The Daddy Decision Read Free Page B

to Tamika. “You don’t mind if I peek in at him, do you? I promise I won’t wake him.”
    Tamika rose from the sofa with a delighted grin and led Laura up the stairs.
    Cort refused to let his gaze follow them. Instead, he took a deep, unsatisfying swig of brandy. Laura had definitely changed...and in a profoundly disturbing way.
    He wondered how deep that change went.
    He wondered what a man would have to do to find out.
    Â 
    I CAN GET THROUGH THIS VISIT, Laura swore to herself as she followed Tamika down the stairs, back toward the last man on earth she’d wanted to see. Not even the precious sight of Tamika’s beautiful baby boy sleeping with such sweet contentment had been able to soothe her anxiety.
    The shock of seeing Cort Dimitri again— touching him
again—had left her trembly, hot and dazed, as if she’d narrowly escaped a fatal accident.
    He looked better than ever. His towering height and athletic build seemed more solidly muscular than she remembered, and his masculine presence more potent—a daunting realization, considering the fact that he’d always awed her. The years might have added a few lines beside his thickly lashed eyes and deepened the grooves beside his full, wide, inexplicably sensual mouth, but this only added to the rugged allure of his swarthy face. His thick hair gleamed with the same ebony highlights. His deep, smooth voice held the intriguing cadence of his early upbringing in Greece. And he exuded the cool aura of strength and command that had captivated her as a giddy teen.
    She hadn’t been surprised to learn that he’d made millions. He’d always been so...intense.
    That hadn’t changed, either. When he’d tightened his grip on her hand and his dark, midnight-blue eyes had directed that inner intensity at her, a swift, responsive heat had flooded her
    Her knees trembled as she descended the stairs behind Tamika. Her reaction was due to the surprise of seeing him again, she assured herself. A nostalgic flashback gone awry. Nothing she couldn’t handle.
    Why in God’s name had Steffie neglected to tell her he’d be here? She couldn’t possibly have known that Laura would have found an excuse not to come. Although Steffie and the others knew that she’d been hurt by Cort fifteen years ago, none of them realized how long it had taken her to get over him, or how hard she’d found it to start dating again. Her pride hadn’t allowed her to share the extent of her pain with anyone.
    That, however, was long ago. She’d been “over” Cort
for at least a decade. Looking back, she realized she’d merely been infatuated—not with the man himself, but with the physical side of their relationship.
    Physical side? Ha! There hadn’t been any other side to it. She’d been a sheltered, naive schoolgirl, intoxicated with her newly discovered feminine power over men. He’d been the sinfully attractive bad boy who’d introduced her to sex.
    And what an introduction! He’d approached it with the same intense determination he did everything else, and with his usual inexhaustible attention to detail. Just remembering the passion he’d ignited brought a flux of heat to her stomach.
    It was easy to understand why she’d taken the relationship for more than it had been.
    The pain of her disillusionment was a distant memory now, but the lesson she’d learned remained an integral part of her. She would never again confuse sex with love. She would never again base life’s more important decisions on either. And she would never again get too close to the dangerous, mesmerizing fire that was Cort Dimitri.
    From a few stairs below her, Tamika tossed a glance back at Laura, then halted on the small landing between flights of stairs. “Laura, are you okay?”
    â€œMe?” She stopped beside her in surprise. “I′m fine. Why?”
    Concern glinted in