by Heidi Rice
Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds...
She lay rigid on the bed, her fingers curling into a death grip on the sheet waiting for the wave to pass. Once it finally dimmed and released her from its grip, she gave an exhausted sigh before lifting the watch on the nightstand.
Nearly a minute long and a lot less than ten minutes apart. She caressed the huge mound of her belly and turned to stare at Nate. His handsome face looked peaceful and content in the moonlight as he lay on his stomach snoring gently beside her.
She glanced down at her bump. ‘Okay, Junior,’ she whispered into the darkness. ‘I think it’s time we woke Daddy.’ She shifted over trying and failing to relieve the now constant discomfort in her lower back. ‘But be prepared for fireworks.’
Reaching out, she pressed a hand to Nate’s broad shoulder and gave him a firm shove. ‘Nate, wake up. It’s party time.’
His eyelids drifted up, his sleepy gaze unfocused. ‘Huh? What?’
‘I’m in labour. We should probably go to the hospital.’
The quietly spoken words had his eyes snapping open the rest of the way, and his now laser-sharp gaze shooting down to her belly. ‘But you’re not due for another week,’ he said, jerking upright in the bed as if he’d just been prodded with a hot poker. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Pretty sure.’ She grinned at the raw note of confusion and terror. ‘I’ve been having regular contractions for four hours and they’re less than ten minutes apart now and getting stronger.’
‘Four hours!’ he shouted. ‘What the...?’ Leaping out of bed, he began swearing under his breath as he raced around the bedroom gathering up his clothes and struggling into them at breakneck speed. ‘Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?’ he cried, sending her a dark frown when she let out an exhausted chuckle.
‘Because I knew you’d freak out, and there wasn’t anything you could do.’ She let her lips curve, despite the cramping pain already radiating up her back and signalling another contraction. ‘Duh?’ she added.
‘It’s not funny.’ He stood in the middle of the room, raking his hair back as he glanced around, frantically searching for something. ‘You are in big trouble, lady...’ The threat trailed off as he swore again. ‘Where’s your case? I thought we had it right here.’
‘It’s under the bed,’ she said, but the information was followed by a loud moan as the pain seized her abdomen, building to a crescendo.
She watched Nate’s expression go from aggravated to concerned as he rushed back across the room. Gripping her hands, he kissed the knuckles while she panted, desperately trying to relieve the agony that just kept building.
‘Keep breathing. You’re doing great,’ he said.
She let out a strangled cry, the agony refusing to subside this time. ‘I can’t...’ She groaned through the ragged pants. ‘It hurts too much.’
‘Yell if you want,’ he said, his presence the only solid thing in the maelstrom of pain. ‘It’s nearly over.’ The encouraging words, and the intense emotion in his gaze, gave her the courage she needed. She clung onto his hands, her nails cutting into his palms as she cried out and rode the wave to the finish.
The cramping vice released her at last, and she flopped back against the pillows. ‘Ow, that really hurt!’ she said weakly, a little shell-shocked by how hard the contraction had hit that time.
Resting his palm on the side of her face, he brushed the damp tendrils of hair back. ‘You were magnificent,’ he said, then pressed his lips to hers in a tender kiss.
He pulled back, and she gulped down the swell of emotion at the reverence in his gaze.
‘I may have to remind you of that next time we have an argument,’ she murmured.
He chuckled, getting off the bed. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said, the feigned innocence making her choke out a laugh. ‘We never argue, honey.’
As if.
She grinned as he located the suitcase she had packed over a week ago under the bed and placed it firmly on the coverlet.
‘Yeah, right,’ she scoffed.
They didn’t just argue, they argued a lot. She suspected more than most couples. But then that was probably because they enjoyed it. They were both strong-willed people who had opinions that they weren’t scared to voice—about everything from baby names to the ultimate pizza topping. Not to mention the important stuff. After a few solid months of co-habitation, Nate had only stopped hassling her about investing in her business so he could start hassling her about when she was finally going to make good on her promise to marry him. There had been a fair few fireworks on that topic only two days ago, when he’d laid down the law and insisted on them setting a date in June—and after much deliberation, and even some yelling, she’d finally managed to push the date back to August, on the grounds that it would give her at least some hope of losing the two tons in weight she’d put on in the last month.
But she wouldn’t have had it any other way. She appreciated their rocky moments as much as their smooth ones, because their passion for fireworks had helped to strengthen their relationship. They’d learned to respect each other’s differences, to share each other’s triumphs and to lean on each other when they needed support. They weren’t perfect, but they were willing to confront any issue to make this relationship work. They’d discovered how to compromise and negotiate and on those rare occasions when shouting was involved there was always the promise of great make-up sex when the shouting stopped.
Tess let the contentment wash through her as Nate crossed to the door, his movements firm and decisive with no trace of the earlier panic. She loved him so much—this stubborn, indomitable, pragmatic and ridiculously pushy guy. Because he’d broken through all the barriers she’d put around her heart and shown her that she deserved to be loved and cherished—even when his need to care for her occasionally drove her nuts.
‘I’ll get the Jeep and we’ll head to the hospital,’ he said from the doorway. ‘Magnificence is great, but let’s get you some pain relief to go with it.’
* * *
He came back less than two minutes later, making Tess realise that the panic hadn’t gone completely, he was just being extra careful not to show it. After bundling her into her coat and boots, supporting her as she yelled her way through another monstrous contraction and then carrying her to the Jeep, he started the ignition.
Tess let out a wistful sigh as she watched the redolent glow of the rising sun light up the sky. The spring dawn rolled towards them over the cliffs as the Jeep accelerated down the driveway.
She settled her hands over her belly, contemplating the momentousness of what was about to happen. She was excited about the birth, and eager to meet their baby for the first time, even if she was a little terrified about having her pain threshold pushed to the max in the hours ahead. But she had to admit she was also a tiny bit sad that this would be the end of her and Nate as a couple after only seven short months. If she’d been given a choice, she would have liked more time with just the two of them. She could only hope that they had had enough time together. That their friendship as well as their love was strong enough to see them through all the new challenges they would face when the two of them became three.
‘I guess this is the start of a whole new journey for us,’ she murmured. ‘I hope we don’t mess it up.’
Braking at the gates that marked the entrance to the estate, Nate rested his hand over hers and rubbed. ‘Nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘We won’t mess it up. Because it’s not a new journey, it’s just a new twist in the road. And I’ve found my ideal travelling companion.’
She laughed, the swell of love and hope and commitment going some way to quelling her fears, and whispered, ‘Ditto.’
* * *
Brandon Zane Tremaine Graystone was born sixteen excruciating hours later, weighing in at a healthy eight pounds, three ounces. Tess cradled him in tired arms, and smiled, flinching only slightly when he latched onto her nipple and sucked hungrily.
‘That’s a relief,’ she whispered, glancing up at her
husband-to-be as he leaned over her to stroke the baby’s dark curls. ‘He’s definitely not a billy goat.’
Nate placed a soft kiss on her temple, the fatigue etched on his face overridden by fierce pride and no small amount of smugness. ‘See, what did I tell you? That’s already one thing we didn’t mess up.’
Tess laughed, tears of joy spilling over her lids and the last of her fears slipping away as they gazed in mutual appreciation at their totally beautiful, completely precious, utterly perfect, non-billy-goat son, together.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of The Secrets She Carried by Lynn Graham.
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CHAPTER ONE
CRISTOPHE DONAKIS opened the file on the Stanwick Hall Hotel group, which he expected to become the latest addition to his luxury hotel empire, and suffered an unanticipated shock.
Ironically, it took a great deal to shock Cristophe. At thirty years of age, the Greek entrepreneur and billionaire had seen a lot of bad behaviour and when it came to women in particular he was a complete cynic with low expectations. Orphaned at the age of five, he had survived several major setbacks in life, not the least of which had included foster parents whom he loved but with whom he had not a single thought in common, and a divorce, which still rankled for he had entered his marriage with the best of good intentions. No, what caused Cristophe to vault upright behind his desk and carry the file over to the window to avail of the best possible light was a glimpse of a startlingly familiar face in a photograph of the Stanwick executive staff…a face from his past.
Erin Turner…a pocket Venus with pale hair that glittered like polished silver gilt and eyes the colour of amethysts. Straight off, his lean, darkly handsome features clenched into forbidding angles. Erin occupied a category all of her own in his memories, for she had been the only woman ever to betray him and, even though almost three years had to have passed since their last meeting, the recollection could still sting. His keenly intelligent gaze devoured the photograph of his former mistress standing smiling at the elbow of Sam
Morton, the elderly owner of Stanwick Hall. Clad in a dark business suit with her eye-catching hair restrained by a clip, she looked very different from the carefree, casually clad young woman he remembered.
His tall, powerful body in the grip of sudden tension, Cristo’s dark-as-night eyes took on a fiery glow. That fast he was remembering Erin’s lithe form clad in silk and satin. Even better did he recall the wonderfully slippery feel of her glorious curves beneath his appreciative hands. Perspiration dampened his strong upper lip and he breathed in deep and slow, determined to master the near instantaneous response at his groin. Regrettably, he had never met another Erin, BUT then he had married soon afterwards and only in recent months had he again enjoyed the freedom of being single. He knew that a woman capable of matching his hunger and even of occasionally exhausting his high-voltage libido was a very rare find indeed. He reminded himself that it was very probably that same hunger that had led her to betray his trust and take another man into her bed. An unapologetic workaholic, he had left her alone for weeks while he was abroad on business and it was possible that he had invited the sordid conclusion that had ultimately finished their affair, he conceded grudgingly. Of course, had she agreed to travel with him it would never have happened but regrettably it had not occurred to him at the time that she might have excellent, if nefarious, reasons for preferring to stay in London.
He studied Sam Morton, whose body language and expression were uniquely revealing to any acute observer. The older man, who had to be comfortably into his sixties, could not hide his proprietorial protective attitude towards the svelte little manager of his health spas. His feelings shone out of his proud smile and the supportive arm he had welded to her spine in a declaration of possession. Cristo swore vehemently in Greek and examined the photo from all angles, but could see no room for any more innocent interpretation: she was at it again…bedding the boss! While it might have done him good to recognise Erin’s continuing cunning at making the most of her feminine assets, it gave him no satisfaction at all to acknowledge that she was still happily playing the same tricks and profiting from them. He wondered if she was stealing from Morton as well.
Cristo had dumped Erin from a height when she let him down but the punishment had failed to soothe an incredulous bitterness that only increased when he had afterwards discovered that she had been ripping him off. He had had faith in Erin, he had trusted her, had even at one point begun to toy with the idea that she might make a reasonable wife. Walking into that bedroom and finding another man in the bed he had planned to share with her, along with the debris of discarded wine glasses and the trail of clothes that told its own sleazy story, had knocked him sideways. And what had he done next?
Lean, strong face rigid, Cristo grudgingly acknowledged his own biggest mistake. In the aftermath of his discovery that Erin had cheated on him, he had reached a decision that he was still paying for in spades. He had made a wrong move with long-term repercussions and for a male who almost never made mistakes that remained a very humbling truth. With hindsight he knew exactly why he had done, what he had done but he had yet to forgive himself for that fatal misstep and the fallout those closest to him had suffered. Handsome mouth compressed into a tough line at that reflection, he studied Erin closely. She was still gorgeous and doubtless still happily engaged in confidently plotting and planning how best to feather her own nest while that poor sap at her elbow gave her his trust and worshipped the ground her dainty feet trod on.
But Cristo knew that he had the power to shift the very ground in an earthquake beneath those same feet because he very much doubted that the reputedly conservative and morally upright Sam Morton had any awareness of the freewheeling months that Erin had enjoyed in her guise as Cristo’s mistress, or of the salient fact that at heart she was just a common little thief.
That bombshell had burst on Cristo only weeks after the end of their affair. An audit had found serious discrepancies in the books of the health spa Erin had been managing for him. Products worth a considerable amount of money had gone missing. Invoices had been falsified, freelance employees invented to receive pay cheques for non-existent work. Only Erin had had full access to that paperwork and a reliable long-term employee had admitted seeing her removing boxes of products from the store. Clearly on the take from the day that Cristo hired her, Erin had ripped off the spa to the tune of thousands of pounds. Why had he not prosecuted her for her thieving? He had been too proud to parade the reality that he had taken a thief to his bed and put a thief in a position of trust within his business.
Erin was a box of crafty tricks and no mistake, he acknowledged bitterly. No doubt Morton was equally unaware that his butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth employee played a very creditable game of strip poker. That she had once met Cristo at the airport on his birthday wearing nothing but her skin beneath her coat? And that even the coat had gone within seconds of entering his limousine? Did she cry out Morton’s name and sob in his arms when she reached a climax? Seduce him as only a very sensual woman could while he tried to give the business news his attention instead? Most probably she did, for she had learned from Cristo exactly what a man liked.
Disturbed that he still cherished such strong memories of that period o
f his life, Cristo poured himself a whisky and regrouped, his shrewd brain swiftly cooling the tenor of his angry reflections. The phrase, ‘Don’t get mad, get even’ might well adorn Cristo’s gravestone, for he refused to waste time on anything that didn’t enrich his life. So, Erin was still out there using her wits and her body to climb the career and fortune ladder. How was that news to him? And why was he assuming that Sam Morton was too naïve to know that he had caught a tiger by the tail? For many men the trade-off of as much sex as a man could handle would be acceptable.
And Cristo registered in some surprise at his predictability that he was no different from that self-serving libidinous majority. I could go there again, he thought fiercely, his adrenalin pumping at the prospect of that sexual challenge. I could really enjoy going there again. She’s wasted on an old man and far too devious to be contained by a male with a conventional outlook. He began to read the file, discovering that Erin’s wealthy employer was a widower. He could only assume that she had her ambition squarely centred on becoming the second Mrs Morton. Why else would a scheming gold-digger be working to ingratiate herself and earn a fairly humble crust? He was convinced that she would not have been able to resist the temptation of helping herself to funds from Sam Morton’s spas as well.
Her healthy survival instincts and enduring cunning offended Cristo’s sense of justice. Had he really believed that such a cool little schemer might turn over a new leaf in the aftermath of their affair? Had he ever been that naïve? Certainly, he had compared every woman he had ever had in his bed to Erin and found them all wanting in one way or another. That was a most disconcerting truth to accept. Clearly, he had never got her out of his system, he reflected grimly. Like a piece of baggage he couldn’t shed, she had travelled on with him even when he believed that he was free of her malign influence. It was time that he finally stowed that excess baggage and moved on and how better to do that than by exorcising her from his psyche with one last sexual escapade?
