The Morning After

His stark expression gave her the answer, and Annie grimaced bitterly. ‘So the sweet Angel Lacey fell swiftly from grace,’ she concluded, ‘and I became the notorious Annie Lacey instead—fit to be used for anyone’s convenience—including yours.’

He flinched; she accepted it as her due. ‘Now, if you don’t mind,’ she said more calmly, ‘I would like to leave here as soon as it’s possible.’ With that she turned to walk away.

But he stopped her, not by touch but with words. ‘Susie,’ he bit out grimly. ‘Why does Susie not know about your true relationship with Hanson? They have lived together—shared the same bed for six months! Surely some kind of trust should have evolved in that time?’

‘You would think so, wouldn’t you?’ Annie smiled a tight little smile. ‘But then, she’s always harboured an unnatural hatred of me. Now I know why, of course—’ she shrugged ‘—her being connected with you lot.’ It wasn’t said nicely and wasn’t meant to be. ‘But in openly despising me she got Todd’s back up.’

Slowly she turned to look coolly at him. ‘You see, if any good came out of the Alvarez scandal, then it was the way it brought Todd and me much closer together. He believed my version, you see, Mr DeSanquez. Against all the evidence your family and so-called friends stacked against me, he believed me, stood by me and tried his best to shield me from the worst of the flak the Press wanted to throw at me.

‘You could say we found each other,’ she likened whimsically. ‘And, in so doing, woe betide anyone who tries to come between us, because it will be at their peril—warn Susie,’ she added as a mere mocking aside.

‘You say you and Susie only share the eyes,’ she went on. ‘But you don’t. You share ruthlessly manipulative natures too. Like you she was willing to go to any lengths to get what she wanted,’ she explained, without acknowledging the sudden, angry flash in his eyes at that last insult. ‘But the day she challenged Todd to choose between me and herself she lost him.

‘He may love her,’ she conceded, ‘but he also despises her for trying that. Now, when I tell him about this little—charade she fixed up for me,’ she pointed out, ‘he’ll cut her right out of his life. And don’t take that statement lightly,’ she warned when scepticism lightened his eyes, ‘because just as you and Susie bear similar genes so does Todd to his father. He’ll do it for my sake, just as his father did it to me for his wife’s sake.’

‘And you?’ César questioned. ‘Do you possess that same streak in you?’

Do I? Annie paused to think about it. ‘I don’t know,’ she was forced to admit in the end. ‘It hasn’t been put to the test yet.’

‘Then maybe it is time that it was,’ he murmured. ‘The way I hear you, Hanson means all the world to you. Will you—cut him right out of your life for his own sake?’ he challenged silkily.

Annie frowned. ‘I don’t see the connection.’

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his loose-fitting trousers. ‘I still hold the final card, Angelica,’ he reminded her carefully. ‘And, bearing in mind your analysis of my character just now, it will do you well to remember my ability to use it. Nothing has changed, except, maybe, my opinion of you as a person,’ he allowed. ‘But the success of Cliché still hangs on the promise of my collaboration.’

An icy shiver slid down Annie’s spine. ‘I still don’t see what you’re getting at,’ she said warily.

His eyes were hard now, his expression grim. ‘You either keep to your side of our deal,’ he softly spelled out for her, ‘or I will withdraw my support at the eleventh hour, giving Hanson no chance to put something else in my place.’

Annie took a stunned step back. ‘You would still do that?’ she choked. ‘After everything I’ve just told you?’

His expression was bleak but firm. ‘Susie needs time to mend her relationship with Hanson,’ he stated grimly. ‘I promised her that time. That promise cannot be forfeited simply because you have pointed out to me what I already knew—that my family can be quite ruthless when they need to be.’ Narrowly his green gaze watched her. ‘The rise or decline of Hanson Publications remains firmly in your hands, Angelica. You stay here with me and everything runs smoothly. You insist on leaving and it all falls the other way.’

‘You bastard,’ she breathed. He was no better than his thankless family! Like them he was prepared to sacrifice her feelings as if they didn’t matter! ‘Last night counts for nothing—nothing at all to you!’

His eyes seemed to go black, the green blanked out by an emotion that Annie was too hurt and angry to interpret. ‘It counts,’ he granted roughly. ‘And indeed alters things slightly…’ His pause was deliberate and chilling. ‘I did not use protection last night, Angelica. And with hindsight I must presume that neither did you.’

Not slow at getting his meaning, she went so white that her eyes looked like huge dark pools in her horror-pinched face.

A nerve twitched in his jaw as he watched her, but his mouth remained firm with resolve. ‘Which leaves us with another—problem we may yet have to face,’ he went on. ‘Which is whether you are pregnant with my child and, if you are, what we are going to do about it.’

It was all too much. Shock upon shock over the last twenty-four hours, plus the added emotional wrench of her own recent trauma in allowing herself to open up to this man, had Annie swaying, the beauty of the new day fading around its edges until it encompassed only his grimly watchful face.

Pregnant? She shook her head on a laugh that came very close to hysteria. No, she would not so much as allow herself to consider that as a possibility. Fate would not be that cruel to her, surely?

‘It has to be acknowledged, Angelica,’ he murmured, as though her thoughts were written across her face for his exclusive benefit. ‘Children are not made in heaven, as I suspect you would prefer to believe. They are made by the ejaculation of male sperm into the female womb—a process we well and truly carried out last night.’

She flinched, his blunt, clinical description making her hands clutch at her stomach on a shudder of revulsion—an action that made a nerve twitch in his jaw again.

‘So what are you asking of me now?’ she demanded finally, the very quiver in her voice mirrored in the reactionary tremor of her body. ‘Visitation rights when this other farce with Todd is over? Or perhaps you want even more than that,’ she added bitterly, fingers lifting to comb her hair agitatedly away from her paste-white face. ‘Maybe you prefer to rip the thing from my damned womb before it can cause any more trouble for you!’

At that it was his turn to flinch, but if she gained any satisfaction from it she wasn’t aware. Her whole world seemed to have gone topsy-turvy, and she didn’t know what she was feeling any more.

‘Neither of those things,’ he denied. ‘I was, actually, about to suggest the only option I see open to us. Marriage,’ he announced. ‘I think you and I should get married, Angelica, and as soon as it can be arranged.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

HYSTERIA did take over now. Annie felt it rise like a lift out of a control from the very base of her feet until it burst free somewhere hot between the ears.