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He turned, his size even more intimidating than usual as he stepped close. Too close. She took a step back, not caring if it made her look weak. Right now she felt weak. Too weak to resist her physical reaction to him. And that would be bad for a number of reasons. None of which she could recall, because her brain was packed full of cotton wool and rampaging toddlers tripping on cocaine.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said, wanting to mean it.
‘What didn’t you have?’
The terse question had the toddlers hitting a brick wall while the endorphin rush detonated into a thousand fragments of shrapnel.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You said, “I didn’t have,” and then you stopped. What were you about to say?’
* * *
‘I have no idea.’
‘You’re lying.’ Dane could see it in her eyes. The translucent blue-green was alive with anxiety as her teeth trapped her bottom lip.
Unfortunately he could also see she was naked under her robe. And his body was already riding roughshod over all sensible thought.
Blood charged into his groin, but he kept his gaze steady on hers. He’d spent the last three hours trying to convince himself that seeing her again would be nuts. Why not just sign the divorce papers, have Mel deliver them tomorrow and put an end to this whole fiasco?
But that one half-sentence, that one phrase that she’d left hanging kept coming back to torment him. That and the brutal heat that he had begun to realise had never died.
‘I didn’t have...’
Eventually he’d been unable to stand it any more. So he’d walked the three blocks to the hotel. There was something she wasn’t telling him. And that something was something he needed to know.
Maybe they meant nothing to each other now. But they had once, and not all his feelings had faded the way they should have. Which might explain why his libido hadn’t got the memo.
He still wanted her, and it was driving him crazy.
The light perfume of her scent, the sight of her hair curling in damp strands to her shoulders, the moist patches making the wet satin cling to her collarbone, the trembling fingers closing the robe while he imagined all the treasures that lay beneath...
Damn it, Redmond. Concentrate. You’re not here to jump her. You’re here to get the truth.
He’d convinced himself that she’d got rid of their kid because she’d had to, because it had been the only way she could be shot of him, and he’d never questioned it, but in the last three hours he’d begun picking apart the evidence—and not one bit of it made any sense.
He’d always known Xanthe didn’t love him, because no one really loved anyone else. But when had she ever given him any indication that she didn’t want to keep their baby? Never. Not once. She had been the one who had insisted she wanted to have it when the stick had turned blue. She had been the one to say yes instantly when he’d suggested marriage. She had been the one who had kept on smiling every morning as she’d puked her guts up in the motel bathroom while he was left feeling tense and scared. And she’d been the one who had never stopped talking about the tiny life inside her. So much so, that she’d made him believe in it, too.
How could that girl have given up on their baby because of one dumb argument?
‘I’m not lying,’ she said. ‘And you need to leave.’
The quiver of distress in her voice made a mockery of the spark of defiance in her eyes. He could see the war she was waging to stay strong and immune. Her back was ramrod-straight, and her chin stuck out as if she were waiting for him to take a shot at it.
Frustration tangled with lust.
Gripping her upper arms, he tugged her towards him. Her muscles tensed under his palms, the thin layer of smooth satin over warm skin sending sex messages to his brain he did not need.
‘Tell me the truth, Red. What really happened to our baby? You owe me that much.’
A shudder ran through her and she looked away—but not before he spotted the flare of anguish.
‘Please don’t do this. None of it matters any more.’
‘It does to me,’ he said, and the feelings inside him—feelings he’d thought he’d conquered years ago—raced out of
hiding to sucker-punch him all over again.
