A Debt Paid in Passion. Dani Collins

on her belly. Her profile was grave.

      Raoul dragged his eyes off her, disturbed by how much her earnest simplicity wrenched his gut. It made him twitch with the impulse to reassure her, and not just verbally. For some reason, he wanted to hold her so badly his whole body ached.

      That wasn’t like him. He had his moments of being a softy when it came to his mother or stepsister. They were beloved and very much his responsibility even though they weren’t as helpless these days as they’d once been. He still flinched with guilt when he remembered how he’d been living it up his first year of college, drinking and chasing girls, completely oblivious to what was happening at home. Then, despite how brutal and thoughtless his stepfather’s gambling had been, the man’s death had shattered the hearts of two people he cared for deeply. Faced with abject poverty, it had been easy for Raoul to feel nothing but animosity toward the dead man, but the unmitigated grief his mother and Miranda had suffered had been very real. He’d hated seeing them in pain. It had been sharply reminiscent of his agony after his father’s suicide.

      But as supportive as he’d tried to be while he took control and recovered their finances, he’d never been the touchy-feely sort who hugged and cuddled away their pain.

      Why he craved to offer Sirena that sort of comfort boggled him.

      Forcing himself to ignore the desire, he scanned the changes she’d made to the agreement, thinking that perhaps he was more self-involved than he’d realized since he had been focused this entire time on what the child meant to him, how his life would change, how he’d make room for it and provide for his progeny. What he wanted.

      Suddenly he was seeing and hearing what Sirena wanted and it wasn’t to hurt him. She had ample ways to do that, but her changes to this document were more about keeping the baby with her than keeping it from him.

      “Did you think about termination at all?” he asked with sudden curiosity.

      “Yes.”

      The word struck him like a bullet, utterly unexpected and so lethal it stopped his heart. Until his mind caught up. Obviously she’d decided to have the baby or they wouldn’t be here.

      He rubbed feeling back into his face, but his ears felt filled with water. He had to strain to hear her as she quietly continued.

      “I was only a few weeks along when I found out. There’s a pill you can take that early. You don’t have to go into hospital, there are fewer complications... There seemed to be a lot of good reasons not to go through with the pregnancy.” Her profile grew distressed and her fingertips grazed the pulse in her throat.

      Reasons like the threat of prison and having a man she didn’t want in her life demanding access to her baby. Raoul’s sharp mind pinned up the drawbacks as quickly as her own must have. His blood ran cold at how close he’d come to not knowing about this baby at all.

      “I couldn’t bring myself to...expel it from my life like that. I want this baby, Raoul.” She turned with her hand protectively on her middle again, her eyes glittering with quiet ferocity. “I know it’s foolish to let you see how badly I want it. You’ll find a way to use it against me. But I need you to believe me. I will never let anyone take my baby from me.”

      His scalp tightened with preternatural wariness and pride and awe. Sirena was revealing the sort of primal mother instinct their caveman ancestors would have prized in a mate. The alpha male in him exalted in seeing that quality emanating from the mother of his child.

      While the cutthroat negotiator in him recognized a tough adversary.

      “You’re trying to convince me I can’t buy you off,” he summed up, trying not to let himself become too entranced by her seeming to possess redeeming qualities. She had fooled him once already.

      “You can’t. The only reason I’m speaking to you at all is to give my baby the same advantages its father might provide its future siblings, whether that’s monetary or social standing or emotional support. Consider what those things might be as you work through the rest of that.” She nodded at the contract and slipped into the powder room again.

      Future siblings? Raoul’s mind became an empty whiteboard as he bit back a remark that he hadn’t expected this child; he certainly wasn’t ready to contemplate more.

      * * *

      Three months later, Raoul was taking steps to ensure he was prepared for the birth, looking ahead to clear his calendar in six weeks. He rarely took time off and found even Christmas with his mother an endurance test of agitation to get back to work. Anticipation energized him for this vacation, though.

      Because it was a new challenge? Or because he would see Sirena?

      He shut down the thought. The baby was his sole interest. He was eager to find out the sex, know it was healthy and have final confirmation it was his.

      Not that he had many doubts on any of that. True to their agreement, Sirena had sent him updates on the baby’s progress. Nothing concerning her own, he had noted with vague dissatisfaction, but he expected he would be informed if there were problems. The second scan later in the pregnancy had not revealed an obvious male, so he’d assumed the baby was female and found himself taken with the vision of a daughter possessing dark curls and beguiling green eyes.

      As for paternity, to his mind, the fact Sirena had signed made the baby his. The final test after the birth was a formality that would activate the arrangements, that was all.

      But that was a month and a half from now and he had people to organize. People who were abuzz with the news that the driven head of their multinational software corporation was taking an extended absence.

      Only a handful of his closest and most trusted subordinates knew the reason, and even they didn’t know the mother’s identity. The scandalous circumstances of his father’s infidelity and suicide had made Raoul a circumspect man. Nothing about his involvement with Sirena, their affair, her being fired for embezzlement or her pregnancy was public knowledge. When people asked—and she’d made enough of an impression on associates and colleagues that many did—he only said she was no longer with the company.

      Part of him continued to resent that loss, especially when the assistants he kept trying out turned out to be so trying. The highly recommended Ms. Poole entered the meeting with a worried pucker in her magic-marker brows.

      “I said life or death, Ms. Poole,” he reminded, clinging to patience.

      “She’s very insistent,” the spindly woman said, bringing a mobile phone to him.

      “Who?” He tamped down on asking, Sirena? Her tenacity was something he’d come to respect, if not always appreciate.

      “Molly. About your agreement with Ms. Abbott.”

      He didn’t know any Molly, but something preternatural set an unexpected boot heel on his chest, sharp and compressing, causing pressure to balloon out in radiant waves. Odd. There was no reason to believe this was bad news. Sirena hadn’t contacted him directly since he’d left her looking wrung out and cross at her flat that day, neither of them particularly satisfied with the outcome of their negotiations, but possessing a binding document between them.

      “Yes?” He took the phone in a hand that became nerveless and clumsy. As he stood and moved from the table, he was aware of the ripple of curiosity behind him. At the same time, despite everything that had passed between them, he experienced a flick of excitement. His mind conjured an image of Sirena in one of those knitted skirt-and-sweater sets she used to wear.

      “Mr. Zesiger? I’m Sirena Abbott’s midwife. She asked me to inform you that the baby is on its way.”

      “It’s early,” he protested.

      “Yes, they had to induce—” She cut herself off.

      He heard muffled words and held his breath as he strained to hear what was said.

      She came back. “I’ve just been informed it will be an emergency cesarean.”

      “Where