Groaning, he fell backward and lifted her so that she was poised above him, mindless to everything but the anticipation of her moist, sleek flesh closing around him.
She weighed next to nothing, her bones so small, her frame so slight, that the miracle of her, of her body’s ability to expand and accept a man, or give birth to a child….
Give birth to a child!
Reality, sharp as a stinging slap to the face, succeeded where more proven methods had failed. “What the hell am I doing?” he groaned, casting her away from him so violently that she literally bounced over the mattress.
The silence which followed rang with reproach. Chest heaving, furious with himself, with her, with life in general, he lay with his arm across his eyes and wished he were anywhere but with her.
Eventually, she whispered, “I thought we were making love.”
He didn’t answer. What was there to say? That love had nothing to do with it? That she’d led him on and he’d been too bent on his own gratification to put an end to her seduction before things got so out of hand? That he didn’t trust himself when he was with her, that he found himself wanting to say things which weren’t—which couldn’t—be true, and make promises he knew he’d never keep?
“Liam?” He felt her touch on his arm, tentative, chastened. “Was I wrong?”
“We weren’t making love, we were playing with fire,” he said harshly. “Again. And I don’t intend to risk getting burned a second time.”
“Fire?”
The quiver in her voice stirred him to unreasonable anger. “Do I have to draw pictures for you, Jane? When a man and a woman have sex, they run the risk of making a baby unless they take specific steps to prevent it. The way I see it, it’s bad enough that you might already be pregnant because I didn’t use a condom the first time, without pushing our luck again.”
“You’re right, of course,” she said, shrinking away from him as if she were somehow unclean. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten—I wasn’t thinking—”
Ashamed at taking out his frustration on her, he said, “Don’t beat yourself up, Janie. It wasn’t all your doing.”
“Yes, it was,” she said, and looking up, he saw her twisting her hands together in anguish. “I thought I could accept that things were over between us. I never thought I could be so…so forward, so aggressive. But when you came over here tonight, even though I wanted to be angry with you, I realized…well, the truth is, Liam, my feelings for you have…gone far beyond what I expected. It’s the reason I ran away…and also the reason I came back again.”
He flung up one hand, as if that would be enough to change the direction of her thoughts. “Oh, no! Stop right there, Jane! The decisions you make have nothing to do with me, any more than mine have to do with you. I thought we both understood that.”
“Things change sometimes, whether or not we want them to.”
“But not this.” As if he’d suddenly found himself lying on a bed of nails, he leaped up and began flinging on his clothes. “Listen to me, Janie, we’ve had this conversation before. You’re the kind of woman made to be with a man and you’re ready to start over with someone new, but you’d never have given me a second look if it weren’t that I’m the only specimen to be found in these parts. Once you’re back in the city and can take your pick, you’ll be glad you didn’t settle for less than you deserve—which is what you’d be getting with a guy like me.”
“Selling yourself short isn’t going to change my mind,” she said. “I saw the way you looked at me out there on the porch. I know how you kissed me. I know that you wanted me as badly as I wanted—as I still want you. And I know, too, that you’re afraid to let anyone see that you’re capable of tenderness. But I learned differently tonight, Liam. You can deny it all you like, but what’s happening between us isn’t just a one-sided affair nor is it just about sex, and nothing you say now will convince me otherwise. You care about me, whether or not you dare to admit it.”
When a woman was able to read him this clearly, he was in worse trouble than he thought. “I care about your dog, too,” he blustered. “But that doesn’t mean I want to marry the mutt.”
“Who mentioned marriage? I’m talking about feelings, about love!”
“Oh, jeez!” He could feel the sweat popping out on his forehead. He’d soon be drowning in the stuff if he didn’t put an end to the conversation! How had he let things come to such a pass? He prided himself on being adept at spotting problems before they occurred and at heading them off, but if tonight was anything to go by, he needed a refresher course in the worst way.
“This isn’t about love,” he said, thumping his fist on the bed rail to emphasize each word, in case she didn’t get the message he was determined to deliver, “so get the idea out of your mind once and for all. You’re not in love with me, and I’m sure as hell not in love with you.”
“Shouting at me isn’t going to alter anything,” she said mildly.
Stymied, he threw his hands up in the air. He’d have preferred not to be cruel, but she left him no other option. “Then maybe this will. Get dressed and come with me, Jane. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
It was the longest night of her life. The longest, and the most painful. Withered by humiliation, she huddled on the porch swing with her knees drawn up under her chin, and wished she could cry. But the misery lodged inside her went too deep for such easy relief. She wished that she could forget. But the memories were too recent, too raw.
Eyes burning, she stared out at the night-dark sea, but what she saw was a reenactment of the scene which took place in his cottage.
“This is Brianna,” he’d said. “She’s been staying with me for a couple of days.”
Speechless with shock, she’d stared at the woman lolling on his sofa and wearing one of his T-shirts and precious little else. Brianna: a name as exotic as its owner. Superior, self-assured, polished. Tall and curvaceous, with rounded hips and generous, perfectly sculpted breasts which made Jane’s look like plums by comparison. With hair the color of eighteen-carat gold, and long-lashed eyes which skimmed over Jane as if she amounted to nothing more than a fly on the wall.
“Jane?” she cooed. “How quaint! I always associate that name with the books children read in nursery school. You know the kind. See Jane. See Jane run!”
At that moment, run was what she’d most wanted to do, but she wouldn’t give either of them the satisfaction of putting her to rout so easily. Pride in ruins but doing her best to hide it, she glanced past Brianna’s cool amused gaze to Liam’s unsmiling face, and said, “There is the other Jane, the one belonging to Tarzan. I tend to relate more to her except that I’ve found trying to tame an ape to be a complete waste of time.”
He actually blushed. “Brianna’s leaving in the morning,” he said, at which she’d known a moment of absurd and short-lived hope which he immediately dashed by adding, “And I’ll be going with her.”
“Going with her?” The question was out before she could contain it, hanging pitifully in the air like a limb severed from its body.
“That’s right.” With a smile as brilliant as the sun at high noon and just about as painful to behold, Brianna unwound her legs from the sofa and strolled languidly to where Liam stood at the kitchen counter. “We’re flying out in the morning,” she said, coiling an arm around his neck and batting her silly eyelashes at him. “Weather permitting, of course.”
“Flying out how?” Jane shuddered inwardly at the edge in her voice.
Liam had used her and abused her. All the time she’d been hiding herself away, confronting her true feelings—and, yes, she might as well face it: wondering if perhaps he might miss her, might realize his feelings for her ran deeper than he’d first thought—he’d been with this woman.
Dear heaven, was whining the best she could offer by way of retaliation?
“The same way I flew in, darling,” Brianna gurgled. “By seaplane. I’d offer to give you a lift back to civilization
as well, except it’s a two-seater aircraft.” She bent a smile on Liam that would have melted the fillings in his teeth if they weren’t so perfect that he’d probably never known a cavity. “Just room for me and one passenger,” she said smugly. “So sorry.”
So she had a pilot’s licence, as well as the kind of sophisticated beauty that left other women at the starting post! Recognizing defeat when it was staring her in the face, Jane managed a shrug and turned to leave. “Have a safe flight,” she said.
She’d been halfway across the porch before he’d wrenched open the door and come after her. “Jane, wait a minute!”
“What for?” she burst out. “So that you can humiliate me a bit more? I’d have thought even you’d be satisfied with what you’ve already accomplished.”
“It’s not how it might seem with Brianna and me.”
She laughed, a horrible hollow sound like something wrung out of a dying creature. “I think you’ve both made it perfectly clear how it is with Brianna and you. If you feel a burning need to offer explanations, I suggest you go to her and try to justify why you kept her waiting tonight while you almost made love with me.”
“I have never made love to Brianna.”
“Of course not. Forgive me! You never make love, do you? You have sex. Or, as you no doubt put it to your like-minded cronies, you like to screw women as long as they don’t expect it to mean anything.”
Under cover of darkness, she blushed and buried her face against her knees at the memory of her parting shot. She’d resorted to vulgarity and defiled one of the most beautiful experiences of her life, just for the satisfaction of leaving him speechless.
The tears did come then, bitter and scalding. Why hadn’t she listened, when he’d warned her he wasn’t the man for her? He was a heathen, a savage. Cruel and unfeeling.
And irresistible. The curve of his mouth when he smiled, the storm in his eyes when he was angry, the rumble of reluctant laughter deep in his chest—what woman wouldn’t be seduced by them?
“But he meant more than that to me,” she sobbed to the uncaring stars. “He made me feel like a woman again.”
Strong arms to hold her; virile, driving strength possessing her; hot, vital seed filling her with the belief that life could begin over again: these had been his gifts to her and for a little while she’d known the deep joy of owning them.
But then he’d taken them away and left her sliding down a slippery slope to despair. To gnawing loneliness, much worse than she’d known when Derek died, because then there’d been mutual pain, mutual regret. Now the loss was all hers. Liam was going on without her, by choice. What woman with any sense would love a man like that?
He came to her just as dawn lightened the sky to the color of ripe watermelon fading into lemonade, the kind made from scratch. Bittersweet and cool.
“Why are you out here?” he said, dropping down beside her on the swing. “I thought you’d still be in bed, sleeping.”
“No,” she said. “I wasn’t tired.”
“You’ve been crying.”
What did he expect? That she’d spent the night drawing cartoons and laughing her fool head off? He’d destroyed her, for pity’s sake! Ground her heart to dust under his heel and not turned a hair while he did it!
“Yes,” she said. “Not for the reasons you might think but because I’ve made an undignified spectacle of myself.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Janie,” he said. “We tried something that never stood a chance of working. We weren’t meant to be, that’s all.”
She ventured a glance at him then, at the fluid, masculine grace of his spine curving forward, at his hands clasped loosely in his lap, at the clean, proud line of his profile limned in morning light, and thought she had never known such pain as that which knifed through her at that moment. “Then why are you here?”
He took a folded slip of paper from his pocket. “These are numbers where I can be reached. I want you to let me know if you should find out you’re pregnant. Promise me you’ll do that, Jane.”
“Keep them,” she said, turning her face away. “I won’t be needing them. My period started late last night.”
Still, he made no move to leave. Unable to bear being so close without touching him, she leaped from the swing and paced to the railing. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” she cried venomously. “You’re completely off the hook, Liam. You can fly away into the sunrise with your stuck-up, condescending wench of a girlfriend and never look back! Isn’t that what you want?”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t know what I want,” he said in a low voice. “I guess the only thing I know for sure is what I can’t have, and I can’t have you, Jane. You deserve better.”
“Oh, save it!” She hurled the words at him, not caring that he saw the tears coursing down her face, not caring that his last memory of her would be when she looked pitiful and ugly and a mess. “I’m sick to death of being handed the same old line all the time, especially when it’s nothing but a fine excuse for not getting involved. You fancy yourself as such a big man, so macho, throwing away your crutches and bearing up under pain at any price! So why don’t you have the guts to face the truth now? Your unwillingness to commit to me has nothing to do with your not being good enough and everything to do with your monumental selfishness. You don’t believe the little homily you’re spouting. You’ve got too much ego for such humility!”
“Ah, Janie,” he said, coming toward her with his hands outstretched and his face a study in bogus regret. “If only it were that simple.”
Last night, an hour ago even, she’d have given the world to fly into his arms. But suddenly, the thought of his touching her had her raising her own hands and warding him off with such strength that he only just managed to keep his footing.
“The only simple thing around here is you, if you think for one minute that you can butter me up with kindness this morning, after everything you pulled last night. I want you off my property and out of my life, Liam McGuire. Now that you know I’m not carrying your baby, I’m sure you’ll be only too happy to oblige me on both counts.”
She didn’t wait to hear his reply. Didn’t show her face to the outside world again until after she’d watched from behind the curtain in her living room and seen the float plane lift off into the bright morning.
Two days later, Don Eagle came to pick her up and take her to the mainland. She didn’t look back as the boat headed south toward Lund. She never wanted to see Bell Island or the sheltered keyhole of the cove where Liam had found her the night she went swimming, or the runabout where they’d made love, ever again.
Indian Summer was long that year, stretching well into October with days of soft blue skies and nights sharp with the promised sting of a winter not yet ready to begin. But not everything hung in postponement. Just after Thanksgiving, when the lie she’d told Liam on that last morning still hadn’t evolved into truth, Jane went to her doctor for confirmation of what she’d secretly known for well over a month.
“No doubt about it,” he said, reappearing minutes after she’d provided the required specimen for the pregnancy test. “There’s a baby on the way, due around the beginning of May, if you’ve got your dates straight, which puts you almost into your second trimester. What took you so long to come and see me, Jane?”
Sam Burgess knew her too well, had seen her through too many crises with Derek, to be taken in by pretense. “Denial,” she said.
“You don’t want this child?”
“I want….”
Liam.
Abruptly, she closed her eyes against the vicious ache of longing that never went away. It had been nearly three months, and still no lessening of the pain of missing him. As long as she lived, she would want Liam.
“An abortion?”
“No!” Her eyes flew open in shock and met Sam’s concerned gaze. “That never crossed my mind.”
“But there’s no husband, is that it?”
“No,” she said. “There’s n
o husband, nor will there be. I’ll be having this baby on my own.”
“Hmm. Does the father know that you’re pregnant?”
“No. And I don’t intend for him ever to find out.”
“You’re facing a major undertaking, Jane. And after what you’ve gone through over the last several years, are you really up to the challenge of single parenthood?”
“Loving a child, caring for someone other than myself, gives me a purpose in life. I don’t see this baby as a burden, Sam.”
“Yet by your own admission, you’ve refused to face up to the fact that you’re pregnant until today. Are you really so sure that you’re ready for the kind of long-term investment you’re facing? Because if you’re at all uncertain, there are other options besides abortion. There’s a very long waiting list of highly qualified couples eager to adopt a baby.”
Give away Liam’s child? “I could never do that,” she said.
“Think it over before you dismiss the idea out of hand. It’s not a decision you should rush into anyway, and I’m sure, whatever you decide, that you’ll put the child’s best interests ahead of anything else.”
Although he didn’t come right out and say so, Sam’s implication was clear enough. If she really cared about her baby, she’d make sure it grew up with two parents and a stable home, not leave it at the mercy of a mother pining for a man she couldn’t have.
The issue plagued her as she stepped out into the busy midtown street. It was shortly after noon, and the sidewalks were crowded with people taking advantage of the weather during their lunch-hour break. Small wonder, then, that she didn’t see Liam and would have walked right past him if he hadn’t blocked her passage.
“Hey,” he said, looking almost as disconcerted as she felt. “Imagine running into you. I thought you worked in the suburbs.”
“I do.” Flustered, she scrambled to find something cool and impersonal to say; something which would erase his last unfortunate impressions of her and, above all, not betray the secret he could never learn. “I…I had an appointment which brought me downtown today, though.”
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