Their Secret Baby (11 page)

No, no, no,
no
!

‘Here…’

She flung the shirt at him as she had done the towel, but, being of far lighter material, it only floated halfway across the room, falling well short of his reaching arm and landing on the carpet instead.

‘Thanks.’

Of course, he had to discard the towel before coming forward to pick it up. And then for some reason he paused, the faded denim material in his hands, an unreadable expression on his face.

‘What’s wrong? Won’t it fit?’

The whole point had been for him to put it on—fast. The sight of his naked torso, the whipcord strength of his arms, the black hair-hazed chest, the narrow waist was making her heart thud uncomfortably, her breath suddenly uneven and raw.

‘Yeah, it should fit.’

Rhys shook out the shirt from its ironed folds, holding it up in front of him, which at least eased her edgy feelings just a little.

‘Well, put it on! Just what is wrong?’

‘This shirt? It’s not
his
?’

‘His?’

For several seconds she couldn’t even begin to think who he might mean.

‘It’s my father’s, if you must know—is that a problem?’

‘No.’ Rhys shook his dark head, sending the damp hair flying even more. ‘Not at all.’

He was shrugging himself into the shirt when the truth dawned on her.

‘You didn’t think it was
Joshua’s
? You did, didn’t you?’ she added, interpreting the look he turned on her. ‘You actually thought I’d keep his shirts…’

‘You kept his photograph.’

‘Which you destroyed.’

He actually had the grace to look rather shamefaced at that, but that only made her feel worse about the petty scoring she had indulged in. She had been living in the past and she knew it. She just hadn’t had the courage to take the final step forward, into the future.

Rhys had made sure of that. And in another world, in other circumstances, she might have thanked him for giving her the much-needed push. But not here; not now.

‘Have you eaten?’

Once again it was the need to distract herself from her thoughts that made her ask.

‘You really are determined to look after me, aren’t you?’ He was unbuttoning the shirt as he spoke, pushing his arms into the sleeves, shrugging it up to cover his broad shoulders.

‘Well, don’t read anything into it. It’s just that, if I know anything, your mood will be a lot milder if you’re not hungry as well as furious. And I need you to be prepared to listen.’

‘Oh, I’ll listen all right.’ Somehow he made it sound like a threat rather than a promise. ‘But I’ll have plenty to say as well. And no, I haven’t eaten—but you don’t have to—’

‘I can rustle up a sandwich and coffee at least. I could do with something as well.’

Liar! her conscience reproved her. She doubted if she could eat a thing. Her stomach seemed to be turning somersaults that left her feeling queasy and her mouth and throat were so painfully dry that swallowing would be almost impossible.

She should feel better now that he’d pulled on the shirt, but in fact the effect was the exact opposite. The worn and faded cotton clung to the firm lines of his strong frame and the blue denim did amazing things for his eyes. The deep brown hair, drying fast now, still fell in ruffled softness over his wide forehead, and the shirt hung open over the curling hair on his chest.

And he didn’t appear to have any intention of fastening it up.

‘Do you want any help?’

‘No, thank you.’

It came out with a force that was fiercer than she had intended, her struggle to keep her thoughts from wandering off onto paths she didn’t want to follow meaning that she didn’t quite have full control over her voice.

‘I won’t be a minute. And then you can tell me whatever it is you want to talk about.’

‘You know perfectly well what we have to discuss,’ Rhys told her, his stony face matched by the curt, cold words. ‘You’re going to tell me why you say Fleur isn’t my child when I believe I have evidence that she is. And you’re also going to say whose child you claim she is. And I warn you, Caitlin, I’ll accept nothing but the truth.’

H
E SHOULDN’T
be here.

He had made a major mistake in coming back at all, Rhys told himself, and now he very definitely shouldn’t be here, in this room that seemed to hold shadows of the previous evening wherever he turned.

To sit on the settee invited memories of sitting there, with Caitlin close by. Of the scent of her skin, the feel of her hand on his, her kiss, the journey to the stairs…

And so he prowled round the room, restless as a caged tiger, wishing himself anywhere but here.

And yet where the hell else could he be?

Only last night he had hunted for some sign, some small clue to his daughter, what she looked like, what sort of personality she had. He had wanted so desperately to see her that he had barely been able to contain himself, and yet here he was now, no more than twenty-four hours later, with everything turned upside-down.

He had seen his daughter—seen
Fleur
, held her, felt her small, warm little body close to his. He had fulfilled that dream, only to have it shattered right there in front of him like the splinters of glass from the photograph frame on the floor upstairs.

‘Damn it!’

He slammed a fist down hard onto the back of a chair in a wordless expression of the rage and frustration that was eating away at him inside.

He wanted his child—the child he had thought that Amelie would never give him. He had devoted himself to looking for the baby, only to be told she wasn’t his.

‘Please leave me some furniture intact.’

Caitlin’s tone was cool and controlled as she walked across the room with a tray of cups and plates that she set down on the small dining table.

‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t take out your bad mood on my belongings.’

Rhys flung a black glare in her direction, hating the feeling of having been caught making such a revealing gesture. He didn’t want her to know just how bad he was feeling.

And he would
hate
it if she came anywhere near guessing how much worse she made him feel.

‘I thought you said that you had your bad mood under control.’

‘I said that I’d behave in a civilised manner—and I will,’ Rhys snarled, welcoming the rush of anger that left no room in his mind for the other, more disturbing, more distracting thoughts. ‘So long as you play your part.’

‘My part being to tell you what you want to know and be quick about it?’

She was pouring coffee as she spoke, concentrating just a little too hard in a way that revealed her thoughts were not on the small practical action. And as they had done on the previous night he could see how her white teeth dug into the softness of her bottom lip, worrying at it sharply.

‘Well, don’t worry. I don’t want you to stay here any longer than you absolutely have to. So I suggest we get this over as quickly as possible.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

If they got this mess sorted out fast then he might just be able to keep a grip on himself and not give in to the stupid impulse to grab her and kiss her senseless. Kiss that prissy, pursed-up look from her luscious mouth. Kiss away the prim, controlled words. Kiss her out of the angry, defensive mood she was in now and into the yearning, sensual surrender that had taken possession of them both the night before.

Kiss her back into his bed.

Kiss them both back into the ecstasy they had discovered together last night.

‘So talk…’

He had to give himself a fierce mental shake to get his thoughts back in line, let alone to focus on what he wanted to say. Luckily Caitlin was settling herself in an armchair, taking her mug of coffee with her, and so she didn’t seem to register his momentary abstraction, the hungry way his eyes followed her.

‘What
do
you want to know?’

‘I think you know the answer to that already.’

Rhys made himself take the coffee and, because she had made them and so he felt obliged to show an interest, a sandwich too, before he seated himself in the chair opposite her, leaning back against the cushions and crossing his legs at the ankles.

She looked tired, pale and worn down. The white top that had been so clean and fresh when she had put it on that morning was now considerably worn, obviously after some time spent with Fleur. There was even a small milky stain up high on her left-side shoulder. But Rhys had to admit that, although he had seen many beautiful and supremely elegant women dressed in the most superb selection of designer clothes, none of them had ever been a patch on her for the sheer elemental pull of her feminine sexuality, her total appeal to all that was most deeply male in him.

An appeal he really had to learn to ignore, or she would run rings round him and he would never learn the truth.

‘I want you to tell me precisely why you believe Fleur is not my child and—’

‘I was told.’

‘Who told you? Amelie?’

‘No.’ Caitlin stared down into the top of her coffee mug, where a creamy circle of foam was whirling frantically in a wild circle, much like the thoughts inside her head. ‘Not exactly.’

‘And what the hell does “not exactly” mean?’

‘It means I—overheard her talking to someone, and what she said seemed to confirm what I’d been told.’

‘I repeat,’ Rhys stated coldly, ‘told by whom?’

‘Someone—’

She broke off sharply as Rhys slammed his mug down on the tiled hearth and sat up straight again, abandoning his earlier relaxed position.

‘Stop playing games, Caitlin!’

‘I’m not!’

The distress in her voice was put there by the thought of how totally different this scene was from the way it had been last night. Then she had curled up on the settee, as close to him as she could possibly get, and the atmosphere had been warm, relaxed—sensual.

This time they were positioned at opposite sides of the fireplace, like long-ago duellists facing each other, sizing each other up, just waiting for the word to fire.

And the feeling in the room couldn’t be colder, more hostile if it tried.

‘I’m not playing games! This is awkward for me.’ And painful.

For a moment she thought he was going to push her, force her to give him details she wasn’t yet ready to reveal. Instead he drew in his breath sharply, reached for his mug again, and waited. But this time he didn’t relax and instead sat stiffly upright, eyes once more fixed on her face.

‘So you overheard Amelie talking to “someone” and “someone” told you—would these two “someones” happen to be the same person?’

Caitlin nodded silently and then, because he was obviously waiting for more, pushed herself to add, ‘Fleur’s—her father.’

‘And he would be?’

It was the question she most dreaded. The one she would have avoided if she could.

She took a deep breath, brought it out slowly and reluctantly.

‘Josh.’

She knew he’d heard; knew he’d registered the importance of the name. But still he leaned forward as if to capture an elusive word.

‘Say that again.’

‘Josh—Joshua Hewland!’

‘Your almost-fiancé? Caitlin—I said—’

‘I know what you said—and yes, damn you!
Yes!
The man I thought I was going to be engaged to—to marry—’

‘He—and Amelie? The woman he betrayed you with was Amelie?’

How many times did she have to spell it out?

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you?’

‘Oh, yes, I see all right. I see it all. And I understand so much more, so much that hasn’t made any sense—until now. I could never understand why a young single woman, with all of her life ahead of her, should want to tie herself down by taking on the care of another woman’s child.’

‘I told you! Amelie asked me to!’

‘When?’

‘It was in the hospital—after the accident—’

‘There’s something here I don’t understand,’ Rhys put in sharply. ‘I was told that Amelie—that what killed her was the fact that she had a weak heart. But you claim it was a car crash.’

‘It was both,’ Caitlin told him sombrely. ‘It was her heart that caused the crash. She was driving and she had an attack—drove the car right off the road and into a wall. Josh was killed outright. Amelie—well, they thought they could save her because she wasn’t badly injured. But then she had another attack…’

‘I see.’

‘But before that she knew she—she knew. So she said that if anything ever happened to her would I promise to look after Fleur? And of course I said yes.’

‘Of course.’

He made it sound as if she had committed some sort of a crime rather than try to help.

‘And what does that mean?’

Rhys turned a black look on her, then glanced down at the sandwich in his hand and dropped it back down onto his plate as if he had just discovered that it was dry and stale.

‘Well, naturally you would want to take care of the baby once you knew she was your precious
Joshua’s
child. The man you were carrying a torch for—’

‘Shut up!’

It was low and flat, no emotion in it. She couldn’t find the right emotion. Because there was no way she could deny what he was saying. It was true, some of it at least.

She had wanted Fleur because the little girl had been part of Josh. Something real and warm and living that she could hold on to and into whom she could pour all the love that Josh hadn’t wanted. With Fleur she hadn’t felt quite so lost and alone. She had had Josh’s child, as she had always dreamed of having, even if she wasn’t actually the baby’s mother.

At least that was how it had been at the beginning.

But very soon she had come to love Fleur for herself. The little girl was part of her life. It would kill her to let the baby go now.

‘What’s wrong, Caitlin?’ Rhys taunted. ‘Can’t you take the truth? Can’t you face the facts? You lost your precious Josh to Amelie—and now you want—’

‘I said shut up!’

Caitlin pushed herself to her feet, facing him furiously, golden eyes blazing defiance.

‘You want to be careful, you know, Rhys. You don’t want to start flinging round words like
facts
and the
truth
! Not when you’re on such shaky ground there!’

Her outburst took him aback, leaching the colour from his face so that there were white marks etched around his mouth and his eyes seemed impossibly dark and shadowed.

‘Oh, yeah?’ he managed but his voice had lost much of its earlier bite.

‘Yes!’

Realising she was waving her coffee mug in the air like a dangerous weapon, Caitlin whirled away to dump it back on the tray, heedless of the way that the deep brown liquid slopped over the sides, soaking into one of the abandoned sandwiches.

‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘You know what I mean!’

Coming round the table, Caitlin rested her hands on the polished wood, leaning forward to emphasise the point she was trying to make.

‘You’re the one who won’t accept the truth when it’s handed to you on a plate! I’ve told you that Fleur isn’t yours but you won’t believe it. You won’t—’

‘I can’t,’ Rhys inserted suddenly, stopping her dead. ‘I
can’t
,’ he repeated when she could only stare at him, too stunned to speak, too stunned to think.

She didn’t want to understand. She most definitely didn’t want to sympathise—but she found that that was just what she was doing. She would have thought that it was impossible for Rhys to lose any more colour, for the skin on his face to draw any tauter, be stretched any further over the broad lines of his cheekbones. At his jaw a single muscle jerked as if in protest at the pressure of being held so tight. And his eyes seemed to be all black, no trace of blue even at the most outer edge of the iris.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said again.

‘But—but you have to.’

He was silent for so long that she thought he had actually lost his voice. Either that or he had finally accepted the truth but couldn’t bring himself to say so.

But then he moved, setting his mug and plate down on the hearth and getting to his feet with a strange, uncharacteristic slowness. To Caitlin’s shocked eyes, it was almost as if he had aged ten years or more in the space of the ten stunned seconds that had ticked away so ominously.

‘I can’t accept it,’ he repeated. ‘And I won’t—and before you say it again, no, I don’t have to accept it either. You see, I know something that you don’t know.’

Behind him, the clock on the mantelpiece began to strike the hour, making Caitlin almost jump out of her skin. The slow, sonorous strokes seemed unnaturally loud in the cold, brittle silence that had suddenly engulfed them. Too loud for her to talk against.

Instead she waited, not thinking, barely breathing, concentrating solely on counting from one to ten inside her head.

…eight, nine, ten…

And still the silence dragged on because now she didn’t know how to break it. She had no idea what to say. Except for the one obvious question. The one she didn’t dare to ask.

‘What’s wrong, Caitlin?’ Rhys asked finally, just at the moment that the silence threatened to stretch her nerves to breaking point and still she couldn’t find the words to ask. ‘Lost for words? Or perhaps this time
you’re
the one who can’t face the truth. The one who doesn’t want to know.’

‘I—no—I…’

Her voice failed her, croaking embarrassingly, and she had to stop, swallow hard, before she could try again.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she managed unevenly. ‘There isn’t anything—there can’t be anything.’

The arrogance of his cool, unrelenting stare, the way one black eyebrow rose in cynical questioning, almost destroyed her.

‘All right!’ she burst out. ‘All right, damn you! What is it? What have I missed? What is it you claim to know?’

And strangely now, for some reason, Rhys actually appeared to hesitate. He looked deep into her face, then down at the floor, traced the shape of a flower in the carpet with the toe of his boot, drew in his breath on a long, slow sigh. Then he let it out again in a rush as he pushed both hands through his hair, flexing his shoulders in a shatteringly uneasy gesture.