BALTHAZAR’S WORST FEARS had come true.
And he still couldn’t quite believe it.
He followed the remote road to the cottage Kendra had said was hers. Which could mean she was letting it, or could mean it was her father’s, or could mean, well, anything. He didn’t believe a word she said. He didn’t believe her.
He certainly hadn’t believed her flustered response to his appearance earlier. That he would come for her was the point of all this, surely. It was the final move in her game.
Balthazar had been well and truly played. He still couldn’t quite accept it, but facts did not wait for his acceptance to be true.
He certainly did not believe that Kendra Connolly wasn’t fully aware that they hadn’t used protection that night. He imagined she’d been counting down the days, same as him. The fact that she’d taken herself off to a foreign country was evidence enough of her guilt, to his mind.
And he’d been waiting all this time for her to show her hand.
Instead, she’d appeared to first take on the life of a middle-aged expatriate. Pottery and painting and God only knew what other pointless things, the province of the entitled and bored. Then she’d begun waiting tables, of all things, which might have been more age appropriate, but made no sense for the Connolly heiress.
It had to be another part of her game, though he couldn’t imagine how it fit.
The road opened up and a cottage came into view. Balthazar gritted his teeth. Because it looked like...a cozy, pastoral scene of Provence. Yellows, blues, and purples. Fields of wildflowers on either side with a humble dwelling on a soft rise, lit up against the darkening summer sky.
He had been anticipating the kind of “cottage” people like Thomas Connolly like to call the gaudy, massive mansions in places like Newport, Rhode Island.
This was not that.
And Balthazar didn’t quite know what to do with this unpretentious house. Much less the woman who stood in the open doorway, the buttery light from within making her glow.
Damn her.
Balthazar came to a stop in a cloud of his own bad temper. He slammed out of the car, unfolding his body from the low-slung leather seats and taking longer than necessary to smooth his shirt into place when it did not require smoothing. His clothing did not defy him. It was only this creature before him, standing there like an innocent again, who dared.
“I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding this place,” she said in that bright, chirpy voice he’d heard earlier at the winery.
He detested it.
“I am capable of using navigation technology, thank you,” he growled at her.
Kendra did not back down. She only sighed, slightly. “I see this is going to be contentious. What a lovely change.”
Balthazar did not appreciate her ironic tone of voice.
Because it had been three months of worrying about this very thing. Three months of assuring himself that nothing would come of the one and only time he’d failed to protect himself, his family, and his wealth.
And with a Connolly, to add insult to injury.
Still, his self-delusion might have illuminated his darker moments, but he was a practical man. That, too, had been impressed upon him by his father’s heavy hand, whether he liked it or not. He had therefore enlisted a special security detail to track her movements. To see if she would give herself away.
To make sure that whatever happened, he was on hand to intervene if it went in a direction he didn’t like.
He’d expected her to head to a clinic in an attempt to draw him out. Her relocation to France had confused him. But perhaps it, too, had been as good as waving a flag—because here he was.
Still, he hadn’t been sure.
Not until that performance she’d put on earlier in the kitchen of the winery.
“Perhaps you can explain to me what exactly it is you think you are doing, pretending to be a plucky waitress?” He moved around the front of the sports car and then stayed there, not quite trusting himself to venture any closer to her, which was another personal betrayal. They were adding up. “It does not suit you, kopéla. I think you must know this.”
She might have seemed happy, but Balthazar could not accept that it was real. It was a role she was playing, nothing more. It was a way to hide from what she’d done, who she was, and what must come next.
Surely she had to know this.
He certainly knew it.
As she was almost certainly carrying his child, this rustic life she’d arranged around her this summer was unacceptable, as she must surely have been aware. The mother of a Skalas heir could not be in service, God forbid.
He told himself this supposed happiness of hers had to be fake. It had to be part of the bait in her trap.
There was no other explanation.
She only looked at him for a moment as if he was the one who made no sense. It meant there was nothing to do but gaze back at her.
Damn her, but she looked...angelic.
It made him want to break things.
The light from inside the cottage made her hair look strawberry blonde and drenched in gold. That heart-shaped face had haunted him for months now—years, if he was honest—and it was far prettier in person than it had been in his memory.
That infuriated him all the more.
If he didn’t know any better, if he chose to rely on all his usual instincts, Balthazar would have been tempted to swear that there wasn’t a shred of deceit in this woman.
She was the best manipulator he’d ever seen, he reflected in that moment, as the light exalted her and made her look something like beatific. The apple did not fall far from its gnarled, ugly tree.
He ordered himself to unclench his fists.
“I have to do something with myself,” Kendra said quietly. Thoughtfully, he would have said, if she was someone else. “It turns out a life of leisure doesn’t suit me at all.”
“Yet three months ago I could have sworn you were attempting to be some kind of businesswoman. Wasn’t that your game?” He could remember that night entirely too well. “That outfit. The bartering.”
A kind of shadow moved over her face, and she shrugged. It forced him to pay attention to the fact that she was not dressed like any kind of businesswoman now. She had changed out of the summery shift dress she’d been wearing at the winery and was now dressed simply in a pair of denim jeans and a deep blue tank top with wide shoulder straps that only drew more attention to the elegance of her neck and that clavicle that made his mouth water.
He did not understand how he could want her like this.
Even now.
“My services were not required in the family business,” Kendra said.
“Were they not? That sounds like a remarkably antiseptic version of family drama.”
Another shadow crossed her pretty face, but this one looked like temper. “What does it matter if it’s antiseptic or not? I don’t work for the family company. And if I’m not working for the family company, why stay with the family?”
“So your father and your brother, those paragons of virtue—”
“There’s no need to overdo it, Balthazar.” Her tone was dry. Almost amused, though not quite. “At a certain level, being that sardonic might actually hurt you, don’t you think?”
He almost laughed, but caught himself. “They were happy to send you out like a pair of pimps, is that it? But couldn’t find it in them to offer you a cubicle tucked away in their offices?”
The color in her cheeks bloomed. “That is...an absolutely revolting way to put it.”
“Is it incorrect?”
She made a sound as if she was clearing her throat, then swung around and walked into the cottage.
“I think,” she said as she moved, “that this conversation is going to require wine.”
Balthazar prowled in behind her, expecting to see...he didn’t know what. Something that shouted out her guilt. Something that penetrated this front she put on.
But instead he found himself in an open, bright room that sprawled from the front door into an open kitchen at the back that looked out over a small terrace. There was real art on the walls, placed in a haphazard way that suggested they were there because the owner enjoyed them, not because she was showing off a collection. There were bookshelves and stacks of books and magazines everywhere, but the cottage didn’t feel fussy or overstuffed. The overall effect was of a kind of bohemian joy in art and literature.
It didn’t fit with his impression of this woman. He found himself frowning at the wide, cozy couches that still held the imprint of her body.
Then he remembered what she’d said as she’d walked inside.
“No wine for you, kopéla,” he growled.
He closed the front door behind him and watched her closely as she turned, halfway across the airy room. He noticed that her feet were bare, and could not have explained why that poked at him if his life had depended upon it.
Nor could he understand why it very much felt as if it did.
“No wine for me?” She looked baffled. “If you’re some kind of teetotaler—”
“Hardly.” He waited for her to get his meaning and when she didn’t, another surge of fury swept through him. “Have you forgotten you might be pregnant?”
He didn’t quite know what to do when she paled, as if she truly had forgotten. When that couldn’t be true.
How could that be true?
And because she seemed frozen there, staring at him with her eyes wide and horrified, he moved toward her and tossed the small package he’d brought with him onto an accent table beside her.
She cleared her throat. “Why do I doubt you brought me gifts?”
Balthazar didn’t trust himself to speak. But he must have communicated himself all the same, because Kendra moved to the table and picked up the small carrier bag, then blew out a loud breath when she looked inside.
“Wow.” She laughed, though he could see from the color on her face and the sudden sheen in her eyes that she didn’t find any of this particularly amusing. Good, he thought.
“Pregnancy tests. You thought I needed pregnancy tests. Five of them, no less.”
“It will do for a start.”
She raised her gaze to his and actually had the gall to look shocked. “You can’t possibly imagine that I’m going to...”
“Now, please.”
His voice was soft, but a command. He saw it move in her, a kind of jolt.
“No.” She dropped the carrier bag on the table as if it had fangs. “I will not—”
“Allow me to explain to you what is going to happen, Kendra.” Balthazar didn’t move closer to her. He didn’t trust himself. Nor did he raise his voice. Even so, she jolted again, harder this time. Her eyes snapped to his and he approved. Maybe now she would take this—him—seriously. “I do not know how you intended to play this game. But you chose the wrong man to play it with. I do not believe the innocent act because, lest we forget, I know the truth about you. And even if I did not, I know exactly what your family is capable of.”
“I’m not acting. I’m not an actor, and even if I was, I certainly wouldn’t bother to put on a performance for a man I never planned to lay eyes on again.”
“Silence.”
That command sliced straight across the room, and if he wasn’t mistaken, straight through her.
Kendra’s breathing sounded a little heavy, almost as if she was having an emotional response...
Or, the appropriately cynical part of him chimed in, she knows she’s caught.
“Your intentions do not matter to me,” he told her, harsh and precise so there could be no mistake. “I would prefer to determine, here and now, if you are pregnant. If this nightmare is truly happening.”
“I vote no, it’s not.” She jerked her head toward the door. “Feel free to leave. Now.”
“But of course, I do not trust you, Kendra.” Balthazar wanted to reach for her and lectured himself, sternly, to keep his hands to himself. This situation could hardly be improved by repeating the same mistake. And besides, he needed to interrogate himself as to why and how he could possibly want this woman the way he did, when he knew what she was. When he knew exactly what she’d done. “Therefore, tomorrow—regardless of what we discovered tonight—we will fly to Athens for an appointment with my personal physician.”
He stood there, feeling like an avenging angel, as she gaped at him.
The way an innocent he was railroading might—
But Balthazar dismissed that.
“There is not one part of what you said that’s going to happen.” Kendra crossed her arms and held herself stiffly. “Not one single part.”
“This is nonnegotiable.”
“Are you under the impression that I...work for you?” This time, her laugh bordered on the hysterical, and he had to fight—again—the urge to put his hands on her. “The only interest I ever had in you was as an emissary from my family on behalf of my brother. Who, I can’t help but notice, you have yet to report to the authorities.”
“Was this not the entire point of your little gambit?”
Against his will, against his own orders, he found himself moving closer to her. When he noticed that he’d placed himself within arm’s reach, he stopped, but it didn’t help.
Nothing helped. This woman was the only addiction Balthazar had ever had, and he would not succumb to it. To her.
He refused.
“There is no gambit,” she was saying, her voice hot and her eyes dark. “This is my life. A life I put together to suit me, not anyone else. I don’t care what you think of it and I certainly don’t appreciate you storming in here like you have some claim—”
“I have every claim.”
Balthazar’s voice was pure ice.
Kendra made a soft sound that might have been a gasp, as if he’d punctured her straight through. He rather hoped he had.
“Whatever life you think you might have had here, you forfeited your right to it when you involved me,” he told her. Ferociously. “You must realize that there exists absolutely no possibility that I will allow you to give birth to my child anywhere that is not under my direct supervision.”
“If I’m pregnant,” she said, and on some distant level he noticed that she almost stuttered over that word, “I will handle it. My way. It has nothing to do with you.”
“I will require genetic testing to determine paternity, obviously. Because oddly, Kendra, I do not trust you.”
“Genetic testing...” She blinked, then lifted a hand as if warding him off. “I understand that you take great pride in crashing about the planet, ordering everyone around and taking your revenge when they don’t do what you want. But I have already spent a lifetime putting up with that from my actual relatives. I have no intention of allowing you to take up where they left off.”
“How will you stop it?” he asked with genuine curiosity, though there was a kind of silken threat in his voice.
He did nothing to hide it.
And he expected her to cower. To look away, keep her eyes downcast, make herself small, the way most of his subordinates and rivals did in his presence.
Instead, Kendra Connolly charged across the few feet remaining between them and actually brandished her finger in his face.
It was...astonishing, not alarming.
Such a thing had never happened before. Not with anyone other than his father, that was.
“You can go straight to hell,” Kendra threw at him. “And you can start by getting out of my house.”
Balthazar shrugged. “Whether I am in this house or out of it, that will make no difference. The outcome will be the same.”
“You have absolutely no authority over me. I don’t even like you. And even if I did, the state of my womb is none of your business.”
“Think again, Kendra.”
He saw sheer murder on her face, and something about it...delighted him.
Balthazar had now seen a number of different versions of this woman. The fluttery, overcome, supposed innocent that night in the gazebo. The cool, controlled businesswoman who had sold herself so matter-of-factly and then kissed him like the culmination of a lifetime of his most erotic fantasies. The sunny, happy little waitress at the winery.
And even the woman who had greeted him at the door tonight, seemingly angelic. Bathed in light and not nearly as intimidated by him she ought to have been.
Now there was this version. Unafraid, uncowed, and somehow even more beautiful because of it.
He had come here wanting to do absolutely nothing but crush her, and instead he found himself hard again. That longing, that impossible need, stormed through him as if it intended to tear him apart.
She had no idea how close he came to simply sweeping her into his arms and tasting her mouth again. To lose himself that completely, that quickly.
No matter what she’d done to him.
This weakness will soon rule you, a voice inside that sounded far too much like his harsh father lashed out at him. Then you will be no better than she is. Is that what you want?
His trouble was he knew exactly what he wanted.
Kendra dropped that finger, but only so she could prop her hands on her hips. “You make a lot of threats but I think we both know they’re empty. Because this is the modern world, not whatever medieval daydream you have going on.”
Balthazar laughed, then. “I would advise you not to make yourself comfortable with that fantasy.” He laughed again when she scowled at him. “I would prefer it if you agreed to my terms. I would prefer it if you took those tests now, to spare us both the suspense. But I don’t require your agreement or cooperation, kopéla. Either way, I will have my answers in the end.”
“Either way? What are you going to do?” Kendra scoffed at him. “Kidnap me?”
But Balthazar only smiled.