‘Every word,’ Theo said, shouldering open her bedroom door and somehow managing to switch on the light without dropping her. ‘I just chose to ignore it because you must know as well as I do that you’re talking rubbish.’ He placed her on her bed, a luxuriant double bed complete with feather mattress, which had been her one big extravagance when she had begun the task of furnishing her house. He then proceeded to straighten up so that he could stare down at her. ‘You heard what the doctor said. No walking. Now, explain to me how you intend to sort your son out in the morning without getting off the bed. Unless you’ve mastered magic skills no one’s capable of, then it just can’t be done.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and waited for her to refute his baldly logical statement. ‘Which leaves me no option but to stay here. Especially now that you and Michael are no longer an item. I mean…’ Out came the mobile phone again. Abby was beginning to heartily hate the sight of the thing. ‘It wouldn’t really do for the heartbroken fiancé to be called to do nightly duty with the woman who let him down, would it?’ This time his conversation with his brother was brief. A two-minute imparting of information, no more. ‘Nope. No offer to try and patch things up by rushing over to comfort you in your moment of need. Disappointed?’
‘Of course Michael can’t rush over here and babysit me,’ Abby muttered sourly. ‘He works weird hours.’
‘Oh, but I thought that he might just find the wellbeing of his woman more important than supervising a kitchen in a restaurant. After all, overseeing onion chopping and pastry preparation can’t be as important, surely, as coming here to visit you, especially when he’s suddenly found himself cast out into the cold without so much as a formal warning of intent.’
‘That was your fault. You had no right to tell him that I had broken off the engagement. I would have told him myself.’
Theo didn’t bother to answer. Instead he strolled over to her chest of drawers and pulled open the first one. Abby gave a strangled squeak of horror.
‘You need to change,’ he said without turning around. ‘And I’m going to have to help you.’
‘Help me? Help me? Change?’ She squirmed up the bed and her ankle protested with rage at the sudden movement.
‘There. Is this what you sleep in?’ He turned round and dangled her oversized T-shirt from one finger. ‘I’ve looked but I can’t spot anything else that could be passed as nightwear unless your negligées and French knickers are stashed away somewhere else?’ He grinned and the urge to throw something at him was so strong that she actually snarled under her breath.
‘I can get it on myself!’ She watched as he continued to dangle the item in front of her.
‘I’ll need to help you with those jogging things you’ve got on.’
‘I’m not an invalid.’
‘You heard what the doctor said. No pressure on the ankle or risk the consequences. Now, why don’t you start behaving like a good little girl and let me help you?’
He moved towards her and Abby heaved a deep sigh of resignation. To be helpless was bad enough but to be at the mercy of this man was almost unbearable. And he was in a stunningly cheerful mood. She knew why. He had achieved what he had come to do. Not content to trust her to obey his instructions and remove herself from his brother, he had simply taken matters into his own hands and done it for her. She doubted whether he had paused to consider the fallout of his actions. He had simply done what he did best, which was to bypass all obstacles and get to the destination by the shortest route possible. Feelings were minor technicalities that he had no time for. What if theirs had been a real engagement? Abby fretted. How would Michael have been feeling now? In all events, she would have to telephone him as soon as she could and explain what had happened.
In the meantime…
She gritted her teeth and then closed her eyes when Theo slowly and gently extricated her from the trousers. Then he manoeuvred her under the quilt and neatly placed the T-shirt next to her.
‘I’m doing you both a favour,’ he murmured gently and Abby opened her eyes and looked at him with deep scepticism. ‘The thought of all that money must have seemed tempting, especially when you have all those expenses associated with bringing up a child, but can you truthfully say that you would have been happy living with someone you had no feelings for?’
‘I do happen to have a lot of feelings for Michael.’
Strangely enough, that was not what Theo wanted to hear. His mouth tightened as he sat on the bed next to her. ‘You were badly hurt once. Maybe you do have feelings for Michael, but maybe they’re the wrong kind of feelings.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I may have been wrong about you,’ he mused slowly. ‘I assumed that you were little more than a common gold-digger, out to get your sweaty little hands on my brother’s money, whatever it took. But, thinking back on it, you didn’t really fit the image. Not that there is a gold standard for the gold-digger. They come in all shapes and sizes!’ His dark eyes roved over her face until Abby felt herself begin to go warm under the lazy scrutiny. But something inside her unfolded with pleasure at the thought that he was no longer writing her off as the lowest of the low. She told herself that she couldn’t care less what the man thought of her, but that didn’t stop the little bubble of pleasure, even though her face remained coolly impassive.
‘Should I be pleased that you’ve changed your mind? When you’ve taken matters into your own hands and told Michael that I no longer wanted to…’ she couldn’t bring herself to say the word marry ‘…to be his fiancée? Leaving him to think that I was discussing my personal affairs with you before I had discussed them with him?’
‘Regrettable, I admit.’
‘And that’s all you have to say about it?’ She stoked herself up to some healthy anger because he was leaning over her now, hands squarely placed on either side of her prone body, which was quivering with shameful awareness. ‘You are the most obnoxious…’
‘I know. I think you’ve told me that before. But I still make you feel things my brother never did and never could. Admit it. I don’t know whether you would have gone ahead with a wedding if I hadn’t come along, but I did and I think we both know that I’ve done you a favour.’
‘How can you sit there and calmly justify your behaviour?’
‘It’s all in the name of truth,’ Theo drawled. ‘And I am honest enough to admit when I have made a mistake. Of course, you were marrying Michael for the wrong reasons, but the intent was not quite as straightforward as I originally thought. You are a single mother with a deep mistrust of the opposite sex. Michael was the un-threatening protector, the safe haven. No surge of emotions to deal with but then…no chemistry either. It would have been a match made in hell.’
Abby watched the dark, devilishly sexy face with reluctant fascination. So much right and so much wrong. ‘I don’t need any surge of emotions,’ she heard herself say. ‘I had those once and they didn’t do me any good.’
‘Wrong man,’ Theo murmured. In the dim lighting the unsteady rise and fall of her breasts was mesmerising. The vision that had been haunting him for weeks rose into his head with disturbing clarity, the memory of those breasts and the feel of them under his hands, the taste of them. He had to get out of this room and quick or he would end up behaving like a sad besotted fool, happy to take advantage of a woman who literally couldn’t run away from him. Sad he had never been and besotted…well, the word was simply not part of his vocabulary. He pulled back and stood up, quickly spinning round on his heel to hide the betraying bulge of his erection.
‘I’ll need a sheet,’ he said abruptly, only turning round to face her when he was confident that his body was once more under control. ‘I can sleep downstairs on the sofa. If you leave the bedroom door open and I leave the sitting room door open, I should be able to hear you if you call out for anything.’
‘There’s no need…’
‘There’s every need.’ Theo’s voice was harsh. ‘It’s my fault you took that fall in the first place and it’s my
responsibility to make sure that you don’t do any further damage by trying to put weight on the foot.’
‘How is it your fault?’ She had visions of him creeping up the stairs in the middle of the night to check on her, seeing her in all her sleeping vulnerability.
‘If you hadn’t been running away from me, you would never have tripped on that step down. If you ended up doing untold damage to your foot because I took off now, I would carry the weight of it on my mind for the rest of my life.’
It made it easier to think that his motives were entirely selfish. Abby could breathe a sigh of relief at that because it fitted the category she was increasingly desperate to fit him into. The minute he climbed out of his neatly labelled box, she seemed to lose control of the steering wheel, as she had just then, when he had been sitting there on the bed, being perfectly controlled and rational and still managing to send every pulse in her body racing wildly out of control.
‘And we can’t have that, can we?’ she said, coolly sarcastic. ‘There are sheets in the airing cupboard on the landing and a couple of spare pillows as well. I always have those in case Jamie wants a friend over for the night.’
‘Right. And his school is…?’
‘I can get him to walk to school with one of the mums.’
‘I’ll take him.’ The expression in his eyes didn’t encourage her to think that a debate was on the agenda, and she briefly gave him directions. All along, she had been thinking about herself, thinking about the nightmare of having him around, even for one night, and what that did to her fragile equilibrium. She hadn’t spared a thought for the fact that he was a high-powered businessman and this unforeseen incident must have been the last thing he would have expected or wanted, but he had stayed because she was physically incapable of doing all the things she had vehemently told him she could do.
‘Thank you,’ Abby said simply. ‘I know you’re staying here tonight because you feel obliged to, but I’m very…grateful anyway.’
‘There’s no need to act as though the words are being torn out of you.’ He gave her a crooked smile. ‘Didn’t you know that there’s nothing a man likes better than a woman he feels the need to protect?’
And he would make any woman the best protector was the first thing that flashed through her head. Before she acknowledged that he was simply being as courteous about the inconvenience as he could. She smiled faintly at him. ‘I’ll remember that when I’m yelling for you at two in the morning because I need another dose of painkillers.’ And he wouldn’t object. Even with her, someone he disliked, whatever he said about not believing her to be the person he had first thought. Abby felt a sudden shift in her thinking. She had once imagined Oliver to be like that, but time had proved her wrong. He had been monstrously selfish and exploitative, but Theo…
She didn’t want to go there, though. Instead, she waited until he had left the room, then she reached for the phone by her bed and dialled Michael’s mobile number. He had amazing stamina and was in wicked form when he recognised her voice.
‘He thought you took our broken engagement very well,’ Abby said, cutting him off in mid speculation about his brother spending the night in her house. ‘So, just to let you know, I told him that we had discussed the possibility that marriage might not be the ideal route for us to take.’
‘I’ll be suitably heartbroken.’
‘Michael…you could always come clean.’
‘I prefer to play the heartbroken ex-fiancé, thanks.’ He laughed but changed the subject, asking her about her foot, for details of how it had happened, chipping in with comments. Then, obviously in no particular rush despite the lateness of the hour, he gave her a long description of the jazz band who had played at his night club.
‘I can pop in over the next few days and make sure that you and Jamie have enough to eat,’ he concluded.
‘Your idea of buying food doesn’t cater sufficiently for someone who can’t make it down the stairs to cook or for a five-year-old palate, come to think of it.’
‘I’ll pop in anyway. Who’s going to be available while you’re off the pegs? Will you be able to get Rebecca over to help out?’
Not a chance, thought Abby. Her indebtedness to one person was already bad enough without extending it to anyone else. Whatever the doctor said, she was pretty sure that she could hobble to the kitchen and, just so long as Jamie was content with the television set and a couple of board games, she would be fine. She was certain of it. What was the point of two legs if you couldn’t make use of the good one when the other one was out of action? But she knew that if she mentioned any such thing Michael would arrange for someone to come and take over the responsibility of her house for a few days. That, she thought drily, was the one thing his privileged background had granted him. He was always confidently sure that he could achieve anything. When she had first met him, she had assumed the trait came from a willingness to take a risk and, yes, he had taken risks, but now she knew that maybe he had always been aware of the fact that if he fell he would have fallen on a cushion. Not quite the same as a concrete floor.
She hurriedly assured him that she had everything in hand and was even quicker to inform him that his brother would be leaving first thing in the morning.
Which didn’t seem to be the case when she surfaced to sunlight making its way weakly through her curtains and a polite knocking on her door, which was a few inches ajar.
Theo Toyas didn’t look like a man suitably kitted out for heading back to his fast track in London. Abby struggled up a little further, biting back the sharp reminder of yesterday’s little fall which her foot was issuing, and glanced at her watch. Ten-thirty! She yelped.
‘You were dead to the world.’ He strolled towards her, two small white tablets in one hand, a glass of water in the other. ‘So I didn’t wake you and I made sure that Jamie was as quiet as a mouse. He rather enjoyed the game.’
‘You shouldn’t have let me lie in!’ Abby threw aside the quilt but the simple act of trying to swing her legs out of bed made her cry out in pain.
‘No. I should have shaken you till you got up and then insisted you come downstairs!’ He handed her the pills and, as she swallowed them, she listened as he filled in the gaps of her missing hours. While she had been cheerfully sleeping he had been up since six, had handled Jamie, taken him to school and on the way back had stopped off to buy himself a change of clothes and some food. Oh, and of course, collect her prescription.
‘Now—’ he sat on the bed, as sexy as hell in a short-sleeved striped cotton shirt and a pair of light trousers ‘—I’ll help you to the bathroom. Then some breakfast. I’ll carry you downstairs. Unless you’d like me to bring you it on a tray?’
Abby was aghast. This did not look like a man on the verge of vacating her premises. This looked like a man taking his responsibilities a little too seriously for her liking. And why did he have to look so damned good? She felt the soft hang of her breasts brushing the T-shirt, felt her nipples stiffening, and scowled at him.
‘I’m sorry I messed up your night, but I’m not going to mess up your day. Don’t you have to return to London? For meetings? Michael said that you hardly ever had a minute to spare when you came over here.’
‘Actually, I am rather busy at the moment, but that’s the joy of this modern life we now live. Have work can travel. Fortunately I automatically slung my laptop in the car with me when I drove from London, so I’m more than capable of keeping a tab on what’s going on from here. I’ve had to cancel a couple of meetings, but I have people who are primed to slip into place whenever I can’t make something.’ He shot her a wry smile that sent tingles racing up and down her spine. ‘I pay them enough. Now and again they need to justify their hefty salaries.’
‘But…’
‘I’ll run a bath.’ He left her floundering in what felt like a sudden onset of quicksand under her feet and was back before she could resign herself to the inevitable.
‘Just for the day, then,’ she sa
id as he lifted her smoothly from the bed and carried her to the bathroom, turning her sideways through the door so that her foot was protected.
‘If you say so,’ Theo murmured agreeably. He could feel her warm and vulnerable in his arms, could hear the machinations of her brain as she dealt with his presence, was aware of the rapid beating of her heart. He felt like a boy of eighteen again, invigorated, challenged and prey to runaway emotions…
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE woman was a bag of contradictions.
He stared at the screen of his laptop computer, which he had set up on the kitchen table, making damned sure that the leads connecting it were well out of harm’s way. His mind, however, was not focused on the emails blinking at him. For once, his formidable mind, which had been meticulously trained to concentrate on work in whatever place in which it presented itself, was wandering.
With an impatient grunt he stood up and wasted time making himself a cup of coffee while he wondered what she was doing in the sitting room. For someone who had been prepared to sell herself into a loveless marriage in an attempt to provide financial stability for her child she had been remarkably prudish when it came to having him help her with the bath. In fact, she had locked him out and done it herself, even if it had taken five times longer than necessary, a minor fact which he had pointed out several times through the closed door with increasing impatience. She had only brought herself to ask for his help when it came to manoeuvring herself downstairs, and even then she had refused to be carried, insisting on hobbling the best she could and tartly reminding him of the doctor’s orders about making sure the foot started receiving some exercise. He had only agreed because the swelling had reduced and the painkillers were efficient.
This evening Michael would be coming round to visit, taking time out of his hectic schedule to cluck around the woman who had dumped him. It didn’t make sense. Theo had never been dumped by a woman but he was damned sure that if he had been the last thing he would have wanted to do was clap eyes on the perpetrator, never mind socialise with her over a civilised cup of tea. The whole business was mystifying and Theo abhorred mysteries. He eyed the laptop and, with a sudden burst of decision, tipped his coffee into the sink, snatched up the computer and headed for the sitting room.
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