His for the Taking - By Ann Major Page 0,31

face going even whiter as she leaned down to retrieve her flashlight.

“Sure!” When he laid them on his desk, she snatched them away. “Why not? I already read them,” he said.

“You had no right.”

“Really? You claim we have a son together, and I have no right? Tell me something. Did you come over here today just to get these letters? When you failed to find them while my mother was here, did you stay and sleep with me just so you could stay a little longer and sneak back down here and try to get these letters?”

“You can believe that if you want to. You’ve believed worse of me.”

His dark eyes were probably as lethally fierce as he felt, because she quickly averted her gaze.

“I wonder why?” he asked, hating it when she paled further. “I want the truth this time, damn it.”

“No, you don’t. Nobody in this town has ever wanted that from me. All of you want to despise me. So go ahead! I should be used to it by now.” But her eyes were wild and her voice caught on a raw sob.

“I want to know if my mother’s right, if you used your beauty to play me for a fool! And I want to know if you used your beauty when we were kids. Did you chase me because you thought I was rich and you’d be bettering yourself? You are, obviously, by your own admission, ambitious.”

“I never chased you, if you’ll remember! You chased me. And then…when I realized you’d never really wanted me for more than sex, I walked away.”

“With Vernon?” he snarled.

She gasped. “I let you go.” She paused. “But yes, I am ambitious. Yes, I want to give my child a better start in life than I had back then. And not only my child…but to give other children a better start. I don’t want any child to have to grow up like I did!”

Something earnest and heartbroken in her eyes tore at him, but he ignored it.

“Right—you’re the saint now, and I’m some entitled, arrogant demon from hell who got you pregnant and then callously rejected you and our son after I married another woman!”

Despite her stricken expression, she notched her chin a fraction of an inch higher.

“All I know is that tonight…coming here…what we did…was a mistake,” she whispered. “I should never have confided in you at the pool, or slept with you.”

“Well, you did, damn it!”

“Can’t we just please forget tonight ever happened?”

He stared at her pale, forlorn face in disbelief. No! he wanted to yell.

Forget he had a son? Forget how seeing her again, how having her in his arms again, had made him feel so complete and so connected to her on a soul-deep level that his loneliness of six years had fallen away? Forget that despite everything he knew about her and everything people said about her, she looked defenseless and stricken and so damn innocent he wanted to take care of her? Forget he’d begun to trust her again and she’d disappointed him? Hell, furious as he was, she had him crazy with desire. How could he feel this way about her even now, when he’d just learned they had a son she’d planned to conceal from him forever?

She was as unscrupulous and selfish as her mother, but, on some level, he didn’t care.

Why the hell did his heart and body refuse to believe what his mind knew about her? Fool that he was, he still wanted her.

Not that he was about to let on how much power she had over him.

“Once I would have given anything to hear you say you wanted Noah, anything…. I couldn’t believe it when your only response was my two self-addressed, green postcards that came back with your boldly scrawled signature. After that there was nothing. No phone call. No letter. No email. Nothing. I kept waiting to hear from you. I went through hell. So, no—I don’t care how you feel now because I can’t trust you. Don’t you see? I can’t let myself care. I’m a mother. I have to do what’s best for Noah.”

“Right,” he growled. “You’re the trustworthy one. You were going to keep your son from ever knowing his real father. How do you think he’d feel about that if he ever found out?”

Clutching her letters against her breasts, which were covered by a long sheet, she squared her shoulders and backed toward the door. “I’m going to get dressed. I want you to