Their Secret Baby (9 page)

The seconds while he reconsidered were some of the longest of her life. If he decided to go she knew she would only have one alternative—to shout the truth after him. And that was the worst possible way to do it. For one thing, she doubted that he would believe a word she said, the mood he was in.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, Rhys swung on his heel to face her.

‘Not another word…’

‘Not one. I promise. Just let me feed the baby.’

He had her in a cleft stick, she knew it, and so did Rhys, she admitted to herself as she hurried into the kitchen and started pulling out formula, baby food. The trouble was, she wasn’t in exactly the sort of trap that Rhys believed she was in.

But she would keep quiet—for now. It was safer that way. Perhaps when Fleur was fed and comfortable, when the little girl had settled down for her nap, then they could talk.

And though her stomach quailed queasily at the thought, every nerve knotting tight, she knew that then she would have to tell him.

By the end of the afternoon Rhys felt surprisingly tired, but infinitely satisfied—and supremely happy.

Who would ever have dreamed that one tiny person could be so demanding and so complicated to handle? Feeding her had been fun—the changing of her nappy less so; but the real challenge had come with getting her to sleep. Clearly the upset to her routine, the arrival of someone new in her life, had sparked off an unsettled mood that had turned her from a sweet, contented little honey into an awkward, demanding monster, who had yelled if he held her, yelled if he put her in her cot, yelled if he rocked her…

Or perhaps she just sensed the atmosphere in the small house. It wouldn’t take much to do so. Although Caitlin was almost totally silent, only speaking when she had to, you could cut the tension in the room with a knife. And, although polite, every answer she gave was frigid and stiff, cold as ice.

So it was no wonder that the baby had taken so long to settle and drift off to sleep.

And even when she had, he hadn’t been able to leave her. Instead, he had stayed, simply standing by the cot, watching her sleep, unable to believe that she was real. Though he knew that it would wake her up again, he was severely tempted to pick her up, cuddle her, feel the soft, delicate warmth of her, smell the sweet, baby scent of her skin, listen to the ridiculous snuffles and chirrups she made as her way of communicating.

But she was asleep now. And, like it or not, he had to leave her. There were things that he and Caitlin had to talk about. Things they had to thrash out.

And this time he was keeping his head!

All right, admit it, he told himself furiously—the real phrase he needed was that this time he was
thinking
with his head. This time he wasn’t going to let his most basic instincts get in the way of the rational thought, the calm approach that was needed.

The problem was Caitlin. Five minutes spent with her and he forgot the control and the experience learned after thirty-two years of living. One look at those eyes, the curves of her body and he reverted to the yearning hunger of an adolescent who had just discovered his sexuality and the attractions of the opposite sex.

And he didn’t like the way that made him feel.

This time, he was going to keep his libido firmly under control and discuss things in a cool, calm and above all, damn it, a
controlled
manner.

But first he had to find Caitlin. When he had taken Fleur up to bed she had stayed in the kitchen, but while he was trying to persuade the baby to sleep, he had heard her come upstairs and go into her bedroom.

Not
the place he would choose to have the conversation he knew was inevitable. But perhaps if he could persuade her to come downstairs again… Surely this time they could manage to behave like the mature adults they both were and discuss this sensibly.

Calm. Sensible. Rational.

Words that flew straight from his head as soon as he opened the door into the bedroom.

‘Caitlin?’

The first thing that hit him was the sight of the bed.

The unmade bed.

The bed on which the covers still lay tangled, the sheets rumpled, the pillows askew—one of them even lying on the floor where some particularly restless movement had flung it.

Images of the night he had spent in that bed assailed his senses, throwing up memories he both did and did not want to recall. It seemed that the sights and sounds of the night, even the scents—the musky floral of her perfume and her skin—still swirled in the air, making the atmosphere heavy and thick with remembered sensuality.

‘What do you want?’

Her voice, cool and unwelcoming, drew his eyes to where she sat on the floor, the curve of her slim hips a provocation in itself. Her brown hair had fallen from the restraining pony-tail, some strands tumbling wantonly across her face, others lingering more sedately within the confines of the elastic band. Her eyes were heavy, the make-up faintly smudged like extra shadows underneath them, and the lipstick she had worn earlier had all but vanished, leaving the soft pink of her mouth completely and sensually natural.

The sweet disorder of her appearance tugged at all the primitive instincts he had sworn to ignore, making him fight to keep his head about the muddying waters of sexuality.

‘We need to talk.’

The words fell into a silence in which he knew that they were both thinking of how he had spoken just the same phrase the previous night and she had refused to listen. He could almost see the lines on which her thoughts were running, the same tracks as his were following. The kisses, the touch, the caresses—the journey up the stairs. His body clenched tightly just remembering.

Hell, no!

‘We certainly do.’

Her voice sounded blurred, as if it was smudged like her eyes, making him look closer. Her cheeks seemed to have lost all colour and those brilliant eyes were glistening with more than just their natural brightness.

Tears?

His stomach clenched on another sensation. An even more disturbing one. He moved across the room, sat on the edge of the bed. Near enough, but at the same time far enough away from her.

‘What are you doing?’

She shifted her body slightly so that he could see and he cursed silently and savagely inside his head as he realised what she had been doing.

The photograph that he had crushed under his heel still lay on the floor, crumpled and torn. A small waste-paper basket stood beside her and she had been carefully picking up the tiny splinters of glass that lay scattered over the carpet.

Guilt stabbed at him as he remembered the wanton violence with which he had destroyed the photograph. A violence that had come from sheer savage jealousy at the thought that any other man had known her. That she had cared enough to keep the picture of a man who just wasn’t worth it.

‘What did you say his name was?’

‘Josh—Joshua Hewland.’

If his voice had sounded rough, then hers seemed worse. Both of them suddenly seemed to have developed painfully sore throats that made the words scrape over raw vocal cords.

‘And you were engaged?’

‘I thought we were.’

Her hand crept out, touched the edge of the photograph, then was snatched back again sharply.

‘I thought we had an…understanding that we were heading for marriage, even though he’d never actually proposed. But it seemed Josh didn’t feel that way. He thought it was just for fun. So he didn’t think I would mind too much when he fell head over heels for someone else.’

The opinion Rhys expressed of a man who believed his lover ‘wouldn’t mind too much’ was short, succinct and extremely rude, making Caitlin’s mouth twist in wry acknowledgement.

‘I might have been able to take that if he’d told me at first,’ she said sadly. ‘But they had been together for four months before I even found out. She was living in my flat—they—’

‘They were carrying on an affair under your roof?’ Rhys inserted on a note of disgust when her voice faltered and she looked down sharply, blinking hard against the moisture that flooded her eyes. ‘She lived with you?’

Caitlin muttered something that he didn’t quite catch and, leaning forward, he put a hand under her chin, lifting her head gently to face him. The tears that glistened over the bronze eyes were for the bastard Joshua, but he felt an unspoken reproach stab at him all the same.

‘Where is he now?’

‘He—died.’

Oh, hellfire. Rhys’s gaze went back to the photograph. To the laughing, handsome face. No wonder she had kept it. No wonder…

‘Caitlin, I didn’t know. If I had…I’m—’

‘No!’

Caitlin had to stop him there.

She had to shut him up. Had to stop him from saying any more. She knew he was going to say he was sorry, and she didn’t want that. Anything but that.

Saying he was sorry meant that he was sorry for
everything
. That he was saying once again how much he regretted last night and all that had happened.

How he wished it had never happened.

And she couldn’t bear to hear him say those words.

She had come into the room to clear up, ostensibly to pick up the pieces of shattered glass, the splinters of the broken picture frame, but in fact she had just been sitting here, staring at the carpet with eyes that wouldn’t focus, lost in her memories.

Memories of last night. And Rhys. And the passion that had flared between them.

And her tears had not been for Josh or the ending of their relationship. Instead they had been for the loss of that wonderful passion, that amazing something that she and Rhys had shared—something she had never known with anyone else.

Something she had hoped might be a beginning.

‘No, Rhys, don’t! I don’t want to talk about it. Any of it. It’s past. Done. What we need to talk about is now. The present and what’s happening in it.’

‘The present,’ Rhys echoed. ‘That’s quite simple. I’ve got what I came for…’

Fleur.

He had come for Fleur, and now that he had her he was happy. His next words confirmed her fears perfectly.

‘I’m going to take her home with me— No?’

She had moved without knowing it. A tiny, automatic shake of her head that, still holding her chin, finger and thumb on either side of her face, he had felt, no matter how small it was.

‘I can’t go home?’ he questioned sharply, his hold on her tightening a notch. ‘Why not?’

‘Rhys…’

It was all she could say. All she could manage. And after that her voice deserted her, shrivelling to nothing, no matter how hard she tried to speak.

‘Why not, Caitlin?’

Rhys looked deep into the troubled depths of her eyes and suddenly thought he knew what was worrying her. She thought she was going to lose Fleur. Not only that, but she also thought that, like Josh, he was going to turn away from her without a second thought.

Something that made the taut, tense set of every muscle in his face suddenly ease and his stern mouth relax into a smile. Something that made him nod as if in acknowledgement of a secret he felt they shared.

‘You don’t want me to go? You think that now I have my daughter I’ll go—forget you?’

Just for a second his gaze slid away and down, towards the bed on which he sat, its covers still dreadfully disordered after the heated lovemaking of the night.

‘Do you think I could forget what we shared? What we had here, together? Caitlin, if I live to be a hundred, I will never forget last night. Passion like that comes into a man’s life only once in a blue moon. One night was not enough. It could never be enough.’

It was nothing less than the truth. This woman had got under his skin in a way he had never anticipated. He could never forget her. Hell, he didn’t even want to be without her. Right now he had no idea where it might lead, but he knew he wanted to try it.

There was no need for them to fight over this. They could work it together. Himself, Fleur and Caitlin.

‘Come with me, Caitlin,’ he said with soft urgency. ‘Come with me and Fleur.’

His thumb brushed over her cheek, stroking soft patterns on the smooth skin, and his voice wove sweet spells around Caitlin’s senses. Spells that whispered of desire and sensuality and an end to loneliness. Promises of time with Rhys.

Promises that tempted her so desperately.

‘Come to London with both of us—live with me…’

She couldn’t let him go any further.

‘No! Never. How can you even suggest that when…I can’t…’

‘Can’t?’

He looked as stunned as if she had just slapped him hard in his face and that stroking thumb stopped moving, tightened cruelly.

‘What the hell are you talking about, Caitlin? Of course you can. I have plenty of room—a huge great house that needs a family in it. You want to be with Fleur. What have you to keep you here?’

Nothing. Except that he wouldn’t want her—wouldn’t want them when he knew. And she had to tell him.

‘Everything.’

With a violent effort that tore at her heart she wrenched free of his grip, moving back out of his reach. Clouded amber eyes locked with intent, fixed blue.

‘I can’t come with you, Rhys.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Can’t—won’t! I won’t come, Rhys—we won’t come. I can’t let you take Fleur. You can’t have her to live with you.’

To her horror he actually laughed. Low and hard, it was a laugh of sheer disbelief. Of total rejection of what she was saying.

‘Oh, now I know that you’re not seeing straight. You’re not talking sense. Of course I can have Fleur to live with me—why do you think I’ve been searching for her for so long? Why else do you think I came here?’

‘No.’

It was a low moan of pain, one that distress forced from her. She had known that this would be hard, but she had never dreamed how hard. How much it would hurt her too.

‘Rhys, please, listen to what I’m saying. You can’t have Fleur to come and live with you—I can’t let you take her. I really can’t.’

‘I don’t think you have any say in the matter.’

If his voice had been dangerous before, then it was positively savage now.