Yet it did. It was taking all his self-restraint not to lay a comforting hand on her thigh. Saying that, if he were to lay a hand there, comforting or otherwise, she’d likely slap it.
‘Are you going to run the deal by Luca first?’ Her soft Irish lilt broke through his musings.
‘No.’ He spoke more sharply than he would have liked. ‘No,’ he repeated, moderating his tone. ‘This is my domain. I run our dealings outside Sicily.’
‘I thought Luca was in charge.’
‘What made you think that? Is it because he’s the older brother?’
‘No. It’s because he’s the more steady and reliable brother.’
Even in the dark he knew his knuckles had whitened.
‘Your brother might be as scary as the bogeyman but at least he conducts himself with something relatively close to decorum and thinks with more than his penis.’
Any minute and his knuckles would poke through his skin. ‘Are you deliberately trying to pick an argument with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t like it when you’re nice to me.’
‘Does driving you home constitute me being nice?’
‘As opposed to you flying me back in that tin shack, then yes; yes, it does. And incidentally, you’re not driving me home. You’re driving me back to your house.’
‘My home is your home until your baby is born.’ Although, at that particular moment, he would take great pleasure in stopping the car, kicking her out and telling her to walk herself back to Paris.
Impossible, ungrateful woman.
Impossible sexy woman.
There was no denying it. Cara Delaney was as sexy as sin, and as much as he tried to keep his errant mind on the present, it insisted on going back sixteen weeks to what had been, in hindsight, the best weekend of his life.
‘Would you prefer if I spent the next five or so months being horrible to you and having no consideration of your needs?’
‘Yes.’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘The only niceness I want from you is my freedom.’
‘You have your freedom. You are here under your own free will. You are welcome to leave at any time.’
‘But for me to leave would mean a life of poverty for our child. Or at least, the start of its life would be full of poverty unless you do the decent thing and give me money to support him or her.’
‘I will give you money to support our child when I have definitive proof that it is our child. I will not be played for a fool.’
He heard a sharp inhalation followed by a slow, steady exhalation.
‘I really don’t get it.’
‘Get what?’
‘Your cynicism.’
‘I am not cynical.’
‘You impregnated a virgin yet you refuse to believe your paternity without written proof. If that’s not cynical, then I don’t know what is. And I don’t get why you are that way.’
‘There is nothing to get. I do not take anything at face value. That’s good business sense, not cynicism.’ Much as he tried to hide it, a real edge had crept into his voice. He’d thought she would be grateful he was rearranging his schedule to drive her back to Paris, had assumed a little gratitude would soften her attitude towards him. But no. For all the softness of her curves and her bottom lip, Cara Delaney was as hard as nails.
From the periphery of his vision, he saw her straighten.
‘Grace and I used to talk about you,’ she said.
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘We used to wonder why you were the way you were.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You come from a loving family. You had two parents who loved and supported you and encouraged you...’
‘That is what you used to say about me?’ he interrupted with a burst of mocking laughter.
‘Your mother dotes on you,’ she said coldly. ‘By all accounts your father doted on you too. You have a closer relationship with your brother than most siblings can dream of. That’s what I mean about coming from a loving family.’
‘Sì,’ he conceded. ‘My parents loved me. Luca and I are close. It is normal.’
‘I have two stepsisters who hate me only fractionally less than they hate each other. I have a bunch of half-siblings scattered around Dublin whom I have never met. I have a mother who doesn’t care a fig that I’m pregnant. I have a father who is unaware he’s going to be a granddad, but that’s because he’s had no involvement in my life for over a decade.’
For a moment he didn’t know what to say to that unexpected outburst or how to react to the raw emotion behind it. ‘You haven’t seen your father in ten years?’