressed the instinctive urge to tell him that sugar water would be better for shock. Somehow she didn’t think Nick would appreciate it.
His hand closed around her wrist and he gently drew her down onto the couch beside him. “Now run that past me again.”
She simply wasn’t ready to confront the fact that she and this man who caused such an emotional response in her had made a child together.
A perfect, wonderful little girl.
Jennie…
A child Candace had no intention of leaving in his care, a child she wanted back…whatever it took.
But she was starting to suspect that Nick might not surrender Jennie so easily. And Candace was delaying the inevitable moment of confrontation, thinking about the best way to address it.
“Jennie is your child.” Candace’s stomach churned. “Your sperm was used for the IVF. And the DNA tests after her birth confirmed that you are her father.”
At the time she’d signed the surrogacy agreement, she’d been affronted by the clause requesting a DNA test before the baby was delivered to the Valentines. But she’d understood that the couple had wanted to be assured that the baby was Nick’s—not the child of some stranger she’d slept with.
“Frankly, I’m stunned that you believe Jennie is my child,” he finally admitted, not looking at her, “and more than a little skeptical.”
He hadn’t known. Her suspicion that he and Jilly had worked together to pull off the pretense of a lifetime had been off the mark. She’d been so sure he’d known that Jennie wasn’t Jilly’s baby, that for reasons of their own he and Jilly had wanted to keep that secret.
Now it appeared Nick really had believed Jennie was his wife’s child all along.
That stunned her.
Her attention shifted back to him as he ran his hands through his hair in a distracted manner. “I told you Jilly was pregnant—and my sister confirmed it.”
“But…” Candace’s voice trailed away.
He raised an eyebrow. “But?”
