His pregnant mistress

by Carol Marinelli

  His brother's baby.

  Images he didn't want to think about, couldn't bring himself to witness, were homing in: that he had practically forced her into Richard's arms by his cruel rejection, by his utter failure to ask her side of events.

  A painful lesson he had well and truly learnt, but it was too late now, for remorse or for what might have been. His brother's baby was growing inside the woman he loved, his brother had held her, made love to her, adored her. And. whatever way he looked at it. Richard had been cremated less than twenty-four hours.

  Black pools of bile churned inside him as the ram­ifications hit home, the almost incestuous edge a cou­pling would bring, too close for moral comfort.

  'It's too late for us, Mia.'

  'Maybe not,' she whispered. 'Ethan—'

  'It's too late,' he broke in. 'This is Richard's baby and I know...' he closed his eyes in regret.

  'Is it the fact it's Richard's baby or that Richard and I...?' Her voice trailed off. She knew she was tipping the conversation into dangerous territory and held back. Her promise to Richard resounded in her head, conflicting so violently with temptation to fol­low her heart, to tell him the truth he maybe needed to hear.

  'Does it really matter?' He shook his head, stared at her for a painful second longer. 'I just can't do this, Mia.'

  Despite the hot water her body was cold without him. Turning her back , she tried in vain to ignore the image of him peeling off his saturated clothes, wrapping a towel around that divine body, only remem­bering to breathe again when finally the door closed behind him and she was left alone. Shivering under the water, she stood there, knowing it could never be over, knowing that in a few moments she'd be facing him again.

  And wondering how she could do it.

  How she could look him in the eye and somehow not reveal the secret truth that only Mia now knew.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was a very different Ethan that greeted Mia as hesitantly she joined him on the patio. To date Mia had only seen him wearing a suit or the best part of nothing at all, but dressed in denim jeans, so dark they were almost navy, topped with a black jumper, his hair flopping over his forehead as it quickly dried in the hot midday sun, Ethan Carvelle for the first time since yesterday bordered on approachable.

  And it wasn't just his rather more informal attire.

  The contempt had gone from the eyes that greeted hers as she shyly sat down. Dressed in a pair of Ethan's boxers and a massive oversize T-shirt he had thoughtfully left on her bed.

  'Thanks for these.' She pulled at the baggy white top. 'I think my bump's expanded even since yester­day. I didn't much fancy struggling into that black dress again.'

  Another long silence ensued, but this time it wasn't uncomfortable, just a quiet pause as Ethan filled two long glasses with fruit juice and pushed a plate of pastries towards her.

  'No, thanks...' Mia started, then checked herself, remembering their conversation last night, instead re­luctantly selecting a chocolate croissant and not feeling quite so hard done by as she bit into the sweet dough, the bitter chocolate a delectable contrast.

  'Nice?' Ethan asked.

  'Very. You'll have to tell me where you got them, so I can take a stack back with me when I go home. Fattening myself up might not be so hard after all!'

  His eyes narrowed for a moment, but he didn't rise, just took a long drink before finally he spoke.

  'Can we talk, Mia? I mean, can we try and have a conversation without arguing?'

  'I doubt it.' She gave a small hollow laugh, ran a finger around the rim of her glass before finally screwing her eyes closed and nodding. 'But we can try.'

  'I can see how it happened.' He gave a long ragged sigh. 'I can still hear the row in my head. My father was furious the night Richard came back livid, in fact. He was determined to get to the bottom of things and anyone who's seen my father like that would know that Richard didn't stand a chance against him, would understand why Richard chose to lie.'

  'Was it always like that with your parents?' Mia asked, drifting off the subject but desperate for in­sight. 'Richard just clammed right up whenever I tried to find out about hi s childhood.'

  'With good reason,' Ethan said darkly, his eyes fix­ing on her then, a question in his voice when he spoke, only this time his words weren't derogatory. 'Mia, if Richard had lived, would you still have raised the baby alone?'

  She gave a small hesitant nod. 'We'd decided that Richard would be involved, would play a big part in our child's life, but I was always going to be the sole carer.'

  'Sole carer?' A slightly patronizing note tinged his words and Mia fought quickly back.

  'I thought we were going to attempt to get through this conversation without a row. Ethan. If that can only happen if I say what you want to hear, then we might as well call it a day here and now.'

  'I'm sorry.' He put up his hand. 'I really am. In fact, I have no right to judge you, Mia. For some strange reason I've always held this ingrained belief that two parents are better than one—'

  She went to stand, to terminate this discussion. Ethan didn't have to agree with her, but his disparaging remarks she could well do without. But he caught her hand, asked her to sit with his eyes and after a moment's hesitation Mia complied.

  'If you'll let me finish, I was about to say that, given my upbringing, it's a rather strange belief to hold. You'll be a wonderful mother, Mia.' He watched the colour suffuse her cheeks before contin­uing.

  'I'd give anything for your baby's one parent to my own two!' He let out a long sigh. 'I'm not sur­prised in the least that Richard clammed up when he spoke about his child hood. My parents are two of the coldest people you could ever meet and, if that sounds a bit over the top, believe me, I'm not exaggerating. It amazes me that they even had sex once let alone twice...'

  'You don't have sex just to get pregnant.' Mia's lips bordered on an ironic smile, but it faded when she registered the flash of pain in his eyes.

  'Not one kiss, not one cuddle.' His voice was bland, without a trace of self-pity, but Mia's heart bled for him. 'Nanny after nanny was paraded in front of us, but as soon as we got to know their names, no sooner had they found out how we liked our eggs in the morning, our parents assumed we were becoming "too attached" and they were replaced. It was a relief finally to go to boarding school’.

  ‘So why did they have children if they didn't even want them around?'

  'They didn't want children.' Ethan's eyes held hers and if she'd witnessed pain before it was nothing compared to the despair behind his words. 'They wanted heirs. That's all we were, and when it was clear Richard wasn't going to come around, when it was clear that he wasn't going to come back and as­sume what our parents decreed was his rightful role in the family hotel business, he was cut off with barely a backwards glance. That's the type of people my parents are, I'm afraid.'

  'Yet you work with them,' Mia pointed out. 'You chose to stay.' He gave a small shrug, but it infuriated her, the shutters coming down, the barriers coming up again.

  'Talk to me, Ethan. You're the one who insisted we talk. You can't have it both ways. You can't de­mand I open up to you and then sit there in judgment. Why did you stay? If they're so awful why do you still work with them? You don't strike me as the subservient kind—'

  'I'm not,' Ethan broke in. 'But they gave Richard such hell, were fully prepared to just cut him off...'

  'Is that why you stayed?' Looking up, he saw a questioning frown pucker her brow, registered the confusion in her eyes. 'So that they wouldn't cut you off as well?'

  'No.' He shook his head slowly, before downing his drink in one gulp. 'Believe me, Mia, I'd have loved to have gone, would have loved to wash my hands of the bloody lot of them.'

  'They're your family.' Mia gasped, shocked by the brutality of his words, but Ethan remained unmoved.

  'They're my parents,' he said without a trace of affection. 'That's all they are to me, nothing more, nothing less. I stayed working for them s
o that they'd let Richard go...'

  'Please.' She gave a scoffing laugh, but it halted midway, something in his stance telling her she was glimpsing the real man behind the rather austere, scathing version that was usually on show, hearing the painful truth for once, or as close to it as Ethan was likely to reveal.

  'Mia, if I'd have walked away that would have been it, it would have been over. I could have survived,' he said with his usual arrogance. 'Hell, I'd have excelled. But not Richard.'

  He shook his head, his voice low and pensive, more talking to himself than her now. 'He'd have been like some beautiful oriental cat suddenly thrown out with the ferals. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes out there. When they moved to Sydney they were totally prepared to sign him out of their lives.'

  'But you stepped in?'

  He nodded. 'I made sure Richard at least got a decent allowance from them right up to the day he died. He was at least given a chance to go to art school and follow his dreams, which might seem more than most people get, but at the end of the day he is a Carvelle...' he swallowed hard '... was a Carvelle. If it wasn't for me he'd have been tossing on the floor of your love shack...'

  And if she hadn't heard the raw pain behind his voice, she'd have snapped back a retort, but instead she sat quietly, terrified almost to move, to break the magical spell. And in a mawkish way it was magical, seeing this aloof, distant man actually open up a touch. 'Mia, you witnessed firsthand how they treated your father and, as bad as it might have seemed at the time, believe me, if I hadn't been there it would have been far worse.'

  'In what way?'

  'In every way. I fought tooth and nail to make sure your father got a decent pay-out.'

  'Hush money, more like,' Mia retorted, but Ethan just shrugged.

  'Call it what you like, but he got a damn sight more than he would have if it had been left to my parents. Don't think for a moment they wouldn't have called the police on their own son if they'd found out the truth. Money's their God, Mia. Mere mortals, even their own sons, don't get a look-in. I keep them on the straight and narrow. I'm good at what I do, good enough that they actually need me now, and I'm pow­erful enough to wield some influence as well— I'm the only person who can talk them down when they go too far.'

  'Talent and a social conscience?' She was using his words, lightening the atmosphere a touch, but tears were stinging her eyes as she did so, scarcely able to fathom the cold nature of his family, the lonely, harsh world t he Carvelles had created for their children. 'So that's the only reason you stay?'

  'Hell, no.' Startled, she blinked back at him, watch­ing as an almost cheeky grin twitched his lips. 'I make a shit-load of money as well.'

  'I guess every job has its perks.' Her smile was gratefully received; a tiny moment to regroup before he shifted the conversation.

  'Will you tell me now what the doctor said?'

  'I pretty much have.' She gave a tight shrug, and maybe it had been a calculated move of Ethan's, maybe it was just another one of his strange mind games, but, given how he'd opened up, Mia felt that the least she could do was reciprocate. 'My blood pressure's still a bit high.'

  'Which means?'

  'He's not sure yet. He said that I need to be mon­itored more closely. That, though it would be easy to put the rise in blood pressure down to the stress of the past few weeks, there was also a possibility that...'

  'That the baby's in danger?' Ethan asked when Mia didn't finish.

  'Both of us could be in danger. The doctor's con­cerned that I might be in the early stages of toxaemia.' She registered the confusion in his eyes. 'It's a com­plication of pregnancy. It can cause convulsions...'

  'Like Richard had?'

  She took a nervous swig of her drink, trying and failing not to picture the convulsions that had racked Richard's frail body in his final few weeks.

  ‘It's only a possibility,' Mia said as dismissively as possible, but she knew she wasn't fooling anyone, least of all Ethan.

  'You know you can't go home, Mia,' Ethan said softly, but there was firmness behind every word. 'You can't be alone now.'

  'But I can't stay here.' Anxiety was creeping into her voice and she fought to counter it. Emotion crack­led in the air around them, sizzled across the table between them, but it ha d to, had to stay out of the conversation. Too much was at stake now to lo se her head and say something she would surely regret. 'I can't, Ethan.'

  'Because of what happened between us?'

  She nodded, the simple truth tearing her apart.

  'Would it help if I told you what's happened be­tween us will never be repeated? Would it help if I told you that, as much as I feel for you, Mia, that after this morning I now realize too much has gone on, that there's too much past between us to look to the future?'

  'Is that how you really feel?'

  'It's Richard's baby.' His voice was hoarse, thick with emotion as he stared at her across the table and he fought for eloquence, tried to rip through the pain and somehow convey that it wasn't just the fact it was Richard's child she was carrying. That fact he could deal with, he was even happy about, thrilled that a part of Richard would live on, that his legacy would continue, that a child would be born with his brother's blood flowing thro ugh its veins.

  It wasn't the baby that was mentally bringing him to his knees, sending his normally well-checked emotions into a furious spin, but the tangible proof that Richard had loved her, that, even though it had been seven years after the assumed event, what he had dreaded most, the one thing he couldn't forgive, had finally hap­pened.

  'I just can't pretend...' His voice petered out, words failing him as he stared into those delectable aquamarine pools, saw the sun catch her golden hair, had to clench his fists because if he didn't he'd have reached out to touch her.

  'It's okay,' she whispered through pale lips, wish­ing it didn't have to be so, wishing that the might that Ethan Carvelle supposedly was could be strong enough to love another man's child. 'I can manage on my own.'

  'You don't have to be alone,' Ethan countered. 'Just because it can't work out for us, it doesn't mean I can't be there for you, for the baby too.'

  'We'll manage,' she responded, but the tremor in her voice was audible even to Mia.

  'Stay,' Ethan urged gently. 'At least for the baby's sake. I'll stay out of your way as much as I can, give you your privacy, there will be no repeat s of this morning's episode. This really isn't the time to be living alone, Mia, miles away from medical help.'

  'I need to work,' Mia argued. 'Ethan, I've got a contract. I've got a painting waiting to be done that I haven't even started; if I don't get the work done before the baby arrives, heaven only knows when I'll be able to complete it.'

  'Do you really think you'll be able to work?' Ethan asked perceptively. 'Do you really think, given all that's taken place, you're going to be able to go home and throw yourself into your art?'

  'I have to.' Mia gulped, while realizing the futility of her own words. As gentle as Garth had been he had scared her, not for herself, but for the baby. Ethan was right: alone in the mountains was the last place a woman in her condition should be, and the knowl­edge of that would be enough alone to throw her off her stride, that she couldn't truly immerse herself in her art with the knowledge that her baby w as in danger.

  'Let me help,' Ethan insisted. 'Look, I know Richard didn't mention the baby in his will, but I'm sure if he'd had more time then it would have been addressed. The details haven't all been finalized, he's got a property t hat's in the process of being sold, his life insurance policy, I'm sure we can—'

  'I don't need Richard's money.' She stared back at him. 'Ethan, this was never about money. As hard as it is for you to understand, money was never my motive.'

  'I do believe you, Mia, but be realistic—'

  'I am being. Ethan, my business is doing really well. I'm more than capable of supporting myself, I'm paying off my home, the gallery's taking care of itself, I'm more than comfortable.'


  'You're still paying off your home?' Shrewd busi­ness eyes narrowed. 'Mia I thought you said it was a dump. What about your father's house? Surely that would have covered it.' When she didn't answer he pressed on. 'Or did you keep it as an investment property?'

  'I didn't sell it and I didn't keep it.' There was an edge to her voice that had him frowning. 'My dad met someone, he married again...'

  'She got to keep the house when he died?' His voice was incredulous.

  'Her name is Sally, Ethan, and she didn't get to keep the house, she continues to live in the home she shared with my father.'