CHAPTER THREE
PREGNANT?
Pregnant, with his child?
Damian’s brain reeled.
Thee mou, a man didn’t want to hear that accusation from a woman he didn’t love once in a lifetime, let alone twice…
And then his sanity returned.
This woman, Ivy, might well be pregnant but it didn’t have a damned thing to do with him. Not unless science had come up with a way a man could have sex with a woman without ever seeing her or touching her.
She was looking at him, defiance stamped in every feature. What was she waiting for? Was he supposed to blink, fall down, clap his hand to his forehead?
The only thing he felt like doing was tossing her over his shoulder and throwing her out. But first—but first—
Damian snorted. Snorted again and then, to hell with it, burst out laughing.
Ivy Madison gave him a killing look.
“How can you laugh at this?” she demanded.
That only made him laugh harder.
He’d heard some really creative tall tales in his life. His father had been especially adept at telling them as he took his company to the edge of ruin but nothing, nothing topped this one.
It was funny.
It was infuriating.
Did she take him for a complete fool? Her sister had. Yes, but at least he’d had sex with the sister. There’d been a basis—shaky, but a basis—for Kay claiming she was pregnant.
Hell, the hours the two women must have spent talking about what a sucker he was, how easily he could be taken in by a beautiful face.
“Perhaps you’d like to share what’s so damned amusing, Prince Damian?”
Amusing? Damian’s laughter faded. “Actually,” he said, “I’m insulted.”
She blinked. “Insulted?”
“That you’d come up with such a pathetic lie.” He tucked his hands in his trouser pockets and sighed dramatically. “You have to have sex with a man before he can impregnate you, Miss Madison, and you and I…”
Suddenly he knew where this was heading. He’d heard of scams like it before.
A beautiful woman chooses a man who’s rich. Well-known. A man whose name would garner space in the tabloids.
When the time is right, she confronts him, tells him they met at a party, on a yacht—there were dozens of places they could have stumbled across each other.
That established, she drops the bomb.
She’s pregnant. He’s responsible. When he says That’s impossible, I never saw you before in my life, she starts to cry. He was drinking that night, she says. He seduced her, she says. Doesn’t he remember?
Because she does.
Every touch. Every sigh. Every nuance of their encounter is seared in her memory, and if he doesn’t want it all over the scandal sheets, he’ll Do The Right Thing.
He’ll give her a fat sum of money to help her. Nothing like a bribe, of course. Just money to get her through a bad time.