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“Are you sure it’s mine? I used condoms.”
She nearly leapt out of her skin, not realizing he’d come back. She grappled at the edge of the bar to steady herself, feeling spun around one too many times by all of this.
“Are you okay?” She looked to his hand. Two fingers wore beige-colored bandages.
“Fine.” He folded his arms, feet braced. He’d withdrawn even further, presenting her with a wall of frost that chilled her to the bone. “This is why you’re here, then? You think you’ve pulled the golden ticket?”
She opened her mouth, but her voice stalled in her throat. In her head, all her words had been carefully planned out, but none of this was going the way she’d expected. Her thoughts were scattered on the wind.
“This is not my first stroll around this particular block, Fliss.” Saint’s tone grew even more deep and lethal.
“Wh-what...?” She had to press her wobbling lips together to make them work. “What do you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“When it’s yours. What do you do?” She dropped her gaze to the elegant buckles on his shoes and the fine detail work across the toes, trying to tell herself that his skepticism worked in her favor. “You don’t have any children that you acknowledge, so what do you do when it’s yours? Pay for termination or—”
“They’ve neverbeenmine.” He spoke through his teeth. “If I had children, I’d acknowledge them, but I don’t. That’s why I wear condoms, so claims like this don’t even arise. And I say this without judgment, Fliss...”
Oh, he was definitely judging her. She flashed a rancorous look up at him.
“I’ve seen what people have said about you online.” His voice and expression were cool and remote. “I can’t take your word for it that it’s mine.”
“Wow.” She couldn’t hide the slap of that. She looked away, unable to keep from revealing her torment. It wasn’t just the memory of those old, cruel rumors. It was demeaning enough that he knew about that time of her life. She couldn’t believe he had thrown it in her face like that, though.
“I don’t care how many lovers you’ve had,” he said grimly. “I’m not that much of a hypocrite. I’m only saying I can’t take it on faith that your baby is mine.”
“You’re—” She had to clear the thickness of humiliation from her throat. It came from realizing that she’d nurtured a barely acknowledged hope that this would go differently. Deep in her subconscious, she’d thought he might welcome her back into his life and greet this news with the joy that imbued her.
Fool. Struck by lightning. A new day. A naked child on a horse, proceeding into the future alone.
“You’re making assumptions,” she said, fighting to inject some semblance of dignity into her voice as she scraped for the words she’d come to say. “I only came to ask you to make a statement that it’snotyours, so the paparazzi will leave me alone.” She fumbled her sunglasses from her pocketbook and put them on before she looked at him again.
He was standing like a pillar, lips parted as though he’d been about to say something. His brows were a thick, foreboding line.
She wished these cheap lenses didn’t afford him such a golden glow. He looked like a bronzed statue. A gleaming study in wrath.
“Will you?” she prompted, arteries stinging from the adrenaline running through them.
“It’s not mine.” Why did he sound so angered? Shouldn’t he have been relieved? “That’s why you came here today? To tell me it’snotmine?”
“It seemed fair to warn you.” Now the words she’d rehearsed were coming more easily. “It’s all over the entertainment sites that you’re looking for a wife. It would be awkward if rumors about me started while you were engaged to someone else, wouldn’t it? Your intended would be dragged into something she didn’t sign up for. I’d rather skip that myself, if you don’t mind. So will you? Make a statement?”
“Take off those glasses.” He was trying to pierce through their mirrored lenses with the strength of his glower.
“No.” She stood straighter, chin up, but she was quivering like jelly inside.
“Is the baby mine or not, Fliss?”
“You wore condoms,” she reminded him, refusing to outright lie. “None broke, did they?”
“No, but we had sex. There’s a chance it’s mine, isn’t there? That’s why you’re here.”
“With the legions of men I’ve entertained? Who’s to say?” she said scathingly.
“Don’t play games, Fliss.”
“This isn’t a game,” she snapped. “I’m pregnant. The baby is mine. Your only obligation is to tell people to leave me alone.That’swhat I came to tell you today.”
