Astonished by his request, Lindy stared back into level dark golden eyes and felt her heart breaking inside her. All of a sudden she was wondering if everyone had been right when they’d advised her to set aside her own feelings and tell Atreus that she was pregnant as soon as possible. She had waited, kept silent, and now an awful lot of water had passed under the proverbial bridge. His life had moved on to a fresh chapter that had no place for her in any capacity.
‘You’re so organised,’ Lindy remarked stiffly, moving away from him to stare out of the window. Far from impervious to her tension, the dogs nudged against her legs and Sausage released an anxious whine. ‘It’s all right,’ she told the elderly dog, reaching down somewhat awkwardly to pat his shaggy head. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Lindy…’ Atreus let her name trail off. ‘The rumours set off by that article will be repeated again in the future if action isn’t taken against them now.’
Colour flaring over her cheekbones, Lindy spun back—or at least she tried. But she had moved too fast, and her sense of balance was no longer reliable. As her head swam she clutched at the back of the chair next to her, to steady legs that felt as safe and dependable as bendy twigs.
It came as a complete shock when Atreus strode forward to close a supportive arm round her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ she said a little shrilly, in growing distress at the situation in which she found herself. ’Anything but.’
The disturbingly familiar scent of his skin, his hair and his cologne was washing over her and arousing agonisingly acute slivers of intimate memory. She remembered him too well, and she stiffened in consternation when her body reacted accordingly. Her breasts swelled and tightened inside her bra, while a sliding sensation of warm awareness stirred between her thighs. She drove out that humiliating sexual awareness with an image of Krista Perris, with her long blonde hair, tiny designer-clad body and cute smile: the woman he was thinking of marrying. The effort of it almost broke her in two. Pulling away from him in an abrupt movement, she slid a seeking hand down to the arm of the chair and sank heavily down into it.
‘You’ve wasted your time coming down here with your lawyer in tow,’ she murmured between compressed lips. ‘I can’t help you.’
‘You mean, you won’t help me?’ Atreus gritted, his exasperation unhidden.
Lindy lifted her head. ‘Just whose baby do you think this is?’
Atreus shrugged. ‘That’s none of my business. I merely want a statement from you to tidy this up, so that neither I nor my family will be haunted by unsavoury rumours of an illegitimate child for years into the future,’ he completed impatiently.
Lindy threaded slim fingers unsteadily through the hair tumbling over her warm brow. A little more stable in body now that she was seated, she was fumbling for the right words but already regretting the fact that she had remained silent about her pregnancy for so many months. Her secrecy had left him horribly unprepared for the announcement she now had to make.
‘I can’t agree to make that statement for you because I would be telling a lie,’ Lindy explained with care. ‘I know you don’t want to hear this right now, Atreus…but this is your baby.’
His eyes narrowed, his lean strong face tightening, his jawline taking on an aggressive slant. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘There’s no such thing as one hundred per cent reliable birth control,’ Lindy countered. ‘Somehow it went wrong for us.’
‘I don’t believe this. You staged this vulgar press exposure to try and con me into believing that this is my child?’
Lindy’s hands closed tight on the chair-arms so that she could lever herself upright again. ‘That’s the end of our little talk, Atreus. I want you to leave now.’ She walked briskly to the front door and yanked it open with the suggestion of suppressed violence.
‘This is ridiculous. You can’t throw a bombshell like that at me and then demand that I leave without explaining yourself,’ Atreus ground out, dark golden eyes censorious and hot as molten metal.
‘The first point I would like to make is that I don’t have anything to explain. The second is that I will not tolerate being accused of trying to con you or anyone else. You got me pregnant—deal with it!’ Lindy slung back at him in furious challenge.
Brilliant dark eyes fringed by inky lashes fiercely focused on her, Atreus closed his hands over hers. ‘I don’t want to set my lawyers on you, Lindy—I only want to know why you’re doing this…’
Lindy forcefully wrenched her fingers free of his hold. ‘How dare you? You hounded me out of my home, you disrupted my whole life, and you got me pregnant! Now you’re threatening me with your lawyers?’