Page 17 of Fergus

“I’m trying to say that I like your arse.”

She pulled away from him, her eyes wide. “What the…? Why are you saying these things to me?”

“Being honest, you mean?”

“Is that what you’re being?”

“Yes,” he acknowledged heavily. “In the interest of continuing with that honesty, it isn’t just your arse I like.”

“No?”

“I like you too.”

She shook her head. “You don’t sound very happy about it if that’s the case.”

He huffed a laugh. “Can you blame me?”

Not when she was the daughter of the woman who had set out to destroy Fergus, socially and publicly, when he wouldn’t agree to marry her.

Even now, Thea cringed, remembering how Jessica had told Fergus she was pregnant with his child as a ploy to trick him into marrying her after he had ended things between them because of all her lies.

Jessica had baulked when Fergus refused to marry her and had instead insisted on accompanying Jessica to see an obstetrician to confirm the pregnancy.

The possibility of her lie being exposed had frightened Jessica so much that a week later, she told Fergus she had miscarried the baby.

That should have been the end of it, but instead Jessica had threatened to go to the more lurid newspapers and tell them how badly Fergus had treated her, before and after she lost his baby. She had demanded he give her money to maintain her silence.

At the time, that negative publicity would have harmed not only Fergus but Wynter Security and the whole of the Wynter family. Fergus had immediately hired a lawyer to fight against the extortion.

Jessica had done the same, tellingherlawyer the same sob story she had told Fergus.

Thea had been horrified by her mother’s machinations. Especially when she knew her mother couldn’t have been pregnant in the first place because she hadn’t been able to have any more children after Thea was worn.

Thea had been so upset that for the first time in her life, she had challenged her mother.

Since her father died six years earlier, she’d tried to be understanding about her mother’s grief, the half dozen relationships she’d had that hadn’t worked out, and the financial worries she claimed to have about their future.

Thea had considered the latter to be questionable, considering her mother had not only been the recipient of her father’s life insurance when he died, but she had also received a huge settlement from the oil company he worked for.

But hounding a man, whose only mistake had been to go out on three dates with her mother, and then trying to extort him into marrying her or giving her money to pay for her silence, was something Thea could not condone or remain silent about.

Her mother had been furious when Thea had gone to her lawyer and told him the truth, before threatening to go to the newspapers and do the same with them if Jessica dared to lie to them too. She had even told her mother she would offer to give evidence on Fergus’s behalf if she persisted with these lies.

Her mother had resisted at first, claiming that no one would listen to anything a fourteen-year-old girl had to say.

Thea’s response had been to pick up the telephone and start to put a call through to the firm of lawyers she knew were working on Fergus’s behalf.

Her mother had furiously pressed the End Call button.

She had ranted and raved at Thea for some time after that, but Thea had remained adamant: if her mother didn’t cease harassing Fergus immediately, she would expose her mother for the liar she was.

Her mother had reluctantly backed down and dropped the case, but things had never been the same between her and Thea after that. Which was probably why, when her mother married Andrei five years later, the two of them had rarely spoken in between those obligatory birthday and Christmas meet-ups.

None of which was Fergus’s fault. He had been the victim, not the instigator.

Thea winced at the realization she had mentally drifted away from their conversation to relive those painful memories.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “After what happened with my mother, you can’t possibly want anything to do with me on a personal level.”

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