A Debt Paid in Passion

There was no way she could live with having another loved one wrenched from her life. The fear of her baby growing up without its mother, the way she had, had given her the strength to fight tooth and nail against Raoul’s determination to put her in jail. Somehow she would rally the strength to oust him from her life for good.

Which left her feeling incredibly bereft, but she ignored it.

Taking tea, toast and a tablet for nausea to the sofa, she scanned her laptop to see if any transcription jobs had come in. The legal bills were appalling and being fired three months ago had decimated her very modest savings.

If only she could take back that one awful moment when she had thought, Raoul will understand. She rubbed her brow where it crinkled in lament. Borrowing from him had seemed the most simple and obvious thing to do when her sister had been in tears, saying, I guess I’m not meant to be a teacher. Their father was expecting payment from a big customer any day. Ali had struggled so hard to get her marks up and be accepted into the specialized program. The tuition was due, but the cash was not in hand.

I can cover it, Sirena had assured her, confident the balance would move out and come back into Raoul’s account on the same statement. He probably wouldn’t even notice, let alone care. He paid her to worry about little details like that.

Then her father’s customer had gone insolvent.

Not overnight, of course. It started with a delay of a few more days. A week. Sirena had begun chasing it herself, right up to the monthly cutoff date, not wanting to mention her self-approved loan to her boss until she had the funds to repay it.

The money hadn’t appeared and the opportunity to explain hadn’t arisen, not before other events.

And since she didn’t want to involve her father when his livelihood was nose-diving, she had shouldered the fallout herself, keeping her motives from Raoul and not revealing to her family what she’d done or that she was facing jail time for it.

This had been the most crushingly lonely and frightening time of her life.

A muted beep announced an incoming email. From Raoul. Her heart leaped in misplaced anticipation. It was one word.

Liar.

He wasn’t buying that the baby wasn’t his.

Gritting her teeth against an ache that crushed her chest, she added Raoul to her email block list and sent a missive to John.

Tell him that contacting me directly is out of line. If the baby was his, I would sue for support. I would have asked for leniency when he was trying to put me in jail. This baby is not his and he must LEAVE ME ALONE.

Hitting send was like poking herself in the throat. She drew a pained breath, fighting the sense of loss. But life hit you with sudden changes and you had to roll with them. She had learned that when her mother had died, and again when her stepmother had whisked her father and half sister to Australia with brutal speed as soon as Sirena graduated and enrolled in business school.

People left, was what she’d learned. They disappeared from your life whether you wanted them to or not. Sometimes they even fired you and tried to lock you away in prison so they’d never have to see you again.

Making a disgusted noise at herself for indulging in what amounted to emotional self-harm, she turned her thoughts to the little being who wouldn’t leave her. With a gentle hand on her unsettled abdomen, she focused on the one person she’d do everything in her power to keep in her life forever. She didn’t intend to smother the poor thing, just be his or her mother. She couldn’t countenance anyone taking that role from her. And Raoul would try. He was that angry and ruthless.

She shivered as she recalled seeing that side of him for the first time, after making bail. The only thing that had gotten her through the humiliating process of being arrested, fingerprinted and charged was the certainty that Raoul didn’t know what was happening to her. Some accountant had done this. A bank official. They didn’t understand that Raoul might be gruff on the outside, but she was his best PA ever. His right hand. They’d become intimate. He would be furious that she was being treated this way.

She had believed with all her heart that as soon as she told him what had happened, he’d make it right.

He hadn’t. He’d made her wait in the rain at the gate of his mansion outside London, eventually striding out with hard-hearted purpose, his severe expression chilly with distaste as he surveyed her.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Sirena had said through the rungs of the security gate, frightened by how unreachable he seemed. “I was arrested today.”

“I know,” Raoul replied without a shred of concern. “I filed the complaint.”

Her shock and stunned anguish must have been obvious, but his mouth had barely twitched in reaction. Cruel dislike had been the only emotion in his scathing expression. Sirena’s stepmother had been small and critical, but she hadn’t outright hated Sirena. In that second, she realized Raoul reviled her, and that was more painful than anything.

Guilt and remorse had made her want to shrivel up and die, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe she’d ruined her career and her budding relationship with the man of her dreams over one tiny misstep.

“But...” Everything she wanted to say backed up in her throat. They’d developed friendship, reliance and respect over two years of working together and just yesterday they’d taken that relationship to a new level. He’d been tender and teasing and...

God, she had believed he’d been loving.

“But what?” he challenged. “You thought sleeping with me would make a difference to how I’d react when I found out you had stolen from me? I was bored. You were there. That’s all yesterday was. You ought to know better than to think it would make me go easy on someone who was cheating me. Get a lawyer. You need one.”

Swallowing the rock that her crust of toast had become, Sirena pushed the betrayal firmly away. Raoul was in her past and somehow she had to make a future for herself and her baby. She turned her attention to putting out more feelers for work.

But over the next several weeks, the attacks from Raoul kept coming. Settlement offers that increased in size. Demands for paternity tests. Time limits.

Pacing John’s office, she bit back a rebuke at him for revealing her pregnancy that day in the courtroom. She hadn’t admitted to anyone that Raoul was the father and she was determined she never would.

“Here’s what I would like to know, John. How am I supposed to pay more legal bills I can’t afford when it’s not even my wish to be talking to you about this?”

“Your wish may be coming true, Sirena. He’s stated clearly that this is his final offer and you’re to accept it by Monday or forever go empty-handed.”

She stopped and stilled. Loss again. Like watching the final sands drifting through the neck of an hourglass, unable to stop them. Pain in her lip made her aware she was biting it to keep from crying out in protest. Rubbing her brow with a shaking hand, Sirena told herself it was what she wanted: Raoul gone from her life.

“Look, Sirena, I’ve told you several times this isn’t my area of expertise. So far that hasn’t mattered because you’ve refused to admit the baby is his—”

“It’s not,” she interjected, keeping her back to him. She wasn’t a great liar and didn’t like doing it, but she justified it because this baby was hers. Full stop.

“He obviously thinks it’s possible. You and he must have been involved.”

“Involvement comes in different levels, doesn’t it?” she snapped, then closed her mouth, fearful she was saying too much.

“So you’re punishing him for bringing less to the relationship than you did?”

“His mistresses spend more on an evening gown and he tried to send me to prison for it!” she swung around to blurt. “What kind of relationship is that?”

“You’re punishing him for his legal action, then? Or not buying you a dress?”

“I’m not punishing him,” Sirena muttered, turning back to the window overlooking a wet day in Hyde Park.

“No, you’re punishing your child by keeping its father out of the picture—whether that father is Raoul Zesiger or some other nameless man you’ve failed to bring forward. I’m a father, so even though I don’t practice family law, I know the best interests of the child are not served by denying a parent access just because you’re angry with him. Do you have reason to believe he’d be an unfit parent?”

Completely the opposite, she silently admitted as a tendril of longing curled around her heart. She had seen how Raoul’s stepsister adored him and how he indulged the young woman with doting affection while setting firm boundaries. Raoul would be a supportive, protective, exceptional father.

Her brows flinched and her throat tightened. She was angry with him. And secretly terrified that her child would ultimately pick its father over its mother, but that didn’t justify keeping the baby from knowing both its parents.

“Have you thought about your child’s future?” John prodded. “There are certain entitlements, like a good education, inheritances...”

She had to get this baby delivered first. That’s where her focus had really been these last several weeks.