style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I’m really not hungry.’
‘Do you want me to be there when you tell your mother?’
The suggestion made her eyes fly wide. ‘No, I don’t! I hadn’t even thought about telling her.’
He laid down his glass. ‘I really don’t think that’s an option, do you?’
‘No...yes...there’s no need to go public with this, is there? It’s private.’
Ben’s jaw clenched as he guessed that by private she actually meant secret. ‘Oh, no, I want you to send me report cards and...’ He gave a contemptuous grimace. ‘Of course I want to “go public”, as you put it. After I’ve broken the news to my grandfather, that is.’
Lily leaned back in her chair. ‘Oh, God!’
‘Oh, he’ll be delighted. Once he gets over the fact he’s been living half a mile from his granddaughter for two years. Two years he’s missed out on.’
Lily lowered her gaze from his expression. It was obvious that Ben was no longer talking about his grandfather.
‘Everything is going to change,’ she realised.
He was never going to forgive her. With a sinking heart she recognised the fact that this much, at least, would never change.
She looked up and saw the mockery in his blue eyes. ‘You catch on quick. Tell me, what did you think was going to happen?’
‘I suppose...’ She swallowed and gave an unhappy little shrug. ‘I thought we could go slowly...you could see Emmy with me there at first for an hour or so. Later maybe, when she got to know you, take her to the park or something. I thought we were going to talk some more and discuss things...’
‘We are—we have been.’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she denied. ‘We are not talking. You are telling me, not asking.’ The waiter appeared and she waited while the food was set down before adding, ‘There’s been no discussion.’
‘So what do you want to discuss?’
Lily looked at him in seething frustration as she tried to organise her thoughts. ‘This is too much too fast. You might change your mind. I don’t want Emmy to get to know you, only to have you disappear from her life. She needs stability, continuity...not—’
‘She needs a father. I get it that you think I’m some sort of low life...’
‘I didn’t say that!’ she protested, watching him dissect the steak on his plate.
He laid down his knife and looked up at her, his steely gaze as unrelenting as a surgical scalpel.
‘It isn’t going to happen.’ His jaw line tightened as he spelt out his intention. ‘Lily, I’m going to be part of my daughter’s life so get used to it. I’m in this for the long haul.’
His take-it-or-leave-it stance made her feel angry and helpless.
‘You say that now,’ she countered, dropping the fork she was stirring her salad with and glaring at him. ‘But your track record doesn’t inspire confidence. And I have to protect my daughter.’
His dark brows lifted. ‘Care to elaborate?’ he drawled.
‘Well, I expect you told the woman—the one you were engaged to when you slept with me—that you were in it for the long haul...?’
To her amazement some of the tension left his jaw; he actually laughed. ‘Caro...?’
‘Was there more than one?’ she asked sourly.
‘We were never actually engaged.’
This display of deceit sparked her anger into life. ‘I saw the ring!’ she exclaimed contemptuously.
His ex had been wearing the ring in several of the photos accompanying the article.
‘There was a ring, granted. But it was a gift.’
Anger boomed in her head like a pulse. She pressed her fingers to her temple and realised it actually was her pulse. ‘So she imagined the engagement, then?’
Her thinly veiled sarcasm drew a calm response. ‘No, she invented it.’
‘As you do.’
‘You had to be there,’ he drawled, thinking of the nightclub Caro had dragged him to. With the music booming, it was usually the sort of place that he avoided.
He’d even been amused when she’d transferred the ring he’d bought her to her left hand. Then he’d seen the paparazzi and realised it was a set-up—he’d been set up. You had to admire her ingenuity and she hadn’t even tried to deny it.
‘Do you know how many cookbooks get published in a year? Even the novelty value of me being an ex-model will only get me so far... Being dumped by a heartless billionaire?’ She had produced a mock sad face before delivering an equally brilliant smile and adding, ‘It will raise my profile.’
‘And sell books.’
‘Obviously. But I was thinking more of a TV show. That’s where the real money is.’
That was what he’d liked about Caro: she’d never pretended. That and her appetite for sex.
‘So we’re splitting up?’
‘You’re heartbroken. I can tell. Honestly, I don’t want to, but a girl has to make a living.’
He shook his head as the formerly meaningless memories faded. Now he realised that the implication that he’d been engaged had stopped Lily from telling him she was pregnant.
‘I was there, remember?’ Lily bit back. ‘I was the other woman.’
He stared at her and looked thoughtful. ‘And that bothers you?’
Her cheeks grew pink. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, it does.’
‘If you mind so much, it might be a good idea in future to ask a few questions before you jump into bed with someone.’
Indignant, she sat bolt upright in her chair. ‘Talk about double standards. I don’t recall you asking me many questions. For all you knew I might have had a boyfriend.’
‘Oh, I’m not trying to occupy the moral high ground,’ he retorted. ‘Though I have to admit, skipping out while my partner is asleep has never been my style.’
Feeling the flush mounting in her cheeks, she lowered her gaze and grabbed her glass.
‘It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I had to have you.’
The sudden raw, throaty admission brought her eyes up. She had barely registered the dark feral gleam in his eyes before it was gone. Then he picked up the threads of their previous conversation as though nothing had happened.
