by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
‘You apparently feel free to comment on my life and my relationships; I’m merely claiming the same right.’
‘It’s easy to see you’re James Sanderson’s daughter,’ Aline sneered. ‘You learned that vulgarity from him.’
Hope’s head jerked but she answered calmly, ‘He’s my stepfather, not my father.’
Aline turned her head and contemplated a small bush, subdued by the pruner’s merciless skill to mere sticks. When she looked back her face was wiped of expression. ‘I didn’t mean to turn this into a cat-fight. And I’m sorry that you think you’re in love with him. I don’t suppose it’s any consolation, but you’re not the only one. He has a fatal attraction.’
Hope didn’t answer, and after a few seconds Aline resumed, ‘However, you should realise that you have no future with Keir. Oh, he’ll care for his child; he’s a good man, with a strongly developed sense of responsibility, so you’ll never have to worry about money or support, but that’s all.’
‘You seem to have no problems accepting that this is Keir’s child,’ Hope said, finding her way. Aline seemed so confident…
A faint, knowing smile crossed the older woman’s lovely face. ‘Keir will make sure it’s his,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect you to understand our relationship, but I can assure you that it’s strong enough to withstand this complication. I probably won’t be seeing much of you again, so I hope that everything goes well for you and the baby.’ She nodded regally and turned away, walking through the formal beds back to the house.
Hope discovered that she was trembling. After a moment’s thought she realised that it was with fury. And not because Aline had taken it upon herself to force this confrontation, but because Keir had made love to her. A fierce, hot jealousy drove all sensible thought from her head; she had to wrestle with her demons in the sun until the heat drove her inside.
‘Did Ms Connors find you?’ Maria asked, popping her head around the drawing room door.
‘Yes, thank you.’
Hope thought she’d managed to keep an impassive face and level voice, but Marie’s eyes widened a moment. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked neutrally.
‘Yes.’ Hope strode upstairs, coming to an abrupt halt in the middle of her bedroom. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she said between clenched teeth.
Last night in that bed she’d finally acknowledged her love for Keir—and now this, the greatest betrayal of all! How dared he make love with Aline? But for some stupid reason the biggest sin was that he’d told her about the baby.
Half an hour later she was still stewing in the room, pacing recklessly back and forth. Her spine stiffened at a tap on the door. She swallowed and turned to face it. ‘Come in,’ she called, steadying her voice.
Keir walked in, tall and dark and dominant, still dressed in the dark business suit that made the most of his long legs and wide shoulders.
Hope’s pulse-rate pushed through the ceiling. ‘You’re back early,’ she said in a low, dangerous tone.
Ice-pale eyes surveyed her face. ‘Maria called me,’ he said laconically. ‘She thought you looked pale and upset. What did Aline say to you?’
‘That you were lovers,’ she flashed back. ‘No, to be a hundred per cent accurate, that you have been lovers and will be again when this complication—’ her hand rested protectively on her waist ‘—is over.’
‘And you believed her?’
She said bleakly, ‘I saw the truth in her eyes. And I can see it in yours now.’
Keir swore, his deep voice raw with anger and frustration. ‘We made love once,’ he said with cold precision, watching her with hooded eyes. ‘Once, months ago. It was stupid and unkind of me, and I regretted it the moment we’d done it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
His mouth hardened. ‘Because it wasn’t relevant. One night does not constitute an affair—we both agreed that it wasn’t something we wanted to repeat.’
‘Is that when she decided to marry you?’
Keir frowned. With reluctance he said aloofly, ‘I suspect it was. I’m sorry it happened, and I have made it clear to her that it was an isolated incident. Why is it so important to you?’
She floundered for a moment before retorting, ‘If I’d known it would have saved me some embarrassing moments.’
‘You’re more than capable of dealing with embarrassing moments,’ he said, his judicial voice scraping across her sensitive nerves. ‘You’re a confident, capable, sensible woman, so why have you reverted right back to that eighteen-year-old girl who overheard her stepfather trying to barter her off so he could huddle the miserable vestiges of his power around him?’
‘I haven’t!’ Stung, she lifted her chin. ‘I’m not accustomed to being—dismissed—’ She fell silent.
‘She made you feel like a pawn, worth nothing.’ His anger shimmered around him. Mercilessly he bored back in. ‘You’re feeling betrayed.’ He waited while she stared at him, and then jerked her face sideways. In a tone compounded of ice and disgust he said, ‘I can understand that, and I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have told you that I’d slept with Aline, but you didn’t seem interested in anything else about me but my prowess as a lover.’
Hearing her own lies delivered back to her in that excoriating tone made Hope flinch.
Very quietly, very lethally, he said, ‘I’m not promiscuous, but I have made love to other women besides Aline—do you want a list?’
Heat surged up through her skin, heat and shame and that harsh anger. ‘No,’ she said angrily.
‘I won’t crawl across broken glass to prove over and over again that I’m not like your stepfather. You have to decide whether to trust me.’
A bitter smile twisted her mouth. ‘Ah, that’s the problem. I think I might love you—but I can’t trust you.’
Panic kicked her hard beneath her breasts. How the hell had that slipped out? Her gaze flew to his ruthless face, set in mask of cold, unyielding disbelief.
He said cruelly, ‘You don’t know how to love. Love is trust.’
Hope shook her head, striving hard to quell the black fear that almost engulfed her. ‘Why did you tell her I was pregnant?’
He said calmly, ‘I didn’t.’
‘Then how did she know?’ she demanded.
‘I have no idea.’ Keir’s black brows drew together. ‘Perhaps she noticed the difference, as I did—you look riper, yet more contained, as though you’re drawing into yourself, preparing yourself—’ His voice altered as she winced. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ she said blankly. A twist of pain surfaced beneath her fingers.
He demanded harshly, ‘What is it?’
‘Not quite a cramp.’ With bent head she concentrated on her inner self, only straightening when the small twinge faded into nothingness. ‘It’s gone,’ she said on a slow sigh of relief.
Emotion clamped Keir’s features, compressed his mouth into a straight line, blazed fiercely as hidden diamonds in his eyes. ‘I’ll get a doctor.’
Hope shook her head. ‘It’s probably nothing—just another supercharged hormone acting up.’
Unexpectedly, jerkily, he pulled her into his warm, strong body, holding her against him. ‘Everything will be all right,’ he promised uncompromisingly, as though by saying it he could make it so.
When he picked her up she exclaimed, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking you to bed.’ Her heart jumped, only to lag back to its usual rhythm when he went on, ‘Maria will bring up your dinner.’
In spite of her protests he carried her over to the bed and sat her on the side, leaning over to haul back the covers.
‘Keir, I think you’re overreacting,’ she said, a trace of anger curling through her words.
‘I won’t ring the doctor if you go to bed and stay there until tomorrow morning.’
‘You’re trying to manipulate me!’
He shrugged, but didn’t back down an inch. ‘I carry through on my threats. Think of the child.’
Hope narrowed her eyes. Bitterness corroded her voice. ‘I hate emotional blackmailers.’
He held her gaze for some moments before bending towards her. Hope’s eyelids fluttered down as his mouth touched hers gently, sweetly. ‘And this?’ he asked, his voice deep and raw. ‘Do you hate it when I do this?’
Her voice faded, emerged drowning in hunger and need and love. ‘Don’t,’ she managed at last.
And then the kiss was transformed, losing gentleness, losing sweetness; Keir’s mouth plundered her willing one, and she gasped, offering him much more than a simple kiss.
He took his chance and she went up in flames. Desire twisted through her, clouding her mind with its potent witchery, persuading surrender. But she knew enough now to realise that the siren summons wasn’t enough. ‘No, Keir,’ she said against his ardent mouth, her voice husky and laboured. ‘It just—complicates things.’
He lifted his head; the crystalline eyes cooled, froze. A wolfish smile hardened his sensual mouth. ‘But this is so simple,’ he said even as his arms loosened and he stepped back.
‘For you,’ she said sadly, and gasped, stiffening as another cramp spread across her stomach. She didn’t say anything, but she heard Keir swear beneath his breath, then yell for Maria.
Torn by a bitter anguish, she said raggedly, ‘Perhaps we should have waited three months before making any decisions—aren’t pregnancies more likely to carry to term after that?’
His eyes went opaque, the iron angularity of his bone structure showing starkly through his skin as he said between his teeth, ‘I don’t ever want to hear you say anything like that again.’ His head swivelled as the housekeeper appeared at the door. In a voice Hope had never heard before he ordered, ‘Maria, get the helicopter here and ring the doctor.’
Chapter Eleven
AN HOUR later Hope was lying in a private clinic in Auckland. She’d been processed, examined by the obstetrician she and Keir had seen previously, told that the cramps were almost certainly a mere glitch in the grand scheme of pregnancy, and put to bed.
Stiff with a corrosive fear, she stared at the ceiling and waited for another pang, bitterly aware of the unformed dreams that had lurked just beyond the border of consciousness. Barely formed the baby might be, but if she lost it she’d grieve with all her heart.
And at the back of her mind skulked the furtive, despicable knowledge that if the baby died she’d lose Keir, too.
Perhaps it served her right that she should feel the first cramp just after she’d told him that she couldn’t trust him. Even as the thought formulated in her mind her stomach muscles tightened—not yet pain, but ominously threatening.
Breathing slowly and steadily, to a formula, she summoned calming thoughts, determined to give their child the best chance it could have.
The door clicked open, swung closed behind Keir’s tall figure. ‘How are you?’ he asked, coming over to stand by the bed.
Hope kept her eyes on the ceiling. ‘I’m fine,’ she told him dully, snatching her hand away from her waist.
Sitting down, he enclosed her fingers in his warm ones. ‘Try not to worry. You heard what the specialist said—it’s almost certainly nothing.’
His warmth went through her like the promise of life.
‘If I—if it—if I lose the baby—’ her mouth trembled ‘—I’ll go back to Australia.’
‘Why?’ he asked, that note of harshness more pronounced. Deliberately he went on, ‘Because your revenge will have backfired?’
Shocked, she turned her head. The light glowed lovingly on his face, slid in slabs of radiance over high, proud cheekbones, the blade of his nose and the arrogant thrust of jaw. Framed by dark brows and lashes, his eyes burned like ice under moonlight.
Stumbling, her voice thick, she muttered, ‘I don’t want any sort of revenge. I never did. You said I was screwed up because of my stepfather—and I think you’re right.’
He dropped a kiss on her hand and stood up. ‘You’re not screwed up. We’ll talk when we’re back home. Relax now, and go to sleep.’
Watching him move away, she stifled the weakness that almost persuaded her to call out, plead with him not to leave her in this strange place, in this strange bed, alone and lonely…
Disgusted by her need, her dependence, she asked brightly, ‘Where are you going?’
He was a dark silhouette filling the doorway. ‘I have to ring someone. I’ll be back in five minutes or so.’
‘You can’t stay here.’
‘Of course I can.’ His voice was calm, completely confident.
She moved uneasily. ‘Keir, I’ll be all right. You need a decent sleep. Go to your apartment—it’s not far from here, is it?’
He paused, then said in a level voice, ‘No. Try to trust me, Hope,’ and closed the door behind him.
She lay still, monitoring every twinge of muscle, every heartbeat. Resembling a luxurious hotel bedroom, the room itself didn’t so much as hint at a hospital, but through the glass panel in the door the corridor light shone with white, cold luminescence.
Was that Keir’s voice in the distance? Perhaps he was speaking to the nurse at the station. She strained her ears, but heard only the whine—muted, impersonal—of some machine somewhere, and the occasional hum of traffic outside the windows.
Tears stung her eyes. She shivered, locked by anger and dismay into a hideous stasis as she wondered what she’d do if she lost the baby. Roam an empty world, always lonely…
Perhaps dwelling on the fear might make it happen. Desperately she pushed everything from her brain, and eventually kind sleep and the light sedative they’d given her dragged her beneath the level of consciousness.
When she woke again it was getting light and for a moment she didn’t know where she was. Frowning, she looked around, then stiffened as she became aware of another presence in the room. Keir was sitting on the edge of another bed that had been pushed against the wall while she slept. He hadn’t noticed that she was awake because he was leaning forward, elbows on knees, head in his hands in an attitude of such despair that she whispered his name.
He looked up sharply, then sprang to his feet and strode rapidly across to her. ‘What is it?’ he demanded, his voice raw and taut.
Hope couldn’t get her brain to work; she croaked lethargically, ‘Nothing. I’m thirsty.’
He poured a glass of water, then sat on the bed and eased her up into his arms, holding her against his chest as he held the glass to her lips.
Cold hard practicality warned Hope to shut down her senses so that she couldn’t feel his warmth, but the lure of his effortless masculine support kept her still as she sipped gratefully.
‘That was lovely,’ she said when the glass was empty. Why had he been sitting like that, as though all he’d ever wanted had abandoned him to emptiness?
He set the glass down on the bedside table. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, allowing herself a cautious hope. ‘No cramps since last night, unless I’ve been having them in my sleep.’
‘If you have, they’ve been very mild ones. You haven’t moved or made a noise.’
‘Have you slept at all?’
‘No,’ he said, and was silent, still holding her against his chest, one arm supporting her back so that his hand rested beneath her breasts.
She should pull away, but she couldn’t. Just this once, she pleaded with some unknown, cruel fate—just let me stay like this, free from the flashfire of passion, enveloped in tenderness.
Above her head he said roughly, ‘I’m sorry you found out about Aline like that. And even sorrier that I lost my temper when you taxed me with it. I’d give anything to take back what I did—and what I said.’
Hope twisted so she could see up into his face, all angles and planes, the strong bone structure providing compelling toughness. His mouth was a thin line, the polished silver eyes screened by thick lashes. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ she said quickly. ‘Truly, it wasn’t your fault.’
He didn’t speak for a few charged seconds, long enough to make her tense and wish that she hadn’t told him the truth. Then, still in that level, emotionless voice, he said, ‘After you left New Zealand I kept in touch with your mother. Occasionally she’d read something out of one of your letters. Then she died, and I didn’t know where the hell you were, or whether I’d ever see you again. Aline came one night—I wish to God it had never happened.’
‘Keir,’ she whispered, ‘it’s all right.’
As though she hadn’t spoken he said, ‘I want this baby desperately because it’s yours, nurtured in your body, part of you. And because if you can’t learn to trust me it will be the only child I’ll have.’
Astonished, her heart bumping noisily in her chest, she twisted to look at him. His features were a stark testimony to force and power, his eyes shards of dazzling ice, ice darkened by the long polar night.
‘Why?’ she breathed, searching his face for some indication of his meaning.
The muscles in his body coiled and flexed as he moved against the pillows, but his arm didn’t tighten around her. She could pull free any time she liked…
Speaking steadily he went on, ‘If we lose the baby, don’t go back to Australia. Stay here.’
‘Keir—’
She was cut off by the abrupt opening of the door and the entrance of a nurse, bright and cheerful and romantic, if the smile she gave them both was any indication. Hope could have killed her.
‘I just need to do a couple of things for Ms Sanderson,’ the nurse announced, making it more than obvious that she expected Keir to leave.
‘A couple of things’ meant a shower and a change of clothes, then another check by the obstetrics specialist again, who finally said with a warm smile, ‘Relax! As far as I can tell, everything’s going to be all right. Now, here comes your breakfast. Eat it up, and then I’ll see you and Mr Carmichael together.’
Hugely relieved, Hope settled back, but Keir’s last words drummed through her brain, driving away her usually excellent appetite. Glowering at the white gardenia on the tray, she forced down a piece of toast and marmalade and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice before sitting back against the pillows.