Wedding at King’s Convenience (6 page)

S
he slammed the door an instant later.

Eyes wide, heart pounding in her chest, Maura leaned back against the door and tried to catch her breath. She shivered slightly and couldn’t be sure if it was the bitter spring weather or the ice in Jefferson’s pale blue eyes that had made her feel cold down to the bone. She only knew that seeing him again had shaken her. Shaken her so badly she couldn’t afford to let him see it.

Bad enough he’d shown up on her doorstep without so much as a phone call in warning. “But then,” she murmured aloud, “the man obviously doesn’t know how to
use
a bloody phone now, does he, since I’ve been calling him for more than three months now with no success.”

And yet here he was.

At her front door, looking half-drowned and furious
with it and still so tempting everything in her wanted to shout for glee at seeing him again. Even though she knew better, Maura felt that familiar need for him rise up inside her. She should have been prepared for this. Somehow, she should have known.

Of course he’d come back to Ireland. If not to see her, then to check on his blasted movie people. Yet, even if she had expected to see him, she doubted she would have been prepared for the delicious licks of want and desire that swept through her with just a single look into the man’s eyes.

“He had the right of it. He is a bastard.” She leaned her head back against the closed door and waited for him to start pounding on it.

Jefferson wasn’t the kind of man who’d hear the news she’d just delivered and then disappear as quickly as he could. Oh no, he’d be demanding entry in another moment or two. And then he’d be righteous and full of himself and expecting explanations and details.

Though she’d been trying for months to give him exactly that, right now, she was in no mind to speak with him at all.

Mostly because her stomach was still spinning from that first sight of him. And because her hands itched to slap or hold she wasn’t sure which and mostly, because he was
Jefferson.

God help her, it didn’t seem to matter that she was furious with him. Her heart was still full of him and she couldn’t seem to dig him out despite how hard she tried. Which only made her even
more
furious with herself than she was with him.

And who would have thought that possible?

A heartbeat later, several loud thuds came from right behind her head. She knew without looking out the window that he was using his fist to batter at her door. Her heartbeat quickened and low in her belly something stirred, buzzing awake feelings that had been lying fallow for weeks now. Like a limb waking from a deep sleep, there were pinpricks of awareness tingling across every inch of her skin.

“Damn it, Maura, open the door!”

She might have if he hadn’t ordered her to. As it was, the anger she’d been carrying around for months suddenly swamped her and she pushed away from the door. “Go away, Jefferson!”

“Not gonna happen!” he shouted back. “Now, do we have this conversation loud enough for everyone to listen in or do we talk in private?”

Private.

That got her moving. She wasn’t interested in having half of Hollywood listening in on her private business. Maura flung the door open and stepped back as Jefferson marched inside, followed by King, who promptly shook the rainwater off his coat and onto everything else.

“For heaven’s sake,” she muttered as the dog sprinted off the long hallway toward the kitchen and his bed.

Wiping water off her face, she stared up into Jefferson’s eyes and almost took a step back from the glittering wrath shining there. Then she remembered just which of them had the right to be angry.

“You’ve nothing to be snippy about,” she told him before he could speak.

“Snippy?”
He pushed both hands through his wet hair, shrugged out of his suit jacket and tossed it onto the umbrella stand beside the door. His white dress shirt was soaked as well, clinging to the muscled contours of his chest and abdomen in a way that made Maura’s mouth water, though she wouldn’t have admitted it even with a knife to her throat.

“I’m way more than snippy,” he told her. “What the hell do you mean you’re pregnant?”

She forced herself to calmly close the front door before she turned to answer him. “Just how many things could I mean, do you think, Jefferson?” Oh, she’d imagined this scene too many times to count and the reactions she’d given him in her mind had been wide and varied. But in none of them had he looked as though someone had hit him over the head with a stick.

He was stunned, pure and simple, which told her flat out that no one had given him the countless messages she’d left over the last couple of months. Why did the man employ so many people if none of them could be trusted to pass on a message?

Her temper built steadily as she met his shocked gaze. “It’s easy enough to understand. I’m
pregnant.
With child. Carrying. Bun in the oven.” She tipped her head to one side. “Shall I draw you a picture?”

A tension-filled second or two ticked past, the only sounds in the house that of the rain battering at the windows and the wind whistling beneath the eaves. Finally, he spoke and his voice was tight with controlled emotion.

“If you think you’re being funny, you’re mistaken. And if you’re really pregnant why the
hell
didn’t you tell me?”

“Really pregnant?” She repeated the words, spitting them back at him. “Instead of only a bit pregnant, is that it?”

“That’s not what I meant. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Hah! You’ve quite the nerve asking me that question, I’ll say.” She closed the space between them with two quick steps and poked her index finger against the center of his chest. “With me calling and calling that bloody studio of yours, leaving messages both long and short with that crowd of people standing between you and the public?”

“You called?”

“Repeatedly and I’ll tell you now, the Pope would be easier to ring up.”

“I never got any message from you,” he said, pulling his tie off and opening the collar of his shirt.

Was that true? She wondered if she’d been wrong all this time. For weeks now, she’d been harboring a snarling fury toward him. She’d thought he’d been getting all of her messages and simply ignoring them. Choosing to distance himself from a woman he no longer wanted and a child he had no interest in. She’d thought him the lowest sort of man and she’d been hurt and furious with herself that she hadn’t seen him originally for the snake he’d turned out to be.

Now…she had to rethink everything. She had to consider that perhaps he really hadn’t known about the baby. And if that was true then what did it mean for all of them? Ah God, she needed time to think, without him
standing within arm’s reach of her and looking good enough to bite.

Irritated beyond measure, she snapped, “It’s hardly my fault that you didn’t get messages I left, now is it?”

He tossed the tie onto his suit jacket. “You’re pregnant.”

“As I’ve said.”

Shaking his head, he looked as though he wanted to say something, but he bit the words back before they could escape. Instead, he swiped one hand across his face, stared at her as if he’d never seen her before, then muttered something under his breath that she didn’t quite catch.

He took a few steps down the polished wood hallway, then stopped and turned around. “Does everyone in the village know about this?”

Maura sighed. It hadn’t taken long at all for her secret to become public knowledge. “Nurse Doherty has ever had a flapping tongue.”

“That means yes, I take it.”

“It does.”

“You ought to sue her,” he mumbled. “Doctor-patient privilege.”

She laughed shortly. “Isn’t that just like an American? Lawsuits the answer to all problems? Well, what good would it do me to sue a woman who’s known me since my mother was carrying me?” Maura sighed again and explained, “It wasn’t Doc Rafferty who spilled the news. Trying to quiet Patty Doherty would be like holding back the tide by building a wall of sand.”

She’d known the moment she left the doctor’s office that fine day that within hours, word of her pregnancy
would be spread across all of Craic. Not that she was ashamed of her situation. But if Maura had even guessed beforehand that she might be pregnant, she’d have visited a doctor in Westport, to keep her business her own.

“Are you well?” he asked quietly. “The baby?”

“We’re both fine,” she assured him.

And weren’t they being civilized, Maura thought vaguely. Just two adults who’d made a child, standing in a dimly lit hall speaking to each other like strangers. The cold she’d felt earlier dropped into the freezing range.

When he’d first come to Ireland, there’d been heat. Heat that had burned bright and hot between them, ending in the inevitable. Now though, Maura thought that if he had looked at her then the way he was now, they wouldn’t be in the position they were in.

It wasn’t lust he was showing her now. It was…less and more at the same time. Confusing to both of them, no doubt.

All around them, a storm raged, yet here in the house where she’d lived her whole life, there was a stillness that ate at her nerves and chewed at the edges of her heart. Was he wondering what to do with her? How to keep his affair with a sheep farmer a secret from the press?

Why the devil wouldn’t he
say
something?

“Must you just stand there staring at me as if I’ve grown two heads?”

He inhaled sharply. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“Oh, aye,” she agreed. “What to do about Maura? Must be bloody difficult to think of the right thing to say.”

He ignored that. “So, the reason the film crew’s having so much trouble…the reason I couldn’t get a room
at the inn or a beer in the pub…” His voice trailed off, but Maura could see him thinking and knew from the expression on his face he didn’t much care for what was in his mind.

“They’re angry on my behalf,” she told him, her voice soft, her words sharp. “Everyone in the village knows I’m pregnant and that you’ve done nothing about it.”

“I—” He took a step toward her and stopped again. “How in the hell could I have done anything about it when you didn’t bother to tell me?”

“I’ve already explained that I bloody well tried to tell you, didn’t I?”

Maura stormed out of the hall into the main room. Through the bank of windows, she saw the gray skies, the green field where lambs played and the wide, pewter stretch of the lake. She didn’t turn around to know he’d followed her into the room. She didn’t have to. She would have sensed him even if she hadn’t heard his footsteps.

“How hard did you try, Maura?” He grabbed her upper arm and turned her around to face him. “A man’s got a right to know when he’s going to be a father.”

“Aye, he does. And along with that right,” she countered, refusing to be cowed by the flash of indignation in his eyes, “comes a responsibility to return calls left so that he might discover what a body’s trying to tell him.”

“I never got any messages.”

“So you say, though I left dozens. Maybe hundreds.” Doubt crept in and battered at the anger she’d been carrying for weeks.

“With whom?”

“With anyone I could get on the phone, blast you!”
She yanked free of his grasp and whipped her hair back behind her shoulders. “Mostly I called your office and never got past your secretary. Oh, she was polite and all and told me how nice it was that I wanted to stay in touch, but that you’re a busy man and so I was to be sure and let her know if I had any problems in the future.”

“Joan. Did you tell her about the baby?”

“I did. She congratulated me as nice as you please and said she was sure Mr. King would be happy for me.
Happy
for me.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I assumed you wanted nothing to do with me
or
my child.”

“Our
child.”

She nodded. “As you say. So when I heard nothing from you for weeks, I put you out of my mind entirely.”

Liar,
her brain screamed silently. He’d never been out of her thoughts. Or her dreams. Even with the hurt and disappointment and anger, she’d thought of him, remembered that night with him and torn herself up with regrets for what had been lost.

Blast if she’d let him know that, though.

“So it seems, Jefferson, that once your contract is signed, you’ve no need to be polite to those you’ve already won over.”

“I can’t believe Joan knew and didn’t say anything.”

“Get a lot of those messages, does she?” Stung, she snapped, “Believe me or not, it’s your business to be sure.”

“I don’t mean I didn’t believe you. I meant—” His voice trailed off. Shoving both hands into his pockets, he shook his head and said, “I’ve had people call after the contract was signed, trying to up the amount of money they agreed to. Or to get more out of me in other ways.
Joan—my assistant—knows that and weeds out people she thinks might be causing trouble.”

“Well, I might see how she could think that when, after the first few tries I made, I might have lost my temper with her…”

“Might have?” he asked, one corner of his mouth lifting.

“All right,
did,
but I had my reasons, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did. She should have told me you called.”

Jefferson blew out an unsteady breath. This was all happening so fast he could hardly think. He’d never even considered the possibility of leaving Maura pregnant. Which made him a complete ass. He hadn’t worried about contraception—had just given himself over to the heat of the moment. Something he had never been careless about. But damn it, he couldn’t be faulted for not acting on something he hadn’t even known about.

The important thing to focus on was the fact that he was going to be a father.

Everything in him trembled. Not the kind of news a man got every day. Not hard to understand why his brain was having a tough time computing it all. He hadn’t known. For four months, she’d been alone with this knowledge, thinking that he didn’t care. Thinking he wanted nothing to do with her. No wonder she was spitting fire at him. Guilt roared up, took a bite of him, then Jefferson shoved it back down. Damned if he’d take the blame for something he hadn’t even known about.