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Back in the living room, she glanced at the clock again, silently counting the minutes until Rio would appear. It was hard to rehearse what she was going to say when she didn’t have a clue what he was going to ask, or demand or... She sighed and began to chew her plump bottom lip distractedly, fighting her way free of another wave of despair.
‘For goodness’ sake, Gwen, stop feeling sorry for yourself!’
Her eyes narrowed with determination as she began to whisk around the room, plumping the odd cushion, picking up a toy and lobbing it in the toy box beside the window. Yesterday she had been wishing she had the space for a playroom; today she loved everything exactly the way it was. Perhaps you had to have your little world threatened to appreciate a worn carpet or a shower that was only a frustrating trickle.
It was a struggle to visualise Rio in these surroundings; it really wasnothis natural environment. He was sleek and exclusive and—she released a quivering sigh—just thethoughtof him being here had the power to make her insides quiver. Shameful though it was, it hardly seemed worth the energy it cost pretending she wasn’t still as vulnerable as she had ever been to his lethal sexuality.
It just proved that sexual chemistry was utterly indiscriminate. Ignoring the butterfly kicks still making their presence known in her stomach, she walked into her diminutive galley kitchen to get a glass of water to moisten her suddenly dry mouth.
It was the uncertainty, she told herself, that was really testing her. If Rio had gone into denial mode she could have dealt with it, or at least dealt with it more easily. Of course, he might still go that way once he had got over the initial shock.
He might just want confirmation that she was not going to make any future demands on him. Well, she could happily give him that—she’d sign anything if it meant he’d leave them in peace.
Gwen tiptoed back into the bedroom, checked on Ellie, who was sleeping peacefully still, and jumped at the sound of a rose branch scratching the window as the freshening breeze caught it.
You need to relax, Gwennie girl, she told herself, before grinning at the sheer impossibility of this. Absently fishing a lip gloss from her pocket, she smeared it over her lips before closing the door behind her.
By the time she had sat down and then jumped up again she had chewed the strawberry moisture off.
Would he be on time?
Should she have contacted a lawyer?
As if she had one on speed dial! She gave a small snort of self-mocking laughter and tried not to think of the access to top legal experts that Rio had.
Discovering a stray brightly coloured building block behind a cushion that had escaped her whirlwind round of frenzied tidying, she headed for the overflowing toy box when the knock on the door made her leap like a startled deer.
She took a deep breath and schooled her features into neutrality, or as close as she was going to get to that, and opened the door. Her eyes travelled upwards as she took a half-step outside, her elbow brushing the roses around the door.
His jacket had gone and the fabric of his tailored shirt was fine enough to suggest the drifts of body hair on his torso. Or maybe she was just seeing them because she knew they were there. Her cheeks heated guiltily at the thought.
‘You live here?’
She didn’t pause to think of a sarcastic response, just nodded.
He didn’t respond to the social cue so, after an awkward pause, she added, ‘It’s convenient.’ Less convenient was noticing for the first time the coiled tension in his lean body. It wasn’t just his masculinity that sent a fresh shudder through her body, it was the predator barely disguised by the perfect tailoring.
One dark brow lifted but he still didn’t say anything. Gwen tried to ignore the grab of some emotion that felt like a hand in her chest as their eyes finally connected, the moment she had been avoiding.
She wanted to look away but the moment dragged, hampered by the mind-fogging hormonal flare she felt. She resorted to stiff formality as she finally managed to slide her eyes to some point over his left shoulder. Sexual chemistry had no place here; she owed it to Ellie to keep a clear head. She had learnt from her mistakes and it was more important than ever not to repeat them.
Chance would be a fine thing!
Ignoring the shame-inducing reaction of her inner voice, she gave a faint smile. ‘Come in.’ She stood to one side and, after an equally stilted and blank-faced pause, he stepped past her directly into her sitting room.
In the confined space his sheer physicality took on an extra resonance, as did the predatory undercurrents that had made her hormones leap.
Rio discovered that the cottage, which looked like a chocolate box outside, was more like a doll’s house inside. He supposed it was charming if you liked low beams and leaded windows, but he didn’t; he preferred light and space. His eyes moved over the toys spilling out of a box in the corner and they darkened. He was still desperately struggling to assimilate the knowledge he was a father, but the emotions were so complex and intertwined that the anger kept colliding with the shock and the sheer gut-wrenching wonder of it all.
It was a situation that he’d not asked for but one he was certainly responsible for, which equated to this combined anger and guilt. Being a father was one thing, but having the fact hidden from him, leaving him an outsider in a process he had been so intimately involved with, left him feeling...what, exactly?
Of course, the irony and the massive degree of hypocrisy his reaction generated was impossible to duck. How could he blame Gwen when he had done the very same thing to his brother? His twin, his other half, who still didn’t know he had fathered a son... The guilt Rio had lived with every day since he’d agreed to the deception hadn’t gone away, but it had been easier to bear because he had been so sure that he’d made the right decision.
Today’s events made him feel far less secure about that. Had Gwen thought she’d made the right decision too?
Had she thought his daughter was better off not knowing her father? And could he really blame her? This degree of reluctant understanding of her possible motives didn’t lessen his determination to be an ongoing part of this child’s life, to be the best father he could, but the next step was convincing Gwen of this. Of course, his advantage in all this was that he suspected she had a strongly developed sense of fair play whereas he was quiteflexibleabout such things, especially when the stakes were this high.
He had no intention of taking no for an answer.
