LITMIR.BIZ

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aback.

      He didn’t believe her?

      She’d prepared herself for anger and recrimination. She’d braced herself to be on the receiving end of his hot Brazilian temper. She’d been prepared to explain why she hadn’t told him seven years before. But it hadn’t once crossed her mind that he might not believe her.

      ‘You seriously think I’d joke about something like that?’

      He gave a casual shrug. ‘I admit it’s in pretty poor taste, but some women will stoop to just about anything to get a man to fork out. And I presume that’s what you want? More money?’

      It was exactly what she wanted but not for any of the reasons he seemed to be implying.

      Her mouth opened and shut and she swallowed hard, totally out of her depth. She hadn’t even entertained the possibility that he wouldn’t believe her and she honestly didn’t know what to say next. She’d geared herself up for this moment and it wasn’t going according to her script.

      ‘Why wouldn’t you believe me?’

      ‘Possibly because women don’t suddenly turn up after seven years of silence and announce that they’re pregnant.’

      ‘I didn’t say I was p-pregnant,’ she stammered, appalled and frustrated that he refused to take her seriously. ‘I told you, he’s six. He was born precisely forty weeks after we had—after you—’ She broke off, blushing furiously, and his gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered and then lifted again.

      ‘After I had my wicked way with you? You’re so repressed you can’t even bring yourself to say the word “sex”.’ His dark eyes mocked her gently and she bit her lip, wishing she was more sophisticated—better equipped to deal with this sort of situation. Verbal sparring wasn’t her forte and yet she was dealing with a master.

      He’d wronged her and yet suddenly she felt as though she should be apologising. ‘You’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell you this before—’

      ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

      ‘You threw me out, Luc,’ she reminded him in a shaky voice, ‘and you refused to see me or take my calls. You treated me abominably.’

      ‘Relationships end every day of the week,’ he drawled in a tone of total indifference. ‘Stop being so dramatic.’

      ‘I was pregnant!’ She rose to her feet, shaking with emotion, goaded into action by his total lack of remorse. ‘I decided that you ought to know about your child. I tried to tell you so many times but you cut me out of your life. And you hurt me. You hurt me so badly that I decided that no child of mine was going to have you as a father. And that’s why I didn’t tell you.’ She broke off, waiting for an angry reaction on his part, waiting for him to storm and rant that she hadn’t told him sooner.

      Instead he raised an eyebrow expectantly. ‘Seven years and this is the best you can come up with?’

      She stared at him blankly, unable to comprehend his callous indifference. ‘Do you think I made that decision lightly? Have you any idea what making a decision like that does to a person? I felt screwed up with guilt, Luc! I was depriving my son of a father and I knew that one day I’d have to answer to him for that.’ She broke off and dragged a shuddering breath into her starving lungs. ‘I have felt guilty every single day for the last seven years. Every single day.’

      ‘Yes, well, that’s another woman thing—guilt,’ Luc said helpfully, ‘and I suppose that all this guilt suddenly overwhelmed you and that’s why you’ve suddenly decided to share your joyous news with me?’

      She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re behaving like this. Do you know how hard it was for me to come here today? Have you any idea?’ He was even more unfeeling than she’d believed possible. How could she feel guilt? She should be proud that she’d protected her son from this man. But the time for protection had passed and, unfortunately for everyone, she now needed his help. She couldn’t afford the luxury of cutting him out of her life. ‘What do I have to do to prove that I’m telling the truth?’

      Luc turned his head and glanced towards the door expectantly. ‘Produce him.’ He lifted broad shoulders in a careless shrug. ‘That should do the trick.’

      She looked at him in disbelief. ‘You seriously think I’d drag a six-year-old all the way to Brazil to meet a man who doesn’t even know he’s a father? This is a huge thing, Luc. We need to discuss how we’re going to handle it. How we’re going to tell him. It needs to be a joint decision.’

      There was a sardonic gleam in his dark eyes. ‘Well, that’s going to be a problem, isn’t it? I don’t do joint decisions. Never have, never will. I’m unilateral all the way, meu amorzinho. But in this case it really doesn’t matter because we both know that this so called “son” of yours, oh, sorry—’ he corrected himself with an apologetic smile and a lift of his hand ‘—I should say son of “ours”, shouldn’t I?—is a figment of your greedy, money-grabbing imagination. So it would be impossible for you to produce him. Unless you hired someone to play the part. Have you?’

      Kimberley gaped at him.

      He was an utter bastard!

      How could she have forgotten just how cold and unfeeling he was? What a low opinion of women he had? How could she have thought, even for a moment, that she’d made a mistake in not persisting in her attempts to tell him that she was expecting his child? At the time she’d decided that she could never expose a child of hers to a man like him and, listening to him now, she knew that it had definitely been the right decision.

      People had criticised her behind her back, she knew that, but they were people who came from safe, loving homes—homes where the father came home at night and cared about what happened to his family.

      Luc wasn’t like that. Luc didn’t care about anything or anyone except himself.

      He was just like her father and she knew only too well what it was like to grow up with a parent like that. She’d been right to protect her child from him and if it hadn’t been for her current crisis she would have continued to keep Luc out of his life.

      But fate had intervened and she’d decided that she had no choice but to tell him. He had to help her. He had to take some responsibility, however distasteful he found the prospect of parenthood.

      But at the moment he didn’t even believe that his son existed—

      He seemed to think that their child was some sort of figment of her greedy imagination.

      She sank on to the nearest chair, bemused and sickened by his less than flattering assessment of her. ‘Why do you have such a low opinion of me?’

      ‘Well, let’s see—’he gave a patient smile, as if he was dealing with someone very, very stupid ‘—it could have something to do with the volume of money you spent after we broke up. Or the fact that you’re now stooping to depths previously unheard of in order to sue me for maintenance. Not the actions of someone destined for sainthood, wouldn’t you agree?’

      She stared at him blankly. Her mind didn’t work along the same lines as his and she was struggling to keep up. ‘I’m not suing you for maintenance.’

      He gave an impatient frown. ‘You want me to pay money for the child.’

      She licked her lips. ‘Yes, but not to me and it’s nothing to do with maintenance. I can support our son. I took the money from you because I was pregnant, alone and very scared and I couldn’t think how I could possibly bring a child into the world when I didn’t even have somewhere to live. I used your money to buy a small flat. If I hadn’t done that I would have had to find a job and put the baby into a nursery, and I wanted to care for him myself. And I bought a few essentials.’ She gave a tiny frown, momentarily distracted. ‘I had no idea how many things a baby needed. I bought a cot and a pushchair, bedding, nappies. I didn’t use any of the money on myself. I know that technically it was stealing, but I didn’t

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