Million-Dollar Love-Child
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She caught her breath, trapped by the burning heat in his eyes and the tense, pulsing atmosphere in the room. All at once she was transported back to long, lazy afternoons making love on his bed, in the swimming pool—afternoons that had stretched into evenings that had stretched into mornings.
She swallowed as she remembered the slow, throbbing, intense heat of those days.
No, Brazilians certainly didn’t rush anything.
‘The deadline is tomorrow night.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘So many shoes, so little time. You think I will just give you the money and let you go? Is that what you think?’
She swallowed, hypnotised by the look in his eyes. ‘Luc—’
‘Let’s look at the facts, shall we?’ Lean bronzed fingers beat a slow, menacing rhythm on the glass table. ‘You clearly hold me responsible for seducing you seven years ago. You come into my office ignoring the past as though it is a vile disease that you could catch again if you stay close to me for long enough.’ His gaze swept over her. ‘Everything about you is buttoned up. You are wearing your clothes like armour, protecting yourself and the truth is—’ he leaned towards her, his dark eyes mocking ‘—you are afraid of those things I made you feel, are you not? You are afraid of your own response to me. That is why you deny your feelings. It is so much easier to pretend that they don’t exist.’
The breath she’d been about to take lodged in her throat. ‘I don’t feel anything—’
He gave a lethal smile. ‘You forget, minha docura, that I was once intimately acquainted with every delicious inch of you. I know the signs. I recognise that flush on your cheeks, I recognise the way your eyes glaze and your lips part just before you beg me to kiss you.’
Completely unsettled by his words, Kimberley rose to her feet so quickly she almost knocked the chair over. ‘You’re insufferably arrogant!’
Her heart was pounding heavily and everything about her whole body suddenly felt warm and tingly.
‘I’m honest,’ he drawled, swivelling in his seat so that he could survey her from under slightly lowered lids, ‘which is more than you have ever been, I suspect. It is so much easier to blame me, is it not, than to accept responsibility yourself? Why is it that you find sex so shameful, I wonder?’
She couldn’t catch her breath properly. ‘Because sex should be part of a loving relationship,’ she blurted out before she could stop herself and he gave a smile that was totally male.
‘If you believe that then clearly maturity has added nothing to your ability to face facts.’
Tears pricked her eyes. ‘Why are you so cynical?’
He shrugged. ‘I am realistic and, like most men, I don’t need the pretence of love to justify enjoying good sex.’
How had she ever allowed herself to become involved with this man?
They were just so different. ‘I—I hate you—’
‘You don’t hate me—’ his relaxed pose was in complete contrast to her rising tension ‘—but I know you think you do, which makes this whole situation more intriguing by the minute. You would so much rather be anywhere else but here. Which makes your greed all the more deplorable. You must want money very badly to risk walking into the dragon’s den.’
‘I’ve told you why I need the money and this situation has nothing to do with us—we’ve both moved on.’ Her fingers curled into her palms. ‘I know you’re not still interested in me, any more than I’m still interested in you.’
‘Is that a fact?’ His voice was a deep, dark drawl and he lounged in his seat with careless ease, contemplating her with lazy amusement. ‘And what if you’re wrong? What if I am still interested in you?’
Her mouth dried. ‘You’re being ridiculous.’
‘A word of advice—’ His voice was suddenly soft and his eyes glittered, dark and dangerous. ‘When you’re trying to relieve someone of an indecent sum of money, don’t accuse them of being ridiculous.’
She swallowed. How could she ever have thought she was a match for this man? She was a different person around him. Her brain didn’t move and her tongue didn’t form the right words.
She should never have come, she thought helplessly. ‘If you won’t lend me the money then there’s no more to be said.’
She’d failed.
Panic threatened to choke her and she curled her fingers into her palms and walked towards the door.
‘Walk out of that door and you won’t be allowed back in,’ he informed her in silky tones. ‘Come back and sit down.’
Would he be ordering her to sit down if he had no intention of lending her the money?
Hope mingled with caution and she turned, her hand on the door handle and her heart in her mouth.
‘I said, sit down.’ His strong face was expressionless and, with barely any hesitation, she did as he ordered and then immediately hated herself for being that predictable. For doing exactly what he said.
Wasn’t that what her whole life had been like for that one month they’d spent together? He’d commanded and she’d obeyed, too much in love and in lust to even think of resisting. Completely overwhelmed by him in every way. And here she was, seven years on, in his company for less than an hour and still obeying his every command.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen that way again.
She wasn’t that person any more, and being in the same room as him didn’t make her that person.
Her expression was defiant as she looked at him. ‘It’s a simple question, Luc. Yes or no. It doesn’t matter whether I sit or stand and it doesn’t matter whether I leave the room. All the information you need is in that letter in front of you.’
The letter he clearly thought was a fake.
She watched in despair as he gave a casual shrug and pushed it away from him in a gesture of total indifference. ‘I have no interest in the letter or in your stories about phantom pregnancies. What does interest me, meu amorzinho, is the fact that you came to me.’
She froze. ‘I already told you, I—’
‘I heard—’ he interrupted her gently, ‘you came to me to tell me you would do absolutely anything for five million dollars and now I simply have to decide exactly what form absolutely anything is going to take. When I’ve worked it out, you’ll be the first to know.’
CHAPTER THREE
BACK in her hotel room, Kimberley dragged off the jacket of her suit and dropped on to the bed, fighting off tears of frustration and anxiety.
She’d blown it. She’d totally blown it.
She’d planned to be calm and rational, to tell him the facts and explain the reasons for having kept Rio’s birth a secret from him for so long. But from the moment he’d walked into the room her plans had flown out of the window.
She’d been catapulted back into the past.
And she had less than twenty-four hours before the deadline came and went. Less than twenty-four hours in which to persuade a man with no morals or human decency to deposit five million dollars into the blackmailer’s bank account.
The blackmailer he didn’t even believe existed.
She took several deep breaths, struggling to hold herself together emotionally. It had been the hardest thing in the world to leave her child at this point in time, when all her instincts as a mother told her to keep him close. But she had known that to bring him on this trip would have been to expose him to even greater danger. And she’d hoped that she would only be in Rio de Janeiro for two days at the most. And after that—
She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. She hadn’t dared think further than this meeting. Hadn’t dared think what would happen if Luc refused to lend her the money.
Even now, with the letter still lurking in her handbag, she couldn’t quite believe that this was happening. Couldn’t believe that someone, somewhere, had discovered the truth about her child’s parentage. She’d been so careful and yet somehow they knew.
And she’d left her son with the only person in the world that she trusted. The man who was a father figure to him.
As if by telepathy the phone in her bag rang and she answered it swiftly.
‘Is he all right?’
Jason’s voice came back, reassuringly familiar. ‘He’s fine. Stop fussing.’ They’d agreed not to discuss any details on the phone. ‘How are you? Any luck your end?’
Kimberley felt the panic rise again. ‘Not yet.’ She couldn’t bring herself to tell Jason that Luc didn’t believe her. Part of her was still hoping for a miracle.
‘But Luc agreed to see you this time? You met with him?’
Kimberley’s fingers tightened on the phone. ‘Oh, yes.’ And her whole body was still humming and tingling as a result of that encounter. ‘But he won’t give me an answer. He’s playing games.’
‘Did he fall on bended knee and beg your forgiveness for treating you so shoddily?’
Kimberley tipped her head back and struggled with tears as she recalled every detail of their explosive meeting. ‘Not exactly—’
‘I don’t suppose “sorry” is in his vocabulary.’ Jason gave a short laugh that was distinctly lacking in humour. ‘Hang in there. If he doesn’t come banging on your door in the next hour then he isn’t the man I think he is.’
Banging on her door? Why would he do that?
Kimberley gave a sigh. She knew only too well that Luc Santoro didn’t go round banging on women’s doors. Usually they fell at his feet and he just scooped them out of his path and dropped them in his bed until he’d had enough of them.
‘I wish I had your confidence. What if he refuses?’
‘He won’t refuse. Have courage.’ Jason’s voice was firm. ‘But I still think we should talk to the police.’
‘No!’ She sat bolt upright on the bed and swept her tangled hair out of her eyes. ‘Not the police. You saw the note. You know what that man threatened to do—’
‘All right. But if you change your mind—’
‘I won’t change my mind.’ She wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize the safety of her child. ‘All I want is to deposit the money in his account as he instructed. I don’t want to do anything that might upset him or give him reason to hurt Rio.’
Limp with the heat and exhaustion, Kimberley snapped the phone shut and lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. For a moment she questioned her decision to stay in this small hotel with no air-conditioning in a slightly dubious part of Rio de Janeiro. At the time it had seemed the right thing to do because she didn’t want to squander money, but now, with the perspiration prickling her skin and her head throbbing, she wished she’d chosen somewhere else. She was hot, she was miserable and she hadn’t eaten or slept since the letter had arrived two days previously.
Instead she’d spent the time pacing the floor of her London flat, planning strategy with Jason. It had been hard to act as if nothing was wrong in front of her little boy. Even harder to board a plane to Rio de Janeiro without him, because apart from the time he spent at school or playing with friends, they were hardly ever apart.
She’d stayed at home when he was little and, with the help of Jason, a top fashion photographer who she’d met when she was modelling, she’d started working from home, selling her own designs of jewellery. She’d managed to fit her working hours around caring for her new baby and she’d worked hard to push all thoughts and memories of Luc Santoro out of her system.
And she’d dealt with the enormous guilt by telling herself that there were some men who just weren’t cut out to be fathers and Luc was definitely one of them. He was a man like her father—a man who shifted his attention from one woman to the next without any thought of commitment—and she vowed that no child of hers was ever going to experience the utter misery and chronic insecurity that she’d suffered as a child.
Finding the heat suddenly intolerable, Kimberley sprang to her feet and stripped off the rest of her clothes before padding barefoot into the tiny bathroom in an attempt to seek relief from the unrelenting humidity.
The shower could barely be described as such, but it was sufficient to cool her heated flesh and she washed and dried herself and then slid into clean underwear and collapsed back on to the bed, wishing that the ceiling fan worked.
‘Presumably this is all part of your plan to gain the sympathy vote, staying in a hotel with no air-conditioning in a part of town that even the police avoid.’ His deep, dark drawl came from the doorway and she gave a gasp of shock and sprang off the bed.
She hadn’t even heard the door open.
‘You can’t just walk in here!’ She made a grab for her robe and dragged it around herself, self-conscious and just horrified that he’d caught her in such a vulnerable state. Her hair was hanging in dark, damp coils down her back and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. She felt completely unprepared for a confrontation with a man like him. ‘You should have knocked!’
‘You should have locked the door.’ He strolled into the room and closed the door firmly behind him, turning the key with a smooth, deliberate movement. ‘In this part of town, you can’t be too careful.’
Hands shaking, she tied the robe at the waist, still glaring at him. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was under the impression that you wanted an urgent answer to your request for funds.’ He strolled across the cramped, airless room and stared out of the smeared window into the grimy, litter infested street below. His broad shoulders all but obliterated the light in the room and she couldn’t see his face. ‘If your finances are in this bad a state, perhaps you ought to be asking me for more than five million.’
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She could hardly breathe, trapped in this tiny, airless room with Luc Santoro, who dominated every inch of available space with his powerful body. He was still wearing the sleek business suit and the jacket moulded to his shoulders, hinting at masculine strength and power. His glossy hair brushed the collar of his white silk shirt, just on the edges of what would be considered respectable in the cut-throat world of corporate finance. His hard jaw betrayed the tell-tale signs of dark stubble and at that precise moment, even dressed in the suit, he looked more bandit than businessman.
He was wickedly, dangerously attractive and with a rush of horror she felt her nipples harden and push against the soft fabric of her robe.
Mortified by her own reaction, she wrapped her arms around her waist and tried to remind herself that none of that mattered. It didn’t matter how her body reacted to this man. This time around, her brain was running the show and all that mattered was her child.
Would he agree to the loan? Would he have come in person if he was going to refuse to help her? Surely he would have sent a minion—one of the thousands of people who worked into the night to ensure that the Santoro empire kept multiplying.
‘I’ve already told you that the money isn’t for me.’ Nervous and self-conscious, she blurted the words out before she could stop herself. ‘I don’t know what else to do to convince you.’
He turned to face her, his voice soft. ‘To be honest, I’m not particularly interested in your reasons for wanting the money. What does interest me is what you intend to give me in return for my—’he lingered over the word thoughtfully ‘—let’s call it an investment, shall we?’
There was something in his eyes that made her suddenly wary and nerves flickered in her stomach, her feminine senses suddenly on full alert. ‘I don’t understand—’
‘No?’ He moved away from the window. ‘Then allow me to give you a basic lesson in business.’ His voice was smooth and he watched her with the unflinching gaze of a hunter studying its prey for weakness. ‘A business deal is an exchange of favours. No more. No less. I have something you want. You have something I want.’
Feeling as though she was missing something important, her heart beat faster and she licked dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I have nothing that you can possibly want. So I assume you’re saying no.’
He lifted a hand and trailed a lean, strong finger down her cheek. ‘I’m saying that I’m willing to negotiate.’ His finger lingered at the corner of her mouth and his smile was disconcerting. ‘I will give you money but I want something in return.’
Not his son.
Dear God, please don’t let him ask for his son.
Trying to ignore the sudden flip of her stomach, she stared at him helplessly, hardly daring to breathe. ‘What?’ What else did she have to offer that could possibly be of interest to him? Her flat in London was ridiculously modest by his standards and she had few other assets. ‘What is it you want?’
Not Rio. Please, not Rio—
His hand slid into her hair and his eyes didn’t shift from hers. ‘You.’ He said the word with simple clarity. ‘I want you, minha docura. Back in my bed. Naked. Until I give you permission to get dressed and leave.’
There was a stunned silence. A stunned silence while parts of her body heated to melting point under the raw sexuality she saw in his dark gaze.
She couldn’t believe she’d heard him correctly.
He wanted her?
Relief that he hadn’t mentioned Rio mingled with a shivering, helpless excitement that she didn’t understand.
Somehow she managed to speak, but her voice was a disbelieving croak. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I never joke about sex.’
‘But why?’ The blood pounded in her ears and she felt alarmingly dizzy. She wished he’d move away from her. He was too close. ‘Why would you want me in your bed? We’ve been there, done that—’
His eyes burned into hers. ‘And I want to do it again.’ He gave a lazy, predatory smile. ‘And again. And again—’
The air jammed in her lungs. ‘You can have any woman you want—’
‘Good,’ he said silkily, withdrawing his hand from her hair slowly, as if he were reluctant to let her go. ‘Then that’s settled.’
He stood with his legs planted firmly apart, in full control mode, completely confident that he could manipulate any situation to his advantage.
‘Hold on.’ She wished desperately that she hadn’t taken off the crisp business suit. It was hard to maintain an icy distance dressed in a virtually transparent robe, especially when the conversation was about sex. ‘Are you saying that you’ll give me the money if I agree to—’ she broke off, having difficulty getting her tongue around the words ‘—sleep with you?’
‘Not sleep, no.’ His mouth curved into a slow smile that mocked her hesitation. ‘I can assure you that there will be very little sleeping involved.’
Her mouth dried and she hugged the robe more closely around herself, as if to protect herself from the feelings that shot through her body. ‘It’s a ridiculous suggestion.’
Winged dark brows came together in a sharp frown. ‘What’s ridiculous about it? I’m merely renewing a relationship.’
‘A relationship?’ Her voice rose. ‘We did not have a relationship, Luc, we had sex!’ Relentless, mindless, incredible sex that had neutralized her ability to think straight.
Someone in the next room thumped on the wall and Kimberley closed her eyes in embarrassment.
Luc didn’t even register the interruption, his handsome face as inscrutable as ever. ‘Sex. Relationships.’ He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘It’s all the same thing.’
Her eyes flew wide and she stared at him in appalled dismay. ‘No! It is not the same thing, Luc!’ She was so outraged she could hardly breathe and she barely remembered to lower her voice. ‘It is not the same thing at all! Not that I’d expect a man with your Neanderthal, macho tendencies to understand that.’
He clearly hadn’t changed a bit!
Luc shrugged, supremely indifferent to her opinion. ‘Women want different things from men, it’s an acknowledged fact. I don’t need fluffy romantic to make me feel OK about good sex, but if fluffy romantic makes you feel better then that’s your choice.’
Her jaw dropped. He just didn’t have a clue. ‘I can’t believe you’d think I’d even consider such a proposition. What sort of woman do you think I am?’
‘One who needs five million dollars and is willing to do “absolutely anything” to get it.’ He was brutal in his assessment of the situation. ‘I have something you want. You have something I want. This is a business deal at its most basic.’
It was typical of Luc that he viewed sex as just another commodity, she thought helplessly. Typical that he thought he could just buy whatever he wanted. ‘What you’re suggesting is immoral.’
‘It’s honest. But you’re not that great at being honest about your feelings, are you?’ His gaze locked on hers with burning intent. ‘Tell me that you haven’t lain in your bed at night unable to sleep because you’re thinking about me. Tell me that your body doesn’t burn for my touch. Tell me that you’re not remembering what it was like between us.’
Her breathing grew shallow. She didn’t want to remember something she’d spent seven years learning to forget.
Kimberley licked dry lips and her stomach dropped. ‘You’re prepared to pay to go to bed with a woman, Luc?’ She struggled to keep her tone light, not to betray just how much he’d unsettled her. ‘You must have lost your touch.’
‘You think so?’ He smiled. ‘There is nothing wrong with my touch, meu amorzinho, as you will discover the moment you say yes. And, as for paying—’he gave a dismissive shrug ‘—I can be a very generous lover when I want to be. The money is nothing. Call it a gift. Only this time I will pay you for your services up front to save you the bother of taking the money afterwards.’
Her desperate need for the money warred with her own powerful sense of self-preservation. It had taken her years to recover from the fallout of their relationship. Years to rebuild her life. How could she even contemplate putting herself back in that position?
She knew from bitter experience that he was incapable of connecting with a woman on any level other than the physical. He was incapable of showing or even feeling emotion. He’d break her heart again if she was foolish enough to let him.
Except that this time she wasn’t an idealistic teenager, she reminded herself. Her expectations were realistic. This time round she knew the man she was dealing with. Understood his shortcomings. Understood that he wasn’t capable of a relationship.
And, most of all, this time she would have more sense than to fall in love with him.
She almost laughed at her own thoughts. She was weighing up the facts as if she had a decision to make but the truth was there was no decision to make. What choice did she have?
Given the circumstances, how could she say no?
The only thing that mattered was her son.
So what were Luc’s reasons? Why would he want her back when he’d been so determined to end their relationship all those years before?
‘Why do you want this when our relationship was over years ago?’ She just couldn’t bring herself to refer to it as sex, even though that was what it had been. ‘I just don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you?’ His gaze dropped to her mouth and his dark eyes heated with molten sexuality. ‘We have unfinished business, meu amorzinho, as you well know.’
Her heart thudded hard against her chest. ‘I need time to think about it.’ Time to talk herself into doing something that left her almost breathless with panic.
‘You can have ten seconds,’ he offered in a smooth tone, glancing around the basic, threadbare room with an expression of appalled distaste. ‘And then we’re leaving.’
‘Ten seconds?’ How she wished she’d booked a room with air-conditioning. It was too hot to think properly and she needed to think. Just in case there was an alternative—‘That’s ridiculous! You can’t expect me to make a decision that quickly!’
‘And yet it was you who said that you needed the money immediately,’ he reminded her, thick dark lashes shielding his expression, ‘you who told me there was no time to linger over this decision. The blackmailer is waiting, is he not?’
His tone dripped sarcasm and she stared at him helplessly, looking for a hint of softness, a chink in that solid armour plating which might suggest that for him this arrangement was about something deeper than just animal hunger.