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She jerked out of the recollection to find herself leaning towards Alex, breathing hard. Her name had scraped out of his mouth on a half-strangled choke. He was breathing as hard as her.
Oh, dear Lord! She wanted to close her eyes. She’d been staring at him, practically undressing him with her eyes and begging him to—
And his eyes had darkened in response. She swallowed. She’d recognized the answering hunger that had stretched across his face before it had been comprehensively snapped off from her view.
He shot out of his chair and pretended to adjust the blind. She knew he was giving them both time to pull themselves together again, but she couldn’t help noticing his hands weren’t any steadier than hers.
How could it be like this? How could she want him so badly when she didn’t even like him? How could he want her, knowing she was pregnant? She’d seen what the news of her pregnancy had done to him.
But he did want her. She read that too clearly to mistake it for anything else.
He raked a hand back through his hair. ‘I picked you up some magazines while I was out.’ He spoke to the window, not to her.
‘Thank you.’ She breathed a sigh of gratitude. Her voice was low, but at least it worked.
He finally turned. ‘I thought if you wanted I could haul your television in here and set it up so you at least have something to watch.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not necessary.’ It’d only mean setting it back up out in the living room when she was well again. She suddenly frowned. Had too much sleep fogged her brain? ‘Alex, why are you still here? Don’t you have a company to run?’
‘The company isn’t important.’
She stilled at that, glanced down at the photo frame. Had he changed his mind about having a baby? Yesterday he’d been in shock and denial. But maybe today … ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ve come around to the idea of being a father?’
‘No.’ The single word was inflexible. His face had gone impassive, emotionless. It was an expression she was starting to recognize, and loathe.
‘Then don’t you think it would be better for both of us if you just left?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Between them, Caro and Doreen can take perfectly good care of me.’
He dragged a hand down his face then before seizing the chair and pulling it back a foot or so and planting himself in it. He leant forward to rest his elbows on his knees. ‘Caro told me that over the course of the next two days Doreen is booked in for a rash of tests at the hospital. It’s something to do with late onset diabetes,’ he added quickly when she bolted upright, ‘and it’s nothing serious, but … ‘
But it meant Doreen wouldn’t be available to look after her. Kit settled back again, chewing her lip.
‘And Doreen told me that Caro’s mother is arriving from England tomorrow and—’
‘Oh!’ Kit clapped a hand to her forehead. ‘Caro is collecting her from Sydney Airport. She’s leaving at the crack of dawn to get there in time. I forgot.’
‘She was going to change her plans and make other arrangements for her mother, but I told her not to. If you think I did wrong, then I can call her now and—’
‘No, no. Caro hasn’t seen her mum in over a year.’ And while Caro’s mother was staying for a month, Kit certainly wasn’t going to be responsible for delaying their reunion.
‘And we’ve all been trying to ring your grandmother,’ Alex continued, ‘but … ‘
Kit smiled faintly. ‘But she’s a gadabout who refuses to carry a mobile phone. If you leave her a message on Tuesday you might hear back by Friday.’
‘And your mother lives—’
‘In Brisbane,’ she finished for him.
She pressed her fingers to her temples. Think!
‘Kit?’
She glanced up.
‘I’m staying in Tuncurry until the weekend.’
‘But—’
‘It’s non-negotiable. There are things we need to discuss, but they can wait until you are well again. It’s just as easy for me to stay here and keep an eye on you than it is to book into a motel.’
Easy for who?
‘And it’s the least I can do.’
She sagged into her pillows, suddenly unutterably weary. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I know I hurt you, Kit.’
She wanted to look away, but those dark eyes of his held hers and something whispered between them. The memory of soaring together for one unforgettable night and touching the stars. No matter how much she wanted to deny it, this man had touched her soul. In that moment she recognized that she’d touched his too.
It didn’t mean they had a future together, though. She saw that just as clearly.
‘I hurt you, Kit, and I know I’m disappointing you now.’ He rested his head in his hands for a brief moment. ‘Knowing me has made your life worse. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am about that.’
She blinked and then frowned. He looked as if he actually meant that.
‘Helping you out for the next two and a half days is the least I can do.’
Two and a half days? When he put it like that, it didn’t sound like much. And, frankly, there was no one else available because she had no intention whatsoever of imposing on either Caro or Doreen.
‘Don’t you think your baby’s welfare is more important than anything else at the moment?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. She did. With all her heart.
‘So do I.’
She blinked and frowned. He did?
‘So why don’t we just do what the doctor ordered—you rest and I’ll be general dogsbody?’
She drew in a breath. What he was proposing, she may not like it, but it made sense. She let out the breath in an unsteady whoosh. ‘Okay, Alex.’ She nodded. ‘It seems to be the best solution. And … um … thank you.’
‘No thanks necessary,’ he said roughly.
She frowned suddenly, hitched up her chin. ‘But you know what? Regardless of what you think, being pregnant, that hasn’t made my life worse. Having a baby is wonderful.’
He turned grey. She shrugged. ‘I just want you to know that you don’t have to feel guilty about that. At least, not on my account.’
If he really did mean to walk away from his child, though, she hoped guilt would plague him every day of his sorry life.
He moved to fiddle with her CD player on the other side of the room. The sound of lapping water and soft squeals and gurgles filled the room.
She stared at him when he turned back around and then at the CD player. ‘What on earth is that?’
‘It’s called Sounds of the Sea.’ He shrugged and held up the CD case. ‘It’s supposed to be calming and relaxing.’
He’d bought her a relaxation CD!
‘I got it from one of those hippy places when I went shopping earlier.’ He rubbed the back of his neck and didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘You know the doctor said you needed to relax. I thought the CD … ‘
‘I thought you went shopping for a change of clothes, a toothbrush.’
‘I did. And for food—your refrigerator was practically empty!’
‘There are plenty of frozen TV dinners.’ She shrugged at his stare. ‘I don’t cook.’
He planted his legs, hands on hips. ‘What do you mean, you don’t cook?’
She waved her hands in front of her face. ‘This is all beside the point. Alex, you’re doing my head in!’
One corner of his mouth kinked up. ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that to Caro.’
The silence between them filled with the laughter of dolphins—oddly hypnotic. She shook herself out from under its spell. He might find this amusing, but she’d lost her sense of humour. There was too much at stake for laughing. Her baby …
‘I just don’t get you at all. You wanted me to terminate my pregnancy—’
‘No, I didn’t! I—’
‘You threw up when I told you I was pregnant but now you’re doing everything you can to make sure the baby stays healthy.’
He was silent for a moment. ‘You want this baby, Kit. You’ve already given your heart to it. You love it. I would never take that away from you.’
Her chest clenched. Frustration, remembered joy and then the ensuing crushing desolation, Alex’s generosity as a lover and then his callousness the next day, it all rose up through her now. She didn’t understand him at all and yet she’d agreed to let him stay in her house.
She was having his baby!
She needed to understand at least some of what had happened between them or …
Or she’d have learned nothing.
‘You were the most incredible lover, Alex, generous and thoughtful. You made me feel beautiful and cherished.’ And loved, which just went to show how skewed her judgement had been.
He leapt up, going white at her words.
‘And then the next day you acted as if what had happened between us meant nothing. No, even less that that, as if what had happened between us was an aberration.’ She lifted her hands. ‘Why?’
‘It wouldn’t have been fair to let you think we had a future.’
‘But you were so utterly cold, so callous. You didn’t even bother trying to let me down gently. What did I do wrong? Please—I don’t ever want to make that same mistake again.’ She had a baby to think of. Her heart jammed in her throat. What if next time it wasn’t just her heart she broke but her child’s too? If her judgement about him could be so off, how could she ever trust it again?
‘How could you have changed so completely? What was that all about? Was it you? Or did I do something?’ She couldn’t hold the questions back. Her voice rose as each one burst from her. ‘Why?’
Alex’s face twisted in an emotion she couldn’t identify—anger? Panic? Horror? He thrust an arm towards her stomach. ‘Because I didn’t want that!’
The shouted words reverberated in the quiet of her cool, shady bedroom. They pulsed in the air like live things. Her hands crept across her stomach in an attempt to block her unborn baby’s ears. In an attempt to protect it from pain and hurt. In an effort to console it. Her knees drew up beneath the covers to form a barrier between him and her.
‘You really don’t want this baby, do you?’ She’d known that before, but now she knew it in a harder, more real way. And it hurt. It died, that part of her that hadn’t been able to give up hope. Hope that once he’d recovered from the initial shock he’d come around, perhaps even welcome this baby into his life.
Alex was never going to accept this child.
‘I’m sorry.’ He’d gone a hideous kind of grey. ‘I shouldn’t have yelled.’
Perhaps not, but she couldn’t really blame him. She’d pushed him. She hadn’t meant to, it had just happened. But now she had her answer.
He dragged a hand back through his hair, eyed her uncertainly. ‘Time for us to get calm again.’
‘I am calm.’
Strangely enough, that was true. She felt icily and preternaturally calm. It didn’t stop her from suspecting she may well cry buckets over all this later. ‘I’m tired,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll leave you to rest.’
CHAPTER SIX
ON WEDNESDAY evening Kit woke to the smell of something divine coming from the kitchen.
Alex poked his head around her bedroom door as if he had some finely tuned radar that let him know when she was awake. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Good, thank you. Actually, really good.’ Back-to-normal good. She pushed herself into a sitting position and smiled when her back proved totally pain-free. ‘I can’t believe how much I’m sleeping, though.’
‘Your body needs the rest.’ He shuffled his feet, glanced away. ‘Dinner will be ready in five if you need to …’ He waved towards the bathroom.
‘Freshen up?’ she supplied.
‘Uh, right.’
No sooner had she made it back to bed and settled the covers around her when Alex walked in with a tray. Kit groaned as he set it on her lap. ‘This smells heavenly.’
‘It’s just a beef and potato salad.’
She could tell he was pleased, though. She speared a piece of beef, popped it into her mouth and closed her eyes in bliss as she chewed.
When she opened her eyes she found Alex frozen to the spot, his eyes glued to her mouth. Her stomach, skin, even her ears, all tightened. ‘I … um …’ She cleared her throat and tried to tamp down on the heat rising through her. She set her fork to her plate before she dropped it, and searched her mind for something to say. ‘You’re … um … not going to eat out there on your own, are you?’
He snapped back. ‘I thought—’
