Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“Angel is my niece, not my girlfriend.”
It took Thea several seconds to absorb Fergus’s words. “Your niece…?” she finally prompted guardedly.
He nodded. “Step-niece, actually, but the minute my brother Magnus fell in love with Sapphie, who is Angel’s mother, they both became members of our family.”
“Magnus is your twin, right?”
Fergus nodded. “But we’re not identical.”
Thea doubted the female population could cope with two Ferguses!
Except she had seen photographs of Magnus when she was looking into what Fergus was doing now and where he lived, and she knew that his twin was just as lethally attractive as he was, but in a more rugged sort of way. Magnus was just as tall and intimidating as his twin, but he also had a thick, dark beard and was so muscular, he looked as if he could bench-press a truck. Fergus had a muscular chest and arms too, just not so defined they looked as if his arms might burst out of his tailored jacket.
“Angel is only four years old,” Fergus continued. “And she has a love for spiders, hence the ringtone when she calls me.”
Thea felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. “Your niece is a four-year-old who loves spiders.” She couldn’t stop the shudder running through her just thinking about arachnids. She disliked spiders of all sizes.
“Yes,” Fergus confirmed ruefully. “She has her own pet spider she calls Henry. Which totally freaked Magnus out when he first met Angel and Sapphie. He solved the problem by buying her a special see-through Perspex case to keep the spider in. Now she keeps begging Magnus and her mother for a Mrs. Henry, so they can have babies. None of us want to tell her that Mrs. Henry would probably eat Angel’s beloved Henry after they’ve mated.”
This conversation was so ridiculous that Thea knew it had to be the truth. Unless that knock on the head had caused more damage than she’d realized?
“No, I really do have a niece who loves spiders and has one as a pet.” Fergus answered the question Thea had obviously spoken out loud without realizing she had. “I really think you should let me call a doctor to at least check you over,” he added with a frown at what was probably her perplexed expression. “The possibility of a concussion isn’t to be dismissed lightly.”
“We’ll see,” she said evasively. “Why did you tell me all that about Angel?” There was really no reason for him to do so, as far as she could see. Unless…
“I think you know why,” he answered in a low voice.
She tensed. “Do I?”
“Yes.” He stepped so close to her that Thea’s nostrils were filled with the spicy scent of his cologne and male musk.
Fergus’s gaze was searching as it roamed over what Thea guessed would be the paleness of her face. She had little color at the best of times, but she imagined she’d have even less after being knocked unconscious.
He raised one of his hands to cradle the side of her face as he stared down at her intently. “I told you the truth about Angel because I don’t want there to be any more unnecessary misunderstandings or barriers between us.”
Thea didn’t miss the “more” in that statement. Which was ludicrous when all the barriers between them had been created by her mother’s past behavior.
“This was a mistake,” she realized. “I should never have come here and asked for your help.”
“Why did you?”
“Because I don’t have anyone else I can ask,” she was forced to admit.
“No family?”
“No.”
“What about friends?”
“I told you we moved around a lot after my father died. Too much for me to be able to make and keep friends. I did have friends at university. Had being a correct description. That changed after my mother very publicly married Andrei Yegorov. After that, the friends who were ordinary and nice were nervous about who my stepfather was, and tended to avoid me, and the ones who weren’t so nice just wanted to be with the girl whose stepfather was a rich Russian oligarch.”
“Nice.”
She gave a derisive huff. “They very quickly learned I wasn’t in the least wealthy by association, because I had little or nothing to do with the man my mother married, and that included taking money from him. I have my colleagues at school now, of course, most of whom don’t have any idea who my mother and stepfather were. That goes for the parents of the kids I teach too. My mother died during this last Christmas holiday, so I didn’t even have to arrange to take time off for the funeral.”
“What about a boyfriend? And I don’t mean Lev,” he dismissed harshly.
“My last relationship ended several months ago.”
“Your decision or his?”
“Mutual. But it became completely mine after my mother died and left me all that money and Martin then decided that perhaps he could put up with my scrawny arse after all, now that I’m an heiress.”
Fergus’s eyes widened. “He called your arse scrawny ?”
“Amongst other things.”
“Firstly, he sounds like an idiot and a bastard, and you’re well rid of him. Secondly, I can say with all sincerity that your arse isn’t in the least scrawny.”
She blinked. “You can?”
He nodded. “It’s pert. Perfectly round and juicy. Biteable,” he grated.
She eyed him uncertainly. “I don’t understand…”
“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, telling her lawyer 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.”
Fergus gave a hard, humorless laugh. “I admit, I don’t want to want you. But I can’t deny, in spite of everything, that I do. And I have no intention of lying to myself, or you, about it.”
Thea’s frown deepened. “But we won’t be seeing each other again after you leave the hotel today.”
When she left the hotel too, she acknowledged heavily. Because she had no intention of remaining here for the rest of her stay in Paris after someone had not only broken in but physically attacked her.
“When I leave here today, you’re coming with me,” Fergus told her. “Either that, or I stay here with you tonight,” he challenged when she was about to protest. “In the meantime, I’ll make arrangements for the family-owned Wynter private jet to be waiting for us at the airport tomorrow, along with a team of bodyguards to accompany us back to England.”
Thea had a feeling she’d missed something. Because of the blow to her head? Whatever the reason, she wasn’t sure she had heard Fergus correctly.
Had he really just said, after so shockingly revealing that he wanted her and liked her arse, that he was flying to England with her tomorrow?
That in the meantime, he intended either to spend the night here with her at the hotel or she was going back to his home with him until they flew out of Paris tomorrow on his family’s private jet?
More importantly, she was still having trouble processing the fact that Fergus had said he wanted to bite her arse…?