Chapter 53

"SO IT'S true. You are pregnant."

His words fell strangely on Nicole's ears. She had expected shock.

The lack of it was mind-jolting.

"I didn't want to believe you'd go without telling me," he went on, hurt gathering momentum. "Without giving me the chance to..."

"You knew?" Her own shock spun her around to face him.

He gestured dismissively as though it didn't matter. "Rosita told my grandmother. She thought I should be informed."

"You knew before you came up here and said all those things to me?" Her voice climbed at the shattering of all she'd wanted to believe.

He frowned at her. "How could you do that? Leaving me a letter?"

"You don't have to feel responsible. I don't want you spinning me a whole pack of lies to..."

"A letter!" he thundered, cutting her off. "Letting me know so I could stew about it for the next eight months, wondering how you were, worrying if all was well with the baby, while you took care of everything by yourself, shutting me out of both your lives. Was that the plan?''

"Yes!" she snapped. "I couldn't bear you to feel trapped into something you wouldn't have chosen with me."

"You didn't give me the choice. You chose to give me the hell of being shoved aside. Rendered useless. I wasn't to help you through the pregnancy. I wasn't to be at your side when you gave birth to our child. You were going to cheat me of holding our son or our daughter when it came into this world." He threw up his hands, his whole body expressing a towering rage. "How could you do that? How?''

"It's all about possession to you, isn't it?" she fired back at him, defying his stand on what he considered his paternal rights. "Possession, not love. You didn't want to let me go because you knew I had something you wanted."

"Let you go? Not in a million years." Fierce purpose glared at her. "I'm not taking any more nonsense from you, Nicole Redman. We are going to get married. We're going to get married so fast, it'll put Nonna in a total tailspin getting it arranged in time."

She backed away from him. "You can't make me marry you."

"Give me one good reason why you won't," he challenged, his eyes glittering with wild certainty in his cause.

"No one should marry for the sake of a child. It doesn't work," she cried vehemently.

"Marrying for love does." "You're just saying that."

"No. Don't speak for me, Nicole."

"You said you didn't want to be trapped into marriage."

"I'm walking right into it with my eyes wide open." He stepped towards her. She retreated. He kept coming as he pressed his view. "No trap. This is precisely what I want. My woman. My child. A home we share. A future we make together."

His aggressive confidence came at her like a tidal wave, swallowing up everything in its path, crashing past barriers as though they were nothing. Nicole struggled to hold on to the sense of the decisions she'd made.

"If I hadn't fallen pregnant..."

"You would have stayed at the castle long enough for me to show you we belonged with each other."

"How can I know that?" She stretched out her hands, pleading her uncertainty. "How can I believe anything?"

"Listen to your heart." He was all command now, brushing aside any equivocation. "You don't want to be alone in this. You want to be with me. I'm the man who'll look after you. I'm the man who'll always be there for you. The provider. The protector. But most of all, the one who loves you." "Love..." she repeated, her voice wobbling over the tantalising word,

her head reeling from the overwhelming force of arguments which were sweeping into all the empty places of her life and setting up unshakable occupation.

She forgot about backing away from him. He kept coming—big, tall, powerfully built, sinfully handsome, intensely sexy, with a mind that saw obstacles as something to beat, nothing to stop him. And the truth was she loved him. She loved everything about him—this king amongst men.

He seized her upper arms. His eyes blazed with an indomitable will to win. "Stop all this destructive resistance, Nicole," he commanded in a voice that drummed through her heart. "Stop and remember what we felt when we came together. When we made our baby...yours and mine...together. It was right. Admit it!"

The intense blast of his passion poured a sizzling sense of rightness through every cell of her body. And wasn't he promising everything she had ever ached for?

Admit it!

She wanted to be Matt King's wife... wanted to become part of his extraordinary family... wanted their child to belong here.

His fingers pressed urgent persuasion. "Give us a chance, Nicole.

Please...just give us a chance."