The Secret Baby Revenge

“Right!” She lifted her glass, determined on blocking out the more intimate future for a while. “Here’s to fine food…”

“Fine company,” Quin slid in.

“And fine wine,” she finished pointedly, sipping the champagne which was, indeed, very fine.

Nevertheless, it was impossible to relax with Quin sitting opposite her, watching her, silently revelling in his plans for tonight. Get his mind off them, she told herself. Ask him questions. Persist until he did talk about himself. He might even give her answers this time around.

“So how is the banking world these days?” she started.

He shrugged. “I run my own finance company now.”

“Trading profitably?”

“That’s what I do.”

“Tell me about it,” she invited.

“The money business is no different to when you were working in a bank, Nicole.”

“But the transition from being employed to—”

“The work is the same,” he cut her off. “I’d find it far more interesting to hear why you’ve chosen to teach dancing.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” she flared at him.

His eyes glittered with challenging speculation. “What do you want to change about me?”

Nicole quickly retreated from any personal element. “I’m not interested in changing you, Quin,” she stated flatly. “I was merely commenting.”

“On what?”

She shrugged. “You don’t open up about yourself.” Suddenly seeing a line of attack, she added, “It makes me wonder what you’re afraid of revealing.”

“Fear doesn’t enter into it,” he answered.

“What does then?”

The waiter arrived with their first course. Nicole stared down at the oysters as he refilled their glasses before leaving the two of them alone again.

“This is just what you’re like,” she shot at Quin. “An oyster with an impenetrable shell.”

“I’ll let you eat me tonight,” he said wickedly.

Sex! That’s all it had ever been with Quin. He’d probably ordered the oysters because they were supposed to be an aphrodisiac. She picked up her fork and ate them, her mind skating around memories of Quin’s body—his sexually aroused naked body—and how wildly they’d made love in the past. Except it hadn’t been making love. It was just sex! Which was what she had to remember at all times with him.

“So why are you working at a dance school, Nicole?” he asked when the plates had been cleared away.

She looked directly into his penetrating grey eyes and defiantly answered, “Private reasons.”

His mouth took on an ironic twist. “You know, money always leaves a trail. Mortgage on the school, mortgage on a house, big debt to a money-lender—all attached to one name, and that name is not yours. Who is Linda Ellis?”

The question tapped into a bank of resentment that had never been resolved. “You’d know if you’d ever accepted one of my invitations to meet my mother.”

He ignored her reference to the old bone of contention between them. “Your mother. Why the different name?”

“A second marriage.”

“Does she have a gambling problem?”