keeping the baby, as if he, the child’s father, had no place in its life, caused a torrent of hot, possessive anger to flood through him. It was so intense that it momentarily blotted out the lust that had just been firing through his veins.
“The baby isn’t yours. The baby is ours,” he said.
“But … but you and your wife …”
He froze, realizing suddenly that she didn’t know who he was. It didn’t seem possible. Her face betrayed nothing, not a hint of recognition or foreknowledge concerning what he was about to say. If she did know who he was, she was a world-class actress.
“My wife died two years ago.”
Those exotic eyes widened and her mouth dropped. “I’m … I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Melissa didn’t tell me that. She didn’t tell me anything about you but your name.”
“Usually that’s enough,” he said ruefully.
“But then … you don’t think I’m going to give you my baby?”
“Our baby,” he growled. “As much mine as yours. Assuming of course that you’re actually the mother and it wasn’t some other woman who donated genetic material.”
“No. It’s my baby. Biologically. I was artificially inseminated.” She lowered her gaze. “This was my third attempt. I didn’t get pregnant the first two times.”
“And you are certain it was my sample that took?”
“They were all your samples.” She pursed her lips. “They made the mistake months ago. They only realized after the last time. The time that was successful.”
Silence hung between them, thickening the air. Maximo felt his heart rate quicken, his blood pumping hard through his veins. He looked down at her, at those full pouting lips. In that moment his only thought was what a shame it was that he had not made three traditional conception attempts with this woman. She was incredibly beautiful—an enticing mix of strength and vulnerability that appealed to him in a way he didn’t understand. He crushed the surge of almost crippling desire that was washing through him.
“So you’re capable of having a baby with a man the usual way, and yet you chose to make one with a turkey-baster?” he said, his voice harsh.
Her lip curled in disgust. “That’s horrible.”
It was, and he knew it. Yet he felt compelled to lash out at her, at the woman who had walked into his home and tilted his world completely off its axis. He hadn’t been entirely happy with how his life was, but he had come to the point where he’d accepted it. Now she was here, offering him things he had long since let go of. Only what she was offering was a mangled, twisted version of the dream he and his wife had shared.
“You’re a lesbian?” he asked. If she was, it was a loss to his gender. A waste of a very beautiful woman, in his opinion.
Color flared in her cheeks. “No. I’m not a lesbian.”
“Then why not wait and have a baby with a husband?”
“Because I don’t want a husband.”
He took in her business attire for the first time. The extreme beauty of her face had held his attention before, preventing him from examining the rest of her appearance too closely, and he hadn’t noticed the neatly tailored charcoal pantsuit and starched white shirt. She was obviously a career woman. Probably intent on having day-care workers raise their child while she set about climbing the corporate ladder. Why have a baby, then? An accessory no doubt, the ultimate symbol of all she had achieved without the help of a man. Distaste coiled in his stomach, mingling with the desire that lingered there.
“Don’t imagine for one moment that you will be raising this child without me. We’ll have paternity testing done and if it is in fact my baby, you may yet find yourself with a husband, regardless of your original plans.”
He didn’t want to get married again. He hadn’t even been inclined to get involved in a casual relationship since Selena’s death, but that didn’t change the facts of the situation. If this was his child, there was no way he would be an absentee father. He wanted his son or daughter in Turan with him, not half a world away in the United States.
The thought of having his child looked upon as a royal bastard, illegitimate and unable to claim the inheritance that should belong to him or her by right, was not something that settled well with him. And there was only one way to remedy that.
The look of absolute shock on her face might have been comical if there were anything even remotely funny about the situation. “Did you just propose to me?”
“Not exactly.”
“I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
“We’re having a baby,” he said simply.
“I fail to see what that has to do with marriage,” she said, that luscious mouth pursed into a tight pout.
“It’s a common reason for people to marry,” he said drily. “Arguably the most common.”
“I fully intended on being a single parent. I wasn’t waiting around for a white knight to sweep me off of my feet and offer matrimony. This wasn’t plan B while I waited around for Mr. Right. The baby was my only plan.”
“And I’m sure the League of Women applauds your progressive viewpoint, Ms. Whitman, but you are no longer the only person involved here. I am, as well. In fact, you chose to involve me.”
“Only because I need to know if you’re a carrier for CF.”
“Couldn’t you have had the baby tested?”
“I want to know before the baby is born if there’s a chance he or she might have the disease. It’s something that would require a lot of emotional preparation. There’s testing that can be done in utero, but they typically don’t perform the test unless both parents are found to be carriers. I could have waited and said I didn’t know the father and gotten prenatal testing done but there’s a slight miscarriage risk and I just couldn’t take the chance, not when I could just come and talk to you.”
“Or perhaps all of your feminist posturing is simply that. Posturing. You said you have a friend at the clinic, and I’m a powerful, wealthy man. It is not outside the realm of belief that you did not receive my sample by accident. How is it that my sample has been sitting there for two years and it suddenly got mixed up with the donor sperm?”
Maximo had seen people go to extreme lengths to get a hand on his money, to use his influence. Had this woman cooked up a scheme in order to net herself money and power? People had done worse for far less than he had to offer, for less than the mother of his child would stand to gain.
“I don’t know why the mistake happened, I only know that it did,” she said, her pretty white teeth gritted. “But don’t flatter yourself by thinking I would go to such trouble to tie myself to you just to get money. In fact, don’t flatter yourself by assuming I have any idea who you are.”
He barked out a laugh. “It’s hardly flattery to assume that a woman who is presumably well-informed and well educated would know who I was. Unless of course you’re neither of
