Summer Sins

Hayley started to cry as she stumbled towards him. ‘Of course it is, you big, dumb, gorgeous, arrogant fool. How could you possibly think I would ever look at anyone but you?’

He buried his head into the fragrance of her springy hair, pulling her tightly into his body. ‘I never realised until I saw that pregnancy test how much I wanted it to be mine. I had told myself for years I wouldn’t put my hand up again to claim someone else’s child, having seen the damage it does when secrets come out when and where they shouldn’t.’

‘It must have been so hard for you,’ she said. ‘There was so much pressure on you. Everyone blamed you, including me.’

‘I was OK about supporting Daniel even though I always knew I wasn’t his father,’ he said. ‘Miriam came to me and asked for my advice. I offered to do what I could to support her. I hadn’t factored in my father’s reaction. He demanded that I marry her, but she and I both knew that wasn’t an option. I couldn’t stand by and watch everything my brother had longed for taken away because of one mistake. I decided it would be the best thing all round if I accepted the blame. And to tell you the truth I have never once regretted it until Martin Beckforth came on the scene and started throwing his weight around. Then I wondered if I had done the right thing after all, but Daniel assures me he’s thrilled with how things have turned out. Miriam’s finally getting a divorce, which is a huge relief to him.’

‘Daniel is as much your son as he is Raymond’s,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘You have been the most amazing father to him, as you will be to our child.’

‘So you’re willing to take a risk on me?’ he asked. ‘To stay married to me and bring up our baby together?’

She smiled up at him rapturously. ‘As far as I’m concerned there’s no risk involved, darling.’ She placed his hand on her belly where his child was already tentatively starting to stretch its limbs. ‘I’m not going to stop loving you, not after all this time.’

‘I love you too,’ Jasper said, his voice so deep and raw it hurt his throat. ‘I’m not sure when I started loving you. It’s sort of crept up on me. The last three months have proven that if nothing else.’

‘Why didn’t you contact me?’

‘I picked up the phone so many times but my pride got in the way. I kept telling myself you were going back to Lederman and I was better off without you. Daniel made me realise how dumb I was being. He said I was a fool to let someone like you slip through my fingers.’

‘So we’re really not getting divorced?’ she asked as she pressed closer to his hardening warmth.

‘What do you think, baby girl?’ he said with a slow, sexy smile. ‘Do you fancy being married to me for longer?’

‘What sort of time frame were you thinking of this time around?’

He brought his mouth within a breath of her smiling one. ‘How about for ever?’

Hayley gazed dreamily at the sensual curve of his mouth. ‘Starting from when?’ she asked in a breathy whisper.

‘Starting from now,’ he said, and captured her sigh of joy with the heat of his kiss.

THE MEDITERRANEAN

BILLIONAIRE’S

BLACKMAIL BARGAIN

ABBY GREEN

About the Author

ABBY GREEN got hooked on Mills & Boon® romances while still in her teens, when she stumbled across one belonging to her grandmother in the west of Ireland. After many years of reading them voraciously, she sat down one day and gave it a go herself. Happily, after a few failed attempts, Mills & Boon bought her first manuscript.

Abby works freelance in the film and TV industry, but thankfully the four am starts and the stresses of dealing with recalcitrant actors are becoming more and more infrequent, leaving her more time to write!

She loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her through her website at www.abby-green.com. She lives and works in Dublin.

CHAPTER ONE

‘I AM quite certain that if I had fathered a child I would be well aware of the fact, which, needless to say, would be none of your business, as you are a complete stranger. Now take your hand off me immediately.’

Alicia Parker was still stunned into immobility by the sheer audacity of her actions, which had stopped this man in his tracks. She looked up into a face so savagely handsome that the breath left her body. All her poor muddled, overtired and overwrought brain could formulate were impressions. Tall. Broad. Dark. Gorgeous. Sexy. Powerful. Sexy. Powerful.

Eyes as cold and dark as the night stared down with uncompromising arrogance and supreme assurance that she—and her preposterous accusation—were so far removed from his gilded life that she must be certifiably mad to accost him like this. His look could have turned her to ice … and yet, awfully, Alicia didn’t feel cold. She felt hot. All over.

And as she watched, struck dumb by any number of things, the very least of which was his overwhelming presence, Dante D’Aquanni calmly and disdainfully extricated the expensive cloth of his suit from her white knuckle grip, flicked a glance to his minions nearby and strode off and out of the mammoth building which housed his offices in London.

He was gone, as if spirited away, without a backward glance at the petite, dishevelled woman who stood gaping at his departing back. Who’d had only the briefest of chances to get out a few words, her attempt to make him listen having failed abysmally.