by Неизвестный
He began to pace the floor, glaring down at it. Disappointment lanced her heart like a sword. He didn’t want her to be carrying his child. This was, after all, likely to be a short-term affair as far as he was concerned. A brief obsession which had no room for babies and nappies and a woman who’d become a mother instead of a lover. He wanted her to be his bed—mate, to amuse him, to devote herself to him exclusively. A baby would spoil all that for him, she thought miserably.
‘If you are...’ His mouth compressed as if he couldn’t say the word, couldn’t cope with what he’d done.
‘Pregnant,’ she supplied grimly.
‘Are you?’ When she nodded, he swayed and steadied himself by grasping the back of a chair. ‘Our child,’ he said hoarsely. He passed a shaky hand over his face.
‘The beginning of a life,’ she said, emotion threading her words with a trembling passion. Overwhelmed, she pressed both hands to her stomach and closed her eyes. Her baby would probably never know its father. Adam might send cheques regularly, but he clearly didn’t want to be involved. His passion had cooled. Well. Better to know the truth, she thought.
Wanting to get rid of him before she broke down, she flung off the bedclothes and began hauling his clothes from the wardrobe, clutching at them blindly because of the tears in her eyes.
‘Stop that!’ he ordered.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘You have to go! I love you and you don’t care for me and it’s destroying me, Adam!’
His case was on top of the wardrobe. Standing on tiptoe, she dragged it down-—and found herself wrestling with Adam. They ended up on the floor with the case. He covered her with his body. Kissed her hard. Held her by her wrists and drew them over her head so that she couldn’t struggle. Soon she realised that her furious writh—
ing was having an undesirable effect on them both. They were panting, snatching fast and desperate kisses as if they were about to part and never see one another again. When he raised his mouth briefly, she lay rigid, hurting so much inside, she couldn’t breathe or think. He kissed the tear stains all the way down her cheeks and across to the groove on her upper lip. Briefly his lips pressed to her eyes, warm and sweet, then he released her. She quickly rolled away and stood up.
‘Trish.’ He was there, with her, struggling with unknown emotions. ‘You’re jumping to the wrong conclusions. I am in deadly earnest about my feelings. I want you——’
‘Sex!’ she derided, challenging him to deny that.
‘Yes!’ His eyes burned like coals. ‘My body goes haywire every time I see you-I’ve told you that! But I’ve also told you time and time again that I want you in other ways, that I do care deeply about you———’
‘You never said "deeply"!’ she cried, biting her lip in confusion.
‘Deeply.’ He kissed her. ‘Deeply.’ He kissed her again.
‘Deeply.’
Mouths locked, they enjoyed the sweetness of each other’s lips. Then Adam sighed. ‘I’ve messed things up. I meant to take my time. Court you properly. l wanted us to become friends. But...you filled my mind, my heart, my soul,’ he said huskily, tipping up her chin so that their eyes met. She trembled, awed by his passion, afraid of it. ‘I had no idea that sex with the right person could be emotionally demanding. And I was stunned by my reactions when I realised you must be carrying our child.'
‘What kind of stunned? she asked doubtfully. It took him a long time to answer. When he did, it was muttered so quietly that she barely heard. ‘As in knocked sideways. Moved.’ He shook his head helplessly. ‘I—I felt a rush of feeling which-’ He broke off and kissed her mouth tenderly. ‘You must have been scared.’
He looked at her for a long time as if he didn’t know what to say and she waited breathlessly for the words she wanted so badly to hear. ‘No. I have people here who care for me,’ she said eventually.
He frowned. ‘Would you have kept it to yourself if I hadn’t found out?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied honestly. ‘If I’d thought you were playing around, yes, I suppose so. I didn’t want you to feel a duty towards me. I still don’t want that. I’m not sure of you, Adam,’ she confessed. ‘You’re holding back so much of yourself—’
‘I am what I am.'
He had spoken curtly, his face set in the expression she was coming to know: closed and determined and nearlybut not quite—hiding the pain in his eyes. That expression haunted her. Because she loved him, she longed to root out its cause. One day she would. His passion would turn to love, she vowed. And he would let that ruthless restraint go.
She put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his chest. The thud of his heart pounded in her ear. She shifted her position and placed her hand there, lovingly.
‘It’s important to me that you should share your feelings.'
‘I share what I can,’ he said into the thick mass of her hair. ‘I can do no more. You manage to love others unconditionally. Your grandmother must annoy you, but that doesn’t make any difference. Christine was often irritable and short-tempered, but you let that wash over you and remained cheerful and loving. I’ve always admired you for not judging people, for concentrating on their good points. Can’t you do that with me? I want our relationship to grow. We have a child to think of, our baby.’
‘Our baby!’ she echoed, her face shining with happiness.
‘Take me as I am, Trish!'
‘Warts and all?’
‘You’ve noticed!’ he cried in mock horror. The tension had been broken, the sticking point glossed over. For the moment, she would be content. He was giving her as much of himself as he could and speaking of a longterm future. But was he sacrificing too much? What of his love of city life, excitement, glamour and sophistication?
‘You have a lot to lose by staying with me,’ she said soberly.
‘Stress, high blood pressure, an early heart attack-!'
‘No, idiot!’ She smiled up at him, then became serious again. ‘You’re doing all the surrendering, Adam—’
‘I’m taking. Walking away from a life which would probably kill me before I’m sixty. It’s only when you stop running, Trish, that you discover how pleasant it is to walk.' His arms tightened around her. ‘I’m not denying that it’ll be a culture shock, or that it won’t be easy. I’ve hardly been here five minutes. But the magic has already sunk into my bones. When I left, I felt bereft. Maybe because I was leaving you, but I believe it was more than that. Otherwise why would I feel a sense of calm and delight the minute I looked out of the helicopter window and saw the islands in the distance?'
‘I want desperately to believe you——’
‘And I desperately want it to work. So between us,’ he said with a grin, ‘it should!'
Her face showed her lingering doubts. ‘And your business?’
‘No problem there. I can be on the mainland in a very short time if necessary. Most of the time I can easily run it from here.’
'Where?’ She pulled away, her eyes concerned. ‘I’ll need your room soon——and I’m full up for the rest of the season!
There’s nowhere for you to go——’
‘I’ll find somewhere, don’t worry. Leave that to me.’
‘I do worry,’ she said, frowning. ‘About your taking these huge decisions to change your life—’
‘I’m more concerned about you. If we stay together, the age difference will show up more and more. You’ve spent half your life looking after other people. Do you really want to add a crotchety old man to your repertoire?
‘If it’s you, yes,’ she said, her face suffused with joy at the thought of being with Adam until they were old and decrepit! ‘But you wouldn’t be crotchety. I’d make you laugh.'
‘I think you might!’ he agreed with a chuckle. ‘Is it really that simple, this problem of our ages?’
‘It’s the least of our problems,’ she replied, her expression grave.
‘Do you love me?’ he asked in a low tone.
‘Totally,’ she
replied, gazing at him with a ravenous hunger. His mouth touched hers in a sweet, breathtakingly tender kiss. ‘Then that’s all I need to know, Trish. Everything else is a mere detail.’ He took her hand and kissed it passionately. Then, trailing a forefmger along her collar-bone, he said more throatily, ‘I’m going to take a shower. Join me, mermaid. I’ll show you how committed I am.’
Afterwards, while he was in the middle of drying her, he held her tightly, rained kisses on her face and then demanded breakfast.
‘Am I allowed to dress first?’ she asked with mock in—
dignation.
His hot gaze made her bones dissolve in a moment. ‘My ultimate fantasy!' he murmured with a lecherous leer. ‘Be—
ing served bacon and eggs by a nude goddess——’
‘Well, fancy that! We have something in common,’ she declared, her hands jauntily planted on the swell of her hips.
‘My fantasy is the same. But substitute nude god.’
‘I fear the bacon fat might cause problems in the god’s lower regions,’ Adam said drily.
She giggled. ‘I’ll get dressed—’
He caught her hand. ‘Trish...’ Nervous excitement rip—
pled through her body. He was going to say it. The words she longed to hear were on his lips, waiting, ready... He cleared his throat. She held her breath. ‘Two eggs, three rashers?’ he suggested.
‘Coward,’ she said fondly. He looked shocked, confirm—
ing her suspicion that he’d chickened out, and she smiled. Pleased with herself for interpreting his intention so well, she detached her hand and went to find some clothes. A new confidence settled within her. For the first time she dared to hope for the future. She began to hum happily to herself as she pulled on her jeans. Our baby, she thought fondly, planning a shopping spree for maternity clothes. and she’d tell her grandmother, Lucy, Joe-oh, everyone!
A few moments later, Adam appeared in her bedroom doorway, dressed already in a pair of jeans and a beautifully tight—fitting T—shirt. ‘Or, on second thoughts, one egg, two sausages——’
She threw her hairbrush at him. ‘Get the ingredients ready!’ she said with a grin, wrapping a towel around her wet hair. ‘I’ll be thirty seconds. You be ready or I’ll serve your breakfast down the front of your jeans!’
Adam laughed and wandered down the stairs. Slipping her feet into her old plimsolls, she followed, loving the way he played stupid as she barked out orders. And she found herself dissolving into giggles at his obsequious bowing and scraping. .
‘Oh, please don’t!’ she gasped, weak with laughter after a truly nauseating display of cringing. ‘I think I prefer Valentino Capelli!’
‘Ah!’ he cried, leaping into the part at once and bending her back with theatrical skill.
‘That’s the wrong Valentino,' she gasped. ‘You’re copying Rudolph!'
‘Is good, no? My woman, she getting hot, eh?’
‘Your woman, she getting backache,' she told him tartly.
‘And hungry. For breakfast!’ she added.
‘Damn!’ he said with easygoing disappointment, bringing her to the vertical again. ‘OK. We eat. Shall I be Mother?’
‘Just pour the tea,’ she replied, her eyes scathing. But she was smiling. And overjoyed. They ate, they argued, they laughed. It seemed that the past four years had never happened. Yet there was a difference. Adam was now her lover and the father of her baby.
‘I’m crazy about the way you are,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her across the table.
‘Chewing a sausage, with egg on my chin?’ she hazarded.
‘Fresh and unadorned—’
‘Great gorges of wrinkles-!
‘Laughter lines,’ he corrected her, ‘but only if I get very close and go cross-eyed.’
‘Ruddy-faced——’
‘Don’t swear,' he reproved. ‘Scrubbed and pink.’
He abandoned his breakfast and came over to kiss as much scrubbed and pink as he could get to, before she pushed him away with a growled, ‘Oh, let a girl eat her grub in peace!'
‘Some women,’ he said huffily, being Mother again and pouring more tea, ‘have no idea of romance.’
‘Don’t go to London tomorrow? she said suddenly, catching his hand.
‘I don’t want to, but...I must,’ he answered. He hesitated. ‘Trish, I’ll need to do some work on my computer today. Don’t mind if I shut myself in my room, do you?’
‘Yes,’ she said honestly, making him smile. But he worked all day and she didn’t see him—apart from when she took in cups of coffee and sandwichesuntil the evening.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ she finally said tentatively, popping her head around his door. He’d been staring at the monitor, his arms folded, and she wondered how much work he had done. And what he’d been thinking about.
That night they made love and she fell asleep in his arms. It was hard for her when they said their goodbyes the next morning at Anneka’s Quay because of the low tide. She clung to him, trying not to show how upset she felt, trying to be cheerful and to trust him to come back. But he sussed her out.
‘I’ll return in a couple of days. I’ll ring you every evening and every morning. Watch you don’t bump into something on your way home,’ he said fondly. ‘Your eyes are all misted over. You need windscreen wipers.'
She laughed ruefully, and then he had pushed her away and was striding onto the boat. Although it was a blur, she waved at it frantically till she was all alone on the quay and she had no choice but to turn and make her way home. The loneliness hit her like a wall. Silence where there had been laughter. She went up to his room and snuggled her face into the soft cashmere jumper he’d left on a chair. Nothing must come between them. This was the love of her life. Without him, everything would be meaningless. Gently she replaced the jumper and went downstairs, intending to do some jobs, but she couldn’t settle. On an impulse, she rang Petra on the chance that she was off duty from the hospital where she worked as a staff nurse. Perhaps she could throw some light on Adam’s refusal to abandon himself to his emotions.
‘I gave your love to Mr Mack Row,' she announced tartly, when Petra answered.
‘Jolly good,’ said Petra encouragingly.
‘You rat! Where’s your apology? You knew it was Adam!'
‘Who am I to stop a lovely romance?’
Trish’s eyes widened. ‘What is this? Bush telegraph?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Petra groaned. ‘It’s hardly the biggest secret in the world! He loves you——’
‘What makes you think that?’ Trish cried in amazement, her heart rate beginning to endanger her health. ‘Have you been talking to him? What have you said? What did he say?’
‘Look, you dim-witted yokel,’ her friend said affection—
ately, ‘of course he loves you! A child of two could tell that with a blindfold on and earplugs the size of pillows. He’s been nuts about you ever since you fetched up on our doorstep! I knew that, Mother knew——even Stephen knew!
Why do you think Stevie gave you hell? He was scared witless that you’d become his wicked stepmother!’
‘Petra, stop making things up!’ said Trish in exasperation. ‘He hasn’t said——’
‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? Adam keeps a respectful distance where emotions are concerned,' Petra said gently.
‘He’s always avoided anything that might hurt him. He didn’t go to Mother’s funeral, if you remember.'
Something he’d said came to the forefront of her mind. Trish hesitated, then asked, ‘Pets, why would he have married Christine? He told me he didn’t love her——but that he’d needed someone. What do you make of that?’
‘Sounds like a teenager trying to escape his family or something. Abusive father. Drunken mother, family drug ring. . . ’ she said, going over the top as usual. ‘I don’t know!
I was three at the time! He never talked...Trish, this is odd. . .he never talked about his family! Not a word. Listen, duckie,
it’s not anything to do with you. He loves you and that’s that. OK? Got that in your peasant brain?’
Trish caught herself grinning idiotically. ‘I hope you’re right, darling? she cried fervently.
‘Course I am! Now, how’s your gran?’
‘Fine, apart from complaining of a broken heart because none of the doctors will marry her and demanding they find some superglue for it!’ She giggled. Everyone in the hospital had adored her grandmother. ‘She’s going to stay with a friend on St Mary’s to recuperate, so she can be near the hospital.'
Trish didn’t speak her private thoughts. Judging by the way her grandmother had announced this with a suspiciously overacted casualness, it was a ploy to leave the scene clear for her romance with Adam to develop!
She and Petra chatted for a little while and then Trish rang off. Hugging herself, she danced around the kitchen. He loved her! She had no doubt of that now. Two days later she was jumping up and down on the quay in agitation, willing the boat to hurry up. ‘Adam!’ she yelled excitedly, seeing him standing in the bow. ‘Adam!’
He waved, a broad grin lighting his face. He was first to leap off the boat, holding out his arms, and she ran into them, overjoyed to see him.
They held one another for so long without moving that all the passengers had disembarked and the boat had moved away before they parted. Ridiculously happy, she lifted her face for his kiss.
‘I’ve missed you so much!' she said fervently.
‘I’ve missed you too. How are you?’
‘We’re fine,’ she answered tenderly.
He kissed her again, as if bemused. ‘The traffic was awful. Terrible stink of petrol fumes and you wouldn’t believe the noise——l couldn’t sleep. What are you laughing at?’ he demanded.
‘You!’ she cried in delight, her eyes dancing. ‘You sound like a true islander!’
Looking around him wearily, he passed a hand over his forehead and pressed his fingers to his temples. ‘It is good to be back. I have a foul headache. Stephen gave me some pills but I’ve run out.’
‘I’ll find you something, darling,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Let’s get you back. The walk will help you to unwind. How was Stephen?'