A Debt Paid in Passion

“Well, isn’t that like you,” she said with the only weapon available: a tongue coated with enough resentful hatred it wielded itself. “I want you, Sirena,” she mocked. “Touch me, Sirena. And the next morning it’s, take everything that matters to her and kick her to the curb. Go ahead. Send me into John’s office for another pile of legal bills I can’t afford. I’ll raise the stakes and take this to the court of public opinion. I’ll hurt you in every way I can find. I’ll take your daughter, because I will not let her be raised by someone who treats people the way you do.”

She wiped the back of her wrist across her lips, her incensed emotions deflating to despair as she heard her own words and knew that she was bravado against his arsenal of money, position and power. What did she have? Charges against her for theft.

She couldn’t continue to face him without breaking down.

“Where do you get the nerve to judge me?” she managed as a parting shot before she decamped to higher ground.

* * *

Raoul stood in astonished silence as he listened to Sirena’s retreat. He felt as though he’d just surprised a wounded lioness and barely escaped still clutching his vital organs. Adrenaline stung his arteries and he had to consciously tell his muscles to relax.

None of that closed what felt like a giant chasm in his chest. Touch me, Sirena. Kick her to the curb. Shame snaked through him, keeping his jaw clenched even though he wanted to shout back at her in defense. He was the one with the right to trust issues. Where did she get off accusing him of manipulation?

His housekeeper came through, startling him. “More coffee?” she asked, obviously surprised to see the table deserted.

“No,” he barked, then pulled himself together. “No, thank you,” he said with more control, rubbing his face then disheveling his hair. “Please make up some sandwiches for Sirena, since she didn’t finish her breakfast. I’ll be in my office.”

He went there for privacy, to work through their confrontation, not to make a dent in the work that piled up every minute he was distracted by this new family of his.

Just a daughter, he reminded himself. Not a partner.

Touch me. His gut tightened in remembered ecstasy as he felt again her light fingers encircling him. Desire had exploded in him last night. For her. Despite all his attempts to make excuses, the sad truth was no other woman tempted him. Even before conceiving Lucy, he’d been taking women to dinner without taking anything else.

He didn’t want Sirena to be the only one he wanted. He ought to have more control over himself. As he’d eschewed sleep this morning in favor of forming arguments to keep Sirena and Lucy living with him, he’d convinced himself it was a convenient solution to their custody battle, nothing to do with sexual attraction.

While he’d relived her soft mewling noises and passionate response to his kiss in the hallway, her body incapable of lying.

Sirena didn’t want anything to do with him, though. Maybe she was physically attracted, but her ferocity this morning warned him that she would rather smother him in his sleep than share his bed for lovemaking.

He stared blindly at the colorful gardens beyond his office window, his mind’s eye seeing her savaged expression the day at the gate, then again this morning. A hard hand closed around his heart, squeezing uncomfortably. A million times he’d told himself she was as jaded and detached as all the rest of his lovers, but today something admonished him. He feared he’d hurt her in a way he hadn’t realized he could. But how was his treatment of her any different than hers of him? She had gotten him depending on her, then backhanded him with theft. She’d ruined him for other women and was completely wrong for him at the same time.

Movement caught his eye. Sirena had brought Lucy into the garden. She wore a summer dress and bare feet. Her hair hung in a damp curtain down her back, its curls weighted into subtle waves that would spring up as the sun dried it. Folding one leg under herself the way she often did, she sat on the covered swing and kicked it into a gentle rock, head tilting back as she inhaled deeply.

She was pure woman in that moment, sensual yet maternal. Beautiful.

The want in him took on a new, disconcerting depth. It wasn’t just sexual. He remembered her efficiency, her smooth handling of difficult people, her quick smiles.

He wanted the Sirena he’d believed her to be before his dented bank balance had proved she wasn’t.

Damn it, he didn’t do complex relationships. Mother-son. Simple. Protective big brother. Easy. Boss and employee. Black-and-white.

With one noted exception.

His father’s suicide over what had seemed to be a sordid yet standard affair was earning some of his empathy. If his father had struggled with things like overstepping boundaries in the workplace and a lust that battled strength with his love for his child, Raoul could see where he’d felt torn in too many directions. Raoul wasn’t anywhere near killing himself over it, but he wasn’t getting much sleep.

But if he was about to be exposed for his perfidy, he might start thinking drastic thoughts. Sirena had threatened a publicity backlash and he believed her. He was learning there was a no-holds-barred quality when her basic rights were threatened and part of him respected her for it.

And if there was one thing he prided himself on, it was upholding his end of a bargain.

Cursing, he opened the French doors onto the patio and strolled across to Sirena, footsteps whispering across the grass. Her eyes opened, but only to slits.

“I’m floating down the river of denial. Don’t kill the mood,” she warned with a chilly edge to her soft tone.

The corner of his mouth quirked. She had always caught him off guard with her colorful expressions. There was a hidden poet in her, he suspected. A romantic.

He frowned, unable to fit that with the calculating vamp he knew her to be.

“Look,” he said, sweeping her multiple facets aside to work at keeping things simple. He’d been angry when he’d thrown his ultimatum at her, grumpily aware that he wanted her rather desperately while she thought he was trying to manipulate her. The manipulating factor was this infernal chemistry!

“I was wrong to say I’d go back on our agreement. You’re right. You negotiated in good faith and things between us will only get ugly if we don’t talk these things through without using Lucy as leverage.”

“Are you on drugs? I thought you said I was right.” Her eyes stayed shut, not revealing any of the willingness to compromise he was looking for.

“Where is all this sass coming from?” he demanded. “You never used to say things like that to me.”

“Sure I did. In my head. Now that you’ve fired me, I can use my outside voice.”

He accepted that with a disgruntled press of his lips, pushing his hands into his pockets as he rocked on his heels. The sun on his back was so hot he could feel the burn through his shirt. Sirena and the baby were in the shade, though, so he didn’t insist they go back into the house yet.

“Will you stay? You know what my workload is like. I have to travel and I don’t want to be half a globe from Lucy, not for weeks at a time.”

“So when you say stay, you mean follow you around like nomads?” Her eyes opened, lashes screening her thoughts, but the indignant lift of her brows said plenty.

“Why not? You liked the travel when you worked for me, didn’t you?”

Sirena pursed her lips. “When I got out of the hotels to see the sights.”

He frowned, sensing criticism when he was well aware she’d enjoyed visiting foreign cultures, welcoming new people and perspectives with excited curiosity, always ready with small talk full of well-researched questions about museums or local wonders, always craning her head at markets when they passed. She made good use of all she learned too, providing tidbits that informed his negotiations through foreign bureaucracy, but he wondered suddenly if he’d kept her too busy to actually experience all she’d wanted to.

They’d been there to work, though. That’s what he did and who he was.

He scowled as he contemplated how little of those countries he’d seen.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she sighed. “Lucy will have school—”

“Years down the road,” he argued, not letting her finish. “I’ll make allowances for that, but you know as well as I do it will take time to put things in place. For the next few years, as long as she has us, she’ll be happy anywhere. I’m not talking about leaving tomorrow. I realize you have medical checkups. We’ll stay here as long as you need, but later in the year I don’t see why we can’t take a few weeks in Milan. My mother is already asking when I’ll bring her to New York.”

“I can’t live with you permanently. How would we explain it to people? Your future bedmates sure wouldn’t like it, and what if one of us wants to get married?”

Irritated by the mention of bedmates and life mates, he dismissed both. “I’ve never been interested in marriage and see even less point now. As for bedmates, for Lucy’s sake, we should keep that in-house.”

Sirena suddenly stopped the swing. Raoul sensed refusal so tangibly he bristled.

“Wow. For Lucy’s sake I ought to have sex with you? That’s the kind of reasoning even someone with my damaged morals has trouble following.”