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Authors: Kim Lawrence

BOOK: Accidental Baby
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‘Cramp my style? What the hell are you talking about, Jo?’ Liam asked, running his fingers through his thick mop of hair and watching her with an expression of exasperation.
‘
She
thought I was a man.’
Liam’s mystified frown gave way to a grin which he swiftly stifled. ‘Suzanna?’ he enquired gravely as he pushed back a hank of dark hair that had flopped in his eyes.
‘Who else?’ She hadn’t missed, or forgiven him for, the grin.
‘I suppose I might have mentioned you a few tunes, and when she asked I think I probably said you were my best friend.’ Liam looked up as she sniffed rather loudly. He silently handed her a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘She must have assumed ..’
‘People don’t marry their best friends,’ Jo said heavily.
‘They’re normally the wrong sex.’
‘This isn’t about gender.’ He could be flippant while her heart was breaking—there was just no justice in the world! ‘This is about love and sexual chemistry. It isn’t fair to ask either of us to sacrifice our—’
‘You expect to find love and sexual chemistry
here
?’ Liam interrupted scornfully.
‘I’m not about to marry Justin.’
‘Too right you’re not.’ His eyes narrowed to slits and he thrust his hands deep in the pockets of the khaki chinos he wore. The action drew her reluctant attention to the narrowness of his lean hips and the length of his thighs.
This had to be some sort of punishment for all the times she’d always thrown scorn on women who were turned to marshmallow by a brooding look, she decided, desperately trying to quell the strong urge to throw herself into his arms and babble brainlessly about his beautiful blue eyes.
‘Because
I
don’t want to.’ Her chin took on an aggressive angle as she gave him back stare for stare even though she was handicapped by knees that had turned to jelly.
‘You said you wanted to marry me.’
God, the man had the recall of a computer! ‘I said—’ she tried hard to sound calm and reasonable, but she felt neither ‘—that it would be
easier
to marry you.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought it would be easy being married
to a man who intends to sleep his way through the female population of the Western hemisphere.’
‘Why stop there?’ she snapped, sensing he was backing her steadily into a corner. She knew him too well to underestimate his tenacity.
‘I’m immensely flattered at your opinion of my sexual prowess, but I think perhaps you’re not quite as objective about the subject as you might be.’
‘And what,’ she enquired icily, ‘is that supposed to mean?’ Please don’t let him know, she prayed. Let me retain a little dignity. The fear of discovery was a bitter taste on her tongue.
‘I mean that, despite our lack of sexual chemistry,’ he drawled slowly, ‘the past couple of weeks we spent together were pretty hot.’
‘Hot,’ she echoed stupidly. She felt weak with relief; for once Liam hadn’t recognised the obvious. ‘There’s no need to be crude.’
Liam laughed. ‘If you think
hot
is crude, sweetness. . . ’
‘I am not your sweetness.’
‘Granted, but I’ve always preferred something with a bit more bite.’
‘I don’t enjoy trading sexual innuendoes with you.’
‘Does this blanket disapproval cover sharing sex with me too? Are you going to tell me you didn’t enjoy the time we spent together?’
‘When you say the time we spent together I think you’re actually talking about the time we spent together in bed.’ She tried to inject scorn into her voice.
‘I’ve certainly enjoyed that part.’
The husky sound of his voice aroused her body with shocking ease. She folded her arms protectively across her aching breasts.
‘In these enlightened times people don’t get married to
have sex, no matter how—’ She broke off as she realised what she’d been about to say. From the expression on Liam’s face he realised it too.
‘You were saying?’ he taunted heartlessly.
‘I was saying that sex is no basis for marriage.’
‘Are you trying to say you want to carry on sleeping with me, but you don’t want to marry me?’
‘No!’ she cried in a shocked voice.
‘It sounded suspiciously like it to me.’ She watched with misgiving as his lazy mocking expression was replaced by something much more steely. ‘We’re good in bed—scrub that, we’re
great
in bed. My relationship with Suzanna Wilson is nothing that need concern you. I’ve no intention of sleeping with her or anyone else once we’re married—my God, if the time we spent together is anything to go by I’d have no energy,’ he added half to himself.
‘Well, you didn’t seem to mind at the time!’
‘I didn’t mind at all.’
This devastatingly simple reply made her whimper. Biting her own tongue was a crude method of breaking the spell of his eyes, but desperate circumstances didn’t allow time for finesse.
‘I obviously didn’t make myself clear earlier—I don’t want a cosmetic marriage,’ he told her huskily.
She could taste the salty tang of her own blood on her tongue. ‘No?’ It was hard to maintain her scepticism in the face of such solid conviction.
‘Most definitely not.’
‘And does it matter what I want?’
‘We’ve already established that you would find it easy to marry me.’ He moved swiftly on as she opened her mouth to challenge this assertion. ‘The same goes for our sexual compatibility, or,’ he enquired with a quirk of one darkly defined eyebrow, ‘were you faking it?’
‘As I said, that’s hardly a basis—’ she began, this blush sort of merged with the earlier ones which hadn’t faded yet.
‘You’re carrying my child,’ he interrupted smoothly, ‘and that child needs both parents.’
‘Piling it on thick, aren’t you, Liam?’ she choked resentfully. ‘Aren’t you going to lay your mother’s failing health at my door too?’ Everything he was saying made perfect sense. Was she just greedy for wanting more than he was offering?
‘Mum’s strong enough, that needn’t come into the equation. I shouldn’t need moral blackmail to make you see we should get married. On your better days you’re a reasonably rational soul.’
She gave a disparaging grunt. ‘You’ve changed your tune!’
‘However, you do realise that once your dad gets wind of this he’ll probably come after me with his shotgun.’
‘Don’t joke,’ she advised darkly. ‘You’re still only fractionally above Attila the Hun on his list of people he’d like to break bread with.’
‘Who’s joking? And I can understand how he feels—he thought you were safe with me.’
She could see that the distaste in his eyes was aimed at himself and it hurt. ‘Aunt Maggie will probably already have told him.’ One of these days she’d actually think of the consequences before she acted impulsively. Liam had got it in one: she’d run away because she was eaten up with jealousy. The sort of knife-twisting, stomach-churning jealousy she hadn’t even dreamt existed.
‘No, I convinced Mum it was just a case of last-minute nerves. Apparently you were pretty unintelligible on the phone.’
‘I was. . . ’ She looked away avoiding his eyes.
‘Blubbing,’ he finished knowledgeably. ‘Mum mentioned that I know it bothers you that we’re not madly, passionately in love.’ Jo hardly noticed that it was his turn to look uncomfortable and avoid her eyes.
‘I. . . never imagined it this way,’ she admitted huskily. ‘Marriage, I mean.’
‘I intend to take my vows seriously, Jo. You’ll never have to worry about other women. I respect you too much.’
‘Respect.’ She clamped her lips together; suddenly she was spitting angry. ‘I don’t want respect, I want. . . ’ Hands clenched into fists, she pressed them to her mouth and closed her eyes.
‘What?’ His fingers touched the side of her cheek. ‘What do you want, Jo?’ There was a greedy urgency in his soft voice as he bent over her.
I want you to love me. For one heart-stopping second as their eyes met she thought she’d actually said it. Frightened by the suicidal desire she had to tell him the truth, she scrabbled to her feet.
‘Ouch, sorry,’ she gasped in dismay as he backed away, his hand clamped to the lower part of his face. When he moved his hand she saw the blood on his lip. ‘I didn’t mean to. . . Are you all right?’
‘Bruised, but not beaten.
Am I?
’
Her throat was too engorged with emotion to permit speech. When had Liam ever admitted defeat? she thought wearily. She couldn’t run away from him any more than she could run away from her own feelings. She knew at that moment that she would marry him the next day. She couldn’t consider the subject objectively—she was just responding to a deep gut instinct that told her it was something she
needed
to do.
‘If it’s Suzanna that’s bothering you I can explain—’
‘Don’t!’ She lowered her voice. ‘Please, I don’t want to
know.’ Ignorance wasn’t bliss, but it was more bearable than the unvarnished truth.
He shrugged. ‘As you like,’ he said, his expression unusually guarded. ‘We
can
make it work.’
Jo believed he would never betray her, not in the physical sense. She respected that, but fidelity of the heart wasn’t something a person had control over, as she knew all too well. It was unbearable to think of him wanting someone else and being tied to her. She couldn’t lose his heart because it had never been hers.
‘I don’t like pretending.’
‘Then don’t.’
If only. A weak wave of longing swamped her, she was getting good at disguising such things. ‘It feels. . . awkward when you act as though we’re a couple in public.’
‘We
are
a couple.’
She shot him an exasperated look. ‘You know what I mean, the. . . touching and so forth.’ She fumbled awkwardly for words. ‘It’s really not necessary, when people are bound to realise we’re only getting married because of the baby.’
‘A lot of people get married because of a baby, but it’s not usual for them to act as if they’re strangers,’ he said, effortlessly tearing her tenuous logic to shreds. ‘When I touch you privately or publicly it isn’t to fulfil a role. I do it spontaneously because I want to. . . ’
‘Oh!’ she gasped, meeting his direct angry blue stare with wide-eyed confusion. Don’t read anything deep and meaningful into it, she told herself. Liam always had been a very tactile person. He’d always touched her—that hadn’t changed, it was her reaction to that touch which had undergone a transformation.
‘And because I thought you liked it,’ he continued softly. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t?’
The question made her start guiltily. ‘I. . . I just didn’t want you to feel obliged,’ she floundered. ‘To act a role.’
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
‘I’m
not having any trouble acting normally. You’re the one who can’t relax. Nobody expects you to drool over me and hang onto my every word as if—’
‘I expect that’s what you’re used to, but I’ve no desire to ooze or drool,’ she grated from between clenched teeth.
‘Then what’s the problem? You’re just not the type. When you and Justin were pretty full on you never went in for extravagant displays of—’
‘I save my displays for behind closed doors.’
Liam couldn’t stop his mind placing Jo and Justin behind a closed door His jaw set hard. ‘What I’m saying is even if you were. . . ’
‘In love with you,’ she finished crisply. It was easier to throw scorn on the notion herself than hear him do it. ‘What insight, I’m impressed. And you’re the expert on the soft, drooly type of female, I assume. Speaking as the hard-boiled, unemotional variety myself I’d be really interested to hear more. For your information I was devastated when Justin left me.’
‘I recall,’ he said in an oddly expressionless voice. When her eyes collided with his he looked inexplicably angry. ‘I’m not saying you’re hard-boiled,’ he continued, ‘just. . . emotionally objective.’
‘If I hit you over the head with a blunt object it will comfort you no end to know I considered the alternatives objectively.’
‘This is much better,’ he approved.
‘What?’ she yelped, bosom heaving.
‘Be yourself,’ he advised her calmly. ‘I’m much more comfortable with you throwing insults, or even assorted missiles at me than being all jittery and polite.’
She mentally reviewed her behaviour and a frown developed over the bridge of her nose. ‘I haven’t been that bad. Have I?’ It was true—she did feel as though all her actions were under a microscope. Deceit always had made her uncomfortable and what had started off as a small lie had grown out of control. Not only did she have to act like a loving fiancée for the benefit of others, she had to disguise the true state of her feelings from Liam. A complicated double bluff like that was enough to make anyone jittery!

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