Forbidden Desires. Marion Lennox
of being arrested, fingerprinted and charged was the certainty that Raoul didn’t know what was happening to her. Some accountant had done this. A bank official. They didn’t understand that Raoul might be gruff on the outside, but she was his best PA ever. His right hand. They’d become intimate. He would be furious that she was being treated this way.
She had believed with all her heart that as soon as she told him what had happened, he’d make it right.
He hadn’t. He’d made her wait in the rain at the gate of his mansion outside London, eventually striding out with hard-hearted purpose, his severe expression chilly with distaste as he surveyed her.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Sirena had said through the rungs of the security gate, frightened by how unreachable he seemed. “I was arrested today.”
“I know,” Raoul replied without a shred of concern. “I filed the complaint.”
Her shock and stunned anguish must have been obvious, but his mouth had barely twitched in reaction. Cruel dislike had been the only emotion in his scathing expression. Sirena’s stepmother had been small and critical, but she hadn’t outright hated Sirena. In that second, she realized Raoul reviled her, and that was more painful than anything.
Guilt and remorse had made her want to shrivel up and die, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe she’d ruined her career and her budding relationship with the man of her dreams over one tiny misstep.
“But...” Everything she wanted to say backed up in her throat. They’d developed friendship, reliance and respect over two years of working together and just yesterday they’d taken that relationship to a new level. He’d been tender and teasing and...
God, she had believed he’d been loving.
“But what?” he challenged. “You thought sleeping with me would make a difference to how I’d react when I found out you had stolen from me? I was bored. You were there. That’s all yesterday was. You ought to know better than to think it would make me go easy on someone who was cheating me. Get a lawyer. You need one.”
Swallowing the rock that her crust of toast had become, Sirena pushed the betrayal firmly away. Raoul was in her past and somehow she had to make a future for herself and her baby. She turned her attention to putting out more feelers for work.
But over the next several weeks, the attacks from Raoul kept coming. Settlement offers that increased in size. Demands for paternity tests. Time limits.
Pacing John’s office, she bit back a rebuke at him for revealing her pregnancy that day in the courtroom. She hadn’t admitted to anyone that Raoul was the father and she was determined she never would.
“Here’s what I would like to know, John. How am I supposed to pay more legal bills I can’t afford when it’s not even my wish to be talking to you about this?”
“Your wish may be coming true, Sirena. He’s stated clearly that this is his final offer and you’re to accept it by Monday or forever go empty-handed.”
She stopped and stilled. Loss again. Like watching the final sands drifting through the neck of an hourglass, unable to stop them. Pain in her lip made her aware she was biting it to keep from crying out in protest. Rubbing her brow with a shaking hand, Sirena told herself it was what she wanted: Raoul gone from her life.
“Look, Sirena, I’ve told you several times this isn’t my area of expertise. So far that hasn’t mattered because you’ve refused to admit the baby is his—”
“It’s not,” she interjected, keeping her back to him. She wasn’t a great liar and didn’t like doing it, but she justified it because this baby was hers. Full stop.
“He obviously thinks it’s possible. You and he must have been involved.”
“Involvement comes in different levels, doesn’t it?” she snapped, then closed her mouth, fearful she was saying too much.
“So you’re punishing him for bringing less to the relationship than you did?”
“His mistresses spend more on an evening gown and he tried to send me to prison for it!” she swung around to blurt. “What kind of relationship is that?”
“You’re punishing him for his legal action, then? Or not buying you a dress?”
“I’m not punishing him,” Sirena muttered, turning back to the window overlooking a wet day in Hyde Park.
“No, you’re punishing your child by keeping its father out of the picture—whether that father is Raoul Zesiger or some other nameless man you’ve failed to bring forward. I’m a father, so even though I don’t practice family law, I know the best interests of the child are not served by denying a parent access just because you’re angry with him. Do you have reason to believe he’d be an unfit parent?”
Completely the opposite, she silently admitted as a tendril of longing curled around her heart. She had seen how Raoul’s stepsister adored him and how he indulged the young woman with doting affection while setting firm boundaries. Raoul would be a supportive, protective, exceptional father.
Her brows flinched and her throat tightened. She was angry with him. And secretly terrified that her child would ultimately pick its father over its mother, but that didn’t justify keeping the baby from knowing both its parents.
“Have you thought about your child’s future?” John prodded. “There are certain entitlements, like a good education, inheritances...”
She had to get this baby delivered first. That’s where her focus had really been these last several weeks.
Sirena’s fists tightened under her elbows as she hunched herself into a comfortless hug. Her mother had died trying to give birth to the baby who would have been Sirena’s little brother. Sirena’s blood pressure was under constant monitoring. Between that and the lawyer meetings, she was barely working, barely making the bills. The stress was making the test results all the more concerning.
She tried not to think of all the bad things that could happen, but for the first time she let herself consider what her child would need if she couldn’t provide it. Her father and sister were all the way in Australia. It would be days before they could get here—if her stepmother let either of them come at all. Right now Faye was taking the high ground, sniffing with disapproval over Sirena’s unplanned, unwed pregnancy. No one would be as emotionally invested as the baby’s father...
“Sirena, I’m not trying to—”
“Be my conscience?” she interjected. He was still acting as one. “I have a specialist appointment on Monday. I don’t know how long it will take. Tell him I will give his offer my full attention after that and will be in touch by the end of next week.”
John’s demeanor shifted. “So he is the father.”
“That will be determined by the paternity test once the baby is born, won’t it?” Sirena retorted, scrambling to hold onto as many cards as she could because she was running out of them, fast.
* * *
Raoul’s mind had been going around in circles for weeks, driving him mad. If Sirena was pregnant with his child, she would have used that to keep him from trying to incarcerate her. Since she hadn’t, it must not be his. But she could have used her condition for leniency during the proceedings and hadn’t. Which meant she wanted to keep the pregnancy from him. Which led him to believe the baby was his.
Most troubling, if he wasn’t the father, who was?
Raoul sent baleful glances around his various offices as he traveled his circuit of major cities, aware there were a plethora of men in his numerous office towers with whom Sirena, with her voluptuous body and warm smile, could easily have hooked up.
The thought grated with deep repugnance. He’d never heard the merest whisper of promiscuity about his PA, but she’d obviously led a secretive life. It wasn’t as if she’d been a virgin when he’d