AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When Ethan still said nothing Abe let out a frustrated cuss. Then he shook his head and gave a dismissive wave of his hand.
‘Get a DNA test, talk to Maurice—’
‘It’s mine,’ Ethan said.
‘And you know that because...?’
‘I just know it is.’
‘Does she work?’
‘She’s an actress.’
‘So she’s hadtrainingat being convincing?’
Ethan knew why he’d come then. Abe was like a black mirror, voicing his doubts. Yet he found himself arguing back at him.
‘She was working at a gallery when I met her. I dropped in to check things out for Khalid. Merida gave me a private tour.’
‘So it would seem.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘It wasexactlylike that,’ Abe said. ‘And don’t forget it for a moment. She saw you coming. Or rather she saw dollar signs and made sure you were coming. Some two-bit actress saw her chance—’
‘Hey!’ Ethan roared. ‘Merida’s good at what she does. I found out last night that she’d been cast inNight Forest...’
But it didn’t sway Abe. ‘I’ll bet this house that she hadn’t been cast when you bedded her.’
Ethan might be cynical where relationships were concerned but Abe was contemptuous.
He was also right.
‘So what do you want to do?’ Abe asked.
‘I don’t know, but I have to sort something out. She was on her way back to England when I found out.’
‘Well, that sounds like a solution to me.’ Abe shrugged. ‘Pay her off, set her up, drop in now and then, be seen to do the right thing...’
His final words were like a punch to the gut. Ethan practically felt Abe’s fist land and was grateful he was sitting down. He sat there, staring into the amber fluid, remembering being lined up for photos, smiling for journalists, being ‘seen to do the right thing’, just as Abe described.
And then their father, being his usual arrogant self, closing the door on his study the moment the photographers and reporters were gone.
His mind cast around for their mother, for the perfect childhood he had had before she was gone. For a memory of her.
Except there wasn’t one.
Not one that he could remember, aside from the photos that lined his father’s walls.
‘I don’t want them in another country,’ Ethan said, and that winded feeling stirred into nausea as he thought of his close call tonight.
Had he arrived a few moments later they might be on a plane now.
They.
Merida and his baby.
‘Then we’ll sort it,’ Abe said. ‘It’s going to cost you, but...’
