Theo slowly raised his dark head. 'That's better, Willow,' he said roughly. His long fingers were still covering her breasts, deliberately moving from one to the other, playing with the aching, rigid peaks. She opened her eyes, and gazed up into his darkly attractive face, hot and breathless with sensual excitement.
He was staring down at her, unable to hide the desire in his eyes, his breathing as erratic as hers, a muscle beating in his jaw. But his voice was remarkably steady as he added, 'Now I know coming to an arrangement will not be a problem.' She caught the gleam of cynical triumph in his smouldering eyes and it was like a douche of cold water.
What on earth was she doing? She must be mad. This man wanted her son, and for the second time in less than twenty-four hours she was lying in his arms, her dress half off, gazing at him like a besotted fool. Terrified by her own emotional frailty, she wrenched herself from his arms and darted out of the room. She ran into the kitchen, fumbling with the buttons of her dress, her legs trembling and almost collapsing with shame and embarrassment.
Leaning over the sink, she turned on the cold-water tap and splashed her face with water in a desperate attempt to cool her overheated flesh. Straightening, she picked up the hand towel from the rail and dried her face. Coffee, thick and black, that was what she needed. She realised it had been a long night and an even more harrowing morning and she needed to start thinking sensibly and quickly. She filled the kettle and reached for the jar of coffee in the cupboard with a hand that shook.
'Ah, there you are.' Spinning around, she almost dropped the coffee jar as Theo, her nemesis, walked in.
Willow glared at him. He'd removed his tie, and the open-necked shirt only served to draw her attention to his strong, tanned throat. She gulped and felt hot colour return to her cheeks as she recalled how only minutes ago her arms had been wrapped intimately around that throat. It was so unfair—he looked even more incredibly attractive than ever, and he was in total control, she thought bitterly.
'Coffee. Good, I could do with a cup, and I hope your hasty exit means you are going to make me lunch. I am starving,' Theo drawled smoothly, and, as cool as a cucumber, pulled out one of the four pine chairs that surrounded the square breakfast table and sat down. 'We can talk just as easily in here.'
She didn't trust herself to speak, and simply stared at him as his dark, curious gaze swept around the room, lingering on the window that opened out onto the back garden and the fields beyond.
'One thing I will say for this little house, it does have rather good views.' Theo turned his dark head towards her, his eyes taking in her beautiful face still tinged scarlet with embarrassment. His gaze flickered over her slender figure before lingering on the bodice of her dress, where in her haste she had fastened the buttons in the wrong buttonholes, and the curve of one breast was exposed to reveal the dark aureole surrounding a small, tight nipple. 'Both outside and in,' he added.
As a gentleman he should tell her, but after what she had done to him he had no inclination to act the gentleman. Let her find out for herself, and in the meantime he could sit back and enjoy the view. He glanced up into her wary eyes, a broad smile slashing across his handsome face, his dark eyes lit with amusement.
His grin was so open that for a moment Willow was tempted to respond, but, tearing her gaze away, she muttered, 'Flattery will get you nowhere,' and she turned back to the bench. Reaching up for two cups, she plonked them down on the worktop. 'But I will make you a coffee.' At least that way she could keep her back to him for a while. 'There is a good pub and restaurant a few miles back the way you came that serves a very nice lunch, if you are really hungry.' With a bit of luck he would take himself off to the pub and, with a bit of breathing space, she might just possibly get her chaotic thoughts into some kind of order before she had to pick up Stephen.
'You don't really imagine for a minute that I am going to leave you alone,' he prompted, moving across the room to lean casually against the bench beside her. 'And surely you cannot be so cruel as to refuse to feed a starving man? Because of you, Willow, I ate very little breakfast.'
She ignored his barbed reminder and cast him a sidelong glance. 'You don't look like any starving man I have ever seen. But, if you insist, I think I have some eggs and homemade bread rolls.' Slowly it was beginning to dawn on Willow that there was no point in fighting Theo. She needed to keep her temper, and her arguments, for the big issue: Stephen.
Ten minutes later she placed a plate containing a cheese omelette and salad on the table in front of Theo, accompanied by the butter dish and a basket of crusty bread rolls.
Willow did not want to eat, in fact she felt sick, but Theo had insisted she join him. His earlier anger appeared to have vanished and she agreed, hoping to keep him sweet. As she watched Theo wolf down his food with apparent enjoyment she pushed hers around the plate, pretending to eat, her stomach curled in knots of nervous tension.
'That was excellent, Willow. I must say you surprised me. The omelette was perfect and the bread rolls were a work of art; you are a wonderful cook.' Theo grinned, leaning back in his chair. 'I don't think I have ever had a girlfriend who made her own bread,' he offered, amusement in his tone.
Rising to her feet, she collected the plates and glanced down at him. 'You still haven't,' she responded bluntly. 'Your type of girlfriends are well-documented fashion plates who probably don't have the time between visiting the beautician's and the hairdresser, and of course pandering to your every whim, to do anything else,' she ended dryly. Turning, she crossed to the dishwasher and loaded the plates, and then plugged in the kettle. 'More coffee?' she asked without looking around. Theo disturbed her on so many levels she was having trouble concentrating.
'Yes.' She nearly jumped out of her skin as the affirmative was murmured very close to her ear. She had not heard his silent approach, and he was now standing right behind her. 'But I think you are going to need the coffee more before this day is out, because you are quite wrong, Willow.'
No humour now. Willow heard the threat in his voice, and she straightened up, her shoulders tense, but she was incapable of turning around as his warm breath brushed against her cheek.
'True, you are no longer my girlfriend—that was a shortlived but very productive episode, as I have just discovered. But, make no mistake, I am no longer the poor fool who was put off by your lie about the morning-after pill,' he drawled silkily. 'This time I don't just want you as a girlfriend. This time I'll marry you if I have to, but I do want my son.'
'What?' She spun around. 'Have you taken leave of your senses? I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth!' she exclaimed, horrified at his suggestion.
Theo stared down at her for a long moment, taking in the stunned expression in her dazzling blue eyes. He then gave a slight shrug of his broad shoulders. 'Tough.' He paused, one dark brow arching sardonically, 'But it is not your choice, Willow. It is mine.'
'You can't say that,' she cried, agitation making her voice rise. 'It's ridiculous. Marriage is a diabolical suggestion.'
He gave a scornful laugh. 'Nowhere near as diabolical as you depriving me of my son for eight years. I had to learn of his existence, even his name, from a cheap tabloid. Well, you are not getting the chance to humiliate me, or lie to me, again. If we marry our son will have both parents. It is the simplest solution and the only thing we need to discuss is what you have told Stephen about his absent father.' He stared down at her, ferocious tension written into every hard line of his strong face as he added in a voice devoid of all emotion, 'And if you made the mistake of telling him I was dea
d, I might very well kill you myself.'
The threat was there in his eyes and in the powerful body towering over her. Suddenly something seemed to snap in Willow's brain, and without thinking she lashed out at him, her hand connecting hard on his lean cheek. 'Don't you dare threaten me, you no-good womanising bastard. No one ever deprived you of anything in your life, and you have the nerve to threaten me and my son.'
Theo stared down at her, his eyes cold as ice. 'That was a very stupid thing to do, Willow. I want my son, but I don't have to take you. My offer of marriage was one of kindness, but a court order will do just as well,' he drawled cynically.
'As if I care about your kindness. You deserved it,' she snapped, almost choking with anger. 'No court in the land would give you custody, you arrogant devil, not when I tell them the truth.'
'And the truth, as we both know,' he sneered, grasping her by the shoulders, 'is that you were a precocious young girl who wanted nothing more than to get rid of her virginity. So desperate, in fact, that you slept with some unsuspecting male. Then you quite deliberately denied that you could possibly be pregnant, and quite deliberately deprived the father of his son.'
'My God, that is rich coming from you,' she cried. 'You took one look at me and seduced me into your bed, in your own house, where your sister and her friends were supposed to be looking after me, conveniently forgetting you were engaged to be married at the time!' She tried to twist free from his hold but he slammed her back against the bench.