quality Romy Picard possessed in spades.
‘What if I were to put forward a proposal?’
For a moment she was prepared to swear her heart stopped beating. ‘Proposing what, precisely?’ The query held caution and an elevated degree of suspicion.
‘Involving you.’
No. The word echoed through her mind as a silent scream. He was toying with her, like a butterfly in captivity as he waited for the moment he would pin her to the wall.
‘I don’t enter the equation.’
He continued to study her in silence, until she felt close to hitting him. Had he any idea how impossibly angry she was at having to confront him? In normal circumstances, she’d take extreme pleasure in telling him to go to hell.
‘No?’ Xavier posed with deceptive mildness. ‘You represent the only tangible entity your father possesses of any worth to me.’
Something deep inside curled into a tight, painful ball, and she wanted nothing more than to turn and walk from the room, the building…anything to escape the compelling man who held her father’s fate in his hands.
‘You’re suggesting I become a form of payment in human kind?’ Each word took immense effort to enunciate and emerged in faintly strangled tones.
‘Your words, not mine.’
His drawled voice held an indolence that caused the pulse at the base of her throat to quicken to a hammered beat.
‘Prostitute myself by becoming your current mistress?’
‘And bear me a child,’ Xavier continued silkily.
It took enormous effort to resist the urge to slap his face, and for a heart-stopping moment time stood still, becoming a suspended entity when electric awareness pulsed heavily in the air.
Restrained anger emanated from her slender frame, and her eyes darkened to a vivid blue sapphire. ‘Are you insane?’
‘You beg leniency and attempt to bargain by offering nothing in return?’
Her eyes speared his, their blue depths intensely fiery with incredible fury. ‘What you’re suggesting amounts to blackmail.’
‘I prefer to call it a negotiated deal between two consenting adults.’
‘Bastard.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Erroneous,’ he relayed in a musing drawl. ‘Given my parents were married at the time of my birth.’ The fact his father had abandoned mother and child within weeks no longer seemed relevant, or that his mother had been forced to do menial work for long hours in order to survive a trailer-park existence, and had died young.
Romy took a deep, calming breath, aware it didn’t come close to enough. Did he have any idea how much she wanted to rail against him? Even in her most trying moments in the classroom with students from hell, she hadn’t come this close to physically lashing out. And that was saying something!
‘You demand too much.’
He rose and indicated the door. ‘Then we have nothing more to discuss.’
Words temporarily failed her, and she could only look at him with stark disbelief. ‘You’re asking me to become pregnant with your child,’ she demanded with incredulity. ‘Give it up after birth…then be cast out of its life?’
‘Why would I cast a wife aside?’
The colour leeched from her face. ‘What do you mean—wife?’
‘Marriage,’ Xavier clarified succinctly. ‘Adequate recompense for me dropping all charges against your father,’ he added in dry mocking tones. ‘And clearing his gambling debts.’
For a moment she lost the power to think as erotic images filled her mind…images she’d never been able to erase, and words tumbled from her lips without thought. ‘I don’t want to marry you.’
‘Consider the advantages.’
‘At the moment, I can’t think of one.’
Was that a quick gleam of amusement she glimpsed on his face or merely a trick of the light?
‘No?’
Romy swept his impressive form a deliberate appraisal, and successfully tamped down the unbidden emotion threatening to consume her body. ‘What we shared wasn’t anything special.’
Liar, she silently castigated. Once, just once she’d attempted to erase his lovemaking from her mind by superimposing it by having sex with someone else…and the memory still gave her cause to regret the experience.
Xavier tamped down the urge to pull her in close and take possession of her mouth, to tame her fine anger and turn it into purring pleasure. Instead, he reached out a hand and trailed light fingers down her cheek, then he cupped her chin and eased his thumb-pad gently over the soft fullness of her lower lip. He watched her eyes darken and sensed the faint hitch in her breath.
So much for thinking she was immune to his touch! Strength of spirit ensured she stood perfectly still, her eyes steady as she held his gaze, and she wondered if he had any inkling just how much it cost her to do so.
‘You want a deal for your father,’ Xavier reiterated quietly. ‘I’ve offered a solution. Take it or leave it.’
The thought of her father having to appear in court again, be escorted under police guard to prison, suffer indignities, fear, not to mention several years incarceration, possibly die there, was more than Romy could bear.
‘Do you need me to spell out what form of reminder the loan shark will serve Andre, and ultimately you, if payment isn’t forthcoming on time?’ Xavier queried and saw her features pale.
She had until midnight tomorrow to produce a large sum of money neither she nor Andre could scrape together.
Face it, she reminded herself grimly. Every possible resource had been explored. Xavier DeVasquez was their last hope for any form of rescue package that would help her father.
A hollow sensation settled in her stomach as desperate reality hit home. She had a choice, which was really no choice at all. The question had to be—did she have sufficient courage to take what Xavier offered? Yet how could she not?
The faint burr of his phone intruded, and he picked it up, listened, offered a curt instruction, then he ended the call.
There was little to be gained from his expression, and she didn’t even attempt to hazard a guess as she bore his measured scrutiny.
‘I have an important meeting scheduled.’ He paused fractionally. ‘Your answer, Romy?’
This was it, she recognized with a sense of fatalism. She’d come this far and would gain much—at considerable personal cost—if she agreed to the deal. A deal which didn’t need to be a life sentence, for marriage carried an escape clause. There was always the option of divorce.
