“Yes, you’d better start praying,” Matt Valente declared.
Recovering hastily, she played for time even as she edged the door shut a fraction. “Matt, what are you doing here?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I do?”
“Invite me in, Lana.”
Not for all the tea in China.
“Sorry, no. I’m going out shortly.” She started shutting the door with more haste. “Perhaps if you have something to say you can telephone me tomorrow and—”
He pushed past her into the apartment, despite his haste, gently moving her out of the way. “I’ve got plenty to say and I intend on saying it now.”
She tried to hold back her agitation. “Look, you just can’t come in here and—”
“Where is she, Lana?”
Lana froze. “Where is who?”
“My daughter.”
Dear Lord, until that moment she’d been hoping this wasn’t what his visit was about.
“So you know?” she whispered.
“It’s true, then.”
She bit her lip. “No. I mean…er…sure, I had a baby but—”
“Give it up, Lana. She’s my daughter. My father saw you with her on the street and he checked out her birth certificate.”
She gaped at him. “But…but that’s an invasion of my privacy.”
“Do you think he cares?”
Just then a child’s babble issued from the living room and Matt shot her a dark look.
Lana stepped in front of him. “Matt, please. Just leave. Don’t do this.”
“No chance in hell,” he growled, and stepped around her, taking a few paces to the doorway. He went stone still as he saw the little toddler standing up against the playpen railings.
Lana tried not to think about how he must be feeling right now. She told herself not to feel sorry for him. Matt Valente was a playboy who wasn’t ready to settle down or have children. If he was here, it was only because his father had made him come.
“What’s her name?”
Surprise kicked in. “You don’t know?”
He didn’t move a muscle. “What’s her name?” he said rawly.
“Megan.”
A moment slid by, then, “Megan Valente.”
Apprehension slithered down Lana’s spine. “Actually, it’s Megan Jensen.”
“Soon it will be Valente,” he said with the full superiority of a Valente male.
Her mind reeled. “What do you mean?”
He ignored the question as he walked over to Megan, crouched down in front of the eleven-month-old and looked at her through the bars.
Lana could see his reflection in the decorative wall mirror. There was awesome wonder on his handsome face as he took in each and every feature of the beautiful little girl.
Her heart tilted. For Megan’s sake she wanted Matt to love his daughter. For her own sake she wanted him to deny parentage, leave and never come back.
“Hello, Megan,” Matt said softly, not touching, not moving, not doing anything except capturing her attention.
Megan stared back entranced, her brown eyes so like her father’s. She looked so cute, a little dark-haired doll with chubby cheeks and bow-shaped lips that had recently learned to blow a sloppy kiss for her mother.
Oh God.
Suddenly Megan transferred her gaze to Lana and within the space of a second her face began to screw up and she let out a wail.
Lana rushed forward and lifted her out of the playpen. “It’s her bedtime,” she said, soothing her daughter with a “shh” and patting her back until the little girl hiccupped and quieted.
Matt got to his feet, his expression unreadable. “Put her to bed, then we’ll talk.”
She hesitated.
“Put her to bed, Lana.”
“If you insist.” She hitched Megan higher on her hip. “Take a seat. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
She swallowed. That sounded ominous. “Why?”
“I’m interested in everything my daughter does.”
“Our daughter.”
“At least you’re admitting it now.”
Trying not to show how upset she was with all this, she hurried past him and down the hallway to the smaller bedroom. She had stenciled Megan’s room with a variety of farm animals, adding a musical mobile that played a lullaby above the crib, and giving her daughter plenty of soft toys to cuddle. The room looked lovely.
Megan had fully settled down by now as Lana changed her diaper. She lay there quietly, her eyes on Matt in the doorway as if she was fascinated by him despite herself.
Don’t let him get to you, sweetheart, Lana wanted to say. Ignore him and he’ll go away.
She hoped.
Then she kissed Megan on the cheek. “Good night, pumpkin,” she murmured, then put her in her crib.
She was grateful when Matt stepped back to allow her to leave the now-darkened room without having to squeeze past him. “Coffee?” she said, heading for the kitchen, needing something to do.
“Don’t you have something stronger?”
She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Sorry. I don’t usually drink.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
His sarcasm had her spinning to face him. “That was different. It was Christmas and—”
“You thought I’d be a good lay.”
The breath caught in her throat. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It wasn’t? Then perhaps you thought I’d be a good sperm donor and future moneymaker?”
“No! I—”
She’d been so attracted to Matt back then, and working for him the two years previously had made her crazy with want. Yet in spite of them both having a few drinks too many, it hadn’t been cheap.
Not for her anyway.
It had been intense and overwhelming, and she hadn’t been able to help herself when she’d literally run into him coming out of the elevator as she went to collect her purse from her desk after the party. He’d held her to stop her from falling and that had been all it needed. She’d lifted her mouth up toward his and he’d groaned and backed her into his office.
“Yes?” he prompted now, a sudden sensual look in his eyes telling her he remembered.
Everything.