The Secret Baby Revenge

She looked at her bedside clock: 23:17. Was the house on fire or something? She sniffed but didn’t smell any smoke. Nevertheless, there had to be an emergency to account for such determination to arouse the people in the house. She tumbled out of bed and met her mother in the hall heading for the front door. She stopped as she heard Zoe calling out, alarmed by the bell which was still being rung aggressively.

Not for one second did it occur to Nicole that Quin Sola might be at the door, that a determination not to forfeit one night with her had caused him to cut his business meeting short, catch a plane from Melbourne to Sydney and come to this house in Burwood to collect her before midnight!

CHAPTER NINE

HAVING jettisoned his plans and travelled hard for the past few hours to get here, Quin was not a happy man to find the house in darkness. It was an old but solid red brick Federation-style home with a neat front lawn and garden—typical of the whole street—yet with no light on anywhere, its old-fashioned respectability felt forbidding. Definitely unwelcoming.

And this was the house he’d saved for her!

So what had Nicole done, having thrown down her challenge about his priorities? Gone out with her mother for the night? Taken herself off to a bed that didn’t have him in it? She certainly hadn’t been waiting around to see if he’d turn up. Which made Quin fighting mad. She wanted the deal kept to the letter, then let her keep it, too. Tonight she had to be available to him!

The worst of it was he’d thought she’d been softening towards him, actively wanting to spend time together, enjoying their nights. He’d believed he’d been making headway towards drawing her into the same close relationship they’d had before. Tonight it had struck him forcibly that he now had more than enough money to do anything he wanted, and what he wanted most was Nicole Ashton. It didn’t matter if he lost a lucrative client. It did matter if he lost Nicole again.

If she needed a demonstration of how important she was to him, fine…but it wasn’t fine to have his demonstration shown up as totally irrelevant to her. A fierce resentment put a savage twist to his ringing of the doorbell, which was an old-style metal mechanism, not a modern button, and much more satisfying to operate—snapping it back and forth, back and forth. However, the loud clanging seemed to echo through an empty house, which drove his frustration higher.

If Nicole had gone out, he’d camp on this porch until she returned and insist she make up the time he’d been kept waiting. His gaze skated around, looking for a chair. No chair. But in the far corner…a doll’s pram? Must have been overlooked and left behind by the friend who had the little girl.

His hand was still working the bell when light suddenly shone through the glass panels of the door. So someone was at home! He kept the loud ringing going to encourage a fast response to it. The blurred image of a woman appeared behind the stained glass. The door rattled as it was hastily unlocked. Quin dropped his hand to his side and composed himself to confront Nicole with his refusal to forfeit.

The door opened.

The woman facing him was not Nicole.

She had short hair and was middle-aged. Her dressing-gown had not been properly adjusted and her hair was mussed—clear indications that she’d been disturbed from sleep. Her initial expression of confused alarm changed to sharp annoyance as he simply stared at her, coming to the realisation that this had to be Nicole’s mother, Linda Ellis.

“Who are you? What’s the problem?” she rapped out.

He looked her straight in the eye and said, “My name is Quin Sola and I have business with your daughter, Mrs. Ellis.”

“You!” It was a gasp of shock. In the next instant her whole body was recoiling from him as though he was the worst possible news.

Quin frowned over the reaction. Although they’d never met, Linda Ellis certainly knew his name and obviously it didn’t conjure up good feelings. Which raised the question…what had Nicole been telling her about him? Didn’t being rescued from financial ruin give her mother cause enough to be more welcoming towards her benefactor?

“Is Nicole here?” he asked, deciding quite a few things needed to be confronted and settled in this household.

Linda Ellis didn’t answer.

She didn’t have to answer.

Over her shoulder he caught sight of Nicole stepping into the hall from a room at the back of it. She carried a child, a little girl whose head was snuggled into the curve of her neck and shoulder. Both of them were wrapped in hurriedly donned dressing-gowns.

“What is it, Mum?”

The words had tripped off Nicole’s tongue before she saw him. When her mother stepped back to reveal his presence and recognition hit, her forward momentum along the hall came to a dead halt, shock radiating from her frozen stillness.

The little girl lifted her head and looked directly at Quin, wanting to find a reason for the sudden stop, the silence. She had short black hair, cut in a bob. Her large and thickly lashed eyes were surprisingly light—a smoky grey—and Quin thought there was something familiar about her face, but…

“Do you know this man, Mummy?” the child asked.

Mummy!

Quin’s gaze jerked to Nicole’s. Anguish in her eyes now, not shock. A flood of heat turned her cheeks scarlet. Her throat moved convulsively, swallowing hard, needing words to emerge from it but not finding them easy to form. Her chin lifted, signalling defiant pride before she finally spoke.

“He’s just someone passing by, Zoe.” This relegation to insignificant status in her life was accompanied by a glare that rejected any other possibility in the future. “Please excuse me while I put my daughter back to bed.”

The child looked curiously at him over her mother’s shoulder as Nicole wheeled and headed back down the hall. There was something about the little girl’s eyes, her face…the odd fa

miliarity niggled past the stunning fact of her existence in Nicole’s life. His mind almost burst with the intuitive leap that speared through it.