'For God's sake, come inside,' he ordered, drawing her shivering form into the kitchen and shutting the door against the stormy elements outside. 'Is everything all right?'
That was an all-encompassing query, and it was so typical of Rafe that Jo could not suppress a snort of laughter. 'Everything's fine with mother and child. And I'm fine too, except that I'm drenched and frozen.'
'You'd better get out of those wet clothes at once and into a hot bath,' he advised sternly. Jo could not fault that advice. There was nothing she needed more at that moment than to immerse herself in a hot bath. Her teeth had started to chatter, she was getting so cold, and she almost ran the distance from the kitchen to their bedroom.
Half an hour later, relaxed and warm after a steaming bath, she had wrapped herself up in her quilted dressing-gown and she was sitting cross-legged on the bed while she towelled her hair dry. The storm had passed, but she could still hear the rain pelting the window-panes when the bedroom door opened and she looked up through an untidy veil of damp hair to see Rafe walking towards her with a mug in his hand.
'Feeling better?' he asked, seating himself on the edge of the bed and turning so that he was facing her.
'Much better, thank you.'
Her heart was beating a fraction harder and faster against her ribs as she discarded her towel and pulled her brush through her damp, stringy hair in an attempt to restore some order to her appearance. Was the dimness of the bedside light to blame for that extraordinary softening of his ruggedly handsome features?
A mug appeared in her line of vision. 'I made you some cocoa,' he said.
'Thank you.'
She put down the brush to take the mug from him, and their fingers touched. He did not remove his hand at once and, when he did, a current of awareness was surging through her that made her throat feel oddly tight as she raised the mug to her lips to sip at the hot cocoa he had prepared for her.
'You must be tired,' he remarked.
'At the moment I'm still too keyed up to feel tired.' Her eyes met Rafe's over the rim of the mug and she smiled as she recalled the excitement and happiness she had witnessed earlier that evening. 'Stan and Klara have a son.'
An answering smile touched his strong yet sensuously chiselled mouth, and the smile deepened until it creased the corners of his eyes. 'They were hoping for a boy.'
'So Klara told me.'
And you, Rafe? Jo questioned him silently. Would you want a boy? Or would you be happy with a girl?
She lowered her lashes hastily in fear of what he might see in her eyes. He had a right to know that he was going to be a father, but she was not yet ready to tell him.
'I'll get you something to eat,' he said into the silence when she was swallowing down the last mouthful of cocoa.
'No, please don't.' Her fingers caught at his arm, detaining him when he would have got up to leave. 'I had a mug of soup and a sandwich with Stan and Klara before I came home, and I'm really not hungry.'
She was hungry for conversation, not food. If Rafe left now, then her mental buoyancy would turn to frustration. There was so much inside her that cried to come out, so much that needed to be shared, and she did not wait for an invitation from Rafe to lapse into a resume of everything that had occurred during those long hours she had spent at Klara's bedside.
Rafe asked questions and listened intently when she answered him in a voice that was lowered and calm despite that detectable undertone of excitement. His eyes lingered on her face while she spoke, and at times his features actually softened into a bone-melting smile that awakened memories of the past. This was the old Rafe, Jo was thinking when her voice finally trailed off into silence. This was the Rafe she had always found it so easy to talk to; this was the gentle, caring man she had fallen so madly in love with all those years ago, and her soul reached out in recognition and longing. Tell me I'm not mistaken, Rafe. Touch me and show me you still care.
'You always give unstintingly of yourself to others,' he said softly, his fiery eyes responding to her silent plea and touching her in a way that made her body feel heated and eager beneath the quilted dressing-gown. 'Do you have anything left of yourself to give to me?'
'I'm giving of myself now, aren't I?' The emotional tension between them was becoming unbearably laced with desire, but something told Jo that she would have to make the first move. She folded her legs in beneath her and, without breaking eye contact, took off her dressing-gown. 'Make love to me, Rafe. Please?'
'You don't have to beg,' he said, framing her face with his hands and smiling as he leaned forward to take her lips and everything else she was offering him.
Jo opened her mouth to his, inviting the intoxicating invasion of his tongue while her body welcomed the exciting touch of his hands. She tried to control the stabbing urgency of her emotions when Rafe cupped her breasts in his palms, but her control snapped when his thumbs moved back and forth across their rosy peaks in an electrifying caress, and she moaned her pleasure into his mouth. Her fingers fumbled with his shirt buttons, and if Rafe had not helped her she might have ripped the expensive cotton in her eagerness to touch him without the annoying barrier of his clothes. She wanted him as she had never wanted him before, her body was beginning to ache with the intensity of her need, and when she had freed him of his shirt she unashamedly trailed a path of heated kisses from the hollow of his throat down across his hair-roughened chest until the explorative tip of her tongue encountered a hardened male nipple.
Rafe groaned and, encouraged by the knowledge that she was pleasing him, she ventured on, but his fingers bit into her waist, and she was lifted higher on to her knees until her breasts were on a level with his face. His flicking tongue teased her nipples into swollen nodules throbbing with a need he had not yet satisfied. She locked her fingers into the hair at the back of his head in an attempt to draw him closer, but still he held back.
'Please, Rafe! You know what I want! Please!' she begged huskily, her body straining towards that tantalising tongue.
Only then did he relent, but, even so, it was Jo who leaned into that warm, moist mouth which had been tormenting her and driving her mad with desire.
A shuddering moan escaped her as he sucked gently first at one nipple and then the other, arousing a longing so intense that her body arched against his. The pleasurable torment continued as he eased her over on to her back to trail his mouth and hands lightly and sensually over every centimetre of her heated body right down to the sensitive soles of her feet.
Jo felt drugged with desire, and she was scarcely aware of breathing when Rafe parted her legs to trail a path of fiery kisses along the softness of her inner thighs, but when he reached the core of her womanhood she cried out in the wake of her body's flaring response to this unfamiliar caress.
'No, Rafe! Don't!'
That pleading voice seemed far removed from her own as she struggled to free herself from the rasping intimacy of his tongue, but his weight on the lower half of her body held her a prisoner. And then it was too late. Her body spasmed on a strange surge of pleasure, and then stilled beneath him.
'Oh, God!' She raised her forearm over her face to hide her shame and embarrassment. 'I'm sorry. You—you shouldn't have done that.'
'I had to.' He rubbed his stubbly chin against her hip-bone. 'You were much too impatient.'
'But now it's over.'
'It isn't over yet, Jo,' he promised. 'Not for me, and most certainly not for you.'
She watched him with heavy-lidded eyes as he got up to take off the rest of his clothes, and she marvelled as always at the magnificence of his body when he leaned over her with his muscles taut like those of a predatory animal preparing to vanquish its prey.
'You're crazy!' she gasped in protest when he lowered his naked body on to hers and sought her mouth with his own. 'I can't... I couldn't possibly...'
But she did!
Rafe aroused her skilfully, taking her once again to that frantic peak of desire where her mind clouded over to
let her body take charge of its own search for satisfaction.
I love you. The words hovered on the perimeter of Jo's conscious mind, but they remained unspoken as their heated bodies melded in the rhythmic harmony of shared passion. I love you, Rafe. She wanted him to know this, and the only way she could tell him was to give herself to him—body and soul—for the first time since entering into this unpalatable marriage.
Jo awoke early the following morning, but not early enough to speak to Rafe before he left the house. Last night, when they drifted off to sleep, she had wanted to tell him that she was going to have his baby, but in the end she had remained silent for fear of shattering that feeling of contentment she had known in the aftermath of their lovemaking.
She would tell him later when they met for breakfast, she was thinking as she got up and dressed herself to go out, and she could only pray that her earlier fears would not be realised. After last night—after what she believed they had shared—he wouldn't reject her. Would he?
The sun had just risen when Jo drove out to Stan's cottage. The storm had wreaked havoc with the farm road, but the earth seemed to rejoice in its wetness, and Jo knew that soon a multitude of indigenous, succulent plants would emerge from the hidden recesses of the dry soil to cover the scrub-covered land with a carpet of colourful flowers.
Klara had risen and was taking care of herself and the baby when Jo arrived at the cottage. Stan had gone to fetch the girls, and Jo did not stay longer than the few minutes it took to examine the mother and her baby.
Later that morning, when she faced Rafe across the breakfast table, she changed her mind about divulging her secret. The gentle, caring Rafe of the night before was gone, and in his place was the harsh-faced stranger she had married two months ago. Jo had believed that last night would mark a turning-point in her marriage to Rafe, but she had been sadly mistaken.
'You didn't have a decent meal last night, and you're not eating your breakfast this morning.'
Rafe's accusing statement made her focus her glance on the fried egg which was beginning to congeal on her plate, and her face paled. A wave of nausea rose inside her, and beads of perspiration were breaking out on her forehead when she got up and fled.
She somehow reached the bathroom in time to accommodate her convulsing stomach, and she slumped over the basin as she felt herself being turned inside out. She retched violently, again and again, but the only thing she succeeded in doing was to exhaust herself. When the nausea finally passed she sat down weakly on the edge of the bath with tears in her eyes, and that was when she realised that she was no longer alone.
Rafe was there, and he was holding a glass of water to her lips. She gulped down a mouthful to ease that burning sensation at the back of her throat, and then he was carrying her into the bedroom as if she weighed no more than a child.
He lowered her gently on to the bed and sat down beside her, his features grim in the morning light that filtered into the room through the lacy curtains at the window. 'I take it you're pregnant.'
That cold, cryptic statement unleashed the pain and anger she had locked away inside her for so long.
'Yes, damn you, I'm pregnant!'
The words had come out in a furious hiss through her teeth, and then, to her horror, she burst into tears. She rolled away from him to bury her face in her pillow, but Rafe pulled her up into his arms and held her with her face buried against the hollow of his shoulder.
'For God's sake, don't cry.' He stroked her hair with gentle fingers and rocked her in his arms as one might rock a child in distress. 'Please, Jo, I can't bear to see you crying.'
'I always w—wanted to—to have your child,' she wept brokenly into his khaki-clad shoulder. 'But n—not like this. Not in—in exchange for a—a 1—loan. It's so '
'There was no loan.'
'—barbaric and—and so utterly immoral. I don't think I—' Jo's voice hiccupped into silence as his words, spoken over hers, suddenly penetrated. They made no sense, but they had a sobering effect, and she drew a shuddering breath as she tilted her head back to stare up at him through the film of tears in her eyes.
'What did you say?' she demanded shakily, convinced that she must have heard him incorrectly. Rafe held her probing glance for a moment, then he released her and got to his feet. 'I said there was no loan,' he repeated grimly.
'I—I don't understand,' she murmured, brushing the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand, and trying to make sense out of the confusion inside her while she watched him sweep the lace curtains aside at the window as if he suddenly had a desperate need for more air.
'I wanted you back. It's as simple as that,' he explained harshly. 41 knew you wouldn't return to Satanslaagte of your own free will, and I suspected that if I asked you to marry me again you'd turn me down flat, so between Danny and myself we devised the story about the loan.'
Jo stared at that broad, formidable back which was turned so resolutely towards her. Has he gone mad, or have I? she wondered.
'Why did you want me back?' she demanded, ignoring the latter half of his statement for the moment.
'Why?' The hand clutching the lace curtain closed into a fist that made the muscles in his tanned forearm bunch together. 'Because I should never have let you go in the first place,' he announced with an unexpected savagery.
Jo's mind was reeling drunkenly between the shocking truth and disbelief. Suddenly nothing made sense to her, and she wondered if anything ever would again.
She swung her feet down to the carpeted floor and rose slowly. There was a fierce clamouring inside her, like a volcano threatening to erupt, but there was one question that still needed an answer. 'If Danny's need for a loan was a farce, then I presume your desperate need for an heir was also a fabrication?'
'It was the only way I could think of to coerce you into a normal marriage.'
'How could you do this to me?' Humiliation and anger flared hotly in her cheeks, but the ice of winter was in her voice. 'How could you?'
He turned then, and there was an odd whiteness about his mouth when he came towards her. 'Jo, I know how——'
'Don't touch me! Don't even come near me!' Her eyes sparked green fury as she shrank beyond the reach of the hands he held out to her. 'I think you're contemptible!'
CHAPTER NINE
'I THINK you're contemptible!'
Jo's words were still hanging uncontested in the air between Rafe and herself when a sharp knock on the bedroom door shattered the angry silence, and her fury was still seeking an outlet when she flung open the door to find an anxious-looking Elsie hovering on the threshold.
'I'm sorry, madam, but Madam Averil is not well and she's asking for you.'
Averil's pride would not have allowed her to send for Jo unless it was a matter of some urgency, and it was this knowledge that penetrated the mists of Jo's anger to make her shelve her personal problems for the moment. She stormed down the L-shaped passage ahead of Rafe, and she was almost running when she crossed the lounge to enter the flat through the inter-leading door. Jo found Averil lying in bed, her silvery hair in disarray, and her hands clutching agitatedly at the bedclothes which she had pulled up to beneath her chin when they entered her bedroom without knocking. Her breathing was audibly fast and laboured, she was feverish to the touch, and in between racking coughs she complained of a pain in her back.
Jo suspected bronchitis, and her fingers were resting firmly against Averil's wrist, checking her pulse-rate, when she realised that Rafe was observing her silently and intently from the opposite side of the bed.
'I suggest you get in touch with your doctor,' she said, giving him no more than a cursory glance. Averil gestured protestingly, but Rafe took no notice. He left the room and when he returned a few minutes later he was looking pale and grim. 'Dr Bosman is already out on a call, but his wife promised to get in touch with him, and he'll be here as soon as he can make it.'
Jo made Averil as comfortable as she could, and almost an hour passed before they he
ard a car approaching the house. Rafe got up to investigate, and when he returned a few minutes later he was not alone. An elderly man, carrying a medical bag, preceded Rafe into the bedroom, and the look of almost smiling recognition on Averil's face made Jo conclude that this man had been doctor and family friend for many years. Rafe performed the necessary introduction, then left the room so that the medical practitioner could carry out his examination.
'It's acute bronchitis,' the doctor finally confirmed Jo's suspicions. 'A few days in bed with the proper care and medication will soon clear it up.'
'I can't stay in bed,' Averil protested in between rasping coughs.
'You can and you will stay in bed, Averil,' the doctor instructed sternly while he put away his stethoscope and closed his bag. 'If you don't do as you're told the bronchitis could develop into something which would force me to hospitalise you, and you know how you hate hospitals.'
Averil's fit of coughing subsided and she glowered up at the doctor even while she sagged exhaustedly against the pillows. 'You're just trying to frighten me into complying with your wishes.'
'You know me too well to believe I'd do something like that, Averil.' Dr Bosman eyed his patient speculatively for several moments. 'I think it might be a good idea if I sent someone along from the hospital to nurse you through the next few days.'
Averil's feverish glance shifted to Jo with just a hint of a plea in those dark eyes. 'That won't be necessary, Dr Bosman,' Jo intervened calmly in response to that surprising plea. 'I'm a qualified nurse, and I'm quite prepared to see to it that Mrs Andersen gets all the rest and care she might need through the next few days.'
The doctor nodded his approval and, after exchanging a few words with Rafe in the lounge, he left. Jo seldom left Averil's bedside during the next three days and nights, and the only time she saw Rafe was when he came in briefly to check on his mother's progress.
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