Just after eleven, the bell rang again and once again her pulse quickened. “Registered envelope,” the mail man said, holding out a clipboard with a form attached. “Sign here, please.”
But he wasn’t delivering a love letter from Liam, only her new gold credit card. She’d barely closed the door before she succumbed to another bout of weeping.
At noon, Iva reappeared. “I won’t stay,” she said, bustling into the bedroom with a covered tray. “Eat the soup while it’s hot, dear, and don’t worry about returning the dishes. I’ll collect them later.”
The afternoon wore on, with rain spitting against the windows and the wind howling down the chimney. “He’s never coming back,” Jane sniffled to a sympathetic Bounder, who took immediate advantage of her sorry state to jump into bed with her and make himself comfortable.
When the bell rang again, just after four, she didn’t even bother to check her appearance. Who cared if her hair was standing on end, the end of her nose was red enough to stop traffic, and she looked like the wrath of God?
“Hey,” Liam said, when she cracked open the door. “You weren’t at the office today. How come?”
She could have done what any sane woman would have done in the same situation, which was tell him to come back in an hour when she’d made herself presentable. She could have told him that, in light of his unforgiving attitude the day before, it was none of his business why she’d taken the day off. She could have informed him that she’d changed her mind and didn’t want anything to do with a man who’d put her through more misery in one summer than she’d known in ten with her late husband.
Instead, she hung on to the door frame as if it were a lifeline and burst into tears.
“Oh, jeez!” he said, trying to inch the door open without squashing her bare toes. “I was afraid of this!”
“What?” she snuffled, the word emerging as little more than a watery snort.
“Something’s gone wrong with the pregnancy and it’s all my fault. I knew it the minute they told me at the bank that you hadn’t shown up for work today. Sweetheart, someone should take me out and shoot me, but—!”
“The baby’s fine,” she wailed.
“It is?” His relief was almost palpable. “You’re sure? I mean, this isn’t another attempt to hoodwink me, is it? You wouldn’t lie about something this important?”
“Of course I wouldn’t!”
She tried to sound incensed, but when the best she could manage was a waterlogged hiccup, he continued to regard her suspiciously. “Then why are you crying?”
“You have to ask?” This time, her indignation carried a more authentic ring.
“Because of me? Because I’m a thickheaded clod with about as much sensitivity as a brick?”
“All that and more,” she informed him soggily, catching sight of herself in the wall mirror. “It’s all your fault I look such a mess.”
“Sure it is,” he said, scooping her up in his arms and planting a kiss on her mouth that would have melted the polar ice cap. “I’m a first-class jackass and I don’t know why you give me the time of day.”
“I don’t know, either,” she said, but she wound her arms tightly around his neck to make sure he didn’t take umbrage and disappear again.
He carried her to the couch in the living room, cradled her in his lap and tilted her face so that he could look deep into her eyes. “Because it’s a rotten job but someone’s got to do it?”
How easily he brought out the sun in her life. A touch, a glance, his droll sense of humor—they were as much a part of the fabric of her love for him as the passion he aroused in her. “Maybe,” she said, the ghost of a smile emerging through the tears.
He dropped his forehead against hers and she felt a shuddering sigh sweep through him. “Sweetheart,” he said soberly, “I’m sorry I made you cry. I swore I’d never do that again. But the plain truth is, my feelings for you scare me to death and that’s the only excuse I can offer for running out on you last night. I drove for hours trying to escape my demons, but no matter how far or fast I went, I couldn’t outrun the one thing I know to be true. My life is nothing without you in it.”
“But I don’t fit the kind of life you lead. You told me that often enough last summer. You like challenge and adventure.”
“And I get both in spades with you. Daring to admit that I love you is the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, and I can’t face it alone.”
“But you said you didn’t want children. You said—”
“I said a lot of things except the one thing that matters the most. I love you, Jane. I’m through with chasing danger all over the globe. There are plenty of other ways of earning a living and I’m not exactly short of cash. I can afford to keep you in style. It’s the things money can’t buy that I’m looking for now. I want to live to a ripe old age with you. I want what any man of good sense wants: a woman like you to come home to. Don’t ask me when I realized it because I’m damned if I can put a date on it. And don’t ask me why I fought it, because I don’t know that, either. Just try to forgive me and help me become a better man for you and our child.”
“It hasn’t been all your fault,” she said, almost drowning with love for him. “If I’d told you about the baby—”
“You would have, if I’d faced up to my feelings sooner, instead of denying them, and you.”
He put her from him then, setting her as carefully on the cushions as if she were made of the most fragile china, and snapped open a small green velvet box he withdrew from his pocket. “I want to do this right,” he said, squaring his shoulders and tugging his tie into place. “You once told me that if ever I needed anything from you, all I had to do was ask. Well, I’m asking you now. Will you marry me, Janie?”
She could have done what any sane woman would have done in the same situation, which was ask him to save his proposal until she’d washed her face, sprayed on a little perfume, and slipped into something suitably romantic. She could have made him suffer at least a little bit, and said she needed time to think before taking such a momentous step.
But the irrefutable truth was, she loved him in all his cantankerous, proud, impossible glory. So she did what she seemed to do best these days. She burst into tears.
“Should I take that to mean ‘Yes’?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you crying again?” he asked, clearly mystified.
“Because I’m pregnant. It’s hormones.”
“Oh, jeez!” He rolled his eyes in mock despair. “What will it take to cheer you up?”
“They do say actions speak louder than words,” she howled, soaking the front of his shirt with happy tears and winding herself around him the best way she knew how, given the fact that their baby insisted on coming between them.
“I never was very good with words, anyway,” he said, taking her left hand and sliding a ring blazing with diamonds onto her finger. “There, now it’s official. Is there anything else I can do?”
“You could kiss me,” she said. “I believe that’s usually how a couple seals their engagement.”
“Hell, I can do better than that, Janie,” he said, sweeping her up into his arms again. “Direct me to the bedroom and I’ll prove it.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0285-6
PASSION’S BABY
First North American Publication 2001.
Copyright © 2000 by Kathy Garner.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not
even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit us at www.eHarlequin.com
Passion's Baby Page 16
