The Heir From Nowhere (17 page)

She tilted her hips and he groaned again, this cry more desperate, his need matching her own, before he lunged into her, deeper this time, impossibly better.

She was gasping now, wild with need as he moved inside her, building the rhythm, his kisses pulling her deeper, his mouth hot and hungry, his big hands on her breasts, at her hips, setting her skin alight wherever he made contact.

Slick and hard, he filled her. Stretched her.
Completed her.

Colours were her new friends. Colours that sparked behind her eyelids, colours that shot fireworks searing through her senses.

She could not come again. Somewhere in the vague recesses of her mind she knew that. Not twice in one night. It had never happened before. It couldn’t happen now. But still the colours flashed, the sensations mounted and denial slowly turned into a smouldering sense of wonderment, a rising tide of tension, a need that went beyond mere completion. A need that demanded his completion too.

He drove into her, his sculpted back slick beneath her hands, every muscle tight and taut with that skin straining, every last part of him focused and true, until the smoulder became a curling ripple of smoke that became a raging fire that sent clouds to obliterate the sun.

With one final thrust he set her alight, her senses exploding, shorting, fusing as she came. She burned up in the inferno he’d triggered inside her. She lost herself in the flames. And she wondered, vaguely, from a very,
very long way away, if she would ever really find herself again.

Later, much later, she left him while he slept, lifted his arm from her body and eased herself away. It was late in the afternoon. Rosa would wonder why she wasn’t in the kitchen—if she came to the nursery looking and found her like this, Angie would never live it down. Worse, she couldn’t bear it if Dominic woke and she saw the resentment return to those dark eyes. She couldn’t bear to be there when he realised what a mistake he’d made.

For it was a mistake, she should know. From the moment of her conception her entire life had been based on mistakes.

An unplanned pregnancy, an ill-conceived wedding, a wrong embryo. A mistake had brought her to Dominic’s home and now another mistake had seen her fall into his bed.

When would she ever learn?

She located her clothes, slipped on her crumpled dress, smoothing it down her legs. She spared him one last lingering glance, admiring the sheer unadulterated magnificence of the man—this was one mistake that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

And fled.

She was gone, his bed empty when he woke and reached for her, hungry for her again. Her scent lingered on the pillow, fresh and feminine, taunting him in her absence as the soft light of dusk filtered through the curtains.

Just lust, he told himself, sinking back into the pillows. It was probably for the best that she had gone. It had probably saved them both some awkward moments.

Just sex.

He growled and pushed himself from the bed, striding to the bathroom.

Just sex?
Was that how she saw it? She’d been molten in his hands. He’d taken her apart and put her together and taken her apart again. She hadn’t been faking it. He was too good at what he did not to recognise that.

And she’d just walked away.

Maybe it was better. Maybe she was right.

She was going to leave anyway.

Maybe it would make things less complicated.

He snapped on the shower, stepped in while the water was still cold and growled again as he put his face up into the spray.

But there were weeks to go before she left, he told himself, and he wasn’t done with lust just yet.

T
HE
clinic was cool and welcoming as they entered, as only health practices could be. But it never ceased to amaze her that for a place promoting fertility, it managed to maintain such a sterile atmosphere.

Dominic walked stiffly by her side, his eyes still hidden under sunglasses, and Angie imagined his eyes beneath, unblinking and unforgiving.

But she could understand why his mood would suddenly darken, for this was the very same place that had offered her the option of getting rid of his child.

Maybe that was why he was here like a dark cloud to accompany her. Because he didn’t trust them.
Welcome to the club,
she thought, groaning a little, her bladder full to bursting point. If the clinic was running late, she might just explode right there in the waiting room.

But there was no waiting. Within ten minutes she was gowned up and lying on the examination table with towels strategically placed. Then her gown was pulled up and her belly exposed and gelled. The probe pressed into her swollen tummy, pressure she didn’t need, but she was distracted by Dominic by her side, the dark cloud vanquished, now looking agonisingly anxious as he was asked to be patient for a few minutes before the monitor could be turned.

Dominic patient? She smiled at the contradiction in terms, smiled at his furrowed brow and dark, worried eyes.

He really cares, she thought, as the man she’d thought a mountain looked achingly vulnerable and for a moment, just a moment, she wished he cared that way for her, not merely for the unborn child inside her.

And jealousy snaked its twisted way through her heart. For this was Carla’s baby he was concerned for. This was Carla’s baby he wanted—the baby she’d never been able to have. Carla—the woman he had loved and lost.

And so help her, but she was jealous of her. Jealous of a dead woman. What kind of woman was she?

Tears pricked at her eyes as she uttered a silent apology to the innocent child lying inside her. Whatever else happened, at least she had been able to do this for him. For them both. At least she had been able to give him Carla’s child.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, his patience wearing thin.

The radiographer smiled. ‘Everything looks perfect. Your baby is doing everything right. I’ll show you in a moment. Do you want to find out what sex it is?’

The question hung in the air, and beside her Dominic asked, ‘What do you think?’

The question was so unexpected, it winded her. He was asking her? She didn’t care, did she? She wasn’t supposed to care or have an opinion. It was a baby. That was all she needed or wanted to know. Besides, did it matter? Surely any child of Dominic’s would be a gift, boy or girl …

‘It’s your baby, Dominic. It’s your choice.’

And he looked down at her, his eyes studying her face, questioning. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘Don’t tell us.’

The doctor nodded and the radiographer swivelled the screen so they could see. Angie studied her feet. She’d found the six-week scan amazing. There was her baby, she’d thought, a tiny jelly bean with a heartbeat. She’d been fascinated by the tiny life, simultaneously racked with guilt that she had never really wanted a child, terrified at the thought she wouldn’t love it enough.

But the baby had never been hers and it had been a strange, sweet relief she’d felt to discover that. Escape.

The men’s voices washed over her while she lay there, terrified all over again. The fascination was there—it was impossible to deny that part of her that wondered what this creature looked like, this thing growing inside her that treated her more and more to night time jabs and swishing tumbles that caught her unawares and took her breath away.

But the fear was back, bigger than ever. This time not that she would not love this child.

But that she would.

Her nerve-endings tingled with fear. She could not afford to love this child. She’d only managed to decorate the nursery out of sheer bloody-mindedness at Dominic not letting her get a job. She’d only managed by thinking of the baby as an abstract, not connecting it with this child contained within.

She could not afford to see it.

She could not afford to want it.

As far as she was concerned, this was merely a package she was delivering. A gift, if it came to that. It was never hers to keep.

‘Look, Angelina, can you see from there?’ The sheer
joy in Dominic’s voice broke through her thoughts. ‘The baby’s sucking its thumb!’

And in spite of herself, in spite of the fear, Angie looked then, wanting to be part of his discovery, envying his joy. The picture was indistinct, shades of grey fading in and out, but she found sense in the shadows, and shape and even definition. And she found something else too as she gazed at the unborn child, something she’d been terrified of.

A yearning for that which could not be hers. She suddenly wanted the months to fly by so she could cradle the tiny infant in her arms, to kiss its soft downy cheek and hold it to her breast.

To be its mother.

‘Beautiful,’ he said, his rich voice gravelly thick and filled with awe and wonder and she looked at him, his gaze intent on the screen, his dark eyes filled with emotion as he drank in the features of his unborn child, and she knew she was dreaming.

For she was nothing to him but a means to an end.

The baby was the thing he wanted, the thing he craved.

She was disposable.

And she had no right to yearn.

With a sigh she realised it was good she’d left his bed when she had, while she’d still been capable of it. Good she’d pulled back and created some distance between them. Good that she’d let him go before he’d done the same to her.

And he would have let her go, nothing surer. Men like him didn’t fall for women like her. They fell for sleek high-gloss sirens who could further their career, not charity cases from the back blocks. Besides, he’d made no attempt since that night to come to her. Wasn’t
that proof he was regretting that night as much as her? No, it was clear she’d done the right thing.

And if she managed to keep her distance, she might even just survive this with her pride, if not her heart, intact.

She was quiet on the way home, barely saying a word in response to his attempts at conversation. He’d expected her to be a little shy given the last time they’d tangled words they’d ended up tangled together in the sheets, something he was having trouble getting out of his head, but it was more than that.

She was cool, distant, and so he hadn’t bothered making too many attempts at conversation. For it had soon become clear she didn’t share his excitement over what they had witnessed on the scan.

He was disappointed. He’d thought she’d at least express some interest in the child she was carrying. He’d thought he’d seen some flicker of maternal instinct in her expression in the way she’d curve her hand under her bump, rubbing it gently, whispering soft words when she thought he wasn’t looking. And what about what she’d done in preparing the nursery! It had been Rosa who had disclosed that Angelina had done it all herself—all of it. How could a woman prepare rooms for an infant like that and not be interested in seeing that infant’s face on a screen?

Was she really so opposed to the idea of having a child?

Perhaps she was.

But perhaps that was what it took to be able to walk away. Right from the start she’d insisted she wanted no part in it, that she would walk away and never have
anything to do with the child again. Right from the start she’d told him she wouldn’t change her mind.

It appeared that she wouldn’t.

Which was a shame, really.

He’d been thinking lately about what she’d said about Rosa managing an infant along with the house. Rosa would be happy to do it, he knew, but it was unfair to expect her to. He hadn’t given it enough thought. And down there in the garage last night, sculpting the piece he was working on, thinking about this woman splayed across his big bed, a look of utter abandonment on her face when he’d sent her plunging over the abyss for a second time and how much he burned to send her to oblivion again, the kernel of an idea had come to him. A good idea, he’d thought. A sensible solution.

Though clearly it would never work. Not once she found out what he had managed to secure for her.

Shame.

Dinner would have been completely silent if not for the occasional unintended clatter and scrape of cutlery against crockery, and even that rare occurrence intruded into the otherwise quiet. Rosa gathered the unfinished plates, saying nothing yet saying volumes in her eyes. Across the table Dominic sat like a volcano, brooding and about to erupt.

Angelina didn’t dare look at his eyes. She said no to dessert, despite the fact she’d barely touched her dinner, and when Dominic called her back, halfway to leaving, she expected he was going to admonish her for not eating all her meal.

‘I have something for you,’ he said instead. ‘Meet me in my office in ten minutes.’

She almost breathed a sigh of relief. The old Dominic was back. The old Dominic she could deal with.

Duly she arrived at his office at the appointed time, expecting the worst. He was waiting for her, standing stiff and tall and mountainous behind his desk. ‘What did you want to see me about?’ Try as she might, it was impossible to keep the slight tremor from her voice.

His face looked like thunder, his stance so tightly drawn she wondered if he might snap if he so much as moved. But he did move, picking up some documents on his desk, handing them to her. ‘These belong to you, I believe.’

Confused, she took them and tried to make sense of what she was holding. She blinked, not entirely recognising the property reference, still unsure what it all meant when she saw the mortgage discharged stamp on the second page. A sizzling snake wound its way up her spine. She looked up at him. ‘Is this what I think it is?’ He was waiting. She imagined he wasn’t used to people not understanding forms and papers and legal things, but she’d never seen a title deed before, if this was what it was.

‘It’s the title deed to your house on Spinifex Avenue. It’s yours now, lock stock and barrel.’

His words confirmed her wildest imaginings. ‘It’s mine! But what about Shayne? What happened? I thought he wanted his so-called share.’

He snorted with contempt. ‘The lawyers sorted that. In the end, as we suspected, he was happy to settle.’

‘But who paid him? Who paid the mortgage out?’