A Delicious Deception (19 page)

‘I hadn’t realised in these circumstances that it was customary to apportion blame.’

She had told him she was on the Pill and he hadn’t doubted her for a moment, even though she had been less than forthcoming with the truth about herself in the beginning. Still, his own behaviour towards her had been less than exemplary, when he had suspected her of just being after his father’s money. Nor could he quite forgive himself for being so determined to get her into bed, even when he had felt that badly about her, even if his opinion of her had changed when he’d found out who she was and by the time they had eventually made love. The fact remained, though, that those abandoned few days had resulted in a child being conceived between them, and finding out as he’d just done had floored him.

‘Aren’t you angry?’ Rayne enquired, watching his cool, economical movements as he opened the boot and placed her groceries inside.

‘What’s the point of being angry?’ he stated with the descending boot lid punctuating his remark.

So he was, she thought, noticing a muscle pulling in his tight, tense jaw. And realising what he had just done, she said, ‘I did bring my own car, you know. I can’t leave it here.’

‘We’ll come back for it,’ he told her, moving round the side of the car to open the passenger door. ‘Because if you think I’m letting you get away from me again—and this time pregnant with my child—you can think again.’ He gestured for her to get in.

‘I was pregnant the first time,’ she reminded him dryly, settling herself onto the luxuriously upholstered seat.

‘Except that you didn’t know. Otherwise, yes, I would have been exceedingly angry with you,’ he assured her through the open door, slicing her flippant attempt to ease the awkward situation between them to pieces with the precision of a scythe.

‘I suppose you think I engineered this as well, don’t you?’ she contested hopelessly when he slid onto the driver’s seat beside her, guessing he would never ever accept her for the person she really was.

He could have, but he didn’t, King thought, knowing her far better than she realised. He also knew that a woman of her calibre who had had enough gumption to do what she had for her father would never dream of stooping to such a thing, regardless of the insults he had flung at her that last morning in Monaco, which made him cringe now as he remembered them.

‘I didn’t come here to fight with you,’ he stated, with one touch of his fingers bringing the powerful engine throbbing into life.

‘Why did you come?’ Rayne asked, trying not to think
about what those long skilled hands could do to her as she stared almost belligerently at the windscreen.

Seeing her chin raised in proud challenge against him, King wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her. But if he did, he knew she would probably only view his action as purely sexually motivated, and what he felt for this beautiful and complex woman was a lot more complicated than that.

‘I wanted to see you,’ he admitted heavily, restraining the impulse. ‘We didn’t exactly part on very amicable terms.’

‘And whose fault was that?’ Rayne looked directly into his dark brooding features now and, against all her powers of resistance, felt her heart lurch in her chest. ‘You were horrible to me.’

‘I was angry,’ he told her truthfully, drawing his seat belt across his shoulder. ‘That article had me doubting you. As it probably intended me to do,’ he added with a self-effacing grimace. ‘I know I overreacted and that I should have listened to you, but I never thought you’d leave—just like that.’

‘Perhaps some people just don’t like being treated as though they’re the lowest of the low,’ she said bitterly, wrenching her gaze from his dangerously handsome face and fastening her own seat belt with trembling hands, because just sitting here in such a confined space with him was making her so painfully aware of what they had shared.

‘And for that I’m very sorry,’ he expressed, wishing he’d swallowed his wounded masculine pride long before this instead of driving himself crazy with wanting to see her. ‘It was wrong of me. That’s why I came. To tell you to your face—and, in the circumstances, it’s a good thing I did.’

He meant because of her pregnancy, because she couldn’t imagine him being a man who would shirk his responsibilities.

‘I don’t want anything from you, if that’s what you’re imagining,’ she put in quickly before he could say anything else.

‘We’ll see about that,’ was all he said, reversing out of the space.

His features were set with purpose as the car roared away from the car park.

All he could think about was how his father—his family—had screwed up her family’s life. And how they owed them big-time.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, her forehead pleating.

‘Just somewhere where we can talk.’

About the pregnancy. About how he could help support and maintain her and their baby, she decided from the way he was taking control. Unless, of course, he was simply intending to offer her the funds to ease the situation in what might possibly be—to him, at any rate—a far more convenient way, because he hadn’t expected this outcome when he had come looking for her today.

‘How did you know where to find me, anyway?’ she asked tremulously when they were driving through the traffic, because the thought of him even entertaining that last scenario was making it almost painful to breathe. ‘Did you just happen to be in that supermarket at the same time I was? Or do you have some sort of extra-terrestrial powers that homed in on me as soon as I stepped through the doors?’ It occurred to her suddenly that she hadn’t seen him buying anything for himself back there at the checkout.

‘Neither,’ he clarified. ‘I called at your home and your mother told me where you were. I gather she wasn’t too happy finding out from one of her neighbours on her return from Majorca that her daughter had been photographed with me in one of the tabloids.’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ Rayne admitted, still cringing from the memory of both that article and her mother’s response to it.

In fact, Cynthia Hardwicke had been horrified when Rayne had explained that she’d gone to Monaco to try and get the truth out of the Claybornes. ‘Oh, Lorrayne!’ the woman had
expressed with an almost defeated slump to her shoulders. ‘Why did you have to go and get involved?’

‘And what did she say when you told her you were having my baby?’ King asked, indicating to take a side road off the main highway.

Rayne drew in a deep breath. ‘I haven’t yet.’

The lifting of a masculine eyebrow expressed surprise and disbelief in equal measure. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you did?’

‘I’m going to,’ Rayne returned with a niggling unease in her stomach. ‘I just haven’t wanted to give her anything else to worry about.’

‘Anything else?’ He sliced a glance her way. ‘I take it she’s all right? Health-wise?’ he enquired succinctly.

Her forehead puckering, Rayne glanced quickly away from those far too perceptive eyes, saying in a rather unconvincing way, ‘She’s fine.’

She couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth. That Cynthia Hardwicke had developed further worrying complications. It was much too personal and painful to share with him at that moment. And anyway, there was the baby to talk about.

‘I’m going to bring the baby up on my own, but I will allow you visiting rights, if that’s what you want,’ she managed to say quickly before her confidence failed her, and to let him know exactly what she was going to do. Let him know where he stood, in case he had any differing ideas as to what she should do about the precious little bundle of life she was carrying inside her. Because it was precious to her, regardless of the unfavourable circumstances in which it had been conceived.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘If that’s what I want?’

‘I was only just saying—’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean? Don’t you want visiting rights?’ She couldn’t believe he wouldn’t want to see any child he might
have created—even with her—and her eyes defied him to say anything that might indicate that he expected she might want to hurt her baby in any way.

‘I think we should get married,’ he said.

It was so far from what she had been expecting that she just sat there staring at him as he brought the car to a standstill in a quiet road beside the ancient iron gates of a local park.

‘Because of the baby?’ she croaked, hardly daring to hope that there might be some other motive driving him to suggest such a drastic step.

‘Can you think of a better reason?’ he suggested.

Only love, she supplied achingly, but she didn’t say it, staring sightlessly through the open gates with their peeling blue paintwork at an enormous oak tree just inside the park, which looked as though it had stood like that, looking down on people, with their joys and sorrows, for centuries.

‘I’ve known what it’s like to go through childhood with only one parent,’ he was reminding her now. ‘And it wasn’t a bowl of cherries, I can tell you. I don’t want any child of mine having to go through what I did,’ he stated grimly.

‘It wouldn’t. It would have two loving parents, even if—’

‘With its time with them apportioned out, just how and when they thought fit?’

‘We don’t even know each other,’ she reminded him, overwhelmed that he could decide such a thing after being acquainted with her for such a short time. Her legs felt weak and her heart was hammering like a drum-roll through her body.

‘Couples wind up in the divorce courts after knowing each other for decades,’ he commented dryly. ‘I would have thought—for our child’s sake, at least—you would be prepared to give us a chance.’

‘And supposing we wound up hating each other? Or just not wanting each other … in that way any more?’ Colour suffused her cheeks just from mentioning the passion that had
gripped them both so profoundly while they had been in Monaco together.

‘I don’t think there will ever come a time when I won’t want you—when
we
won’t want each other—in that way, Rayne. The magnetic pull, or chemistry, or whatever you want to call this thing between us is far too strong. But, as for hating each other … well … if it doesn’t work out within a few years we can always call it a day. But I want my child to be born legitimate, with two united parents and with my name.’

So that was all he was really concerned with. Legitimising his heir and protecting his rights and the rights of his child. Never mind about her. About how much she loved him! She didn’t think she could enter into a marriage with him like that, knowing that if it didn’t work out, if he wasn’t happy, he would simply be prepared to ‘call it a day’! Surely it would be better to walk away from him now, with her pride and her dignity intact, rather than at some later date when he realised that he couldn’t love her, and when she was even more enmeshed in her feelings for him than she was now?

‘I can’t,’ she heard herself uttering.

‘How can you say that?’ He was looking at her incredulously. ‘Discount it just like that? I’m not only offering you a stable and comfortable home life for our child, but the best possible outcome in view of past … hostilities,’ he supplied, finding the word he’d been searching for, ‘between our families. Don’t you see? This child we’ve created between us will not only have two loving parents to care for its welfare, but he’ll also inherit the rewards of everything both our fathers—but particularly yours—created and missed out on. Doesn’t he or she deserve that?’

Yes, Rayne thought, realising the poetic justice that lay in her marrying King and her children being the heirs to the Clayborne fortune—in combining their genes, their blood. In uniting their families.

But how could she, when she would only be tying herself
down to a man who was only marrying her because he’d made her pregnant? When he had come looking for her today, to do what, exactly? Express his regret for the way he had treated her—doubted her—and to take up where they had left off? Which was right back where they both wanted to be—in his bed! Instead of which, he now found himself faced with a child’s future to plan, as well as having what he’d presumably hoped would be a willing mistress as his reluctant wife.

‘I can’t,’ she murmured again. ‘It wouldn’t be right. We don’t love each other, for a start.’

‘Fair enough,’ he agreed, not realising how deeply those two words had the power to hurt her. ‘But we will have respect for each other—and loyalty, if we work at it—and perhaps this “love” that you’re so wrapped up in will take care of itself.’

If only she could believe that! Rayne thought poignantly, but told him, ‘You’re not going to bully me into it.’

‘And I wouldn’t want to,’ he expressed. ‘All I’m asking is that, first and foremost, you consider the welfare of our child. And if that’s not enough to persuade you into doing what’s best for your baby, perhaps you’ll be more inclined to come out from behind this idealised fantasy you’re obviously harbouring about romantic love and think about how it could benefit your mother.’

‘What do you mean?’ she queried cagily, her tone both challenging and hurt.

He wasn’t sure until then whether what he had garnered earlier when he had visited Cynthia Hardwicke’s home was right. But now, from the pain that darkened those beautiful, yet guarded, eyes, and that same pain he’d seen on her face when he’d asked after her mother a few minutes ago, he wasn’t left in any doubt.

‘Your mother needs further treatment. Treatment, I suspect, that can only be paid for, and which neither of you can afford. How are you going to do it, Rayne? On the salary of a struggling freelance journalist? I can help you, if you’ll let
me. I can see to it that she receives all the necessary treatment and care she needs to help her optimize her chances of a good recovery.’

‘Did she tell you that?’ She sat looking out of the window, absently watching a squirrel foraging for food around the base of the oak tree and biting her lower lip to stem the emotion he knew she was battling against.

‘Not in so many words,’ he enlightened her. ‘She said one or two things quite unintentionally that made me wonder and, seeing the way you were as soon as I spoke about her, it didn’t take much to work it out.’