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I’m not. I got by fine without him,’ Merry declared, lifting her chin.

      ‘Maybe you did.’ Angel trailed out the word, letting her know he wasn’t convinced by her face-saving claim. ‘But others don’t do so well without paternal guidance. My own mother grew up indulged in every financial way, but essentially without parents who cared enough about her to discipline her. She’s well past fifty now, although she doesn’t look it, but she’s still a rebellious teenager in her own head. I want my daughter to have stability. I don’t want her to go wild when she becomes an adult with the world at her feet along with every temptation.’

      Involuntarily impressed by that argument, Merry shook her head. ‘That’s a long way off and if I don’t stand in the way of her having a relationship with you now, you’ll still be around.’

      Angel lounged back in his chair and crossed an ankle over one knee, long, powerful thigh muscles flexing below tight, faded denim. He looked outrageously relaxed, as if he were posing for a publicity shot, and drop-dead gorgeous from the spill of glossy black curls to the golden caramel brilliance of his eyes. Merry dragged her guilty gaze from his thighs and his crotch, sudden heat rising inside her and burning her cheeks. His hard-boned, thoroughly raunchy masculine beauty broke through her defences every time she looked at him and it made her feel like a breathless fan girl.

      ‘But the bottom line is that unless we marry I won’t be around enough,’ Angel intoned with grim emphasis. ‘I spend at least fifty per cent of the year abroad. I want her to meet my relatives and learn what it means to be a Valtinos...’

      He could have said nothing more calculated to cool Merry’s fevered response to him. Dismay filled her because she understood the message he was giving her. As soon as Elyssa was old enough, Angel would be spiriting her out to Greece, taking her away from her mother, leaving Merry behind, shorn of control of what happened in her child’s life. It was a sobering prospect.

      ‘Did you mean it...what you said about fighting me in court?’ Merry prompted angrily.

      ‘For once in my life I was playing it straight,’ Angel declared.

      ‘But where the heck did all this suddenly come from?’ Merry demanded in heated denial. ‘You didn’t want anything to do with us last winter!’

      ‘It took time for me to come to terms with how I felt about fatherhood. At first I thought the most important objective was to conserve my world as it was. I thought I could turn my back on you and my child but I found that I couldn’t,’ Angel breathed in a roughened undertone as though the words were being extracted forcibly from him. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about her...or you.’

      ‘Me?’ Merry gasped in sharp disbelief. ‘Why would you have been thinking about me?’

      Angel lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in questioning doubt. ‘So, I’m human. Learning that a woman is carrying your child is an unexpectedly powerful discovery—’

      ‘Angel,’ Merry cut in without hesitation, ‘let’s come back down to earth here. Learning that I was pregnant sent you into retreat so fast you left a smoke trail in your wake!’

      ‘And all I learned was that there was no place to run from reality,’ Angel countered with sardonic bite. ‘I fought my curiosity for a long time before I finally gave way to it and asked to see her. You said no repeatedly but here we are now, supposedly acting like adults. I’m trying to be honest... I’m trying not to threaten you but I’ve come to see marriage as the best option for all three of us.’

      ‘You threatened me quite deliberately!’ Merry slung at him furiously.

      ‘You need to know that I’m serious and that this is not some whim that will go away if you wait for long enough. I’m here to stay in your lives,’ Angel intoned harshly.

      ‘Well, that’s going to be rather awkward when it’s not what I want and I will fight you every step of the way!’ Merry flung back at him. ‘You wanted me out of your life and I got out. You can’t force me back.’

      ‘If it means my daughter gets the future she deserves, I will force you,’ Angel bit out in a raw, wrathful undertone as he plunged upright, casting a long dark shadow over the table. ‘You need to accept that this is not just about you and me any more, it’s about her!’

      Merry paled. ‘I do accept that.’

      ‘No, you don’t. You’re still set on punishing me for the selfish decisions I made and that approach isn’t going to get us anywhere. I don’t want to go to court and fight but I will if I have no alternative!’ Angel shot at her furiously, dark golden eyes scorching, his Greek accent edging every vowel with piercing sibilance in the afternoon stillness. ‘When I asked you to marry me I was trying to show respect!’

      ‘You wouldn’t know respect if it bit you on the arse!’ Merry flamed back at him with helpless vulgarity. ‘And I am so sorry I didn’t grovel with gratitude at the offer of a wedding ring the way you obviously expected.’

      ‘No, you’re not sorry!’ Angel roared back at her equally loudly. ‘You enjoyed dragging me over the coals, questioning my motivation and commitment, and not for one minute did you seriously consider what I was offering...’

      ‘Stop shouting at me!’ Merry warned him, reeling in shock from that sudden volatile surge of anger from him, not having appreciated that that rage could lie so close to his seemingly cool surface.

      ‘I’ve said sorry every damn way I know how but you’re after revenge, not a way forward, and there’s nothing I can do to change that!’ Angel growled, throwing open the back door to go back into the house and leave.

      There was sufficient truth in that stormy welter of accusations to draw Merry up short and make her question her attitude. ‘I’m not after revenge...that’s ridiculous!’ she protested weakly, closing a staying hand over his arm as he shot her yet another murderous smouldering glance before turning back to the door.

      Sorry every damn way I know how rang afresh in her ears and tightened her grip on his muscular forearm. ‘Angel, please...let’s calm down.’

      ‘For what good reason would I calm down?’ Angel raked down at her. ‘This was a pointless attempt on my part to change things between us.’

      Her teeth were chattering with nerves. ‘Yes, I can see that but you storming off in a rage is only going to make things worse,’ she muttered ruefully. ‘Maybe I haven’t been fair to you, maybe I haven’t given you a decent hearing, but you came at me with this like a rocket out of nowhere and I don’t adapt quickly to new ideas the way you do!’

      ‘You adapted fast enough to me in bed!’ Angel husked with sizzling clarity.

      ‘That’s your massive ego talking!’ Merry launched back at him irately.

      ‘No, it’s not,’ Angel growled, yanking her up against him, shifting his lithe hips, ensuring she recognised how turned-on he was. ‘You make me want you.’

      ‘It’s my fault?’ Merry carolled in disbelief even as her whole body tilted into his, as magnetised by his arousal as a thirsty plant suddenly placed within reach of water. Little tremors were running through her as she struggled to get a grip on the prickling tightness of her nipples and the heat building between her thighs. An unbearable ache followed that she positively shrank from reliving in his vicinity. She wanted to slap herself, she wanted to slap him, she wanted to freeze the moment and replay it her way, in which she would draw back from him in withering disgust and say something terribly clever and wounding that would hold him at bay.

      ‘You just can’t bring yourself to admit that you’re the same,’ Angel gritted, bending his arrogant dark head, one hand meshing into the tumble of her hair to drag her head back and expose her throat. His mouth found that slender corded column and nipped and tasted up to her ear, awakening a shower of tingling sensation, and she was electrified and dizzy with longing, wanting what she knew she shouldn’t, wanting with a hunger suppressed and denied for too many

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