Modern Romance June 2017 Books 1 – 4. Maisey Yates

I’m staring. You dropped a bomb on me last night. I’m still reeling,’ Jax breathed in a raw undertone, green eyes glittering warily below curling ebony lashes.

      ‘Well, I’ve been mentally reeling from the minute I discovered I was pregnant,’ Lucy confided truthfully. ‘With time you get used to the idea. I couldn’t bear to imagine life without Bella now.’

      Jax scanned the youthful glow of her unblemished skin and the luxuriant tumble of strawberry-blonde ringlets that merely highlighted her bright blue eyes. He acknowledged her beauty for there was no denying what was right in front of him. As his body began to react he clenched his teeth together hard and wandered back towards the front door, determined not to let his libido take over when there would soon be a child in the room.

      ‘Coffee?’ Lucy pressed as the awkward silence stretched when he reappeared in the doorway.

      ‘This is not a social visit,’ Jax answered.

      A cry sounded out somewhere above them and Lucy scurried upstairs, her face flushed by his deflating statement.

      Jax plonked himself down on a sofa and struggled to relax but it had been more years than he cared to recall since he had been around a baby. He was godfather to several but his role had never been hands-on, nor would it ever have been more because nobody expected a single man, who was also erroneously known as his actress mother’s only child, to be comfortable dealing with young children. Ironically Jax had learned the daily routine of how to look after a baby when he was only twelve years old. It had been the end of the summer before his mother had finally engaged a nanny because Jax was returning to boarding school.

      He heard the creak of the stairs and vaulted upright. As he straightened his shoulders Lucy walked into the lounge and he immediately saw the child in her arms. He froze into a statue in the same moment that he saw the little girl’s black curly hair and the green eyes. That fast, that dramatically, Jax knew he didn’t need a DNA test to prove to anyone that the little girl was his. Lucy’s child was the living image of his kid sister, Tina, and that uncanny resemblance hit him like an avalanche. His mother had had very strong genes, he reckoned ruefully, for both he and the little sister who had died as a toddler had looked far more like Mariana than the men who had fathered her two children. He knew too that his striking likeness to his mother had only been another nail in his coffin as far as his oversensitive father was concerned.

      ‘This is Bella...’ Lucy framed, kneeling down to settle the little girl gently on the floor.

      A thumb planted in her rosebud mouth, Bella studied Jax fixedly, her green eyes full of curiosity.

      Jax bent down and lifted a toy that broke straight into a catchy tune as soon as he pressed the right button. Bella grinned and came closer, steadying herself on one powerful thigh with a clutching little hand.

      ‘She’s not scared,’ Jax remarked, marvelling that he could still speak normally after being plunged without warning into some of his darkest memories. The remnants of that guilt, anger and pain still resonated powerfully with him.

      ‘No, she’s quite confident and she likes men. My father makes a fuss of her and spoils her. I suppose we all spoil her a bit,’ Lucy conceded, staring at the little tableau of Jax and his daughter as they each assessed the other. ‘She looks very like you—’

      Jax skated a teasing forefinger off Bella’s determined little chin and swallowed thickly, struggling to master his almost overwhelming emotions. He should not cloud his first meeting with his daughter with such tragic memories, he censured himself fiercely. The past was the past and it would be wiser to leave the sad little ghost of Tina safely buried there.

      ‘What is it?’ Lucy prompted, troubled by the feverish glitter of Jax’s stunning eyes, their brilliance enhanced by the surround of spiky black lashes. ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘Nothing,’ Jax insisted, his wide sensual mouth slashing into a sudden forced smile, for he had shared far too much private stuff with Lucy in the past and he had no plans to make himself vulnerable in that way again ‘But when she was born you should have moved heaven and earth to ensure that I knew I was a father.’

      Unprepared for that criticism when she had tried every way she knew how to contact him, Lucy stiffened. ‘That’s not fair—’

      ‘What isn’t fair,’ Jax fielded as he accepted the little plastic doll that Bella brought him, ‘is that this little girl and I weren’t able to be in each other’s lives from the start.’

      Lucy’s bright blue eyes hardened. ‘As you said though, when you dumped me, you didn’t want me making a nuisance of myself,’ she reminded him thinly. ‘If you didn’t want to hear from me ever again, how was I supposed to tell you?’

      Not trusting himself to speak in the mood he was in, Jax shrugged a muscular shoulder in brooding silence.

      ‘Didn’t think you’d have an answer for that,’ Lucy sniped, leaning down to clasp Bella’s hand and guide her into the kitchen where she set about filling a toddler cup with milk.

      Bella pushed against the back door, keen to get out onto the patio and play. Lucy opened it and watched her daughter toddle out into the sunlight to retrieve the little plastic pram she loved.

      His child, his daughter, a new generation in the Antonakos family, Jax acknowledged, watching Bella swig her milk and then set down the cup with exaggerated care before pushing the little pram out onto the small lawn. Somehow, he didn’t know how, he didn’t care, Lucy should have contacted him, he thought angrily.

      ‘I have missed out on over a year of my daughter’s life,’ Jax intoned grimly. ‘That is not acceptable—’

      Under sudden attack, Lucy spun. ‘No, what was unacceptable back then was the way you treated me!’ she condemned with spirit.

      Jax thought about the contents of the investigative file he had been given. He saw no point in throwing the contents of that file in Lucy’s face now. Likewise her little session in that alleyway. His reaction had been all too human. He had let his anger and aggression take over and dictate his moves. ‘I’m afraid it never occurred to me that you could be pregnant,’ he admitted in a harsh undertone. ‘I should’ve acknowledged that possibility and made provision for it but I didn’t. That was a serious oversight on my part.’

      A little of the tension in Lucy’s slender shoulders eased. ‘Yes, it was.’

      ‘Then let us not waste time stating the obvious and rehashing a past we both prefer to forget,’ Jax countered impatiently.

      ‘We can’t forget it when Bella was born from it,’ Lucy argued helplessly. ‘We may not like each other but we’ll just have to live with that. I’ll make coffee, and not because this is a social occasion but because we need to learn how to act civilised.’

      As Lucy left the doorway to switch on the kettle Jax strode out onto the patio, unable to let his newly discovered daughter out of his sight and reach. It crossed his mind that he had no intention of living with his distaste of Lucy and forging a civilised alliance with her as a co-parent. With what he knew about her past, he didn’t, couldn’t possibly trust her to be a caring decent mother. Bella’s well-being came first and nobody would ever persuade him that his child could be safe with a mother who had once dealt in drugs and sold her body. It didn’t matter that to all intents and purposes Lucy appeared to have turned over a new leaf.

      Jax, after all, was the son of a drug addict. He had heard too many promises, seen all too many fresh starts and witnessed the subsequent falls from grace. Bella would always be at risk of harm if she remained with her mother, he decided cynically. He would have to fight Lucy through the courts for custody of their daughter. He was sure that she loved Bella to the best of her ability but with her fatal weakness for substance abuse he couldn’t trust her to always put their daughter’s needs first.

      ‘Are we capable of behaving like friends?’ Lucy asked Jax hopefully as she hovered in the doorway.

      Jax glanced at her in astonishment, questioning how she contrived