Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,64

I wasn’t certain why I was so angry, why I couldn’t accept that he clearly still wanted a relationship with me, and that since I admittedly loved him, and was carrying our child, it would make the most sense to be with him.

Except the past was still the past—one we didn’t talk about. And I didn’t want to be with a man as ruthless as my father.

“Emily.” Just my name, but he was walking toward me. So I stepped back, toward the open door, the outside. Where I could run. “Emily.”

The way he said my name that second time, it sounded the way he had said, “I love you.” It sounded the way my heart ached in the dark of the night. It felt tantalizingly right. Maybe I didn’t have to run. Maybe I could simply tell him I loved him too. That I hadn’t stopped loving him. That he was in every fiber of me all the time, influenced everything I did.

After all, he was here. Again. And he didn’t have any other reason to be. Maybe something had changed.

I couldn’t step back anymore anyway because suddenly he was around me. Holding me, breathing me in. Touching me. His hand on my belly in a way that stopped me cold.

No. Nononono. How did he know?

“Why are you here?” I forced the words out again, colder this time. He seemed to sense my shift in mood but his arms tightened around me, as if he could hold me captive.

“Because I want to be there for you.”

I pushed out of his arms and turned, furious, desperate. The guilty, wary expression on his face confirmed my fear. “You’re here because you think I’m pregnant. Who the hell told you that? Leanna?”

“No, your father.”

I stopped again, stunned. “Why would he do that? Why would he say that to you?”

“Emily, aren’t you?”

But I couldn’t get past what he had said.

“You spoke with my father?” And Daniel was still alive? My father hadn’t killed him? Daniel hadn’t trapped him into committing another crime?

“He came to see me. He didn’t think I should have to go through what your mother put him through. Not knowing you. I want to know our child.”

I struggled against the darkness that clouded my mind and my soul. Against the realization that my father had betrayed me again. Against the impossibility of my father and Daniel having a peaceful conversation. But most of all—

“You’re here because you think I’m having your baby,” I said, my chest aching. “I understand now. Well, that’s not a good enough reason to be together. In fact, it’s a horrible reason!”

“What is a good enough reason?”

If he was asking that question then there wasn’t a reason good enough. I couldn’t trust him. I needed to send him away, to deny anything that might tie us together.

“You’re having my child,” he said finally. Exactly the wrong thing to say. Everything was ruined. Instead of having space to figure this out on my own, he was here, crowding my thought, making all of the choices just about the mistake we made that night on the beach. How could my future end up resting on that one fateful moment?

“What do you want from me?” I demanded.

“I want another chance.”

No.

“Daniel—”

But it was his turn to stop me.

“Wait, Emily. We’ve spent the whole time we’ve known each other avoiding talking about the past.”

What? Now he brought up the past? I didn’t know I could be so angry.

“Exactly!” I raged, and I saw him flinch. “Now you’re asking me to spend my future with you. I’m saying no because we have the past standing between us. It was there from the beginning and then, when maybe we could have put it behind us, I dragged it back in.”

Silence met my impassioned speech and I searched his thoughtful expression for some sign that he understood.

“Okay,” he said finally. “You’re right. So let’s talk about it.”

I sucked in my breath. I felt strange, so light inside, abuzz with the possibility that he might actually understand.

Stared at him. Went from despair to hope in a nanosecond.

He was daring me. I felt it. And the moment was ridiculously powerful, like those midnight moments of creative brilliance just before I turned them into art. I could jump in, seize it, and if we worked it out everything could be wonderful. But what if we did this, talked about the past, and all that love wasn’t strong enough?

“I blamed your father for betraying my father,” he started, his