and her aggressive stance, remembering that fire in bed, how it had stoked his own and resulted in a conflagration more passionate than anything he had ever known. As a rule, she kept that fire hidden, suppressed beneath her tranquil, prissy little surface, but around him she couldn’t manage that feat and he cherished that truth. Anger was much more promising than indifference.
Merry planted her hands on her curvy hips and flung him a fierce look of censure. ‘And don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she warned him, helplessly conscious of that smouldering sexual assessment. ‘It’s rude and inappropriate.’
Angel shifted lithely in his chair, murderously aware of his roaring arousal and the tightness of his jeans and marvelling at the reality that he could actually be enjoying himself in her company, difficult though she was. A slow-burning smile slashed his lean, strong face. ‘The burn is still there, glyka mou,’ he told her. ‘But let’s concentrate our energies on my solution for our future.’
‘That wasn’t a solution, that was fanciful nonsense!’ Merry hissed back at him. ‘You don’t want to marry me. You don’t want to marry anybody!’
‘But I’ll do it for Elyssa’s benefit because I believe that she needs a father as much as she needs a mother,’ Angel asserted levelly. ‘A father is not expendable. My father was very important in my life, even though he wasn’t able to be there for me as much as he would have liked.’
Unprepared for that level of honesty and gravity from a man as naturally secretive and aloof as Angel, Merry was bemused. ‘I never said you were expendable, for goodness’ sake,’ she argued less angrily. ‘That’s why I let you finally visit and meet her.’
‘How much of a relationship did you have with your own father?’ Angel enquired lethally.
Merry’s face froze. ‘I didn’t have one. My mother, Natalie, fell pregnant by her boss and he was married. I met him once but his wife couldn’t stand the sight of me, probably because I was the proof of his infidelity,’ she conceded uncomfortably. ‘He never asked to see me again. When it came to making a choice between me and his wife, naturally he chose his wife.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Angel disconcerted her with a look of sympathy that hurt her pride as much as a slap would have done.
‘Well, I’m not. I got by fine without him,’ Merry declared, lifting her chin.
‘Maybe you did.’ Angel trailed out the word, letting her know he wasn’t convinced by her face-saving claim. ‘But others don’t do so well without paternal guidance. My own mother grew up indulged in every financial way, but essentially without parents who cared enough about her to discipline her. She’s well past fifty now, although she doesn’t look it, but she’s still a rebellious teenager in her own head. I want my daughter to have stability. I don’t want her to go wild when she becomes an adult with the world at her feet along with every temptation.’
Involuntarily impressed by that argument, Merry shook her head. ‘That’s a long way off and if I don’t stand in the way of her having a relationship with you now, you’ll still be around.’
Angel lounged back in his chair and crossed an ankle over one knee, long, powerful thigh muscles flexing below tight, faded denim. He looked outrageously relaxed, as if he were posing for a publicity shot, and drop-dead gorgeous from the spill of glossy black curls to the golden caramel brilliance of his eyes. Merry dragged her guilty gaze from his thighs and his crotch, sudden heat rising inside her and burning her cheeks. His hard-boned, thoroughly raunchy masculine beauty broke through her defences every time she looked at him and it made her feel like a breathless fan girl.
‘But the bottom line is that unless we marry I won’t be around enough,’ Angel intoned with grim emphasis. ‘I spend at least fifty per cent of the year abroad. I want her to meet my relatives and learn what it means to be a Valtinos...’
He could have said nothing more calculated to cool Merry’s fevered response to him. Dismay filled her because she understood the message he was giving her. As soon as Elyssa was old enough, Angel would be spiriting her out to Greece, taking her away from her mother, leaving Merry behind, shorn of control of what happened in her child’s life. It was a sobering prospect.
‘Did you mean it...what you said about fighting me in court?’ Merry prompted angrily.
‘For once in my life I was playing it straight,’ Angel declared.
‘But where the heck did all this suddenly come from?’ Merry demanded in heated denial. ‘You didn’t want anything to do with us last winter!’
‘It took time for me to come to terms with how I felt about fatherhood. At first I thought the most important objective was to conserve my world as it was. I thought I could turn my back on you and my child but I found that I couldn’t,’ Angel breathed in a roughened undertone as though the words were being extracted forcibly from him. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about her...or you.’
‘Me?’ Merry gasped in sharp disbelief. ‘Why would you have been thinking about me?’
Angel lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in questioning doubt. ‘So, I’m human. Learning that a woman is carrying your child is an unexpectedly powerful discovery—’
‘Angel,’ Merry cut in without hesitation, ‘let’s come back down to earth here. Learning that I was pregnant sent you into retreat so fast you left a smoke trail in your wake!’
‘And all I learned was that there was no place to run from reality,’ Angel countered with sardonic bite. ‘I fought my curiosity for a long time before I finally gave way to it and asked to see her. You said no repeatedly but here we are now, supposedly acting like adults. I’m trying to be honest... I’m trying not to threaten you but I’ve come to see marriage as the best option for all three of us.’
‘You threatened me quite deliberately!’ Merry slung at him furiously.
‘You need to know that I’m serious and that this is not some whim that will go away if you wait for long enough. I’m here to stay in your lives,’ Angel intoned harshly.
‘Well, that’s going to be rather awkward when it’s not what I want and I will fight you every step of the way!’ Merry flung back at him. ‘You wanted me out of your life and I got out. You can’t force me back.’
‘If it means my daughter gets the future she deserves, I will force you,’ Angel bit out in a raw, wrathful undertone as he plunged upright, casting a long dark shadow over the table. ‘You need to accept that this is not just about you and me any more, it’s about her!’
Merry paled. ‘I do accept that.’
‘No, you don’t. You’re still set on punishing me for the selfish decisions I made and that approach isn’t going to get us anywhere. I don’t want to go to court and fight but I will if I have no alternative!’ Angel shot at her furiously, dark golden eyes scorching, his Greek accent edging every vowel with piercing sibilance in the afternoon stillness. ‘When I asked you to marry me I was trying to show respect!’
‘You wouldn’t know respect if it bit you on the arse!’ Merry flamed back at him with helpless vulgarity. ‘And I am so sorry I didn’t grovel with gratitude at the offer of a wedding ring the way you obviously expected.’
‘No, you’re not sorry!’ Angel roared back at her equally loudly. ‘You enjoyed dragging me over the coals, questioning my motivation
