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He remained silent, those all-knowing green eyes pinned on her.
‘Did you not hear me? I said—’
‘I heard you, and you know exactly what I said. I just prefer not to conduct this conversation in the hallway in the hearing of my staff, especially if you insist on using that shrill voice.’
Suki swallowed down the scream that rose; squashed the urge to march up to him, take him by his expensive designer lapels and shake the living daylights out of him. It would be useless because she suspected he would remain just as unmoved as he seemed now.
She shook her head in abject confusion. ‘What gives you the right to invade my privacy?’
‘You don’t seem to have grasped the reality before you, Suki.’ He stepped back from the door, his hands leaving his pockets to hang almost menacingly against his masculine thighs. ‘So come back in and let’s discuss this rationally. Now,’ he added after a handful of seconds when she remained frozen.
‘All this...the ticket, the hotel, coming here to meet with your lawyers...it was all one giant plan, wasn’t it?’
‘Sí, it was,’ he confirmed, not a trace of apology in his face or voice. ‘Oh, and I forgot to mention. Your things were moved here from the hotel while we were at the memorial. So bear that in mind if you decide to make another grand exit.’
Her mind sped with the thinly veiled threat in his voice.
Her things...including her passport and airline ticket. ‘Oh, God. You...’
‘Need your undivided attention without the histrionics.’
The reality of what was happening rammed home in that instant. She could try to leave but she wouldn’t get very far. So really, she was going nowhere until he deemed it so.
On leaden legs, she returned to the study. The sound of the door shutting felt like the slam of prison gates.
She tightened her fingers around her clutch to stop their trembling. ‘I can report you to the authorities. You know that, right?’
He raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘For having a simple conversation with a guest after my brother’s memorial?’
‘There’s nothing simple or remotely funny about this, and you know it,’ she replied heatedly.
All traces of mockery evaporated from his face, leaving a harsh, bleak mask. ‘On that we’re agreed,’ he bit out. One hand rose to spear agitated fingers through his hair. ‘Did you stop to think that, had I been in the picture, things could’ve turned out differently?’
Suki didn’t want to admit that the thought had crossed her mind when the doctors had first given her the diagnosis. But in those initial harrowing weeks, she’d clung vainly to hope. Then the tabloids’ timely confirmation of Ramon and Svetlana’s still very much on engagement had usefully reiterated why any reliance on the man who’d slept with her while still committed to another woman, who’d proven most categorically that he was untrustworthy, was out of the question. Father of her child or not, the knowledge that she couldn’t trust Ramon with so momentous a decision had kept her silent. ‘How?’ she asked, despite knowing they wouldn’t have been.
‘For a start, had you come to me, you would be in a financially better place now than you currently are.’
She frowned. ‘Financially better place? What are you talking about?’
‘Luis helped you with your medical bills, did he not? Did you stop to think that going ahead with the pregnancy, that presenting me with my child, would have made you rich beyond your wildest dreams?’
She staggered, actually staggered back at the accusation. ‘Are you telling me you think I deliberately got rid of the baby because it wasn’t financially viable?’
‘I had my investigators look into your financial history, Suki. I know you’re broke.’
She struggled to take a breath. ‘I understand that we were little more than strangers. And we didn’t even like each other very much,’ she ventured. ‘But I would never...never dream of—’
‘Drop the excuses, Suki. Nothing you say will excuse your actions. Having my child was an inconvenience you took care of without bothering to tell me,’ he cut across her, jaw clenched into stone. Turning, he headed back to his desk and picked up two files and the bundle of papers she’d discarded minutes ago and strode towards her, savage purpose in every step.
He casually opened the file he held. Suki recognised the charity’s logo on the letterhead immediately. ‘Which begs the question, why would you get rid of my child, then make yourself a charity c
ase for a sperm donation four months later?’ There was something dangerously deadly in his voice. A scalpel-sharp control that said he was stroking the very edge of his endurance.
She swallowed, knowing instinctively that the none of your business line was the last thing she wanted to throw at him right now. A tremble shivered down her spine. Retreating until she had the grouping of studded leather sofas and a coffee table between them, she attempted to reason with him. ‘Ramon, the past is the past. This thing...what you’re suggesting...it doesn’t make sense.’
His harsh exhalation stopped her stuttering. He glanced up, eyes like the frozen wastelands of Siberia blasting her. ‘Why, Suki? Why, for some unconscionable reason, have you decided you want a child now?’
She raised her chin. ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
