Their Secret Baby (8 page)

‘I’m sorry—nearly done.’

And he couldn’t be finished soon enough, he told himself. He did
not
want to feel this way. In fact, he wanted to feel anything but.

He had come downstairs this morning, determined to have things out with Caitlin. To tell her a few home truths, and put his cards on the table. And the first thing he’d planned on was making only too plain just what an appalling mistake he’d—they’d—made getting into bed together. A mistake that must never, ever be repeated. And then he was going to demand that she hand over his daughter.

He’d done quite well on the first point. And she’d even helped him by making it plain that she felt the same way. That the last thing she wanted was a repetition of the madness that had gripped them last night. They had both seemed totally in agreement on that at least. And if he could only have gone on to talk about the baby…

But then he’d been distracted by the injury to her foot.

How
could
he have let himself be diverted from his main, his only purpose in being here?

How could he have forgotten about his child, his daughter, when she was the one thing that had brought him here in the first place?

‘There.’

He placed the last strip of protective plaster over one of the larger cuts and stuck it down, smoothing it tightly over the pale skin.

‘That’s that done. Finished.’

‘Thank you.’

She sounded subdued, thoughtful, but he wasn’t going to allow himself to wonder what was going through her mind. What he needed was to concentrate on what was important—what really mattered.

‘No problem.’

Screwing the protective paper from the plaster up into a ball and lobbing it vaguely in the direction of the bin, he let her foot go abruptly and stood up, taking the bowl of water to the sink to empty it out.

‘Anyone would have done it. I couldn’t leave you bleeding all over the floor. No, wait,’ he commanded as she started to get to her feet. ‘You can’t wander about like that. At least let me get you some shoes—or slippers?’

Caitlin subsided back onto the chair, clearly not liking his abrupt tone.

‘In the cloakroom—by the door.’

It was just the break he needed. Just enough time to draw in a deep, calming breath and force his mind away from the sultry, erotic paths it had been following and on to calmer, more important matters.

And so had she.

‘Rhys, we have to talk about the baby,’ she began as soon as he came back into the room.

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he declared, dropping the shoes on the floor at her feet without ceremony. ‘I came here to get her and I’m not leaving without her. That’s all there is to say.’

It wasn’t all
she
had to say, Caitlin reflected uneasily, trying to push her feet into her shoes without dislodging the plasters or catching one of the tiny cuts on the leather. But she didn’t know how or where to begin.

Whatever she said, he wasn’t going to like it. And there was one major detail that she knew he was just going to hate. One that she didn’t have the faintest idea how to start telling him.

‘It isn’t that simple…’

‘It’s perfectly simple.’

Not listening,
the expression on his face said.
And you’re not going to persuade me to listen unless you go along with what I want.

‘I want my baby, Caitlin. Amelie’s and my child. That’s why I came here.’

‘Rhys, please—let me tell you about—’

‘No!’

It was brutally cold, icily emphatic. No argument, no debate, just this one forceful syllable.

‘I don’t want you to tell me anything about my baby! I don’t want to
hear
anything second-hand. I want to see her—to hold her—to get to know her myself. One to one—with no in-between. That’s the way I want it and that’s the way it’s going to be.’

‘Amelie didn’t want you to have her.’

‘Amelie was a selfish bitch and a liar!’ Rhys exploded. ‘She told you I wanted her to have an abortion—is that right?’

‘Y-yes…’

Caitlin was struggling to recognise the man who stood before her. The charming, urbane companion who had shared her dinner table, the passionate lover of the night before, had vanished. Even the coolly distant man of just moments before was transformed into this coldly angry creature whose eyes blazed blue fire, and whose beautiful mouth had white marks of blind fury etched strongly around it.

If
this
Rhys had been her cousin’s husband, then she could see exactly why Amelie had left in the first place.

‘No,’ Rhys stated harshly, ‘it’s not true—not a word of it. I didn’t tell Amelie to have an abortion.
She
told
me
that if she ever got pregnant she was having one. She had never wanted children, and she couldn’t stand the thought of getting fat and ugly—she’d do anything rather than go through that. That’s why we split up the first time—she ran away from me and from the thought of ever being a mother.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

She couldn’t believe him. It couldn’t be true. Any of it. How could it when Amelie had told her the opposite? And Josh…

‘So you think your cousin was such a saint? You said yourself you didn’t know her.’

‘I didn’t, but—’

‘But what?’

How could she tell him? How could she let him know the truth about this baby he thought was his when he had come so far, determined to find her? How could she tell him the real truth when he could only hate it—and hate her all the more for revealing it to him?

And the shocking thing was that she didn’t know which felt worse—the thought of the pain the truth would bring to him, or the idea of him detesting her even more than he clearly did already.

‘Caitlin…’

Rhys’s voice held an ominous note of warning, the promise of retribution if she didn’t explain herself—and fast.

‘I don’t— I know…’

Desperately she floundered, not knowing which way to turn, how to phrase it, what to say…

But then, just as she drew in a fearful breath, ready to try and speak, a sudden rap at the door startled them both.

While they were still standing, frozen in shock, there was the sound of a key in the lock, the door was pushed open, and a cheery female voice echoed round the tiny hallway.

‘Cait? You there? Is everything OK?’

Mandy, Caitlin thought bitterly. Sweet, helpful Mandy, who worked as a chambermaid in the hotel and who adored children. Who often acted as babysitter…Panic clutched at her throat, holding her silent and still when she most wished she could move or say something—anything.

‘Your dad was worried when it was getting so late and you hadn’t turned up. So he sent me over with a key.’

Please let her be alone, Caitlin prayed. Please, please, let her be alone…

But even as she sent the desperate entreaty heavenwards she could hear Mandy stepping into the hallway, the slight grunt she made indicating that the older woman was carrying something—or someone. And at the same time her listening ears caught the faint snuffling beginnings that experience told her would swiftly change into a full-throated cry.

She didn’t dare to look into Rhys’s face, to watch him turn, see his reaction, as with the worst timing possible the baby he was seeking announced her arrival at the top of her voice.

R
HYS
was the first to recover.

While Caitlin still stood frozen to the spot, staring wide-eyed in shock and disbelief, it was Rhys who moved forward, switching on a ready, charming smile that clearly had exactly the effect he wanted.

Mandy melted like ice in the sun just at the sight of it.

‘Hi,’ he said smoothly. ‘I’m Rhys—I’m afraid I’m the reason why Caitlin’s been delayed so long. I’m sorry about that.’

‘No problem.’ Mandy’s eyes were huge with astonished delight and she was practically drooling.

Oh, great! And now the whole hotel staff would know that Rhys Morgan had spent the night here, Caitlin thought bitterly. Knowing how much Mandy loved to gossip, she clearly couldn’t wait until she got back and told everyone all about it.

‘And you’re—?’

‘Mandy.’

‘OK, Mandy—let me take the little one from you…’

No!

The word screamed inside Caitlin’s head but she didn’t dare give voice to it. For one thing she didn’t want to frighten the little girl. And for another, she was afraid that any false move on her part might just push Rhys into reckless action. The door was still wide open behind them, the car park only a few metres away. If he decided to turn and go with the baby neither Mandy nor she would be able to stop him. He could be in his car and gone…

Swallowing hard, she forced herself to find the strength to speak.

‘I’ll take her…’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Rhys dismissed her feeble croak with a single arrogant glance. ‘I have her.’

I have her, and I’m going to keep her, his tone said only too clearly to Caitlin’s over-sensitive ears. Or was that just her desperate feeling of horror, the result of tightly stretched nerves, distorting her hearing? Mandy didn’t appear to find anything wrong at all but handed over the shawl-wrapped bundle without a qualm.

‘She doesn’t like strangers,’ Caitlin tried again.

Then watched in despair as the baby blithely proved her wrong by not only stopping the petulant wail she had been indulging in, but also settling down into Rhys’s arms as if she had been born to be there. The tiny head, covered in downy dark hair, rested securely in the crook of the man’s strong arm, and her wide blue eyes blinked once, then stared up into his face in apparently fascinated delight.

‘Hello, little one,’ Rhys murmured, and the softness of his tone caught on something desperately raw and painful in Caitlin’s heart and twisted a brutal knife agonisingly where it was already wounded.

Through the blood that was pounding in her head, she heard Mandy say something, though what she had no idea, but she nodded all the same. Dimly she was aware of the other woman turning, leaving, and shutting the door behind her, but she didn’t see her go.

The only thing she could see, the one thing that held her gaze, was the tall, dark, stunning man before her. The big man and the tiny baby held so securely in his arms. And that, the one thing she had prayed that she would never, ever see, was all that her stunned vision could focus on, seeing it with an excruciating clarity.

She had never seen anyone fall in love before, but now she watched and saw it happen right before her eyes. She watched Rhys Morgan look down into the small, upturned face of the baby girl he believed was his daughter, and lose his heart to her, put his soul in thrall in the space of a heartbeat.

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He just looked and smiled.

Smiled in a way that she had never, ever seen on his hard features before. In a way that said his devotion had been won, given totally and freely. Handed over without a second thought and with no hope of return. He wouldn’t care about that anyway.

It was as if she had ceased to be. As if she had faded from existence, into total oblivion, and the man and the baby were the only things in the room. And they were totally absorbed in each other.

Because Fleur too seemed transfixed. She had lost all her normal shyness and unease with people she didn’t know. She had even forgotten the nagging beginnings of hunger which had started the crabby wailing of just a few moments before and which normally went on and on until her appetite was appeased. She just lay there and stared up at the strong male face above her and blew tiny bubbles of delight from her rosebud-pink lips.

‘What’s her name?’

It didn’t sound like Rhys’s voice. In fact it sounded so unlike anything she had ever heard from him before that she blinked hard, actually looking round the room to see if anyone else had come into the house while she had been standing, stunned and mesmerised by the scene before her.

Of course there was no one.

‘What?’

The struggle to force it out made the word crack embarrassingly in the middle, her voice too not sounding like her own. She didn’t need to ask the question either. She knew exactly what he had said; she just couldn’t cope with the question—with any questions—when she couldn’t work out just what the significance of them, and her answers, might be.

‘Caitlin!’

Rhys’s note of warning was deliberately pitched so that it was strong enough to be heard but would do nothing to disturb the little girl in his arms. And Fleur didn’t even blink but went on staring, holding the man’s blue-eyed gaze with an effortless calm.

‘What’s her name?’

She didn’t dare to ignore it a second time.

‘Fleur,’ she whispered, her voice no more than a thin thread of sound that he must have had to strain hard to hear. ‘Her name is Fleur.’

‘Fleur.’

It was just a sigh. A crooning sound of soft delight that clawed brutally at the already raw wound in her heart just to hear it.

It was a sound she had never thought she would hear—never, ever wanted to hear. A sound that undermined everything she had believed up to now. That put violent explosives under the walls she had built up around herself, set light to the fast-burning fuse that led straight to them.

It made a mockery of everything Amelie had ever said. And turned her cousin’s story into a lie in the blink of an eye.

At least the part of the story where Rhys Morgan was concerned.

No man who had ever wanted his wife to abort their child, no man who had ever declared that he didn’t want children would ever take to a small baby with such ease and warmth. So Amelie must have made things up. She had to have done.

But if that part was true—what about the rest of the story? The one that Josh had told her?

Caitlin didn’t know what to think. And she didn’t know where to look for an answer.

Not from the man in front of her. The man who was so absorbed in the baby that nothing would distract him.

So absorbed that she doubted he would even hear the truth if she tried to tell him.

But
was
it the truth?

There was no one she could turn to for the answer to that. The only people who could tell her the real truth were both dead, and she didn’t know if they could be trusted anyway.

There was just one thing she did know, and that was that she couldn’t risk telling Rhys Morgan any of it. Not right now. Not when he had Fleur in his hands, his strong arms holding her so safely.

And he was still smiling that damn smile.

‘Fleur,’ he crooned in a soft voice that turned her insides to water.
‘Ma petite Fleur.’

Oh, damn, now tears were pricking at her eyes, blurring her vision. She couldn’t let this go on. Had to stop it somehow.

‘Mandy…’ she tried then stopped abruptly, her voice behaving in the most peculiar way. It had shot up to an appalling squeak on the word, cracking embarrassingly at the last moment.

Caitlin swallowed hard, trying to get control back.

‘Mandy brought her round because it’s getting close to her next feed time,’ she managed, with rather more clarity this time. ‘She’ll be getting hungry any minute.’

Damn you, Fleur, at least you could
look
just a tiny bit hungry! she reproved the little girl privately. Normally by this time of the day the baby would be wailing her head off, impossible to comfort until she had some food in her tummy.

But today the novelty of Rhys’s hard, carved face obviously held an unbreakable fascination for the child as she stared up at him totally absorbed—and totally content.

‘So if you’ll give her to me, then I’ll give her…’

The words died unspoken, shrivelling on her tongue in the face of the fiercely quelling glare he turned on her, reducing her to silence without a word needing to be spoken. He barely lifted his eyes for a second, but it was enough.

‘You get the food,’ he said with icy precision. ‘I’ll give it to her.’

‘But…’

‘I’m going to have to learn, Caitlin.’

It was expressed with a sort of exasperated finality that showed he clearly did not expect her to argue in the least.

‘If I’m going to be looking after her in the future, then I need to know what to do.’

Oh, this was getting worse and worse. She couldn’t let things go on this way. She just couldn’t.

‘But…’ she repeated.

‘But nothing, Caitlin.’

Rhys dismissed her protest with the same casual indifference with which he might flick away an irritating fly.

‘Fleur is hungry so she’ll need something to eat. And I’ll need you to show me what she has so that I can prepare it again later.’

‘So that I can prepare it again later.’ Even the ‘if’s had gone now, Caitlin registered with a terrible sense of galloping inevitability. There was no doubt in Rhys’s mind that the baby was his and that as his child she was going to be with him in the future. His statement made a fact out of something that wasn’t a fact. And she was going to have to tell him so.

Tell him and face the inevitable explosion.

‘Rhys, I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she began cautiously, feeling as if she was treading on eggs, walking blind, feeling her way in desperation. This must be what it felt like edging your way along a mountainous, snow-filled valley where there was a constant threat of terrifying avalanches, never knowing quite when some small stumble, or the slightest careless sound might trigger off disaster. When thousands and thousands of tons of brutally destructive snow would break free and come thundering down, crushing and devastating everything in its path.

‘I think it’s the obvious idea,’ he countered decisively, turning another of those dark-eyed glares on her colourless face. ‘It’s the only way I’m going to learn.’

‘But…’

She’d nerved herself to tell him; had actually opened her mouth to say the words that would bring that avalanche crashing down. But if she managed to make a sound, it was never heard. Instead, it and every other noise in the room was suddenly drowned out by the high, demanding wail that Fleur at last unleashed to display her disapproval.

Whether it was because she had finally realised that she was in fact hungry, or because her new-found favourite had allowed himself to be distracted, turning his attention from the baby to Caitlin in a way she totally disapproved of, Caitlin couldn’t guess. All she did know was that, having finally remembered what her vocal chords were to be used for, the little girl simply let rip. Her small head went back, her rosebud mouth opened, her face went bright red, and she yelled. Yelled at the top of her voice her total displeasure at being left alone and disregarded like this.

‘I warned you she was hungry!’ Caitlin managed, with her own voice carefully pitched above the row. ‘I thought she was rather too well-behaved.’

‘Well, she certainly isn’t now!’

In spite of the tension that still gripped her, the way that her heart was tap-dancing nervously against the sides of her chest, Caitlin still couldn’t totally suppress the urge to let a fleeting smile escape. Only for a second though and then she hastily caught it back, not daring to risk Rhys even guessing at what she was thinking.

Now
he would see what being a parent was really like! Now he would realise that a six-month-old baby wasn’t all sweetness and light—and smiles and coos. Now he would have his nose rubbed in the harsh realities of just how impatient a hungry little one could be. Once Fleur got going, her cries could threaten to pierce eardrums, and she had staying power that was positively exhausting. Rhys was getting a much-needed early lesson in the reality of baby care—with a vengeance.

‘Do you want me to take her?’

She was thankful for the way that Fleur’s high-pitched screams drowned out the undercurrent of triumph that might otherwise have shown in her voice.

‘I said no. If she needs food—you get that.’

Infuriatingly he appeared totally unconcerned. Instead, he walked around the room, somehow sensing intuitively that the movement would soothe the hungry child.

‘I really think—’ Caitlin tried again, the need to have Fleur back in her care overcoming any thoughts of caution.

‘Caitlin, I said I’ll look after her. I need to learn.’

‘But it would be better if you gave her to me. And much better if we talk about this. You see…’

The words died on her lips in the face of the coldly quelling glance he turned on her.

‘No,
you see
,’ he stated with dangerous emphasis. ‘I have waited three long months to get my child into my arms. And that is where she’s staying. Either that or I walk out of here right now…’

It was no empty threat. He meant it. She knew that from the cold burn in his eyes, the fiercely uncompromising tone, and the way he looked towards the door as if he was already out of it.

But even knowing that, she couldn’t leave things unsaid. She would have to tell the truth some time.

‘But she’s not—’

He turned before she completed the first word. The two long, determined strides he took across the room, away from her, had panic clutching at her throat, silencing the rest of her protest. She had no doubt at all that if she hadn’t he would have been gone before the next syllable could form.

‘All right! I’ll say nothing! Just stay—
please
stay.’