The Consequence He Must Claim. Dani Collins

anger was worse. She knew him. She knew with a roiling dread in her belly exactly how much he hated learning of any sort of perfidy. Keeping her pregnancy from him had been a massive act of self-preservation, but there was no way to protect herself now.

      “Wives are different from girlfriends.” She licked her lips, aware that his sharp gaze followed the action. An internal flutter started up under his attention, but she ignored it. “I wanted to work for you, not her.”

      “How were you working for her?”

      “Little things.” She shrugged. “If she wanted tickets for the theater, she asked me to buy them.”

      “That happened once! You bought them for me all the time.”

      “Exactly. For you.”

      He narrowed his eyes. “So when you told me in your interview that you would never become possessive, that was a lie?”

      “I wasn’t being possessive,” she insisted. Okay, she’d been a little bit possessive. Maybe. “It wasn’t just buying the tickets. It meant I was expected to put that event into your schedule regardless of anything else you might have planned.”

      “You rearranged my calendar a hundred times a day anyway. Did you need a raise for this extra responsibility?” That was pretty much what he’d said that day, right down to the facetious tone.

      “Changing your timetable on her instruction is not a responsibility. It’s playing politics. She was the one being possessive, showing me that she had the power to direct me, which tells me she saw me as a threat. So I chose to remove myself.”

      “Odd that she would feel threatened, when you, apparently, let our relationship blur into personal?”

      “I didn’t sleep with you to get at her, if that’s what you’re suggesting! It just happened. Is that so hard to believe?”

      “No,” he said with clipped firmness and a hint of self-condemnation.

      Her question was supposed to be a knock back, but his response, and the way their gazes locked, kept them firmly in the center of the ring. She could feel him trying to dig past her defensiveness to the truth, trying to see exactly how their lovemaking had happened.

      Naked and earthy and, in her case, complete abandonment to something that had been building for years.

      Her layers of composure began falling away like petals off a rose. A fresh wave of heat rose from her chest, up her throat, into her cheeks. His gaze slid down, scanning like an X-ray, trying to see not through fabric, but through time. He was trying to remember what she looked like, nude and flushed with desire, then pink with recent climax and supreme satisfaction.

      The night nurse came in, making them both jerk guiltily.

      “Hello,” she said cheerily, unaware of the thick sexual tension. “Are you the father? I hope you have identification. The guard at the nursery door will need it. We have strict orders to be vigilant with your two sons.”

      “Two?” Cesar snapped his head around.

      Sorcha caught back a laugh.

      “Just one,” she assured him. “She means Octavia and I. Our sons. The mix-up.”

      His brows crashed together. “Yes. Explain that.”

      “Talk while you walk.” The nurse brushed him aside so she could assist Sorcha from the bed. “No limo service this time. Dr. Reynolds wants you moving.”

      Cesar stepped to her other side as she struggled off the edge of the bed.

      He reached to flick her gown down her bare thighs before she could, telling her his gaze had been on her legs.

      This was such a peculiar situation. She’d slept with him in her mind long before she’d done it in real life, yet the experience remained only in her mind. He didn’t share it.

      But he brought her shaky grip to his arm to steady her as she stood, acting like intimacy between them was established. She licked her lips, stealing a wary look up at him.

      His expression was hard and fierce, impossible to interpret, but when had he ever been easy to read? He was capable of charm, had a dry sense of humor and was incredibly quick to understand almost anything. This situation, however, defied understanding. No wonder he’d retreated to his most arrogantly remote demeanor.

      “I was planning to be home when I delivered,” Sorcha explained. “But I went into labor early and the cord was in the wrong place. His blood supply would have been cut off if I delivered naturally.”