Their Newborn Gift. Nikki Logan

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СКАЧАТЬ broke the silence. Reilly snagged Max up off the ground and dumped him unceremoni-ously in Molly’s chair. The girl fell on him with open arms. Max looked suitably disgusted.

      Lea’s mouth opened to protest, but then she snapped it shut.

      ‘What—she can’t be near cats either?’ Shock was giving way to sarcastic fury.

      Lea shot to her feet and spoke to Molly. ‘You play with the kitty, sweetheart.’ She crossed to the far corner of the veranda. Reilly followed.

      ‘She’s mine, isn’t she?’ He loomed over her intentionally. He wanted the truth from her almost as much as he wanted to smell her. Lea nodded and his chest constricted, bright light ex-ploding behind his eyes. His mind worked furiously.

      ‘Did you not think I’d care?’ he asked. Lea turned away from him. ‘Did you think I’d tell you to get lost?’

      ‘I wasn’t looking for a relationship,’ she whispered back over her shoulder. ‘I saw no need for you to know.’

      ‘No need?’ She winced and he struggled to keep the edge out of his voice. He knew what impact it had on his toughened workmen; Lea was not one of them. ‘I got you pregnant, Lea. I would have stood by you. By Molly.’

      No matter what the world expected of him, he would have done that much.

      She spun. ‘I got me pregnant, Reilly. There was no need for you to stand by me. I was fine. I made the decision to go ahead with the pregnancy. It didn’t need a team.’

      There was something in her tone, like the particular look in a stallion’s eye when he was about to turn. It screamed a warning at him. Suspicion stained his words. ‘I can’t believe it took you five years to find me.’

      Her furtive glance told him it hadn’t. Ah. ‘You weren’t going to tell me.’

      Her chest heaved. ‘No.’

      ‘Nice.’ He meant her to hear his mumble.

      ‘Don’t you judge me, Reilly Martin,’ she snapped furiously. ‘If you cared so much where your DNA ended up, you wouldn’t have distributed it so liberally across the district.’

      Slap! Being true didn’t make it any less pleasant to hear. He could have little Mollies scattered across the state.

      In theory; he’d loved and left enough women.

      Anger boiled up furiously between them. ‘Did you think I was a good catch, Lea?’ He nearly spat the words at her. How stupid had he been to think he had been the reason they’d gone so long and so hard that weekend? To think that she might have felt the same indefinable connection he had, despite running out on him. ‘The heir to a country-western fortune. Had you been tracking the circuit long waiting to bump into me?’

      ‘I didn’t plan it! I might have made some bad choices five years ago, but that wasn’t one of them.’

      ‘You didn’t know who I was?’ He let the challenge roll out like giant rolls of straw shoved off the back of a feed truck. Her hesitation gave her away.

      Blush-heat raced along her cheekbone. ‘Everyone knew who you were, Reilly. You’d just brought home the rodeo champion’s cup. You were Reilly Martin, king of the Suicide Ride. I practically had to join a queue.’

      For what good it had done him. ‘I’m sure the challenge made me all the more attractive.’

      Lea’s eyes flamed. ‘You don’t really need much help with that, Reilly. I’m sure you’re not going to tell me I was the first bar-room pick-up you’d ever pulled?’

      Self-loathing added its weight to the discussion. ‘Not by a country mile, sweetheart.’

      The blush doubled. It intensified the glitter in her eyes, and did unhelpful things to his resolve. He dropped his face from her gaze. ‘I’m not the point of discussion here. You are. Or rather, Molly is.’ He met Lea’s eyes again. ‘You cheated me out of knowing my daughter.’

      Damn, that felt weird, coming out of his mouth.

      Lea paled and her eyes widened. She struggled against something internal. ‘No one forced you to have sex with me. Fatherhood is a risk you were taking every time you went with any woman.’

      ‘Particularly a deceitful, immoral one.’

      Pain streaked across her face. She sucked it up, took a deep breath. ‘Look, it happens, Reilly. Birth control fails. It’s why they print warnings on the boxes. You could have walked away first that night.’

      No. Not if he’d tried.

      They glared warily at each other, like a cattle dog and a steer sizing each other up. ‘Why me, Lea—of every man in that pub?’

      Her eyes rounded—not the question she was expecting, obviously—but she pushed her shoulders back and answered. ‘You stood out for two reasons. You were—’

      ‘Male and stupid?’

      Her eyes hardened. ‘Attractive but unhappy.’

      An ugly laugh cracked through his lips. ‘Unhappy? I’d just won the champion’s cup, I was surrounded by women and was working my way through a keg of celebratory beer. Why would I be sad?’

      If she noticed how he’d remembered so much about that night five years ago, she didn’t comment. Lucky; it would be tough to explain.

      She barrelled on, ignoring the question. ‘I’d had…I wasn’t feeling the best that night.’ Something in her expression told him there was a heck of a lot more to that story. ‘And there was something in your eyes that I recognised. Some pain that spoke to me.’

      He snorted to cover up how close to the mark she suddenly was. No way was he going there. ‘I’m guessing my inheritance probably spoke to you loudest. Is it speaking to you now?’

      She gasped. Her nostrils flared and she tossed her thick hair back. ‘Have I asked you for money?’

      ‘I’m sure you’re getting round to it.’

      ‘I’m not here for that.’

      ‘Then why are you here? Why now, Lea, five years into my daughter’s life?’ There was that word again. It was going to take some getting used to.

      Deep shadows crossed her eyes. ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t be here at all if I had a choice,’ she blazed up at him. ‘We were doing just fine, Molly and me.’

      Were? His eyes drifted to the little girl, who had Max in a delighted stranglehold. The cat swished his tail impatiently but knew better than to lash out.

      Lea took a deep breath. ‘My daughter’s dying, Reilly.’

      Reilly staggered backwards, and his eyes fell on the little piece of innocence tangled around his cat. He’d only discovered her moments ago. Then Lea played a particularly stinking card.

      ‘Our daughter’s dying,’ she continued, her voice dead and tight. ‘She has aplastic СКАЧАТЬ