“Thanks, yeah, you could say that. I have a lot of work to get through before tomorrow. Can you ask Thompson to serve my dinner in my office?”
His dismissive rejection of her presence couldn’t have been more emphatic. Hadn’t last night meant anything to him?
“Surely you can stop to eat. You’ll need to take a break to stay fresh.”
“Can’t afford to.” He walked across the patio towards the house.
“Connor!”
He stopped in his tracks and turned slowly, his black eyebrows pulled together in a forbidding frown. “What is it, Holly? I told you I have a lot of work to do. Can’t this wait?”
She baulked for a moment; very few people dared press him when he wore that particular look. But she dared. She had to or she’d go mad with boredom. “Maybe I could help you?”
His right hand fidgeted, always a give away when he was irritated. “No. You need to rest. You’re still too pale.”
“Rest?” Anger swirled like a red haze through her mind. “I’ve been resting all day. I want to do something. I need to do something or I’ll go crazy.”
“Go read a book, watch a movie.”
“I want to help you.” He just didn’t get it, she thought in frustration. After spending her day wandering around like a lost soul, she’d looked forward to him coming home. The prospect of an endless evening with only her own company stretched before her like an echoing void.
“I said no. Look, if you really want to do something to fill your days, pick a room upstairs and turn it into a nursery. We’re going to need it eventually. Maybe the turret room, since that’s closest to the master suite, then the nanny can have the room next to it.”
“Nanny?” The word nursery had been enough to turn her blood to ice in her veins, but nanny elicited a gut deep response she didn’t want to identify.
“For when you’re gone, Holly.” Connor explained with pseudo patience. “I’m going to need a nanny.”
He turned and went inside. His exit hit her like a physical slap, and Holly sank to the chair behind her. Hearing him speak of a nanny in such cold and clinical terms brought the reality of this pregnancy back to her in spades. A cold clammy shiver ran down her back. She was only here to have his baby and then move on, he’d reminded her quite succinctly. He neither expected nor, obviously, wanted her to stay. And why would she? She hadn’t the faintest notion of how to be a mother. Her own had abandoned her so she had no role model there, nor had the succession of foster mothers over the years touched her heart.
The risk of pain was just too great. Losing Andrea had proven that. It was much better to lock those feelings down. Look at what loving Connor had given her. Only more heartache, and now a child she didn’t want to love—just as her mother had so obviously not wanted her.
But wouldn’t she be doing the very same thing as her mother? Wouldn’t she be just as wilfully neglectful by walking away from her baby? No, it wasn’t the same. Not the same thing at all. She propelled herself out of the seat and hurried back inside. Her baby would be loved and would be cared for. It would lack for nothing. Nothing but a mother’s love, the insidious voice in the back of her mind taunted.
She didn’t want to deal with this, not now, not ever, she thought irrationally even while knowing that at some stage she was going to have to. Nature had its own way of making a person sit up and take notice. So Connor wanted a nursery for his baby. Well, she’d give it to him. It would be the best nursery on the planet, just as she’d been the best PA he’d ever had. She’d show him it didn’t matter to her. She’d show him she could do this and then walk away. No matter what.
Connor leaned back in his chair and looked through the closed French doors to the patio where Holly still stood, her face partially obscured by the long late-afternoon shadows. He tilted his chair and rested his head against the high leather back.
Why had he baited her like that? What had he expected? That she would suddenly develop overwhelming maternal instincts and demand that she be the one caring for the baby and not some nameless faceless stranger? And what did it matter to him, anyway? It wasn’t as if he expected her to stay. To be a mother. To be a real family. Life was complicated enough without that.
Truth be told he’d been looking forward to coming home tonight, to seeing Holly. Yet, when he’d seen her all he could think about was her absolute rejection of the child she carried. This morning, before work, he’d almost toyed with the possibility they could have a normal relationship. Be a couple.
But it was hopeless—the mere thought ridiculous—that was as clear as the nose on his face. Her expression when he’d suggested she create the baby’s nursery had been filled with horror. There was no way she’d take on the task. Regret tinged with an emotion even more intangible, knotted in his gut.
He sat upright and flicked open his briefcase. Caring for Holly, beyond seeing to her good health and welfare was not an option. Going down any other road, unthinkable. He’d cared about his mother and she had gone. He’d cared about his wife, and she’d betrayed his deepest trust, totally and irrevocably.
They said you couldn’t control who you loved or who loved you. Well, maybe the latter was true, but he had news for the former. He could and would control whom he loved, and right now that began and ended with his baby.
When Connor arrived home the next evening Holly wasn’t waiting on the patio with an ice-cool drink. Even Thompson, instead of being in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to the evening meal, was nowhere to be found. Connor flung his briefcase behind his desk in his office and sank down into his chair when a loud hollow thud sounded from the second floor—a thud that sounded sickeningly like someone falling. He hurtled from his seat and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“Holly!” he shouted as he rounded the landing at the top, his heart hammering in his chest. He tried to tell himself it was just the baby he was worried about, but he had to be honest with himself. It wasn’t. Not anymore.
“Holly!” he shouted again, and sagged in relief when he heard her muffled voice.
He raced towards the turret bedroom, the one he’d suggested as a nursery the night before. The door was closed and another thump echoed under the door. As he reached his hand to the doorknob he heard something he hadn’t heard before. Surely that wasn’t Thompson laughing? The door opened abruptly beneath his hand and swung inwards.
The carpet had been rolled back from the polished floor and the heavy carved wooden furniture in the room was all shoved in the centre and draped in dust covers. Thompson, wearing a baggy set of coveralls, was on his hands and knees, sanding the foot-high moulded skirting boards.
Holly, to his horror, stood on a makeshift scaffold, a scraper in her hand, and balanced precariously on a plank that to his eyes looked far too narrow. A strip of wallpaper hung drunkenly from the wall. She turned, twisting to see him, simultaneously losing her balance and sending the narrow plank skittering to the floor. Connor leapt forward to catch her in his arms and held her against him before lowering her feet to the floor.
His heart beat double time. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. A fierce wave of anger swiftly replaced the fear that had torn through him when he’d seen Holly lose balance.
She pushed away from him and free of his hold. Her eyes sparkled and colour flushed her cheeks. A strand of long dark hair had worked free of the crooked ponytail she wore. A smudge of paint dust streaked across her forehead. Connor lifted a hand and wiped it away and watched as her expression froze and changed from one of relief to defensiveness.
“What do you mean, what are we doing? You have eyes in your head don’t you?” She turned and defiantly replaced the plank and stepped back up onto it. “We’re preparing a nursery.”
“Not now you’re not.” Connor stepped forward and lifted her back down off the makeshift trestle. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous. If you hadn’t burst through the door and startled me like t
hat I would never have fallen. Besides, Edgar is here with me.”
“Edgar?” Did she mean Thompson?
“Yes, sir. I offered to do the wallpaper, but in light of my frozen shoulder, Miss Christmas insisted she do it.” Thompson levered up from his knees and stood as he spoke, brushing clouds of dust off him as he did so.
Thompson had a frozen shoulder? He’d never so much as complained once. What the hell was going on?
“Well, whatever the two of you have decided to embark on together it stops right now. I’ll get contractors in.” He spun Holly around to face him. “And the most risky thing you will do from now on is choose paint and fabric swatches.”
“Excuse me, I think I’d best go and finish dinner while you discuss this.” Thompson edged past the bristling pair and disappeared down the hall.
“There is nothing further to discuss,” Connor said through clenched teeth. He wheeled around and stalked from the room, fury building up inside him until he felt as if he’d erupt into a seething, spitting cauldron of molten metal.
The solid thump of the wooden-handled scraper hit him square between the shoulder blades and stopped him in his tracks.
“How dare you dictate to me like that?” Holly’s voice followed with equal force.
He turned slowly, his hands fisted on his hips. “I dare because you endangered my baby. Remember? The one I’m paying you to have.”
“You can’t wrap me in cotton wool! Make up your mind for goodness sake. First you tell me to decorate a nursery, now you tell me I can’t. Well I have news for you, Connor Knight, and it’s all bad. I’ll decorate that room if it kills me. You’ve taken my job from me. You’ve taken my home from me. You will not take my will away from me, too.”
Her eyes flashed, burning blue like heated cobalt. Connor closed the distance between them, aware of the emotion that poured from her, of the way her breasts heaved under an old T-shirt he thought he’d discarded years ago. The worn white cotton draped over her, shaping to her gently rounded shoulders—the sleeves coming halfway down her arms. She looked soft and feminine and extremely desirable. Rigidly he slammed the brakes on his thoughts before they further roused his disruptive libido.
“I don’t want to take your will away from you. I just want to keep the baby safe.”
“That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? Just some damn incubator for your blasted baby! What about me? Me?”
She raised her hands and pressed against his chest, vehemently emphasizing each word, and pushing him back a step. Connor caught her wrists before she wound up for another push.
“Stop! Holly, stop!”
“No! I don’t want to stop. I can’t live like this with you dictating everything I do. I can’t wait to get away from here—away from you!”
Her eyes washed with tears. They were his undoing. Maybe he’d been too dictatorial. But she didn’t understand what was at stake, or why this child was so important to him. But she was wrong, he realised with damning clarity. She was more than just an incubator for his baby. Somewhere along the line she’d inveigled her way into a crack in his heart. A crack that was opening to let her into a piece of him he fought to hold apart.
If he wanted to be totally honest with himself right now, his first thought had been about the potential danger to her. He hadn’t even been thinking about the baby when he’d seen Holly twist and begin to fall. Even now, just thinking about it—the startled look in her eyes, the position of her body—made him feel sick to his stomach.
As he held Holly’s hands and looked down into her face, tears pooled in her lower lids and one by one spilled over her lower lashes to track twin trails down her smooth cheeks.
He didn’t want to admit that he cared for her, nor the vulnerability it would leave him open to. Loving his unborn baby was simple. There could be no lies between them, no trust broken. Loving Holly was not an option.
Warily he let go her hands and took a step backwards. Anything that created some barrier between them had to be good, even if it was only a short, air-filled distance.
“Okay, I admit it. I overreacted. But I mean it about the contractors. I will get them in to do the basics.” He saw her stiffen, and rushed on before she could interrupt. “To do the basics only. The rest you can do yourself.”
“Define the rest.”
“Anything that you can safely reach without requiring assistance like ladders or that wretched scaffolding you put up. Is that completely clear?”
“Yes.”
He turned to walk away, pulling his jacket off and tossing it onto the bed. The evening sun glinted on the metal edge of the wallpaper scraper where it had landed on the floor. He bent to pick it up and turned to face Holly. “I believe this is yours?”
A wash of pink coloured her neck and upwards to her cheeks. She put out her hand to accept the scraper. “I’m sorry. I overreacted, too.”
Connor held onto one end of the scraper even as she held the other. “Truce?”
“Yes,” she whispered again, this time with her eyes fixed on the carpet between their feet, as if she was ashamed to meet his eyes. She’d caught her lower lip between her teeth, biting down hard enough that all colour fled their usual rosy fullness.
Connor tugged gently on the scraper, pulling her slightly off balance and into his arms. Her surprise at being pulled off centre made her let go her lip, and he watched as colour returned to the soft membrane.
He had to taste her.
He lowered his head and drew her more firmly into his hold. She tasted of a heady combination of salt and dust. But more than that, she tasted of her incredibly individual and enticing sweetness and spice that left him constantly craving for more.
Reluctantly he let her go. Any more of this and it would get to be a habit. He had to remember why she was here and how temporary it was. Remember who she was and the fact she was prepared to walk away from their child without so much as a backward glance. A man didn’t love a woman like that.
Love?
A wave of denial swamped him. No way. There was no way he’d let himself love Holly. His son or daughter, no matter how perfect or imperfect, would see the light of day. Would feel the warmth of its father’s arms, would know—every single day of its life—the love that was for his child and his alone. He had no room in his heart to love another.
He turned away abruptly, wrenched off his tie and yanked at the buttons on his shirt on his way through to the en suite. It had been a day of pure chaos in the office. Janet was good at her job, but she wasn’t Holly. The calm and controlled order he’d taken for granted each day had gone to hell in a hand basket, and it didn’t look as if it would improve anytime soon. He needed a stiff drink and dinner, and then enough work to ensure he’d fall asleep exhausted, immune to the temptation of wanting to slide inside her body and slake the hunger she set alight in him.
As he’d driven himself to the top of his field, he’d learned to recognise weakness in all its forms and to identify his opponent’s Achilles’ Heel. He’d honed the ability into a sixth sense and become a master at capitalizing on it, using it to his advantage, then driving home an unbreakable deal.
Now, suddenly, he identified weakness in himself. And he hated admitting he’d allowed himself to become vulnerable to the one woman he couldn’t love.
Twelve
Holly stepped back from the curtain she’d just straightened—her heart swelling with pride. She’d painstakingly learned to sew and she’d made them herself, just like she’d made the comforter for the crib and the layette for the bassinette right down to the miniature sheets. She reached forward and gave the drapes a tiny flick, smoothing an imaginary hitch in the fall of the fabric.
Seven months ago she’d never have imagined she could turn into such a homebody let alone furnish an entire nursery. Once Connor’s contractors had finished wallpapering and painting the room, she’d had carte blanche to use whichever interior designer she wanted to create the baby’s room. Yet, for some reason, it had become more
important than she’d ever imagined to leave an indelible print behind her. To leave a piece of her heart.
She reached for the framed picture of the baby’s first sonogram that Connor had placed on the tallboy, trailing her finger across the tiny form captured in black and white. She could still see the wonder that had spread across his face when he’d caught his first glimpse of his child, still see the unsettling and uncharacteristic shine of tears in his eyes. Up until then, she’d hardly had the nerve to look at the radiographer’s screen, yet the love that shone from him as he viewed his baby had forced her to turn away from him and look for herself. It was easier to look at the object of his love than to admit that love could never be shared with her.
Holly took a final look around. While she’d been oddly loath to finish the room, taking her time on small details no one but herself would notice, Connor’s reluctant yet urgent departure for the States a week ago had been the catalyst that drove her to complete it.
This would be the last time she would come in here. Her end of the deal was all but finished. As if to acknowledge her hard work a tiny foot pressed against her rib cage. Absently she massaged her swollen belly.
With the baby’s due date only three weeks away, the days now stretched emptily before her. Holly turned and walked out. A ragged sigh dragged past the sudden tightness in her chest as she closed the door behind her. The day she’d have to leave the island, leave Connor, permanently drew closer with every cross on the calendar.
He’d miss her checkup tomorrow she realised with a pang. He’d made all her doctor’s visits thus far, hovering like a worried shadow at every stage of the pregnancy. The baby was everything to him. She’d given up hoping he’d forget for just one moment that she was carrying his baby and see her as a woman with needs and desires again. Sleeping with him every night was fraught with hopes of what might have been, but still he made no attempt to touch her, unless it was to feel the baby’s vigorous reminders of its existence. Now, more than ever before, Holly felt incredibly and desolately alone.
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