Love Islands…The Collection. Jane Porter

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      ‘Thank you.’ Under the cover of a stiff automatic smile, her swirling thoughts raced as she wrapped the soft fabric sarong-wise across her breasts and waited, with a sense of fatalism that approached a Zen-like calm, for him to speak.

      When he didn’t, she flung a rope of wet hair over her shoulders. She was amazed that her hands were still steady, despite the fact that under the calm, pulses of fear continued to pound through her body and her knees felt ready to give way.

      She was living her worst nightmare. If the ground had opened up at her feet, she would have gladly jumped into the black hole.

      No obliging hole appeared, so she met his hostile stare with as much composure as she could summon.

      ‘This is a surprise. So what are you doing here?’

      ‘Have a guess?’ he ground back, tearing his eyes from the small trickle of sea water running down the curve of her pale, creamy shoulder.

      ‘I was never very good at guessing games,’ she blurted, her voice a low driven undertone almost drowned by the low hiss of waves breaking on the shore. ‘If you have something to say...?’ The tense silence stretched. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me I’m late for my massage.’ She made to move past him but he blocked her path. The sheer menace of his physical presence would have made her pause if his next words hadn’t frozen her to the spot.

      ‘Oh, well, when you can fit me into your schedule, I thought we might have a conversation. One like—oh, I don’t know... How about: Ben, it totally slipped my mind, but I had your baby a few years back...?’

      She closed her eyes and thought, Oh, hell... Well, maybe now was as good a time as any to get this over with. Sucking in a short, tense breath, every muscle in her body taut, she turned and looked him in the face and nodded.

      ‘Sorry.’ Then because it crossed her mind he might think she was sorry she’d had Emmy she tacked on hastily, ‘That you found out about it in the way—’ She stopped. She didn’t know how he’d found out, but she supposed the significant bit was it hadn’t been from her. ‘This way.’

      He clenched his jaw and ground out grimly, ‘So you’re not even going to deny it?’

      A bit late now. ‘I’m not a good liar.’

      His lip curled. ‘Oh, I think you’re a very good liar.’

      ‘I didn’t lie, I just decided not to—’

      ‘Burden me with the truth?’

      She winced at the acid sarcasm and began to resent his occupation of the moral high ground as she jerked her eyes up to meet his intense blue glare.

      ‘Or were you just not sure who the father was?’

      The insult, because there was no doubt he intended it as such, drew a wobbly little laugh from her aching throat. She clamped her teeth over it and lifted her chin. It was an irony she had no intention of sharing with him. She could at least retain that much pride. Having him know she’d thought their one-night stand was the start of something special would have been too cringingly humiliating; she’d prefer he think she was some sort of bed-hopping tart.

      ‘Oh, there was never any doubt about that,’ she said quietly.

      ‘Because I’m curious,’ he said, his control straining at the leash. ‘Did you ever intend to tell me?’

      ‘I thought about it.’ Lily didn’t register the hissing sound her admission wrenched from his clenched teeth. Her eyes glazed as her thoughts drifted backwards. After the initial shock had worn off she had thought about little else. The tipping point had been the article his ex had written. It had seemed like fate that she’d picked it up in the waiting room before her first appointment with the midwife.

      It turned out Ben had only been engaged for five minutes before he’d got cold feet and dumped the poor woman. Commitment phobic, the gorgeous ex-model had explained, but the real breaking point, she had confided, had been his refusal to have a family.

      You had to admire the woman. She’d have been perfectly justified, in Lily’s opinion, if she’d chosen to stick the knife in. But instead she’d displayed a really healthy attitude focusing on the future, her career change and plugging her new cookery book that was to hit the shelves soon.

      That had sealed the deal for Lily. She’d known then that she couldn’t tell him.

      ‘But I knew how you’d react,’ she continued.

      He arched a sardonic brow and ground his teeth in reaction to this claim of psychic abilities. ‘And how is that?’

      Lily studied his face, her heart clenched in her chest. Even mad, he was beautiful. She spread her hands in an expressive gesture. ‘Pretty much like this.’

      Before she had become pregnant Lily had never asked herself if she wanted to be a mother. Unlike Ben, who it turned out had decided never to be a father. A man who broke off an engagement because having children was a deal breaker was not going to be happy to learn he was about to be a dad by a one-night stand.

      ‘So how did you find out?’

      ‘How did I find out?’ He shook his head and looked at her as though she were insane. ‘I saw her, I saw me...’ he ground out, shaking his dark head in an incredulous motion from side to side. ‘Your mother doesn’t know?’

      She swallowed, thinking of all the occasions when she had been tempted to confide in someone, wishing she could.

      ‘Not СКАЧАТЬ