‘We’re back to this dented ego thing, aren’t we? I didn’t come here because I was mad with rage and suffering from wounded pride because you walked out on me. I came here to take you back where you belong.’
‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve just said!’
‘I’ve heard every word, reds. Of course, I’m still waiting for the three you haven’t said. Those three little words that made you run away like you did.’
‘I…’ Shannon looked at him sulkily. ‘I…I love you, Kane Lindley.’
‘Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?’
‘I’m still not coming back to London to be your mistress,’ Shannon said hotly.
‘And I wouldn’t ask you to. I’ve come to take you back with me so that you can be my wife.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOUR wife?’ Shannon looked at Kane incredulously.
‘That’s right.’ He signalled for the bill and then smiled at her, a smile that sent her fluttering heart soaring upwards, somewhere in the region of the heavens.
‘Shouldn’t that proposal be accompanied by three little words?’
‘Rather more than three.’ He stopped talking to sign the credit card slip, then leant across the table towards her. ‘But I’ll just start by saying that I love you.’
‘But you can’t. Can you? Really? Are you…sure?’ She looked at him anxiously. If there was a fly in the ointment, then it was important that she find out sooner rather than later. ‘But you said that an affair with me was no promise of a wedding ring, you told me that it was a relationship without commitment.’
‘And I believed it at the time, I assure you.’ He shook his head, as if marvelling at the way events had altered the course he had originally planned. ‘But,’ he told her as they walked out to the car, ‘I was wrong. By nature, I have always been a considered man. You know that, don’t you? I’ve been accustomed to using my head rather than my heart, especially after my last marriage when I realised, somewhat late in the day, that impulse has a nasty habit of backfiring when you least expect it.’ He switched on the engine but, instead of pulling away, he turned to her, resting his arm along the back of her seat. It had begun to snow, light flurries like powder than brushed against the windscreen. Stray people on the streets hurtled along, heads bent, hands clutching tightly at their coats in an attempt to protect themselves from the freezing weather. Inside the car, with the engine on, it was warm.
‘I thought I could handle anything. I thought that marriage was a step I wouldn’t take until I was one hundred per cent sure it would be the right step. I failed to realise, until you ran out on me, that I had been one hundred per cent sure for longer than I cared to think. Do you know that you were the reason I kept coming back to Alfredo’s every morning?’
‘Me?’
He laughed softly at the incredulity in her voice. ‘You. I was on my way to a breakfast meeting at a client and I stopped in for a quick coffee and a chance to look over some files. And there you were, with your red hair and your Irish voice and that way you had of looking as though any requests for a refill of coffee might result in a heated debate. In the end, I didn’t get through nearly as much work as I’d anticipated, and I found myself going back the next morning and every morning after that, even though the damn place was hardly convenient. I began to look forward to seeing you in the mornings, before my day had begun, bursting with vitality, always ready to make comments on my choice of newspaper or some item of news that might have captured your interest. There were times I caught myself wondering what you did for the rest of the day, where you went, who you saw, what the quality of your personal life was like…’
‘You never said…’
‘On a conscious level, I don’t think I was aware of it myself at the time. But I do know that when you threw that plate of food over Gallway, I felt myself want to laugh in a way I couldn’t remember wanting to laugh in a very long time.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No, I didn’t. I offered you a job instead.’ He brushed her hair back with his fingers and then gently pulled her towards him. When his mouth found hers, she was powerfully aware that this was where she belonged. Wrapped up and possessed by this big, strong man who could admit to feelings most men might want to hide, to being vulnerable in a way that assumed unswerving trust in her response.
‘And it was the best damn thing I ever did,’ he murmured into her mouth, before resuming his kiss. ‘I should have thanked that arrogant little twerp for handing me the opportunity to have you near me. Although if I’d known your connection with him at the time, I might have been tempted to kill him on the spot.’
He slipped his hand under the lapels of her thick coat and moaned huskily as he found the mound of her breast, primly concealed by the woollen dress but, even so, responding to the hot touch of his hand.
‘Is there a law in Ireland against making passionate love in the back seat of a car?’ he demanded, nibbling her ear lobe. ‘Because if there is, I have a rather nice hotel room booked and we have some catching up to do…’
‘Kane…’
The fly in the ointment, which had been dormant during his heady, blissful protestations of love, now began to buzz. Gently at first, but then with increasing vigour. A nasty, frightening thought lodged in her mind. What would he say when he discovered that she was pregnant? How would he react to knowing that she’d concealed it from him and, as far as he was concerned, might well have carried on concealing it unless he’d sought her out?
Could fate be so cruel as to offer her everything her heart desired in one hand, only to yank it back with the other?
‘Shannon…’ he murmured, his breath warm in her ear while his hand continued to caress her breast. Her nipples were erect, like soldiers standing to attention, and as he rubbed his thumb over the swollen bud protruding through the lace in her bra she knew that he could feel it.
Shannon took a deep breath. ‘Look, there’s something else I have to tell you,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Something else? Apart from your declarations of undying love? Now, what could that be, I wonder?’
‘I can’t think straight when—’ She gasped as his wandering hand left her sensitive nipple to sweep beneath the hem of her dress. Just as well the car had been parked away from any streetlamps. He pressed his palm between her thighs and she squirmed against the steady, hard pressure, rubbing herself against him with half-closed eyes.
‘When you’re turned on?’
‘Yes,’ she said unsteadily. Her breathing sounded thick. ‘And we can’t do this here…’
‘Then let’s go back to my hotel room.’
‘What would Mum say if she found out?’
‘Why would she find out? I’ll make sure to deliver you back safe and sound before the cock crows.’ He laughed at the unwitting suggestiveness behind his remark. ‘So tell me what you have to tell me.’
‘I’m…’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m…’ She tried desperately to recognise the importance of what she was about to say, but her mindless body was too busy responding to his hand which pressed rhythmically against her tights, already dampening at the erotic contact.
‘You’re not pregnant by any chance, are you?’ He detached himself from her and tilted her face to his. ‘Is that the revelation? That you’re carrying my baby?’
She nodded mutely. ‘And now you’re going to walk away, aren’t you? You’re angry with me for not telling you sooner, aren’t you? I don’t blame you,’ she cried, agonised, ‘but what was I supposed to do? When I found out, the only thing I could think of doing was running away as fast as my legs could take me. And don’t tell me that running away never solved anything!’
‘I don’t have to tell you, Shannon. I think you’ve discovered that all by yourself. And as for being angry with you, well, I wondered when you were going to tell me.’
Shannon looked at him in bewilderment. ‘You knew?’
‘I suspected,’ he answered
drily, and when she didn’t say anything, he continued, ‘I’m not a fool, my darling. I can add up as good as the rest of them, and I worked out that you hadn’t had a period for well beyond the normal limits.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Because I wanted you to,’ he said simply. ‘When you left, my first urge was to rush up here and confront you with it, but I knew what would happen. You would back off like a scared rabbit, and then, if I told you that I wanted to marry you, you would jump to the conclusion that I was proposing for all the wrong reasons, that I just wanted to fulfil my responsibilities. So I lost sleep for three nights and told myself that it was for the best because it gave you time to think. And then I told you how much I loved you because, my darling, I can’t bear the thought of not being with you. Night and day. And the fact that you’re having my baby is the icing on the cake.’
‘It is? Am I dreaming?’
‘If you are then so am I. Shall we continue with our pleasant little dream…in a hotel not a million miles away?’
At four in the morning, her body still tingling from hours of love-making, Shannon crept into the dark house, feeling like an adolescent terrified of being caught in the act of disobeying parental orders.
Kane would be coming around later that morning and she had made him promise to let her do all the talking.
‘My mother might have a heart attack if she knew what we were up to,’ Shannon had said to him. ‘I don’t think she suspected for a minute that you were anything but a nice man who had my welfare at the top of his mind.’
‘Which I was,’ he’d pointed out, as he’d stroked her thighs, his fingers as delicate as butterflies brushing against her skin. ‘A kind hearted gentleman innocently taken advantage of by a wanton and abandoned young woman with a fabulous body and eyes that could drive a man crazy.’ When he’d said that, his strolling fingers had begun stroking the bulging nub that made her groan in anticipated ecstasy, spreading apart her legs in eager arousal, and that had been the last coherent sentence for a while.
She hoped, as she surfaced from a dreamless sleep at ten o’clock that morning, that he remembered her instructions to leave the talking to her.
At ten-thirty, she rushed to answer the door and flashed him a warning look with her eyebrows.
‘Don’t forget,’ she whispered, ‘let me handle this.’
From behind his back he produced a startling bunch of lilies with the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.
‘For me?’ Shannon beamed.
‘For your mother, actually,’ he replied gravely, and she giggled behind one hand.
‘Creep. Anyway, I’ve managed to clear the house of children and family, apart from Mum. I thought you might get distracted by lots of—’
‘Computer-crazy adolescents?’ He grinned and kissed her lightly on her lips. ‘Mmm. Slightly swollen lips. Do you think it’s the pregnancy or an overdose of love-making?’
‘Shh!’ Shannon laughed and dragged him through to the sitting room.
‘Mum!’
‘Well, Kane, I thought you might have been on a flight back to England. Come and sit down for a moment. I’m taking a rest from Christmas preparations.’ She patted the chair next to her, flushing when he handed her the flowers. ‘So, did you two children have a good time last night?’ She looked shrewdly at her daughter. ‘You must have. You didn’t get back until well past three.’
‘How did—?’
‘Having children makes light sleepers of us all, Shannon. I take it the restaurant was an all-night one?’
‘Well…’ She glanced helplessly at Kane who smiled serenely back at her.
‘We…have something to tell you, Mum.’ Shannon reached out for the flowers and placed them on the coffee-table, then she sat down, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees.
‘I’m sure you do. When is it going to be?’
‘We haven’t set a date as yet,’ she said, gaping in disbelief.
‘I didn’t realise,’ her mother said, frowning, ‘that you could set a date for a birth. Technology must really have advanced without me noticing.’ Then she saw her daughter’s expression and laughed.
‘I knew the minute you came back all in a rush, my girl, that you were in the family way. Just as I knew the minute I saw the both of you together that you were in love. There was no point in preaching to you about saving yourself for the right man because you’d found the right man and I expect you’ll be married. Won’t you? So. Where’s the good in giving long lectures and trying to bolt the stable door after the horse has gone? Just tell me, how long have I got to do my knitting? And how much time do I have to look for a suitable hat?’
EPILOGUE
‘YOU are the most exquisite creature in the world.’
Shannon looked drowsily at Kane and smiled. She watched as he tenderly picked up the eight-pound-three-ounce baby girl sleeping in the crook of her arm and watched as the tiny newborn figure stirred and stretched with closed fists and made small gurgling sounds before settling back into her new sleeping position.
She felt as fragile as a piece of china, Kane thought as he circled the small hospital room with his baby in his arms. A family. Eleanor, Sophie, Shannon and himself. Nothing else mattered.
For years work had been his driving force but now that he’d delegated much of it to his various directors it seemed natural to slide into a less frantic schedule. In a short while he would drive back to the house to collect Eleanor so that she could meet her sister for the first time, and as soon as Shannon was ready they would be moving out to the country and leaving London to the Londoners. He looked at his wife and felt a burst of gratitude and love.
‘Have you called everyone on the list?’ Shannon asked, and he went to sit by her on the side of the bed.
‘You forget that you’re speaking to the most organised person in the world.’
‘Oh, is that right? Would that be why you forgot my overnight bag when I went into labour?’
‘Ah, but you have to admit that I made sure it was packed weeks in advance.’
‘How was Mum?’
‘A bag of nerves,’ Kane said drily, ‘as you can imagine. They’re all coming over tomorrow, so expect a hectic day of showing off our daughter. Your mother will be in her element considering you deprived her of a big, white wedding…’
‘My mother has ample opportunity for big, white weddings with my sisters. Not that she’s a big, white wedding kind of lady. Anyway, she said that she couldn’t have hoped for anything more. Family only for the register office and then a reception in the grandest hotel in Dublin…’
Shannon closed her eyes and knew that even if the photographer hadn’t been present, recording everything from every angle, she would still hold that memory in her heart for the rest of her life. The joy as she’d turned to Kane and kissed him chastely for the first time as his wife, her mother dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, Eleanor bursting with the thrill of it all, and then the reception in Dublin where every friend and relative had showed up with good wishes on their lips.
She’d had her cream silk dress dry-cleaned and one day soon she would sit Eleanor down and tell her how much it meant to her, how powerful a symbol it would always be of her great happiness. When she looked at Kane, she saw him smiling at her, understanding what was going on in her head, the way he always did.
He placed the baby back with Shannon and watched in fascination as Sophie uncurled her fists and wriggled about. ‘Now, reds, I feel you should get some rest before Eleanor comes to visit.’ He leant over and kissed her on the tip of her nose. ‘She’s bursting with excitement at the thought of seeing you and our baby. Not forgetting your family…’
‘They did kind of adopt her, didn’t they?’
‘They certainly did, Mrs Lindley.’
‘Mrs Lindley.’ She savoured the words and smiled at him. She wondered whether it would take her a lifetime to adapt to the fact that dreams could come true.
; ‘My Mrs Lindley.’ He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. ‘And I would be no one without you.’
‘Good,’ she said comfortably. ‘Because you’re always going to have me.’ She kissed their baby’s downy head and thought how their love would only grow stronger over the years, a safe, secure haven she would never leave.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8658-4
SECRETARY ON DEMAND
First North American Publication 2002.
Copyright © 2001 by Cathy Williams.
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