The Heir From Nowhere by Trish Morey Page A

but only so he didn’t appear so large beside her and so she didn’t appear like some recalcitrant child throwing a tantrum. What she really needed most was her own space, somewhere she felt comfortable—even if it was only a hovel compared to this palace—not to live cheek by jowl with the parents of her child. But refusing to come out of the car was hardly any way to convince him.
    ‘I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but I’m not convinced this is a good idea. I mean, how’s it going to look to everyone if you move some random pregnant woman into your family home? People are going to talk. I really think it would be better for everyone if I went somewhere else.’
    He stiffened alongside her, the man becoming mountain again, his eyes darkly intense, his jaw as stiff as if it had been chiselled from stone. ‘There’s something you obviously don’t understand about me, Mrs Cameron. I don’t actually give a damn how things look or what people say or think.’
    Least of all her. She knew for a fact he didn’t give a damn what she thought. But that didn’t mean she’d stop trying to make him see sense. ‘I realise you have little reason to care about my needs and wants—you have different priorities—but have you thought for one moment about what your wife might think of this plan? Surely you must realise this arrangement will make things awkward for her?’
    He took a deep breath and looked skywards, running one hand through his dark hair before he whipped off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes with the back of the other. With the sun on his face, she could make out the strain lines etched around his eyes and the sudden tight line of his mouth. ‘I assumed you would have known,’ he said, his deep voice coarse like a dry riverbed. ‘It’s not exactly a secret, after all.’
    ‘Known what?’ she asked, confused, her mind clicking over before seizing on the obvious answer—an answer she should have considered before now, given her own pathetic circumstances. But why should hers be the only marriage to fail? She cursed herself for never considering that very real possibility but instead choosing to believe some kind of fairy tale ending for the child with a mother and a father who both wanted it and would both cherish and love it together. And now she didn’t know if the mother even knew about the baby’s existence. Or was the father, by bringing her to his place, making a de facto claim for custody?
    It was all going so wrong! She should have insisted on meeting the mother. She should never have let her fantasies get in the way of reality. She sighed. ‘You’re telling me you’re divorced?’
    ‘Not divorced!’ His words ground their way through the morass of her mind. ‘My wife is dead.’

CHAPTER SIX
    H IS wife was dead? The mother of the baby she was carrying was dead?
    Angie was stunned. Sickened beyond belief.
    Poor baby,
she thought, the palm of one hand instinctively going to her belly. Poor, poor baby to grow up with no mother.
    And then right on the heels of that thought, poor Dominic. His wife was dead and then some stranger turns up on his doorstep pregnant with their child. No wonder he’d been so angry when she’d called! No wonder he’d been so quick to judge—so openly resentful—denied his own wife, only for Angie to turn up claiming to be carrying their baby.
    Tears pricked her eyes. Tears of sadness. Tears of loss. Tears for a baby that would be born in circumstances surrounded by so much tragedy. It was as if the weight of the world was pressing down on the shoulders of this child and it wasn’t even born.
    And she’d been so wrong. All the while she’d imagined he was protecting his wife by not bringing her to their meeting! She’d half resented him for wanting to check her out first, knowing he’d found her wanting, even wondering if he’d even bothered to tell his wife. But how was he supposed to tell his wife? How could he?
    Oh, God, what a mess!
    She looked up