Page 4 of Bound By Her Shocking Secret

Daniel had said idly, ‘One of our new designs.’

Then she’d looked at him with genuine confusion. ‘What is this?’

‘A gift.’

She’d shaken her head. ‘But...this isn’t that kind of relationship.’

Daniel could remember feeling a sense of frustration that she wasn’t behaving as he expected. As he was used to. Even though, at every step of the way since he’d first asked her out, she’d behaved contrary to any other woman he’d ever known. At first she’d told him it would be one date. Then, when they’d slept together, that it would be one night. But one date and one night had bled into more dates, and more nights, because the chemistry had been just too strong to ignore.

Even then, she’d always made a point of making sure he knew that she didn’t expect more. In many ways it should have been Daniel’s dream scenario: a woman who set out boundaries before he even had to. Because he certainly didn’t want more either. But some rogue part of him had been prompted at that moment to ask, ‘What kind of relationship is this, Mia?’

‘Not one where you give me...stuff.’

He’d felt bemused. ‘Do you have any idea what thisstuffis worth?’

She’d backed away then. ‘I don’t care, Daniel. It’s lovely...truly. But I don’t want it. I’d feel uncomfortable.’

It had been the first time a woman had refused a gift from him. Daniel might have cynically suspected it was some kind of ploy, in spite of Mia’s protestations, but the following morning when he’d been leaving her apartment she’d handed him the box saying, ‘Don’t forget this.’

‘You really don’t want it?’

‘Thank you, but no.’

The past faded. The present returned. Mia said with a desperate tone in her voice, ‘Please, Daniel, I need to go.’

‘If it was anyone else we’d be calling the police.’

Now she went so pale Daniel thought she might faint. He even reached out, but she backed away, her hip bumping awkwardly on the corner of the table.

‘Mia, dammit... Why are you here?’

She bit her lip and Daniel had to curl his hand into a fist to stop himself from reaching out to tug that lower lip free. It had been one of her habits before, which he’d suspected she’d played on because she knew it drove him crazy.

She spoke so fast he almost didn’t hear her.

‘It’s my daughter. I have to get home to her. My friend is babysitting and Lexi has a high temperature and she’s vomiting.’

Daniel went cold inside. ‘You have a baby?’

It had been two years. Of course she could have had a baby by now.Another baby.With someone else.Lexi. A girl.

‘Yes.’

Daniel shook his head, words coming out before he had time to rationalise why he needed to know. ‘How? Who...?’

Mia looked at him. The moment stretched.

Daniel became aware of the silent presence of at least two guards, who had been watching this interplay. He said abruptly, without looking at them, ‘Please leave us.’

The guards left.

Mia looked at him.

His sense of the ground beneath him shifting slightly was disconcerting. There was no need to think at all that this child could be—

Mia said, ‘I really don’t want to get into this now. I have to go to her.’

But something dark compelled Daniel to say, ‘I’ll let you go when you tell me who her father is. Are you still with him?’

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