Only with you, she thought, but that seemed too frighteningly vulnerable a thing to say. She licked instead.
He moved over her, his eyes burningly bright—a strange, shining combination of blue and black. In the heat of the moment his mind went blank and he forgot everything other than the sweet temptation of her flesh.
‘God, Catherine, I want you so badly.’ He slipped his hand between her thighs, where she was as wet as he had known she would be, and a wild kind of fever heated his blood. He moved and then groaned, then groaned again as he thrust into her, deep and hard and long, and she gave a low, exultant scream of pleasure.
‘Is that good?’ he ground out. ‘Because—sweet God in heaven—it feels good to me!’
She gave herself up to the delicious rhythm, feeling control beginning to slip away.
‘Is it, Catherine?’ he urged, wanting to hear the surrender he could feel in her fast-shivering flesh. ‘Is it good?’
Through dry lips she managed to say the very word she had said to Miranda. ‘Unbelievable,’ she groaned, as he filled her and moved inside her. ‘Unbelievable.’
It happened so quickly, and her orgasm seemed to make Catherine’s world explode. For a moment consciousness actually receded, and she was lost in a dreamy, perfect world of feeling and sensation, then it slowly ebbed back and reality was just as good. She smiled. That was if reality was lying naked in Finn’s arms with the whole day—maybe even the weekend—ahead of them.
And this time they would do things other than make love. She could cook him lunch—had she got enough food to produce something impressive?—and then afterwards she could take him to the park. Maybe an early film, and then supper… Sooner rather than later she was going to have to come clean about her job, and very probably the mix-up about the article, but she could deal with that. She was certain she could…
‘Mmm,’ she breathed in anticipation. ‘Mmm!’
Her ecstatic response shattered his equilibrium and a sudden icy chill shivered its way over his bare flesh.
Finn withdrew from her and rolled away, and the physical deprivation of his presence made her whimper like a lost little animal.
‘What are you doing?’ she murmured sleepily, watching through half-slitted eyes the graceful, muscular body as he reached for his jeans.
‘What does it look like? I’m getting dressed.’
He pulled the jeans back on and zipped them up before replying, and suddenly his face was shuttered. This was a new, hard Finn she didn’t recognise, with a new, hard voice she didn’t recognise either.
‘Wh-where are you going?’
‘I don’t think that’s really any of your business, do you?’
Catherine screwed up her eyes as she sat up, thinking that she must have misheard him—or that perhaps she had slipped unknowingly into a nightmare made uncannily real by his expressionless face. ‘What?’
The movement which curved his lips was a bitter parody of a smile. ‘Shall I repeat it for you in words of one syllable, Catherine?’ he questioned cruelly. ‘I said it’s none of your business. Got that?’ And he slipped his feet into the deck shoes, jerked on the blue sweater.
Her mind was spinning as it strove to make sense of this bizarre ending to what had just happened. Perhaps if she wasn’t so befuddled by the aftermath of her orgasm then she might have made sense of it sooner. ‘Finn, I don’t understand—’
‘Oh, don’t you?’ His mouth twisted and the blue eyes were as cold as ice. ‘Then you can’t be very good at your job, can you? If you lack the ability to understand the implication behind a simple sentence like that!’
The penny dropped. Her job, he had said. Yes, of course. Her job—her wretched, wretched job! Oh, God—he had seen the article! ‘Finn, I want to explain—’
‘Oh, please—spare me your lies. Just don’t bother!’
Realising that she was completely naked, Catherine grabbed at her tee shirt and wriggled it over her head as she scrambled to her feet, aware of the movement of her breasts and aware too that Finn wasn’t oblivious to their movement either. She turned to him with a face full of appeal, and suddenly nothing was more important than establishing the truth. ‘You owe me the right to explain what happened,’ she said in a low voice.
‘I owe you nothing!’ he spat back, and the temper which had been simmering away came boiling over, words spilling out of his mouth without thought or care. ‘In fact, quite the contrary—I felt that in view of the fact I’d been paid nothing for an article about me which I did not agree to, then I should take my payment in kind!’
It took a moment or two for the meaning behind his words to sink in, and when it did Catherine felt sick. Physically sick. And even worse was the look in his eyes…
So here was the look of blistering contempt she had been anticipating at the very beginning but had conveniently forgotten when he had given her flowers and put his arms around her. And it was even worse than in her most fevered imaginings…
She swallowed down the bitter taste in her mouth, barely able to believe what he was implying. ‘Y-you mean…you mean…you came here today deliberately to have sex with me—’
‘Sure,’ he answered arrogantly. ‘It wasn’t difficult—but why should it be? It was as easy as pie the last time.’
She wanted to hit him, to shout, to scream at him—but still she forced herself to question him, because surely there was some kind of ghastly mistake. ‘To get your own back for some stupid magazine article?’ she finished faintly.
“‘Some stupid magazine article”?’ Two high lines of colour ran across his cheekbones, and his Irish accent seemed even more pronounced. ‘It may be just some stupid article to you, sweetheart, but it has very effectively sent my credibility flying!’
‘You mean that you wanted to look whiter than white because you hope to run for government?’ she demanded.
‘That has nothing to do with it!’ His voice became a low hiss. ‘Other people put labels on me that I do not seek for myself! I couldn’t give a stuff about politics, but I do care what my friends and family read about me!’
And he fixed her with a look of such utter scorn that Catherine actually flinched.
Her own look matched his for scorn now. ‘And the flowers? Such an elaborate masquerade, Finn,’ she said bitterly. ‘Did you really have to go to so much trouble to ensure my seduction? Did you think that your powers of persuasion were slipping?’
‘I never doubted that for a minute, sweetheart,’ he drawled, and then his eyes gleamed and his voice softened. ‘No, the bouquet was to send you a silent message.’
She stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Did you never hear of the language of flowers, Catherine?’
The question and the way he asked it were so close to the image of the poetic Irishman who had swept her off her feet that for a moment Catherine was lulled into imagining that the things he had said were not real.
She shook her head.
‘Every flower carries its own message,’ he continued softly.
‘And the mock orange blossom?’ she asked shakily. ‘What does that stand for?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ He paused, and raised his dark eyebrows. ‘Not got it yet, Catherine? Deceit,’ he said finally, with a cruel, hard smile.
She supposed that as a gesture it deserved some kind of accolade, but it felt like a knife being twisted over and over in her gut.
‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said, and his eyes were piercingly clear. ‘When you came to Dublin did your editor send you? Was it just coincidence that brought you? Or did she tell you to get something on me?’
Catherine opened her mouth. ‘Well, she told me to, yes. But—’
‘But what? The article just wrote itself, did it?’ he questioned witheringly.
She wanted to say, It wasn’t like that! But she knew that no words in the dictionary could ever make things right between them now.
‘Please go,’ she said quietly.
But he was alrea
dy by the door. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ he grated.
And with that he was gone.
Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE moment the door had shut behind him, Catherine snatched the flowers from out of the vase and took them to the kitchen sink, where she squashed them ruthlessly with a rolling pin, bashing and bashing at them until they were made pulp.
That should relieve some of her pent-up frustration, she thought, with a fleeting feeling of triumph which evaporated almost immediately. Except that she wasn’t feeling frustrated—not in the physical sense, in any case. No, her frustration was born out of the random and cruel tricks of fate which had led her into this situation. The man whom she had fallen for, hook, line and sinker, would never trust her again.
But he didn’t even give you a chance to explain yourself, she reminded herself bitterly—and in the heat of the moment she had forgotten to ask him about Deirdra O’Shea. Finn Delaney himself was no saint, she thought. And there had been a reason why she had been so indiscreet with Miranda.
Tears began to slide down her cheeks just as the telephone rang.
She snatched it up, despising herself for the eagerness which prompted her, thinking that maybe Finn had had a change of heart—was ringing her to apologise for his unbelievably cruel behaviour.
‘H-hello?’
But it was her mother. ‘Catherine? Are you all right?’
Catherine wiped the tears away with a bunched fist. ‘Of course I’m all right, Mum.’
‘Well, you don’t sound it.’ Her mother’s voice sounded worried, but of course it would. Mothers were notoriously good at detecting when their daughters were crying, particularly when they were as close as Catherine and her mother. ‘Have you been crying?’
‘Not really.’ Sniff.
‘Not really?’ Her mother’s voice softened. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
‘I can’t! You’ll hate me for it!’
‘Catherine, stop it. Tell me what’s happened.’
Such was her distress that the story came tumbling out—or rather an edited version designed to cause the least hurt to her mother. Catherine did not mention that she barely knew the man, nor the shockingly short time scale involved. She just told her the simple truth of the matter, which was that she had leapt into a foolish and inconsidered relationship straight after Peter and that it was now over.
‘Oh, Mum!’ she wailed. ‘How could I have done it?’
‘You did it on the rebound,’ her mother said firmly. ‘Lots of people do. It isn’t the end of the world! Just try to put it out of your mind and forget about it.’
‘And I hadn’t seen Peter for months and months!’ Catherine found herself saying, which again was true. She didn’t want her mother thinking that she was about to start taking lovers at the drop of a hat.
‘I’m not making any value judgements, darling. I know the sort of person you are. I’ve never doubted you for a moment, and anyone who does needs their head examining!’ she finished fiercely. ‘Who is this man—is he married?’
Catherine heard the slightly raw tone. Even now her mother still hurt. She had had her own cross to bear. Loving a married man had brought with it nothing but pain and heartache. And a baby, of course. Mustn’t forget the baby. For Catherine had been one of those fatherless children—a child who had never known her father. ‘No, he’s not married.’
‘Thank God for that!’
‘I shouldn’t have worried you by telling you about it, Mum.’
‘I’m more worried about the fact that you don’t have a job any more,’ her mother was saying. ‘Any luck on the freelance front?’
‘I haven’t really been looking—’
‘Well, better start, Catherine—you have to keep a roof over your head and food in your mouth and clothes on your back, remember?’
Oh, yes, she remembered all right. Independence had been another lesson drummed into her from an early age by a woman who had always had to fend for herself and bring up her child. Catherine’s mother had initially been wary of her daughter’s chosen career, seeing it as precarious—and for Catherine to now be freelance must be her idea of a nightmare.
‘Oh, I’ll find something—I’ve got plenty of contacts.’
‘Why don’t you come down this weekend? It’d be lovely to see you.’
Catherine hesitated, tempted. She couldn’t think of anything nicer than to escape to her mother’s tiny cottage, surrounded by fields and trees, with a distant peep of the sea. Under normal circumstances she would have been scooting straight out of the door to buy her ticket at the train station.
But these were not normal circumstances. No, indeed. Catherine cast a disgusted look down at her baggy tee shirt.
‘No, Mum,’ she replied. ‘I have a heap of things to do here. Maybe next weekend.’
‘All right, darling. You will take care of yourself, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will!’
Her mother’s words came back to haunt her during the next few weeks as Catherine scouted around many publications angling for assignments. She had a mixed bag of luck. Some people knew her work and respected it, and were keen to hire her. But the market was full of freelance journalists—some of them talented and hungry and straight out of college—and Catherine knew that she was going to have to work very hard to keep up with the competition. Suddenly the staff job she had had at Pizazz! seemed terribly comfortable, and she wondered why she had bothered throwing it in.
As a defiant gesture it had been rather wasted. She had lost Finn anyway—though she reminded herself that he had never been hers to have.
And what else had her mother said?
‘Take care of yourself.’
Had she known that the stress of everything that had happened would leave Catherine feeling distinctly peaky?
Stress had all kinds of insidious effects on the human body, she knew that as well as the next person. It played havoc with her appetite, for example. One minute she would be feeling so nauseous that just the thought of food would make her feel sick. The next she would be diving for the biscuit tin and thickly spreading yeast extract on a pile of digestive biscuits.
It wasn’t until one afternoon when Sally—her best friend on Pizazz! and the only person she had kept in touch with from there—commented that she was putting on weight that Catherine’s safe reality finally crumbled into dust.
She waited until Sally had gone and then shut the door behind her with a shaking hand. She went into the bathroom to stare at her white, haunted face with frightened eyes. Knowing deep down and yet denying it. Not wanting to know, nor daring to.
The thought that she might be pregnant simply hadn’t occurred to her. But as she allowed the facts to assemble logically in her head she wondered how she could have been so stupid.
The next day she went through the rituals of confirmation, knowing that they were unnecessary, but until concrete proof confirmed her worst fears she might really be able to put it down to stress.
The blue line on the indicator was a fact. Just as was the faint tingling in her breasts. The missed periods. The nausea. The compulsive and compensatory eating. It all added up—and you wouldn’t need to be Doctor of the Year to work out why.
Catherine sat back on her heels and took a deep breath, hugged her arms protectively around her heavy breasts.
Now what?
Her breathing short and shallow and low, she tried to flick her mind through her options. But nothing she thought of seemed to make any sense because it didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be real, could it?
She went into denial. Threw her energy into an article on pet cemeteries and spent days researching it. Managed to agree to an almighty fee for a piece on London’s newest wannabe club and spent a queasy evening in a smoke-filled room regretting it.
She denied it all over Christmas by wearing baggy jumpers and telling her bemused mother that she was trying to ‘cut down’ when asked why she wasn�
��t drinking.
And still the days ticked by—until one morning, after dashing to the bathroom to be sick, she gripped the washbasin with still-shaking hands and stared at her white-green reflection in the mirror.
She was pregnant with Finn Delaney’s baby!
A man who despised her, a man she barely knew—a man, moreover, who had walked out of her life with the clear wish of never setting eyes on her again.
She was going to have a baby.
And with that one focused thought all her options and choices dissolved into one unassailable fact.
She was going to have a baby.
She booked an appointment with her doctor, who raised her eyebrows questioningly at Catherine when she’d finished her examination.
‘Yes, you’re pregnant, though you’re fine—fit and healthy.’ The doctor frowned. ‘You really should have come to see me sooner, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
The doctor appeared to choose her words delicately. ‘And you’re going to go ahead with the pregnancy? Because if you’re not…’
Catherine didn’t even have to think about it. Some things you just knew, with a bone-deep certainty. She drew a deep breath, scared yet sure. Very, very sure. ‘Oh, yes. Very definitely.’
The doctor nodded. ‘How about the father? Will he be able to support you?’
Another pause. There was no doubt that he would be able to. But… ‘I’m not expecting him to. We’re not…together any more.’ How was that for managing to make the truth sound respectable?
‘But you’ll tell him?’
Catherine sat back in her chair. ‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t feel she knew anything any more.
The doctor straightened the papers on her desk and looked at her. ‘A man has a right to know, Catherine—I really believe that.’
Catherine walked back to her flat, scarcely noticing the light drizzle which slowly seeped into her skin and clothes. The doctor’s question refused to go away. Should she tell him? Did he really have a right to know that he had fathered a baby?
She sat in the sitting room, nursing a cup of tea which grew cold and unnoticed, while the floor where she and Finn had made love seemed to mock her nearly as much as her idealistic thoughts.
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