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Emmie stiffened. Marrying Harold without love was entirely different—she knew the man could never break her heart! Desperately, she turned. “Dad.”
But her father only patted her shoulder. “You’ll thank me later, sweetheart. It’s for the best.”
“For the best,” her younger brothers repeated, nodding sagely.
She was being railroaded. Looking around the church, she saw no allies. Everyone clearly believed she’d been about to settle for a marriage of convenience with Harold, and so they expected her to clap her hands with joy at a chance to marry Theo instead.
How would anyone understand that it was far worse for her to marry Theo Katrakis, even if he was the father of her baby, even if he was handsome, even if he was a billionaire?
With a deep breath, she whirled back to him.
“Please don’t do this. You’d regret it,” she choked out. Black mascara smeared her fingertips as she wiped her eyes. “You’d make me regret it.”
He looked down at her.
“I’m your baby’s father,” he said quietly.
Those four words made Emmie catch her breath. Was she wrong to deny Theo even the chance to try to raise their son in the same home, just because she was scared?
Scared if she ever let herself get close to Theo again he’d wrap her heart around his little finger and never let go. And if he made her love him again, there’d be no escape for her this time, not if they were married with a child. She’d be chained to him forever, by the bonds of matrimony and family and by her own heartsick longing.
She’d spend the rest of her life loving a man who could never love her in return. The endless rejection would destroy her, until it finally crushed her into pieces so small she really would be invisible.
But—what about her baby?
Maybe Theo could never love her. But what if there was hope for him as a father?
Could Emmie really deny their baby the chance to be raised in a secure home with both parents? Could she actually be selfish enough to put her own needs first?
“Just go through the ceremony,” Theo told the minister arrogantly. “We’ll fix the paperwork later.”
“I’m not sure...” the man began, then looked at Theo and shrugged. He turned to Emmie, his eyes grave behind his spectacles as he placed his finger on the correct page. “What do you say, my dear? Should I begin again?”
Lump in her throat, Emmie stared at him uncertainly.
“Do it,” Theo said in a low, husky voice. “Sayyes. Marry me.”
She turned, seeing all the staring eyes in the pews, feeling like she was in some awful dream. “I don’t know—”
Her voice cut off as he roughly pulled her into his arms. She gasped, breathing in the scent of leather and engines and woodsy aftershave and something even more intoxicating. Something justhim. Theo’s black eyes blazed.
Then, lowering his head, he kissed her.
Theo deployed his kiss like a weapon.
He’d meant to use his sensuality against her, to assert the power of his will and make her agree. He’d done it a few times in the past with other women for much less reason, lazily, almost without thinking. He could always convince a woman to see things his way. And now that he’d decided to marry Emmie, in shocked determination to permanently secure and protect the son he’d just found out about. He had no compunction about his method, just the outcome. The end justified the means.
But as his lips touched hers, something happened that Theo hadn’t expected.
The contact of their kiss caused a flash of electricity to curl through him, sizzling up his nerves, burning through his body. It had happened that way before, that night he’d taken her virginity, when they’d conceived their child. But he’d almost convinced himself in the months since then that he’d deceived himself, that he’d been drunk, that he’d been crazy, that he’d imagined that overwhelming ecstasy.
But he hadn’t imagined anything.
Kissing Emmie Swenson had made his world spin.
With an intake of breath, Theo pulled her tighter, feeling the firm curve of her pregnant belly and lush fullness of her breasts against his chest, the white satin of her wedding gown sliding against his T-shirt. He gripped her body against his as if she were the answer to the question he’d been asking all his life.
He needed this. Neededher. Oh, God. He heard a soft moan and realized it had come from his own throat.
