by Lynne Graham
Her lashes were fluttering in bewilderment, and then, suddenly, she understood. Blaze believed her. He believed that Rosie was his child. She was shattered by the acknowledgement. Had anyone asked her, she would have said that Blaze would still be denying paternity a month from now by every means within his power. She had assumed that he was drumming up the big guns when he so swiftly consulted his lawyer, and evidently he had been…only he wasn’t intending to aim those guns in the direction she had expected.
‘I thought you d-didn’t believe me…’ she began, willing him to start disbelieving her again. This was an even more alarming development than the last. And she was fresh out of inspiration.
‘If I had one shred of doubt left, it vanished when I saw you making a break for it!’ he shot at her wrathfully.
‘But why?
‘You told Elaine in the first instance, not me. You didn’t want me to know. You made no demands and, at the first opportunity, you try to bolt. If you were on the make, none of it would have happened that way,’ he asserted with cold cynicism.
‘I could still be l-lying,’ she heard herself say, and wondered if there was insanity in her genes as well as bolting, because now she was striving to rouse his doubts again. ‘I thought that leaving was the best thing I could do—’
‘Where were you going?’ he demanded again.
‘I was going to get on a train…’
‘Where?’
‘I hadn’t d-decided!’ she gasped.
‘What the hell sort of a mother are you?’ Blaze blistered at her without warning. ‘Don’t Rosie’s needs deserve some consideration? What about her rights? You drag her out of bed in the middle of the night and you don’t even know where you’re taking her! How much money have you got?’
Chrissy stood there mute, fighting back tears of mingled rage and guilt.
‘I want an answer,’ Blaze grated.
‘About fifty pounds… It’s yours!’ she muttered fiercely. ‘I was stealing it!’
‘Fifty quid! Is that all?’ he breathed incredulously. ‘You’re not any more fit to be out there on your own than Rosie is! How far did you think you were going to get on that?’
‘I just wanted to g-get away from you!’
‘Like hell you do!’ he derided, running a scathingly disbelieving scrutiny over her small, slight figure. ‘Something spooked you into the great escape, but it wasn’t a genuine desire to get away from me. No way, José.’
Fury sparked in her defiant gaze. ‘Where do you get that idea?’
‘Right now, we have more important things to discuss,’ he spelt out, his expressive mouth twisting with impatience. ‘Why don’t you sit down so that we can talk about this calmly?’
‘Maybe I d-don’t want to sit down!’ Chrissy slung back at him.
‘Don’t be so damned childish!’ He closed the gap between them in one long stride, clamped his hands round her slim waist, and dumped her into the wing armchair behind her. ‘Now co-operate,’ he instructed grimly. ‘I want to see Rosie’s birth certificate.’
‘You can’t,’ she told him.
‘Why the hell not?’
Belle had torn it up in a rage one day and Chrissy had never got around to getting a copy. ‘It got lost in one of the moves… I never applied for a r-replacement.’
He swore. ‘Am I named as her father?’
She shook her head.
He actually looked annoyed, sapphire eyes hardening as they rested on her. ‘When is her birthday?’
Reluctantly, she divulged the date.
He frowned. ‘She was premature, then…’
‘Only by a couple of weeks.’ In fact, Belle had been ten days past her due date when she finally went into labour.
‘Where was she born?’
She named the hospital.
‘Most women in the same position would have opted for an abortion…’
‘Belle had religious objections,’ Chrissy filled in before she realised her slip.
‘And she persuaded you to go ahead with the pregnancy?’
He had misunderstood. Hurriedly, she nodded agreement.
‘Did you have a rough time having her?’ he demanded abruptly.
It took her several seconds to understand what he was talking about. He was actually asking her what sort of birth experience she had had. Her pale skin flamed. Now she really knew how a woman living a nightmare of her own making felt. ‘Look, I d-don’t want to discuss that kind of thing with you!’
His striking bone-structure hardened. ‘It’s a pity you weren’t so fastidious when I allegedly flattened you to the floor three years ago,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘Then you just might have said no and we wouldn’t be in this predicament now!’
‘Well, I l-like that—’ she began furiously.
‘Evidently you must have done but it’s hardly something to boast about,’ he continued harshly. ‘I have never treated a woman that crudely in my life!’
Clearly the fanciful sex scene she had created for his benefit had damaged his all-male ego. Chrissy was delighted…in fact she couldn’t have been more pleased that she had accidentally hit on a description that he found offensive. ‘No? You surprise me!’
He reached down slowly and drew her up out of the chair. What shook her was that she instinctively let herself be drawn. ‘No,’ he repeated very quietly, slowly winding his fingers into the tumbling strands of hair lying against her breast to anchor her in place.
His thumb brushed against her breast, and instantly all the oxygen in her lungs was sucked dry by the sudden shocked release of her breath. Beneath the thin T-shirt, her sensitive flesh swelled and her nipple peaked into a tight bud of response. Involuntarily her eyes closed and she swayed. His thumb rubbed against the hardened nub he had teased into visibility and a deep, unbearably sharp pang of response stirred low in her stomach and made her ache.
‘If you responded like this then,’ Blaze murmured thickly, ‘even the kitchen table could begin to look as inviting as a feather bed.’
As she was wrenched from the drowning sensuality that had plunged her into shameless oblivion, her eyes flew open, but it was too late; Blaze had closed both arms round her and she collided with dark dense blue before his mouth came crashing down hard on hers. Her feet left the floor in the midst of that devouring kiss and he tumbled her down on the sofa without breaking the connection.
The sofa was like a rock. It hurt her shoulder-blades. She didn’t care. That was an irrelevance in comparison to the welter of other sensations controlling her. He brought his full weight down on her, mouth to mouth, chest to breast, thigh to thigh, until not an inch of her was not connected to some part of him and at every point of connection she burned in varying degrees. His tongue was stabbing into the moist interior of her tender mouth in a rawly sexual imitation of a far more basic possession. She moaned as he tugged her thighs apart and settled his lean hips in the cradle of her pelvis.
He tore his mouth away and thrust her T-shirt out of his way. The worn scrap of lace that cupped her straining breasts was parted with the same summary efficiency and then he bent his dark head and hungrily closed his lips over a pouting roseate nipple. A choked sound broke in her throat. Her spine arched as he flicked his tongue expertly over the sensitive nub and employed his hand on its neglected twin. An explosion of sensation made her jerk and writhe beneath him.
He groaned something and deftly shifted her on to her side. He found her breasts again but this time he inflamed her with maddening little bites that drove her to fever pitch. His hand slid down over her quivering stomach and beneath her leggings to the tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs. The clothing hampering his explorations was wrenched out of the way. Long fingers smoothly sought and found the moist welcome at the very heart of her, and without warning she was suddenly flat on her back again.
Every inch of her body was hot, hungry, aching. She was trembling, shaking, lost to everything but the intense need he had awakened. He drew back from her, hauled
his sweater off, and cast it roughly aside, his hands dropping to the waistband of his tight riding breeches as he knelt between her spread thighs. For a split-second he paused, staring down at her with glittering jewelled eyes that blazed with ruthless determination and a desire so powerful that it vibrated from him in sexual waves.
‘Bloody hell, I’ve never felt like this before,’ he admitted rawly. ‘Nobody’s ever made me feel like this before! Getting laid has never been this exciting for me… I feel as if I’m about to ride for the Gold Cup.’
Chrissy had already been unconsciously tugging her T-shirt back down over her exposed body. She hadn’t been thinking. Quite frankly, she was far beyond the ability to think. She was not rational. She was possessed by the overwhelming hunger he had unleashed, ready to drag him back to her, as unashamedly impatient as he was. And then she heard the scream, thin and distant and scared, and she reacted instantly, as if someone had jerked a maternal tripwire inside her.
‘Rosie!’ she gasped, practically falling off the sofa in her haste to reach the source of that frightening cry.
She took the stairs two at a time. Rosie was sitting up rigid in her bed, sobbing. Chrissy wrapped her arms round her. ‘It’s all right, baby…it’s all right,’ she soothed with the calm of long practice. ‘It was only a silly dream.’
As soon as Rosie felt her touch, heard her voice, the rigidity went out of her small body. She allowed herself to be lowered back on to the pillow. Chrissy smoothed her hair back from her damp brow and, within seconds, Rosie gave a sleepy half-smile, turned on her side, and went back to sleep. If you got there on time, it was always that easy with Rosie.
Still on automatic pilot, Chrissy was backing out of the room when a pair of determined arms imprisoned her from behind.
‘I don’t think even the fire service moves that fast.’ Blaze spun her round and lifted her with equal speed. Closing two lean hands round her thighs, he anchored them smoothly round his lean hips and, without even pausing for breath, he drove her soft lips apart with the force of his mouth in a long, drugging, earth-moving kiss.
The world spun violently around her. She dug her fingers into the luxuriant depths of his black hair, drunk on the sheer intensity of pleasure for several dizzy minutes. He groaned as he bruised his shoulder against an inconveniently situated door-jamb and then lowered her to the bed. That was his mistake. Her lashes lifted and she focused on the elaborate canopy of faded crewel work far above her and the sight twined instantly with a memory from the past.
‘Oh, no…’ Chrissy whispered in horror, and started to try and sit up.
Blaze, wholly engaged in the intricacies of arranging her to his exact satisfaction, flattened her again with an arrogant hand.
She jack-knifed up on to her knees, both hands holding her oversized T-shirt down in a sudden attack of stricken modesty. ‘No!’
‘No?’ Blaze almost whispered. His voice wasn’t quite steady.
Chrissy scrambled frantically off the far side of the bed. ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t—’
‘We most definitely can.’ In one long stride, Blaze reached her again.
‘I’m s-sorry!’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t m-mean this to go so far—’
‘I haven’t even crossed the starting line yet. What the hell is going on?’ Blaze demanded ferociously. ‘Is this some sort of game you play in the hope of getting raped?’
‘That’s a f-f-f-f-f—’ Abruptly, she dived past him, taking him by surprise and fled downstairs.
He found her in the dimly lit sitting-room, curled up in a tight ball in an armchair. He stilled several feet away. Her strained eyes, full of guilt and confusion, skittered over him. He was so incredibly good-looking that she couldn’t take her eyes off him even though she knew that he was in a white rage of disbelief.
‘I’m s-s-s-sorry,’ she stammered painfully.
‘I want to know why. Is this pay-back time for three years ago?’
‘No!’
‘Did I hurt you then?’ Brilliant blue eyes probed her shuttered face. ‘Is that what this is about? Are you scared?’
‘No!’ To seize on such an explanation after all the lies she had already told seemed quite inexcusable to her. Soon he would be thinking that he had virtually raped her that night. And the truth was that he had only kissed her, spoken harsh words. A hysterical giggle clogged her throat. She was sinking deeper and deeper into a quagmire of her own making. The lie and the truth were becoming blurred as she found herself forced to live the lie.
‘Has there been anyone else since then?’ Blaze prompted with horrific persistence.
More embarrassed than ever, she shook her head. The speed with which he had controlled his anger startled her. He could have said a lot of very nasty things to her and they would have been true. She should have called a halt far sooner, but she didn’t have that capability to draw on at will. His power over her was the greater. And either she was a natural born wanton or the unstable emotions sloshing about inside her were a symptom of an involvement on her part that ran far deeper than simple sexual need.
She shivered fearfully.
‘Stop that… I am not about to jump your bones without permission in triplicate. Relax,’ Blaze breathed with a savage edge to his usually cool drawl. ‘Are you afraid of becoming pregnant again? It may be hard for you to believe, but I wouldn’t have risked that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. All she wanted to do was get away from him to probe the depths of her own confusion.
‘If you say that again, I’ll—’ His exclamation broke off. Swinging away, she heard him breathe in deeply. ‘You really know how to pile on the agony, don’t you? No, that wasn’t an accusation, but have you any idea how I feel? I never get into complicated relationships…you could say I avoid them like the plague. I know my own limitations better than anyone. I like women for two things: company and sex. Emotions and sensitivity don’t come into it. There are no strings.’
‘You u-use women!’ Her voice had a tiny betraying catch.
‘That’s another thing about you…’ Blaze gritted. ‘You make me so bloody angry! Using is a two-way street, sweetheart. My first sexual experience was with an assistant matron at school. I was thirteen! Who used whom? When some devious bitch tells the tabloids exactly what I did to her in bed, who used whom? And when I pick up all the bills for the duration of the affair, who is using whom?’
In stark distress, she stared at him. ‘I don’t want to h-hear any more. I’m not trying to use you!’
‘I know…but you are making me feel things I don’t want to feel.’
‘Let us go, then,’ she whispered. ‘Why d-did you drag me back tonight?’
‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ He expelled his breath in a hiss. ‘I want Rosie.’
Chrissy went rigid. ‘I want Rosie’! Short and succinct, no beating about the bush. No pretence that the woman he believed to be Rosie’s mother was one tenth as important as the child. The admission burned into her like the careless slash of a knife, and it hurt, oh, lord, it hurt. He had had a natural affinity with Rosie from the very first moment they met. How much was that influencing his willingness to believe that Rosie was his? But she couldn’t concentrate on that question. The pain absorbed her and she traced it this time to source. She was falling in love with him. Crazy…insane…suicidal. Falling in love with Blaze couldn’t be anything else. She couldn’t credit that she had so blithely denied how he was affecting her.
‘You want Rosie…’ She struggled desperately to focus on the conversation.
A broad shoulder shifted in a slight shrug. ‘I really want her…I haven’t the slightest desire to duck the responsibility.’
‘You didn’t want her this afternoon when your l-lawyer came to the rescue!’ Chrissy condemned. ‘You pushed her away—’
‘I had to come to terms with my own shock before I could handle being close to her. I didn’t want to see her until I had.’ He held her gaze levelly. ‘Do you want a dri
nk?’
‘No.’ She needed her wits about her…that was, what wits she had left.
She watched him splashing whisky into a crystal tumbler. He was barefoot, clad only in the skin-tight riding breeches and a checked shirt he had pulled on and not bothered to button. He was, without doubt, the most gorgeous male she had ever seen. Was that what it was? Some kind of ghastly juvenile infatuation with his looks? But if that was true, why did the rest of him fascinate her so much? She wanted to get inside his head and know exactly what he was thinking, and she knew that never, ever would she have that power.
You got glimpses, hints, occasionally careless confessions, but most of the latter were triggered by sexual arousal. The rest of the time, everything was hidden. She was shut out, distanced, foiled by a self-discipline undoubtedly learnt in childhood. He shared only what he chose to share, and she hated the superficial front he could assume at will. But that front, she registered, was nowhere in evidence now. Not when Rosie was in question.
He was acting entirely out of character. He should have run a mile from the threat of fatherhood! But then possibly the prospect of a child outside the imprisoning bonds of marriage did have appeal for him, she thought uncertainly. ‘I want Rosie’, she repeated to herself again, angry that she still couldn’t concentrate on what was most important. What on earth did he mean when he said that he wanted her sister? Did he mean that he was ready to take charge and Chrissy was free to go?
‘I called on Guy for two reasons,’ Blaze stated. ‘One, he’s a close friend. Two, your attitude convinced me that I had to know what rights I had—’
‘Rights?’
‘Where Rosie’s concerned. You could say that Guy helped to clarify how very few rights unmarried fathers have. I can demand visitation rights, but you could probably block me on that if you could convince a court that seeing me is upsetting her—’
Her brows pleated anxiously. ‘But—’
‘Hear me out,’ he told her flatly. ‘I haven’t supported you since she was born, so that doesn’t make me look too good. You’ve been having a very hard time surviving and I’ve been living a highly visible and far from respectable existence, broadly based on the old wine, women and song adage. I haven’t lived like responsible father material. Short of bribing people to lie about your fitness as a mother in court, I really have no chance of winning custody—’