Have Baby, Need Billionaire & The Sarantos Secret Baby by Maureen Child

Author:Maureen Child
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Harlequin Billionaires and Babies
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

Eighteen months later…

Déjà vu tightened its grip on Aris’s senses.

Standing in front of the Louvardis mansion brought it all back. That fateful day a year and a half ago.

He couldn’t believe it had been that long. Or only that long. It felt as if it were yesterday, and yet in another life.

Not that it had been a day, but rather a week of blows, ending in those mind-boggling two days and nights with Selene Louvardis.

His body tightened and his breath shortened, the unfailing effect the memory of that weekend had on him. Each time the slightest tendril of recollection strummed his senses, he relived the fever that had possessed him, ending in a surreal sense of fulfillment and peace, and almost total amnesia. He’d woken up remembering nothing about himself or his life, only the tempestuous, delirious time with her.

That was, until he’d realized she’d gone. The same numbness that had assailed him at that discovery spread through him again now.

It had simulated bewilderment, loss, even anger. But he’d at last decided what it was. Relief.

She’d saved him the trouble of finding a resolution to their interlude of temporary insanity. Their plunge into abandoned intimacies had been unforeseen and uncharacteristic, not to mention fraught with consequences. But they’d rushed into it like one would into danger to escape unmanageable pain.

But she’d clearly thought it better to have no morning-after, to have a clean break, resume their leashed hostilities and forget the two days they’d been all-out lovers.

He’d grappled with the need to contest that decision for hours. He’d ended up deciding it was for the best.

Respecting that unspoken treaty of avoidance had kept him away from the States since. He’d been loath to end up face-to-face with her, had feared he’d end up doing something unpredictable again.

But just as it was she who’d kept him away, now it was she—and her brothers—who’d brought him back.

He was about to crash another Louvardis function. This time, a party instead of a funeral.

His negotiators, emissaries and go-betweens had failed to resolve this current situation, the most potentially catastrophic of their business interactions. The Louvardises were no longer trying to wring him dry in negotiations. They were trying to take an ax to his throne in the shipping world. They’d left him no doubt that they would go kamikaze if it meant taking him down with them.

So he was here as a last measure. To find out just what had instigated this extreme stance. He owed it to their father—and to Selene—to give them a chance to reach a compromise, to back off, before he employed his heaviest artillery and gunned them down.

The emotional ferocity, the lack of a logical core at this last attack had made him wonder if it was Selene’s doing. But he’d dismissed that wishful thought. She wasn’t a woman scorned. She was the one who’d walked out.

Whatever it was, it had to end now. One way or another.

He moved at last, passing through the gates. Good thing the man who asked for his invitation recognized him and decided to not make an issue of it.

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