One-Click Buy: November Harlequin Presents

by Susan Stephens

  The satisfaction he had known in her bed this afternoon had totally evaporated already. It had only been enough to show him that he could never, ever sate himself on this woman, if he was to spend a lifetime trying.

  ‘Tell the truth, damn you!’ The hungry demands of his body made his words harsher and rougher than before.

  Flinging himself to his feet, he made himself move across the room, putting as much distance between himself and Becca as possible, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers to conceal the way they had clenched into tight, angry fists.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Rebecca! Never lie to me—not if you want to have any hope of getting what you want.’

  ‘I’m not lying.’

  ‘You are if you tell me that Stanton has nothing to do with this.’

  That got through to her. Her face went white, all colour deserting her cheeks, and her mouth fell open in shock. So he’d been right in his suspicions. It didn’t make him feel any better to know it. Instead, he felt sick with contempt.

  ‘I’ll ask you again—does Stanton have anything to do with the reason why you want this money?’

  How did she answer that? Becca thought miserably. Because she knew that just mentioning the name Roy Stanton was like setting a match to paper-dry tinder where Andreas was concerned, and she’d tried to dodge the truth once—not actually lying but avoiding answering with strict veracity as far as she could. Now that he’d changed the question, there was no hope she could do that again.

  ‘Don’t bother to say anything, Rebecca.’

  She’d hesitated too long and Andreas had jumped to the inevitable conclusion.

  ‘I can see your answer in your face.’

  She would have sworn that it was impossible for Andreas’ face to close up any tighter, his eyes to get any colder, or his expression any more distant, but somehow he had managed it.

  ‘I think you’ve had a wasted journey, Rebecca. You should have stayed at home and spared yourself the effort of coming all this way for nothing. You might have thought that deceiving me into believing that you had come to look after me so that you could worm your way into my bed would enslave me sexually again so that I could deny you nothing—’

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’ Becca protested sharply, but Andreas continued without pausing, speaking over her as if she had never tried to say a thing.

  ‘Unfortunately for you, I got my memory back before you could really work on me, but I think you should know that you were foolish even to try. I don’t put my head into that sort of noose twice.’

  ‘I didn’t…’ Becca tried, but Andreas shook his head, his refusal to listen stamped into every line on his face.

  ‘If you’re wise, you’ll leave it there, Rebecca. You will only make things so much worse if you continue.’

  Pulling his hands out of his pockets, where they had been pushed deep all this time, he raked both of them through the black silk of his hair, ruffling it wildly, and Becca bit down hard on her lower lip as a sudden yearning desire to go and smooth it down for him caught her painfully on the raw.

  Then he was speaking again, heading for the open patio doors as he did so.

  ‘I threw you out of my life once because of him, and I’m quite prepared to do it all over again. In fact, I would prefer it if you left now. I’m going for a walk on the beach—and I don’t want to find you here when I get back.’

  ‘Andreas…’ Becca tried but she was talking to his back. He was moving so fast, with such ruthless determination, that he was already outside, already heading away from her physically when he had been so distant from her mentally all the time.

  She couldn’t let him go. Not like this. If she did then any hope of saving baby Daisy were gone for good, and she would rather die than let that happen. She had to try and get him to reconsider.

  ‘Andreas—please…’

  But he continued walking, not even glancing round at her. His long, straight back was held so stiffly upright, his proud head so high, that she could almost see her words bouncing off the invisible walls of defence that he had built around himself.

  ‘Andreas—don’t…’

  She stepped out after him into the heat of the sunny afternoon.

  ‘The money’s not for me—or for—for him…’

  She didn’t dare to actually speak Roy Stanton’s name, knowing the incendiary effect it had on Andreas.

  ‘It’s for a child—a baby…’

  He’d stopped at least. But she still had to get him to turn round. Right now he could still walk on—away from her.

  ‘Please listen.’

  He was turning. Slowly—but he was turning to face her. Her heart leapt with relief, leaving her breathless and shaky.

  ‘A baby?’

  He managed to inject the words with such scepticism, such disbelief that she fully expected him to fling a rejection in her face and move on. She had his attention for now; she had to hold on to it and make him understand.

  ‘A little girl—Daisy—she’s desperately sick and—’

  ‘Whose baby?’

  It slashed through her words as she struggled to get them out. And at the same time those blazing black eyes seared over her from top to toe, taking in her slender figure, lingering on her waist…

  ‘No, not mine,’ she hastened to assure him. ‘Daisy’s not my baby—though I love her as if she were. She—she’s my niece. And I would do anything I could to help her.’

  ‘Niece?’ Andreas echoed as if he did not understand the word. ‘Anepsia? You do not have a niece.’

  ‘Yes, I do—she’s my sister’s little girl. And before you say that I don’t have a sister,’ Becca rushed on when he opened his mouth, clearly planning to do just that, ‘let me tell you that I do. A half-sister, that is. But I didn’t know about her for years. I only found out about her—quite recently.’

  She paused, waiting for Andreas to ask the next question, but he remained silent, hands on narrow hips, black eyes fixed on her face, obviously waiting for her to go on.

  ‘You know that I’m adopted. That I was born when my biological mother was only sixteen? And my mum and dad adopted me as a tiny baby. I told you…’ she prompted, needing some response from him before she could go on. She couldn’t just pour the whole story out while he stood there, silent and withdrawn, as distant from her as if some huge cavern had opened up on the stone-flagged terrace, separating them from each other.

  A faint, brief inclination of his dark head was all the acknowledgement Andreas made and then he was still again, obviously waiting for her to continue.

  ‘I’ve been trying to find my birth mother—to see if I had any family. Blood family. I thought it was important to know.’

  She couldn’t tell him that this search had taken on a whole new meaning and importance from the moment that Andreas had asked her to marry him. That she had really felt the need to know about her family then, to know if she had some blood ties, someone who was linked to her that way. And deep down there had also been a secret, private need to know if there were any health problems she needed to take into consideration if she and Andreas were ever to have children. That was one concern that no longer mattered at all, she told herself miserably.

  ‘I found that my mother was dead—and she’d never known who my father was. But I had a half-sister—Macy. I managed to get in touch with her—meet her.’

  ‘And when was this?’

  Becca bit her lip in discomfort. She’d known this question would come, but being prepared for it didn’t make it easy to answer.

  ‘Just before our wedding.’

  ‘I see.’

  Andreas took a step backwards, and the arms that had been at his sides were now crossed over his broad chest. He couldn’t have put a distance between them more effectively if he’d tried.

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’

  ‘I—couldn’t. Macy had—some problems and she made me promise not to tell anyone.’

  Once, perhaps
, she might have explained all this in detail to him. Once he would have been owed the full story. But Macy had been so insistent that no one should know. If she’d breathed a word, she would have lost the sister she’d just found. Macy had only just discovered about Daisy then. And the realisation that there was a baby on the way had made everything so much more urgent; made it so much more important that she stay in touch with her half-sister, and with the baby who was to become her darling niece.

  And then Andreas had forfeited the right to know anything more about her when he had declared that he had never loved her and their marriage was only for sex before throwing her out of the house.

  ‘I would have told my husband as soon as I could—but then you weren’t my husband long enough for that to matter at all.’

  Andreas actually flinched as the barb she flung at him went home, and just for a moment some emotion that she didn’t understand flashed across his face. It was there and gone again before she had time to even try to interpret it and the stone-wall look was fully back in place again.

  ‘So Macy is the mother of this Daisy?’

  ‘Yes. And Daisy’s just eleven weeks old—’

  ‘And who is the father?’

  The words seemed unnaturally loud in the silence of the sunny garden. The inevitable question. The obvious question. And one she would dodge if she could. She desperately wished that she could.

  ‘Does it matter?’ she hedged nervously, knowing as soon as she heard it that her voice gave her away, the way it broke in the middle, making it obvious that she had something to hide.

  ‘The look on your face tells me that it does,’ Andreas told her harshly, his tone as cold as ice. ‘So tell me—who is the father of this baby?’

  Becca’s jaw seemed to have frozen stiff so that it was impossible to open her mouth to answer him, even if she had wanted to. And she didn’t want to. Every time she tried to force herself to speak, she looked into Andreas’ dark, shuttered face and a terrible sense of dread overwhelmed her. Bitter tears stung at the backs of her eyes and she blinked hard, trying to force them back. But she knew why they were there. Fear had put them there. Fear of what would happen as soon as she spoke.

  She feared it for poor baby Daisy, who needed this man to help her so much—and yet who would probably be condemned not for anything she had done but for the simple biological fact of who her father was.

  And she feared it for herself because she dreaded how she was going to feel if Andreas did reject her and walk away in a black, unforgiving fury as soon as she spoke the name that enraged him so much.

  And she knew that he wouldn’t let go of this until he knew.

  ‘Becca…’ Andreas’ use of her name was a warning, but it was the fact that he had once more reverted to the shorter, more affectionate form of it that finished her completely. The tears she had struggled against wouldn’t be held back any longer but flooded her eyes and a single one spilled out and ran slowly down her cheek.

  ‘Don’t ask me…’ she whispered, and to her astonishment Andreas accepted her plea and didn’t push her any more. But only because he didn’t need to. Her response, the distress she couldn’t hide, had given him her answer.

  ‘Roy Stanton,’ he declared, hard and flat. ‘The baby’s father is Roy Stanton.’

  It was a statement, not a question, but still Becca had to give him an answer, though all she could do was nod silently, the ability to speak having deserted her completely.

  ‘Roy Stanton,’ Andreas repeated, the other man’s name almost like a curse on his lips.

  She couldn’t read his expression through the blur of tears but she didn’t have to. All she needed to know about his reaction was there in his voice, in the way he spat out the words.

  And then it was as she had always dreaded it would be when, without another word, Andreas turned on his heel and walked away from her, striding fast and determinedly over the terrace and down the roughly carved steps that led from the cliff to the shore. Rejection and hostility were stamped into every line of his powerful body and she knew that if she tried to call him back he would refuse to even show that he had heard.

  And besides, she couldn’t find the strength to do so. She didn’t know what she could say to change his mind, and even if she’d been able to think of anything her voice wouldn’t work. So all she could do was stand and watch through tear-drenched eyes, staring after him until he disappeared from view.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DOWN in the bay, a lively breeze was whipping up the sea into unruly waves. The water whirled and swayed, rising up into foam-topped peaks and then hurling itself against the shore in a swirling rush before ebbing back out again fast, in a way that had it sucking at the sand, drawing it back with it.

  The atmosphere suited Andreas’ mood perfectly. The restless movement all about him was in keeping with his own frame of mind, the way that he couldn’t make his thoughts settle into any balanced pattern. Instead they swung from burning rage to icy cold and back again in every second that passed.

  Roy Stanton.

  He kicked viciously at the sand as the name burned in his mind, making him clench his teeth hard against the feeling.

  Roy Stanton.

  Almost a year before he had hoped that he had heard the last of that name. That the man who had ruined his life, and taken away the one thing of value he truly loved, was out of his life for ever.

  Roy Stanton and Becca between them had destroyed his happiness, and when he had thrown her out of the villa on the evening of their travesty of a wedding day he had hoped—prayed—that he would never, ever see or hear of either of them again.

  And then she had turned up, needing money.

  Money for a sick child.

  Money for Roy Stanton’s sick child.

  Standing staring at the sea was doing nothing to ease the restless rage of his thoughts and Andreas set off along the edge of the shore, striding fast, splashing through the water, heedless of the way that the waves broke against his legs, soaking the fine linen of his trousers. He needed the movement to express his feelings, to ease the fury in his mind so that he could think.

  There was one thing that stood out clearly. The baby was innocent in all this. How could he not help a sick child? That was not in question. But Roy Stanton…!

  Obviously the selfish bastard had moved on from Becca to another woman—Theos, he’d moved to her sister and had a child by her! And Becca had wept at the thought of it.

  Oh, she’d fought with everything that was in her not to show those tears, but he’d seen them sheening her pale eyes, swimming under her lids as she fought to blink them back. Stanton had taken her from him, he’d made her break her wedding vows before she had even spoken the words out loud in the ceremony, and then he had broken her heart by moving on to someone else and fathering a child on her.

  And Becca had still come here to plead for help for that baby. Her sister’s baby. Her sister’s child with her own former lover. His stomach heaved at the thought.

  Inevitably, his mind went back to the time just before the wedding. The last time that he had been truly happy. When his future had been like a glorious sun rising out there on the horizon. He was going to be married to the woman he adored. She was his life and she loved him back—or so he had believed. Another few days, less than a week, and they would be together forever.

  And then the phone calls had started.

  Foul, sneaking phone calls that spoke of secrets and lies. The voice at the other end of the line had told him that Becca—his fiancée—wasn’t the woman he believed her to be. That she didn’t love him at all but was only using him; marrying him to get as much money from him as she could. Money that she was then going to share with her real lover…

  And for a fee—a substantial fee—he would reveal the name of that lover. For now he would just give the initials. And those initials were RS.

  Coming to a halt in his furious march over the sand, Andreas stared out at the horizon with unseeing eye
s, shoulders hunched, hands pushed deep into his pockets.

  He’d laughed. He’d actually laughed. The story was impossible to believe. He had trusted Becca. There was no way she was deceiving him. He’d slammed the phone down on the call; put it out of his mind.

  Until the letter had arrived with a photocopy of a cheque. A cheque for the full amount of the money he had recently given Becca to help her pay for everything she needed for the wedding—right down to the last penny. And the cheque in the copy had been written in his fiancée’s handwriting—and made out to one Roy Stanton.

  That was when he’d called in an investigator. He’d wanted to get to the bottom of this, find out the truth.

  There had been nothing to find, the man he’d hired had assured him. He’d turned up no evidence to link Rebecca Ainsworth to Roy Stanton. The phone calls had been traced to the same Roy Stanton, who was obviously at the back of all this.

  Whatever Becca had paid him the money for, he’d obviously wanted more. But Andreas didn’t give a damn about the money. He had plenty of that. It was only if the claims that Stanton was Becca’s lover were true that he would have acted.

  And so he’d put the matter out of his mind and gone through with the wedding. He wouldn’t have been human if a doubt, a worry, hadn’t flashed across his mind just once—but he pushed them away. One look at his bride’s face had been enough to convince him that she was honest, innocent and as much in love with him as he was with her.

  It was there in the way that she’d smiled at him, the way she’d looked deep into his eyes when she said her vows. And it had been there in the way that, in reply to the usual question ‘Do you take this man…?’ she had been unable to hold back in her reply, answering not just with the simple ‘I do’, but saying:

  ‘Oh, I do—I do—I do…’

  At least that was what he had thought. It was what he had wanted to believe too.

  He had married the woman he adored; brought her here to his home on this tiny island that his family had owned for centuries, thinking that he could put it all behind him. He’d hardly been able to keep his hands off his beautiful bride, and had made passionate love to her just as soon as they had reached the house. Their marriage couldn’t have begun in a more perfect way, he had told himself.