by Abby Green
He grimaced. “As long as it’s healthy, I’ll take whatever we get and be delighted with it.”
“I’ll agree with that,” she said.
“Although it might be nice to have some warning if it’s a daughter. What I know about little girls would leave plenty of room on the head of a pin.”
She didn’t answer him, but he saw her cheek dimple in a smile before she turned her head to face out over the water again.
An hour later, he tied up the canoe, and they headed back into Phoenix.
“I have to stop at the grocery store,” he told her as they neared the suburb where his home was located.
“May I come along?” She seemed instantly intrigued.
Her enthusiasm reminded him of his first years in the States when he’d done so many things for the first time. Things that most people took for granted, a part of everyday life that had to be done. They had no idea how exhilarating true freedom was. He knew she must be experiencing the same feelings. She had known restrictions that most people never even dreamed of. Restrictions he understood better than she might imagine.
A cage with velvet bars was still a cage.
“Of course you can come along,” he said. “Have you ever been in one before?”
She shook her head. “No. There was no reason to at home. What kinds of things do we need to buy?”
We. Such a simple little word. How could it change so many things? He wondered if she even realized she’d used it as he answered.
“Breakfast foods. Lunch meats. The ingredients for the chicken dish you wrote down. Fruits and vegetables. Cleaning supplies—”
“Stop!” She was smiling. “I get the picture.”
She wanted to push the cart at first, simply for the novelty of it all. Then she wanted him to explain the price comparisons and the meaning of the dietary listings on the back. What would normally have taken him less than thirty minutes became a two-hour tour of the grocery market.
When they finally had finished and he’d loaded the last of the groceries into the back of the truck, he swung into the driver’s seat and snagged his seat belt. Automatically he glanced over at her. Then he frowned.
“You shouldn’t be wearing your seat belt like that.”
“Like what?” She glanced down at herself, then back at him, clearly mystified.
He leaned across the seat, snagging his fingers in the lap belt she’d pulled over her belly and tugging it down beneath the bulge of his child to rest across her hips. “I’ve seen warnings about this. Pregnant women should be careful not to position the belt too high. If there was an accident, the belt could harm the baby.”
“Oh.” Her voice was slightly breathless.
With sudden, shocking clarity Rafe became aware of how close they were. His breath stirred the copper curls about her ears, and the arm he’d draped over the back of the seat was very nearly an embrace around her shoulders. His fingers, where he’d hooked them beneath the seat belt, rested against soft feminine flesh. He’d pulled the belt down as he’d spoken so that now his hand was practically nested in the warm pocket where her thighs met her body. His fingers were held firmly against her by the constriction of the seat belt.
She froze.
So did he, largely because his entire being was caught up in the battle raging inside him: the gentlemanly part of him that knew he should move away versus the purely male impulse to extend his fingers down and brush over the sensitive flesh he knew lay just beyond his loosely curled hand. It was a toss-up as to which one would win.
And then she took the choice from him.
Slowly, her hand came up and snared his wrist, her small fingers braceleting his hard male sinew, not even meeting around the thickness of his arm. It was clearly a signal to halt. She didn’t tug his hand away, though, only turned her head and tilted up her chin to look at him with wide, questioning eyes.
The desire to lower his head and take her lips was nearly too much for him to resist. But he’d promised her. No kissing.
Damn that promise!
Holding her gaze, he slowly, slowly slid his hand from beneath the seat belt fabric, caressing her flesh with the back of his hand as he withdrew, moving higher to let his knuckles lightly skim over a nipple, which elicited a swiftly indrawn breath from her. Not a moan, but not far from it, either.
Without a word, he slid his arm from behind her and turned his attention to starting the truck and pulling out of the lot. She didn’t speak the whole way home and neither did he, though he was hard-put to contain the elation dancing around inside him.
She’d said no more kissing, but she hadn’t said a word about touching—and she hadn’t objected just now to what had been a whole lot more intimate than some kisses he’d experienced.
What in the world had she been thinking? Or not thinking?
Washing up before joining Rafe to work on the recipe she’d copied from the television, Elizabeth held a cool facecloth to cheeks that burned at the very memory of his hard, hot fingers pressed firmly against her body. If she’d been naked, those fingers would have been nestled in the curling hair that protected her most private flesh.
If you’d been naked he would have been doing a whole lot more with those fingers.
She groaned and flopped the sopping cloth over her entire face. She was an imbecile. An imbecile ruled by her hormones. And she didn’t mean pregnancy hormones, either. She couldn’t even be in the same room with the man without her heart beating faster and her mind conjuring up vivid pictures of him embracing her, his body hard and demanding against her soft, yielding one.
Staying here in his home was the dumbest thing she’d done since…well, since she’d slept with a perfect stranger and gotten herself pregnant.
But in her heart she didn’t consider Rafe a stranger. Not then and not now. They might not know each other well, but her body and her heart knew all they needed to know to assure her that he was the only man she’d ever want.
She snatched the cloth off her face and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no! She was not in love with Rafe Thorton.
He didn’t want her, at least not in any way other than the purely physical, and she’d promised herself she wasn’t going to weave any more foolish romantic fantasies around him.
But oh, it was hard to make her heart listen to her common sense. All her life she’d dreamed of a man who would breach the fortress of security around her and carry her off to a world where she could be just another ordinary person. These easy-flowing hours the past few days had given her more contentment than she’d known in her entire life.
She loved living in a single-story home with only a few bedrooms as opposed to an entire wing of bedroom suites with drafty hallways half a kilometer long. She loved the casual atmosphere in which one simply drove one’s car out of the garage and went to the market instead of calling a chauffeur. She loved everything about the life Rafe had created for himself, and that was part of the problem.
She couldn’t let his life-style confuse her. She couldn’t fall for him simply because he embodied the kind of life she’d always longed for in her most secret heart.
But this experience had been good for her in some ways. She was determined that her child wasn’t going to be raised in a hothouse environment. She wasn’t blind to the fact that she might always need discreet security, but she was determined to make as normal a life for her baby as she could.
And that didn’t include being escorted everywhere she went every minute of the day. So far, Rafe had treated her exactly in the hothouse-flower way that her own parents always had. He might be content with his lifestyle, but he clearly didn’t think it was right for her.
Before she’d known who he was, she’d woven the most ridiculous romantic fantasies about her mysterious lover. Now, she could only thank heaven that she’d gotten wise.
Of course she didn’t love him.
She repeated that to herself the whole way out to the kitchen w
here he was waiting for her.
“Ready for another lesson in preparing American cuisine?” Rafe stood at the counter, where he’d assembled what looked like half his kitchen’s worth of cooking equipment.
“Ready for another lesson in preparing any kind of cuisine,” she said lightly, walking across the room to join him. It was hard to meet his eyes after the thoughts that had just been running around in her brain, so she concentrated on the items before her.
Without thinking about what she was doing, she opened the cabinet doors beneath his sink and withdrew a dishpan, drainer, dish soap and a cleaning cloth. Automatically she began to fill the dishpan with hot water.
“What are you doing?”
She glanced at him. “Getting out the cleaning things so we can get rid of the mess as we make it.”
“Since when does a princess think about cleaning up? Don’t you have servants for the menial tasks?”
His tone had been merely curious, but it still made her bristle. “You were raised much as I was. You already know the answer to that.”
“But I wasn’t,” he said. “Remember? I lived at school most of my childhood. And, believe me, one learned to clean up at those venerable institutions.”
“Kitchen duty for breaking the rules?” She smiled, determined to keep a civil distance between them. After all, he was her host.
“Occasionally.” He grimaced. “Bathroom duty was worse.”
“Infinitely.” Genuine amusement lit her eyes. “Although there’s a tremendous satisfaction to be gained from seeing porcelain and steel gleam through your efforts.”
“And how would you know that?” He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “I can’t imagine you scrubbing toilets in the family castles.”
She chuckled. “I can’t quite see that myself. But for the past three years, I’ve volunteered at a children’s hospital.”
“And they asked you to clean their bathrooms?” He was grinning.
“I did anything that was necessary,” she said, her face growing serious. “It would be a terribly bad example for others to see me pick and choose tasks as if I were too important for some.”
He didn’t want to let her see how impressed he was by her attitude. By all rights, she should be a spoiled, demanding brat, but she wasn’t. In fact, she was one of the most conscientious, sensible women he’d met in a long time, he thought, recalling her concern when she thought her parents might be worrying about her.
But all he said was, “Good point. Now, are you ready to make your first jen-yoo-wine American entrée?”
She laughed. “Ready.”
It wasn’t until later that the fragile truce ended.
They’d put together the casserole she’d chosen, which thankfully had been pretty straightforward. While he’d become a credible cook since he’d been forced to feed himself, Rafe was under no illusions about the limitations of his culinary skills.
As she’d insisted, they cleaned up the dishes as they went so there wouldn’t be a huge mess at the end. He liked the idea since he usually had a mini-disaster area in his kitchen after any cooking effort.
As she passed him the final mixing bowl to dry and put away, she folded the dishtowel over its bar. They worked well together, he realized. That would be helpful after they were married, one area in which they could be relatively compatible.
After they were married. A few weeks ago—hell, a few days ago—he’d have thought someone who mentioned marriage and Rafe Thorton in the same sentence was insane.
But everything was different now. When had he realized that? So, okay, maybe she wasn’t what he’d envisioned when he’d entertained hazy, half-formed thoughts of a wife and family. But she was carrying his child and that made all the difference. That and the way she goes up in flames every time you touch her.
It would be best to get things settled between them quickly, he decided. He clattered the bowl into the cabinet and closed the door, then turned and walked to her. She merely looked at him with puzzled, wary eyes when he took her hands.
“Elizabeth. Marry me.” It might not have been the most romantic proposal in the world, but it wasn’t as if they were in love or anything. This was strictly a necessity in his eyes, to give his child a name.
“No, thank you.” She spoke as calmly as if she were declining a second helping at a meal. She slipped her hands free of his and linked them together at her waist.
There was a long, taut silence while his brain processed the fact that she’d refused his offer. She’d refused him! Summoning a calm tone that he was proud matched her cool little voice, he said, “No, thank you? Any possibility you’d expand on that?”
She hesitated. “You do me a great honor with your offer,” she said formally, politely, not meeting his eyes. “But I have no wish to marry solely to provide a family unit for this child. You and I lead very different lives.”
“That we do,” he said grimly, annoyed at the way she’d reduced his proposal to a mere matter of convenience, conveniently ignoring the fact that he’d done exactly the same thing a few minutes ago. “And there’s no way I’m ever going back overseas, not for you, not for anyone.”
“I didn’t ask you to!” Her tone wasn’t so calm anymore. Pivoting, she flounced to the other side of the counter and stood staring out the window with her back to him.
The unspoken dismissal broke the thin threads by which he’d been holding together his temper. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, if I’d fall into line like a good little subject and—”
She whirled. “If you were a good little subject, you’d be even more objectionable than you are now!”
“Well, you aren’t exactly my first choice, either.” Her belligerent words had stung. “My plan was to marry a home-grown American girl who doesn’t have a drop of blue blood or aspirations to a title when I was good and ready. A princess doesn’t exactly fill the bill.”
“Good!” Her face was flushed, and unless he was mistaken, her eyes held the sheen of tears. “Then you have no problem accepting that you did the honorable thing and proposed and I chose to decline.”
“Fine!” He was as mad as she was now. Then he thought about what he’d just said. “Hold it. Not fine. My child isn’t going to be born a bastard.”
Her brows snapped together. “That’s a nasty word and I don’t appreciate you applying it to our child.”
“Why not? Other people will.”
One of the tears that had been swimming around in her eyes broke the dam and spilled down her cheek. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“Of course they would. You know how people love good gossip. Just imagine the fodder an illicit liaison between royals of Wynborough and Thortonburg would provide them—” The look on her face stopped him mid-sentence.
A moment of silence as pregnant as the woman before him hung in the air between them.
“You weren’t going to tell them, were you?” A part of him wondered why it bothered him so much. After all, it would get him out of an inconvenient marriage and ensure that he didn’t get sucked back into his father’s title-seeking sphere again. But a bigger part of him rejected the idea that his child wouldn’t bear his name.
“You weren’t even going to tell them,” he accused again. “You planned to go home to Wynborough with this baby in your belly and never tell your parents who the father was, didn’t you?”
“Why not? It makes sense.” Her face was still flushed with anger. “Neither of us wants to marry the other. You weren’t planning on becoming a father now. There’s no reason to involve yourself in my life.”
“No reason?” He was so mad, he had to clench his fists to keep from reaching for her. “You’re going to bear my child in a matter of months. My child. Not that of some anonymous man who you can dismiss for his rather negligible role in the conception.” He stalked around the counter until he was only inches from her, leaning forward to speak right into her startled, defiant face. “This baby is going to be legitimate if I have to tie you up and f
ly to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding.”
Her eyes rounded. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me,” he invited. “And while I’m at it, I’ll get on the telephone and call your parents. I’m sure your father would be pleased to know I’d done the right thing by you.”
Her face drained of color. “You can’t tell my parents,” she said. She half turned away from him. “This baby can’t be—” She stopped abruptly and put a hand out toward the counter, and he saw her sway. “I feel…” He didn’t wait for any more. He’d never seen anyone faint, and he wasn’t going to start now. Taking a half step that brought him to her side, he drew her into his arms.
She gave a startled squeak that trailed off into a moan, but she didn’t fight him, merely laid her head against his chest. After a moment, he led her into the living room and laid her on the couch, then placed a pillow under her feet.
She moaned again, but this time there was an element of relief in the sound. The band of tension squeezing his throat relaxed marginally and he nudged her over gently to make space to perch beside her.
“Can I get you anything?” His voice was deep with concern, and he didn’t care if she noticed.
“No, I’ll be all right.” She groped for his hand. “Just— don’t go.”
Her small fingers found his and clung, and he was astonished by the force of the emotion that roared through him. His throat grew tight again and he had to clear it roughly before he squeezed her fingers and said, “I’m right here.”
Long moments passed. He watched her closely. Her eyes were closed, dark silky lashes lying soft against her cheeks, and gradually a hint of pink crept back to replace her pallor. Her clutch on his hand lessened. Even so, he made no move to release her.
Finally, her eyelashes fluttered and slowly her eyelids rose to reveal deep, mysterious emerald pools that swam with emotions he couldn’t name. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“Don’t be. I’m the one who should be sorry.” Disgusted with himself, he looked away from her. “I should be treating you more carefully—”
