Mistresses: Blackmailed With Diamonds / Shackled With Rubies

by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker

  That was when Hope knew she’d have to run.

  Chapter Eight

  THE next fortnight passed in a haze of bleak activity; both dreading and hoping that Keir would come back before she left, Hope organised her departure from Noosa.

  ‘But why are you going?’ Val demanded on the last day, slapping a mug of tea onto the table in front of her. ‘You haven’t given me a sensible reason yet. I thought you liked it here?’

  ‘I do.’

  Val got up to check on the children in the pool. Turning back, she said, ‘It’s Keir, I suppose. What went wrong? Don’t tell me you’re going to dump him like you have the others?’

  ‘I didn’t dump the others! They were just friends.’

  Val snorted. ‘Who wanted very much to be much more than friends, only you wouldn’t have it. I could understand that because you certainly weren’t in love—or even in lust—with them. But Keir was different. You glowed when you were with him.’

  ‘It didn’t mean anything,’ Hope told her crisply, drinking down some of the tea while she tried to convince herself that she’d be once more in control of her life—and herself—as soon as she got away from this place.

  The older woman gave her a baffled stare. However, something in Hope’s expression must have warned her off, because she came across to the table and gave her a quick hug. ‘All right, I won’t pry. Just give me your address, all right? Otherwise I’ll worry.’

  ‘As soon as I settle in I’ll write. I promise.’

  Back in the flat, Hope looked around. Her belongings stood packed in one large pack and a box. Perhaps Val’s robust disapproval had found a weak spot, because she was listening to the honeyed voice of temptation again.

  Why not wait for Keir to come back? Those days and nights of incredible rapture hadn’t really been enough to liberate herself from his spell. If she stayed in Noosa he might visit her often enough for the novelty to fade, and then—when she could look at Keir Carmichael and see just another sexy, interesting man—then she’d be able to let her dreams go.

  No! With shaking hands she picked up the three cards he’d sent her since he’d left Noosa. She’d planned to throw them in the rubbish, but she couldn’t.

  If she saw any more of him she might as well hand her heart on a plate to a man she didn’t dare trust.

  Yet she wanted—longed!—to have faith in his integrity. The inevitable next step, she thought bleakly, would be love, the abject surrender that had ruined her mother’s life.

  She’d been so conceited, so arrogant to believe she could keep herself safe while she indulged in rapturous sex with Keir.

  Her fingers curled protectively around the cards as she stowed them in her bag. Monumentally stupid she might have been, but even she could learn her lesson. She’d never allow herself to be dominated by a man, not even a man who made her body sing with ecstasy and challenged her mind in a thousand absorbing ways.

  He would call it cowardice; she called it self-preservation.

  So she said goodbye to the Petries and her landlady, and travelled drearily by bus to the Gold Coast, another holiday destination an hour south of Brisbane, one big enough to hide her for as long as it took Keir to lose interest.

  Once there she operated on automatic pilot, renting a small flat well back from the superb beach that gave the city of Surfers’ Paradise its name. Within a week she was employed by a house-cleaning service. It was hard work but reasonably well paid, and because most of the home-owners were out during the day she had plenty of lonely hours to miss Keir while she vacuumed and mopped and cleaned and scanned the Situations Vacant columns for a better job.

  It didn’t help to tell herself that she’d get over this astonishing pain, that time healed all things. Time certainly hadn’t healed her when she’d run away from him before—she’d survived only by repressing the memories.

  This time she had to tough it out.

  But she spent the nights lying awake, listening to her thoughts scurrying around her head, weighed down by the ache in her heart. During the day, she had to push her heavy limbs to work, to walk to the supermarket, to clean her own flat. Because food tasted like ashes, she ate only enough to keep going.

  One morning her neighbour, a middle-aged woman, turned the key in her lock at the same time that Hope was setting out for another day’s work.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the older woman asked, scrutinising Hope’s face. ‘You’re very pale.’

  ‘Just a bit tired,’ Hope said quickly, smiling to show she wasn’t offended.

  ‘You could have the flu,’ her neighbour observed, frowning. ‘There’s a nasty virus going around—no real symptoms except for exhaustion.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking of buying some vitamins.’ Hope picked up her bag and stepped down onto the common driveway.

  ‘Take my advice and go to a doctor. It can’t do any harm, and at least then you’ll find out what you’ve got. There’s a good medical centre in the shopping centre just along the road.’

  Hope had no intention of visiting a medical centre—until she fainted getting out of bed next morning. She came to immediately, but it worried her enough to make an appointment and keep it on her way home from work.

  A young woman doctor examined her, took her blood pressure, peered in her throat and ears, and listened to her chest and back. Afterwards she sat down behind her desk and asked bluntly, ‘Could you be pregnant?’

  ‘No,’ Hope said explosively, her stomach quivering. ‘I—we—took precautions.’

  ‘If the precautions you took were just condoms, there’s a definite possibility,’ the doctor informed her dryly, and sent her off to the practice nurse for a pregnancy test.

  Twenty minutes later the doctor told her, not unsympathetically, ‘You’re pregnant. When was the date of your last period?’

  Numbly Hope counted back the weeks and told her.

  The doctor nodded and looked down at a paper on her desk. ‘The baby’s due the first week in May.’

  ‘I see.’ Hope swallowed.

  ‘Unless, of course, you choose to—’

  ‘No.’ Hope didn’t even have to think about it. ‘No, thank you. Is there anything special I should do or shouldn’t do?’

  The doctor took her medical history, told her what she should do, prescribed vitamins and as much rest as she could take, and gave her a diet sheet.

  On the way back to the flat Hope detoured into a park shaded by African tulip trees and subtropical shrubs; small, white-beaked coots swam in a pond and black-headed ibises stalked the margins, looking vaguely sinister.

  Hope sat down on a seat and touched her stomach with a wondering hand. Somewhere in there—so tiny it barely existed—was her child, the child she’d conceived when Keir and she had made love. A stab of exultant joy persuaded her to picture his baby in her arms, to wonder if it would have his pale eyes and black hair, that elegant, careless grace…

  Not that it mattered whether their son or daughter looked like him or inherited her features and tawny colouring. Alight with fierce, inconvenient love for the tiny life within, she whispered, ‘Don’t worry, little one—you’re safe, I promise.’

  And then she wrenched herself reluctantly away from the tender daydream and forced herself to be pragmatic, clenching her hands together in her lap as she tried to work out what would be best for the precious child she carried.

  Once it was born she’d be imprisoned by its dependence and her love. There’d be no escape; she might achieve some sort of freedom after the child had grown up, but for the rest of her life she’d be the mother to Keir’s child.

  Panic threatened to block her thought processes, but she forced herself past that first, unreasoning reaction. Her own wishes, her own needs, were no longer paramount.

  Should she tell Keir?

  No. He’d want to have some part in its life.

  He’d take over.

  And the way she felt now, she thought wearily, she’d probably let him. Of course, she might
wake up the following morning feeling as fit as she ever had; apparently that was as likely to happen as the three months of exhaustion she’d been warned about.

  She wouldn’t tell Keir. Not because she didn’t trust him, but because she didn’t trust herself; the temptation to give in to his authority and decisiveness wooed her seductively. She needed time to come to terms with this.

  ‘Hope, I’m sorry, but it’s not working out.’ The owner of the cleaning service was matter-of-fact. ‘I can’t afford to employ anyone who’s not pulling their weight, and you haven’t been.’

  Hope stiffened her backbone. ‘I know,’ she said numbly. Strange that she should feel so shattered, because she’d been expecting this.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave the woman a small smile. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, I remember that tiredness.’ The woman looked sympathetic, but she wasn’t going to change her mind. ‘Right, I’ll give you a fortnight’s wages in lieu of notice. Good luck with the baby—and everything.’

  Once I get to the flat, Hope told herself as she signed for the wages and got herself out of the office, I can fall to pieces—for ten minutes or so, until I work out what to do.

  A fierce, overwhelming protectiveness stiffened her body, propelled her home. She’d coped with everything life had flung at her so far; she’d cope with this.

  But back in her stuffy little sitting room she sat in the only comfortable armchair and let herself drift into welcoming oblivion.

  She woke so thirsty her throat felt like a desert, and so tired it was an enormous effort to get up and pour herself a glass of water.

  Standing in front of the elderly refrigerator, she accepted the decision her mind had somehow arrived at in her sleep. With only the equivalent of three months’ salary in the bank, plus pending payment for two travel articles, finding cheaper accommodation was her next step. Her best bet would be in a low-income suburb of Brisbane; failing that, a small town in Australia’s vast, dusty hinterland.

  Unexpected homesickness blitzed her. Here the sun beamed down through perfumed air, the life was casual and friendly. In New Zealand spring would be chilly, windy, frequently wet, yet the grass was a green she’d never seen in Australia. Pansies and violas and linarias—her mother’s favourite annuals—would be brightening the gardens now. The winds would be blowing the strong, evocative scent of freesias along the streets, and there’d be daffodils, and Japanese cherries in their brief, delicate finery, and fruit trees awash in pink and white blossom.

  It was the season for tangelos, sweet and gaudily orange on glossy bushes, and tamarillos, like oval tomatoes in clusters on their big-leafed trees—tangy and ruby-red. And, spread around its twin harbours, Auckland would shine on the fine spring days like a city seen in paradise.

  But if she went back to New Zealand she’d be much easier for Keir to find.

  Always provided he was looking for her, of course.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have sent the diamond pendant back to him. If she’d kept it she could have sold it through Markus, and then she’d have had enough to live on for some years.

  Shaking her head impatiently, she gulped the cold water down, then ran her wrists under the tap. She’d never take anything for herself from Keir. But the baby was different. Watching the water splash and foam over her blue veins, she accepted with enormous reluctance that she’d have to contact him.

  Independence was all very well, but she didn’t just have herself to think of now.

  Now you understand the power of sex, she thought, trying desperately for irony, almost gagging at the bitterness of the lie. Because it hadn’t been just sex.

  Making love to Keir had forged bonds of passion and need and longing—bonds that now locked her inside a cage of her own making.

  At least she’d had the sense to get out before she’d fallen in love with him, she thought fiercely.

  An abrupt knock jerked her head around. Through the frosted glass panel of the door she saw the threatening silhouette of a tall man. A whirling darkness threatened, was beaten back as she wondered half hysterically if she’d summoned him with her thoughts.

  Ashen-faced, determined, she used every atom of will-power she possessed to square her shoulders and walk across the room. Her fingers shook on the door handle; swallowing, she gripped it and pulled the door open.

  The sight of Keir—alarmingly large and all coiled, furious aggression, silver eyes unreadable in a hard-edged face—jolted apprehension through her, chilling her skin and roiling her stomach.

  ‘Come in,’ she said with the best imitation she could produce of her usual crisp tone.

  Noiselessly he strode through the door and closed it behind him, his eyes never leaving her. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She must, she thought thinly, look like something pale and sluggish from off a cave wall. And although she was both angry and despairing, a huge weight had rolled off her shoulders.

  ‘You look bloody awful,’ he said grimly. ‘Have you been sick?’

  ‘No.’ Tell him, she urged herself, but she couldn’t think of any way to do it.

  Silence hung as menacing as a thundercloud, broken by his savage question. ‘Why the hell did you leave Noosa? And why didn’t you contact Val Petrie—she was frantic with worry until she got your note.’

  ‘Have you been hounding her?’ Hope’s lassitude vanished as though he’d brought the elixir of life with him. ‘How dare you? Who do you think you are?’

  ‘I’m your lover,’ he said brutally, ‘the lover you ran from. Why, Hope? Did your appalling stepfather make you so terrified of any sort of commitment that you had to run away?’

  ‘What commitment?’ she fired back. She caught up the bitter words on a deep breath. Forcing her voice to steady, she resumed, ‘I found out that I’m a lousy mistress. I’m too used to my independence to wait around for a man. Why not just agree that we had a good time together and leave it at that?’

  ‘Can you?’ he asked lethally. ‘You only had to say if you wanted to make something more of our relationship.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘Make up your mind,’ he said with cruel mockery. ‘If it was money you wanted—’

  Goaded into stupidity, she swung at him, regretting it instantly as one swift lean hand broke the blow, fastened around her wrist and hauled her into the heat and power of his poised warrior’s body.

  Eyes glittering, mouth fiercely disciplined into a hard, straight line, he said, ‘I always knew you’d have a temper.’

  ‘Of course I have a temper.’ Her brain was drifting, spinning, and she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the piercing intensity of his. ‘Keir,’ she breathed, her muscles loosening, her body preparing itself for his triumphant penetration. She licked dry lips, and saw with a fierce pang of pleasure the way his pupils narrowed, the gleaming shards of crystal heated by a reciprocal surge of desire, the heaviness of his eyelids as they lowered.

  Then he let her go and stood back.

  Chilled, she swayed, and grabbed the back of the nearest chair.

  ‘So,’ he said silkily, ‘what do we do now, Hope?’

  Before she could change her mind, she rapped out, ‘I’m pregnant. I’ve just found out.’

  Mutely she watched every bit of expression leach out of his face, watched the light die in his eyes; her eyes noted the sudden flick of a muscle in his jaw. He didn’t move, and she couldn’t breathe.

  When he spoke she almost collapsed with the release of tension.

  ‘I see,’ he said remotely. ‘When is it due?’

  She told him and he nodded, those cold, implacable eyes surveying her as though he could somehow see the baby—his baby. ‘You’ve lost weight. Are you suffering from morning sickness?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Then what, exactly?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t feel like eating, but I’m not sick. And I’m exhausted all the time, but apparently tha
t’s quite normal. I’m not sleeping very well—that’s probably the heat, although I should be used to it by now.’ Firmly, before she could babble any more, she closed her mouth.

  His black brows met. ‘Sit down. You look as though the wind could blow you away.’

  Struggling with a shocking, unjust disappointment, she lowered herself into the elderly cane armchair. It took effort to arrange her hands loosely in her lap, and even more to say, ‘I was going to write.’ Perhaps it was a need for reassurance that compelled her to add, ‘Would you have come even if you’d known I was pregnant?’

  His scathing glance chilled her to the bone. ‘I realise you don’t have much of an opinion of me,’ he said with biting precision, ‘but what sort of man would I be to ignore my own child? One of these days you’ll finally admit that I’m not like your stepfather.’

  Although, she thought cynically, he’d been prepared to play James Sanderson at his own game. ‘I know you’re not.’

  Perhaps she spoke too quickly, too carelessly, because his mouth compressed. Unable to meet his intent regard, she looked down. The adrenalin surge was fading fast, replaced by the leaden tiredness that had become her constant companion.

  He waited, as though expecting her to continue; when she didn’t he said crisply, ‘It doesn’t matter now—we have to decide what to do.’

  ‘I suppose I want you to make it all better,’ she said ironically. ‘Stupid of me. But this is your child, too, and you do have rights.’

  When she lifted her eyes she saw his gaze flick to her mouth, to her hair, and then, significantly, to her waist. ‘Some women would disagree,’ he said neutrally.

  It was like trudging through a desert—there were no signposts, no ways of telling whether she was heading in the right direction. ‘If you don’t want anything to do with the baby I’ll understand. I know you did your best to prevent one.’

  ‘And obviously failed. That’s not relevant.’

  Angry with herself for needing something he wasn’t able to give—and angry with him for playing his cards so close to his chest—she said, ‘I want what’s best for the baby.’