It wasn’t a lie.

She was bold and unexpected. From the moment she’d turned up at his offices the other night, spouting the outrageous claim that she was his stepsister, through to today, when he’d come home and discovered her laughing and dancing with his staff, he’d felt as if his carefully controlled world was shifting beneath him.

And tonight... Somehow she’d turned even the act of sharing a meal into an unpredictable affair. How the hell they’d ended up talking about marriage and children and love, of all things—that singularly destructive emotion he had vowed to avoid at all costs—he had no idea.

Irritation had made him want to reassert control, turn the focus back onto her.

Earlier in the day, when Rosa had delivered his sandwich, he’d casually elicited her opinion of their guest, and in the midst of her effusive praise of the younger woman she had mentioned that Jordan was a nurse. At dinner he’d used that, and then deliberately asked questions that would trip her up if her answers didn’t correspond with what he already knew from the investigator’s report.

Instead he had tripped himself up, and he hadn’t even realised his mistake. He’d been too spellbound. Too captivated by the enthusiasm and passion she exuded when she talked about her work.

And then she’d spoken of her stepmother—his birth mother—and her compassion and the sacrifice she’d made to nurse the woman through her final weeks of life had made him feel unexpectedly tight-throated and humbled.

The gut feeling he’d had this afternoon had strengthened into certainty. This woman was no threat.

She tugged her arm again and he realised he was still holding her. Reluctantly he let her go, and as she stepped back, her arms wrapping around her middle, it occurred to him he could let her go altogether. He could let her pack her bag, put her in a taxi as she had asked him to do and send her on her way. He could write all of this off as an unfortunate disruption and get on with his life.

Simple. Practical. Convenient.

So why could he feel his chest tightening and his body tensing in rejection of the idea?

Why did he feel as if he wanted to soothe the look of hurt and vulnerability from her face while at the same time a part of his mind was entertaining dark, carnal thoughts that involved dragging her onto the bed, stripping her naked and doing things with his hands and mouth that would make her forget about leaving and have her begging him instead to let her stay?

Dios.

Never before had a woman provoked such a tumult of conflicting urges in him. Not even Natasha, the ice-blonde American heiress who ten years ago had left him deeply embittered, determined never again to make himself vulnerable to that kind of humiliation and pain.

Clenching his jaw, he thrust her cold, heartless, duplicitous image out of his head and focused instead on the hot, stubborn, fiery woman in front of him.

‘Then why?’ she challenged. ‘Why do you want me to stay?’

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, then dropped his hand. ‘Because right now you’re the only connection I have to the woman who gave birth to me,’ he said.

The admission made him feel a little raw inside, even though it was only part of the truth as to why he wanted her to stay—the only part that made enough sense to try to explain. And even that was difficult, because he’d never expected to feel curious about his birth mother. Up until forty-eight hours ago she’d never been anything more to him than a faceless, nameless woman—and then Jordan had walked into his office and shown him a photo. Told him a name. Camila Walsh, nee Sanchez. The woman who’d given birth to him at eighteen and thirty-five years later died of leukaemia. A woman whose stepdaughter had loved her enough to sacrifice her job so she could nurse her through her final days.

He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about all that. He certainly had no hope of articulating it. So he didn’t even try.

‘I don’t think you want to sever that connection just yet any more than I do,’ he h

azarded instead, and watched a look of telltale uncertainty shift across her face.

Trapping her voluptuous bottom lip between her teeth, she glanced towards her half-packed rucksack, then back to him. ‘If I stay,’ she said, a slight emphasis on the if, ‘would you consider coming somewhere with me tomorrow?’

Had he not been distracted by her mouth again, Xav would have registered the distant clang of alarm bells as he responded. ‘Where?’

There was a pause. ‘I want to visit the village where Camila grew up.’

He jerked his gaze up to connect with hers, the lush perfection of her lips momentarily forgotten.

‘It’s north of here,’ she rushed on, before he could even properly assimilate what she was asking. ‘Up the coast and then inland towards the mountains. About a two-hour drive, according to Delmar.’

His gut suddenly tensed. ‘He knows—?’

‘Of course not,’ she interrupted, frowning at him. ‘That’s your personal business. I would never share that information with anyone else. I just mentioned at lunch that I wanted to visit my stepmom’s village and asked for advice on travel times.’

Advice she could have sought from him instead of Delmar.

If you’d been here.

Tags: Angela Bissell Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net