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“The plan is to get your sister back. I’m working on—”
“No,” she interrupts, “I mean the long-term plan. What happens after you get my sister back? Because I know one thing for sure: you cannot marry Celineandhave a baby with me.”
I’m starting to realize the same thing. But the stubborn asshole in me refuses to accept that it has to be one or the other.
“What are you really asking me,tigrionok?” I murmur. “Are you asking me to leave your sister for you?”
Anger flashes across her eyes. “Fuck you, you egotistical bastard. Are you already forgetting the promise you made to my mother? Because I certainly haven’t.”
“I remember.”
“Good,” she hisses. “So I’d much rather keep this secret than make my sister unhappy.”
Every muscle in my body tightens. I know for sure that whatever she says next, I’m not going to like. “What are you suggesting?”
“I was convinced that the only move going forward was to get my sister to leave you,” she admits. “But I was convinced that she didn’t know who you really are. I was so sure that what she felt for you was infatuation, not love.”
I wait patiently. Dread coils low in my gut.
“But talking to my aunt, I realized that Celine doesn’t do infatuation. She doesn’t fall often, but when she does, she falls hard. So if she agreed to marry you, it’s because she really does love you.” She meets my gaze. I watch in real time as the fires in her eyes cool into dense sadness. “Don’t get me wrong—I still think she’s making a mistake. But it’s her life, and her mistake to make. So I’m not going to ask her to leave you. I’m not going to get in the way of your marriage. And that means this baby has to be mine, and mine alone.”
I stride towards her, covering the last of the distance between us. This time, she doesn’t back away from me. She holds her ground and stares up at me with those astonishing hazel eyes.
“You’re asking me to abandon my child. To pretend that I’m not the father. To bury my fucking head in the sand.”
My voice quivers with pent-up fury at the mere suggestion.
The worst part?She’s right.
She’s right and I fucking know it. Even as every bone in my body is screaming to pour lighter fluid on the plan I’ve painstakingly put together over the last few months, to cast it all aside and grab the infuriating woman in front of me to finish what we started on the bed earlier tonight…
I know deep in my marrow that I can’t.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” she agrees. “Are you still going to marry Celine?”
I close my eyes and say the only thing I can say: “Yes.”
She nods. “Then I can only be your sister-in-law, and this baby can only be your niece or nephew. Not your child. Certainly not your heir.”
Everything she’s saying makes sense. Too much sense. Which is exactly why I don’t address it. I snatch her bag off the ground, and then I grab her arm.
“Ow!”
I ignore that just like I’m ignoring all the reasons I shouldn’t be doing this as I drag her up the driveway and back into the house.
“Stop!” she cries out. “Let go of me!” She slips out of my grasp and whirls around to face me, hair mussed into a furious mane around her head. “I can walk up by myself. I know the way.”
“You’re here for as long as I say you are,” I snarl as I get right up in her face. “You got that?”
She meets my eyes for only a fleeting second. I see so many things written on her face.
Fear.
Disgust.
And worst of all…
Hope.
