LITMIR.BIZ

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I want to be able to see Molly regularly. I want to be part of her life.’

      Lea took a deep breath. Since he was the one saving Molly’s life, that wasn’t unexpected. She would watch him like a hawk until she could determine whether he was a man like her father…or something else.

      She nodded slowly. ‘Agreed.’

      Reilly looked at her, his dark gaze unfathomable, probing, intense. The hairs on Lea’s neck stood to attention and her skin tingled.

      ‘And second…’

      Here it comes. He was going to ask her for a physical com-mitment. A tiny part of her wasn’t dreading it. She remembered every moment from five years ago and the primal haven that was his embrace.

      ‘…I want custody of the child we make together.’

      Gravity suddenly altered its fundamental principles. Lea would have gone down if not for Reilly’s iron grip on her upper arm.

      ‘Given the sacrifice I’m making, it seems a reasonable trade,’ he said. ‘You get Molly’s cordblood, I get an heir.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      LEA’S skin prickled despite the morning heat. To find hope only to have it ripped violently away again…Her hands shook. Her voice was strained.

      ‘No.’

      ‘Lea, think about—’

      ‘No!’ She marched off toward her house, heart thumping painfully. She needed to be close to Molly right now. Badly. How could he think, even for a moment, that she would…could…? Her chest tightened like a slingshot. She spun round, wounded beyond measure that he thought that of her. ‘You cannot ask that. It’s not fair.’

      ‘How fair was it to rob me of a child? To bring her to me only when you needed something?’

      ‘I had no choice!’

      ‘Neither do I, Lea. You’re handing me a miracle. How can I just shrug that off?’ He pursued her across the house-paddock, snagged her arm and spun her back round to him. ‘I remember something you said when we were together, about how discon-nected you felt from the world.’

      ‘I said way too much that weekend.’ Her determination to keep her distance had lasted all of an hour. After that first sweet time together, she’d opened up to him like he was her confes-sor, believing she’d never see him again.

      ‘I don’t have to tell you about loneliness, Lea. Surely you can understand why your request might be like a beacon in the darkness? The chance I believed I’d never have?’

      Lea’s chest lifted and fell with her tumbling thoughts. Of course she could understand it. Molly had been her own beacon, even the very idea of Molly. It was why it had been so easy for her subconscious to subvert her morals five years ago and keep the pregnancy a secret. Her father had done such a prize job on her trust in men—in anyone—she’d given up any hope of meeting someone to have a child with. To have one simply gifted to her…It had felt very fated. Divine.

      Was that how he was feeling? Damn him. ‘Reilly, you’re asking me to give you my child.’

      ‘And you’re asking me to give you mine.’

      Lea blinked furiously, realising for the first time just how much she was asking. Her mind worked frantically to find escape. ‘Do you have any idea how to be a father? How will you possibly raise a child alone?’

      ‘You managed.’ He rushed on as Lea opened her mouth. ‘And, before you play the “I’m a woman” card, ask yourself whether you’d accept that if you were in my position.’

      Lea’s mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth.

      He stepped closer. ‘I’m granting you the last of my sperm. What you need to save Molly. I understand the price is high but so are the stakes for me.’

      She stared at him through watery eyes. ‘It’s more than high. I can’t do it.’

      Reilly stiffened his back. ‘Then I’ll fight you for Molly.’

      ‘No!’ The fierce yell practically tore its way out of her constricted throat.

      Reilly stood his ground and pointed at her heaving chest. ‘There, Lea. Take those feelings you’re only barely managing to suppress and multiply them by one hundred. That’s how you’re going to feel if you walk away from this chance—Molly’s last chance—and she dies.’

      It was all too easy to imagine how that day would feel. She thought about it every day. Lea’s whole body shook. Months of suppressed agony, of having to be strong for Molly while fearing the worst, hit her full in the chest. She nearly crumpled.

      Nearly. At the last second she swayed back into a surer position. Her voice was thick and strained. ‘There must be some other way.’

      His hoarse laugh grated on already tattered nerves. ‘Sure—you could marry me and raise the baby together.’

      She smiled tightly at him. ‘I’ll pass, thank you. When I said you were my last choice, I meant it.’

      His lips thinned. ‘What happened to you doing whatever it takes to save Molly?’

      ‘You can’t tell me that’s your preference?’ she gaped.

      ‘Tie myself to a woman who lied and cheated me out of a child? Who only surfaces when she wants something, and who asks me to be a stud-bull?’ His contempt was palpable. ‘You even need to ask?’

      Silence. Goff snorted in his paddock.

      Finally Reilly spoke. ‘I’ve told you what I want, the terms under which I’m prepared to help Molly.’

      Lea’s snarl was heartfelt. ‘What sort of a man sets terms on saving his daughter’s life?’

      Brown eyes blazed. ‘A desperate one.’

      Lea clung to the doorframe and watched Molly sleep. Tired as she still was, she slumbered deep and long, her breathing shallow, her skin almost translucent. Surrounded by her toys, she looked for all the world like she was laid out in state.

      Macabre but at peace.

      Few days were peaceful for Molly, and they were getting fewer. She’d gone far beyond benefiting from treatment; it was now essentially for survival. Without the stem cells, Molly wouldn’t live to go to school.

      What Reilly was asking was effectively blackmail. To put such a condition on the life of a child. It was why she’d thrown him and his selfish needs off her property, sent him packing back to Minamurra.

      What sort of a man wouldn’t give up even the last of his sperm to save a dying child?

      A desperate one, he’d said.

      Not so desperate he hadn’t thought the finer details through and laid it all out for Lea as she’d stared, horrified, at him. She would carry the baby to term and doctors could harvest the umbilical stem cells. Then she and Molly would head back to Yurraji, and the baby would be packed off with a nice big tin of formula to the home of a man with no wife who knew nothing about rearing children. He didn’t even have brothers and sisters to have learned from.

      It meant nothing that she’d seen a softer side to him five years ago, a side that had potential to grow into the sort of patience and compassion required in a parent. She’d seen not a hint of that today. Or yesterday. The new Reilly Martin was one-hundred percent diamond-ore; cold, hard and unmoveable.

      She shook her head. This was the man she’d let into Molly’s life. Molly she could at least buffer, but she couldn’t protect a new child, living alone three hours away with a monster.

      Reilly’s minimal interactions with Molly flashed through her mind like a reluctant slideshow—how instinctively gentle he’d been with her. Okay, so he wasn’t likely to be a total monster, but

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