Secret Heirs: Baby Bargain. Эбби Грин

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ them as they headed straight to the bank of lifts.

      ‘You’d think...’ Sergio flicked her a wry glance. ‘My first powerful lesson in never judging a book by its cover.’

      ‘And in always assuming the worst when it comes to other people’s motivations...’

      ‘Very good.’

      ‘What happened?’

      Sergio’s eyes narrowed and he shrugged. His face was hard and coldly unforgiving, even though he was recalling a past situation and not currently enduring it.

      ‘She made sure to engineer an introduction to my father and pulled out all the right cards. She was a caring, fun girl, thirty years his junior, who could understand just what he might have been going through. She told him a life alone was no kind of life—not for a sexy silver fox like him. He was flattered. For the first time in years he decided that life was worth living after all. They were married within six months and it didn’t take long before her true colours started appearing. The caring, sharing nurse became the free-spending gold-digger she had been all along—and if that wasn’t enough she contrived to get my father to change his will. When he died suddenly of a heart attack pretty much everything went to her, and within five years she had managed to work her way through most of his fortune. Fortunately, he’d had the sense to leave the majority of his companies to me. She was cash-rich, with a couple of houses to spare, but she was still greedy enough to consult a lawyer, in the hope that she might get her hands on some of the companies. I spent five years batting her off until she finally gave up. Where she is now is anybody’s guess.’

      Susie wandered over to the chaise longue by the window and sat down, her own problems temporarily on the back burner as she worked out just how he had ended up where he had.

      There was safety in a hard-boiled career woman. She thought of her own sister. Alex would never be interested in anyone’s money, or in furthering herself on the back of someone else. She was fiercely independent and ambitious to get ahead under her own steam. That would be the sort of woman he would be seriously interested in. A woman who had her own life—just as he had his own life.

      ‘I’ve seen how a person can imagine they’re in love,’ he continued, taking up a position on the chair facing her, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his expression cool and remorseless. ‘They get swept away by emotion, lose all sense of perspective, abandon their self-control. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the sort of thing that never has a good ending.’

      Susie thought that he might have been describing her.

      ‘In due course,’ he drawled, ‘I imagine I will want to settle down, but when that time comes it will be rather more of a business arrangement than a giddy loss of judgement.’

      He was uneasily aware of just how fast his self-control disappeared when he was presented with her glorious body, but immediately dismissed that as a cause for concern because there was a clear line of demarcation between the physical and the emotional. On the emotional front he knew exactly where he was going, and on the physical front... Well, a little loss of self-control was perfectly acceptable...it made a great change to his usual predictable diet.

      Susie heard the unmistakable clang of his boundary lines being repositioned.

      Her breathing quickened and she flushed under the steady gaze of his eyes.

      Why had she let herself be talked into coming back here with him? She knew why. Because she was weak and in love. Because one kiss from him could send her common sense flying in all directions. Because she was just the sort of emotional type he had told her he didn’t need as a long-term investment.

      ‘It’s late.’

      ‘So it is...’ He slanted her a smile that turned her bones to jelly. ‘Come here.’

      ‘I’m not in the mood for sex.’

      ‘No? Do you want to put that to the test?’

      ‘We need to talk, Sergio. There are things... Well, things I need to say to you...’

      Sergio frowned. Women who had a pressing need to talk rarely said anything he wanted to hear. He reminded himself that she wasn’t like the other women he had dated. She talked a lot. She probably wanted to talk about the wedding—her parents, her sister, her huge array of cousins. It made such a change from his non-existent family, as an only child born to only children.

      His face cleared and he smiled.

      ‘Let’s go to bed...’

      ‘This isn’t pillow talk.’

      ‘Who said it was? I’m just finding it hard to keep going with the chat when we could be doing other things. Why don’t you give an old man a kick and do a striptease for me...?’

      ‘You’re only thirty-two!’ Her face warmed and her body was going into its usual meltdown.

      Sergio grinned and remained where he was, enjoying the way he had hardened for her, enjoying the thrill of what was going to follow. Sooner or later he would move on because, as she had pointed out, they weren’t suited to one another, but just at the moment familiarity was a long way from breeding contempt.

      He tried to swallow down his dislike of her reminding him that he wasn’t her type, but it nagged away like a thorn in his side he couldn’t quite reach.

      He stood up, strolled towards the bed, shedding his clothes en route until he was left in only his trousers, which he began to remove while she watched in her usual trance-like state of fascination.

      Her body was as it always was. There were no outward signs of her pregnancy. But what would happen, she wondered, when she did begin to show? When her flat stomach began to go round...when her breasts grew even bigger...? What would happen to that overwhelming lust he felt for her, which was the one and only thing that kept him going?

      It was just one more thought to pile on all the other thoughts that were buzzing around in her head like a swarm of bees.

      For the moment...

      What if this was the last time she had him—really had him? Because she would break the news to him in the morning and then leave, giving him time to digest the indigestible.

      From that point on what they had would officially be over. Which would make right now her last chance to have him make love to her, to have him touch her and feel her and want her...

      If she was a coward to be snatching it with both hands then so be it.

      She followed him, kicking off her high shoes, and then stood at the side of the bed, with his deep, dark eyes on her, and performed the striptease he had asked her to do.

      Sexy, erotic, sensuous... In the dark so that their bodies were shadows and angles...

      She was wet for him by the time she slid under the covers. Their bodies seemed perfectly matched. She had felt comfortable with him even that very first time, and she felt so much more comfortable now.

      His hands knew just where to touch, what turned her on. He nuzzled her breasts and took her nipples into his mouth in a way that sent delicious sensations zapping through her. He licked her and played with her and toyed with her...taking her to the СКАЧАТЬ