Bartering Her Innocence by Trish Morey

heat—she left when I was six months old. Just packed up and left Mitch with a baby and a hole where his heart had been.’
    ‘It seems—’ he hesitated a moment, as if searching for the words ‘—an unlikely match. Someone like Lily with someone who works on the land.’
    ‘I think their differences were what attracted them to each other. She was the original English flower, on holidays to visit an old maiden aunt. He was the rugged Australian right down to his leather workman boots and as exotic to her as she was to him. When they met at some charity event in Sydney, it was lust at first sight.’ She sighed. ‘In normal circumstances it would have run its course and they would have both gone back to their separate worlds but Lily ended up pregnant with me and before you know it they were married. Pointlessly as it turned out.’
    ‘You don’t approve?’
    ‘I don’t think an unplanned pregnancy is any reason for a marriage! Do you?’
    Maybe she’d sounded too strident. Maybe her question had sounded too much like a demand because she needed him to agree with her. But across the table from her, Luca merely shrugged instead of agreeing. ‘I am Italian. Family is important to us. Who’s to say if it’s the right or wrong thing to do?’
    ‘Me,’ she said, knowing that if he knew— if he had only known —he would think differently. ‘I’ve lived my life knowing their marriage was futile, a disaster from start to finish. I would never do that to a child of mine. I might be Lily’s daughter, but I am not Lily!’
    ‘And yet here you are, still picking up after her.’
    ‘I’m not doing this for Lily,’ she hissed, with rods of steel underpinning her words, ‘but you threatened to bring my father into this and there is no way on this earth I am going to let you suck him into Lily’s nightmare. He’s worked hard for every cent he has and I won’t let him lose any of it on her account!’
    She was breathless after her outburst. Breathless and breathing fire, but she was glad too, that he had reminded her of all the reasons she hated him, that he thought he could manufacture the result he wanted by manipulating people and using them for his own ends.
    ‘Do you realise,’ Luca asked, leaning forward and cradling his wine glass in his hands, ‘how your eyes glow when you are angry? Did you know they burned like flames in a fire?’
    She sucked in air, blindsided by the change in topic, but more so because she had expected anger back in return. She had been prepared for Luca to fight, expecting him to fight, if only to defend his low actions. Whereas his calm deliberations and an analysis of her eye colour had knocked the wind from her sails.
    ‘I was angry,’ she said, uncomfortable and unnerved that he could find things about her that nobody else had ever told her. Things that she herself didn’t know. ‘I still am.’
    ‘It’s not just when you’re angry though,’ he continued as their meals arrived, the waiter placing their plates with a flourish before disappearing on a bow. ‘They glowed like that last night when you came. I look forward to seeing them burn that way for me again tonight.’
    She wasn’t sure which way was up after that. The meal passed in a blur, she ate and the beef melted in her mouth, but five minutes after her plate was whisked efficiently away, she couldn’t have described how it tasted. Five minutes after he said something, she couldn’t have remembered his words. Not when her whole being seemed focused not on the meal, but on the senses he stirred and by the knowledge of what would come afterwards.
    Every word he spoke stroked her senses. Every heated look stoked the fire burning deep inside her belly. Every single smile had the ability to worm its way under her skin.
    God, but he looked so good when he smiled. Generous lips swept open to reveal white teeth. Not perfect teeth, she noted with some satisfaction, for one eye tooth angled and hugged too close to