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‘You loved your job!’
‘So?’
‘And you were brilliant at it.’
She blinked.
‘Come back to Hallam Enterprises and I will double your salary.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll triple it.’ He planted his feet. ‘Kit, you’re too valuable an employee to give up on without a fight.’
She stared up at him and he could’ve sworn her bottom lip wobbled. ‘Alex—’
‘Look, come back. You don’t need to relocate and change your whole way of life. If working with me is so difficult for you, I’ll relocate instead to our Brisbane office. I will leave Donald in charge of operations in Sydney, I’ll triple your salary and you won’t have to clap eyes on me again. I promise.’
Her eyes had grown huge. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘I thought you’d ring, Alex, or email. I didn’t expect you to just turn up like this.’
Her hands shook. Her colour kept flooding and then receding. Should he have given her some warning? He’d been so intent on his mission he hadn’t thought what might be best for her.
But he knew how much she’d loved her job. She gained more satisfaction out of her job as project manager than he did running the entire company. She shouldn’t feel compelled to leave because of what had happened between them.
Still, he’d been a fool to think that any meeting between them could be anything less than fraught.
He raked both hands back through his hair. In the warm spring sunshine his skin started to prickle beneath his suit jacket. ‘Why don’t I come back tomorrow at, say, 10:00 a.m.? It’ll give you a chance to think over my offer. You’re obviously busy here and—’
‘No!’ She surged to her feet. ‘I don’t want to drag this out. Alex, I will not be returning to Sydney. I mean to make this place home. I grew up in Tuncurry and I’ve missed it. This is where I want to live. The lifestyle, the people, the pace, it suits me more than Sydney ever did.’
Didn’t she care that her talents would be wasted here?
‘Your offer was more than generous—’ she hauled in a breath ‘—and I do appreciate it, but … ‘
She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t have to. Her shrug said it all. Bile rose up to burn his throat, his tongue. His recklessness, his weakness, had made this woman’s life worse and there was nothing he could do to make amends. ‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll get a job. I have a lot of contacts here and the tourism industry is thriving. With my qualifications, it’ll be a piece of cake.’
She had every right to that confidence. Whoever was lucky enough to employ her would find they had a gem.
‘You’re sure you won’t reconsider?’
She shook her head. And then she went so pale he found himself stepping forward to take her arm. She lifted her hands to ward him off. Stepped away so he couldn’t touch her. As if his touch would poison her. Just for a moment he had to rest his hands on his knees.
‘Alex, I don’t want to raise my children in the city. I want to raise them here.’
He flinched at that word—children—and then straightened, but part of him was glad—fiercely glad—that she’d uttered it. It reminded him of the impossible gulf that lay between them.
Her lips twisted and her eyes hardened at whatever she saw reflected in his face. But her colour didn’t return. He noted the way she twisted her hands together. To stop them from shaking?
‘Alex, I didn’t resign from Hallam Enterprises because I found it impossible to work with you. I resigned because I’m pregnant.’
He stared. For a moment it seemed as if time were suspended. And then her last two words hit him in the stomach like blows from a sledgehammer. I’m pregnant.
I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.
No! He fell back. Not … No! ‘You can’t be serious?’ The words rasped from a throat that burned like acid.
‘I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.’
Her hands twisted and twisted. He stared at them and prayed they could save him. ‘With …?’
But he couldn’t finish the question. He reeled away from her, reeled all the way to the back fence and the banksia tree. He dug his fingers into the hard bark of a branch and held on until the nausea passed. Anger pounded through him then, hot and thick and suffocating. At the edge of his consciousness he could hear Chad’s laughter taunting him like it did in his nightmares.
He swung around, strode back to where Kit stood and jabbed a finger at her. ‘You expect me to believe it’s mine?’ The words were harsher than anything that had ever scraped out of his throat before.
She folded her arms, moistened her lips and met his glare head on, although tears filled her eyes and he doubted she could see him properly through them. But she didn’t let a single one of them fall. ‘Just walk away, Alex,’ she whispered. ‘Just turn around and walk away and we’ll pretend that none of this ever happened.’
His heart pounded in his throat, his pulse raced. He’d come here to make her the offer of a lifetime. Instead, she was extending that offer to him.
He could walk away.
He didn’t want to walk. He wanted to run!
CHAPTER THREE
ALEX lurched across to the nearest azalea bush, where he promptly and comprehensively vomited. Kit had to sit again and focus on her breathing to avoid that urge herself. Up to this point, her pregnancy had been remarkably nausea free.
She rubbed at the niggling ache in her back. In her free moments, when she’d tried to picture telling Alex he was going to be a father, she’d expected yelling and shouting, accusations and disbelief, even a hard, angry silence.
Shock—yes.
Vomiting—no.
Had her father vomited when her mother had told him she was pregnant with Kit?
She shook the thought off and deepened the massage to the left side of her back, her fingers doing what they could to shift the pain there and their own nervousness. With Alex, she’d have preferred the shouting and anger. A part of her would have preferred it if he’d taken the out she’d offered him and had walked away without one single backward glance. She flicked a quick glance in his direction.
He still might yet.
She tried to stamp out the sympathy that rose through her at the memory of the white-lipped panic that had sent him wheeling away from her, at the red-faced panic that had sent him hurtling back, at the grey-skinned despair that had sent him staggering across to that azalea bush.
Having an unplanned baby wasn’t the end of the world!
Her throat ached. Her eyes stung. Her news had made him vomit. Vomit!
I don’t do happy families.
He wasn’t kidding, was he?
Her temples throbbed. The ache in her back that had been plaguing her since yesterday increased in ferocity. A hot flush wrung her out and then a chill gripped her. She might not be able to stop herself from feeling sorry for Alex, but he was an adult, a grown up. He might not do happy families, but she did. There was no way on God’s green that she was going to let him hurt her baby.
Their baby.
No—her baby! Alex didn’t want this child. She did with every molecule of her being. She would provide for this baby and give it everything it needed.
A baby needs a father.
She thrust her chin out. She’d coped perfectly well without one.
Really?
She dropped her head to her hands with a groan. She’d ached to have a father who’d wanted her, who’d loved her.
‘Kit?’
Alex’s face was void of all emotion. It made her catch her breath. How could he hide all that … that turmoil away, just like that? She searched his face for a spark of … anything.
She searched in vain.
‘You’re saying it’s mine?’
‘Yes.’
‘We used protection.’
She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to curl up and sleep the afternoon away. She wanted to forget all about Alex Hallam. ‘We’d have been better off if I’d been on the Pill.’
‘Have you thought everything through? Considered all your options?’ He planted his hands on his hips, his eyes narrowed. ‘You know you have options, don’t you?’
‘You’re talking about a termination?’
‘That’s certainly one of your options and—’
That had her surging to her feet. She ignored the pain that cramped her back. ‘What a typically male thing to say! You’re …’ She couldn’t find words enough to describe the entirety of his awfulness.
He wanted her to get rid of their beautiful baby?
Oh, that so wasn’t going to happen!
‘Look, I’m just saying it’s an option, that’s all. I was just checking that you’d considered all your options.’
‘Is that so?’ She folded her arms. After the heat of her first flush of anger she went cold all over. Chilled-to-the-bone cold. ‘But a termination would make your life so much easier, wouldn’t it?’
‘Only if the child is mine.’
For a moment she couldn’t breathe. He doubted it? He thought she would lie about something as important as this? She’d envisaged anger and shock, resentment, when she told Alex the news but not once had it occurred to her that he might not believe her. She’d never given him any reason to think she would lie.
She wrapped her arms about her middle to stop from falling apart. ‘I am not terminating my pregnancy.’
He didn’t blink. He didn’t flinch. ‘Fine. But if you claim the child is mine then I demand a paternity test be carried out upon the child’s birth.’
She hitched up her chin. ‘Alex, you’ve made it clear from the start that you’re not a family man.’ Well, perhaps not exactly from the start. But he had rectified that particular misapprehension on her part with startling speed. ‘I don’t want anything from you. I assure you I have everything that I need. Frankly, I don’t know what you are still doing here.’
His gaze sliced to the path that led around the side of the house—the path that would take him to his car and freedom. She recognized the hunger that flashed across his face before all expression was cut off again.
‘I—’
An almighty crash from within the house interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. Kit spun around. One of the deliverymen appeared at the back door. ‘I … uh … a wall’s fallen down.’
She blinked. ‘It’s what?’ She took off at a run. Her beautiful house!
‘Kit, wait, it might not be safe!’
She ignored Alex’s shout. It couldn’t be any more dangerous than being out in the back garden with him. His footsteps pounded behind her, but he didn’t catch up with her until she came to a dead halt at the edge of the living room. He slammed into her and she winced as pain cramped her back again. She coughed at the plaster dust thick in the air.
‘Sorry.’ He gripped her shoulders to steady her. ‘Okay?’
She couldn’t answer him. The warmth of his hands had memories sideswiping her, memories that demanded she turn and rest herself in his arms. Crazy! She couldn’t talk but she could resist such insane impulses. She managed a nod.
He immediately transferred his attention to the deliverymen. ‘Anyone hurt?’
She closed her eyes. She was a hundred different kinds of a fool where this man was concerned.
The deliverymen all assured Alex that they were unhurt and Kit opened her eyes to survey the damage. She waved a hand in front of her face to try and dispel some of the dust. ‘What happened?’
Her house. Her beautiful house.
As the dust settled, a great hole appeared in her wall where her brand new shelves should’ve been. They lay in disarray amidst the clutter and mess on the floor. Alex swore. ‘Didn’t you look for a supporting beam?’
‘Course I did,’ a dusty figure muttered. ‘Take a look yourself.’
Alex did. He poked and prodded and then swore at whatever he’d discovered. Kit’s heart sank. Her budget didn’t run to expensive repairs and—
All her thoughts slammed to a halt when he stuck his head through the hole and peered upwards. ‘Alex!’ The protest squeaked out of her. What if more stuff fell down?
It was only when he backed out again that she noticed the three deliverymen edging towards the door. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She’d meant to utter the words in her best scary secretary voice, but it came out as a squeak too.
‘Sorry, love, but we’ve delivered your furniture. There’s nothing more we can do here.’ With that they turned tail and fled.
‘Hold on a minute!’
A firm hand wrapping around her upper arm prevented her from setting off after them. ‘It’s not their fault, Kit. Let them go.’
She wrenched herself out of his grip and then coughed as dust rose up around them, disturbed by her agitated movements. It settled on the shoulders, the sleeves, the lapels of Alex’s finely tailored suit. It settled everywhere, even on his eyelashes. Kit yanked her gaze away. She didn’t want to notice how the dust on his eyelashes made the brown of his irises deeper and clearer. She didn’t want to notice anything about Alex Hallam.
He went to take her arm, but she evaded him. She didn’t want him touching her again either. She didn’t want to notice how his touch was imprinted on her soul. As if she were his woman. She wasn’t!
She whirled away from him. ‘What do you know about any of this anyway?’
