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

him, it didn’t mean he had to lose his grip. He was furious it was even in question. “That is not quite the same thing, is it?”

Her gaze shifted back to him, glittering hot and gold. “Remind me, whose money is it that you were given?”

He found himself smiling. Almost. “Fair point. Though, unlike me, I am unaware of any great financial ventures you’ve been involved in on your own since you came of age. Please enlighten me.”

“I was happily working in a winery in Provence until six weeks ago.”

Balthazar lifted a brow. “Are you so divorced from reality that you imagine waiting tables is a wealth-building exercise? Unless, of course, you went about getting your tips in the same way you approached your business meeting with me?”

Kendra didn’t rise to the bait and surely he should not have felt a vague sense of disappointment at that.

She sighed as if he was the trial. “Surely the man who has spirited me away to his very own private island is not really speaking to me about reality.”

And he, who had a cutting response for everything, found he had nothing.

Worse, he found himself sitting there, seething, while Kendra returned her attention to the grilled chicken on her plate, helping herself to more fresh greens from the bowl at her elbow. Ignoring him, he was forced to conclude.

Ignoring him.

Ignoring him.

He ordered himself to stop gritting his teeth.

“If I am brutally honest—”

“That would be a bracing shift, I’m sure,” she murmured aridly.

Balthazar ignored that. And continued, with great magnanimity. “I am not worried about you, kopéla. Obviously it is your father and brother and their grasping, deceitful behavior who concern me more.”

“Are you marrying all three of us?”

He couldn’t quite read that tone she’d used, but he could see the look on her face all too well. He couldn’t say he liked it.

“Oh, I see,” she said when he didn’t reply. “I forgot that I am no more than a tool my father and brother alike use for their own nefarious ends. You think you’re taking their little toy away and making it yours instead. Naturally you want me to sign documents to enshrine these playground antics into contract law. After all, what could be the harm? This was never my life in the first place.”

It was the bitterness in her tone, the harsh slap of it, that got to him then. Balthazar felt as if he’d lost something when she reached out, grabbed the folder, and pulled it toward her.

A feeling that only worsened as she rifled through the pages, signing her name with dramatic flourish.

“You do not appear to be reading the documents, Kendra.”

“Does it matter?” She didn’t look up at him. “Surely the object of this humiliation is the mere fact of it. Not what the papers actually say.”

She capped the pen, closed the folder again, and then shoved it all back across the table toward him. “Here you go, Balthazar. Congratulations, you have dominion over me and legal documents to prove it. What a glorious environment this will be for your child.”

Balthazar told himself it was the mention of the child that got to him then, that was all. Imagining that child torn between warring parents the way he and his brother had been. He told himself that was all it was.

He had been so focused on the fact of Kendra’s pregnancy. What it meant in financial and practical terms. What he was going to have to do to contain the damage and attempt to repair this mistake of his own making.

Somehow, he hadn’t thought about the fact his child would be an individual, a whole human being who would grow and laugh—and want his parents to be better, as he had—until now.

It felt a great deal like a kick to the gut.

For a moment, he almost dared imagine what things might have been like if his parents had been different. If they had actually gotten better instead of worse. If they had somehow managed not to poison everything they touched—

But that felt uncomfortably disloyal.

He shoved it aside—aware that it seemed harder to do than it should have.

“Why are you staring at me?” Kendra asked after a while, and he wondered if she found the silence between them oppressive. Or if that was only him, again. “It is not going to change anything.”

“Nothing needs to change.” He shrugged, no longer feeling oppressed. Not when she was aiming that baleful glare of hers his way. “We will marry in the morning. Though as a Connolly you certainly do not deserve such consideration, you will become my wife. You may thank me.”

“I would be happier with less consideration, actually. No thanks required.”

“Too bad.” His mouth curved into something hard. “The child you carry will be my heir, and I insist any child of mine be legitimate. If you had read the documents you signed, you would know that I have made generous accommodation for you because you are the mother of this child, no matter what our future holds.”

Somehow, he knew she was not likely to thank him for that, either.

“Do we have a future?” she asked instead. Then frowned. “Or, wait. Do you mean a succession of creative imprisonments for me to enjoy?”

“That is up to you, Kendra.”

“Why do I find that very hard to believe?”

Balthazar studied her. “This role you keep attempting to play, that of the wronged innocent, does not suit you.”

“Whereas the role of overly controlling bastard seems to fit you perfectly. Almost as if you’ve had practice. I’m betting you have.”

“You have only a few months left.” It was a warning, not that Balthazar expected her to take it on board. “Indulge your bitterness as you wish. Once the child is born, it stops. Or I will make certain you see as a little of him as possible.”

“I don’t know what makes you think it’s going to be a boy, aside from wishful thinking,” she said, when he’d thought she would have reacted more dramatically to his