by Diana Fraser
“I knocked but there was no reply. Your music was too loud.”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“No.” Long seconds passed while he stood looking her over. It was just as before, a frank appraisal during which she felt as if she were stripped naked. She had to stop him.
“Callum, why are you here?”
“I’ve come to see you.”
She raised her eyebrows in brief surprise. “Come to discover how I could possibly manage in this, what did you call it, ‘wreck of a home,’ without you?”
“No. I’ve come to see you.”
She watched as his eyes ranged over the tired and shabby furnishings, the rotting window frames, before settling on the things she didn’t want him to see—the most private expressions of her innermost feelings and thoughts that no one had ever seen. Her paintings.
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine. So don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you’ve more important things to do.”
“No, I haven’t.” He walked around the room, stopping at each of the dozen or so large boards that she used in lieu of canvas. “These yours?”
“As you’re no doubt aware, I have no money so I’ve hardly bought them. They’re just abstracts, ideas, that’s all.” She felt exposed and unnerved as he looked at her, a sharp curiosity evident in his stare.
“They have a feel of the Mackenzie country. I didn’t know you were an artist.”
“Why should you? We were together less than twenty-four hours. You don’t know me at all.”
“Perhaps,” he touched one of her drawings, “like your sketches, I know the lines of you, but not the detail.”
His words were all the more powerful for their simplicity and accuracy. They shot down the words of self-defense that were already forming in her mind and stirred the powerful physical reaction just being in his company had on her. She sucked in a deep breath. She couldn’t be swayed by him. She had too much to lose–especially now.
“I’d keep your knowledge to the lines if I were you. You might not like the detail.”
He didn’t respond, but continued to walk around the paintings until he came to a stop in front of her. There was no flicker in his expression, no movement of his eyes. She could hardly meet his steady gaze that bored into her, as if he could tell all he needed to know by looking at her.
“You’re well, Gemma?” She swallowed and nodded. “You look tired.”
“A little. You don’t though. You look…” She couldn’t finish her sentence, couldn’t tell him how utterly devastating he looked. He didn’t just look well, he looked hot. His tan had deepened under the hot summer sun and pale lines radiated out from his eyes, a result of squinting into the bright light, she assumed. He still had a day’s worth of golden stubble on his face but it couldn’t hide the strong line of his jaw, nor the absurdly sensuous line of his lips. She cleared her throat. “You look fine. Anyway if all you came here to do is tell me I look tired…”
“It’s not.” He paused. “Don’t I get a drink?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Tea? Water? I’m afraid I don’t have anything else.”
“Water’s fine, thanks.”
It was a relief to go into the kitchen and pour him a glass of water. When she re-entered the dining room, he was looking at her paintings once more.
“You’re good. Very good. Do you sell them?”
She passed him the water and felt an erotic charge pass between them as their fingers touched briefly.
“No, they’re not good enough. I just do them for me.”
“What else do you do, just for you?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“No boyfriends?”
She shook her head. “No. Although I don’t see that’s anything to do with you.”
He shrugged. “That depends.”
She arched an eyebrow. “On what?”
“On whether your baby is mine or not.”
She closed her eyes, shocked as much by the hard, low voice as by his words. “So you’ve heard.”
“Of course. Did you think you’d be able to keep something like that a secret?”
“I had high hopes.”
He kept his eyes focused on her. “You haven’t answered my question. Is the baby mine?”
“Of course it is!” She flung down the paintbrush she’d been crushing in the palm of her hand and paced away from him. “What do you think? That I’d gone and had unprotected sex with someone else immediately afterwards?”
“I wanted to hear it from you.” His gaze followed her restless pacing around the room. “I thought you were on the contraceptive pill. Otherwise I’d never have had sex.”
She shook her head. “No. No pill. I thought I was in a safe point in my cycle. Hadn’t taken into account how the jet lag and exhaustion would put my body out of sync.” She shook her head again, bitterly. “Stupid, so stupid.”
“Yes, you were. But so was I. You’d said you didn’t need protection and I’d believed you.”
She glanced up at him as she remembered what she’d said. “That word—protection—had bad connotations for me. I didn’t want to be protected from anything or anybody. I’d had enough of that.”
“You need protection now. You can’t bring up a child in this house. Alone, penniless…” He looked around the room without focusing on anything in particular. He was buying time, for what she didn’t know. He turned to face her once more, his gaze now determined and fierce. “I have a proposition.”
“I’m not interested in any prop—”
“Listen to me! You can keep your freedom but you come to Glencoe. You marry me.” He held up his hand, stopping her from speaking. “You get to stay in New Zealand like I hear you still want to do, you get a father—a family—for the child and no money worries.”
“And in return you get…”
“My child.”
Gemma turned blindly to the painting and closed her eyes. A family for her child. It was what she’d never had. It was what she’d vowed she’d always give her children. She opened her eyes but still didn’t turn to him, just focused on the wet paint that glowed in the rich evening light. “And I’d have my freedom, you say?”
“Yes.”
“How would that work exactly?”
He walked over to the window, hands thrust into his jeans pockets, his eyes narrowing against the brightness. A shiver of lust sliced through her stomach at the sight of his body, muscles tight and sinuous, rimmed by the rich, red light.
“You can come and go as you like. I won’t…” He paused although his expression didn’t change. Whatever he was thinking, whatever he was feeling, he was keeping it well in check. “I won’t make any demands on you.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise and nodded agitatedly. “Right. Of course.”
“This is purely practical. I don’t want a relationship.”
Gemma’s head throbbed with the tension of wanting what she shouldn’t want. “No relationship,” she repeated.
“No. No relationship, I want an arrangement.”
“But why, Callum? Why bother at all? You obviously don’t want to be with me, so why not leave me to my own devices?”
“Because I’d never leave my child to grow up in poverty. When my wife died, so did any thought of love. I’m not interested in that any more. I had it once and don’t wish for it again. But I want a child to leave Glencoe to. Marry me, and I’ll get what I want and you’ll never have to worry about money again.”
She was shaking her head before he’d finished his sentence. “Callum, no. It doesn’t work like that. Listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“I can’t do it. I just can’t.”
“Don’t you want the best for our child?”
“Of course I do. And I can give him the best—alone.”
“Like your father did? So bitter about your mother that he had no time for a relationship with you. Even if you did want that for our child, I certainly don�
��t. He’ll be raised properly.”
“Leave my family out of this. That’s my business.” She gripped the windowsill and leaned against the wall, willing her shaky legs not to crumple beneath her. What if Callum decided to investigate her background? What if he found out she wasn’t who she said she was?
“The moment you became pregnant, it became my business too.”
She turned to face him. Her short life in the real world had taught her to come out fighting—attack as a means of defense. But it took all of her hard-learned lessons to meet the chill of his gaze.
“So my family wasn’t a great role model. It doesn’t mean to say I can’t be.”
Gemma gritted her teeth and jutted out her jaw, desperate to stop her inner fears surfacing. Callum Mackenzie didn’t need to know that she was scared, so scared she wouldn’t be enough for her child.
“I know you have courage, Gemma. But courage isn’t enough to raise a child. And I want my child with me. There will be no other outcome.”
“There has to be.” She closed her eyes. She couldn’t let him see the fear and pain she could no longer hide. His footsteps paced across the room as he huffed in frustration. He paced towards her again, she tensed and then he paced away again. She rubbed her aching temples back and forth as if to erase the conflicting emotions and confusion that raged inside.
She was aware of him standing behind her before he touched her. She sensed a shift in him before he spoke. His fingers raked the sides of her arms lightly but she couldn’t move away. Instead she slowly opened her eyes as her body responded to the rightness of his touch.
“Tell me what it is you’re so afraid of.”
“Trying the soft approach now Callum? Not subtle are you?”
“You’ll have your freedom.”
“I can come and go as I please?”
“Within reason.”
“Whose reason?”
“Mine of course.”
She yanked her arm away. “You see, this is why it wouldn’t work.” She bit on her lip in an effort to stop herself moving back to him.
“So, tell me how it’s working out, being on your own.”
“I have a job.”
“I told Liz to hire you.”
His hands moved up her arms, his palms grazing the curves of her waist and shoulders, urging her to relax, to trust.
“I’ve got friends. A really good friend, Rebecca. She lives in Tekapo, works at the Observatory. I know she’ll support me after I have the baby.”
“It’s not enough.”
“And I have a car, a reliable car. Not the old bomb I bought after I moved in. So you see, I can look after myself.”
“A job you won’t be able to keep, friends, a car. Is that all you need to bring up a child?”
“And I’ve begun doing this place up.”
“It’s summer. What happens when winter comes? Our winters are fierce. It’s often below freezing. How the hell are you going to manage then?”
“People managed years ago. I’ll do the same.”
“And this from the woman who can’t even light a fire, can’t make dinner.”
“I can now. I’ve learned.”
“I hope you haven’t lit a fire here. I told you not to.”
She frowned. “No, it’s been too warm. And you had Morgan drop off the heater for me so there’s been no need.”
He sighed. “Anyway, it’s beyond me why you left London in the first place. You’d have been more suited to living in a city.”
“I wanted to be free to come and go as I wished, with no one stopping me. To live my life on my terms.”
“And you couldn’t do that in London? What or who was stopping you?”
She couldn’t say a word. He’d come too close.
“Gemma! Who?” His frown deepened as he took her hand from her mouth.
She shook her head. “I wanted wide open spaces. This,” she gestured out the window, “is what I wanted.” She looked out across the sun-streaked plains and listened to the tumbling of the river, the rustle of the ancient pine tree outside the window and the sweet tones of a skylark high overhead. “This is the sound of freedom now.” She was listening to it. The soft murmurs of the Mackenzie country together with the knowledge that they were surrounded by hundreds of miles of empty landscape quieted and settled her like nothing else could. She took a deep breath. “And I’m determined to keep it,” she added.
“You can have it at Glencoe. I won’t demand anything of you—just that you be a mother to our child. You surely don’t want to inflict a childhood like your own on our child? Only in your case you’ll be poor as well—your only asset, a decaying house in the middle of nowhere.”
The final twist of the knife. She spun around to face him, his eyes, colorless with his back to the light, were fixed on hers.
“And if I don’t agree?”
“Let’s not go there.” He began to turn away but she stopped him with her hand on his arm.
“Yes, let’s. I want to know where we stand.”
“If you don’t agree, I play dirty.”
“I don’t believe you play anything else.” He’d moved in front of her and she searched his face before settling on his mouth. “From the moment you picked me up in your arms and threw me into your car,” she flicked her tongue around her lips to moisten them, “to when I awoke in the morning light to find your arm around me, your breath warm on my face.”
Gemma could have sworn she heard both their hearts thudding in the quiet that descended as they both remembered with vivid clarity the passions of that night.
He traced his finger down her cheek before slipping one long strand of hair between his thumb and forefinger and dragging it down straight to her breasts. “Playing dirty? That was me playing fair. I saved you from being swept away by the river, remember? It was you who wanted sex.”
“Tell me, Callum, what was it you thought then?” She couldn’t help the bitterness creeping into her tone, a useful check to the heat and need that was building and coiling within at the onslaught of almost tangible memories.
“I had no thoughts that night—only needs.”
“And that’s the way you like it isn’t it? Using each other for mutual pleasure and then? Nothing. No thoughts, no feelings.”
“Why would that matter to you? Just think of your past, Gemma. Do you really want our child brought up by a solo parent, isolated, deprived, just as you yourself were?”
“I was deprived of love. My child won’t be.”
“You can’t exist on love alone. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re so naïve.”
“And you’re so callous.”
“Practical.”
“Callous,” she repeated. “And cold and everything I don’t want near my child.”
She felt the heat of his breath against her mouth. Somehow they’d moved closer to each other. How, she had no idea. She looked up into his face, her eyes drinking in the spark of heat she saw flickering in his eyes. For once she was out of words.
“I want my child, Gemma. And I will have him—with or without you. Which is it to be?”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’ve come all this way to be deprived of the thing I wanted most—freedom.”
“Is it what you want most now?”
Slowly she shook her head. “You know it isn’t. It’s my child’s security and happiness.”
“Our child.” The words were breathed so that she barely heard them. “You will marry me.”
Cold words from a heart that held no warmth. She looked out at the indigo sky seeking reassurance, inspiration, something, anything that would give her the strength to stay here alone. But there was none. Only a beautiful place that, with the change of seasons and no money, would become impossible to live in. She forced a smile to her lips.
“And, these terms, I can come and go, be as free as I like within this loveless marriage?”
He frowned. “Providing it doesn’t reflect badly on the family, on me. Prov
iding it doesn’t affect our child.” He cleared his throat. “No affairs, of course.”
“Of course.” She said sarcastically. “And no affairs for you, as well, I take it?”
“We’ll work out the details later. Bottom line, you come to Glencoe and we raise our child together. This is all it’s about. This is all that’s important to me.”
“And, to me…” Her hands came around her stomach—holding it, supporting it—as a deep sadness at what might have been swept through her. She’d tasted freedom. Yes, it had been freedom tainted by confusion and sadness after her night with Callum but, even so, she’d found a home here, out in the middle of nowhere, a life with friends in Tekapo. It could have been everything she’d been looking for. And it had transformed to dust before her eyes because of her own stupidity. She cleared her throat. “And, to me,” she repeated stronger now. “My child is everything. I agree. We’ll make a life together—God knows what sort of life—but we’ll make one for the sake of our child. But, Callum?”
“Yes?”
“You must love him or her.”
“Of course I will. He or she will be my child—a child I’ll love and care for.”
She nodded slowly, aware that, if nothing else, she could trust this big man to speak the truth. “Okay.”
She hadn’t realized until then how uncertain Callum must have been at her reaction to his proposal. It was only when she’d uttered her brief words of agreement that his face relaxed with relief. “Good. Pack your things—let’s go.”
She walked over to the French windows and tugged their warped frames sharply together in order to close them. They slammed shut and the glass rattled and the pane cracked. She gasped—the darkening sky looked as broken as the window.
“I’ll get someone to fix it.”
“No! Leave it.” She turned away and had to bite her lip to hold back the tears. “I’ll just put a bag of my things together. The rest—”
“I’ll have someone pack it up and bring it over to Glencoe. We’ll find a place for it somewhere.”
“No, it stays here.”
“But—”
“No, I don’t want it moved. I want my paintings here. I want everything just as it is.”
He was puzzled but she couldn’t explain. She just knew that she couldn’t sever her connection to this place so easily.