High-Society Secret Baby - Maxine Sullivan Page 0,44

hated her with a passion.

He should have known, Dominic told himself as he gunned his Porsche down the freeway, anger settling like a steel weight in his chest.

Since their wedding he thought he’d managed to understand this part of Cassandra. That she’d felt vulnerable as a child and it had made her crave security…that she was a gold digger who had valid reasons for marrying for money. But there were simply some things too big to ever accept.

And that was all the more disappointing because he knew now she had a depth to her he hadn’t suspected before. She wasn’t superficial like he’d thought she was. She was deep, but of course, that didn’t mean her integrity was beyond question. Obviously.

Hell, he’d come to admire the way she’d survived all that life had thrown at her, but he’d been a fool to forget what she was. She had no hesitation in manipulating him. Sharing her childhood. Telling him she wanted to do volunteer work. Not telling him about her birthday. It had to have been for show.

His disappointment tasted like bile.

Dammit, he still didn’t understand why she needed to win him over in the first place. She already had his wedding ring on her finger. She already had a Roth child. And now she had him in his bed.

What the hell else could she want from him?

Capitulation?

A declaration of love?

Was she a control freak who had to have every man fall in love with her, and all the better if it was a wealthy husband to twist him around her little finger? No chance.

She’d be waiting a long time for that. She might think she knew how to manipulate a man, but she was in for one hell of a shock. No one manipulated him and got away with it. Not even the woman who’d mothered his child. At the next off-ramp, he turned the car around and headed back.

At the discovery that she loved Dominic, Cassandra sat in silence for a while after he left, feeling as empty as the coffee cups on the table in front of her. Love had only ever taken what it could from her and left her hurting. It probably wouldn’t be any different this time.

She loved Dominic.

And now she had to pretend that she didn’t. Could things get any worse than this? It was hard enough knowing he had the upper hand, but now she also had to live with the fear of giving herself away to the man she loved. Certainly he would use it against her if he knew. The Roth men were good at that. Liam certainly had no problem using her love for him to get himself a trophy wife, turning her heart totally against him. She didn’t want that to happen with Dominic.

She made a pact to herself then. She would keep her love for Dominic a secret. It would keep her going during the years ahead when he continued to believe she was something she wasn’t. After all, she couldn’t fool herself into believing it would be any different in six months’ time, not even after the letter with the lawyer was destroyed and the threat of Liam’s “truth” disappeared.

That letter was the instrument that could take her daughter away from her, but there was still nothing anywhere to prove to Dominic that his wife hadn’t married Liam for money or had his child for the money. The proof was there in the money having gone into her account. Sure, she could prove she’d paid the half million to the nursing home for the bond, but that didn’t prove to Dominic that she hadn’t had Liam’s child for her own selfish reasons. Even if she told Dominic about Liam’s letter and its contents, it would still be her word against a dead man’s, and who was Dominic going to believe? His beloved brother? Or the wife he believed to be a gold digger and an adulteress?

Yet how could she share her life with Dominic and say nothing about Liam paying her to have his baby? Because that was true. Liam had paid her, except he’d been the one to blackmail her, not the other way around. Oh, God, what a mess.

And even after all this she still had to get the money for Penny. She could ask Dominic again, but she knew she wouldn’t. Somehow she would find a way. She had to. And soon.

Knowing her best ideas occurred in the bath, she dragged herself upstairs and