Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 by Carol Marinelli (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

hair was standing at attention. “But I feel certain you know that.”

“Indeed.”

And something in the way he studied her then made her feel as if she was trembling again, from the inside out. As if her own bones had betrayed her. She had the wild notion that she should leap across the room, slap her hands over his mouth if necessary, do anything she could to keep him from saying whatever it was he’d come here to say... But she didn’t.

“Three months,” he repeated, as if for emphasis. “And in that time, have you bled?”

She felt all the color and sensation drain from her. “What?”

“It is a simple question, if indelicate. Because we did not use protection, Kendra. And if you have not bled—”

Her pulse was taking over her body, beating at her. “Why are we talking about this? How is it your business? And anyway, I moved to a different country. It’s not unusual to miss one or two—”

She cut herself off, horrified.

The reality of what she was saying slammed into her anyway, flattening her. And then it was as if she was swallowed up in the ferocious blaze of his glare.

Balthazar did not move. He did not close the space between them.

And still Kendra felt as if he’d lunged at her. Or did she only wish he had?

Did she really long for his touch so much? But she knew the answer to that. She lived it every night.

“Is this your family’s latest attempt to force my hand?” Balthazar asked idly, though his gaze was afire with the darkest, harshest condemnation. With a bitter hatred that made her breath hitch. “This will not end for you the way you imagine, Kendra. I promise you that.”

CHAPTER SIX

BALTHAZAR’S WORST FEARS had come true.

And he still couldn’t quite believe it.

He followed the remote road to the cottage Kendra had said was hers. Which could mean she was letting it, or could mean it was her father’s, or could mean, well, anything. He didn’t believe a word she said. He didn’t believe her.

He certainly hadn’t believed her flustered response to his appearance earlier. That he would come for her was the point of all this, surely. It was the final move in her game.

Balthazar had been well and truly played. He still couldn’t quite accept it, but facts did not wait for his acceptance to be true.

He certainly did not believe that Kendra Connolly wasn’t fully aware that they hadn’t used protection that night. He imagined she’d been counting down the days, same as him. The fact that she’d taken herself off to a foreign country was evidence enough of her guilt, to his mind.

And he’d been waiting all this time for her to show her hand.

Instead, she’d appeared to first take on the life of a middle-aged expatriate. Pottery and painting and God only knew what other pointless things, the province of the entitled and bored. Then she’d begun waiting tables, of all things, which might have been more age appropriate, but made no sense for the Connolly heiress.

It had to be another part of her game, though he couldn’t imagine how it fit.

The road opened up and a cottage came into view. Balthazar gritted his teeth. Because it looked like...a cozy, pastoral scene of Provence. Yellows, blues, and purples. Fields of wildflowers on either side with a humble dwelling on a soft rise, lit up against the darkening summer sky.

He had been anticipating the kind of “cottage” people like Thomas Connolly like to call the gaudy, massive mansions in places like Newport, Rhode Island.

This was not that.

And Balthazar didn’t quite know what to do with this unpretentious house. Much less the woman who stood in the open doorway, the buttery light from within making her glow.

Damn her.

Balthazar came to a stop in a cloud of his own bad temper. He slammed out of the car, unfolding his body from the low-slung leather seats and taking longer than necessary to smooth his shirt into place when it did not require smoothing. His clothing did not defy him. It was only this creature before him, standing there like an innocent again, who dared.

“I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding this place,” she said in that bright, chirpy voice he’d heard earlier at the winery.

He detested it.

“I am capable of using navigation technology, thank you,” he growled at her.

Kendra did not back down. She only sighed, slightly. “I see this is going to be contentious. What a lovely change.”

Balthazar did not appreciate her ironic tone of voice.

Because it had been three months of worrying about this very thing. Three months of assuring himself that nothing would come of the one and only time he’d failed to protect himself, his family, and his wealth.

And with a Connolly, to add insult to injury.

Still, his self-delusion might have illuminated his darker moments, but he was a practical man. That, too, had been impressed upon him by his father’s heavy hand, whether he liked it or not. He had therefore enlisted a special security detail to track her movements. To see if she would give herself away.

To make sure that whatever happened, he was on hand to intervene if it went in a direction he didn’t like.

He’d expected her to head to a clinic in an attempt to draw him out. Her relocation to France had confused him. But perhaps it, too, had been as good as waving a flag—because here he was.

Still, he hadn’t been sure.

Not until that performance she’d put on earlier in the kitchen of the winery.

“Perhaps you can explain to me what exactly it is you think you are doing, pretending to be a plucky waitress?” He moved around the front of the sports car and then stayed there, not quite trusting himself to venture any closer to her, which was another personal betrayal. They were adding up. “It does not suit you, kopéla. I think you must know this.”

She might have seemed happy, but Balthazar could not accept that it was