Long-Distance Marriage

by Kendrick, Sharon

‘Sorry?’ she stormed. ‘Sorry? I should think that you damned well would be sorry! You were the one who got me into this, weren’t you? Remember? I was the one who overheard—’

  ‘Yes,’ he cut in. ‘You overheard me saying that there were about to be major changes in our life, and you overheard Ken leap to the conclusion that what I meant by that was that we were going to have a baby—’

  ‘And your prediction was accurate, wasn’t it?’

  ‘So you rushed off in floods of tears.’

  ‘I was not crying,’ she corrected him tightly.

  ‘Whereas, if you’d stayed, you would have heard me correcting Ken and found out that I was in the process of selling all my properties in New York.’

  Alessandra’s eyes widened in amazement, her natural business acumen momentarily eclipsing her highly emotional state. ‘You haven’t sold them now?’ she whispered in shock.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘But now is a terrible time to sell. Property prices—’

  ‘Are irrelevant,’ he interrupted crisply. ‘Wheeling and dealing was something which I enjoyed doing when I was younger. Building up a lucrative portfolio was a kind of hobby for me, if you like—but as the years went on what had started out as fun began to feel awfully like a millstone hanging around my neck.’

  ‘I—see,’ she said breathlessly, trying to take it all in. So he hadn’t been talking to Ken about the fact that she might be pregnant...

  ‘Anyway,’ he said curtly, ‘what I said or didn’t say to Ken is fairly irrelevant now. The only thing which is relevant is that our night of...passion...’ the word had a curiously neutral ring to it ‘...did have unfortunate repercussions.’

  Alessandra’s head jerked up. ‘Unfortunate?’ she queried with icy indignation.

  ‘I meant from your point of view,’ he put in quietly. He was watching her from across the room with the wary scrutiny of a man who had just made acquaintance with a new and unknown species. When he spoke again his voice was as heavy as lead. ‘The question is, just what are you planning to do about it?’

  Alessandra was an intelligent woman, but she gazed at him now with blank, uncomprehending eyes. ‘Do?’ she echoed stupidly.

  He nodded, his mouth tightening, as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

  ‘Do about it?’ she repeated. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ he ground out savagely, his big frame shuddering with the intensity of his words. ‘Won’t a baby get in the way of your precious career?’

  It took a moment or two for it to sink in, and, when it did, it was as though he had come up to her and punched her in the face. Without warning she leapt out of the chair and launched herself at him, her fingers scrabbling towards his face with all the fury of a wild cat.

  It was the first time she had ever seen Cameron look nonplussed, but his usual razor-sharp reactions quickly came to the fore as he caught her flying hands before they could draw the blood she had intended.

  ‘Hey!’ he said softly, in a voice which she assumed was supposed to soothe her temper but which had exactly the opposite effect.

  ‘How dare you?’ she sobbed. ‘How dare you imply that I’d do something to our baby? How dare you? What kind of a woman do you think I am? No! On second thoughts, don’t answer that!’

  ‘Hell!’ he swore, and caught her to his chest in an embrace which managed to be both rough and tender, and Alessandra briefly breathed in the warm, masculine scent of him before his implied accusation stirred her up again and she began to pummel her small fists against his chest.

  It had all the impact of a flea jumping up and down on a pillow.

  ‘Stop struggling,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She jerked her head back and stared at him disbelievingly. ‘No, you’re not!’

  ‘Believe me, Alessandra,’ he said, and something suspiciously soft in his eyes made her believe him. She gave a little whimper and she heard his heavy sigh before he picked her up and carried her back to the sofa, laying her down on it as though she were some precious piece of china. And it was rather nice to be treated like that, she thought reluctantly, realising for the first time in her life that there were times when being a helpless little woman definitely had its own kind of appeal...

  He pulled a chair over beside her, as though he were a doctor and she his patient, and sat there studying her dispassionately for a moment or two. ‘So how are you feeling?’ he asked, at last.

  ‘Fine,’ she lied.

  ‘I see.’ There was a long pause as he continued to survey her unwaveringly. Then he frowned and looked around. ‘It’s cold in here!’ he accused.

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘It damned well is!’ He glowered at her and their precarious peace seemed to have shattered again. ‘What is it with you, Alessandra? Don’t tell me you can’t afford to pay the electricity bill?’

  ‘Of course I can!’

  ‘Then why the hell are you putting at risk your health, and the health of our—? He seemed to correct himself with an effort. ‘Of the baby...?’ But there was a peculiar note to his voice as he said it.

  ‘For your information, the heating system is antiquated, and isn’t running properly,’ she retorted. ‘We’ve complained about it—’

  ‘We’ve?’ he interrupted sharply.

  ‘Me,’ she said unhelpfully. ‘And the other people who own flats in the block.’

  ‘Including Brian, I suppose?’ he put in nastily.

  She widened her eyes in surprise. ‘Been spying on me?’

  He ignored that, just rose to his feet with a determined look on his face and walked around the room restlessly, his height and the magnificent breadth of his shoulders making the flat appear small and insubstantial. She watched him covertly as he went to stare out of the window for a long moment, and then he nodded silently, as if he’d come to some sort of decision, and came to stand by the sofa, towering over her.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ he told her abruptly, and proceeded to walk towards her bedroom.

  It took a few seconds to realise just where he was heading. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ she demanded unnecessarily, sitting up with an effort. But he didn’t take the slightest bit of notice of her, and she couldn’t see what he was up to, so she climbed off the sofa and padded across the room to the doorway of her bedroom in her carpet slippers. She watched him in growing disbelief. ‘And what do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘What does it look like?’ he countered smoothly as he took the suitcases from the top of the wardrobe and began calmly loading her clothes in.

  She stormed over to him and put her hand on his arm, in some puny effort to halt him, but it felt like gripping onto pure steel. ‘Cameron!’

  ‘What?’ he demanded, effortlessly continuing to fold her clothes into neat piles.

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  He paused in the act of wedging four pairs of shoes down the sides of one case. ‘I am taking you back home with me.’

  Her heart began hammering. ‘B-but why?’ she managed.

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious. You are having a baby. My baby. I want to make sure that you look after yourself properly—’

  ‘I don’t need you to do that,’ she sniped tiredly. ‘I’m a big girl now.’

  ‘Are you really?’ He frowned. ‘I don’t think so. This flat is cold. You look as though you haven’t been sleeping. Or eating,’ he accused. ‘Have you been eating?’

  When Cameron asked you a question in that tone of voice, you didn’t ignore it Not if you were feeling as weak and as pitiful and as pathetic as Alessandra was feeling right then. ‘I haven’t had much appetite lately,’ she mumbled, remembering the mornings recently when she’d sat with her head over the toilet, retching until she felt faint with the effort.

  ‘But you told me you felt fine, Alessandra,’ he observed, with the slick one-upmanship of a lawyer tearing holes in the opposing side’s argument.

  D
rat! She tried another tack. ‘It’s perfectly normal to be sick, you know, Cameron!’

  ‘Sick!’ he echoed, as shocked as if she’d just announced she was expecting quads! ‘You didn’t mention you’d been sick!’

  She suddenly felt rather superior, and it made a pleasant change because Cameron had certainly had the upper hand since walking into her flat that morning. ‘Morning sickness,’ she smiled smugly, sounding as seasoned as if this were her eighth pregnancy, ‘is perfectly common in the first trimester. Some women even feel nauseated from the first day after conception.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Er—the books,’ she admitted.

  ‘You’ve gone and bought books on pregnancy?’ He suddenly looked more pleased than if all his shares had suddenly shot through the ceiling.

  ‘Not exactly. I went and looked in the library.’ Last weekend, for something to do, in an effort to get Cameron out of her mind.

  He frowned for what seemed the millionth time. ‘And have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘I’ve only just missed my period!’

  ‘You are also pale. You probably need iron, or something.’ Now he sounded like the seasoned expert on pregnancy! ‘Or spinach. Or liver.’

  She fought back a wave of nausea. ‘Please don’t mention food!’ she begged him weakly.

  ‘I can look after you,’ he told her firmly.

  ‘And what if I don’t want you to?’

  ‘And I intend to,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘For how long?’ Did she sound hopeful? Oh, she hoped not.

  ‘At least until the baby is born.’

  Her heart sank as she realised how much of a compromise that sounded.

  He was now emptying out her underwear drawer, his mouth tightening as he began folding the gauzy little garments into drifts of lace, but she saw him start as his hand snaked to the back of the drawer to produce her wedding and engagement rings. He held them in the palm of his hand where they glittered accusingly at her.

  ‘And put these on,’ he ordered savagely. Something feral which gleamed menacingly in his eyes made her, for once in her life, do meekly as he said, and she picked up the rings without question. The irony of her obedience had obviously not escaped him either.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ he murmured, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘We’d better note the time and the place down for posterity.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ She slipped the delicate gold bands onto her ring finger, acutely conscious of how much she had missed wearing them. She looked up.

  The blue-grey eyes were watching her every move. ‘And now start getting dressed,’ he ordered, but softly.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CAMERON put the suitcases down and turned to Alessandra. ‘I’ll make you some tea—Earl Grey, with lemon.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said automatically and he raised his eyebrows mockingly.

  ‘Now careful, Alessandra,’ he warned drily. ‘You forgot to be angry with me for a minute.’

  Their eyes met and held, shared humour warming from one to the other. ‘I must be slipping,’ she told him gravely.

  ‘I’ll go and make the tea,’ he said, the glimmer of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  Alessandra looked around after he’d gone into the kitchen. She had somehow expected the flat to look different—the way places did when you returned from holiday—but it didn’t. It was still warm and welcoming, elegant yet comfortable, luxurious and yet homely. It was exactly like coming home, thought Alessandra, rather despondently. Because it wasn’t really her home any more; it was nothing more than a temporary refuge while she was pregnant; or, at least, that was all Cameron had offered her.

  She sat down, feeling as redundant as a mother-in-law on a honeymoon, and sighed, wondering why she was here. Nothing had changed. Nothing had been resolved. The only thing that had happened was Cameron discovering she was carrying his child. And now he’d probably be watching over her as though she were the goose about to lay the golden egg! An heir for his blasted empire!

  It didn’t alter the basic fact of their incompatibility, which had been demonstrated so admirably in the few short months of their marriage.

  She felt a great wave of nausea lurch at the pit of her stomach. She scrambled up and ran for the bathroom, sinking weakly to the floor—only just grabbing the bowl in time before she was sick for the second time that morning.

  Her face and neck were clammy and sweaty and she groaned.

  ‘It’s okay,’ came a soft voice.

  Through the dizziness and dazzling spots which danced manically before her eyes, she became aware of Cameron holding her abdomen with one hand while he gently brushed the hair off her face with the other. From somewhere deep inside her a sob erupted, and she laid her head down helplessly on the cool enamel of the bath.

  ‘Shh,’ he soothed again. ‘It’s all right’

  ‘It’s not all right!’ she protested on a shuddering breath, like a child. ‘It’ll never be all right again!’

  ‘Shh. Of course it will.’ He dabbed at her clammy forehead with a cool cloth, which, given the way she was feeling, was the closest thing to paradise she could imagine.

  ‘I don’t—’ she wailed, and was promptly sick again.

  Cameron amazed her yet again by efficiently dealing with everything, as if he’d spent his whole life doing nothing but tend to sick women. She couldn’t bear it. ‘Go away!’ she mumbled indistinctly.

  ‘No.’ The cool cloth was patted against her damp temples and she closed her eyes, feeling marginally better. He patted again and she sighed aloud. ‘Oh!’

  ‘What?’ He frowned. ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘It’s heaven. Where did you learn to do that?’

  ‘When I was sick at school the matron used to dab cool water on my face. I remember how it used to work like magic.’

  ‘Were you often ill?’ she asked him curiously, in spite of her inelegant position of lying half slumped against his chest. She simply couldn’t imagine Cameron being sick. Not Cameron. As though, she realised guiltily, because he was so strong and so powerful and confident he didn’t bleed like mere mortals.

  He dipped the cloth into more cold water and squeezed it out with strong, efficient hands. ‘At first—when I first began to board. They said it was psychosomatic, that I was sick because I was unhappy.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘Desperately.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘I didn’t like boarding, and, of course, I missed my mother like hell.’

  ‘You never talk about it, do you?’ It was a tentative query. ‘Her dying.’

  Their eyes met for a long, steady moment, and she caught a glimpse of the vulnerable little boy he had once been before the image was gone and the defences came back. ‘You block things out,’ he explained quietly. ‘You have to, really. To survive. And then not remembering becomes a kind of habit. Her death certainly wasn’t unexpected; she’d been ill for a long time before. But that didn’t lessen the blow any. And, of course, it affected my father so badly.’

  Alessandra gulped back the great lump in her throat. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if she started blubbing.

  ‘Go away,’ she appealed again, but her voice lacked conviction. ‘Please, Cameron.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not to me.’

  ‘Because I can’t bear you to see me like this!’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Throwing up!’

  ‘Why ever not? You told me yourself that a lot of pregnant women suffer from morning sickness, so, statistically, I imagine that there are a lot of men out there right now who are, like me, currently ministering to their wives.’

  She looked at him with candid dark eyes. ‘But presumably those husbands and wives aren’t living apart?’

  ‘No.’ There was a long silence before he touched her forehead with his fingertips. ‘Are you feelin
g better?’

  She nodded. ‘Much.’ Physically, anyway.

  ‘Come on, then.’ And he bent down and picked her up.

  He was so strong, she thought Masterful, too. ‘Oh,’ she groaned aloud, appalled at her own weakness.

  ‘What?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’d only laugh.’

  ‘Then tell me—I haven’t laughed a lot lately.’

  She didn’t stop to wonder why. ‘Just that I kind of like being cosseted like this—it must be my hormones.’

  He laughed as he wrapped her in a soft blanket on the sofa. Then there’s a lot to be said for hormones. Are you comfortable?’

  ‘Yes. Blissfully, in fact.’

  ‘Then that’s all that matters.’

  He waited until she was sipping her second cup of tea before he said anything else, and, when he did, his face was as fierce and as stern as that of a headmaster on the warpath.

  ‘Obviously, your pregnancy has put an entirely different complexion on things, Alessandra. And I want you here with me. At least until the baby is born.’

  If only he hadn’t added that final, damning sentence. Then she wouldn’t have had the vividly disturbing vision of her and the tiny baby leaving with all their belongings. Kicked out by Cameron. And she would have had another nine whole months to fall deeper under his spell.

  He didn’t love her; that much was clear. ‘Then what’s the point of me staying here at all?’ she demanded.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? Because I want to look after you—’

  ‘Protecting your investment, you mean? The son and heir?’

  ‘No.’ His mouth was a hard line. ‘And I’ll forget you ever said that. I want you here so that I can look after you. I want to make sure that you’re warm and eating properly. I don’t want you struggling in taxis and buses. If you’re sick I want to be there to mop your brow for you.’

  ‘For how long?’ Her mouth trembled; it really was pathetic just how defenceless she felt! She clamped her lips together to stop them trembling, and forced herself to confront her worst fears. ‘Once the novelty value has worn off, you’ll get rather tired of a big, lumpy wife flopping around the place like a dying duck!’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, no; that’s where you’re wrong, Alessandra. Completely wrong. You see, I get a kick out of being needed by you, which in itself has novelty value,’ he added in a slightly drier tone.