Seduction by the Book

by Linda Conrad

  Nick took a breath. “Mother, there’s no need…”

  “Nonsense. I want to see you.”

  “But Annie is living in the pool house. It will be too crowded for you to move in there as well.”

  “Her quarters still have not been repaired?”

  “No, there were other more pressing construction needs.” And Nick had been putting off fixing Annie’s suite until the very last minute. He wasn’t entirely sure he could stand knowing she was sleeping in the same house and not act on his weaknesses.

  “Well, never mind that,” his mother quipped. “Annie and I will get along famously. It’ll be like summer camp with my sisters when I was a girl.”

  “But…”

  His mother bid him a fast goodbye. And Nick was left quietly swearing as the dial tone droned in his ears.

  “So how’s the construction coming along, dervla?” Her mother’s voice resonating from the phone’s earpiece at once soothed and distressed Annie.

  In the six weeks since the hurricane, Annie was growing weary of endless cerulean skies, of baking heat that hovered in the nineties and of stifling humidity that closed in around her and made breathing difficult. She supposed it was partly the humidity and partly her depression that caused her to be so tired all the time.

  In self-defense, Annie had made it a point not to see Nick any more often than was absolutely necessary. When she wasn’t working, she stayed by herself in the pool house, reading or answering letters. Except for lately, when she hadn’t been able to finish reading even one page without falling sound asleep.

  “I didn’t wake you did I, honey?” her mother asked when Annie had left her first question unanswered for too long. “What time is it there?”

  As if she’d been splashed with cold water, Annie shot upright and looked at the clock—9:00 a.m. She was a half hour late to meet the team in the lagoon.

  “We’re only an hour ahead of you here, Ma,” she said into the portable phone while jumping out of bed and heading for the bathroom. “And I can’t talk right now. I’m late for work.”

  “Are you feeling all right? It’s not like you to be late.”

  “I’m fine. But the heat has been getting to me.”

  “South Boston has been hot, too. Why don’t you just cool off in the ocean?”

  Annie wished it was that easy, but the heat and humidity dogged her wherever she went. “I’ve gotta go, Ma. I’ll call you later.”

  She dashed into the shower and out again in record time. Pulling her hair back in a ponytail and pinning the flyaway strands down, she hurried to step into her swimming suit. But when she dragged it up her hips, she was astounded to discover the darn thing felt too tight.

  Could it have shrunk? That didn’t seem likely since she’d been wearing it every other day for weeks. If anything, all this wearing and washing should’ve stretched it out.

  Shoving the suit back down her legs, Annie eyed the bathroom scale and decided to give it a try. She might have been eating a tiny bit more than usual lately. But she’d chalked her ravenous hunger up to boredom and the heat.

  Until she stepped on the scale. Oh my gosh. She’d gained eight pounds in the past six weeks.

  The thought made her slightly queasy, but not enough to stop from grabbing a candy bar and some cheese crackers on her way to the closet to find something else to wear. She hurried into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that felt a little tight but still fit around her middle.

  Jamming her running shoes on her feet and deciding to think about her weight later, Annie headed out the door at a dead run. She nearly knocked both herself and Nick off their feet when they smacked right into each other on the other side of the door.

  He reached out and steadied her. “Are you all right?”

  “You’re the second person to ask me that today,” she said as she pulled away from him. “I’m fine. Just late.”

  Nick studied her face for a moment. “You don’t look fine. You look exhausted. Have you been working too hard?”

  Her stomach was doing flip-flops at the mere sight of him. And she felt her heart skip as it started beating in double time.

  In the morning light, he looked so good she nearly drooled. Tall, handsome and tanned from working outdoors, the sight of the man she cared so much about made her whole body tighten and her mouth start to water.

  “Annie?”

  Had he asked something? The hunger she’d been feeling became a violent stomach roll all of a sudden.

  “Excuse me, Nick.” She turned and stepped back inside the door, determined to reach the pool house bathroom in a hurry.

  “But I wanted to…”

  “Later, please,” Annie pleaded.

  She slammed the door behind her and made a mad dash to the bathroom, getting there just as the entire contents of her stomach came back up with a powerful whoosh. Well, of all the embarrassing things.

  Rinsing her mouth out with water, Annie wondered if she had picked up a bug. But she had no fever. And actually, she felt just fine now that her stomach was empty.

  Maybe it had been caused by too much junk food. That might be the correct reason for the weight gain, too.

  But when she raised her head and looked in the mirror, she saw a stranger staring back at her. No, wait, stranger wasn’t the right word.

  Her eyes were a bit sunken in her head, but it was her face, just rounder and softer from the added weight. Staring down at the neckline of her square-necked T-shirt, Annie was amazed at how her breasts had suddenly become what could only be called voluptuous.

  Weird. None of the girls in her family ever had big breasts until they…

  Gasping, Annie beheld the truth in the mirror. She saw her sisters, Kelly and Colleen, grown round and glowing with their pregnancies—and looking right out of the mirror behind her eyes, laughing hysterically at her expense.

  In shock, Annie put a hand to her mouth. Then she put the other hand across her belly. Oh my gosh.

  Later this afternoon she would get someone from the research team to drive her down to the village store for a pregnancy test kit. But she really didn’t need a test to tell her what was clearly written all over her.

  She was going to have a baby. And regardless of what he’d told her, she was going to have Nick’s baby.

  Dear Lord. Now what?

  Nick backed away from her door after Annie slammed it in his face. He’d wanted to tell her about his mother’s arrival today. But then he’d been blinded by the sight of the faint purple smudges under her eyes, and of her neon pink shirt, and of her face that was somehow glowing and more beautiful than he had ever seen.

  He needed to walk away from her now while he could still fight off the furious desire that was buckling his knees. He almost hated her for doing this to him, for being everything that Christina wasn’t, and for being the most desirable woman he’d ever known. But he couldn’t.

  The sad fact was that he was the one to blame for not being able to control his own yearnings. Angry at himself, he jumped into his Jeep and headed down to the latest construction site in the village.

  When he’d given Annie the responsibility for the dolphin center, he’d imagined that would be the best answer for both of them. But now he wondered if he had been selfish to want to keep her near enough for him to see, yet hold her far enough away so that there would be no chance of pulling her back into his life.

  It couldn’t be the best thing for her, staying here on this isolated island and not getting the opportunity to go out in the world to find friends and perhaps a man who would love her forever.

  That troubling thought made him slow the Jeep and ball his fists against the steering wheel. The very idea of Annie with another man made him suddenly mad as hell. But he had just better get over it.

  Annie had told him that she imagined him as a storybook prince, bewitched and waiting for a princess to come break the spell. Hell. He didn’t need to read that damned gypsy’s fairy-tale book to know he’d been acting more like
a mean old ogre. A beast, like the one in that old tale of the beauty and the beast, who locked up beautiful women and never let them leave the castle.

  Blowing out a breath, he decided to give the whole thing some more thought. But not until after his mother had left the island again. It was too hard to think with her nearby. Almost as difficult as being around Annie.

  Almost, but not exactly the same.

  “The island doesn’t look too terribly shabby,” his mother said as he pulled in to the lot beside the pool house. “The trees will take some time to grow back, but all in all it’s much better than I’d imagined. You must’ve worked round the clock to get the work done.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve had lots of help. The islanders have been amazing.”

  His mother smiled. “My great-great-grandfather always thought so, too. He said there were no better people anywhere on earth than the families he’d hired to come work and live here.”

  Nick forgot from time to time that it was his mother’s family who had owned this island for generations. His father had always been such a huge presence in his life that he was shocked to remember that it was his mother who had inherited all the money from her wealthy American ancestors.

  “Well, here we are,” he told her as he parked the Jeep and got out to carry her luggage. “I doubt Annie will be here to greet you. In the afternoons she can usually be found down at the lagoon, working with the dolphins.”

  His mother shot him a very strange look before she shrugged her shoulder and climbed out of the Jeep. “That’s fine, dear. It will give me a chance to settle in. I’ll look forward to dining with her later.”

  “Well…” Nick filled his arms with his mother’s luggage and followed her as she unlocked the door and stepped inside. “I don’t know if…”

  Just as his eyes adjusted to the cool interior of the three-room pool house, Annie came flying out of the bathroom and nearly knocked into his mother.

  Her eyes filled with confusion for a second, then she grinned and hugged his mother. “Oh, Mrs. Scoville. I’m so glad to see you.”

  His mother gave Annie a kiss on the cheek and held her at arm’s length to study her. “It’s wonderful to see you again, my dear. I’ve been quite eager for us to have a nice chat. Would you care to join me for a cup of tea?”

  “Uh, can it be later, please? I have to go back to work now.” Annie pulled out of his mother’s grasp, nodded to him and ran out the door.

  He dropped his mother’s bags and dashed outside after Annie. “Wait a second,” he muttered as he caught her by the arm. “What’s so urgent that you can’t spend a few moments to talk to my mother?”

  She tugged against his grip then spun around when he refused to release her arm. “Nick, please. I have to go now. I’m sorry.”

  Studying her eyes, he saw they were overly bright and the remnants of tears lay caught in her lashes. “At least tell me what’s wrong. Maybe there’s something I can do.”

  “You’ve already done it,” she said on a deep breath.

  He stared down at her, wanting desperately to wrap her up in his arms and make whatever troubled her go away. “What have I done? Just stand still a second and talk to me. Are you sick?”

  She laughed, but the sound was more like a strangled sob. “For the third time today, I’m fine, dammit.” Yanking her arm out of his grip, she flipped her loose hair back off her shoulder. “I’m not sick—just pregnant.”

  It took a second for her words to sink into his thick skull. “What? You can’t be.”

  Laughing again, she swiped a hand over her face and cleared away a lone tear. “Just had the test. It’s official. I guess your doctors didn’t know what they were talking about when they said you couldn’t have a child.”

  He stood there, dumbfounded, for much too long. Long enough to see the rejection and hurt fill her eyes.

  “Sorry to spring it on you, Nick, but you insisted. And I really have to go now.” She turned and rushed away toward the lagoon.

  Leaving him stunned—and more than a little baffled. Damn it all to hell.

  Seven

  Nick’s feet were glued to the patio, his brain frozen and unable to function. Was it possible Annie was going to have a child? And more to the point, that he was going to be a father?

  “Is that a real possibility, son?” The soft voice came from behind his back, echoing his thoughts.

  Uh-oh. He didn’t want to turn around and have to face his mother, who had obviously overheard Annie’s announcement. What would he say?

  What could he say? Something like: So sorry. I took advantage of an employee. And at the time, she was a nice young, naive virgin. Isn’t that just the kind of honorable thing you always wanted for your only son?

  Letting out a breath, Nick turned around to face his mother and to begin facing the consequences of his actions.

  “Do you mean, is it possible that Annie is pregnant?” he asked, hedging for time. “I cannot imagine that she would lie about such a thing, Mother.”

  His mother’s violet eyes were filled with questions. But beyond those, she had a kind of bewildered but blissful expression on her face. It made him feel ashamed all of a sudden.

  “But if you meant, is it possible that the child is mine,” he rushed out with a huff. “I don’t know. The doctors in Alsaca were quite positive that my sperm count ranged too low to be effective. But…”

  He had to clear his head and begin accepting facts, but how could he when his mother kept looking at him that way? “On the other hand, I have no doubts that any baby Annie would be having from her time on the island must be…my child.” There. He’d said it.

  His stomach rolled and he was beginning to feel dizzy. He had too many unanswered questions of his own to talk about this just yet, especially with his mother.

  “Come back inside with me for a few minutes, Nicholas,” his mother said as she gently touched his arm. “You look like you need to sit down.”

  Blinded by shock, Nick let her guide him inside the pool house. The front room was laid out like a small apartment with a kitchen and seating area.

  All the thoughts in his head at the moment were of babies. Little boys with fiery red curls, running outside to play with Annie’s exuberance. And little girls, with her deep green eyes, lifting their arms to him for a hug.

  After they were seated at the tiny two person table, his mother took his hand. “You never said anything before about what the Alsaca doctors told you.

  I suspected there was a problem with Christina being able to conceive, but now everything makes more sense.”

  “What makes sense?” To Nick, the whole world was upside down. Nothing made any sense at all.

  “Your isolation from the world. Your determination to open this marine mammal center.”

  “I was just trying to honor Christina’s wishes…her memory.” A small flame of anger lit in his gut at his mother’s pop-psychology attempts.

  “No, Nicholas. It’s all been built on your guilt about not being able to have a child. I’ll wager it has something to do with disappointing your father.”

  He stood and fisted his hands in his pockets. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “Oh, but you should. Talking is the best way to think through a situation.”

  “No, Mother. Stop trying to meddle.”

  She looked up at him with disappointment in her eyes. “Just let me say a few things then. First, I want you to go down to the village clinic and discuss your physical situation with Dr. Gamble. Let him help you understand.”

  When Nick started to argue, she broke in again. “I realize he’s just a small-town family physician, but you’ve known him all your life. And I know you trust his knowledge and expertise the same way I do. Do it for me.”

  He hung his head. “Yes, all right. I can do that.”

  “Good. And afterward, I insist you go and discuss this situation with Annie. She’s a fine young woman who didn’t deserve your terrib
le silence when she told you nothing but the truth. I have no idea what has transpired between you…” she hesitated and then stood up and touched his hand.

  “Well, I can imagine some of it. But regardless of whatever else you are, son, you are an honorable man. I expect you to ask Annie what she wants to do and then to move heaven and earth in order to abide by her wishes.”

  “Do?” As in the future? He hadn’t thought that far ahead. And couldn’t imagine doing it now, either.

  “Think over the possibilities on your way to see the doctor. You may want to ask him any questions you have about that, too.”

  “All right. Fine. Anything else?” His irritation was growing and he needed some air.

  His mother stretched up on tiptoes to give him a kiss. “I love you, Nicholas. You and Annie have created my first grandchild.”

  The guilt came back with a force that nearly knocked him to his knees. “I would appreciate it if you did not mention this to Father,” he said though gritted teeth. “In fact, don’t discuss it with anyone until I can speak to Annie.”

  His mother studied him for a second. “I agree, son. You must be the one to tell your father about this. But would it anger you if I talked to Annie about the subject before you do?”

  “No meddling, Mother.”

  When she looked wounded, he relented and gave her a hug. “Yes, perhaps you can give her some advice, or at least give her an opportunity to talk it over with another woman. But you are not to pressure her in any way. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly, Nicholas.” She kissed him again. “Now go ask your questions of the doctor and think about what you want to do. I believe you’re going to make a wonderful father.”

  A father? He hadn’t yet even considered the ramifications of that. He’d thought about Annie being a good mother, but him a father?

  Now that the biology of fathering a child appeared to have happened, Nick had to wonder what kind of father he would really make. His own father’s example was not one Nick wanted to follow. The man was a control freak, a tyrant.

  Nick’s whole life had been spent trying to please his father. To no avail. Never good enough. Never smart enough. The only thing that he’d ever done right in his father’s opinion was to marry Christina.