His face was immobile; each feature might as well have been hewn from granite. ‘Why not?’
‘She says it was a holiday fling and she won’t burden a man with a child she knows he doesn’t want.’
Adam’s jaw tightened, his movements a little jerky as he picked up his glass. ‘But you disagree with her?’
‘I feel like a complete heel for going behind her back—but, yes, I do.’
‘Why?’
The shadow in his eyes told her the question was genuine and that if she had any hope of convincing him she was going to have to answer. Not ideal. But if revealing her personal history would swing Adam’s support then there was no choice.
Swallowing in an attempt to dislodge the pebble of discomfort that clogged her throat, she met his gaze. ‘Because I grew up without a father and I want this baby to have a chance to have one. It’s as simple as that, Adam. I promise.’
FIVE
Adam drummed his fingers on the arm of the sofa, the rapid tattoo making his knuckles ache.
Olivia’s words had vibrated with sincerity, plucking an unwilling chord of memory within him.
Remembered frustration churned his guts. Desperate to know something about his father, his childhood self had pored over the single photograph he’d possessed. He’d plagued his mother for details until he had realised that Zeb Masterson wasn’t exactly one of her favourite people. However much she’d tried to hide it.
In all conscience he couldn’t doom another child to that experience.
An experience Olivia had shared.
The idea tugged at his chest, creating an unwanted connection between them. If, of course, she was telling the truth. About anything.
‘What happened to your father?’ he asked.
Shimmering eyelids swept down and up again as she surveyed him, her small frown indicating that she was pondering her answer or maybe even whether to answer at all.
‘You brought the subject up,’ he pointed out.
‘I never knew him. My mother was very young when she fell pregnant—I’m lucky she kept me at all.’
She said the words with great care, as if she were stepping cautiously across the stepping stones of truth and missing out a fair few on the way.
Suspicion tingled Adam’s nerves as he looked back down at the photograph. ‘Jodie must have been very young.’ The woman in the photograph couldn’t be much over forty now.
‘She was.’
‘So it was a teenage romance that went too far?’
‘Does it matter?’ After a careful scrutiny of his face she huffed out a sigh and slammed her glass on the table. ‘You think I’m making it up, don’t you?’
‘It’s a possibility I’m considering, yes.’
‘Fine. If you must know my father paid my mother to keep his identity secret. They struck a deal. He handed over a lump sum, she swore never to reveal who he is. Even to me.’ She shifted on the sofa, clasped her hands together on her lap in a pose of defiance. ‘Satisfied?’
Not really. Because he could sense her pain, knew she was telling the truth. Which moved him way into schmuck territory for forcing her confidence.
‘Then he missed out,’ he said. ‘Not you. A man who would do that isn’t worth knowing.’
Olivia blinked and a smile curved her lips for a fleeting second. ‘Thank you. That’s a way better response than saying how sorry you are.’
‘You’re welcome.’
The atmosphere tautened around them. His eyes snagged on her mouth and a memory of the taste of her kicked his pulse-rate up.
Her eyes shuttered again. ‘It’s also good to know that you can actually be nice. So, Mr Nice Guy...’ The wedge heel of her sandal tapped on the wood of the floor. ‘Will you help me?’
Adam locked on to those determined hazel eyes, half pleading, half insistent.
He tore his gaze away and rose to his feet; he had to break this spell Olivia was weaving. Instinct told him that she was telling the truth; further instinct told him that in this case his instincts were less than reliable—fuzzed and blurred by inordinate desire and a strange, tenuous bond that he would love to deny but couldn’t.
Walking to the window, he stared out, forced his brain at least to make an attempt at logic. Olivia Evans could be a con artist extraordinaire. Or she could be telling the truth. In either case, logically he couldn’t risk letting her go. If she were at his side she would either slip up and he would expose her web of deceit or he would remain in control of the situation.
There. Thinking was so much easier staring out at the cosmopolitan glitter of London by night. Even if the net result was dubious.