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To not be alone, at last.

She looked up from the paper at Christos’s unsmiling face. “How did you get this?” she asked quietly.

He gave a little shrug of his broad shoulders. “I told you. Money buys information. And as it happens, I have a lot of money.” His mouth stretched in a smile that held not a shred of humor as his golden-brown gaze turned metallic and hard. “It was done very discreetly, and if you chose to press charges, you’d soon find you wouldn’t be able to get very far, I promise you.”

Rose jerked back, shocked to her core by the sudden turn in the conversation. Christos Amanti had seemed so solicitous, so amenable, and now he was telling her not to even think about pressing charges? “Is that a threat?” she demanded, her voice wobbling.

She’d sensed the ruthless power of this man, this stranger, underneath his smooth urbanity, but now she felt it. He’d paid someone for her private information, information that should never have been shared. That was illegal to share. What else was he capable of doing, and more importantly, why?

“No,” he replied calmly. “It’s not a threat. Not at all. It’s simply a fact.”

“This whole thing has to be illegal—” she began, only to be cut off by Christos Amanti’s implacable voice, as hard as iron.

“Luca wanted his information to be shared. He was part of the identity release program, and he hoped that in time, any children he’d helped to conceive would contact him. It’s just that it has happened sooner, and under tragic circumstances.” He paused, his throat working as he seemed to hold back some powerful emotion, his lashes sweeping down to his sculpted cheekbones to hide the emotion radiating from their golden-brown depths.

It was a reminder, Rose realized, that this man’s brother, the biological father of her baby, had died, and she forced herself to fall silent, not that she was brave enough to make any further objections. Christos Amanti didn’t scare her, not exactly, but he definitely intimidated her. And maybe he saw what he’d said as a fact, but Rose still felt as if a threat loomed, relentless, formless, because she didn’t understand its nature. She wished she hadn’t agreed to come here, to hear whatever it was he had to say, because she sensed he hadn’t said it yet. The worst, whatever it was, was yet to come, and she had no idea how she was going to handle it.

“However,” Christos continued, looking up resolutely, his gaze softening slightly in seeming recrimination, “your identity as a recipient was protected, and I appreciate you may feel as if your privacy has been violated. I hope you will understand and accept why it was necessary.”

“May…” Rose choked disbelievingly. There was surely no question about it.

“But,” he continued implacably, rolling right over any objection she might have worked up the courage to make, “when I explain the situation, I believe you will understand why I had to find you.”

Rose pressed her trembling lips together. “Okay,” she said, grateful her voice no longer wobbled. Whatever Christos Amanti had to say, she would hear it. And then, whatever it was, she told herself staunchly, she would walk back into her life and forget he ever existed, because she had that choice. That power. She did. There had been plenty of times when she’d felt powerless in her life, at the mercy of others and the tragedies of fate, but…this did not have to be one of them.

“So explain,” she said, and met his gaze with as much defiance as she could muster, trying her darnedest not to react to the blaze of heat that swept through her when his golden-brown gaze clashed with her own.

Chapter Three

Christos eyed Rose thoughtfully. Her face was still pale, and she was chewing her lower lip, her hands tucked under her thighs, her hair unwound so it fell once more to her waist in glorious golden-brown waves.

She was doing her best to be brave, but he could sense how fearful she was, and he realized he didn’t like it. Yes, he intended to get what he wanted, what he needed, out of this situation, but preferably without resorting to threats or intimidation. He shouldn’t have told her not to press charges, but his back was against the wall, whether she knew it or not. Still, there had to be a better way, a way that would put Rose Delaney at her ease.

“First, perhaps you could tell me a little about yourself,” he invited. He gestured to the bump barely visible underneath her loose sundress, its skinny strap sliding off one slim, golden shoulder. “How far along are you in your pregnancy?”

She hesitated, eyeing him warily for a moment before replying cautiously, “Seventeen weeks.”

“And the pregnancy has been healthy? No complications, I hope?”

“Just some morning sickness… Why are you asking me this?” Her eyes flashed, and her voice trembled. So much for putting her at her ease. She clearly thought he was interrogating her, and he supposed he was. “Why do you care?”

“Because,” Christos told her, gentling his voice even though everything in him had turned tense as the knowledge slammed into him once again of how much was at stake. “You are carrying my brother’s child. My dead brother’s. Of course I care.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “That’s not,” she whispered painfully, “how this works. How it’s meant to work. It’s meant to be an anonymous thing…”

“I understand that,” he replied evenly. “This situation is both difficult and unique.”

Her eyes flew open. “You’re not supposed to know who I am.”

“But I do,” he pointed out, making sure to keep his voice gentle. “And now we need to decide what to do about it.”

“What—” She stopped abruptly, shaking her head, her hair flying. “No. No, I’m not going to ask that.”

Christos regarded her calmly. She was scared, and he understood why. He’d come here for a reason, and even if she was trying not to, she had to know what it was. The only thing it could be. “Why did you decide to have a baby?” he asked conversationally. “You’re quite young, aren’t you, as well as unmarried? It’s not the usual course of action for a woman such as yourself, I would imagine.”

“I wanted a family,” she replied numbly. She clasped her hands in her lap, fingers clenched, knuckles white. “I wanted someone who was related to me, to…to not be alone anymore.”

His gaze swept over her thoughtfully as he resolutely quashed the flicker of sympathy her words ignited within him. Family was everything to him, so he could appreciate how she would want it herself. But he knew her vulnerability was something he could potentially use to both their advantages, and he needed to think of it simply as that, even if it already was causing something tender and protective to unfurl inside him. He could not afford to feel it. “Do you not have someone like that in your life now?” he asked quietly.