From Sydney With Love: With This Fling... / Losing Control / The Girl He Never Noticed

‘I’m not marrying you, Greyson. There’s no need for that. Not in this day and age.’

‘If you really think I’m going to let my child be raised a bastard, you really don’t know me very well,’ he said grimly.

‘My point exactly,’ countered Charlotte. ‘Greyson, we hardly know one another. What I do know of you suggests that marriage is the last thing on your mind, and that you’d start to feel trapped within five minutes of taking that step. You’ve already broken one engagement because you weren’t prepared to settle for a life based in Sydney.’

Grey stared at Charlotte broodingly. He couldn’t deny it. He liked his freedom, and he loved to travel, but, dammit, was it so wrong to want this child to be born within marriage?’

‘The baby could still have your name,’ said Charlotte. ‘Access wouldn’t be a problem. I want you in this baby’s life. But we don’t have to get married for that to happen.’

‘You think I’ll take it, don’t you?’ he said bleakly. ‘The easy way out. The half measure. You think I’ll be content to stand at the periphery of this child’s life, never quite giving or getting enough.’

‘Greyson, I—’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘Lofty words for a man who intends to spend the next three years of his life in Borneo.’

‘I didn’t take that job,’ he said tightly. ‘Something you would have discovered weeks ago had you thought enough of me to stick around.’

‘I thought enough of you to bring you back, didn’t I?’ She looked mutinous, and scared, and sorry, and she made his heart bleed.

‘No. You’re scared enough of your inadequacies as a single parent to bring me back. You’re looking for a back-up plan for this child in case something happens to you, and, unfortunately, I’m all you’ve got.’

If Charlotte had looked wan before, she now looked positively waxy. ‘This is never going to work,’ she said faintly.

‘Are you going to faint?’ Dear heaven, she looked fragile, and anxious, and perilously close to tears. ‘Don’t you dare faint!’

‘I’m not going to faint.’

‘Or cry.’

‘Or cry,’ she said in a voice that threatened exactly that.

Greyson eyed her grimly. ‘You should know something about me, Charlotte. I never give up. I make things work. It’s what I do.’ He cupped her neck in his hand and touched his lips to hers again, hard and fast and ruthless. ‘I’m free next Tuesday. What say we get married then?’