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It shouldn’t matter he felt he’d suffocate if he didn’t have more of her. It shouldn’t matter she’d had his son. A boy who provoked a thousand unknown stirrings inside him. For what would he do with those aberrant feelings?
She hadn’t told him she’d had his son, seemed bound on never letting him know. Even without knowing what he really was, she knew she mustn’t let him near a boy that age.
And she was absolutely right.
For the past seven years he hadn’t known Mauricio existed, and Mauricio hadn’t known he did.
He would keep it that way.
Six
After Richard left, her mother and sister pounced on her with questions. Isabella expended every drop of ingenuity she possessed into dodging them and validating none of their suspicions.
Those ranged from his being a suitor she wouldn’t let close for reasons they couldn’t imagine—since as did every woman on earth, they thought him a god and/or a godsend—to the truth. Her mother was the one whose eyes contained the suspicion...the hope, that he was Mauri’s biological father.
She held it together until she was in her room, prepared for bed, then collapsed on it in a mass of tremors.
So much had happened so fast in that exhilarating, nauseating and terrifying roller coaster since he’d exploded into her life last night. Now his incursion had reached inside her home and within inches of the secret she’d thought safe forever. And it scared her out of her wits.
And that was before she considered that confounding evening he’d spent with them. Every second he’d spent charming her family like the snake he’d admitted he’d been labeled as, she’d felt a breath away from screaming with aggravation and swooning with dread. At the torture’s end, she might have stood her ground, and Richard might have walked away, but she didn’t think it would end that simply. He hadn’t given his word he’d leave her family alone in his pursuit of her. And nothing involving Richard was without long-term repercussions. She was now terrified what his next blow would be and how he’d deal it.
At least she seemed to have steered him away from any suspicion he might have had about Mauri. His age alone must have been a red flag, and she’d gone light-headed holding her breath, expecting the worst. After all the suspense, he’d only made a passing comment and had taken her claim that Mauri was adopted without batting a lid.
But...maybe this very reaction indicated she was overreacting. Maybe even telling him the truth about Mauri would be the best way to end his infiltration of her life.
A man like him, who lived separate from humanity, without connections, who only cared about having the world at his feet, would probably be appalled at the news he’d fathered a son. His lack of curiosity, or the one that had been satisfied by a mere word, indicated that her assessment was probably correct.
Furthermore, this inexplicable visit itself might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Maybe seeing her in her domestic milieu as a mother, especially to his biological son, would be a too-banal dose of reality, spoiling the fantasy of the wild affair he’d been planning to have with the mysterious femme fatale he seemed to think her. Maybe it would all douse his passion and make him walk away now, not later.
That sounded plausible. There was no way he would involve himself with her now that he’d seen her “tribe.” Spending time with her family had probably been a quaint novelty to him, a field experiment in how the other half lived to add to his arsenal of analyzing human beings, to better devise strategies to control and milk them for all they were worth. But there was no way he’d want to repeat it.
He’d only said he would to punish her because she’d dared challenge him. But once he was satisfied he’d made her sweat it out long enough, he’d let her know he never intended an encore.
Once she came to this conclusion, exhaustion, emotional and physical, descended on her like a giant mallet. She had no idea when sleep claimed her.
* * *
She woke up feeling as if she’d been in a maelstrom.
And she had been. Her dreams had been a vortex filled with Richard and their tempestuous time together, past and present. He’d always wreaked havoc inside her, awake or asleep. There’d never been any escaping him. Not in her psyche. She’d just have to settle for escaping him in reality.
By the time she headed to her office, her new conviction that he’d fade from her life again made her wonder if she should come clean to Rose and Jeffrey about her past.
She’d tried to after she’d left Richard yesterday, to deprive him of that coercion card. But their schedules hadn’t allowed her to even broach the subject. So she’d scheduled a meeting with Rose first thing in the morning, the one sure way to get a hold of her.
But if Richard disappeared again, should she expose the ugly truth of her history to Rose and Jeffrey? Just the knowledge would scar their psyches. And what if they worried her past would catch up with her and they’d be standing too close when it did? She was certain there was absolutely no danger of that, or she wouldn’t have taken their partnership offer. But what if they couldn’t feel safe with her around?
She stood by her conviction they’d never judge her, would be more supportive than they already were. But if they worried about their family’s safety at all, she’d have to leave.
And she didn’t want to leave. Them, the practice, her new place. It was the first time she felt she had real friends, a workplace where she belonged and a home.
By the time she opened her office door she’d made her decision.
She’d wait to see what Richard did. If he disappeared again, that would be that. If he didn’t...
No. She wouldn’t consider that possibility until it came to pass.
Suddenly she found herself plucked from the ground and suspended against the door she’d just closed with two-hundred-plus pounds of premium maleness plastered against her.
