The tender gesture made Lucy’s throat close and her heart tighten. She sank against the kitchen door as her strength of will drained out of her.
He might not be a monster, but he was going to take Isabella away from her. Watching him in this unguarded moment brought that home in a way nothing else yet had.
Until now, despite everything, she’d had hopes that…that what? Dex would just hand Isabella over to her?
No. That wasn’t going to happen. As long as he believed he was her father, he would fight for custody.
But what if…
Lucy straightened and stared blankly ahead in shock.
“What if she’s not his?” Almost without meaning to, she muttered the words under her breath.
“What do you mean she might not be mine?”
She jerked her head around to find him standing not four feet away. For a long moment, Lucy simply gaped at him, panic clutching her heart.
“Well,” she began nervously. “It’s not like we’ve done a paternity test yet, right? Until then, we won’t really know for sure, now will we?”
“Is there someone else who could be the father?”
Ah, there’s the rub.
She didn’t think so. She had been at the bar the night Jewel had hooked up with Dex. She’d watched the whole thing from a distance, shocked her sister would even flirt with one of the men who ran the company where she worked. Only later had Lucy learned that Jewel had been fired from Messina Diamonds mere days before.
As far as Lucy knew, Dex was the only man Jewel had slept with that month. And Jewel had always been one to kiss and tell. Usually in way more detail than Lucy wanted. But what if Lucy was wrong? What if she didn’t know her sister as well as she thought she did?
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
He eyed her for a long, slow minute, his gaze raking across her face, no doubt looking for signs of deceit. She prayed he wouldn’t find them.
Finally, he said, “It’s a simple question. The month you got pregnant, how many men did you sleep with? Just me? Or did you sleep with some other guy, too, but you left Isabella on my doorstep because I was worth more?”
For an instant, the question actually confused her. She hadn’t slept with any men the month Isabella was conceived. But of course that wasn’t what he was really asking.
And as insulting as his insinuations were, she had no one to blame but herself. After all, it was her big mouth that had gotten her into this conversation.
As annoyed with herself as she was with him, she snapped, “What makes you think it’s between just you and one other guy? Maybe there were dozens.”
There. That ought to shut him up.
Instead of looking shocked or even offended, he laughed. Out loud, dang it.
“Nice try.” He studied her for a minute more while his laughter subsided. Shaking his head ruefully, he said, “No, I don’t buy it. I don’t believe for a minute there was even one other guy, let alone dozens.”
“There could be,” she insisted defiantly.
“No. There couldn’t be. You just aren’t the type. You know what I think? I think our one night together was out of character for you.”
He stepped closer to her, and she found herself backing up against the door.
“You don’t know me well enough to know anything about my character,” she protested. She was surprised how breathless her voice sounded, how weak her protest was. How the pounding of her own heart seemed to close in on her.
“Ah,” he murmured, reaching up to tuck a lock of her hair behind an ear. “But I’m an excellent judge of character. And you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’s been with a lot of men. You’re too innocent for that.”
She felt a blush moving into her cheeks and cursed herself. Jewel wouldn’t blush at this. Jewel never blushed.
“Look at you,” he continued, brushing the backs of his knuckles against her hot cheeks. “You’re blushing. Women who’ve slept with a dozen men in a month don’t blush.”
Trying for far more bravado than she felt, she knocked his hand away and said, “Oh, and I suppose you know women like that.”
But he chuckled and ignored her. “Besides you’re an actuary.”
“So?”
“Actuaries don’t take risks. They think things through. They plan. They organize.”
She couldn’t deny it. And why would she want to. She’d always taken such pride in her logical approach to life.
Yet standing here, with Dex so close she could feel the heat of his body…So close she could smell him, musky and masculine. And dangerous. She wanted to be the kind of woman who did take risks. Who threw caution to the wind.
“No,” he continued, stroking her jawline with a light, tremor-inducing touch. “I bet our night together was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I bet it really threw you for a loop. I bet you’ve been wondering how you could ever have done such a thing.”
Of course, he was right. How many times had she wondered just that? How could Jewel sleep with men she barely knew? How could she engage in such reckless, selfish behavior?
And yet, in that instant, Lucy knew exactly how Jewel must feel. She wanted a little recklessness herself. She craved that wild restless heat.
“And I bet you haven’t stopped thinking about it for a minute. I bet you’re even wondering what it would be like if it happened again.”
She was. Which was why, when he leaned down to kiss her, she rose on her toes meet him.
Six
K issing Lucy was pure heaven.
Her lips were soft and silky. Her mouth, warm and sensual. The heat of response shocked him. She didn’t just kiss him back, she plastered herself against him, pouring herself into the kiss.Her lips parted almost instantly, her body pressing up to his, her tongue stroking against his with an eagerness that inflamed his blood.
Even as he felt his body hardening in response, he knew he’d been right about her innocence. There was no expertise in her. No pretense or artifice.
Just passion.
And he couldn’t wait to explore that passion.
His hands sought her hips, pulling her even closer, his fingers slipping up under her shirt to the silky skin of her midriff.
A moment later, he filled his palm with her breast. She moaned low in her throat as he rubbed his thumb across her nipple.
He couldn’t get enough of her.
He wanted more. More than this teenage groping. He wanted her na**d and arching against him.
But before he could maneuver her toward a horizontal surface, she pressed her palms against his chest and shoved.
He pulled back from her, satisfied that at least she was breathing even harder than he was.
“That was a mistake,” she said almost immediately.
“I disagree.” He’d stopped kissing her, but he wasn’t about to stop touching her altogether. His hand lingered at her hip, relishing her voluptuousness, the lush generosity of her body. “In fact, I can’t imagine why we haven’t done this before.”
“Stop that,” she ordered, swatting at his hand and moving out of his reach. “We haven’t done this before because it’s a bad idea. We can’t get involved.”
He raised his eyebrows. “We have a child together. We’re already involved.”
She glared at him, her eyebrows knitting into a fierce frown. “I meant, involved beyond that.”
Damn, but she was cute when she was trying to look fierce.
“I know what you meant. But we’ve already slept together once. There’s nothing keeping us from doing it again.”
“That’s male logic for you,” she quipped.
“No, that’s just logic. But if that doesn’t work, how about this. We’re adults. We want each other, that should be enough.”
“But it isn’t. Regardless of whether we want—” she stumbled over the word want and another blush crept into her cheeks “—each other, there are other things to consider. You said it yourself, we’re adults. To me at least, that means we act responsibly. We don’t just do whatever we want the instant we want to do it.”
The way she emphasized the word responsibly set his teeth on edge. “Don’t you think it’s a little late to be lecturing me about responsible behavior?”
She seemed to be biting back a response. Or maybe just searching for an answer that would turn the conversation to her liking.
“Whatever else I may have done in the past, you’ve got to believe that now my biggest concern is doing what’s right for Isabella.” Her voice was hot with emotion, dense with yearning to make him understand. “I know I’ve made mistakes, but from here on out, I swear I’m always going to put her first. And she deserves more than two parents who would make a bad situation worse because of a momentary flash of desire.”
With that, she scooped Isabella’s car seat off the floor and escaped toward her room with the still-sleeping child.
He let her go, smart enough to realize she was right about one thing. This wasn’t the time.
For one thing, he still had too many questions about her. If he was right—and he’d bet half his fortune he was—and she really was that inexperienced, then what had she been doing in that bar fourteen months ago?
Why after years of cautious, responsible behavior had she picked him for her one-night stand?
If they’d met under other circumstances, he might have believed her uncharacteristic behavior that night was due entirely to the chemistry between them.
But she had approached him. And when she’d done so, she hadn’t been timid or shy. She’d been bold and flirtatious in a way he hadn’t seen since. She’d set out to seduce him. Which again brought him back to the question: why him?
Only one answer came to mind. She must have known about his money.
And if she’d known about his money, he wondered if she’d gotten pregnant on purpose. Had this seemingly sweet and innocent woman targeted him for a pregnancy scam for money?
Every bone in his body said she wasn’t capable of doing that. Yet he knew she was lying about something.