His own hands slid up her body to curve her ribcage then tightened painfully, stopping her from moving away from him. ‘Then give us this weekend!’ he urged. ‘One last wild, beautiful weekend, Jemma, to lose ourselves in each other before we must part!’
Oh, she was tempted, so severely tempted. She wanted him and he wanted her. It was like manna from heaven to her aching heart. But she dared not give in to it. She knew even as she hovered on that fine dangerous line between self-delusion and sanity that just in this last week since she accepted her condition the changes in her body had been too obvious to dare take the risk of him noticing them—and ultimately drawing the right conclusions.
So, ‘No,’ she breathed, and took the last vital step which would separate them forever. ‘I’m sorry, Leon, but I can’t.’
‘Cannot or will not?’ he mocked, changing from sweet to bitter in response to her rejection.
‘Can’t, Leon—can’t!’ she choked out wretchedly, then whirled away from him, the tears blinding her eyes as she snatched up her coat, desperate to get away from him before her control snapped altogether.
‘Jemma—!’ She was at the door when his harsh voice brought her to a stumbling halt. She didn’t turn, and there was a tension in the short silence which followed that sent violent shudders of reaction spurring through her body while she prayed that he would just let her go while she still had the strength to do it. ‘Take care of yourself,’ was all he said in the end, quietly and so gently that she almost crumpled in a heap of misery on the floor.
She nodded her downbent head. ‘And you,’ she whispered, then left quickly without looking back.
He didn’t try to stop her again, and for that she was grateful. Her heart was breaking and if she’d stayed in his company a moment longer he would have seen it happen.
* * *
Jemma was sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through the morning newspaper while chewing desultorily on a slice of lightly toasted wholemeal bread when the doorbell rang.
‘I’ll get it!’ Trina called from the hallway, and Jemma grimaced with relief, glad to be doing what most pregnant women did first thing in the morning and keeping as still as possible while she coaxed her stomach not to give up on the meagre amount of food and liquid she had managed to swallow.
Only most women lost this inconvenient malady three months into their condition. Jemma, on the other hand, was now well into her fifth month with no let-up in the sickness. Morning sickness, afternoon sickness, evening sickness—you name it, she suffered it.
It showed, too, she grimly acknowledged as she felt that old familiar churning begin in her stomach. For an otherwise perfectly healthy pregnant woman, she looked hagged to death. The inability to hold down more than half of her daily intake of food had certainly taken its toll.
She weighed less now than she had at the beginning of her pregnancy. And, although her hair shone with a thick golden lustre that her doctor assured her was the clearest sign that she was doing fine, the rest of her looked thin and gaunt—except for the bulge forming in front of her, that was. She glanced at it. Her mound, she called it. ‘The lump’. ‘Leon’s parting gift’, since he had never quite managed to come up with anything for that one special gift he owed her.
But as for the rest of her—she wouldn’t give it mirror-space if she could avoid it: bruised eyes, pale cheeks. And a distinct lack of energy which seemed to require every ounce of determination to get her through each day.
It really wasn’t fair.
A bad dose of the flu just after she’d broken off with Leon hadn’t helped. If she’d thought the virus she hadn’t had had been bad enough, then the real thing had proved to be twice as awful. Trina blamed it on all the emotional stress she had been under. And Jemma could not really argue with her about that. It had seemed, that day she’d challenged misery to do its worst and told Leon that she was not prepared to uproot her whole life for him, that the emotional stress could not get any worse. She had been wrong. The constant sickness kept her in a permanent state of taut readiness for the next bout. Fear for the baby’s health had her creeping about like an invalid, afraid that at any moment she would dislodge the poor thing with her constant retching. And if the doctor had not assured her that despite it all—the flu and the sickness—the baby was doing fine, she had a suspicion she might well have given up the ghost and taken to her bed to die languidly.
She felt so rough. And she missed Leon. It hurt most of the time even to think about him. Yet she thought about him constantly, a never-ending circle of self-inflicted misery which in no way helped her present condition.
On a brighter note, Leon’s take-over of the huge American shipping company had made the headlines several times this week, the papers singing the praises of the Greek tycoon who had managed to turn the company’s fortunes around with such devastating speed. This morning’s article said:
Leon Stephanades, the strong arm of the Leonadis Corporation, has worked a miracle on the old company. With heavy investment and a bomb up the backsides of all those who believed themselves to be on to a cushy number under the old regime, he has managed to secure contracts that have set all those mocking doubters in his own family by their ears. His father took time off from his second son’s wedding celebrations to concede last night, ‘Leon has a nose for a good risk’, as their stock on the market hit an all-time high. What Dimitri Stephanades forbore to add was that this success came despite the way he had tied his son’s hands over the last year by refusing to give him carte blanche on this venture. One must ask, though, if it is sensible to tie the hands of a man like Leon Stephanades. And whether maybe it is time the old man abdicated his power to his elder son.
Jemma had read and re-read the article, simply because it told her more about Leon than she had ever learned from the man himself. Namely the fact that there was someone above him who could tie his hands. Then there was the fact that he had a brother at all.
‘Well, lump,’ she murmured to her slowly steadying stomach, ‘your daddy is certainly a clever devil. No wonder I was worth dropping if this was what he was going after.’ And she stared down at the two aerial photographs where the vast square acreage of part of New York’s dockland was shown in ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison. One photo showed its dry docks half deserted of both products and people, but in the other the whole place seemed to be a veritable hive of constructive activity.
‘Jemma...’ Trina’s voice sounded tentative to say the least.
‘What?’ she asked, glancing up from the newspaper article.
‘Trouble,’ Trina bluntly announced and put an envelope down in front of her.
Jemma stared at it, a cold shiver of alarm skittering down her spine. Like Trina, she recognised the bold scrawl instantly. And, like Trina, she knew it could only mean trouble. ‘Hell,’ she muttered.
Trina pulled out the chair beside her and sat down. ‘What can he want?’
‘I don’t know.’ In all honesty, she had not expected to hear from Leon again. This had come as a shock.
‘Hadn’t you better open it and find out?’
I would much rather not, Jemma thought ruefully, but even as she was thinking it her fingers were working tremulously at the seal. Dry-mouthed, she stared at the few hastily scrawled lines before their meaning began to sink in. It said:
I am due in London Friday. I would like to see you. Have dinner with me? Shall call for you at eight. L.
Her heart gave a pathetic little leap, then began to palpitate so fast that she could barely breathe, her lips going as dry as her mouth. The mere idea of him being so close as in London made her want to weep with longing. Then she was instantly hardening herself. There was no room in her life for that kind of weakness now.
‘What does it say?’ Trina asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said, and handed the note to Trina.
Trina read it slowly, her usually open face studiedly impassive, then she looked at Jemma. ‘I think you should go,’ she elected q
uietly.
‘Is that your idea of a joke?’ Jemma derided, sitting back in her chair and pointedly placing her hands on the top of her rounded stomach.
‘No.’ Trina shook her head. ‘I mean it. I think you should go and meet him...I think it’s time, Jemma, for you to ask for his help.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ she snapped, going to get up from the table, but Trina stopped her by grabbing hold of one of her hands.
‘You’ll stay here and hear me out!’ she insisted. ‘Jem,’ she appealed at the other girl’s glowering hostility, ‘carrying his baby has been harder than you anticipated! It’s weakened your health! Left you without a job—’
‘I quit working as a temp because I couldn’t stand being shunted around all over the place!’ she reminded Trina angrily. ‘It had nothing to do with my condition!’
‘It had everything to do with your condition!’ Trina sighed. ‘You were off sick so often they had to let you go—you know they did!’
‘Which has nothing to do with my meeting Leon!’
‘It does when you’re only just managing to exist on social handouts,’ Trina said bluntly.
‘Thanks,’ she muttered, thinking of all the things she had to go without so that she could pay her share for living here. ‘Rub it in, why don’t you?’
‘I am not trying to rub anything in!’ Trina cried. ‘Jem—Leon has a responsibility to help you!’
‘He does not!’ she snapped, and walked away.
‘When are you going to stop being so stubborn?’ Trina demanded, following her with a determined look on her face. ‘What right have you to decide what Leon may or may not want? It’s no use you tripping off to the bathroom in the hopes I won’t follow you because I will!’ she warned as Jemma turned in that direction. ‘You’re on your last legs, love, and if Leon is holding out a hand towards you you’ve got to take it!’
She turned at that, blue eyes flashing in a way they had not done for months now. ‘Since when has he become flavour of the month for you?’ she gibed. ‘I always got the impression that you thought him the worst thing to happen to me!’
‘I did,’ Trina conceded. ‘And I still do. But it doesn’t alter the fact that he did happen, and the results of that are staring me right in the face!’
‘Hear that, lump?’ Jemma said acidly to her stomach. ‘Your aunty Trina is having a go at you!’
Despite herself, Trina had to laugh. ‘I wish you would stop talking to that thing as if it were alive,’ she protested drily.
‘It is alive,’ Jemma pointed out. ‘And my problem.’ Her hand possessively covered the lump. ‘No one else’s.’
‘Wrong,’ Trina disagreed. ‘That lump has a father. Do you honestly have the right to deprive it of that?’
No answer—simply because Jemma did not have one, since it was one of the very things she had agonised over herself since she and Leon had split up.
‘I’m still not going to meet him,’ she said with a stubborn thrust of her full bottom lip. ‘Leave it, Tri!’ she cried when Trina opened her mouth to argue again. ‘Just—leave it!’ she whispered, and turned away, leaving Trina standing there staring helplessly after her as she locked herself in her bedroom.
By the time she reappeared, Trina had left the flat to go to work. In the spotlessly clean kitchen, lying like a pointed threat in the dead centre of the scrubbed table, was Leon’s note. Jemma sat down, drawing the piece of paper towards her.
She read it slowly, wanting to read more warmth into the few short sentences than was actually there and knowing that it would be folly to try. Friends, she reminded herself. We parted friends—or at least we didn’t part enemies, she corrected ruefully, remembering the way she had run out of the house. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he had said, as a friend would say to a friend. This note was just a friend wanting to look up a friend while he was in town.
He would be hurt when she turned him down. ‘It hurts me to turn you down,’ she whispered, a flush of hot tears blurring her eyes. But she folded the letter back into its envelope anyway. ‘I’m sorry, lump,’ she murmured as she stood up again. ‘But it just can’t be.’
When Trina returned late that afternoon, Jemma was tossing a light salad in the kitchen. ‘I’m whacked,’ the other girl said, throwing herself down into a chair. ‘We’ve had to spring-clean a six-bedroomed town house from top to bottom today. You know what these old houses are like,’ she sighed. ‘All twelve-foot-high ceilings with intricate cornices specifically designed to gather dust.’ She stretched tiredly then rotated her shoulders, wincing when the aching muscles protested. ‘Tomorrow we re-hang the curtains—huge heavy things with swags and flounces—but at least when we’ve done that it’ll be finished.’ She picked up her mug and gulped thirstily at her tea.
‘That’s the house near Grosvenor Square, isn’t it?’ Jemma asked lightly. Since giving up her own job, Jemma had taken over Trina’s office work for her and over the last month or two she had become quite familiar with Maids in Waiting’s customer roll.
Trina had gone still, her face coming out of her mug to look narrowly at Jemma. She wasn’t a fool; she knew exactly what Jemma was going to do. With a jerk, Jemma fished a letter from her pocket and placed it on the table. ‘Tomorrow is Friday, and I want to be sure Leon will receive this or I would have sent it by post today,’ she explained. ‘Will you take it for me, Trina—please?’
Trina was a long time answering, her expression difficult to interpret as she looked from Jemma’s pale, defensive face to the sealed envelope then back again. Feeling uncomfortable, Jemma shrugged her shoulders awkwardly. ‘I would take it myself,’ she murmured awkwardly. ‘Only I have a hospital appointment tomorrow and...’ She shrugged again; Trina knew how long and tiring those expeditions were.
‘All right.’ Trina picked up the letter. ‘I’ll take it,’ she agreed, but the look of grim disappointment on her face made Jemma feel worse.
Was she becoming a heavy weight around Trina’s neck? she wondered suddenly, and felt a new fear rip right through her. Without Trina, she just didn’t know what she would do!
Trina went out with Frew that night. When they came back, Frew was unusually quiet, his responses terse when Jemma attempted to speak to him. She took herself off to bed in the end, presuming they’d had some kind of a row and deciding to leave them to it.
The next day Trina had left for work before Jemma had surfaced, and was still out when she trudged back home from the hospital late that afternoon. Trina had left a message on the answersphone, warning Jemma that she was going out with Frew directly from work and not to expect her back again tonight. It wasn’t unusual. It was Friday, and Trina often stayed over at Frew’s flat on the weekend—much the same as she had done with Leon, she recalled bleakly.
It was warm outside, and unusually humid for September, with a distinct threat of a storm in the air. She wasn’t hungry, but she made herself a jug of freshly squeezed though heavily diluted orange juice and drank thirstily at a glass of it before taking herself off for a long soak in the tub in the vague hope it might ease some of the tension out of her body. The hospital was pleased with her progress, but not with the continuing sickness that dogged her still. They had booked her in for another scan next week—just to check a few things out: nothing to worry about, they had assured her.
But she was worried. Anything out of the ordinary where her baby was concerned was a worry. All right, so her weight was still too low, but they were all pleasantly surprised by the size of the baby! And, despite the sickness, she made sure she ate good nourishing food. So, what else could go wrong?
Sighing, she pulled out the plug to let the bath-water escape, then levered herself into a standing position and turned on the shower, allowing the clean cool water to wash over her for long minutes before loading her palm with shampoo and washing her hair.
Six-thirty, she noted as she walked into her bedroom wrapped in a fluffy white towel. She had managed to waste a whole hour and a half in the bath w
ithout thinking of Leon once! All she had to do now was think of something which would fill her mind for the rest of the long empty evening.
She would go out! she decided impulsively. Take in a movie. Jack Bridgeman’s latest was playing at the local. It was supposed to be good. And really, anything was better than sitting here mooning over a man who was even further beyond her scope than a great big movie star.
Hastily, she pulled on fresh underwear then hunted out a pair of white stretch leggings and a navy blue baggy T-shirt that adequately covered her lump. Clipping her hair into a tortoiseshell slide at her nape, she applied a bit of blue eyeshadow to her eyes and a pink gloss to her lips, then snatched up her bag. If she hurried, she would just make the first film, she decided, opening the flat door.
Then she froze.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘GOING somewhere?’ a deep, soft, beautifully accented voice questioned. ‘How fortunate I managed to catch you, then.’
Jemma couldn’t move. One hand had a white-knuckled grip on the door while the other had stalled in the process of throwing the strap of her bag over her shoulder. She was shocked—horrified. Yet, despite it all, her wide, staring eyes drank him up, her senses stinging into bright startling life as they recognised their master. He was wearing white, a white summer shirt and white cotton trousers, the complete lack of colour in the outfit only helping to enhance the rich dark brown of his skin. He looked big and lean, essentially sexual and innately dangerous.
Dangerous. She picked up the word and tasted it warily. Dangerous he certainly was. Pulsing with danger, throbbing with it, standing there smiling at her while his eyes burned with it.
She blinked and swallowed, trying to pull herself together. ‘W-what are you doing here?’ she heard herself asking foolishly. ‘D-didn’t you get my note?’
‘Note? Yes, I got your—note,’ he confirmed, then, while she still stood there staring at him, she watched as the danger metamorphosed itself into blinding anger. ‘Inside,’ he snapped, taking hold of her wrist to twist her fingers off the door so that he could push her back into the flat in front of him.
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