Read Online Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition by Heidi Rice - Free Book Online

wasn’t her fault he’d appeared out of the blue to inherit one of the largest private estates in the country. It also wasn’t her fault he was handsome, rich in his own right and unattached. And it definitely wasn’t her fault that after only a few months in society he already had a reputation for being elusive—evasive, even. If he didn’t think that was newsworthy, he was the delusional one, not her.
    And anyway, Blush hadn’t given a single column inch of copy space to any of the rumours about his past, or how he had ended up as Berwick’s heir when they weren’t related. The magazine she worked for had ethics. It was not a scandal sheet. She’d worked for one before and she knew the difference.
    ‘I’m not responsible for the behaviour of the tabloid press or the paparazzi—or your groupies.’ She paused for effect. ‘And that article certainly didn’t give you the right to lie to me and seduce me so you could teach me a lesson.’
    He swore under his breath and then, to her astonishment, braked in the middle of the tree-lined avenue, wrenched up the handbrake and clicked on the hazard lights. He turned, pinning her with his icy gaze, barely leashed temper radiating off him.
    Nerves stampeded up her spine. Okay, she hadn’t meant to get him quite that annoyed.
    ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said, the words low and dangerous. ‘What happened between us was unstoppable. A force of nature. We’d been coming on to each other allevening.’ His voice deepened as his eyes blazed. ‘When I pulled your clothes off, when I stroked you to orgasm, it didn’t have a thing to do with revenge, or punishment, or seduction, or any other damn thing except relieving the heat that had been building between us for hours. Do you really believe I was thinking about some magazine article when you were so tight, so hot around me I could feel your heart beating? When I came so hard inside you I burst the condom and got you pregnant?’
    ‘I…I…’ Louisa shut her mouth to stop the stammering. ‘There’s no need to be crude,’ she croaked eventually, and realised she sounded like a prude.
    But what else could she say? She wanted to cling on to the belief that his seduction had been a carefully calculated, coldly methodical form of revenge. The alternative—that he’d been as carried away as she had, and the magazine article had had nothing to do with it—was far too dangerous to contemplate.
    She didn’t want to be drawn to this man. She didn’t want to be enthralled by him. And she definitely didn’t want to acknowledge the uncontrollable sexual chemistry between them. She’d been defenceless and at his mercy once before—and her common sense was telling her not to risk putting herself in that situation again even if her body was screaming exactly the opposite. What did her body know anyway? It had betrayed her once before and look what had happened!
    ‘It’s not important why you made love to me,’ she said, struggling to regain her composure. She folded her arms, trying to deny the scorching heat that his tirade had ignited all over again. ‘The point is it was a mistake. And we’re not going to repeat it.’
    He shook his head, gave a huff of disbelief. The lookof incredulity on his face shattered all her illusions without him having to say a single solitary syllable.
    He took off the handbrake, stabbed the hazard lights button and drove off, muttering something that sounded like, ‘If you believe that, then you really are delusional.’
    Louisa ignored him, too tired and frankly too distraught to debate the point. Arguing with him was like arguing with a lump of wood anyway. Frustrating and completely pointless.
    She stared out the car window, barely registering the redbrick gingerbread houses of Chiswick as they whisked past. Exhaustion and confusion overtook her. Marvellous—she wasn’t only tied to this dominating, overwhelming man by the baby growing in her womb, but by an elemental