The Unexpected Baby Read online

  Elena caught the warning glint of steel in Jed’s smoky eyes and bit down hard on her lower lip, dragging it back between her teeth, holding back a cry of denial as Catherine went on, ‘I certainly don’t want to rattle around there on my own, and, despite intruding on you here for a few days, I’m of the opinion that newly weds don’t want to find a parent lurking around every corner, cramping their style. So, either way, I’ll be moving to somewhere very much smaller.’

  Elena registered Jed’s harsh inhalation and wondeed if he was inwardly applauding his mother’s decision. It would make things easier for him, wouldn’t it? They wouldn’t have to play at happy couples very often; he could trot her out on social occasions then pop her back in her box and forget all about her.

  Over her dead body!

  ‘Are you sure about that, Ma?’ Jed asked, leaning forward slightly, the better to judge his parent’s true feelings in the dwindling evening light. ‘I don’t want you to think you have to make a snap decision, or that Elena and I wouldn’t be happy to have you live with us.’

  Elena watched him narrowly. He looked and sounded totally sincere. On the one hand, having his mother remove herself from their immediate orbit would make life a lot easier for him. But, on the other, he was deeply fond of Catherine, cared about her. The whole idea of pretending their marriage was normal had stemmed from his desire to keep the older woman happily deluded, spare her any further grief.

  ‘You know how you love the old place; all your memories are there—and you’re besotted by your garden!’

  ‘And having seen something of Elena’s, and her beautiful home, I know Netherhaye will be in good hands.’ Catherine smiled gently and put her hand over her son’s. ‘Sam’s gone now, and in any case he wouldn’t have wanted the responsibility. Netherhaye is yours.’

  ‘Even so,’ Jed said gruffly, ‘I don’t like to think of your being on your own. Not yet, not until...’ His voice tailed off, and despite herself Elena had to admire his understanding and compassion. If only he had extended a tenth of it in her direction!

  ‘You really mustn’t worry about me!’ Catherine smiled at both of them. ‘What I was about to tell you is I won’t be alone! I can’t remember who got the idea first, but Susan and I are going to set up home together. There’s a cottage for sale in the village—you remember the Fletchers, Jed? Well, they’re moving to the south coast, to be nearer their married daughter and grandchildren, and while I’m here breaking the news Susan is doing the business with the agent and putting her own home up for sale. There! What do you think of that?’

  Elena didn’t know what to think. Jed was saying something, but her head was buzzing so loudly she couldn’t hear a word. Her mother hadn’t mentioned anything about selling the small house in Birmingham where Elena had been born. The fact that she hadn’t taken her into her confidence hurt.

  ‘As soon as this house was habitable, I asked her to live with me,’ Elena stated numbly. ‘She said she was too long in the tooth to uproot herself. Several years on, she’s obviously changed her mind.’

  She pulled herself to her feet. The stars were bright now, in the dark velvet sky, and the scent of mountain herbs was released in the soft warm breeze. She couldn’t stand it, any of it! The night was so beautiful while her emotions were so painful, twisted and ugly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Catherine, I’ll clear away.’ She balanced dishes and plates one on top of another and forced a thin smile. ‘Ask Jed if you need anything.’

  ‘Did you have to be so bloody curt?’

  The bedroom door closed quietly behind him and Elena pulled the soft linen sheet up to her chin, swallowing the hot hard lump in her throat.

  Contempt blazed from his narrowed eyes and she really couldn’t taken any more.

  Her mother had never forgiven her for the failure of her marriage to Liam. She had thought the sun rose with her handsome young son-in-law. Even when she’d learned the truth she had tentatively suggested, ‘Perhaps you drove him to it, dear?’

  Her own marriage had been a miserable thing. Elena’s father had had one affair after another, finally disappearing off the scene altogether when Elena was fifteen. Naturally Susan had wanted her only child’s marriage to be perfect. She would be even more unforgiving now, when she learned that her second attempt at matrimonial happy-ever-after had been even less successful than the first!

  ‘Go away,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m in no mood to talk right now.’ Though there were things that needed to be said, of course there were—decisions of her own he had to hear about. And she had to make another attempt to break through his stubborn refusal to listen to her story. She should have told him about the treatment she’d undergone as soon as they’d realised they were falling in love. But Sam’s death had been so recent, and Jed’s grief so raw—a grief she hadn’t wanted to exacerbate. She had decided it would be better to wait. And the treatment had been a failure—or so she’d truly believed at the time. She deeply regretted her decision to wait until time had softened the edges of Jed’s grief.

  Yes, there were things that had to be said, but the stress and trauma of the past week had finally caught up with her, draining her of every last ounce of energy.

  ‘You’re “in no mood”—that figures.’ He advanced slowly, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Your ego’s too big to see round, isn’t it? Your needs are the only things that matter. You agree to marry me, conveniently forgetting to mention that you and Sam were lovers, that there was a distinct possibility you might be carrying his child, then get all hurt and bewildered when I understandably say I want out.’

  He pulled his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, the tanned skin of his tautly muscled torso gleaming in the soft diffused light, the line of his mouth condemning as he continued, ‘And then you blank Catherine—who doesn’t deserve it—because, amazingly ,’ he stressed insultingly, ‘your own mother appears to prefer her company to yours.’

  Elena closed her eyes, fighting to hold back a feeble sob. Never before had she felt this useless, unable to take one more brickbat. She had been barely nineteen when Liam Forrester—he of the sharp suits, fast cars and dazzling smile—had swept her off her feet. And only a year later her world had come crashing down when she’d discovered she was married to a common criminal. But she’d picked herself up, because she was basically a fighter, and made a new life for herself from the ashes of the old.

  But now, it seemed, she’d lost it. Lost the ability to pick herself up and carry on and—‘What are you doing?’ she asked thickly, her eyes opening wide as the rustle of clothing sounded ominously close.

  ‘What do you think?’ His trousers joined his discarded shirt on the carved blanket box at the foot of the bed. Naked, apart from brief boxer shorts, his male magnificence made her throat clench.

  ‘You can’t sleep here!’ She panicked, despising herself for not being able to invest the words with more authority. ‘Our marriage, for what it was worth, is over.’

  ‘So it is,’ he agreed coolly. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve no intention of making demands on the delectable body you went to so much trouble to display this evening. What were you trying to do? Remind me of what I was missing? If so, it didn’t work. Move over.’

  ‘No.’ She kept her eyes firmly closed as he removed his shorts, hugging the sheet more tightly under her chin because she was naked, too. And she hadn’t done her best to look sexy to remind him. Or had she?

  She felt the mattress dip and began to shake. Having him share her bed would be sheer, unmitigated torture.

  ‘I’m not overjoyed about this, either,’ he admitted drily as he extinguished the bedside light. ‘But Catherine’s always been an early riser. Crack of dawn and she’s up and doing.’ She felt him slide his legs beneath the sheet, punch the pillow. ‘If she sees us coming from separate rooms in the morning she’ll know something’s wrong.’

  ‘And that’s all that matters, is it?’ Elena snapped, stung. Didn’t he consider her feelings at all?

  ‘At t
he moment, yes,’ he said, his voice cleaving the soft warm darkness. ‘She’s going through a tough time at the moment; I won’t add to it. Sam was always head and shoulders her favourite. Naturally she wouldn’t have wanted to lose either one of us. But she did, and I’m the one that’s left. I feel guilty enough about that without adding to her grief. Just go to sleep, will you?’

  He turned his back on her, carefully leaving a yawning space between them, and Elena lay rigidly, staring into the darkness.

  What he’d said about feeling guilty was crazy. Wasn’t it? Or was there something about his relationship with his brother that she didn’t know about? Something that might explain the brutal transformation from a warm and loving husband, partner, friend and companion, the soul-mate she’d believed him to be, into a hard, uncaring, bitter adversary?

  She didn’t know, and if she asked he wouldn’t tell her. He had refused to believe her when she’d truthfully said that she and Sam had never made love, closed his mind when she’d tried to explain, cut her out of his life and his heart.

  Whatever it was that had troubled his relationship with Sam had risen up and cut out his love for her as surely and completely as a surgeon expertly wielding a very sharp knife.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE smooth rhythm of his breathing agitated her beyond bearing, set every nerve-end tingling. Lying as far from him as she could get, practically on the edge of the big double bed, she held her body stiffly, every muscle aching with tension.

  How could he instantly fall into a healing, untroubled sleep? she thought resentfully. Why couldn’t she? Why was she the one to lie awake, body aching, mind burning, every inch of her flesh craving his?

  Why couldn’t she write him off and calmly get on with her life as he obviously had?

  If he’d truly loved her he’d have listened to her, trusted her. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t even loved her enough to do her the courtesy of at least listening to her explanations of what had happened between her and Sam. So why couldn’t she stop loving him?

  Unanswerable questions made jagged circuits of her brain, tormenting her, but just as she decided she’d be better off downstairs in her study, reading through those neglected faxes from her agent, she slid abruptly into exhausted sleep, and woke to find herself cuddled into Jed’s naked body.

  Hardly daring to breathe, Elena gingerly opened her eyes. Grey pre-dawn light was filtering through the partly closed louvres, and at some time during the night they had unconsciously moved together.

  Who had first reached out for the other was not the issue. It had happened. The only question was what to do about it.

  Jed’s arm was curled around her shoulder, his hand splayed against her back; one of her arms circled his taut waist while the other was tucked against his hardmuscled chest. Her fingers were touching the softly vulnerable hollow at the base of his throat, and their legs seenied to be inextricably twined together.

  Her heart punched, heat crawling through her veins as the flood of desire she had no control over pooled heavily, sweetly, inside her.

  He was deeply asleep, the rise and fall of his chest slow and steady, the motion lazily brushing the hardening globes of her breasts. She struggled to control the instinctive response and failed, holding her breath until she thought her lungs would burst.

  She knew she should try to extricate herself, gently and carefully, so as not to wake him, end the bittersweet torment of this stolen intimacy, put an end to the frightening immediacy of this terrible aching need.

  But her body seemed to be growing heavier, sinking deeper into the soft mattress, pressing more closely into his, electrical currents sparking from the contact of flesh against flesh, setting up convulsive shudders low down inside her. And his skin was damp, slicked with perspiration; it felt like warm sleek satin.

  She ached to run both her hands over his body, reclaim all that had been hers until that terrible day just over a week ago. But she couldn’t do that, she mustn’t do that, mustn’t give in to the intolerable temptation.

  Physically, he was wrapped around her, but mentally and emotionally he had gone away, far away...

  She knew the moment he woke, heard the deeper tug of his breath, the muted, feral sound he made at the back of his throat as his hand slid down from her shoulder to spread across the curve of her buttocks, pulling her onto his immediate arousal.

  Too late now to creep away without waking him. Much, much too late. Elena scarcely dared breathe, her eyes filling with sudden emotional tears.

  There was no denying his urgent physical need. Or hers. But would he make love to her? And if he did would it be lust, a loveless using of her body, or would it signal a change of heart, a desire to cast out the havoc of contempt and distrust, to start again with a willingness to listen, to understand?

  But shouldn’t she signal her willingness to make a fresh start, let him know that for her love hadn’t ended with his cruel words?

  A heartbeat away from lifting her head to find his lips, whisper the words of love against them, she felt his body go rigid, heard the low-voiced self-deprecating profanity as he twisted off the bed, then padded around pulling garments from drawers before heading for the en suite bathroom.

  She felt like dirt, and scrambled up against the pillows, wrapping her arms tightly around her body to contain the pain. The moment he’d reached full consciousness, realised what he was doing and who he was doing it with, he’d acted as if he’d found himself in bed with his arms round a bundle of evil-smelling slime!

  Pushing the pain of that as far out of sight as it would go, she blinked the moisture from her eyes, controlled her breathing and swung her long legs out of bed, reaching for her wrap.

  She tied the belt tightly about her small waist, the full-length mirror throwing back a wanton reflection. Rumpled blonde hair, the filmy robe doing nothing to hide her nakedness. She didn’t care. There was no room for false modesty in this hateful situation. Much as she’d tried during the past long, lonely week, she hadn’t been able to stop loving him. She’d been fooling herself if she’d thought for one moment that she had. But that didn’t mean she’d lost all her pride.

  Jed was under the shower, a cold one by the looks of things. She averted her eyes from his perfect male body, raised her voice above the sound of pounding water. ‘This situation’s impossible.’

  ‘I’m not over the moon about it, either.’ The gush of water stopped, and after a split second Elena steeled herself to look at him. He was wrapping a towel around his lean hips, his mouth taut, water plastering his hair to his skull, droplets gleaming on his fantastic body.

  Elena clenched her hands at her sides, forbidding the instinctive, self-destructive need to touch. ‘Then do something about it,’ she ordered around the lump in her throat. ‘Or I will.’

  The towel he’d been using to rough dry his hair dropped to his side, narrowed grey eyes lacerating her. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  She lifted her chin. He didn’t frighten her. After the loss of his love, nothing could ever frighten her again. ‘You could listen to me, for a start. Let me tell you exactly what happened between me and Sam.’

  ‘No.’ Angry emotion darkened his eyes. ‘I don’t want to hear what happened, listen to you trying to justify yourself. It sickens me.’

  She couldn’t reach him, she recognised hopelessly. Even if she went down on her knees and begged him to hear her out it would make no difference.

  Trying to control the frustration that churned inside her, the pain of it all, she said flatly, ‘If that’s the way you want it. If you want to be this stubborn you can never have really loved me. And I’m not going to plead with you. But I warn you, I’m not prepared to pretend we’re a loving couple when we’re not. I refuse to go back to Netherhaye with you and live my life that way. So Catherine has to be told, sooner or later.’

  His eyes glittered sharply. ‘Later. Very much later. And you know damned well why! Or are you so wrapped up in what you want you don’t
care about anyone else?’

  The rasped barb found its target. Her heart twisted painfully inside her. Of course she didn’t want to cause Catherine any further emotional suffering, and it was an indictment of his so-called former love for her that he would so easily believe her capable of doing anything of the sort.

  She closed her eyes, hiding the despised weak glitter of tears, and Jed said coldly, ‘While she’s here you’ll act the part of a besotted wife. You managed it in bed this morning, so carrying on the act in the light of day shouldn’t give you too much of a problem.’

  Her eyelids batted open at that, revealing sea-blue glittery diamonds. How dared he? She hadn’t consciously instigated that close embrace, and, initially at least, he’d loved every second. Wanted her—

  As he wanted her now! She recognised the slight flare of his nostrils, the tightening of his jaw, the slow burn of colour across his prominent cheekbones, the drift of narrowed scorching eyes over her as-good-asnaked body. Something curled, dark and sharp, inside her. He might not love her now, but he sure as hell still desired her, she thought in bitter triumph. Something that elemental would take a long time dying.

  ‘It’s all yours.’ He scooped up the clothes he’d brought in with him. ‘I’ll dress in the bedroom.’ He brushed past, colour still darkening his face. He couldn’t get away from her fast enough, she thought, untying her belt He might hate himself for wanting her but there was nothing he could do about it.