LITMIR.BIZ

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a gaze on him. “For what exactly do you believe I owe you an explanation?”

      “Don’t pull that ice princess crap on me, Tori. You know damn well what this is about.” He took a step that left him towering over her and Victoria swallowed dryly at the banked rage she saw burning in his eyes. “Esme. I want to know who that little girl belongs to and I want to know now.”

      “Me.” A healthy surge of anger roared through her and her back snapped straighter than a yardstick even as her heart settled down to a more manageable tempo. Tilting her chin up at him, she met his furious gaze head-on. “Esme belongs to me. She’s my daughter.”

      “And mine,” he snarled. “A not-so-minor little detail I never would have known about if I hadn’t come here today.”

      She might have categorically denied his parentage if she’d just had a moment to think things through. After all, they’d religiously used condoms that week. But over the course of the current past two weeks, her father had been murdered, her brother had disappeared and she’d packed up and moved everything she owned from one side of the world to the other. Add to that the father of her child dropping into her life from out of the blue and her mind had turned to chop suey. Besides, what was the point? She had a feeling he knew that her fling with him had been unusual enough. She’d sustained too many shocks and was worn to a nub—she simply didn’t have the wherewithal to pull off the pretense that she’d gone straight from his bed to someone else’s.

      Still, his gall made her gape and she had to snap her sagging jaw shut. “You’ll have to excuse me, Rocket, or John, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days, if I find your self-righteousness just a little hard to swallow. How do you suggest I should have informed you—sent a letter to the U.S. Marine Corps addressed to Rocket, last name unknown? And tell me, during the two months it took me to see beyond the fact we’d used protection to realize my flu-that-wouldn’t-go-away was actually the first stages of pregnancy, where were you? Sleeping with other women you knew only by their first names? Regaling your buddies with all the details of our time together?”

      “No. Dammit, Tori, I never said a word to anyone.”

      Ignoring the little surge of satisfaction she got from hearing him deny the charge, she clung grimly to her indignation. “Why not—that was your usual MO, wasn’t it? The night we met, one of your buddies made a point of warning me you liked to kiss and tell. That you were real big on sharing the particulars with your friends, right down to the last moan.” And the thought of him sharing the specifics of their time together had chewed on her for months after she’d cut and run.

      “Oh, let me guess—Bantam, right? The same guy who tried everything in his arsenal to get you to leave with him instead?” Hands thrust in his pockets, Rocket stared at her for a moment before essaying a curt shrug. “Still, it’s true enough. That was my MO…until you.”

      “Uh-huh.” Skepticism permeated the erstwhile agreement. “Because I was so special, I suppose. Just what kind of fool do you take me for?” She threw up a hand even as he opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t answer that. The fact that I left with you despite the warning makes me too many kinds of an idiot to list.” She could still recall the heart-pounding excitement of his company, though—remembered too clearly that feverish and dangerous feeling of being swept away by something beyond her control.

      It had seemed particularly delicious because she’d come so close to passing on the Pensacola trip. Her accommodations were at the type of swinging singles resort she’d been raised to shun, so when the architectural firm she worked for presented her with a gift certificate as a thank-you for creating the design that had won them a lucrative new account, she’d fully intended to let it quietly expire. But, God, she’d been proud—not only of her work, but of the appreciation her bosses had shown her. And she’d been eager to share it with her father.

      She should have known he’d blow her off. At the very least, she shouldn’t have been surprised—nothing she’d done was ever good enough for him. Once again, however, he’d managed to stagger her with his lack of affection. But this time, when he’d skipped right over her accomplishment to arrogantly proclaim that of course she wouldn’t step foot in a resort that had no more taste than to bill itself as Club Paradise, she’d rebelled.

      However much the vacation may have started out as a screw-you to her dad, though, it had changed into something else entirely the minute she’d met Rocket. She’d found being with him a thrill a minute, arousing and terrifying and increasingly addictive. He’d made her feel so—

      Stiffening her backbone against memories that managed to grab her by the throat even now, she pinned him with a stern look. “Don’t think my being a fool means you get to take the high road. You never made the least effort to contact me and you sure as heck never gave me any personal information when we were together that would make finding you feasible. I didn’t even know what part of the country you were stationed in. So I made the decision to keep my baby, and I battled my father’s demands that I rid myself of it before it could reflect badly on him.”

      He stilled. “Your father wanted you to have an abortion?”

      “Either that or marry the investment banker of his choice.”

      Something savage flashed in his eyes, but just as quickly it vanished, and his expression grew remote. “Okay, so we’ve established you had no expectation of being able to contact me when you discovered you were pregnant.” His tone contained the same cool politeness he’d used to call her ma’am earlier, but his eyes burned with the devil’s own fire, holding not the tiniest vestige of polite objectivity as they drilled into hers. “That doesn’t begin to address your failure to mention Esme or her relationship to me since I arrived.”

      “Are you serious?” Staring at him, she could see that he was. “Well, what can I say, Rocket? Coming face-to-face with a man I haven’t seen in six years took me a bit by surprise.” The edge of bitterness in her own voice shocked her. Reminding herself she was an adult, she drew a deep breath, grabbed hold of her manners before they could slip-slide their way right into oblivion and exhaled quietly. “I apologize. That wasn’t civil.”

      His mouth twisted. “God-frigging-forbid we should be uncivilized.”

      Yes, well, not all of us have the luxury of verbalizing every thought that pops into our head. Unclenching her teeth, Victoria inquired with hard-won equanimity, “Then how about this? I have a well-adjusted little girl, and for all that I remember you as a very nice guy, I also recall that long-lasting relationships weren’t exactly your forte. I have no reason to assume that’s changed.” An edge of hardness crept into her voice and she didn’t attempt to soften it. “Frankly, I don’t care how nice you may or may not be. I will fight to the death before I’ll allow Esme to be exposed to a father who flits in and out of her life like Peter Pan.”

      His eyes grew fiercer yet. “I have news for you, honey—I was never the Peter Pan type. I might have been a partier when we met, but not wanting to grow up was never the problem. Set aside the fact that I was first and foremost a Marine, which by definition is a person of credibility. I grew up rough and I grew up fast, at an age, by God, younger than most. You want to exchange resumes on responsibility? I was out dodging bullets and eating mud while you were still attending your posh little schools for pampered princesses.”

      “So what is it that you want, Rocket?” For a moment, watching his grim face, she could see the warrior in him and she couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice to save her soul. “Visitation rights? Custody every other weekend and two weeks every summer?” That was the last thing the man she’d known would want.

      And perhaps he hadn’t changed all that much, because the question seemed to stop him in his tracks. He simply stared at her while a look that in any other man she might have construed as panic crossed his face. Then he blinked, and his expression resumed that noncommittal blankness at which he was so adept. But his voice was wary when he said, “Visitation rights?”

      “I assume that’s where all this indignation is leading.” And she didn’t even want to consider the idea. When she’d found

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