Bad Blood Collection

by Various Authors

  The doctor came soon afterwards and declared that everything was fine and that Aneesa just needed to eat. So she was waited upon and force-fed for the entire day by her well-meaning family. But nothing could stop the sensation of cold sneaking into her bloodstream as if some life force was being cut off.

  That evening, like an automaton, she got dressed to go to the hotel in a long stretchy black jersey dress. For the first time she’d noticed that she couldn’t get into her jeans anymore. She put makeup on her eyes purely to disguise the shadows underneath and to feel like she had some armour on. Slipping into flat sandals and draping a long shawl around her shoulders that she could pull over her head and belly to disguise herself, sari-style, she left the house for the hotel.

  Despite her disguise, the minute she walked into the foyer of the luxurious hotel, a man stepped forward and said obsequiously, ‘Miss Adani?’

  She nodded. And he gestured with a hand. ‘Please, allow me to show you to Mr Wolfe’s suite.’

  Of course, she realised a little hysterically. It wasn’t as if she’d ever gone to or come from his suite by the conventional route the first time around.

  They ascended in a lift marked Private and came to a smooth halt all too soon. Aneesa’s palms felt sweaty and her heart was beating unevenly. She prayed she wouldn’t faint again.

  The concierge, or manager, ushered her out and opened the door to the suite. ‘Have a good evening, Miss Adani.’

  And then the door was shut behind her. Aneesa let the shawl drop from her head to her shoulders. Déjà vu washed over her with bittersweet nostalgia. The suite was much the same as it had been that night. It appeared to be empty, only one or two lamps throwing out little halos of golden light.

  She could see though that there were lights coming from the terrace, and the sliding doors were open, sending the evening breeze drifting through. The evening was a dusky opalescent colour outside and Aneesa could see the ubiquitous Indian kites floating against the darkening sky as people practiced off their rooftops.

  A sudden feeling of anger gripped her. Why wasn’t Sebastian meeting her downstairs in more anonymous surroundings, under brighter lights? She hated him for bringing her back into this seductive world. And where was he anyway? Aneesa suddenly needed air, needed to breathe before she saw Sebastian and faced the final demise of their relationship as lovers, before it became about the logistics of parenting from their respective countries and homes.

  She made for the terrace and assumed he was in the office room, perhaps catching up on a call. She walked straight outside and went to the ornately carved stone wall. Gripping it, she took a deep breath, much as she had that night all those weeks before.

  And, exactly like that night, a voice from behind her drawled seductively, ‘Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of jumping.’

  Aneesa’s heart stopped, and started again with an uneven beat. This time she didn’t whirl around in shock and surprise. She stayed where she was for a long moment, and then steeled herself before turning to face Sebastian, and when she did she nearly fell down all over again. He was devastatingly handsome, even dressed in just a white shirt and dark trousers. But it was as if she was seeing him for the first time.

  She smiled bitterly in reaction. ‘I had no intention of jumping that night, and I certainly have no intention of jumping now. No man is worth that.’

  He strolled towards her then with hands in his pockets, making her want to take in his lean hips. She fought the urge to look.

  ‘But what you’re implying with that statement is that you’ve weighed up the possibility and found it lacking …’

  Aneesa snorted and felt a little bewildered. Why was Sebastian being so … seductive? Why wasn’t he being all businesslike? Something caught her eye behind him … and why was there a table for two set for dinner complete with a softly flickering candle and an ice bucket with champagne?

  Pain gripped her so hard she saw stars. She garbled out, ‘Oh, God … I’m sorry. You have a date. You were out here preparing and I came out …’

  She went to walk back inside but suddenly Sebastian was there, gripping her arm. Her shawl fell to the ground.

  ‘No, no one else is coming here, Aneesa, it’s just you and me.’

  ‘But …’ Her voice wouldn’t work. She swallowed. ‘Why? Like this? I thought you just wanted to discuss arrangements.’

  He dropped her arm from his grip and for the first time she saw a crack in his composure. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I guess I do … in a way.’

  Aneesa felt seriously overwhelmed and was afraid that, much like last night, she’d end up doing or saying something to give herself away spectacularly.

  Sebastian looked at her so intensely though that she couldn’t think straight.

  ‘Do you remember after we made love last night … do you remember saying anything?’

  Aneesa forced her sluggish brain to work. What on earth could he be—? She froze. Every part of her body froze. She remembered now, in chilling detail. She’d whispered the fateful words. She’d thought she’d just said them in her head. But she’d said them out loud. No wonder he’d left so fast this morning.

  She tried to back away but couldn’t because the wall was behind her. She alternately shook and nodded her head, her brain imploding. ‘I … I’m not sure what you mean …’

  Sebastian was grim. ‘You said you loved me.’

  Any hope of retaining dignity fled in an instant. Aneesa gulped. ‘Well … I may have … I mean, I don’t remember but perhaps afterwards … but it didn’t mean anything.’

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. ‘So it was just a helpless transitory emotional response to a physical act? Is that what you’re saying?’

  Aneesa gulped again. Sebastian looked so formidable. And then she seemed to regain some sanity, or at least equilibrium. ‘Why, Sebastian? Why do you even care what I might have said? You’ve made it very clear all along that nothing would come of this relationship except two adults having a baby. From the moment I arrived in England you fought my presence.

  ‘So what on earth does it matter to you what I might have said, or what I might feel? You’re leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘Am I?’ He laughed but it sounded pained. ‘To be honest, I don’t know if I’m coming or going and I’ve been feeling like that for a long time now….’

  He brushed past her then to rest his hands on the stone balustrade, and dropped his head between his shoulders. Something about him looked so tortured in that moment that Aneesa had to fight back the urge to put out her hand to touch him in comfort.

  His head came up and his eyes speared hers. ‘But I’ve also been feeling alive, and connected, for the first time in my life.’

  He stood tall again and Aneesa felt curiously weightless. He reached out a hand and curled it around her jaw, fingers around her neck under the heavy fall of her hair. She could feel a slight tremor in his hand and her heart tripped.

  ‘I never … wanted to create a family. I never wanted to marry. I never wanted to fall in love. I had no frame of reference for all of those things that most people aspire to, and take for granted. I’ve always been terrified that something of my father’s twisted genes was lying dormant in me and that basic happiness was something I could never have, as if I was jinxed in some way.

  ‘But seeing Nathaniel get married, and Jacob come home to try and make amends … seeing him come to terms with the past, and the way he’s trying to bring us together again, has changed my perspective. Hearing you say you love me last night—whether you meant it or not, it freed something inside me. I hadn’t allowed myself to think that you could possibly have feelings for me. You’d only come to me because of the baby …

  ‘These past few days, being with your family … It’s so … easy. They’re easy. Love for them is freely given and taken. You have no idea what it’s like to witness that, to experience it as a reality, not just an elusive concept.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Well, you do. You’ve grown up wit
h it. It’s why you’re so open and so … honest.’

  Aneesa felt like cringing amidst the shock at what he was saying. He had to be referring to her constant nagging and questioning to get him to open up and spill his innermost secrets.

  He seemed to struggle with something, his hand still on her jaw, and finally said, ‘My family … you’ve seen something of what we experienced. It’s not an excuse but perhaps it’s how I can explain to you why it’s taken me so long to realise the most important thing of my life.’

  Sebastian put his other hand on her jaw now and stepped in close. Inexplicably tears started to fill Aneesa’s eyes and she wasn’t even sure why she was crying. Sebastian smiled. ‘Your eyes … do you know that they are like two worlds of emotion? The first night we met I was in awe of how expressive they were.’

  Aneesa struggled for control, but couldn’t speak.

  ‘Last night, I felt our baby move …’

  Aneesa frowned. She’d felt flutters for a few days now but had put it down to Sebastian’s effect on her.

  ‘… and for the first time I really felt connected to him … or her. This baby is mine, ours. And I don’t want it to be brought up on two different continents, being shuttled back and forth on holidays. Isolated. A lonely child.’

  Aneesa sobered up, her tears cleared. She had a feeling she knew exactly what Sebastian was getting at now, what he meant by ‘the most important thing.’ He wanted to do the right thing, take care of them, because now he felt he could deal with it. And because she’d stupidly revealed that she had feelings for him. She took down his hands.

  ‘Sebastian, I know you’ve been through a lot with your family and I’m so sorry that you had to go through that. But believe me, with the greatest will in the world, a relationship that’s not based on love is not going to be the best thing for your child. Our child. I’m sorry if that sounds impossibly idealistic to you and I can see that you’ve had some revelations, but please … don’t make us do this.’

  She looked away because those damn tears were coming back. She felt rather than heard a movement and looked down when she felt her hand being tugged into Sebastian’s. He was on one knee at her feet and the tears sprang in earnest.

  She shook her head. ‘Please, Sebastian, don’t … you don’t know how cruel it is.’

  He looked up at her. ‘What would be cruel is if you were to turn your back on me and deny me the only chance of happiness I’ll ever have.’

  He gripped her hand tighter. ‘You may or may not have meant what you said last night, but all day I’ve been praying that you did. Aneesa … I’m in love with you. I’m so fathoms-deep in love with you that I’m drowning. I’ve been falling for you since the moment our eyes met that evening, when you looked at me and made my world go spinning in the other direction. But I had no idea what was happening. Not until we came back here … and I saw what love is, and recognised it for the first time in my life.

  ‘It’s as if I’ve had emotional dyslexia—every time you got a bit closer, I pushed you away because it threatened every bit of self-defence I’d built up over the years.’

  He took something out of his pocket and Aneesa saw a ring, a simple princess-cut diamond, about half the size of her first engagement ring and already infinitely more precious. Her throat was clogged with emotion and shock and the incredible burgeoning hope that perhaps this was real.

  ‘I can’t live without you, Aneesa.’ His eyes were intense. ‘I would die. It’s that simple. And the thought of having this baby still terrifies me but I know that if you’re by my side, I might just have a chance of not ruining my child’s existence completely.

  ‘So please—’ with a shaking hand he put the ring on her finger ‘—will you wear this ring … and be my lover and my best friend, for ever. I want to marry you but I know how you feel about the prospect of going through that again and I wouldn’t do that to you unless you wanted it….’

  Aneesa tugged Sebastian up until he stood before her. She finally managed to get out through the rising emotion, ‘I did mean it … last night. I couldn’t hold it in. I’d been holding it in for so long that I knew it would come out eventually. That’s why I wanted to come home. I thought you’d end up hating me for intruding into your life so much. I came to you because I was pregnant, yes, but I hadn’t stopped thinking about you since that night. I would have wanted to see you again no matter what….’

  Sebastian took her face in his hands and kissed her so passionately that she felt dizzy and then he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom where they’d made love that first night. Where their baby had been conceived.

  With tenderness infusing every moment, they made love again. And afterwards, wrapped in the circle of Sebastian’s arms, Aneesa said softly, ‘I feel like this is a dream. I’m afraid I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.’

  He pulled her right into him and put his hand over hers on her belly, over their baby, and said huskily with humour lacing his voice, ‘If I can believe, then you definitely can. And the baby agrees, can you feel him?’

  Aneesa held her breath and there it was, the tiniest of flutters against their joined hands. They seemed to be growing stronger by the minute, along with her belief that this was real, and that with the indestructible force of love between them, anything would be possible, even a second attempt at marriage.

  As if Sebastian could hear her thoughts, he spoke close to her ear. ‘We could go to my island, and get married on the beach. With just my staff as witnesses …’

  Incredible joy bubbled up inside Aneesa and she turned so that she could look up into Sebastian’s face. It was completely open, no shadows or secrets lurking in those blue eyes anymore, and her heart turned over.

  She smiled. ‘I’d like that.’

  Sebastian frowned for a second. ‘Would your parents mind?’

  Aneesa smiled ruefully. ‘I think they would be forever grateful not to have to go through anything approximating a public wedding again.’

  Sebastian grinned and kissed her with achingly slow sweetness and then drew back. With a mischievous glint in his eye he said carefully, ‘You remember when you said you regretted the fact that you hadn’t asked your aunts and cousins to do your henna tattoo ritual when you had the chance?’

  She nodded, feeling a flame start to ignite in her belly.

  ‘Well, if you wanted to give them the chance to do it over again, I wouldn’t mind….’

  Aneesa looked mock shocked. ‘Sebastian Wolfe, are you telling me that you have developed a wedding henna tattoo fetish?’

  He came over her then and she exulted in his solid weight between her legs which she was already opening to entice him to a more intimate position. Between kisses, he growled, ‘I have an Aneesa Adani fetish. Just be thankful that I got the whole unwrapping-the-Indian-princess-on-her-wedding-night out of my system. Otherwise I’d have you laden down with jewels and in a sari all over again. As it is I’m willing to settle for a simple white dress, no shoes, our baby bump and the tattoo….’

  Aneesa twined her arms around Sebastian’s neck and arched into him. ‘Do you know,’ she said a little unsteadily, because she felt emotional at the thought of ‘our baby bump’ and also because Sebastian’s hand was exploring between her legs, ‘that when I have the tattoo done they’ll write your name within the design and you won’t be allowed to sleep with me till you find it….’

  ‘Well, then, tell them to make it small and hard to find because I’m going to enjoy making you beg for mercy and curse their artistic ingenuity.’

  Aneesa gasped her pleasure out loud when he joined their bodies. And for the next few minutes, she was happy to forget about anything but this blissful moment which held within it the promise of all their blissful moments to come.

  1994: Jacob’s darkest days …

  Nomadic Jacob finds his way to a devastated village in Nepal, where for the first time he feels he can be of use, helping these people rebuild their lives and homes. For the next two years
, Jacob works tirelessly, the intense physical labour driving away the nightmares that continue to haunt him, but mentally Jacob is on a knife edge. Finally, exhausted, he collapses and is confined to his bed, where the demons of his past return, more vivid than ever.

  Neighbouring monks hear of Jacob’s plight and in return for his hard work at the village they offer him sanctuary at their monastery. Slowly, they help Jacob recover to full health, but whilst his body is getting stronger, Jacob’s spirit is weak. Within the cool walls of the monastery the monks impress on him that control of the body is nothing without control over the mind. Jacob begins to see that whilst he can’t change the past, he can control his future and slowly begins to put the darkness behind him, finding a new peace.

  Behind the scenes at Wolfe Manor …

  Share a secret about Sebastian or Aneesa?

  Aneesa was going to study medicine when she was discovered by a model scout in a shopping mall with school-friends, so she never followed that career path.

  Who is the biggest, baddest Wolfe?

  Well, I’d have to say Sebastian of course: all that silent, brooding energy and tortured demons …! But after Sebastian I’d say it has to be Jacob because he’s the one overshadowing everyone until the very end.

  Which Wolfe brother did you most fancy?

  Sebastian of course, again! But after Sebastian I think I fancied Jacob the most as he’s the one with all the scars and pain. He’s the most elusive and the one I’d be most curious about: who is he going to settle down with and how will he overcome his demons?

  Which is Sebastian’s favourite room in Wolfe Manor?

  I think his favourite room is his bedroom because he can lock himself away from all the chaos and turmoil outside.

  How did Sebastian pop the big question?

  He got down on one knee like any good self-respecting hero and presented her with a gorgeous ring!

  ABBY’S WRITING SECRETS …