After the Loving

by Carole Mortimer

  So that she could be a charity case, with Raff making perfunctory love to her so that she didn’t need to go to other men! God, she couldn’t exist that way. ‘The pregnancy is my problem, Raff, why don’t you just let me handle it?’ she urged forcefully.

  ‘The child,’ he harshly emphasised the word, ‘is mine. And I want it.’

  Again she acknowledged that Raff was never denied anything he wanted badly enough. She was like a caged bird trying to escape the bars, even though those bars were made out of gold. A lot of people would say she was being ridiculous by wanting to escape, but then those people didn’t love the man who had the key to the door of the golden cage. Besides, she didn’t need his money, she was financially secure herself, although she had nothing like the wealth Raff controlled.

  ‘How do you think Kate and Paul are going to react to this cuckoo in their nest?’ she demanded.

  His expression darkened. ‘This child will be as much mine as they are,’ he rasped. ‘So they’d better learn to accept it!’

  Bryna had run out of arguments for the moment, knowing that the only real one she had was that she loved Raff and he didn’t love her. She had no doubts about his ability to be a good and loving father to her child, she knew that with her inexperience in the role he had more reason to doubt her capabilities as a mother!

  She closed her eyes. ‘All right, Raff,’ she sighed, ‘I’ll marry you. On the condition that I have my own bedroom, and that you never enter it,’ she added the last quickly as she saw the blaze of triumph in his eyes, making them appear almost silver.

  He nodded calmly, looking nothing at all like a man who had just fought a major battle and won. Maybe because there had never been any doubt in his mind that he would be the victor! ‘Agreed,’ he bit out. ‘But I meant it about there being no other men’ he watched her with narrowed eyes. ‘If you want to make love then come to me!’

  Heat burnt her cheeks. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she told him coldly. She would rather suffer the agony of unfulfilment for the rest of her life than beg him to make love to her!

  Raff’s mouth twisted angrily. ‘You don’t think you’ll ever be that desperate, hmm?’

  ‘No!’ she snapped defensively, her eyes flashing deeply purple.

  He shrugged. ‘The offer is there if you want it. We never did get around to drinking champagne together for breakfast,’ he taunted. ‘But I don’t suppose it really matters,’ he dismissed, turning away.

  It was strange that he should remind her of that night when it had already been so much on her mind today.

  The minute her apartment door had closed behind them that night she had known that she wanted him as he so obviously wanted her. And yet her inexperience made her shy, the uncertainty she still harboured about being able to satisfy any man. Physically, outwardly, she was sure she was the same as other women, but Raff was a man who had made love to a lot of women over the years; would he be able to tell that she lacked something inside her that made her into a real woman? There was only one way to find out, she decided, taking a deep breath.

  ‘I’ve been imagining doing this all evening,’ he groaned as his hands threaded through the softness of her hair to cradle the back of her head as he bent to claim her lips.

  That single kiss of the night before hadn’t prepared her for the sensual onslaught of the second drugging kiss, Raff’s body curved into hers, holding her against him only by his hands entangled in her hair.

  Not that she wanted to move away from him, straining against him for closer contact as the pleasure of his touch washed over her in waves, her lips parting beneath the pressure of his, moving together moistly.

  Every other thought but Raff and what he was doing to her went out of her head, and she arched her throat as his lips caressed her there with insistent passion, their breaths a ragged rasp in the silence.

  ‘Is it all right for you tonight, Bryna?’ he pressed urgently.

  She gave him a startled look. ‘All right? But——’

  Colour suffused her cheeks as his meaning became clear to her. ‘Yes, I—I’m fine,’ she assured him awkwardly.

  ‘Can we spend the night here?’ His gaze was intent on her flushed face. ‘I would have invited you to stay on at the house with me, but with Kate there …’

  ‘I understand,’ she cut in hastily. God, was this the way it was done—a mutual desire, and they just spent the night together? Probably it was, she was just such a novice when it came to these relationships, and if she hadn’t already realised she was falling in love with Raff she wouldn’t even be contemplating entering into one of them now. And she didn’t want Raff to think she was a complete fool. ‘It will be much more convenient if we spend the night here,’ she said lightly, throwing her clutch-bag down into a chair, wondering what it had still been doing in her hand in the first place, belatedly realising she could have hit Raff around the head with it as they kissed. Well, from now on she was going to appear a little more sophisticated! ‘The bathroom is through there,’ she pointed to the rose-coloured door. ‘Maybe you would like to use it first,’ she invited, congratulating herself on how blasé she sounded as she evasively told him she didn’t intend sharing it with him.

  ‘Bryna——’

  ‘I have to remove my make-up and all those other going-to-bed things, anyway,’ she added brightly. ‘But maybe I should just tell you,’ she continued haltingly as he just stood there looking at her. ‘That my—experience won’t be anywhere near as extensive as your own, and I——’

  His hard kiss silenced her. ‘I don’t want to talk about our pasts or the other lovers we’ve known,’ he said harshly. ‘For the moment there’s only this,’ his kiss was lingeringly thorough. ‘We can talk later,’ he promised. ‘When I don’t need you quite as badly as I do now,’ he added self-derisively.

  Fool! Bryna berated herself agitatedly. Of course he didn’t want to discuss the extent of her experience—or lack of it—now. Just as she didn’t want to know about the other women he had had in his life. ‘Take your time in the bathroom’ she invited abruptly, making a hurried escape to her bedroom.

  God, she hoped Raff didn’t realise just how inexperienced she was by her fumbling display of so-called sophistication!

  If he had he certainly didn’t show it, sitting back against the pillows in her three-quarter-size bed when she emerged from the bathroom after her own shower, the sheet draped across his thighs revealing that he was completely naked beneath its flimsy covering. And she was buttoned up from neck to ankle in a towelling robe! She also felt like a gauche teenager without her make-up, while he managed to look more devastating than ever, less awe-inspiring with the dark swathe of his hair falling over his forehead, but just as overwhelmingly attractive.

  She suddenly felt more shy than ever, wondering what she was doing contemplating making love with this stranger that she believed she was falling in love with.

  And then Raff threw back the sheet to get out of the bed, magnificent in his golden nakedness, and Bryna was too bemused by him to notice as he deftly unbuttoned her robe before letting it fall to the floor.

  Her lack of experience didn’t seem to matter as they kissed and caressed each other; she reacted to him instinctively, knowing a fierce longing to touch him in the same way he was touching her.

  They made love slowly, tantalisingly, with Bryna wild for his possession when he finally parted her thighs to move between them, all thoughts of inadequacy pushed to the back of her mind as she felt that brief pain followed by the most wonderful feeling of completion she had ever known, meeting the fierce thrusts of his thighs as he drove them both to, and over, the edge of fulfilment.

  Bryna had never felt so free, as if she was completely weightless as she flew on a soft, downy cloud of hazy pleasure.

  But as she looked up at Raff as he still lay joined to her some of the happiness faded from her eyes, knowing that for him it had just been another sexual encounter. ‘I did try to warn you I’m a bit of a novice at th
is type of thing.’ She couldn’t quite meet his gaze, only inches away from her own.

  ‘Novice?’ he echoed gruffly. ‘It was more than that, you were——’

  ‘Very clever to choose someone as skilful as you for my first lover,’ she cut in lightly. ‘And admittedly I may not be very experienced, but I’m sure we both know the rules well enough——’

  ‘What rules?’ he echoed softly, suddenly still as he looked down at her watchfully.

  She smiled, still not quite meeting his gaze. ‘No ties, no commitments, we can just enjoy each other!’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed flatly, moving away from her to lie at her side.

  Bryna looked at him searchingly. Had she been too hasty, could she have been mistaken about the pleasure he had found from their lovemaking? She was discussing the two of them having an affair, and he hadn’t even given any indication that he wanted to see her again!

  ‘Unless tonight was all you wanted——’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Raff cut in harshly. ‘I have a hunger for you that won’t be satisfied with just one night!’ He kissed her fiercely as he began making love to her a second time.

  And so they had had their affair, but although their lovemaking always gave her that feeling of completion, as if Raff were the other half of herself, it had never been quite as emotionally fulfilling as it had that first night; the last month or so it hadn’t even made her feel close to Raff any more.

  And now she had given up even the little she did have, to become his wife.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHRISTMAS Eve sounded a romantic day for a wedding, and this wedding had had it all—the breathless bride in her gown of flowing white chiffon and lace, attended by four beautiful bridesmaids, one of them the groom’s daughter from his previous marriage, the other three all close friends of the bride, the groom himself looking very handsome and distinguished in his grey morning-suit.

  The church had been packed with guests, the bride was given away by her proud father, the vows were exchanged with quiet intensity. The wedding of Bryna Fairchild to Raff Gallagher had lacked nothing.

  Unless you looked beneath the fairy-tale veneer and realised the reason the bride was so breathless was because the wedding had all been arranged within a matter of two weeks rather than the months such a lavishly perfect occasion would normally take to organise.

  Raff had done all the organising, of course, from insisting she wear a white gown, despite her protest that she really shouldn’t, to asking her to choose several other bridesmaids to attend her after she had told him Kate would be enough, to inviting so many guests to the church, and the ballroom of this prestigious hotel for their wedding reception, that after greeting them at the door as they arrived she doubted she would see most of the guests again tonight!

  Everyone agreed that it had been a beautiful wedding and now reception, that the bride looked beautiful if a little pale—but then what woman wouldn’t have been a little pale when she had just become the wife of that magnificently rich and handsome creature?—she had heard one of her female guests murmur bitchily to her companion.

  Raff hadn’t been about to deny or confirm the rumours going around during the two weeks before their wedding that the reason for the haste was the expected arrival of the ‘third Gallagher heir’, as one newspaper had put it. But before too many weeks had passed everyone was going to know that was the reason his bride had looked so pale!

  Raff had insisted on telling Kate and Paul about the baby and marriage as soon as they got back from Scotland, and although Bryna hadn’t even been able to guess what their reaction would be to either piece of news she was pleasantly surprised by Kate’s unreserved pleasure, although Paul seemed to feel slightly embarrassed at the thought of having another sister, or perhaps brother, at his age. But neither of them had openly rejected the baby, which was more than Bryna could have hoped for in the circumstances.

  Paul had been his father’s best man, of course, with Court waving away Raff’s explanations as to why he had chosen his son over him, with the laughing comment that he had already been his best man once and that had been enough, only willing to face the embarrassment of the speech he had had to give after the ceremony once in his life. He had chosen to give Bryna a congratulatory kiss instead.

  ‘Would you care to dance, Mrs Gallagher?’

  Hearing herself called that gave her a slight jolt, and her smile was a little shaky as she turned to a teasing Court.

  His expression darkened with concern as he saw how strained she looked. ‘Maybe you should sit down instead and I’ll get you something to eat; you look as if you’re about to faint!’

  ‘It’s this headdress and veil,’ she sighed, easing her scalp where the weight of the diamond tiara held her veil in place. Raff had given her the tiara as part of her wedding present, the matching earrings and necklace being locked away in the family safe for her. The tiara demanded that she have her long hair styled beneath it, but she had insisted that it not be twisted and curled into some style that would just feel tortuous by the end of the day. But the pins that secured the tiara in place dug into her flesh instead.

  ‘Take it off,’ Court suggested. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t now. I’ll help you,’ he smiled, his actions matching his words as he searched for the hidden pins.

  ‘No,’ she put a hand up to stop him, looking anxiously about the crowded room in case Raff was watching her. He stood across the room talking with Penny and Janine, two of her bridesmaids, and their partners for the evening. But he was looking straight at her, his eyes cold and condemning. ‘Raff wouldn’t like it,’ she told Court a little desperately. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he frowned down at her. ‘Raff isn’t the one who’s uncomfortable.’

  ‘Please don’t worry about it,’ she assured him quickly. ‘The bride can’t walk around without her veil!’

  ‘I don’t see why you can’t now,’ Court dismissed. ‘If you——’

  ‘Why don’t we have that dance?’ and forget about the damned veil! Raff had been determined that nothing should go wrong with the wedding, and she knew he included her own behaviour in that.

  ‘But——’

  ‘Don’t you want to dance with the bride?’ she teased. ‘Maybe you’re frightened that some of the confetti will give you ideas yourself?’ she taunted.

  ‘Not me,’ he grinned as he swept her deftly around the dance floor. ‘I’m what’s known as a “crusty old bachelor"—and determined to stay that way!’ he added firmly.

  Bryna gave him a scathing glance. ‘In that case leave my fourth bridesmaid alone!’

  ‘I happen to find Alyson a very stimulating conversationalist,’ he returned in a reproachful voice.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Bryna laughed softly. ‘That’s why you suggested the two of you book into a room here for the night!’ She arched mocking brows.

  ‘I was only trying to be helpful by offering an alternative to the journey to her home late at night,’ he defended.

  Bryna chuckled. ‘She only lives half a mile away!’

  ‘That’s right, mock my generosity!’ Court sounded as if she had offended him, but the twinkle in his eyes belied the emotion. ‘Women,’ he muttered. ‘They can’t keep anything to themselves!’

  She smiled at him. ‘If it’s any consolation, Alyson was almost tempted to accept!’

  ‘That’s the story of my life,’ he bemoaned with a sigh. ‘Women are always almost tempted.’

  ‘From what Raff has told me about you it isn’t always almost!’ she reproved.

  Court gave a self-satisfied grim. ‘We “crusty old bachelors” need companionship occasionally, you know.’

  Bryna shook her head. ‘No wonder you and Raff are such good friends.’

  He sobered. ‘Raff hasn’t looked at another woman since the two of you started seeing each other. Well—except Rosemary the other week,’ he amended awkwardly. ‘And that doesn’t really count.’

  ‘It doesn’t?’ she frowned, wonder
ing if he knew something she didn’t, because as far as she was concerned that night still smarted very much.

  ‘Well, he should never have let it go that far, of course, but he did have that business deal on his mind, and——’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’ she scorned disbelievingly. She had never actually asked Raff what excuse he had given to his friend for his behaviour that night, and Raff hadn’t offered to tell her, but now she knew he had told a deliberate lie. Why not just tell the truth, that he was tired of her and looking for a way out?

  Over the last two weeks he had consulted her on the finer points of the wedding, overridden her where he didn’t agree with her opinion, making her wonder why he had bothered to consult her in the first place. And he had kept to his promise that he wouldn’t touch her in a physical way again.

  As an example of what their married life was going to be like she learnt just how miserable she was going to be, but as a testament to how well Raff could keep his promise his behaviour had been unimpeachable!

  Court frowned. ‘You mean it isn’t what really happened?’

  She looked up at him searchingly. ‘Court, Raff did tell you that we’re only getting married because of the baby?’

  ‘What baby?’ He looked perplexed, his brows disappearing beneath his hair-line at the same time as his gaze lowered disbelievingly to the high-waisted gown she wore, the swelling of the baby barely perceptible beneath its Regency-style lines. ‘You’re pregnant?’ He frowned his disbelief.

  Now it was Bryna’s turn to look puzzled. ‘You mean Raff didn’t tell you? She had thought that he would at least trust his best friend with their secret.

  ‘You mean you are pregnant?’ Court stopped dancing to stare down at her, tightly gripping her arms.

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed simply, tears glistening in her eyes.

  ‘There have been rumours, because of the suddenness of the wedding,’ he said slowly, still looking dazed. ‘But Raff never gave a hint—My God, I never guessed!’ His face darkened angrily. ‘The stupid——’