Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition (2 page)

I’
LL
just bet you do.

Louisa ignored Tracy’s sharp intake of breath and looked her tormentor square in the eye.

‘Excuse me, but who are you?’ Louisa asked, as if she didn’t know.

‘This is Luke Devereaux, the new Lord Berwick,’ Piers supplied, announcing the information as if he were introducing the king of the universe. ‘Don’t you remember? We featured him in May’s Eligible Bachelors issue. He’s the new owner of—’

Devereaux lifted a hand, halting Piers’s sucking-up speech in mid-suck. ‘Devereaux will do. I don’t use the title,’ he said, his eyes still boring into Louisa and his deep voice as annoyingly distinctive as she remembered it.

To think she’d once thought that accent—crisp British vowels underlaid with a lazy, measured cadence that sounded oddly American—and that steely, impenetrable gaze were sexy. Somebody must have spiked her drink with Viagra that night. His voice didn’t sound compelling any more, just detached, while the icy blue-grey of his irises looked cold, not enigmatic.

All of which would explain why she was fighting the urge to shiver in the middle of August.

‘I’m sure that’s all very fascinating.’ She flicked her hair back. ‘But I’m afraid I’m terribly busy at the moment. And we only do one Eligible Bachelors issue a year. Maybe if you’re still eligible next year you could come back, and I’ll interview you then.’

Louisa congratulated herself on the deliberate insult. She knew how much he had despised being on her list. But she didn’t get as much satisfaction as she’d hoped. Instead of looking annoyed, he simply stared at her. Not by a single flicker of his eyelashes did he acknowledge the hit. Then, to her silent irritation, his mouth curved at the edges. He put his hand flat on her desk and leaned over her. The familiar citrus scent of the soap he used had her boot-heel tapping harder against the chair.

‘You want to have this discussion in public? That’s fine by me,’ he said, in a voice so low only she could hear it. ‘But then I’m not the one who works here.’

She didn’t have a clue what this was all about, but from his predatory smile she suspected the ‘discussion’ he intended to have would be personal. As much as she didn’t want to give him any quarter, at the same time she didn’t want to be humiliated in front of everyone she worked with.

‘All right, then, Mr Devereaux,’ she remarked loudly, swivelling to turn off her computer. ‘As luck would have it, I might be able to squeeze in an interview now. I could talk to our features editor—maybe she’ll consider putting it into next month’s issue. You’re obviously very keen to get your face out there, so the debutantes know what they’re missing.’

He straightened away from her. One muscle in his cheek twitched. She’d got her hit that time.

‘Which is not a lot,’ she continued under her breath, going for the jackpot.

She didn’t get it. The tension in his jaw disappeared and
he smiled. ‘That’s very accommodating of you, Miss DiMarco,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’ll make it worth your while.’

Ignoring the thinly veiled threat, Louisa turned to Tracy, who was doing a very good impression of a goldfish. ‘I’ll finish the article later, Trace. Tell Pam I should still make the five o’clock deadline.’

‘You won’t be back this afternoon,’ Devereaux announced from behind her.

Louisa had swung round to correct him when Piers butted in. ‘Mr Devereaux has asked that you take the rest of the day off. I’ve already approved it.’

‘But I’ve got an article due today,’ Louisa said, stunned. Piers was usually a total Nazi about copy deadlines.

He waved the remark away, looking harassed. ‘Pam’s going to stick in an extra page of ads. Your article can wait till next month. If Mr Devereaux needs you with him today we’ll have to accommodate him.’

What? Since when did the managing editor of
Blush
magazine take orders from aristocratic bullies like Luke Devereaux?

Devereaux, who’d been listening to their conversation with apparent indifference, chose that moment to pick her bag up from the desk. ‘Is this yours?’ he asked impatiently.

‘Yes,’ Louisa replied, still disorientated. What was going on here?

He took her arm and tugged her out of her chair. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, steering her out of the office with his hand clamped on her elbow.

She wanted to yank her arm out of his grip. She yearned to tell him where he could stick his Attila the Hun act. But everyone was staring at them. And Louisa would rather die than cause a scene in front of her colleagues. She was forced to submit to being marched out of the office and
down the stairs like a disobedient schoolchild under the command of the headmaster.

It didn’t stop her fuming every single step of the way.

By the time they’d walked out onto Camden High Street, Louisa’s temper had reached boiling point. She wrestled her arm out of Devereaux’s grasp. ‘How dare you do that? Who do you think you are?’

He stopped by a flashy convertible sports car, parked in a no-parking zone at the front of the office. Opening the door, he flung Louisa’s bag into the back seat. ‘Get in the car.’

‘I will not.’ Of all the cheek! He was treating her as if she were one of his minions. Well, he could think again. Piers might obey his orders, but she most certainly did not. She crossed her arms over her chest, determined not to budge an inch.

His eyebrow lifted. ‘Get in the car, Louisa,’ he said, his voice deadly calm. ‘Unless you want me to pick you up and put you in there.’

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

She had barely finished the sentence before she was hoisted off her feet. She had just enough time to gasp, and slap her fist against the solid wall of his chest, when she was dumped like a sack of potatoes into the passenger seat. The door slammed and the locks clicked shut. She shot up onto her knees, determined to climb right back out again. Unfortunately her movements were somewhat restricted by the skin-tight pencil skirt of her much-loved designer dress. She’d barely wriggled it up past her knees when the car peeled away from the kerb and she was thrown back against the seat.

‘Put your belt on before you get hurt,’ he shouted above the engine noise.

‘Let me out. This is kidnapping!’ The words came out on an outraged squeak, which would have been embarrassing if she hadn’t been in a state of shock.

Handling the steering wheel with one hand, he reached across her with the other and pulled a pair of sunglasses out of the glove compartment. ‘Stop being melodramatic,’ he said, not even sparing her a glance as he put the glasses on.

‘Me-lo-dra…!’ She sputtered to a stop. No one but her father had ever treated her with such high-handedness. And she’d put a stop to that when she was a teenager. She certainly wasn’t going to put up with it now. ‘How dare you?’

He slowed the car to stop at a traffic light and turned to her, an annoyingly assured smile on his face. ‘I think we’ve already established that I would dare. Now, if you want we can have another tussle—which you won’t win,’ he added with complete certainty. ‘Or you can do what you’re told and save a little of your precious dignity.’

Before she could think of a pithy enough reply, he’d shifted into First and accelerated across the intersection.

Drat, she’d missed her chance to leap out.

‘Put your belt on.’ He repeated the words as he shot up a side street, narrowly missing some ambling pedestrians.

Grudgingly she put the belt on—not quite angry enough yet to get killed for the sake of her pride. He’d have to stop eventually, and then she’d let him have it. Until then she’d give him the silent treatment.

That plan worked for about five minutes. But after they’d wound their way through the back streets of Camden, sped down the wide tree-lined outer circle of Regent’s Park and crossed Euston Road into Bloomsbury, her curiosity had got the better of her.

‘Where exactly are we going? If lowly little me is allowed to ask, that is.’

The quick smile he flashed suggested he found her sarcasm amusing. ‘Lowly? You?’

She didn’t dignify that with a reply. ‘I have a right to know where you’re taking me.’ Forget sarcasm—he obviously didn’t have the intelligence to process it.

He made one more turn, braked, and then backed into a parking space outside a six-storey Georgian terraced house. He switched off the engine and, slinging his arm over the steering wheel, angled his body towards her. His shoulders looked even broader than she remembered them in the expertly fitted linen jacket and white shirt. Intimidated despite herself, she had to force herself not to shrink back into the seat.

‘We’re here. The appointment’s not for another—’ he glanced at his watch ‘—ten minutes,’ he announced, as if that explained everything.

She peered past him and read the street sign on the corner. ‘What are we doing in Harley Street?’

The house he’d stopped in front of had an ornate brass plaque listing two doctors’ names. That made sense. Harley Street was the domain of London’s most exclusive private medical practitioners. But nothing else did. Why had he brought her here?

He took his sunglasses off, flung them into the back seat. ‘Answer me one question,’ he said, his voice tight with annoyance. ‘Were you ever going to tell me about it?’

‘Tell you about what?’ Why was he looking at her as if she’d tried to steal the crown jewels and he’d caught her red-handed?

His gaze wandered down to her abdomen. She folded her arms, feeling oddly defensive.

Fierce grey eyes met hers. They looked colder than ever.

‘About my child, of course. What else?’

‘Y
OUR
what
? What child?’ Had she just entered
The Twilight Zone
? ‘Have you gone mad?’

Louisa turned to grab the door handle, determined to get out of the car before he started speaking in tongues or something.

His fingers clamped on her wrist. ‘Don’t act the innocent. I know about the pregnancy. I know about your mood swings, the supposed stomach bug you had a month ago, and the fact that you haven’t had a period in months.’ His eyes dipped to her breasts. ‘And there’s a few other giveaways I can see for myself.’

She wrestled her hand out of his grasp. ‘What have you been doing? Staking out my toilet?’

‘Jack told me.’

‘Jack Devlin told you I was pregnant?’ she shouted, past caring if the whole of Harley Street heard her.

The mention of her best friend Mel’s husband was the last straw. She’d forgotten that Jack and Devereaux were friends. It was how she and Devereaux had met—at a dinner party at Mel’s house. And now Jack had told Devereaux she was pregnant. Next time she saw Jack she would have to kill him.

‘Not in so many words,’ Devereaux said, impatience sharpening his voice. ‘We were talking about Mel’s pregnancy and he mentioned you. Seems Mel thinks you’re pregnant but that you’re keeping it a secret for some reason.’

Okay, now she would have to kill Mel too. ‘Please tell me you didn’t tell Jack about us.’

She’d been so humiliated she hadn’t told anyone. Not even Mel, and she usually told Mel everything.

But how did you tell your best friend that you’d slept with a man on a first date, that you’d discovered how incredible, how amazing sex could really be, that for ten rosy minutes of afterglow you’d deluded yourself into thinking you’d found the love of your life—and then been brought crashing down to earth when you discovered the truth. That Mr Right was actually Mr Dead Wrong in disguise. That he wasn’t the sexy, flirtatious, easy-going ordinary guy he’d pretended to be all evening, but rather a cold, manipulative, controlling member of the aristocracy, who’d seduced you for writing an article about him he didn’t like.

Humiliation didn’t even begin to cover it.

‘I didn’t talk to Jack about us,’ he snarled. ‘I was much more interested in hearing what he had to say about you.’ He was looking at her as if he had a right to his anger.

Suddenly sick of him, and his attitude, and the whole stupid mess, Louisa knew she just wanted to get away from him. ‘I’m not pregnant. Now, I’ve had enough of this idiotic conversation. I’m going back to work.’ She tried to turn away from him, but he grasped her wrist again. ‘Let go of me.’

‘When did you have your last period?’

‘I’m not answering that.’

She struggled. His fingers tightened on her wrist.

‘You’re not going anywhere until you do,’ he said firmly.

She stopped struggling. This was ridiculous. What were they arguing about?

Dropping her head back on the seat, she let her hand go limp and closed her eyes against the bright cloudless August afternoon. She wasn’t pregnant. All she had to do was convince him and he’d let her go. And then this whole horrible scene would be over. She’d never have to see him again.

Shielding her eyes, she rolled her head towards him. He looked as implacable and determined as ever. She tried to remember when her last period had been. A flush crept up her neck. Okay, maybe it had been a while ago. But she’d always had wildly irregular periods. It didn’t mean a thing. And anyway, she had definitely had one since they’d made love. Plus she’d taken a home pregnancy test. She wasn’t that stupid.

‘I took a home pregnancy test. Just in case. And it was negative.’ To her astonishment, instead of looking repentant, he narrowed his eyes.

‘When did you take it?’

‘I don’t know. A few days afterwards.’

‘And did you bother to read the instructions properly?’

‘Enough to know it was negative,’ she said firmly, the guilty blush spreading across her cheeks. Okay, she hadn’t read all the small print—but did anyone?

‘I thought not,’ he said.

Indignation seared through her and she stiffened in her seat. ‘Don’t talk to me as if I’m an imbecile. I took the test. It was negative. Plus I’ve had a period since that night, so it’s all academic anyway.’ Even if her period had been a light one, it had been enough to put her mind at rest.

She tried to wrestle her wrist free again.

He held fast and his brows lowered ominously. ‘That night was over three months ago, and you’re telling me you’ve only had one period since?’ Exasperation sharpened every word.

‘So what? I have irregular periods.’ The blush intensified. Why was she talking to this man about her menstrual cycle? And why was she going on the defensive? ‘Read my lips,’ she said. ‘There is no child.’ The possibility didn’t even bear thinking about.

He looked at the silver Rolex on his wrist again. ‘I’ve made you an appointment with the top obstetrician in the UK. She can start by doing a pregnancy test.’

‘Who on earth do you think you are?’

‘Quite possibly the father of your child,’ he shot back without even blinking. ‘The condom broke, Louisa,’ he said. ‘You know that.’ He let go of her wrist at last and proceeded to count off his points on the fingers of one hand. ‘You haven’t had a period in months. You had what could easily have been a bout of morning sickness a few weeks back, and your breasts are definitely fuller. You’re taking another pregnancy test. A proper one that you can’t muck up.’

The comment about her breasts had the flush blazing across her chest like a brush fire. ‘I’m not pregnant. And even if I were…’ which she most definitely was not ‘…what makes you so sure you’re the father? For all you know I could be a complete slapper. I could have slept with ten other guys since that night. I could have slept with twenty,’ she finished on a note of bravado.

‘Yeah, but you didn’t,’ he said, with such certainty she wanted to slap him.

‘Oh, I see.’ Did the man’s ego know no bounds? ‘You think you were so memorable you spoiled me for other guys.
Is that it?’ She was prepared to lie through her teeth rather than let him know the truth. ‘Believe me, you weren’t.’

He huffed out a breath and stared out through the windshield. ‘Stop pretending you’re something you’re not.’ He turned back to her. Was that pity or regret she could see in his eyes? ‘I knew the flirting was an act the minute I got inside you.’

The blood burned in her cheeks, but she forced herself to flick a contemptuous glance at his crotch. ‘Right, so you’ve got radar down there, have you?’

He shook his head, gave a hollow laugh, but she was certain now the look in his eyes was pity. She hated him for it. ‘I wish I did. I would never have made love to you that night if I’d known how innocent you were.’

‘Well, isn’t that noble of you?’ she sneered back, only realising after the fact that she’d as good as agreed with him. ‘There’s no need to feel guilty on my account. I wasn’t a virgin,’ she said, trying to regain the ground.

‘I know, but you were the next best thing.’ He sighed again. ‘I’m sorry for what happened that night. I figured you knew the score. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

Yes, you did,
she thought bitterly, but didn’t say it. This was all too personal. If he saw how vulnerable she was, it would only humiliate her more.

‘I’m sure this heart-to-heart is all very touching. But it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve got nothing left to discuss.’

‘We’ll decide that once you’ve had the pregnancy test.’

The he-who-shall-be-obeyed tone was back.

She could have argued with him. She probably should have. But she felt unbearably weary all of a sudden, and over-emotional. She just wanted to get this over with now. So she never, ever had to see this man again.

Submitting to a quick pregnancy test seemed like a rela
tively small price to pay. And she was already relishing exactly what she was going to say to him when it turned up negative.