by Susan Napier;Kathryn Ross;Kelly Hunter;Sandra Marton;Katherine Garbera;Margaret Mayo
‘You were very deep in thought,’ he said. ‘Troubled thought. Did it concern me?’
‘Naturally.’ It would have been stupid to claim otherwise.
‘We have a lot of talking to do,’ he admitted.
‘Yes.’
‘It was wrong of me to accuse you of taking those heirlooms.’
‘I’m glad you realise it.’
‘I should have known you’d never do a thing like that.’
‘Yes, you should have.’
‘I should also have known that you had a very good reason for using that thirty thousands pounds.’ His lips twisted wryly. ‘I shouldn’t have tarred you with the same brush as Rosemary and Melanie.’
‘And do you feel better now you’ve said all that?’ she asked tartly.
Oliver’s hands gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles gleamed white. He clearly hadn’t expected quite so much antagonism. But his voice remained calm. ‘I’m asking your forgiveness.’
‘No you’re not.’ Anna shook her head firmly. ‘You’re trying to make amends. But it won’t work. You’ve hurt me far too much. You could get down on your knees and it would make no difference.’
‘Anna—’
‘Anna, nothing,’ she shot. ‘We’re finished; it’s over. I doubt we ever really loved each other. If we had there wouldn’t have been these problems, you’d have trusted me, you’d have let me explain. We enjoyed good sex but that was all. Your father was right to oppose the marriage. He was the only one with any sense.’
Oliver rubbed his fingers over his brow. ‘You’ve changed, Anna. You were never this hard before. You always—’
‘Is it any wonder I’ve changed,’ she cut in, widening her eyes and looking at him scornfully, ‘after the way you treated me? I don’t want you in my life any more, Oliver. If you’ve come here to grovel and beg me to go back with you, then forget it, because I won’t. I’d actually prefer it if you left.’ Please, God, she was doing the right thing.
‘At this time of night?’
‘Yes, at this time of night. It’s your fault for coming so late.’
‘I couldn’t get an earlier flight.’
‘Then you should have waited until tomorrow.’
‘I was hoping you’d let me stay?’
Anna groaned. This was the last thing she wanted. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Not even if I promise not to hassle you? If I promise to be a good boy?’
He pulled such a forlorn face and it was such a ridiculous thing for him to say that Anna’s good intentions went flying out the window. ‘Provided you leave at first light,’ she reluctantly agreed. ‘I don’t want you here, Oliver. It’s over between us and the sooner you accept it, the better.’
He winced at her harsh words. ‘There must be some way I can get you to change your mind?’
‘None at all,’ she retorted. ‘If you want to go to bed now, you know where the spare room is. I’ll clear away here.’
‘No, please, let me help.’ He sprang to his feet and picked up the tray.
‘In that case, you can do it all. I’ll go to bed,’ she said tightly. ‘Goodnight, Oliver.’ He didn’t look pleased but she didn’t care, and she was safely tucked up under the covers when she heard him mount the stairs.
She had brushed her teeth and washed her face in record time so that she wouldn’t bump into him again. But she wasn’t able to relax and she found herself listening and waiting.
Her fingers curled and her whole body stiffened when he reached her bedroom door, even her heart thudded, but he passed on by without a falter in his step. He went into the bathroom, which separated the two rooms, she heard water running and the toilet flushing, and then she heard him go into the spare room. After that there was silence but still she didn’t relax.
She imagined him undressing. Stripping off his sweater and jeans, his shoes and socks, the brief plain underpants he always wore. And as he hadn’t brought an overnight bag she imagined him sleeping nude between the clean cotton sheets. The very thought of his magnificent firm body was more than enough to send her into spasm.
It was a long time before she slept.
The next morning she hoped and prayed that Oliver would have taken her at her word and gone before she ventured downstairs, but she had no such luck. He even had breakfast ready. But the smell of crispy bacon as she walked into the kitchen was more than Anna’s stomach could stand.
She rushed back up to the bathroom, desperately hoping Oliver hadn’t heard her. When she finally rejoined him breakfast had been cleared away. There was a coffee pot on the go but that was all. He looked at her in concern. ‘I know there’s something wrong with you, Anna. Why don’t you tell me what it is?’
‘I must have picked up a bug,’ she said airily. ‘I think I’ll have some toast.’ She needed action, anything so that she wouldn’t have to look at Oliver. Whether she would eat the toast was a different matter altogether.
‘I’m expected to believe that, am I?’ he asked shortly. ‘You’ve seen a doctor? He’s told you it’s a bug?’
‘Not yet, I haven’t,’ she answered with a shrug. ‘It’s only just come on. Don’t worry about it, Oliver, I’ll be all right.’
But she could feel his eyes boring into her back as she popped bread into the toaster. And while she was waiting she filled the kettle. ‘I think I’d like tea rather than coffee. Do you want a cup?’
‘No, thank you, Anna.’ Such polite words.
She would have liked to turn around and look at him but knew that she daren’t. Her heart pumped uneasily. Then she told herself that she was being silly because how could he possibly have guessed? When her toast was made and the tea poured Oliver took it from her and carried it through to the sitting room. In those idyllic days when they first met, they’d always eaten at the window table where they could watch the birds in the garden, the freshness of spring, the weather over the Wicklow Mountains. So there was nothing unusual in him carrying her breakfast there.
And yet Anna still had this peculiar feeling. It was probably guilt, she decided, as she sat down and picked up a piece of toast. Guilt because she’d made a conscious decision to hide her condition from him.
She nibbled a corner and kept her eyes averted. Oliver sat the other side of the table, the pot of coffee in front of him.
‘I think it’s more than just a bug,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t you think you ought to tell me?’
Anna frowned and felt her stomach begin to churn again, though for a very different reason this time. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, I think you do. Look at me, Anna. Tell me truthfully what is wrong.’
‘There is nothing wrong,’ she insisted, but she still couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
‘I looked in your bathroom cabinet this morning for a spare toothbrush.’
Alarm bells rang. Big alarm bells.
‘And guess what I saw, Anna?’
She remained silent.
‘A pregnancy testing kit.’
She wanted to slide beneath the table, she wanted to disappear into a hole in the ground. She could brazen it out and say, So what? She could say that she’d used it and it had proved negative. She could say lots of things—but at the end of the day he would find out.
Oliver wasn’t stupid. He could see the state she was in. Her morning sickness had come on early and there was no way she could hide it.
If only she hadn’t stopped taking the Pill that first time she left him. She’d been experiencing problems and intended trying a different one. Meanwhile, she had decided to give her body a rest.
Stupidly, she hadn’t given it a thought when she let Oliver make love to her. They’d both been fired with the passion of the moment and contraception had been the last thing on their minds.
A fatal mistake. One of many she had made where this man was concerned.
She eyed him bravely. ‘And do you know what, Oliver? It tested positive. Not that it’s
going to make very much difference to you, because this baby’s mine.’
It was a decision she’d made when she first discovered that she was pregnant. She didn’t want him as the father. He had well and truly given up that right. ‘I’m not coming back to you. I’ll naturally let you—’
‘The hell you aren’t coming back!’ It was a mighty roar and almost lifted the rafters. Then Oliver must have realised that this was no way to get what he wanted because his voice went much quieter.
‘This baby is mine as much as yours, Anna. I presume it is mine?’ He said it as an afterthought, not really believing that it was anyone else’s.
‘Of course.’
‘Therefore I want to be a part of it, I want to be there for you, help you through this bad time. You must see a doctor. It will be best if you come home with me and see the family doctor. I’ll make the arrangements, I’ll—’
‘Oliver.’ Anna’s tone was firm. ‘I’m not coming back to a man who thinks I stole the family jewels.’
She was pleased to note that he had the grace to look ashamed. As well he should.
‘I’m not giving you any choice, Anna,’ he said, fingers strumming on the table. ‘The truth is that I accused you without thinking. I realised immediately that you would never have done such a thing. You’re too honest, too straight, too good.’
He added these last two words with a wry twist of his lips. ‘Too good for me. I know I can never repair the damage I’ve inflicted, but for the sake of our baby—’ he smiled as he said the words ‘—I’m begging you to give me one last chance. I promise I will never, ever, accuse you of stealing again. Or of marrying me for money.’
‘You’re right—you won’t, because you won’t get the chance,’ she told him surely. It was no good him making promises because if he’d done it twice what was to say he wouldn’t do it a third time? She refused to take the risk.
He frowned harshly. ‘You really mean that you won’t come home with me, Anna.’
‘Yes.’ She had thought it through very carefully and decided it was the right thing to do. ‘I’ll let you have access, I shan’t be petty enough to deny you that, but—’
‘For God’s sake, woman, what do I have to do? Get down on my knees and beg?’
‘That I would like to see,’ she tossed the words at him bitterly, ‘but it still wouldn’t be enough. Nothing will. I don’t think you have any idea how much you’ve hurt me. I shall never forgive you, not as long as I live. So I can’t see the point in us living together. It would put us both into an impossible situation.’
Chapter Eleven
OLIVER couldn’t even begin to describe his feelings when he’d seen that pregnancy testing kit. Shock at first, complete and utter shock. He’d stared at it for several minutes, his heart banging against his ribs, before deciding it was a relic left behind by Anna’s sister.
But maybe not.
Maybe it was Anna’s!
Alarm set in then—but only because their marriage wasn’t working. The thought of Anna having a baby, his baby, brought a rush of paternal warmth, a joy he had never experienced before.
And he’d known as soon as he’d seen how ill Anna looked when she came downstairs that she was pregnant. She’d been pale the night before but he’d put that down to exhaustion. This was something different.
He’d quietly followed her up to the bathroom and heard her retching, and so he’d returned to the kitchen and got rid of everything that could induce nausea.
He knew when it had happened but he didn’t know how when she was on the Pill. But if anything could mend their marriage, bring them back together, it was surely this. He had been unprepared, therefore, when she’d flatly refused to go home with him.
An impossible situation she had said and he could see how her mind worked. What he needed to do was somehow, some way, persuade her to return with him. And once he’d got her home he could work on her. Convince her that he would never let her down again, that it was the worst mistake he’d ever made in his life, and that this was the best thing that could have happened to them.
It might be a long haul but he loved Anna so desperately that he was prepared to do anything to save their marriage.
‘You can’t stay here alone, Anna,’ he said quietly. ‘Not in your condition.’
‘I shan’t feel sick for ever so why shouldn’t I?’ she snapped, her emerald eyes glaring magnificently.
She was so beautiful, so desirable, that he couldn’t imagine why he had endangered their marriage by accusing her of crimes that he knew she wasn’t capable of committing. He could only plead insanity due to sexual frustration.
‘I want you home because you’re my wife,’ he said patiently. ‘I want to look after you, take care of you, make things easier for you.’
Her eyes flashed again. ‘Belated concern, Oliver? Are you forgetting that you’re the one who made things hard for me?’
She couldn’t have hurt him any more if she’d struck him with an axe. ‘You think I don’t know that? You think it won’t haunt me for the rest of my life?’
He was aware that the pain he felt filled his voice. He wanted her to hear it, he wanted her to know that he truly regretted what he had done. ‘Anna, I want to make it up to you. You must give me that chance.’
He saw the way she looked at him, the flash of indignance, followed by uncertainty as their eyes briefly met, the way she averted them again quickly as though she was afraid of giving something away. Hope flooded through him. It looked as though she wasn’t as immune to him as she was trying to make out.
There had always been a strong chemical attraction, a raging fire that had drawn them irresistibly together and in that one tiny instant he had seen it again. Admittedly, a faint spark only. But in that spark there was hope. Her fire wasn’t dead—he hadn’t killed it—and if it was the last thing he did he would nurture it back to precious life.
He pressed home his minuscule advantage. ‘Anna, you have my word that I will never hurt you again. This is our child you are carrying, conceived through an act of love.’ Hopefully she wouldn’t negate that. ‘Will your conscience let you deny your child its father?’
He wanted to go on and say it would want for nothing but that would mean bringing the money issue into it again—and this was something he needed to avoid like the plague. It would be like holding a red rag to a bull. She would turn on him again and all hope would be lost.
‘My conscience has nothing to do with it, Oliver,’ she told him coldly. ‘You’re the one who’s made me feel this way. You can’t go around flinging accusations and then expect to welcome me back into your arms the next minute as though nothing has happened.’
‘I know that,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘Don’t you think I’ve paid the penalty? But we’re not talking about you, now, we’re talking about the child. It’s not only me who needs you—it’s our baby, too.’
They had spoken of having a family many times, though they hadn’t planned it quite this soon. And they had agreed that a child needed both parents—they had said that if ever the unthinkable happened and their marriage foundered they would stick together for the sake of any children they might have. Had she forgotten that?’
Anna took a long, deep breath, closed her eyes and for several long, never-ending seconds, appeared to consider his words. Faint hope rose in him, but when she spoke it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. ‘I’m sorry, Oliver, it wouldn’t work.’
‘We could make it work,’ he said softly. ‘I cannot envisage life without you. I’m not using our baby as blackmail—well, maybe just a little,’ he added with a self-deprecating grimace. ‘But I need you, too. You mean the whole world to me. These last two days have been the blackest of my life.’
‘Oliver,’ she said with a touch of impatience, ‘I’ve already given this a lot of thought. I don’t see how I can live with a man who distrusts me. It wouldn’t work. I’d be forever waiting for the next time.’
‘There won’t be a next time,’
he promised her firmly. It hurt deep in his gut that she should even think this. Hadn’t his apologies been enough? Hadn’t she believed him? What more could he say?
Anna shook her head. ‘It’s easy for you to say that, Oliver. I’ve discovered a side to you that I hadn’t known existed, and one that I don’t like. Have you really no idea how I feel? I have never stolen so much as a penny in my life. You have hurt and humiliated me, you made me feel like the lowest of the low, and yet you now expect me to come back and live with you, put myself up for more of the same, just because I’m carrying your baby. It’s not on, Oliver. I can’t do it.’
His faint spark of hope died. Short of using caveman tactics and physically carrying her back home, what was he to do? He had never seen Anna so determined. And so magnificently beautiful in her anger.
He wanted to bed her there and then, make exciting, uninhibited love like they had in the early days of their marriage. Would that work? Would she agree to anything once they were locked in each other’s arms, unable to get enough of each other?
But he knew that emotional blackmail wasn’t the answer. Anna had to come back because she wanted to, because she knew it would be best for her and the baby.
He poured himself another cup of coffee while he decided what to say next, noticing as he did so that Anna hadn’t touched her toast; there was still only one tiny bite gone from the corner. She hadn’t touched her tea, either.
‘How can I prove that I won’t accuse you of anything like that ever again, if you don’t give me the chance?’ He was prepared to go down on his knees and beg if he thought it would help. He’d never been in a situation like this before. Most things he could talk his way around, but with Anna so stubborn…
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you made your allegations.’
Oliver groaned. ‘As if I haven’t done that a thousand times already. Anna—’ he leant forward urgently and took her hands across the table ‘—I don’t want you to go through this alone. I want to be there at your side. You need me. You can’t tell me that you’re looking forward to being alone during what should be one of the most exciting and rewarding times of your life?’