Kitabı oku: «His Miracle Baby», sayfa 3

But the truth was that it was already too late. Almost twenty months before, the protection he so valued had failed. Morgan didn’t know it but he already had a daughter. But a daughter he would never want, never acknowledge. And because of that there could never be any future for the two of them.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘GET off me!’

The change was so sudden, so stunning that for a second or two Morgan could almost believe another woman had taken Ellie’s place.

Gone was the willingly wanton bedmate he had anticipated, and in her place was a furiously distant iceberg, one whose golden eyes sparked with furious rejection where before he had seen burning hunger and a passion to match his own. It was so totally unexpected that he actually laughed.

‘I said, get off me!’

This time the cold command was accompanied by a threatening movement of one leg, her knee coming up with such obviously ominous intent that any man would very rapidly think twice about remaining in the danger zone.

Not being prepared to take the risk, he moved swiftly, jackknifing off the bed. The bite of the denim shirt into his arms reminded him of the way Ellie had pushed it down from his shoulders, imprisoning him. With an angry movement he shrugged it back into position again just as Ellie twisted herself off the bed, frantically pushing at the bunched and crumpled skirt to cover herself.

‘Just what the hell is going on here?’ he demanded, matching her fury with his own, an aggrieved sense of injustice combining with a hard ache of frustration with explosive results. ‘When I show consideration for the possible consequences of my—our—actions, I don’t expect to be turned on as if I’ve tried to force myself on you.’

When he’d shown consideration! Ellie’s mind nearly blew a fuse at the thought. She knew damn well that he was not considering her in the slightest!

All he wanted was to avoid the encumbrance of a child. If she needed any further evidence that her decision not to tell him about Rosie had been the right one, it was staring her in the face. In fact her grandmother had been the only person she had told the truth about Rosie’s father, and that was the way she wanted it to stay.

‘Or were you just leading me on, playing some nasty little game?’

‘No! Oh, no!’

But she had to say something to explain her behaviour. To distract him from the dangerous path his thoughts were taking.

‘You’re forgetting something,’ she blustered nervously, backing away from the glare he turned on her.

‘And what, precisely, am I forgetting, my angel?’

‘Not what—who. You’re forgetting about Pete.’

‘Pete!’

He spat the name out as if it were an obscenity. To her horror all the fire seemed to have died out of his eyes, replaced by an icy cold that seemed to flay a layer of skin from her body, leaving her agonisingly exposed and desperately vulnerable.

Suddenly terribly aware of the fact that she was only half dressed, the crumpled skirt all that covered her, she turned wide desperate eyes to hunt for her missing clothing. Her bra seemed to have disappeared completely and her white blouse lay just inches from Morgan’s feet. No matter how urgently she longed to pick it up and pull it on, she didn’t dare risk moving to retrieve it. Not while he was in this mood. So instead she had to content herself with crossing her arms across her exposed breasts in order to provide an inadequate form of protection.

‘Pete Bedford,’ Morgan repeated with ominous quietness. ‘And just what has he to do with this?’

Something was wrong here. He’d been told that Pete Bedford was no longer in the picture. The realisation that the other man was still part of Ellie’s life was like a kick in the teeth, combining with the savage nag of a frustrated libido to leave him incapable of thinking straight.

‘Isn’t it obvious? I—couldn’t possibly sleep with you b-because of Pete…’ she managed clumsily.

Something in what she’d said had surprised him. His dark head went back sharply, blue eyes narrowing in swift appraisal.

‘But I thought that you two were no longer an item.’

There it was again. The suggestion—more than a suggestion—that Morgan was not here by chance but that he had somehow found out exactly where she was and had come here forewarned—and forearmed—by knowledge about her circumstances.

‘Of course he’s in the picture! He’s headmaster of a school in Truro.’

Morgan took a moment to absorb that fact.

‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘And I presume that you suddenly had a belated attack of conscience because it would mean being unfaithful to dear Pete.’

‘It wasn’t belated! And I’ll tell you this whether you believe it or not—I have never—never—been unfaithful to any man while we were still officially together.’

‘You came pretty close to it a moment ago. I’d say your second thoughts came just that bit too late to leave you totally innocent of all charges. Or are you trying to claim that I forced you?’

‘I wouldn’t dare.’

Morgan nodded his grim satisfaction.

‘At least you have the honesty to admit to the truth. I’ve never forced a woman in my life.’

‘Of course not!’

It was impossible to hide her pain, though she tried to mask it behind a show of scorn that she hoped was convincing.

‘I suppose you believe you’re so totally irresistible that no woman can resist you!’

Images she didn’t want to face were filling her mind. Images of a string of newspaper reports that she had seen in the time they had been apart.

‘But then of course you have the evidence of all those starlets and models to support you. Who was it last month, Morgan? Kitty Spencer? And the month before that? Macy Renton?’

A dangerous scowl creased Morgan’s straight black brows and he pulled the sides of his gaping shirt together, fastening it swiftly with brusque, aggressive movements that spoke eloquently of the feelings he was holding back.

‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ he snarled.

‘Oh, so nothing of what was reported is true?’ Her eyebrows shot up in cynical query and scepticism dripped from her voice.

The scowl darkened, his strong jaw tightening aggressively.

‘Not nothing,’ he snarled.

He wasn’t proud of the way he’d behaved during the first month or so after Ellie had left him. Wasn’t proud of the lengths he’d gone to to fill the emptiness she’d left behind, the women with whom he’d tried to forget her. He’d tried to go back to the sort of life he’d lived before Ellie only to find that he had moved further away from it than he’d ever dreamed.

None of it had worked. All that had happened was that he’d managed a few hours of oblivion, but the morning had always come. He’d always had to face reality again, and reality had meant the dreadful irony of knowing that now he’d been free to do whatever he wanted with his future—but that freedom and that future had meant nothing without this one woman. A woman who had turned his life upside down, changed his perspective on everything, and then walked out, leaving behind an empty hole he’d found impossible to fill.

‘But at least any women I had a relationship with were free to be with me. They weren’t committed to anyone else, emotionally or otherwise.’

He was pushing his shirt into the waistband of his jeans as he spoke, the brisk efficiency of his movements as he fastened the zip, buckled his belt, expressing forcefully the distance that had now come between them.

‘Unlike you and your precious Pete. So what is it, my angel? Are you and your headmaster a couple or not? Or is your new man not the lover you thought he was?’

‘How dare you?’ Ellie threw the words into his cold face, amber eyes burning gold with fury. ‘Pete has been very kind to me.’

‘Oh, yes, and we both know how “kind” he’s been. But perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps you don’t want “kind” any more. Perhaps it doesn’t satisfy you, and you’re looking for something a little different—something more exciting?’

‘Well, if I was, then it wouldn’t be with you!’

‘No?’

Sceptical ice-blue eyes went to the bed, drifted over to the suitcase he had kicked aside so violently, and then came back to her flushed and indignant face.

‘No?’ he questioned again on a new and very different note, one eyebrow drifting upwards in cynical query.

‘Excitement wasn’t the word for that!’ Ellie injected every ounce of contempt she could manage into her tone. ‘It was more like a form of masochism—an exorcism of any lingering delusions I might have had about you.’

‘Believe me, angel,’ Morgan drawled with silky menace, ‘the feeling is entirely mutual. Like I said, I very nearly made the biggest mistake of my life.’

And he’d been hers, Ellie reflected bitterly. The worst mistake she had ever made in her life had been allowing herself to love him. Not that there had been any choice in the matter. She had been out of her depth almost from the very first moment she had met him. And nothing that had happened had done anything to change that.

‘So at least we both know exactly where we stand,’ she stated, somehow managing to make herself sound every bit as cold and uninvolved as he had done. All she wanted now was to get away from here as quickly and quietly as she possibly could. ‘Would you mind passing me my blouse? I’d like to get dressed.’

Morgan stooped, picked up the discarded shirt and tossed it disdainfully in her direction. Ellie just caught it and, pointedly ignoring his hard-eyed stare, turned her back to pull it on. The brush of the soft cotton over her sensitised skin, the still-aching peaks of her breasts, was a new form of torture, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it, fastening the buttons with determined movements.

Clothed, at least she felt better, even if the shirt was dreadfully crumpled and must look like nothing more than a rag. Her hands awkward and unsteady, she tried to smooth down the tousled strands of her hair, knowing that her attempts were having very little effect at all as she swung round to face Morgan again.

He hadn’t moved. He was still standing just feet away, tall and dark and devastating to her peace of mind, long hands resting loosely on the leather belt around his narrow waist, blue eyes hooded and watchful.

Ellie forced the polite, meaningless smile she used for really difficult customers, all lips and teeth, flashed on and off again, with nothing in the eyes at all.

‘Well, I don’t think there is anything more we need to discuss, so I’ll leave you to settle in.’

He waited until she reached the bedroom door, until she was thinking thankfully of escape, of finally getting away and hiding somewhere, licking her wounds in peace.

‘And you’ll be back—when?’ he enquired sardonically.

Never—if she had a choice.

‘Back?’

‘The “extra services”,’ Morgan reminded her harshly. ‘Cleaning—meals…’

‘Under the circumstances, I really think that you’d prefer it if Dee did your housekeeping after all.’

‘No way.’ It was a flat, emotionless statement but one that made it plain he had no intention of yielding or offering any concession on the point at all. ‘I don’t want this Dee, or your grandmother, or anyone else at all. I want you.’

‘But why? Why me?’

Why? Morgan asked himself the same question even as he phrased the words, ‘I want you’, not quite sure he had actually heard himself speak them.

Why when she had made it plain that she hated him, that she wanted nothing more to do with him, was he still so determined to play the only cards he had left in order to keep her near him? Why the hell did he want an unwilling, hostile, spitting alley cat coming to the house every day to perform tasks that she clearly resented with every cell in her body?

If it came to that, why was he even considering staying when the information he had been given was so obviously at fault? Pete was clearly still the man in her life, even if it seemed that that relationship was not quite the happy-ever-after that she might once have dreamed it would be. That being the case, why didn’t he just throw his cases back in the car and head out of here, not looking back? It would be safer and easier all round.

But somehow safe and easy didn’t appeal. For one thing, the lingering ache of unassuaged desire reminded him that no woman had ever had the effect on him that this defiant, golden-haired, golden-eyed creature had always had just by existing. Even when she was spitting abuse at him, that soft mouth declaring rejection of everything he was, everything he said, she still excited him physically.

Just one smile, one soft glance from those stunning eyes, the movement of her hair, the scent of her skin, was enough to send his hormones into screaming overdrive, to know that he could never get enough of her. Face it, he told himself. In the past hour or so she had angered, appalled, disgusted and driven him to distraction until he had felt all the normal control he had on his thoughts and his emotions slipping out of his grasp. But he had also been more intensely alive than at any point in the past year and a half.

And he wanted more of it—whatever it took to get it.

So, ‘Why?’ he repeated, lifting his shoulders in an indifferent shrug that dismissed her objections as casually as he might brush away a buzzing fly. ‘I told you. You suit me.’

‘Well, it doesn’t suit me!’

Ellie had had enough.

‘I won’t do it, Morgan! You can’t make me—and don’t tell me that it’s in the damn contract!’ she snapped when he opened his mouth, obviously intending to do exactly that. ‘I don’t care if it’s written in letters of gold carved into tablets of stone. I won’t do it!’

‘You’re prepared to break the contract?’ he enquired with a mildness that Ellie knew only too well was deceptive, hiding a ruthless determination not to let her get the better of him in any way. ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’

‘So sue me!’

High on the adrenaline her fury had created, Ellie tossed her defiance carelessly into his hard, set face.

‘Do what you like! I don’t care! I’m not coming back here, for love or money! The contract didn’t specify exactly who will come and housekeep for you so you’ll just have to take what you get!’

She should never have looked into his face. Never have risked meeting his eyes. But she had done and now all she could see was how like Rosie he was physically.

Those blue, blue eyes were the ones that stared out at her from Rosie’s face. The dark silky hair that had fallen forward over his broad forehead was an exact match for his daughter’s hair. And the thought that if Morgan so much as knew that he had a daughter he would turn and walk away from her without a second glance was more than she could bear.

She had come to the cottage to meet him today with a tiny hope at the back of her mind that something he said or did would show that Morgan had changed. That he had rethought, or at least softened his stance on having children, so that her dream of letting Morgan and Rosie meet, of letting her beloved daughter get to know the man who was her father, might just possibly come true.

But now, looking into Morgan’s cold, set face, seeing the rejection of everything she was in his eyes, she knew that that dream had no hope at all of coming true.

‘I’ll tell Dee to call round in the morning!’ she flung at him. ‘And if you don’t like it—well, tough! That’s the way it’s going to be.’

And before he could react, before he could say another word to object or to keep her there, she had spun on her heel and was heading out of the house and away from him, as fast as she could go without actually running.

Because running would give the impression that she was afraid, and that was not what she wanted Morgan to think at all.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHERE had it all gone wrong?

Ellie pushed a peg onto the washing line with a force that expressed something of the turmoil of feeling she was experiencing and bent to pick up another clean, wet tablecloth from the basket.

When had her relationship with Morgan foundered? When had she realised that they were on opposite sides of a very high fence and that they could never, ever share the same point of view?

Because at first she had thought she could accept the way that Morgan felt. If she was honest, she had believed that his resolution never to have children had been just a temporary phase, not a real, final decision. She’d been convinced that, given time, as their relationship had grown, he would have changed his mind, that his had been just the stance of a young man, used to being single, who hadn’t relished the thought of the restrictions on his freedom, the responsibilities that being a father would inevitably have brought.

Instinctively her eyes went to the spot where Rosie, in a red stretchy cotton top and shorts, sat, kicking contentedly in her pushchair and babbling to herself in her own private baby language. As her eyes met the bright blue ones of her daughter, her whole body clenched on a blaze of love for this tiny being who was as much a part of her as her own heart.

Immediately she had to drop the cloth back in the basket and move to Rosie’s side. Crouching down by the pushchair, she stroked the small, dark-haired head gently, looking deep into the eyes that were a mirror image of Morgan’s brilliant blue ones.

‘I love you, darling! I love you so much.’

Another stream of happy babbling was the response, the baby stilling for a moment and looking into her mother’s eyes in a moment of such intensity that Ellie’s heart kicked sharply again, making her catch her breath.

‘Oh, Rosie!’ she sighed. ‘If only it could have been different. If only…’

Abruptly she pulled herself up, refusing to let her thoughts travel down that path. There was no room for ‘if only’. No possibility of it ever having been any other way. If there could have been she would have tried it. She would have tried anything other than make the decision that had torn her heart so dreadfully that she felt the wounds would never heal.

‘I couldn’t have both of you,’ she said, capturing one wildly waving little fist and feeling the chubby fingers close around her own thumb. ‘Morgan made that plain. So I had to choose. And you were the one who needed me most.’

It had been instant, that feeling of total communication, total love for the baby growing inside her. From the moment that she had first suspected she was pregnant she had known that she’d wanted this baby more than anything in the world. The sense of absolute devotion that had rushed through her had been emotion in its purest form, white-hot and primitive.

She would have fought anyone who had endangered her baby’s life, thrown herself in front of a speeding car, an attacking predator, given her own life to protect that of the baby she’d instinctively adored without even knowing what sex it was.

‘But I couldn’t put right the worst problem of all, could I, sweetie?’

Tears stung Ellie’s eyes as Rosie treated her to her most brilliant, widest, almost toothless smile, leaning forward to pat her mother’s cheek with gentle enthusiasm.

In the beginning it hadn’t mattered at all. She’d had her own career, as the deputy manager of a secretarial agency, and Morgan had been winning a reputation as a writer of screenplays, as well as the dark, brooding thrillers that topped the best-seller lists around the world. And at first Ellie had been too stunned to think that he could want her, that he could care enough to ask her to live with him, to want to question anything else about their relationship.

By then, no force on earth could have stopped her from falling heart and soul in love with him. She had even seen his insistence on being ultra-careful about contraception as an indication of the way he’d felt about her, a way of making sure that no accident had happened before she’d been ready to think about having children.

Looking back, she had realised that she had often been forced into interpreting his actions rather than really knowing what he’d felt. Morgan was a man who played his cards very close to his chest, never expressing his emotions openly.

Ellie’s bronze eyes dulled and she stood, staring sightlessly into the distance as she recalled the first time she had truly become aware of the gulf between her and Morgan over one very vital subject.

They had been out to dinner with a colleague of Ellie’s from the agency and her husband. During the evening Jackie had announced that she had just had her first pregnancy confirmed, and from the start it had been obvious that Morgan hadn’t shared everyone else’s delight.

‘You could have been a little more enthusiastic!’ Ellie challenged him when they were in the car on the way home.

‘About what?’ Morgan’s voice was tight and cold, his attention fixed on the road ahead so that his sculpted profile was etched, harsh and unyielding, against the darkness of the car window.

‘You know what! Jackie was pregnant and she wanted everyone to celebrate with her. And all you could do was to sit and glower in your corner. I had to work really hard to cover up the way your mood clashed with everyone else’s.’

‘I didn’t feel enthusiastic.’

‘But you must have done. Anyone would be happy at the news…’

Her voice trickled away as she realised just what his silence, the tension in the long body beside her, was communicating. As she turned to glance at him he simply shook his head, the slow, emphatic movement leaving little room for doubt.

‘What is this, Morgan? Are you trying to say that you’re not that keen on kids?’

‘I’m not trying to say anything—I’m telling you. And what I’m telling you is not that I’m “not keen” on kids, but that they are just not part of my life. Never have been and never will be.’

She felt as if she had been slammed hard against a brick wall, knocking herself out for a couple of seconds, so that when she came round she was still, mentally at least, seeing stars. She had never thought to raise the subject of having children with Morgan because she’d been afraid that it might seem that she was angling for marriage, something he had never suggested. While their relationship was still so new and vulnerable she had been quite frankly terrified of rocking any boats that might mean she would lose him for good.

But she had always assumed…

They were pulling up outside Morgan’s house when she finally collected her thoughts enough to speak again.

‘You don’t mean that—you can’t.’

‘Can’t I?’

The dark undertone in his voice warned her to leave the subject alone, but Ellie was beyond heeding the danger signal. Coming from a family of five herself, she had always wanted children, at least two, of her own, and it had never crossed her mind that her chosen partner in life might not feel the same way.

Morgan had got out of the car and was unlocking the front door. She had to hurry after him as he headed into the unlighted hall.

‘Of course you don’t mean it! Everyone wants kids eventually.’

‘Not me.’

It was cold and clipped and utterly implacable, and his eyes, when he snapped on the light so suddenly that she blinked in shock, were as cold and bleak as a midnight sky in winter.

‘Let’s get something straight, Ellie. I never intend to become a father. There’s no place in my life for children and there never will be. If you can’t accept that, then we’d better call a halt right here and now.’

‘You don’t…’

But then, seeing the look of withdrawal on Morgan’s face, the distance that he had somehow put between them without ever having moved an inch, she recognised the true extent of the danger she was in.

‘Are you saying you don’t want me any more?’ she questioned shakily and heard his faint sigh in response.

‘I’m saying no such thing, Ellie. I don’t want to lose you. Of course I want you. I would never have asked you to move in if I didn’t. But only you. Just because I want to share my home and my life with you doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to consider starting a family and becoming a father.’

At the time it had been enough. That ‘only you’, spoken in that deep, dark, huskily intent tone had lifted her spirits, setting her heart singing. Morgan had actually said that he wanted her to share his home—and his life! That he didn’t want to lose her. She would be all kinds of a fool to think of asking for anything more.

‘And I would never want it to be other than just the two of us.’

She even managed a smile, slid a hint of throatily seductive invitation into her voice.

‘I could never share you with anyone else.’

To her intense relief, the tight line of his mouth relaxed slightly. The darkness that had shaded his eyes eased gradually, changing his expression subtly.

‘Couldn’t you?’

‘Oh, no…’

She felt on firmer ground now, her confidence growing as one warm, strong hand slid under the golden fall of her hair to curl around her neck, drawing her closer, gently but irresistibly.

The touch of his lips on her forehead made her heart skip a beat and she tilted her head so that her cheek rested against the heat of his palm. Looking up at him through the fringe of her eyelashes, she slanted a glance that was pure feminine enticement into the luminous blue of his eyes.

‘I want you all to myself.’

‘In that case…’ Morgan’s response was a harshly sensual growl as his grip tightened in her hair, holding her a willing prisoner ‘…I think we’re both getting exactly what we want out of this relationship.’

And from that moment all conversation was abandoned as his mouth came down hard on hers.

There was an exciting difference about his kiss this time, the fierce demand that always sent the heavy, honeyed pulse of desire throbbing through her veins mixed with a new and unexpected tenderness that raced straight to Ellie’s vulnerable heart like an arrow thudding into the gold centre on a target.

Perhaps it was that she was so sharply aware of how close a call she had had, how near she had come to losing this relationship, that made her feel things so much more. Or perhaps that fear had given a new edge to her emotions, leaving her in no doubt that Morgan was as essential to her well-being as the air she breathed.

Either way, the passion that flared between them as Morgan crushed her mouth under his was white-hot and all consuming, searing through every nerve in her body, setting her blood aflame with sensation so powerfully and so fast that she feared her bones might actually melt in the fiercely incandescent conflagration.

With her head spinning, her body clamouring hungrily for more of the glorious delights it was experiencing, she was scarcely aware of Morgan swinging her up into his arms and carrying her upstairs.

‘This is what I want—what we both want…’ he muttered as he laid her on the bed, stripping her clothes from her with urgently efficient hands, pressing swift, demanding kisses on the pale flesh he exposed, licking, sucking, nipping. ‘This is what makes what we have special—what will keep us together.’

The passion that raged through Ellie like fire through a tinder-dry forest drove all thought of hesitancy or restraint before it, giving her a new sense of confidence, a desire to show the true depths of her feelings. That need directed her instinctively, giving her new ways to touch, to caress, to kiss him, arousing him to the point where he so completely forgot himself that he cried her name out loud in the moment of fulfilment. In the same split second Ellie felt as if her whole being had been blasted into a myriad tiny pieces, scattered to every corner of the universe as she tumbled crazily into the deepest, darkest abyss of sensation.

It was a long, long time before the violent cyclone of delight gradually slowed enough to allow her to have any awareness of the real world once again. And when she did come back down to earth, she felt as if something cataclysmic and totally life-changing had happened.

It was as if all those myriads of tiny pieces of herself had come together to form a new being that, while it was externally the same as the Ellie she had been earlier that night, could never, ever be exactly the same as it had been before.

‘Ma! Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!’

Beside her, Rosie’s loud babbling and a renewed drumming of red-shoed heels against the base of the pushchair brought her back out of the past and reminded her that in the present her daughter was getting impatient.

‘I’m sorry, sweetie!’ she said penitently. ‘I know—I promised we would go out just as soon as I’ve finished this. One more minute and Mummy will be ready.’

She had raised the topic of children again, she recalled as she hurried to hang the rest of the washing on the line, but not for a long time. The fright she’d had had meant that in the future she’d been wary of risking opening any subject that might have driven a wedge between them, destroying the happiness she’d so delighted in. And when she had risked questioning Morgan again it had been only too clear that his attitude hadn’t changed.

Not that he’d ever actually discussed it with her. Sometimes he’d simply blocked the idea, refusing even to be drawn into talking about anything by declaring that he’d had work to do or a phone call to make. More often than not, he would use the same sort of diversionary tactics he had employed the first time, subjecting her to the sort of sensual onslaught that had set a sexual hunger raging through her and left her incapable of any form of thought for a very long time.

No!

Shaking her head roughly to clear her thoughts, Ellie refused to let herself dwell on the past any more. What she needed was a distraction.

‘Come on, darling,’ she said, turning the pushchair in the direction of the front door. ‘Let’s go and ring Vicki and see if she’ll meet us in Truro. It’ll do us good to get out and about for a while.’