by Kim Lawrence
Can’t live with him can’t live without him. The words popped into her head—a cliche maybe, but it was a cliché that was particularly appropriate to her unenviable situation.
‘What do you think?’ she asked brightly.
His long lashes lowered in a concealing dark mesh over his eyes but he barely skipped a beat before replying, ‘I think…no.’
‘No what?’ Her shoulders lifted and tried to hide her growing desperation. ‘Which bit of my idea doesn’t work for you?’ If he didn’t like the farmhouse there were other options—there had to be because she simply couldn’t go on this way!
‘No as in no, none of it works for me.’
She opened her mouth to protest at his uncompromising response, but Luc got in before her.
‘How long were you standing in your little niche eavesdropping?’
The abrupt change of subject threw Megan. When it came to mental gymnastics she had learnt that she couldn’t keep up with Luc. It was a waste of time hoping he’d drop it. Once he got his teeth into a subject that was it—he just didn’t let go. She shrugged evasively and tried not to look guilty.
‘I just happened to be standing there.’ This explanation sounded lame even to her. ‘You can’t just say no like that.’ There was more than a hint of desperation in her hoarse addition.
‘I just did,’ he reminded her.
Megan gritted her teeth. He had to be the most infuriating man ever born. ‘We have to discuss—’
‘So how long did you just happen to be standing there?’
His sarcastic enquiry deepened the flush that already stained her smooth cheeks. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. It seemed like a private conversation. Now, about the arrangements for your move—’
‘No move, no arrangements. The only place I’ll be moving is into your bedroom. I’m sick of being stuck out in Siberia in more ways than one.’ While she was still digesting this extraordinary statement he seamlessly picked up the previous topic. ‘So you decided to listen in—don’t feel too bad about it. It’s a perfectly normal response. I just want to know how much you heard.’
‘So you can fill in the blanks…?’ Her lips twisted in a self-derisive grimace.
It was so unfair, she reflected despondently. She obsessively craved details about his life, but, with very few exceptions, the things she had picked up about him she had gained second-hand. Even during the time when they had been close he had held back.
Luc shared nothing of himself with her and she wanted to know everything there was to know! Some of her thirst for knowledge bordered on the masochistic, especially in matters concerning his marriage and his wife. Did he still talk to her? Did he keep all her letters?
But she would have settled for the silly little things like how old had he been when he learnt to ride a bike? What was his favourite flavour ice cream? What did he think about when he went on his long, solitary walks?
She wanted to know so much, but she knew so little, and yet it seemed to her that Luc knew all her secrets…all except one. And if he refused to move out of the house, she suspected it was only a matter of time before he found that out too! Well, one place he wasn’t going to move was her bedroom—pretty obvious she had misheard that casual insertion, but she had to check it out…
‘Did you just get all Alpha male and announce you were moving back into my bedroom?’ Her mildly amused tone invited him to correct her.
Luc, his expression stony didn’t respond to her smile. ‘You can move into mine if you prefer.’
‘Why would you want to share a room with me?’
One darkly delineated brow rose to a satirical angle. ‘Why does a man normally want to share a room with a woman?’
Was he trying to be deliberately cruel? ‘The normal hardly applies in this instance.’
Luc’s face darkened with displeasure as he noted the resigned expression on her face as she scanned her own ripe body.
‘Or are you worried about what Uncle Malcolm will think when he comes to stay next week?’ The probability that this was all about keeping up appearances brought a despondent slump to her shoulders.
The same potentially awkward situation had arisen at Christmas when her mother and Jean Paul had come to stay. It had been Megan who had come up with a solution. Luc’s response when she had assured him she would sleep on the camp-bed in the dressing-room had been scathing.
‘Why not go the whole hog and sleep on the floor?’ he’d suggested. ‘It makes about as much damned sense.’
Megan had talked him round eventually, though he’d insisted on being the one to sleep on the camp-bed, and he hadn’t pretended to like it—but then what man of six four was going to like the idea of sleeping on a narrow put-you-up bed. She hadn’t liked it either, but it had been better than the alternative. It had been bad enough with her mother dropping broad hints abut weddings without having to field awkward enquiries about their sleeping arrangements.
‘Uncle Malcolm really isn’t going to notice,’ she reassured him. ‘Besides, I think he already knows you only moved in because of the baby. And you can’t possibly sleep on that camp-bed again.’
Luc’s long lashes came down over a gleam of anger. ‘I wasn’t intending to sleep on the camp-bed.’
‘Well, normally I’d take my turn but it would probably collapse under my weight.’
‘You’re not sleeping on it either.’
‘But—’
‘And Mal’s not coming,’ he revealed casually.
‘Of course he’s coming.’
Luc shook his head. ‘No, I explained to him that you’re not up to visitors.’
For a moment Megan stared at him in open-mouthed incredulity. ‘You what…?’ She expelled a wrathful pent-up breath in one long, sibilant hiss. ‘How dare you tell him that!? She pressed her fingers to her temples where she felt the blood throbbing. ‘I’m absolutely sick of being treated like a child. You,’ she declared, stamping her foot, ‘have absolutely no right whatsoever. You’re not my husband.’
Luc’s glance lifted. A look she couldn’t quite pin down flickered briefly across his face. ‘If I was, would that mean you’d do what I suggested?’
She released a scornful laugh. ‘In your dreams!’
‘I thought as much.’
‘And you don’t suggest, you issue proclamations and expect everyone else to meekly follow them.’ Most people, as far as she could tell, did just that. His orders might have been concealed behind a smile and a laid-back attitude but, as far as Megan was concerned, they were still orders. ‘I don’t respond well to authority.’
‘Why, you little rebel, you.’ His thin-lipped taunt drew a gurgle of rage from her clamped lips. His brows lifted in enquiry. His phoney smile faded as he added, ‘Look, I’m not going to apologise for looking after your best interests, Megan. You need plenty of rest; remember what the doctor said.’
The occasion a couple of months earlier when she had turned up at his bedroom door in the middle of the night had borne no resemblance to the fantasy he had polished and nurtured over the weeks since they had shared a bed. The fear in her eyes when she had sobbed she was losing the baby would stay with him for ever.
‘Among other things, I remember he said it would be advisable for me to refrain from sex,’ she reminded him, flushing.
It had seemed pretty ironic at the time. Luc had been suitably supportive, dismissing the burden of celibacy with a shrug of his magnificent shoulders. But he had grilled the unfortunate medic on every possible aspect of her condition and treatment.
She didn’t have a condition, the doctor had said, her blood pressure was slightly raised and she was, quite simply, exhausted. The treatment he had recommended was rest and plenty of it. The slight blood loss that had alarmed her, he went on to explain, was most probably not significant. It happened to a lot of women and he was merely erring on the side of caution.
‘Most probably’ was not a phrase that Luc had been happy with, and he’d had no qualms about sha
ring this with the doctor. The GP, who usually had an air of reassuring calm, had looked in need of some rest himself by the time he had finally managed to get rid of Luc.
‘Do you think I’m going to leap on you Megan? You’ve made your feelings on that subject perfectly plain and I’m not in the habit of forcing myself on women who find my touch repulsive.’
‘Of course I don’t think you’d do that,’ she retorted flushing.
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to hold someone?’ He broke off and turned away.
‘You don’t want to hold me; you want to hold…’
Luc swung back and the expression of ferocious anger in his taut face shocked her.
‘What are you talking about?’ He heard the breathy whisper of her forlorn sigh and his anger slipped away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THERE was an unusual air of indecision about the habitually assured Luc as he ran a hand down his jaw. The frown line between his darkly defined brows deepened as he met her wary eyes.
‘Megan, you’re beautiful and you are carrying my child! But I have never felt my child move,’ he continued in a thickened, impassioned voice. ‘I have never held you in my arms at night, and felt my baby kick.’ His glance lowered to her belly.
Just as Megan felt she could not take that long, dragging silence for another second without screaming, Luc’s long lashes lifted from the curve of his razor-sharp cheekbones. The raw expression glittering in his deep-set eyes made the breath catch painfully in her throat.
‘You have erected a wall—a damned ten-feet-high three-feet-thick wall—between us.’ He spread his expressive hands to illustrate the dimensions under discussion. ‘And I’ve no idea why. One minute we were happy together, the next you act as though I’ve got the plague.’
This grim accusation startled Megan, who opened her mouth to deliver a horrified denial. She paused; could she deny it? Was there not a grain of truth in his accusation? For the first time she looked at things from his point of view; the things she saw brought a worried frown to her brow. It had been her desire to retain a little dignity that had prevented her from telling him she knew about the letter and about Grace. Now she wasn’t so sure it had been the right call.
‘Hell!’ he yelled into the silence. ‘You’re not just content to push me out of your bed, now you want me out of the damned house. What is it, Megan—out of sight, out of mind?’
If only it were that simple, Megan thought, shaking her head despondently. Suddenly she couldn’t hold her frustration in another second. ‘That’s the problem—you never are.’
He gave an impatient frown. ‘I’m never what?’
‘Out of my mind…I think about you constantly.’
Luc froze and took a deep shuddering breath. His hard, probing stare pinned her to the spot and he seemed to be able to see straight into her head. ‘You think about me…?’
Megan who was already regretting like crazy her candour, flushed and replied icily, ‘Didn’t I just say so?’
‘Then why the big sell…lovely farmhouse, views-to-die-for thing?’
‘I said you’re constantly in my head, not that I want you to be there or that I like it!’ She bit down viciously on her quivering lower lip.
Luc watched a single tear slide silently down her cheek and cursed softly under his breath. ‘For God’s sake, don’t cry!’ he pleaded in a husky voice. ‘I just can’t bear to see you cry—it kills me!’ he confessed, swallowing hard.
She gave a sniff. ‘S…sorry.’
Luc swore again and took her hand. Megan’s eyes widened. She could literally feel the tension and urgency in his lean body.
His eyes swept across her face. Something in his look made her heart pound. ‘We need to talk, but not here.’
Overwhelmingly conscious of the warm fingers curled around her own, Megan walked at his side without protest as he led her along the path to a group of buildings that housed amongst other things, the estate manager’s office.
‘This should be private enough.’
‘Hardly private—what if John comes in?’ Apparently whatever Luc had to say was so urgent he couldn’t wait to get back to the house? Suddenly she wasn’t so sure she wanted to know.
Luc dismissed her complaint with an off-hand shrug. ‘John has gone home early,’ he said, closing the door of the manager’s office behind them. ‘I told him to take the rest of the day off. He’s picking his daughter up from the station.’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘I expect he thought I’d tell you.’
‘He probably didn’t realise that you don’t talk to me any more.’
Luc was in the act of pulling forward a leather-padded swivel chair; at her bitter comment his dark head whipped up. ‘What the hell are you talking about? We talk…at least I do.’
‘Don’t make me laugh!’ Megan, closer to tears than laughter, pleaded. ‘You can’t bear to be in the same room as me!’ She heard her voice rise to a shrill, accusing shriek and winced.
A look of blank astonishment settled on Luc’s lean, expressive face.
‘Did you think I hadn’t realised, Luc? Please. I may not be as clever as you, but I’m not stupid. You’re not exactly subtle,’ she told him. ‘I walk in a room and you remember you need to be some place else. I know that the baby was all you wanted. But I need to be wanted.’
Luc shook his head and released a hoarse laugh of incredulity. ‘That’s what you think—that’s actually what you think…?’ Like his voice, the hand he dragged down his jaw was not quite steady.
‘I don’t think, I know,’ she retorted fiercely.
Muttering darkly under his breath, Luc wheeled the chair towards her and, ignoring her complaints, pressed her firmly down into the leather seat.
‘I don’t want to sit down.’
Luc, his hands on the armrests, leaned down towards her. The intimate sensation of his warm breath brushing against her cheek made all the downy hairs on Megan’s ultrasensitive skin stand on end. A sigh shivered through her body.
‘Tough.’
Her eyes widened in indignation. ‘I’m pregnant!’
‘So I have to be nice to you?’ One dark brow arched. ‘Even,’ he added grimly, ‘if you go out of your way to be unpleasant to me. You’re the one who wanted not to have any special treatment just because you’re pregnant,’ he reminded her.
‘You’re a bully!’
Her tremulous contention drew a harsh laugh from Luc, who, with a stern warning to, ‘Stay put, and shut up,’ settled himself down on the desk opposite. He pressed his hands against his thighs and stretched his long legs in front of him.
Megan did as he asked, not from any desire to be cooperative, but because the sheer shock at being addressed this way had literally robbed her of speech. She was just rediscovering her vocal cords when he said something that struck her dumb all over again.
‘Are you surprised I can’t be in the same room as you under the circumstances?’ he wanted to know.
Megan turned the colour of her white shirt and tried not to let him see how much his words had hurt her. ‘I suppose not,’ she agreed unhappily.
She knew it wasn’t uncommon for men to be turned off when their partners were pregnant, but Luc’s revulsion seemed to go further. Was it all pregnant women he didn’t like being around or just her?
Luc was a very sensual man. It was not logical to expect a man like him to survive without sex. Her dreams were plagued with jealous nightmares of slim, eager women throwing themselves at him and him not ducking! Did Grace still enjoy his bedroom skills? Had they ever stopped being lovers? The not knowing, and the not knowing whether she wanted to know, was killing her.
‘It’s not my fault.’ It was, though—she was the one who had chucked him out of her bed.
A spasm of irritation crossed his dark, devastatingly handsome features. ‘It’s your fault I can’t be in the same room as you, you stupid, infuriating, gorgeous woman!’ he yelled.
Gorgeous? Am I hearing t
hings, or did he just call me…? Her glance dropped to the bulky mass of her body and she shook her head; she had definitely misheard.
‘My fault…?’ she said cautiously while noting the dark bands of colour that stained the high contours of his chiselled cheekbones.
‘You set the damned rules: separate bedrooms, no sex, just good friends…this ringing any bells?’ He broke off, breathing hard, and lifted his hands to his head, sinking his fingers into the dark strands of thick glossy hair.
‘The doctor said it wasn’t safe…’
‘You had already asked me to leave, Megan.’
The man who prided himself on his self-control, his ability to view situations with objectivity, made a visible effort to control himself, but his hardly fought composure slipped again when he encountered her wide shocked intensely blue gaze.
‘Dear God, don’t look at me like that,’ he pleaded hoarsely. ‘I respect how you feel at the moment…it’s just damn hard.’
‘How would you know how I feel?’ Please let him not know.
‘You told me.’
Megan shook her head. If she had confided her feelings she thought she might have remembered. It occurred to her that they might be talking at cross purposes.
‘Did you or did you not say the idea of sex while you’re pregnant makes you feel ill?’
Of course she recalled the words slung in the heat of an argument. ‘You believed me…?’ She gasped, unable to disguise her amazement.
‘There’s absolutely no way I’m going to force myself on you; it’s just difficult for me to be around you when I want…’ He stopped, his vibrant colour fading dramatically as his narrowed eyes darted over the contours of her face. ‘You lied…?’
Megan barely registered his hoarse question. An extraordinary idea was forming in her head. Dear God, now wouldn’t that be ironic? I’m sitting one end of the enormous house lusting after him and he’s sitting the other…!
The baby chose that moment to remind her of its presence, launching a kick at her ribs so strong that she scrunched up her eyes and cried out softly. It also reminded her that the idea of anyone being driven mad with frustrated lust for her in her present condition was remote, to put it mildly.
