CHAPTER 2

        With his halo of golden curls and enormous blue eyes, Raphaël was a perfect little angel. Armel smiled reassuringly at the little boy, making a huge effort to mask his impatience from him. It wasn’t the child’s fault, he reminded himself.

          No, this was all Harley Winston’s fault… The woman in front of him was a charlatan and the greatest liar he’d ever seen. And if Harley hadn’t looked so damned fragile, he’d be tempted to throttle her for manipulating him into this situation.

“I really don’t understand what kind of a game you’re playing… I thought you’ve already learned the lesson, Harley. We already went through this two years ago, remember? When you sprang the news that you were pregnant…? My response is the same now as it was then,” Armel told her coldly. “You might have convinced your grandmother of my paternity but you and I both know you weren’t telling the truth… don’t we, chérie?”

“The way you reacted to the news was wrong then, as it is now, Armel. I’ve never lied to you… Not once, not ever,” Harley snapped, stung by the contempt in Armel’s eyes.

          It was the same expression that she’d seen when she’d told him she was expecting his baby: contemptuous disbelief, followed by his devastating accusation that she had obviously cheated on him.

          The pain in her heart was no less intense, despite the passing of time. In a strange way, right now it was worse. The mental wounds Armel had inflicted on her were far more painful than her injuries. Seeing him again had reignited her agony and she wished he would go before she suffered the ultimate humiliation of breaking down in front of him.

“I no longer care what you think, Armel… I’m done and over carrying…” she told him wearily, unable to stifle a groan when Raphaël scrambled over her and knocked against her sore ribs, bruised in the accident by the force of her seat belt locking against her.

“Look, I can’t imagine what the hell you’re doing here, but I think it’s best if you leave… Right now…”

“Believe me, I’m not here by choice,” Armel ground out savagely. “I was at ‘Dynamico’s’ London office this morning to give a press conference announcing record profits made by the Penrose Lane store, when your grandmother turned up with YOUR son. Presumably, you’d planned the timing of her visit to create maximum impact,” he added harshly. “Her accusation, that Raphaël is my child, was overheard by several journalists as well as members of my staff and rumors have already got back to the Dynamico’s board.”

“What? Raphaël was in London? I don’t understand…” Harley said sharply, frowning in confusion. “The hospital called my grandmother yesterday and asked her to look after Raphaël. Where is my grandmother now?”

“Jetting off across the Atlantic for the start of her cruise, I imagine,” Armel replied. “She went on about how she’d saved for years for a round-the-world trip and that nothing, not even the fact that you were in the hospital, would induce her to miss it. ‘I couldn’t care less about her and your child’, was what your grandmother said to me… Well, that and other things too.”

          Armel’s eyes darkened as he remembered his sickening meeting with Katherine Winston.

          ‘I’m sick to death of incompetent fathers,’ she told him when she marched into his office wheeling a stroller in front of her and handed him an enormous holdall, which, Katherine informed him, contained all the necessary kit for an eighteen-month-old child.

          ‘I was left to bring up Harley after her mother got herself pregnant at sixteen by some shiftless punk she’d met at a funfair. Rose soon got bored of motherhood and went off, leaving me stuck with a child I didn’t want or need. I thought I’d warned Harley of the dangers of handsome, rich men who want nothing more than a good time between the sheets,’ Katherine added.

          The old woman paused and trailed her eyes over him as if he were some sort of stud, Armel recalled furiously.

          ‘I told her when you offered her a job on that fancy boat of yours that you were only after one thing, and evidently, you both got more than you bargained for. But now it’s time you took responsibility for your actions, Mister. I don’t know how long Harley is going to be in hospital and I’m not waiting to find out. If you won’t look after YOUR son, Raphaël, you’d better hand him over to social services, for all I care, because I refuse to be landed with another baby.’

          Katherine Winston’s vitriolic tirade had captured the attention of everyone at the ‘Dynamico’s’ offices, although his staff had done their best to hide their curiosity, Armel conceded darkly. The whole, unbelievable scenario had been utterly humiliating, he thought bitterly, and there was only one person he could blame for it.

“You can drop the act, Harley,” he said coldly. “It’s quite obvious you told your grandmother to bring Raphaël to me, and, having met Katherine, I can’t even blame you for it,” Armel went on, ignoring Harley’s gasp. “I wouldn’t leave a snake in your grandmother’s care, let alone a small child. But if all this is a ploy to get money out of me in the form of maintenance or whatever, you can forget it.”

          Armel glared at Harley, his anger increasing when he felt his body’s response to the petite woman in front of him, with her small, heart-shaped face and mass of silky honey-blonde hair.

          Harley Winston had intrigued him for barely three months, but two years on he could instantly recall her slender, pale limbs and small, firm breasts. The passion they had shared had been explosive, Armel acknowledged, aware of an uncomfortable tightening in his groin as unbidden memories surfaced.

          He had wanted her from the moment she’d first joined the crew of his luxury yacht, ‘The Phoenix’, and the attraction between them had been mutual. Shy, innocent Harley had been unable to hide her awareness of him and Armel had wasted no time persuading her into his bed.

          Although it had been a shock to discover just how innocent she was, he thought grimly. He liked his women to be self-confident and experienced in bed, willing participants in the mutual exchange of sexual pleasure without the pressure of emotional ties.

          But the temptation of her satiny skin as she curled her legs around him and the enticement of her breathless whispers begging him to make love to her had been impossible to resist.

          She had proved a willing pupil and Armel had delighted in tutoring Harley. Her shyness and inexperience had been refreshing and against his better judgment, he had invited her to move into his penthouse apartment as… his mistress.

          It was a decision he had later regretted and after discovering her to have slept with another man behind his back, he had evicted her from his life with ruthless efficiency.

          His bed had not remained empty for very long. His vast fortune meant that there would always be a queue of willing candidates vying to be his mistress, he acknowledged cynically.

          Since he’d dismissed her back to England and up to his unfortunate and unpleasant meeting with Katherine Winston, Armel had hardly given Harley Winston a thought and it irritated the hell out of him to realize that the chemistry between them still burned as fiercely as ever.

                                                         *****

“I don’t care if you believe me or not but I didn’t ask my grandmother to bring Raphaël to you,” Harley said shakily, still struggling to accept that Armel was really standing in front of her. “You’re the last person I’d ever turn to for help, Armel. I did it once and I’ve learned not to do it again.”

          She glared at him, her green eyes blazing with anger and unconcealed hurt. He was so damn gorgeous, she thought painfully. Harley couldn’t tear her eyes from him and the sight of his broad chest and powerful abdominal muscles, delineated by his close-fitting, fine-knit jumper, made her insides melt.

          Armel was utterly gorgeous but fatally flawed, she reminded herself. His arrogance and cynicism had almost destroyed her, but her body seemed to have a short memory and was responding to his closeness with humiliating eagerness.

          He had treated her diabolically. When she had needed him most, Armel de Roquefort had let her down and smashed her pride with his foul accusations that she had been a gold-digger, a piece of trash. Armel bruised her forever using just one word: putain (French for whore, bitch). 

          So, if two years ago, he’d made it clear that she meant nothing to him, why was her heart racing? And why was her brain intent on recalling every detail of his kiss, the feel of his hands on her body, the way he took her over and over again?

          Frantically, Harley dragged her mind from her memories.

“I admit I once told my grandmother Katherine that you’re Raphaël’s father… It was a huge mistake, but she just kept pushing and pushing… and I exploded. She kept on and on about me telling you, about you facing your paternal responsibilities… I don’t agree with my grandmother and her methods, but what I’ve told her is the TRUTH, whether you believe it or not,” she stated with quiet dignity.

          Armel raised an eyebrow, giving her an ‘I don’t believe a word’ kinda look but Harley didn’t care. She’d always told him the truth and she always will, no matter what.  

“You were the first and only man I’ve ever slept with, Armel,” she whispered sadly, “but you had your own reasons for choosing not to believe me, didn’t you?”

          Armel’s expression of cool disinterest did not flicker and his only reaction to her last statement was a slight quirk of his eyebrows.

“Really? And what was that, chérie?”

“Oh… So, we’re doing this… Okay, here it is. You’d decided before I told you I was pregnant that you wanted to end our relationship. After three months together, you’d grown tired of me. Don’t deny it, Armel!” she replied fiercely. “I recognized the signs right away… The way you mentally withdrew from me during those last few weeks that we were together. The only time we were close was in bed, and even then, you were… distant, cold, indifferent.”

“Not that distant, cold, and indifferent, mon ange (my angel),” Armel replied mockingly. “Your voracious appetite for sex wouldn’t allow any distance between us, would it, Harley? I still find it amazing that you had the energy to sleep with anyone else when you put so much effort into… fucking me… literally and metaphorically.”