Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 Carol Marinelli (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

real. It was a role she was playing, nothing more. It was a way to hide from what she’d done, who she was, and what must come next.

Surely she had to know this.

He certainly knew it.

As she was almost certainly carrying his child, this rustic life she’d arranged around her this summer was unacceptable, as she must surely have been aware. The mother of a Skalas heir could not be in service, God forbid.

He told himself this supposed happiness of hers had to be fake. It had to be part of the bait in her trap.

There was no other explanation.

She only looked at him for a moment as if he was the one who made no sense. It meant there was nothing to do but gaze back at her.

Damn her, but she looked...angelic.

It made him want to break things.

The light from inside the cottage made her hair look strawberry blonde and drenched in gold. That heart-shaped face had haunted him for months now—years, if he was honest—and it was far prettier in person than it had been in his memory.

That infuriated him all the more.

If he didn’t know any better, if he chose to rely on all his usual instincts, Balthazar would have been tempted to swear that there wasn’t a shred of deceit in this woman.

She was the best manipulator he’d ever seen, he reflected in that moment, as the light exalted her and made her look something like beatific. The apple did not fall far from its gnarled, ugly tree.

He ordered himself to unclench his fists.

“I have to do something with myself,” Kendra said quietly. Thoughtfully, he would have said, if she was someone else. “It turns out a life of leisure doesn’t suit me at all.”

“Yet three months ago I could have sworn you were attempting to be some kind of businesswoman. Wasn’t that your game?” He could remember that night entirely too well. “That outfit. The bartering.”

A kind of shadow moved over her face, and she shrugged. It forced him to pay attention to the fact that she was not dressed like any kind of businesswoman now. She had changed out of the summery shift dress she’d been wearing at the winery and was now dressed simply in a pair of denim jeans and a deep blue tank top with wide shoulder straps that only drew more attention to the elegance of her neck and that clavicle that made his mouth water.

He did not understand how he could want her like this.

Even now.

“My services were not required in the family business,” Kendra said.

“Were they not? That sounds like a remarkably antiseptic version of family drama.”

Another shadow crossed her pretty face, but this one looked like temper. “What does it matter if it’s antiseptic or not? I don’t work for the family company. And if I’m not working for the family company, why stay with the family?”

“So your father and your brother, those paragons of virtue—”

“There’s no need to overdo it, Balthazar.” Her tone was dry. Almost amused, though not quite. “At a certain level, being that sardonic might actually hurt you, don’t you think?”

He almost laughed, but caught himself. “They were happy to send you out like a pair of pimps, is that it? But couldn’t find it in them to offer you a cubicle tucked away in their offices?”

The color in her cheeks bloomed. “That is...an absolutely revolting way to put it.”

“Is it incorrect?”

She made a sound as if she was clearing her throat, then swung around and walked into the cottage.

“I think,” she said as she moved, “that this conversation is going to require wine.”

Balthazar prowled in behind her, expecting to see...he didn’t know what. Something that shouted out her guilt. Something that penetrated this front she put on.

But instead he found himself in an open, bright room that sprawled from the front door into an open kitchen at the back that looked out over a small terrace. There was real art on the walls, placed in a haphazard way that suggested they were there because the owner enjoyed them, not because she was showing off a collection. There were bookshelves and stacks of books and magazines everywhere, but the cottage didn’t feel fussy or overstuffed. The overall effect was of a kind of bohemian joy in art and literature.

It didn’t fit with his impression of this woman. He found himself frowning at the wide, cozy couches that still held the imprint of her body.

Then he remembered what she’d said as she’d walked inside.

“No wine for you, kopéla,” he growled.

He closed the front door behind him and watched her closely as she turned, halfway across the airy room. He noticed that her feet were bare, and could not have explained why that poked at him if his life had depended upon it.

Nor could he understand why it very much felt as if it did.

“No wine for me?” She looked baffled. “If you’re some kind of teetotaler—”

“Hardly.” He waited for her to get his meaning and when she didn’t, another surge of fury swept through him. “Have you forgotten you might be pregnant?”

He didn’t quite know what to do when she paled, as if she truly had forgotten. When that couldn’t be true.

How could that be true?

And because she seemed frozen there, staring at him with her eyes wide and horrified, he moved toward her and tossed the small package he’d brought with him onto an accent table beside her.

She cleared her throat. “Why do I doubt you brought me gifts?”

Balthazar didn’t trust himself to speak. But he must have communicated himself all the same, because Kendra moved to the table and picked up the small carrier bag, then blew out a loud breath when she looked inside.

“Wow.” She laughed, though he could see from the color on her face and the sudden sheen in her eyes that she didn’t find any of this particularly amusing. Good, he thought.

“Pregnancy tests. You thought I needed pregnancy tests. Five of them, no less.”

“It will do for a