Heir to a Dark Inheritance Read Online Free PDF Page A

suddenly, was hideous. But living her life knowing that any day could bring it would be unbearable.
    “So what you need is more security?” he asked. “Something that would feel legal and permanent?”
    “Yes, something that would feel more stable, so that I wasn’t wondering if you were simply going to sweep through one day and decide I was no longer needed.”
    She looked at him, into those stormy gray eyes, and a shiver ran through her body. He had a kind of easy grace, a relaxed posture that made him look like he was at ease with the world, with his surroundings.
    But what she saw in his eyes just then proved that he was lying to the world. He was ice beneath the exterior.
    “You are the kind of woman,” he said, “who would never sell her allegiance.” The way he said it, with a mix of wonder and admiration, surprised her. “You remind me of someone I know.”
    “That’s all very well and good, but it doesn’t solve my problems.”
    “And I now live to solve your problems?”
    “I think we both can see that no matter how tough you play, you have no idea of what you’re doing with a child.”
    “I can hire someone else.”
    “And you think that would make her happy? Does she not notice when I’m gone?”
    That hit him. Square in the chest. A strong, sudden burning of loss. He’d been two or three when he’d been left at an orphanage in Moscow. He didn’t remember his mother’s face. Or her voice. Or where he’d lived before then. But he remembered loss. Loss so deep, so confusing and painful.
    “She would notice,” he said, because there was no lying about that. Something had to be done. He knew now he stood in a terrible position. That of abandoning his child, or tearing his child away from the only woman she’d ever known as her mother.
    He was trapped.
    “You need to come up with a solution we can both be satisfied with.”
    Jada didn’t know how she’d kept from bursting into tears. She was on the edge of breaking completely. But she had to be strong. She had to show Alik that he wasn’t in charge. She had to take back control somehow.
    This was her life. The life she was creating for herself, and he didn’t get to own it. She’d had enough of being jerked around by fate or whatever it was that had reached down and disordered everything. She was done with that. Done with feeling like a victim. Done with allowing life to make her one.
    Alik looked down at Leena, his discomfort obvious, then looked back at Jada.
    “What do you need?” he asked, his voice frayed, his expression that of a desperate man.
    “I need security,” she said. “I need to be her mother, because no matter whether you understand it or not, that’s what I am, and that’s what a child needs. A mother, not a caregiver, not an absentee father. Someone who is there with her. Always.”
    He looked at her for a moment, black eyes completelyunreadable, his handsome face schooled into a mask. “You think something of permanence would be best for Leena.”
    “Yes.”
    He nodded slowly. “I may have a solution to your problems. You don’t like the idea of my simply…how did you put it? Dumping my child off somewhere in the world with nothing but staff. You think she should have a family, a real family.”
    “Everyone should.”
    “Perhaps, but it is not reality. Still, if I could find a way to make that happen for her…having a family is very important, yes?”
    Jada nodded, her throat tightening. “Yes.”
    “I would hate to deny my child anything of importance.”
    She wanted to scream at him that he was denying his child her mother, and yet she knew it would do no good. He simply didn’t seem to understand the connection she felt for Leena. He didn’t seem to understand love. And losing control wouldn’t win this battle. When he pushed, she had to push back.
    “Perhaps then, I should take a wife,” he said.
    Pain crashed through her. He still didn’t get it.
    The thought of another woman filling her