by Zee Monodee
Oh, no, he regretted what had happened.
She sat up with a start and gulped. “We have to talk.”
He didn’t reply, pulled the quilt away. Then he propped one knee on the bed before both his arms slid under her, lifting her.
“Hey!”
He laughed, depositing her again with her head on the pillow. He lay down next to her and drew the heavy blanket over them both.
Jane suddenly felt like an idiot. She’d thought he wanted to run when he’d been intent on making them more comfortable.
He lay on his side, facing her, his head on his pillow.
“We need to talk, apparently.” His voice brimmed with laughter.
The heat of a huge blush flared on her face, and she looked away. Anger followed right after, and she grabbed the pillow and hit him with it. “Oh, shut up, will you?”
He grabbed the pillow and clutched it, a smile on his handsome face. “Make me.”
Startled, she let the fluffy cushion drop. Michael wasted no time in reaching for her, pulling her to him.
“I can’t believe I want you again so soon.” He dipped his head down and kissed her neck.
The tickle of the feminine power came back when she felt the evidence of his desire against her thigh.
She smiled, then. “Show me.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Stop grinning like that. You look like a loon.”
Michael burst into laughter at Phillip’s comment. He was probably grating on his best friend’s nerves. The two of them were meeting after weeks. In between work and his new relationship with Jane, the days had flown by, and he hadn’t had time to dedicate to his friend.
“Gorblimey, Mike. Not only are you happy to become a dad, but you’re also crazy over your missus.”
He shrugged. What could he say?
He picked up on the dejection in Phillip’s tone, though. “Things still not right between you and Claire?”
Phillip snorted. “When were they ever right?”
“Come on, mate. What was it all about when I introduced you two a couple years ago? You had eyes only for her.”
Phillip took a swallow from his pint of beer. “Blame it on temporary insanity brought on by a need to shag. And that was before I found out what a harpy she really is. Takes after her mother, if you ask me.”
Michael winced. At least in that matter, he didn’t have to worry. Jane was nothing like her sociopathic, neurotic mother.
“I just want to throw the towel in, Mike. I really can’t stand it any longer.”
That’s bad. He put his pint down and leaned across the pub table. “Say that again?”
“I’m tired, mate. I’m trapped.”
“Phil, when a bloke gets a girl pregnant, he owns up. You can’t give up.”
“And if I don’t want a kid?”
“You’re not serious.” He could hear the hint of warning creeping into his tone.
Phillip downed a long gulp of beer. “I don’t even bloody know. Claire knew I didn’t want kids, Mike. She knew I didn’t want to turn into my old man. What sort of father will I be when I have no yardstick against which to measure my own competence?”
He could relate to that, but still ... “Phil, we are what we make ourselves to be.”
His friend snorted. “Easy for you to say. You’re a goner where your missus is concerned, and you crave a family.”
Michael suddenly fidgeted in his seat. “I don’t ‘crave’ a family, as you say.”
“Oh, come on, mate. It’s me you’re talking to. I bet you don’t remember all those piss-up nights in university, when we walked by the Thames like loons a few strings short of a violin. You said very clearly that, later on, you wanted a missus and the whole deal.”
Had he said that? And did what he say under the influence of alcohol really speak for his wishes?
“Look at you, man. You’re in lurrve.” Phillip slurred the word and spat it out. “You prolly go home and get shagged every damn night. Lucky sod.”
Michael didn’t know whether he needed to laugh or frown. Obviously, Phillip had downed one pint too many. As to what he said, though, there was an ounce of truth there. He didn’t get shagged every night, but close to it. As to love, that was another matter. One he’d been loath to consider in the past, but maybe he needed to readjust his notions on the elusive L-word in the given context.
Still, bigger considerations to attend to right here, right now.
“Come on, mate.” He stood and came around the table to Phillip’s side. “It’s time I took you home. You’ve had enough to drink.”
Phillip snorted. “I’m not going back to that witch’s side.”
“Phil ...”
“She tricked me, Mike. I swear she stopped taking the pill just to snag me with a baby.”
Phillip swayed when he stood, and Michael grabbed his arm to steady him. “Okay, mate. Let’s go.”
All the way from the pub to his friend’s house a few hundred yards away, he kept an eye on Phillip to make sure he didn’t walk into a lamppost or hit the mailbox of one of the detached houses along the pavement.
Finally, they made it to the door of Phillip’s house in Hampstead Heath. Michael knocked, and Claire opened a moment later.
“Don’t tell me.” She sighed. “He had one too many at the pub.”
Michael nodded. “Sorry I’m bringing him home like this.”
“It’s okay, Mike. Not your fault. He comes home plastered almost every night.”
Worry started to tug in his mind. “Claire, I don’t want to pry, but I think you two need to talk.”
She sighed. “What’s there to say?”
“He loves you.”
She snorted.
“He’s never loved me.” She paused. “Take care. And say hi to Jane for me.”
He nodded and turned to leave when she swung the door closed.
What had Claire meant by her last statement? He’d heard disillusionment in her tone, an echo of Phillip’s, too.
What the hell was wrong between his friends?
The question plagued him all the way back to his house. The ground floor was quiet, and he peeked at his watch. Close to eleven.
Jane had probably already gone to bed. He went up the stairs and into the master suite. After tossing his suit jacket and tie on a settee in the sitting room, he glanced into the bedroom on his way to the loo.
She lay on the big bed. Her back was turned to the doorway, and her hair cascaded on his pillow, a dark, shiny river against the starkness of the white linen on the mattress.
His loins tightened, and he exhaled. A cold shower, that’s what he needed. She was already fast asleep, for God’s sake. That meant she had to be exhausted. She didn’t need the impervious demands of his libido on top.
After towelling himself dry, he walked to the bed and slipped between the sheets. Jane stirred next to him and pressed her body against his when he cuddled her close.
“Michael.”
The soft sound proved enough to negate all the effects of the shower, and he felt himself grow hard against her buttocks.
With a soft sigh, she rubbed her body against him.
Playful vixen. He smiled, then dipped his head against the side of her neck and kissed her, his tongue lightly running against the ridges of her collarbone.
She moaned, the sound music to his ears. He trailed his lips from her neck to her earlobe while his hand travelled along her hip and waist to settle on a heavy breast. Her nipple grew tight against his thumb, and he pinched it lightly.
“Michael, please.” She lifted a leg and placed it over his thigh.
He wasted no time to honour her plea. Nudging his hips forward, he slid inside her waiting body. She started to move against him, and before long, their breaths were coming in short, ragged bursts. She cried out in her pillow when her orgasm shook her.
Michael knew he wasn’t hurting her when he made love to her, but to hear her scream of pleasure always comforted him that
he was taking good care of her.
He exhaled her name on a rush of air when his climax overtook him. Spent, they lay there spooning. He never took her any longer when she was on her back. In the past months, her belly had swelled, and she clearly sported a pregnant bump now.
“Something’s troubling you.” She snuggled into him.
“Why do you say that?”
“You haven’t fallen asleep yet.”
He chuckled. “So I actually drop dead after I make love to you?”
“At night? Yes.”
He laughed and dropped a kiss on her hair.
She turned in his arms and faced him. “What is it?”
He thought for a long moment. “Phillip.”
“Is it bad?”
He nodded. “Sadly, yes. He goes home drunk almost every night now.”
“Can’t you do anything to help him?”
“I don’t think I can. He’s got it in his head that Claire tricked him by getting pregnant.”
Jane squirmed, and he looked down. “What?”
“Nothing.” But she averted her gaze.
He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “Tell me.”
Uncertainty battled on her face. “Claire ... she practically admitted to me that she planned her pregnancy.”
He’d feared that. This meant Phillip was right. But at the same time, his friend had to shoulder his responsibility. Accidents happened, and a bloke had to know that when he got together with a woman.
“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Jane shook her head. “I mean, for their child. The poor thing already carries this load of resentment on both their behalf. What will life be like for him?”
He thought the same thing. He tightened his arms around her, and she nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder.
“Parents have to do their job.”
She nodded.
After placing a kiss on her temple, he brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Now go back to sleep.”
He, too, forced his mind to blank out, willing oblivion to come.
***
Jane awoke that Saturday morning in her lover’s arms. Smiling, she turned and dropped light kisses on his face. He grumbled in his sleep before lunging at her, getting her flat on her back. He raised his hands to clasp her wrists, pinning them to the pillow as he kissed her and trailed lower to her neck and throat.
She giggled under the raspy, tickling sensation of his stubble against her skin. Suddenly, he rolled them both until he was on his back and she straddled him. She needed no further prompt. She took him inside her and let pleasure engulf her again, like it did every time she was with him.
“Remind me to go away a bit more often.” He laughed when she returned into his arms on the bed. “If this is how you say good-bye when I have an upcoming business trip, I’m all for it.”
She playfully punched his shoulder. “I don’t like saying good-bye.”
“Jane, listen.” He propped himself on one elbow. “It’s only for one week. If it were any place closer than Singapore, I swear I would’ve come back and gone again.”
“I know.”
The sound was muffled by her pillow. She hated to appear to be sulking like this, but she had never spent one night without him ever since that fateful evening of the charity gala. Not only would he be away, thousands of miles from her, but she would also be going back to the flat for the coming week. He didn’t want her alone in the big house. North London was too far from the twins’ modelling shoots, and they couldn’t come over. Her mother? Forget it. At least at the flat building in Chelsea, she had the twins close by and would never really be alone if, God forbid, anything happened to her or the baby.
“Jane, luv, come on. Look at me.”
She did, and pain seemed to etch onto his features.
“Not like that.” He tilted her chin up with a finger. “You drive me over the edge with those big eyes.”
A smile started to tug at the corners of her mouth. To think that she could have him at her mercy with just one look was enough to make her feel like the most powerful creature in the universe.
Michael Rinaldi, the man who had liquid nitrogen running in his veins, spontaneously combusted into raging flames under her touch.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll miss you.” A veil of sadness fell down on her.
“Me, too.” He pulled her close and kissed her hair. “I have to swing by the office before I catch the plane at one.”
He let her go and got out of bed.
“I know.” She sighed. “You have a lot to do.”
She watched him walk away towards the bathroom. Her gaze lingered on the perfection of his smooth back and tight arse. He also had powerful legs that would put any athlete to shame. Had to be all the swimming he did. He’d sculpted a physique worthy of a Greek god with his fitness regimen.
Jane sighed as she allowed her head to fall back against the pillow.
Her mobile rang, shattering the quiet cocoon of the master bedroom. She picked it up off the bedside table and grimaced when she saw the ID.
“Yes, Yan?”
“Jaaaane! You could at least say good morning.”
She moved the phone away from her ear so the outburst wouldn’t affect her eardrums too badly. “Yan, don’t you know it’s ungodly to call someone at eight in the morning? And how come you’re awake at this hour?”
“Ooh, did I interrupt anything?” A conspiratorial dip rang in Ilyanka’s voice.
“None of your business, you git.”
Her friend laughed. “I’m calling to tell you there’s the dress fitting today. It’s at eleven at Meggie’s workshop in Knightsbridge.”
Goodness. That was today?
“Do you want us to pick you up? Ileana will have the car today.”
“No.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I plan to get there in one piece and without any accident happening. I’ll take a taxi and meet you there,” she said before cutting the call.
Michael stepped into the room a few minutes later and began to dress. “What’s the matter? Why are you frowning?”
“The dress fitting for the wedding is today. I had completely forgotten.”
He winced. “You’ll survive?”
“I sure hope so.”
In fact, she probably would. Ever since she had really hooked up with Michael, a new sense of peace had fallen over her life, giving her the much-needed grounding and balance to be able to deal with her crazy entourage. Marenka’s taunts rarely fazed her any longer, and the older woman had even stopped goading her when she saw her prickly barbs were doing nothing to her daughter.
“Where is it again?” He spoke from the walk-in wardrobe between the bedroom and bathroom.
“Meggie’s in Knightsbridge.”
He strolled back to her side and tugged her out of bed. “Come on, then, lazy bones. Let’s go have breakfast. And put something on if you don’t want me to be late.”
Jane laughed as she pulled a negligee on before following him down into the kitchen.
***
“Have you put on weight?” Her mother lifted her nose as she eyed her a few hours later.
“I’m pregnant, in case you didn’t know. I’m supposed to put on weight.”
They were in the fitting room at Meggie’s. Marenka had yet to try on her wedding dress, as the designer and one of her aides were busy adjusting Jane’s bridesmaid attire.
The twins had come up with a pastoral theme for the wedding, in tune with the garden setting for the ceremony. The dresses reflected this thread. Jane wore an empire waist creation that bared her shoulders with its strapless bodice. From the waist down, the dress flowed freely, and the fall of the fabric concealed her belly almost completely. Only when she moved did the swish of the garment hint she was round underneath it. The colour was off-white, and creative embroidery rose from the hem up to calf-length, in fabric and threads of gr
een, pastel pink, and mauve, suggesting that the ones wearing the dresses were nymphs rising from lush grass.
“Oh, no, you can’t go in.” Ileana’s screeching voice rose from the other side of the curtain to the fitting room.
“Says who?” a man with a rich, deep baritone asked.
Jane stood straighter. She’d recognize that voice anywhere.
“But Mikol—” Jane winced every time Ilyanka butchered his name, “—you can’t see Jane in her dress before the wedding.”
He laughed. “Yan, I’m not the groom, and Jane isn’t the bride. Yet.”
She froze. What did he mean by that? Maybe he was simply teasing the twins. They had developed a brother-sister rapport with Michael over the past weeks. Was he humouring them, or did he imply something in that ‘yet’?
He threw the curtain open then, and she gasped, every other notion going up in smoke. He wore a dark blue suit under a classy black Burberry trench coat.
“Ladies.” He nodded towards the designer and her assistant. “Marenka.”
“For God’s sake, Michael. Can’t you leave her alone for a few hours?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
Marenka just rolled her eyes.
Jane started to move towards him, but the prick of a pin in the dress stopped her. She also realized she would trip over the unfinished hem if she tried to get down from the raised platform on which she stood. “I thought you were already gone.”
“I’m on my way to the airport.” He stopped before her, brought his hands up under her arms, and effortlessly lifted her off the platform to put her down on her feet in front of him.
The designer gave a small cough, and out of the corner of her eye, she caught all three women, Marenka included, leaving the fitting room.
Left alone with Michael, she allowed her eyes to drink in their fill of him. She reached out and touched his cheek.
Don’t leave.
But she wouldn’t say that. She wasn’t that selfish. He wasn’t going away for pleasure but for an important part of his job.
He raked his gaze over her. “You almost don’t look like you’re expecting.”
She chuckled. “It’s the dress.”