LITMIR.BIZ

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her father to give her a job at the company’s head office in Whitehall before he’d died—all the while fending off his attempts to find her a ‘suitable’ husband.

      She’d earned the position she had now through hard work and dedication and toughened up enough to take charge of her life. So there was no way on earth she was going to back down from this fight and let Dane Redmond lay some ludicrous guilt trip on her when he was the one who had crushed her and every one of her hopes and dreams. Maybe they had been foolish hopes and stupid pipe dreams, but the callous way he’d done it had been unnecessarily cruel.

      ‘You promised to be there for me,’ she shot back, her fury going some way to mask the hollow pain in her stomach. The same pain she’d sworn never to feel again. ‘You swore you would protect me and support me. But when I needed you the most you weren’t there.’

      ‘What the hell did you need me there for?’ he spat the words out, the brittle light in the icy blue eyes shocking her into silence.

      The fight slammed out of her lungs on a gasp of breath.

      Because in that moment all she could see was his rage.

      The hollow pain became sharp and jagged, tearing through the last of her resistance until all that was left was the horrifying uncertainty that had crippled her as a teenager.

      Why was he so angry with her? When all she’d ever done was try to love him?

      ‘I wanted you to be there for me when I lost our baby,’ she whispered, her voice sounding as if it were coming from another dimension.

      ‘You wanted me to hold your hand while you aborted my kid?’

      ‘What?’ His sarcasm, the sneered disbelief sliced through her, and the jagged pain exploded into something huge.

      ‘You think I don’t know you got rid of it?’

      The accusation in his voice, the contempt, suddenly made a terrible kind of sense.

      ‘But I—’ She tried to squeeze the words past the asteroid in her throat.

      He cut her off. ‘I hitched a ride straight to the Vineyard once I got back on shore. We’d had that fight and you’d left some garbled message on my cell. When I got to your old man’s place he told me there was no baby any more, showed me the divorce papers you’d signed and then had me kicked out. And that’s when I figured out the truth. Daddy’s little princess had decided that my kid was an inconvenience she didn’t need.’

      She didn’t see hatred any more, just a seething resentment, but she couldn’t process any of it. His words buzzed round in her brain like mutant bees which refused to land. Had she signed the divorce papers first? She couldn’t remember doing that. All she could remember was begging to see Dane, and her father showing her Dane’s signature on the documents. And how the sight of his name scrawled in black ink had killed the last tiny remnant of hope still lurking inside her.

      ‘I know the pregnancy was a mistake. Hell, the whole damn marriage was insane,’ Dane continued, his tone caustic with disgust. ‘And if you’d told me that’s what you’d decided to do I would have tried to understand. But you didn’t have the guts to own it, did you? You didn’t even have the guts to tell me that’s what you’d done? So don’t turn up here and pretend you were some innocent kid, seduced by the big bad wolf. Because we both know that’s garbage. There was only one innocent party in the whole screwed-up mess of our marriage and it wasn’t either one of us.’

      She could barely hear him, those mutant killer bees had become a swarm. Her legs began to shake, and the jagged pain in her stomach joined the thudding cacophony in her skull. She locked her knees, wrapped her arms around her midriff and swallowed convulsively, trying to prevent the silent screams from vomiting out of her mouth.

      How could you not know how much our baby meant to me?

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Dane demanded, the contempt turning to reluctant concern.

      She tried to force her shattered thoughts into some semblance of order. But the machete embedded in her head was about to split her skull in two. And she couldn’t form the words.

      ‘Damn it, Red, you look as if you’re about to pass out.’

      Firm hands clamped on her upper arms and became the only thing keeping her upright as her knees buckled.

      The old nickname and the shock of his touch had a blast of memory assaulting her senses—hurtling her back in time to those stolen days on the water in Buzzards Bay: the hot sea air, the shrieks of the cormorants, the scent of salt mixed with the funky aroma of sweat and sex, the devastating joy as his calloused fingers brought her body to vibrant life.

      I didn’t have an abortion.

      She tried to force the denial free from the stranglehold in her throat, but nothing came out.

      I had a miscarriage.

      She heard him curse, felt firm fingers digging into her biceps as the cacophony in her head became deafening. And she stepped over the edge to let herself fall.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      WHAT THE—?

      Dane leapt forward as Xanthe’s eyes rolled back, scooping her dead weight into his arms before she could crash to earth.

      ‘Is Ms Sanders sick?’ Mel appeared, her face blank with shock.

      ‘Her name’s Carmichael.’

      Or, technically speaking, Redmond.

      He barged past his PA, cradling Xanthe against his chest. ‘Call Dr Epstein and tell him to meet me in the penthouse.’

      ‘What—what shall I say happened?’ Mel stammered, nowhere near as steady as usual.

      He knew how she felt. His palms were sweating, his pulse racing fast enough to win the Kentucky Derby.

      Xanthe let out a low moan. He tightened his grip, something hot and fluid hitting him as his fingertips brushed her breast.

      ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he replied. ‘Just tell Epstein to get up there.’

      He threw the words over his shoulder as he strode through the office, past his sponsorship and marketing team, every one of whom was staring at him as if he’d just told them the company had declared bankruptcy.

      Had they heard him shouting at Red like a madman? Letting the fury he’d buried years ago spew out of his mouth?

      Where had that come from?

      He’d lost it—and he never lost it. Not since the day on her father’s estate when he’d gone berserk, determined to see Xanthe no matter what her father said.

      Of course he hadn’t told her that part of the story. The part where he’d made an ass of himself.

      The pulse already pounding in his temple began to throb like a wound. He’d been dog-tired and frantic with worry when he’d arrived at Carmichael’s vacation home, his pride in tatters, his gut clenching at the thought Xanthe had run out on him.

      All that had made him easy prey for the man who hadn’t considered him fit to kiss the hem of his precious daughter’s bathrobe, let alone marry her. He could still see Charles Carmichael’s smug expression, hear that superior I’m-better-than-you tone as the guy told him their baby was gone and that his daughter had made the sensible decision to cut all ties with the piece of trailer trash she should never have married.

      The injustice of it all, the sense of loss, the futile anger had opened up a great big black hole inside him that had been waiting to drag him under ever since he was a little boy. So he’d exploded with rage—and got his butt thoroughly kicked by Carmichael’s goons for his trouble.

      Obviously some of that rage was still lurking in his subconscious. Or he wouldn’t have freaked out

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