The Marriage Ultimatum (City of Dreams Series) Read Online Free PDF

a mystery to him. He learned fast how to read faces and body language and prided himself on his ability to spot a lie even as it was emerging from the liar’s mouth. He strode toward her, his gaze pinning her in place like a dart on a bullseye.
    “You don’t know who the father of your child is,” he said. His voice was harsh and accusing.
    Her already pale face whitened to chalk; the troubled gray of her eyes the only blot of color in its delicate bone structure.
    “No, it’s not…”
    “Don’t bother to lie.” He paced away from her only to pace back. “Not my business, but you’ve made it so.” He heard the disgust and condemnation in his tone. “You chose a lifestyle, chose to be commitment free, and the child deserves better.” The words were spit out like bullets shot from a gun.
    “You weren’t so choosy last night, were you?” She struck back hard.
    The penny dropped and Vlad reared up to his full, threatening six-foot-three inches. They were chest to chest and he could swear those mermaid eyes were trying to pull him under.
    “Do you mean to file a harassment claim? I warn you, I fight dirty.”
    “I have a witness,” she said.
    “Who? My driver? He’ll swear that it was consensual which by the way, it was.”
    “But then when I didn’t give you what you wanted, you fired me!”
    The heat of embarrassment scorched his cheekbones, and he turned away. Untrue, but she hit a sore spot. He absolutely never behaved that way with anyone in an office setting. Those kinds of complications made no sense when admittedly women were all but his for the asking. Though he always confined himself to dating women outside of his own employees, he would have to be blind not to notice the speculative looks that came his way and even the more overt invitations within his own offices. But he had never once reciprocated or in any way responded to those overtures. It was plain stupid, and he liked to think he could keep his mind above it and his pants zipped.
    It infuriated him to think that this slip of a girl wound him up so fast that he had thrown away the habits of a lifetime and been ready to take her in the backseat of his car.
    Perhaps not a slip of a girl. She’d shown up at his office with her child.
    He was losing it. He badly needed a break if someone like Sabrina Boyd could get the better of him.
    “You will regret it if you try that tack, Ms. Boyd. Let’s face it, who’d believe for a second?” His gaze trailed over her body in insulting appraisal.
    “You’d slum it with a girl like me?”
    She swung her hand in a swift arc and connected hard with his cheek.
    “Rina?” Alex, who had been silent and transfixed watching the byplay between the two adults, reacted to the harsh vibration in the air. “Ri-na?” He lifted his arms and wiggled in his seat.
    “Okay, pumpkin, we’re going.”
    Hands shaking, she struggled with the doorknob. Vlad stepped forward to open it, to get her out of his orbit, and presented his hovering assistant with a close-up of the vivid handprint Sabrina left on his cheek.
    ****
    Sabrina stuffed the last few personal items in a shopping bag, unable to organize her teeming thoughts. Her pounding head beat out a flashing, neon crisis list—job-apartment-preschool-college-job-apartment-preschool-college-job…
    She trembled with fear and a bone deep realization that every nightmare she’d ever had of losing Alex was in danger of coming true.
    More humiliating, Sabrina was forced to acknowledge her extreme case of naïvety. Somehow, in the far reaches of her treacherous mind, she’d built up her initial encounter with him into something special, the first meeting of a lasting relationship. Her inexperienced body had mistaken hormones and biology for feelings. That was hysterically funny and completely pathetic.
    And then she’d gone on with that angry blather insinuating he sexually harassed her. By that point, she had no clue what she was saying. She was simply