God, why was he even thinking of this now?
It belonged in the past.
This was Sol’s fault, for raking it all up the other day at the hospital. Stirring up old memories both of them were better off forgetting.
There was no point in what ifs. He’d learned that as a kid, the moment he’d taken up the reins as the adult of the house. He’d had rules, and he’d taken control of everything. His single-mindedness had enabled him to drag himself and Sol out of the gutter. He’d built MIG International after learning investment strategies from the internet, and he’d sent Sol to medical school.
Saskia threatened all of that. Or, more to the point, his lack of focus when it came to this one woman threatened all of that.
He forgot himself around her.
And that couldn’t happen.
Things had changed; she was carrying his baby and he couldn’t let his desire for her make him forget his responsibility as a father. He absolutely would not put this child through anything like what his parents had put him and Sol through.
He would not give in to that primal part of him which seemed to crave her so very greatly. He was better than that. And any child of his deserved more than that.
‘Malachi...? Why did you leave like that?’
He didn’t realise she’d followed him out, hadn’t heard her footsteps coming down the hall until he heard her quiet, shaky voice. Despite all his internal cautioning his chest tightened at the mere sound of her near him. And if he hadn’t known better he might have actually believed his heart gave a kick of delight.
What the hell was he playing at?
Malachi jabbed his finger on the countertop. ‘That should never have happened.’
He could spout about honour and legitimacy and protection all he liked, but he suspected that the real truth of it was far less altruistic. He was being led by something far baser, far more primal. He was being led by his unextinguished desire for Saskia. She was like the worst kind of drug. One taste of her and he’d been hungering for her ever since, craving her in a way which was entirely too much out of his control for Malachi’s liking.
And he was never out of control.
Yet here he was, desperate to keep her here before she remembered her own mind and walked away from him, just like she had at the end of that weekend.
‘I won’t marry you,’ she said belligerently.
Malachi bared his teeth in what he hoped would pass for a grim smile. ‘Yes, Saskia, you will.’
Because his child would never have anyone look at him as though he was less than anyone else.
‘You think that just because you have money you can order people to do whatever you see fit?’
He hadn’t anticipated this show of temper.
‘It won’t work on me. You’re not the only one to have come from money. To be used to getting your own way. I can be just as obstinate, too.’
He wanted to tell her that he hadn’t come from money. That he had scraped and struggled for every penny he had ever made. But he didn’t. Because he knew it mattered to his brother—more than it ever had to himself—not to reveal the true depths of their childhood.
It took him a moment to realise he had hit a nerve.
Interesting.
‘We’ve been through this, Saskia, have we not? I understand that you’re the daughter of Hollywood royalty and that your childhood must have been a fairy tale. You had two parents who loved each other right up until the last. But this isn’t a perfect movie story. This is real life.’
And he told himself that he didn’t covet any of it—because if he hadn’t experienced the hell of his own childhood he wouldn’t be where he was today.
‘Of course,’ she managed tightly, her face shutting down just as it had a matter of hours ago.
And Malachi resolved in that instant to uncover just what it was that Saskia was hiding.
He knew he should put a stop to it immediately, but found he couldn’t. What was it he’d just been saying about rules and control? Yet in reality he was so far out of his comfort zone he scarcely recognised himself.