Free The Heir From Nowhere by Trish Morey

took the car and most of the furniture when he left. He said that was enough. Now he’s telling me he wants his share of the house. But it’s my house! My mother left it to me. He can’t do that, can he?’
    The raw pain in her eyes touched him in a place he didn’t know still existed. This house meant that much to her? But of course it would if it was all she had.
    ‘I’ll have my lawyers look into it,’ he said, folding the letter. ‘But you know you can’t stay here. I don’t want you staying here, knowing he’s out there, knowing he could turn up at any time making demands.’
    ‘I’m getting the locks changed.’
    ‘You think that would stop him if he wanted to get in? No way in the world can I leave you here alone knowing he’s out there, knowing what he wanted for my child. No way can I trust him anywhere near you. Don’t you understand that?’
    ‘But don’t you still need his agreement to take this baby?’
    ‘Let the lawyers take care of that as well. You think about what you need to pack just enough for tonight, I’ll send my people to pick up the rest tomorrow.’
    ‘Hang on. I haven’t agreed to anything!’
    ‘What do you have to stay for? You have no family and no husband. You have nothing, except a child that doesn’t belong to you.’
    How dared he talk to her like that—as if she was a nothing and a nobody he could order around at his whim? She stiffened her spine and kicked up her chin, sick of men who wanted to tell her what to do. ‘I still have this house. Or at least a share of it.’
    ‘And you’re welcome to return to your share of it after the baby is born. Rest assured, I’ll be the last person to stop you.’
    She huffed off to her bedroom and packed her bag, just an overnight one for now, like he’d said, his words stinging in her ears as she flung in her pyjamas.
    Damn the man!
    So, maybe he had a point. Maybe she would be better off right away from here and from Shayne until this baby was born. Maybe it would be better for the baby. Safer.
    She pulled open a drawer, grabbed some clean underwear and slammed it shut the way she would have liked to have slammed Mr Rule-The-World Pirelli with a few choice words of her own.
    I’ll be the last person to stop you.
He’d said those words as if he couldn’t wait to see the back of her.
    Well, fine, she didn’t want a baby and she sure didn’t want to hang around him any longer than was absolutely necessary, but why had she been struck dumb? Why couldn’t she have told him that?
    I’ll be the last person to stop you.
Too late she thought of all the things she could have said—should have said—in response.
    I wouldn’t want you to stop me.
    Just try to stop me.
    You won’t see me for dust.
    But she’d said nothing and she knew why. Because his words had hurt. Because it hurt to feel so utterly worthless. It hurt to be abandoned. It hurt to know you were a loser and a failure on so many counts.
    Hopeless wife.
    Broken marriage.
    She couldn’t even manage to have the right baby.
    Her underwear joined her pyjamas. She looked around the room. What else? He’d said he’d have his ‘people’ organise the removal of whatever else she needed tomorrow. Who the hell was this man that he had ‘people’ to do things, like a general with an entire army at his disposal, just waiting for him to bark out the next order?
    She wrenched off her day-old top and pulled on a clean singlet top, threw another in the bag and reached for her thin cardigan, threading her arms through the sleeves. Too hot still for long sleeves but in the absence of full body armour she was going to need all the protection she could get.
    The bathroom was her next stop, adding her hairbrush and a small bag of toiletries to her stash. She was back in the living room in ninety seconds flat.
    He was making a call when she returned—probably organising a room for her somewhere or barking out more orders to his ‘people’, his eyebrows going north when