The Fatherhood Affair by Emma Darcy

Author:Emma Darcy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1995-03-23T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

DAMIEN’S expression underwent a profound change. His eyes kindled with fiery determination. He rose from the bed with all the bristling pride of a man whose honour had been challenged. He was totally unconcerned by his nakedness as he strode down the room. He scooped his jeans from the floor and drew them on as though girding his loins for battle. Steely grey eyes pinned Natalie to where she stood by the bathroom doorway.

Not that Natalie wanted to move any closer to him. Damien Chandler had a lot to answer for. Outrage burned through her stomach, turning the desire she had felt for him to blistering bitterness. He had known what memories Merlinmist held for her, and he had let her make the decision without saying a word to stop or discourage her. Had there been some lurking subconscious thought that she would regain her memories in such a horrible fashion? What kind of man did that make him?

‘Now, tell me, Natalie...’ he stood with his arms hanging free, his torso bare, aggressive in its raw muscular power ‘...what possible blame can you lay at my door for what happened on your honeymoon with Brett? I wasn’t here. I am not responsible for...’

‘You were here,’ she cut in fiercely. ‘Every minute of every day you were here. It was because of you Brett chose this place for a honeymoon. Not to please me, but to best you, Damien. He beat you so he could boast about it to you.’

‘That is not...my...fault,’ Damien bit out, his eyes as sharp as scalpels, intent on slicing to the heart of her retreat from him.

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I hated you before I came to know you.’

‘What did I do to deserve such prejudice?’ he demanded.

She stared at him, her mind tunnelling back to her wedding-day... Brett’s best man...his best friend and business partner...Damien Chandler...charming, courteous, faultlessly correct in his behaviour towards her, yet holding an aloofness that denied her entry into his personal world. That hadn’t worried her at the time. She had had Brett. At least, she’d thought she had Brett. She didn’t know then that Damien was the centrifugal force around which Brett’s life spun, that she was a pawn in a competition, giving Brett a leading edge over Damien.

‘You knew all about it, Damien,’ she stated with unequivocal conviction. ‘You knew Brett a lot better than I did.’

‘What a man knows of another man is not what a woman knows of him, Natalie,’ he argued. ‘From what Brett told me, you were the perfect woman for him, and from what I observed on your wedding-day you were very much in love with him.’

‘But that wasn’t all you observed, was it?’

There was a flicker of evasion in his eyes. ‘What are you referring to?’

‘You knew what a womaniser Brett was. He didn’t even have the discretion to keep by my side at the wedding reception. The only time you engaged me in conversation, at length, was when Brett went missing with one of your married friends.

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