‘I’m sorry.’ Angel disconcerted her with a look of sympathy that hurt her pride as much as a slap would have done.
‘Well, I’m not. I got by fine without him,’ Merry declared, lifting her chin.
‘Maybe you did.’ Angel trailed out the word, letting her know he wasn’t convinced by her face-saving claim. ‘But others don’t do so well without paternal guidance. My own mother grew up indulged in every financial way, but essentially without parents who cared enough about her to discipline her. She’s well past fifty now, although she doesn’t look it, but she’s still a rebellious teenager in her own head. I want my daughter to have stability. I don’t want her to go wild when she becomes an adult with the world at her feet along with every temptation.’
Involuntarily impressed by that argument, Merry shook her head. ‘That’s a long way off and if I don’t stand in the way of her having a relationship with you now, you’ll still be around.’
Angel lounged back in his chair and crossed an ankle over one knee, long, powerful thigh muscles flexing below tight, faded denim. He looked outrageously relaxed, as if he were posing for a publicity shot, and drop-dead gorgeous from the spill of glossy black curls to the golden caramel brilliance of his eyes. Merry dragged her guilty gaze from his thighs and his crotch, sudden heat rising inside her and burning her cheeks. His hard-boned, thoroughly raunchy masculine beauty broke through her defences every time she looked at him and it made her feel like a breathless fan girl.
‘But the bottom line is that unless we marry I won’t be around enough,’ Angel intoned with grim emphasis. ‘I spend at least fifty per cent of the year abroad. I want her to meet my relatives and learn what it means to be a Valtinos…’
He could have said nothing more calculated to cool Merry’s fevered response to him. Dismay filled her because she understood the message he was giving her. As soon as Elyssa was old enough, Angel would be spiriting her out to Greece, taking her away from her mother, leaving Merry behind, shorn of control of what happened in her child’s life. It was a sobering prospect.
‘Did you mean it…what you said about fighting me in court?’ Merry prompted angrily.
‘For once in my life I was playing it straight,’ Angel declared.
‘But where the heck did all this suddenly come from?’ Merry demanded in heated denial. ‘You didn’t want anything to do with us last winter!’
‘It took time for me to come to terms with how I felt about fatherhood. At first I thought the most important objective was to conserve my world as it was. I thought I could turn my back on you and my child but I found that I couldn’t,’ Angel breathed in a roughened undertone as though the words were being extracted forcibly from him. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about her…or you.’
‘Me?’ Merry gasped in sharp disbelief. ‘Why would you have been thinking about me?’
Angel lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in questioning doubt. ‘So, I’m human. Learning that a woman is carrying your child is an unexpectedly powerful discovery—’
‘Angel,’ Merry cut in without hesitation, ‘let’s come back down to earth here. Learning that I was pregnant sent you into retreat so fast you left a smoke trail in your wake!’
‘And all I learned was that there was no place to run from reality,’ Angel countered with sardonic bite. ‘I fought my curiosity for a long time before I finally gave way to it and asked to see her. You said no repeatedly but here we are now, supposedly acting like adults. I’m trying to be honest… I’m trying not to threaten you but I’ve come to see marriage as the best option for all three of us.’
‘You threatened me quite deliberately!’ Merry slung at him furiously.
‘You need to know that I’m serious and that this is not some whim that will go away if you wait for long enough. I’m here to stay in your lives,’ Angel intoned harshly.
‘Well, that’s going to be rather awkward when it’s not what I want and I will fight you every step of the way!’ Merry flung back at him. ‘You wanted me out of your life and I got out. You can’t force me back.’