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      She lay down on the bed and fed him in the crook of her arm. He’d been blessed with a healthy appetite. While he devoured the contents, she studied every detail of his precious face and body, which had measured twenty-two inches long when he was born.

      He not only had Alik’s skin and coloring, but one day he would grow to be tall like his father. Having just come from seeing Alik, Blaire could pick out the many characteristics that already made Nicky recognizable as one of the beautiful, fabulously wealthy Jarmans of Long Island, a well-established, well-connected banking family on both sides of the ocean.

      The whole clan had exceptional good looks, especially Alik’s mother, a physically beautiful woman with luxuriant black hair reminiscent of her Greek ancestry. Alik resembled her the most in appearance. But not in anything else, thank heaven. His height he’d inherited from his dark-blond, green-eyed father who’d come from English parentage.

      Nicky’s Regan genes seemed to have contributed more to his even temperament. He’d inherited a sunny disposition for which Blaire’s mother was famous. So far his eyes were a cloudy color. Perhaps Blaire had given him her gray eyes. Only time would tell.

      There’d been several knocks on the door of the trailer since Blaire’s hasty exit, but Alik had ignored them. The drone of the rain on the roof was driving him mad. He tossed down his second scotch, but the hoped-for state of oblivion hadn’t occurred yet. Maybe if he finished off the whole bottle a miracle would happen and he would pass out.

      Until Blaire had ripped his heart from his body almost a year ago, he’d rarely drunk anything more than an occasional beer or glass of wine. Since their excruciating breakup for which she offered some mumbo jumbo explanation about him being too old for her after all, he’d kept something stronger on hand for emergencies—like those times in the middle of the night when the emotional wound oozed more blood and the pain got so bad he needed relief.

      This was one of those moments, only it wasn’t even noon. Damn her to hell for showing up with such an improbable, ludicrous tale just when the new project had given him a reason to get up in the mornings.

      Alik threw the empty tumbler across the expanse. It hit the wall, then ricocheted to the petrographic microscope, shattering both the glass and the lens. The fact that he’d caused damage to an expensive tool of his trade didn’t faze him.

      He could still see her mouth forming the words. That luscious red mouth he helplessly devoured over and over in dreams he hadn’t been able to control.

      We have a son who was born August 19th. He’s six weeks old and was christened Nicholas Regan Jarman.

      He actually had a son she called Nicky? A child from his own loins? Alik shook his dark head. Dear God. Could she possibly be telling the truth?

      You have every right to know you’re a father, especially because I’m being married in two months and another man will be raising him.

      Full of rage, Alik leaped to his feet, kicking a couple of geology journals out of the way with the tip of his boot. Did Blaire take him for a complete fool, one who would lie down and die for her? Is that what she really thought?

      No doubt her latest fiancé was the man who’d made her pregnant, the one for whom she’d dumped Alik while he’d been out of town giving a geological seminar in Kentucky.

      Now that the baby was born, the bastard didn’t want anything to do with it. He’d probably threatened to withhold financial support, so she’d decided to fob it off as Alik’s love child, hoping he would kick in with the funds.

      Like hell!

      He reached for the uncapped bottle and made his way through the cluttered trailer to his bedroom. But he couldn’t get away from her last salvo reverberating in his head.

      I’m staying at the Bluebird Inn in Warwick until checkout time at eleven tomorrow morning. If you want to see your little boy, I’ll wait for you that long.

      His bitterness had reached its zenith. He lifted the bottle to his lips. “You can wait until hell freezes over, my beloved,” he ground out before draining what was left.

      Oblivion meant you never had to wake up. Unfortunately Alik’s respite from pain lasted only as long as the phone didn’t ring.

      Disoriented because it was so dark in the room, he ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw and tried to sit up. The room spun. He felt like the devil, but the damn phone continued to jar his nerves.

      Through bleary eyes he checked his watch. It was quarter to eight? He fell back against the pillow from dizziness. That meant he’d been passed out for ten hours.

      What did he expect after drinking a bottle of scotch on an empty stomach!

      His cell phone was in the other room. Who in the hell would let it ring twenty times?

      Blaire. That’s who. She was desperate for money. Too bad she hadn’t figured out which side her bread was buttered on before she’d betrayed him with another man.

      They’d only slept together once—the night before he’d had to leave to give that emergency seminar. From the beginning, he’d held off making love to her until after their marriage because he knew she was a virgin.

      But something about his going away on that last unexpected trip had made her so insecure, she’d begged him to take her to bed, assuring him that her OB had put her on the pill at her premarital checkup. It had never occurred to him not to believe her.

      At that point in time he’d been too seduced by her warmth and beauty, too deeply in love, too filled with desire for her to see what was coming.

      The night they’d made love was the last time he would ever see her again.

      Until this morning…

      If she’d lied to him about the pill, then the baby could be anybody’s. As far as Alik was concerned, if he had fathered her child, then he wanted DNA proof of his paternity!

      Staggering off the bed, he groped his way to the shower and let the water pour over his head until it cleared enough that he could make it to the kitchen without falling down.

      The thought of a meal sounded repulsive, but he toasted a slice of bread to put something substantial in his stomach. Two cups of coffee later, he realized that if he didn’t bite the bait, he would always have a question in his mind about the real reason for her unprecedented visit.

      Much as he dreaded the idea of seeing her again, of being in the same room with the only woman who’d ever held such fatal appeal for him, he couldn’t live with this thing left unresolved. Not if he wanted to survive the rest of his life.

      Obviously he’d never known the real Blaire. It seemed she’d been a bewitching liar all along, deceitfully drawing him down to hell with silken cords fashioned expressly for him. But his instincts told him she wasn’t lying about the existence of a baby.

      All that remained was to call her bluff. Then he could write Finished to the end of the script and toss it in the trash along with every bittersweet memory.

      After brushing his teeth, he dressed in clean trousers and a polo shirt, then left the trailer.

      “Dr. Jarman? Wait up!”

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