Their Secret Baby (10 page)

‘She’s my daughter—my child—mine and Amelie’s. I want her and I’m going to have her.’

‘But she isn’t—that’s the whole problem. Oh, Rhys, this is what I’ve been trying to tell you. You can’t have Fleur because she isn’t yours. I know what you thought but it just isn’t true. Fleur was Amelie’s child, yes—but she isn’t your daughter.’

R
HYS
swung the car around a tight corner and pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator, sending the powerful vehicle hurtling down the road with total disregard for the winding, uneven surface. The brilliant headlights lit up the way in front of him, the trees swaying in the heavy wind, the torrential downpour of rain that sluiced across the tarmac.

The appalling conditions suited his mood. Even the weather seem in harmony with the way he was feeling—though there was nothing at all harmonious about the state of his thoughts. They were a blend of black, blind rage and furious turmoil. And at least the heavy rain meant that there wasn’t another car in sight, not another human being on the deserted country roads.

The tyres squealed as he hit another corner. He had no idea where he was or where he was heading. He didn’t even know what time it was and quite frankly he didn’t give a damn. He just wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the source of his black frame of mind.

Caitlin.

Caitlin, the woman he had wanted so much it had driven him halfway insane.

The woman who had stopped him thinking straight, driven him out of his mind. He had to have been out of his head or how had he ended up in this mess?

Caitlin, damn her. Damn her to hell. Caitlin and her lies and her deceit. Caitlin and her burning, golden eyes. Her sexy body, her scented skin.

The image of the woman he had shared a bed with the previous night seemed to float before him against the darkened windscreen, threatening to drive him even further into madness.

Caitlin. The woman with whom he had had such an unforgettable night of passion that he knew it would be etched on his brain forever.

Caitlin the unforgettable. Caitlin the gorgeous. Caitlin the temptress. Caitlin the
tormentor
, damn her to hell…

Caitlin…

Caitlin and Fleur.

Another squeal of the tyres, louder than before, marked the way that he had slammed on the brakes, wrenching the car to a brutal standstill.

‘Fleur was Amelie’s child, yes—but she isn’t your daughter.’

Even now, when those words had played over and over inside his head for hours, it seemed, he still couldn’t bring himself to actually accept them.

‘You’re lying!’

That had been his first reaction. The only thing that would come to his mind. The only thing he could force himself to say as he’d jackknifed to his feet, unable to sit there—on that damn bed—any longer.

‘You’re lying, damn you!’

But, glaring into her eyes, he had had his doubts immediately. She didn’t
look
as if she was lying.

‘Why would I lie, Rhys?’ she had asked and she had actually sounded as if she had had to struggle to get the words out too. As if she regretted having to say them. ‘What good would it do me?’

‘How the hell should I know?’

But even as he’d thrown the words into her face he’d known. Something of the truth had dawned in his beleaguered brain, forcing its way through the haze of furious rejection.

‘You’d get to keep Fleur!’ he’d flung at her.

And, seeing her flinch, seeing the rush of darkness into her golden eyes, he’d known that he’d come close to the truth or something like it.

‘You never wanted me to have her. You kept her birth—her life—her
existence
—a secret from me!’

‘Because Amelie asked me to.’

‘While she was alive, I might have understood that. But Amelie is dead! What is it, Caitlin? Are you so desperate for a child of your own that you had to steal mine?’

‘She isn’t yours!’

He had had to get out then. Get out and give vent to his rage and pain in some way so as to let it out, ease it somehow—anyhow. It was either that or stay there and lash out at what was closest—which in this case would, of course, have been Caitlin. And that would have been so dangerous.

Blinded by the red haze of fury and misery, he had lost his grip on his temper, and on his actions. If he stayed he wouldn’t be responsible for what his feelings would drive him to do.

And so he had stormed out, thrown himself into the driving seat of his car, and taken off down the steep, winding drive at a speed that was positively dangerous to life and limb, but which expressed his inner turmoil perfectly.

Which had got him here, wherever here was. By the side of this deserted country road. With the rain lashing down so hard that the windscreen wipers were having to struggle just to cope with it. And with the whirlwind of fury abating but not under control.

He doubted it would ever be under control.

Because he couldn’t accept what Caitlin had told him. Wouldn’t accept it.

He had given up three, almost four months of his life, devoting them to tracking down and finding the daughter that he had never believed he would have. The baby he had thought would never exist. From the moment he had heard from a mutual friend that Amelie had had a child—and that she had said that the baby was his—he had had only one thought in his head.

To find his child.

Find her and take her home, to live with him. To care for her as a father should, to bring her up in safety and comfort.

And love.

He had fallen in love with the baby even before he had ever met her. And today, when he had held her in his arms for the very first time, he had thought that his heart would burst for the sheer joy and pride of knowing that she was his.

And now Caitlin had taken all that away from him. If she had physically ripped his heart from his chest then it might have hurt less.

If he accepted it.

His fingers drummed restlessly on the rim of the steering wheel as he reviewed the argument he had had with Caitlin. There was something not quite right in there. Something that if he could just remember…

Ma petite Fleur.

It was like a light going on inside the darkened car.

No. He was damn well not giving up.

Edging the car back out onto the rain-washed road, he turned it carefully and set off back in the direction of the hotel, this time at a much less breakneck pace.

When the knock at the door sounded, the last thing Caitlin was expecting was that Rhys would have returned. He had stormed out of the house in such a blinding rage that she fully expected she would never, ever see him again. And so she answered the summons to the door without any hesitation. It was bound to be her father, who, concerned at the way she had never shown up in the main part of the hotel, or contacted him to explain her absence, would want to know how she was.

‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ she was saying as she pulled open the door to one of the filthiest nights ever. ‘You wouldn’t believe the sort of day I’ve had.’

‘Oh, I’d believe it all right…’

Rhys didn’t wait to be invited in but came straight past her into the hall, bringing with him a flurry of cold night air and a spattering of raindrops on an unseasonable wind.

‘I’ve had much the same sort of time myself.’

‘I don’t remember asking you to come in!’ Caitlin spluttered indignantly, wishing belatedly that she had not opened the door quite so wide and so might have been able to slam it closed before he had intruded with such cold confidence.

‘And I don’t remember asking you to let me in,’ he returned with total indifference. ‘I didn’t intend to let you say no. Where’s Fleur?’

‘She’s asleep in her cot—it is nearly half-past nine,’ Caitlin pointed out. ‘I fed her and put her down nearly two hours ago. And don’t you dare wake her!’ she added as he headed further into the house.

‘I’ve no intention of waking her,’ Rhys flung at her. ‘What sort of father do you think I am? I take it she should sleep through the night?’

Caitlin noted with a sinking heart and a sense of dread that ‘what sort of father’. Clearly, contrary to what she had believed, Rhys had not shaken the dust of the place from his feet and headed for London, ending up miles away from her forever. Instead he had come back in fighting mood.

‘Yes, she’ll probably not wake till around six in the morning.’

‘Good, then that will give us time to talk. And tonight we
are
talking.’

‘I certainly wasn’t planning on doing anything else!’

‘That’s good because neither was I.’

Bitter memories of how they had spent the previous night instead of talking made her voice cold and brittle. And the knowledge that she had only herself to blame made things so very much worse.

How she wished that he had turned his back on her and driven off at speed to London. At least then she would have a sort of peace, knowing he would never trouble her again.

Or was she lying to herself—or at least avoiding facing the truth when she told herself that? When she had been feeding and bathing Fleur, trying desperately to divert her thoughts from the moment that she had had to tell Rhys the truth, she had found it impossible to honestly convince herself that she was glad he had gone. The sound of the door slamming behind him had seemed like a darkly ominous sound, marking the end of something that for such a brief time she had had such high and positive hopes for.

High and
foolish
hopes, she had told herself. Impossible, ridiculous, unachievable hopes.

Rhys had not been the sort of man she believed him to be. He had not even been the man she thought he was. Matthew Delaney had never even existed, except in the fantasy of a future she had allowed herself to indulge in for a short, unrealistic time of dreams.

‘Do you mind if I go in?’

Rhys’s gesture towards the sitting room surprised Caitlin. After the way he had barged into the house, she hadn’t expected him to be quite so hesitant about making himself at home.

‘Of course not.’

‘I’m—’ he grimaced in the shadowy hall ‘—wet.’

‘A little damp won’t harm. It’s not exactly a stately home.’

But when she followed him into the full light of the sitting room her breath caught in her throat as she realised what he meant.

‘Wet’ was an understatement. He was soaked. The jacket of his suit was patched with great stains of water. The exposed areas of his shirt underneath were sodden and clung to the powerful lines of his chest, in places so transparent that the dark shadow of his body hair showed through the fine material. And his dark hair was black with moisture, flattened to the sides of his head and with streaks of water trickling down his temple and along his forehead so that he swiped at it roughly with an impatient hand, making sure it didn’t fall into his eyes.

‘What on earth happened to you?’

‘It’s pouring down outside, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘But you were in your car.’

‘At first…’

Rhys’s mouth twisted in a wry grimace.

‘I set off in my car but then when I came back I realised I wasn’t in a calm enough mood to talk about this—not yet. So I went for a walk.’

‘In this? Rhys—you idiot!’

‘You’d have preferred it if I’d come back here mad as hell and ready to kill?’ he enquired with a dry note of mockery.

‘As bad as that?’

Caitlin eyed him warily, seeing the flash of still unsubdued anger in his eyes as he nodded.

‘As bad as that.’

‘Then…’

‘No, don’t worry,’ he put in hastily. ‘I’ve got myself back under control again, I swear. I’ll be on my best behaviour from now on—completely civilised.’

‘Civilised’ and ‘under control’ were two descriptions that Caitlin couldn’t quite equate with Rhys Morgan. At least not with the Rhys Morgan who stood before her. The man she had had dinner with—was it really only last night?—
he
had been supremely civilised and totally controlled. But that man had been the person she thought was Matthew Delaney. And Matthew Delaney was someone who had never existed.

Which was such a tragedy because she had started to feel something very special for him. ‘No!’

To her horror, she found that her shock at the path her thoughts had been taking had pushed her into revealing her response quite openly, saying the word out loud. And, hearing it, Rhys drew his dark brows together in a sharp frown.

‘No?’ he questioned. ‘No what? No, I can’t stay—or no, you don’t believe that I will behave? Because I can assure you I will.’

‘Well, that remains to be seen.’

Still shaken by what she had revealed, if only to herself, Caitlin found that she couldn’t look at him, couldn’t meet the deep blue of those probing eyes. She was too afraid of what she might reveal to him, afraid that he might actually be able to reach into her thoughts and find out what was there.

‘You’ll need a towel—take your jacket off and put it on the back of a chair while I get you one. A dry shirt would be a good idea too.’

‘Caitlin, don’t fuss…’

‘I’m not
fussing
! I’m being practical.’

And snatching at any possible excuse to keep busy, to move away from him and into the kitchen, where a freshly dried batch of washing had a clean blue towel neatly folded on the top of it.

‘Here.’

She tossed it at him from the doorway on her way upstairs. Anything to keep moving, to stop thinking.

But when she came down, the sight that met her eyes through the open door was enough to make her want to go right back upstairs again and stick her head under a cold, hard shower.

Rhys had taken his jacket off as she had suggested and it was hanging neatly over the back of a chair. But he had also taken his shirt off, tossing that onto the settee, and was using the towel to wipe his chest and arms dry, exposing too much toned muscle and lean strength for Caitlin’s peace of mind. He’d clearly rubbed at his hair too, absorbing the worst of the rainwater from it, and it lay in wild disorder about his head, giving him an untamed, rakish look that brought back disturbing, unwanted memories of the way he had looked in the middle of the night.

In the middle of the night when her own hands had disordered his hair. When her fingers had clutched at it in the throes of her fulfilment, her body arched tightly under his as they climaxed together.