“You’re lying. You need me. Your body sings beneath my touch.”
“What you’re talking about is sex,” she countered, knowing full well she lied. “Simply sex.”
In one swift movement, he pulled her to him, his body hard up against hers, and wrapped his arms about her waist. “There’s nothing simple about this.” And his mouth covered hers, taking her breath in a kiss that sought to prove her lie.
Leah steeled herself. She had to resist, had to. She arched away from him, missing his body heat instantly. “You’re right,” she said, praying for courage where she knew the frailty of her heart would be her downfall. What she really wanted to do was hold on tight, tell him she loved him, and if he didn’t love her, then that would be okay.
She fortified her flagging resolve. “We are good in bed, but that will never, ever be enough.” She twisted out of his embrace. She deserved better this time, and if she had to wait forever for it, she would. Mac needed not to simply want her in his bed, but need her as much as she needed him. “We’ll be gone in the morning.”
His brows creased, his expression strained. “Gone?”
“Charlee and I are moving out. Temporary is over.”
Chapter Fourteen
“But I don’t want to go, Mummy. And Daddy will be all alone.”
Leah’s heart broke, but she wouldn’t relent. “It’ll be an adventure, Charlee.”
“Not going, don’t want adventure, don’t want to go.” Charlee stamped her foot, folding her arms as her bottom lip began to tremble. Then the tears fell, and Leah’s heart broke all over again.
Lifting Charlee to her lap, she let the little girl cry until there were no more tears, just as she wanted to cry too. But she had to be strong and resist the temptation to stay.
She opened the mobile home brochure, hoping that if she involved Charlee, it might go some way to appeasing her heartache. “Now, which one shall we choose?”
Thankfully the insurance company had assessed the damage and offered to pay out, but it would be months before she could begin to rebuild.
That had been three weeks ago. Now they lived in a mobile home parked on the property. It wasn’t so bad, as they had electricity and running water and the familiar landscape she loved so much.
In the past, a home meant order and stability. Now, the mere act of sticking to a routine kept Leah functioning at best.
Up, breakfast, kindergarten for Charlee, who, with the extra physiotherapy Mac insisted he continue to pay, progressed daily, and so bit by bit life became normal. She worked with the pickers, relieved as she watched the first of the harvest come in. But was she happy?
How could she be? Her nights were spent lying, watching the stars, dreaming of Mac’s strong arms around her, imagining his kisses and then crying herself to sleep. Sleep, however, only brought lonely dreams, and she would wake with tears streaming down her cheeks, cries for Mac breaking the nighttime silence. Happiness didn’t come anywhere close. She was miserable, lonely, and she missed him so very much.
The morning chill of late March gave way to the first hint of the coming autumn. Leah had often wondered how New Zealand’s pioneers managed with the differing seasons. No familiar gentle landscapes but the harsh bush of a land littered with volcanoes and thermal activity and rugged mountains. No white Christmases, but the blazing heat of summer.
This morning Leah found it harder than ever to crawl out of bed, yet despite the nausea she’d been battling the last few days, it had to be done. After a quick shower in the miniscule cubicle called a bathroom, she scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. The stark changes in her appearance shocked her. Purple-black shadows gave her that panda-bear look, and she’d already lost her golden summer tan. She spun from the mirror. “Toughen up,” she chastised herself.
She didn’t need reminding that she’d found love and let it go. And that it was over.
Sitting on the banquette that was sitting room seating by day and at night turned into Leah’s bed, Charlee called to her. “Mummy, there’s a car coming up the drive.”
Leah cocked an ear, and sure enough, she could hear the distinct crunch of tires over gravel, and the grunt as the driver changed down gears and the vehicle took the last steep bend.
“It’s Daddy, Daddy.” Charlee flung the door wide, and before Leah could stop her, she jumped down the step, her limp no impediment. Leah wanted to be annoyed, but the delight at seeing her daughter making progress filled her heart with joy.
The moment Mac exited the familiar silver Mercedes, Charlee leapt at him. He held her sky-high, twirling her around and around. Charlee’s bubbling laughter echoed across the valley, Mac’s joining it, a sound that seared across Leah’s heart.
She stole a moment to remember it all, hold it close and savor it. Then there was silence as Mac approached, and her skin prickled right through to her scalp.
“Hello, Leah.”
He looked…the same. No. Better. Wonderful. Dressed casually in jeans and polo and a pair of Texas-style cowboy boots, he walked toward her. He waved, giving her a tentative smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. They were dimmer somehow, the sparkle gone.
Leah swallowed back the lump in her throat. He tempted her still, and damn it, she shouldn’t let him do that. She should have been prepared and shut those feelings down in an instant.
“What do you want?” she asked flatly.
“I’ve come to offer a hand.”
Before she answered, she looked across at Charlee, who seemed intent on chasing a monarch butterfly and, satisfied her daughter was far enough away not to hear her conversation with Mac, said, “I don’t need your help. I’ve the pickers still hard at work.”
“I know, but I’m here anyway, and before you refuse, I thought you should know I phoned your mobile the other day. Charlee answered it and asked me to come.”
“She shouldn’t have done that.”
Mac shrugged. “Too late now. Besides, I couldn’t refuse her. Can you?”
Damn it, he’d scored a direct hit. “Make sure it’s the last time, Mac. It’s hard enough for Charlee. She’s already lost her father.”
The hint of a smile that had been present dissolved. He looked to Charlee, then shoved his hands in jeans pockets, shuffling slightly. “I’m fully aware of that.”
But he reached out to her, too quickly for her to retreat, and his fingers grazed ever so lightly along her cheek. She held her breath while wanting his touch to go on and on.
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Leah. You may hate me, but I’m still the man you want in your bed,” he murmured, stepping closer.
Leah withdrew and quickly closed herself and her heart off to temptation. “What we want makes no difference. One of the things I try to teach Charlee is the consequences of her actions. For good actions, there are good consequences, and for bad behavior, bad consequences.”
“And not believing you, not trusting, having you investigated, falls into the last category, I guess?”
Oh Mac. Not loving her was worse.
A sad sigh slipped from her chest, and she huddled closer into the entrance, taking respite from the hard metal wall at her back as if it would ground her, while all she really wanted to do was throw her arms around him. “Don’t forget the custody documents. You chose your actions. The rest follows.”
Mac’s curse was barely audible as he turned away slightly, dragging a hand through his hair. It had grown a bit since she’d last seen him, and now brushed over his collar, definitely not what went with millionaire suits and business deals. He faced her again, mouth grim, eyes searching hers. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Yes it does, she thought sadly.
“We make a good team,” he added as if he’d read her mind and tried to counter her every thought.
“In bed.” Dear Lord, she wished she hadn’t said that. It was the truth. But it also wasn’t enough.
“Is that so bad?”
Leah dug deep, fighting her instinct
to accept less and take anything he offered, but that would never make her happy. She wanted it all: the white picket fence, the family, but most of all she wanted a man at her side who loved her for who she was, what she was, and would commit to her for the right reason. For love.
She pointed to the shed that ran at right angles to the entrance to the grove. “Get yourself a bucket and knee pads.”
“While you put a spear through my heart?” he chuckled, bringing a sudden lightness to the moment.
“I might, but then I wasn’t sure you had one.” And with that, she turned tail and retreated into the mobile home, waging an internal war, biting back urge to turn round and fall right back to Mac’s arms.
She couldn’t stop loving him. Love, however, couldn’t get in the way of the last of the harvest. It would be a frantic race against the forecasted rain the Met Office promised in the next forty-eight hours, and it meant she and her pickers would need to work around the clock to get the olives to the factory for processing.
True to his promise, Mac worked hard. But hard work made him strip.
The T-shirt came off by midmorning, his back swathed with a fine sheen of perspiration. Every time he stood, massaging his lower back, he wiped a hand across his brow and brushed away the single curl that enticed Leah beyond redemption.
Then the man caught her ogling him. “Like what you see?”
She gritted her teeth and decided on a different tack. Pasting a cheeky smile on her face, she raised one brow and gave him a naughty wink over her shoulder. “Careful you don’t burn, darling.”
“Burn? Who’s burning for who?” He rubbed a hand across his chin and day-old stubble and winked at her.
Leah spun away, gut churning. And she thought she could win against the testosterone-packed Mac Grainger? Instead, she tried escaping. No such luck. The man followed her through the sentinel rows of olive trees. Just as she reached the far gate, his long fingers snaked around her bare forearm. “No use running, Leah.”
“Who’s running?”
“You. You’re scared of me, but you don’t have to be.” He stepped toward her, his face all serious, and Leah’s pulse snapped.
Resting his big hands stained with the juice of olives on her hips, he lowered his lips to hers.
His kiss was slow, hot, burning. And everything in between. Leah gloried in it, wanting more and more and more, and wound her arms around his neck, nostrils flaring as she inhaled his distinctly male smell. She held on tight until her heartbeat hammered against his, mimicking it. They were one and the same.
Hidden in their world of passion, surrounded by a canopy of olive trees burgeoning with the abundance of sun-soaked life, she gave herself to his kisses. Kisses that grazed across her skin, heated it to boiling point. Kisses that promised and drew from her all she could give and then more.
But as a crow screeched overhead, she jerked back, mortified at what she had done. How easily she could give in. “We can’t…”
“We did.”
“But I can’t…” Oh lordy, it was happening all over again. She stared into dark eyes that glittered. They said so much yet so little, and he still didn’t say the words she desperately wanted to hear. She wanted to say she didn’t love him, put him off, send him away, but those words wouldn’t form, her mouth too thoroughly kissed. She slicked the tip of her tongue across her lips. Another foolish move. He’d branded her. Her eyes shuttered, and she wished she could blank everything out.
At last she found her voice. “Okay, there’s a certain chemistry between us,” she admitted, “but there’s no trust, Mac. Nothing will work without trust.”
He dropped his hands from her shoulders. “So I guess this is it?”
She looked away, not wanting him to see her disappointment that he hadn’t tried harder to persuade her, fight for her. “I guess.” She shrugged away her disillusionment, and Mac left her then, alone with sad thoughts of what could have been, but would never be.
After hours in the grove worrying about the threat of rain, which thankfully had held off so far, Leah sank, exhausted, into bed, but her sleep was dogged with unending dreams of Mac.
She woke late and, to top it off, with a migraine direct from hell. Already up, Charlee ran about, albeit in the restricted confines of their small home, her incessant chatter about Daddy this and Daddy that driving a nail in Leah’s heart with every syllable.
As her accompanying nausea swelled, it took all Leah’s energy to bite her tongue. About to head off with Charlee to kindergarten she made a final dash to the bathroom as the combination of headache and unsettled stomach finally became too much.
Her head throbbed, and waves of nausea curled up from her stomach, the acidic wretch burning her throat. Hauling herself upright, she wiped the sheen of sweat from her face with a wet facecloth. Through the damp curls plastered across her face, she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
She looked…dreadful. Sick. But it wasn’t the headache that held her captive as reality whirled through the miasma. Headaches from hell she could cope with. But this new reality struck fear into her heart. Her hand fell to her stomach. Still flat. Not even a hint—except for the nausea that visited every morning.
A baby? Mac’s baby.
Chapter Fifteen
Mac stayed away, but every waking moment he’d called himself every kind of fool. Hours, days, weeks, he’d spent hunched over a computer, trialing different marketing plans as the opening date for his flagship hotel neared, drowning his brain in minutiae. Anything to forget Leah.
And for what?
He told himself he didn’t bloody care—and knew himself to be a liar.
He found himself dreaming of a woman he couldn’t have.
“And whose fault is that?”
His. His. His. His entire fault.
“Bloody fool.”
Somehow, he had to put it right.
Tossing aside the report he’d spent far too long trying to decipher, Mac stared out his office window and across the harbor. His thoughts were chaotic. What should have been a short assessment had become a battle for concentration.
A rap sounded at his door, but before he could answer, Connor barged in. One look at him and Mac knew he didn’t have a hope in hell of preventing an imminent lecture.
His friend dropped into the club chair opposite Mac’s desk. “What are you doing?”
“Wallowing in self pity,” Mac answered with all honesty.
“Thought so.”
“Pathetic, isn’t it?”
“Definitely.”
Mac sniffed his disinterest.
“I know you’re not in the mood for a sermon,” Connor continued, far too cheerfully as far as Mac was concerned, “but you’re getting it anyway.”
“Nice of you.”
“Hey, what can I say?” Connor grinned, hands palm up as he offered a relaxed shrug. “I’m a nice guy, your best man. I have to look out for you.”
“Says who?”
“Me. Besides, it’s in the ‘How to be a Best Man’ advice book.”
Mac scratched his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m your mate, so shut up and listen.”
Mac offered a mock salute and sat back. He knew whatever Connor said would be right, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any of it, didn’t know if he was that brave.
“You should be out chasing her down. You’re in love, Mac, m’boy.”
“Forget it.”
A satisfied smile cut the corners of Connor’s mouth. “Can’t do that.”
It was the first time Mac had actually heard the “L” word out loud. It scared the hell out of him, and he hadn’t even uttered it. He tried denial. “Your imagination is on overdrive.”
“Just like your libido.”
“And you think I’m in love?”
“You’re exhibiting the classic symptoms.”
Mac eyed his friend warily. His gut churned, brain waging a silent battle with emotions he struggled to
acknowledge, not sure he even wanted to.
“Let’s see.” Connor counted off on the fingers of his right hand. “You can’t concentrate.”
“Where is this going? I’m warning you.”
“You care, Mac.”
Oh shit. That’s where.
Mac held back his response. Silence was best. He’d play his cards right, get Connor and his ideas outta here.
“You’ve got it bad, mate.”
“Bad?” Could it be fixed?
Connor offered him a knowing smile. “Very bad. Lust is replete, replaced by love.”
That bad! “Tough, I’m not interested.”
Liar.
He reached for the file that had been sitting on his desk all day that he hadn’t even bothered to open and did so now. Maybe Dear Abby in drag would get the hint.
“Tell me Leah’s beautiful body isn’t crowding in on your brain space.”
Mac kept his head down, not actually reading a bloody thing, the type print a blurry patch of black on white. “Shut up,” he growled.
Connor smiled. “See, told you so.”
Damn it. His tactics weren’t working, but, and Mac hated to admit it, the man was right. He had it real bad.
“So what are you going to do about her?”
“Damned if I know.” He dropped the file back to his desk and found himself staring at the mound of paperwork still to be attacked. Deals. All about deals he’d been concocting, negotiating, building his empire—and for what?
His friend chuckled. “Yep. Very, very bad.”
“Shut up, Connor, I’m thinking.”
“She’s a good woman, Mac.”
He looked Connor dead in the eye. “I know.” And he’d screwed up, taken his cockeyed ideas about a woman he knew nothing about and who his brother had maligned, all to appease his own shortcomings. Then he’d promised marriage on temporary grounds so Leah’s guardianship would be safe.
A half truth.
What he wanted was to keep her in his bed.
What he wanted was to keep her in his life.
Hell! He should have realized then and run. He could do temporary, but now he was thinking permanent.
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