Needed: One Convenient Husband

by Fiona Brand

  “Thought so.” He shrugged out of the shirt and let it drop to the floor.

  Closing her arms around his neck, she lifted up against him, loving the hard-muscled planes of his body held tight against hers. She felt his fingers at the zipper of her dress. Seconds later, it drifted to the floor. Her bra followed, and she shivered at the searing heat of his skin against hers. Kyle’s fingers tangled in her hair, and she found herself walked backward in the direction of the bed.

  He bent his head and took one breast into his mouth, and for long moments her belly coiled tight, the room seemed to spin and there was no air.

  The first few times they had made love the sensations had been intense, now they seemed even more so and the awareness of the changes to her body settled in more deeply. She could not say for sure she was pregnant, but with every fiber of her being she felt it to be so and the knowledge added a depth and poignancy to their lovemaking, because every touch, every caress could be the last.

  When Kyle lifted his head, Eva ran her hands down his torso and deliberately unfastened his pants. She heard his swiftly indrawn breath, felt his tension. A split second later, he had scooped her up and deposited her on the bed. She watched as he peeled out of his trousers, but when she would have expected him to come down beside her, he remained standing and she realized he had a condom and was sheathing himself. When he climbed onto the bed beside her, she wound her arms around his neck and pulled him close.

  She felt the drag of her panties as he peeled them down and obligingly shimmied a little, helping him get rid of that last barrier. She felt his gaze on her in the dimness as he came down between her legs. Loving the weight of him, she clutched at his shoulders as slowly, gently, he fitted himself to her.

  His gaze connected with hers again. “Okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Lifting up against him, she pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him, the passion white-hot and instant as they began to move together. Long moments later, caught in a maelstrom of sensations that were almost too intense to bear, the responses peaked, jerking through her in dizzying waves. Moments later, Kyle collapsed beside her then half rolled, pulling her into a loose hold.

  The room had darkened further, so that the shadows appeared inky and the moonlight by contrast threw stark, cold light over the bare floorboards and the bed.

  Kyle’s fingers tangled in her hair, stroking the strands, as if he loved the feel of it. Emboldened, Eva propped herself on one elbow and studied the planes and angles of his face. She cupped his jaw, enjoying the abrasive roughness of his five-o’clock shadow. “How many times can you do that?”

  Kyle’s head turned into her touch. He caught her hand, bringing it to his mouth. “It depends. How many times did you want?”

  “Once more, at least.” Gathering her courage, Eva straddled him. Since the first night together, she’d made it her business to do some in-depth research about sex and had made some fascinating discoveries in the process. “But this time I get to be on top.”

  Fourteen

  Eva got up just as dawn touched the sky with gray. Sliding from the bed, she walked softly to her room, found her robe and belted it at her waist. Still moving quietly, she walked barefoot down to the front foyer, retrieved the test kit and took it with her into the downstairs bathroom.

  After she had used the kit, she set the stick carefully down on top of the cardboard box it had come in and washed and dried her hands. There were two windows in the stick. According to the instructions, if the smaller one showed a line, that meant she had done the test correctly, if the second window also showed a line, that was a positive result.

  Taking a deep breath, she checked the stick. There were two lines.

  She sat down on the side of the bath, her heart pounding. She was pregnant. The morning-after pill hadn’t worked.

  She had known it. Her period was late, and even though so little time had passed, she felt different. Her breasts were tender and she had gone off food. Her sense of smell had become acute, so that scents that hadn’t bothered her before were suddenly overpowering.

  She touched her abdomen, feeling a sense of wonder that there was a baby forming inside her. In the same instant, dread struck as she wondered if, in the lottery of genetic inheritance, her baby would lose. Her twin had died at age four. Her younger brother and sister had almost made it to five.

  Just long enough for her and Kyle—if he agreed they should stay together—to fall hopelessly in love with their child before having to say goodbye.

  Which was why she had to leave now. Kyle had already loved and lost a baby, but at least, as tragic as his loss had been, it had happened fast and unexpectedly.

  If she left now, she could go through the pregnancy and birth alone. She could choose to have the baby tested while she was pregnant, or wait until after it was born. Once she knew the result, she would contact Kyle and let him know. If the child was healthy, she would happily share custody if that’s what Kyle wanted. Given that this was a Messena child, she could not imagine that he would turn his back on his child. Kyle was an honorable man; when it came to the crunch he would be a father. But she was under no illusions about how he would feel about her for forcing the issue. She did not think they would have any chance now of a real marriage.

  If the child was affected, it would break her heart. She didn’t know how she would cope alone, but she would. Her mother had never recovered from watching three of her children die, but she was determined to be stronger than that. This child was precious. She would love it for every second that it was with her and if she was very, very lucky, maybe the baby wouldn’t have the disorder.

  Pushing to her feet, she put the stick back in the box and dropped it in the bin then walked quietly upstairs. She had packed last night, so other than changing into a pair of jeans and a soft cotton hoodie and slipping on sneakers, she was ready to go. Although, she needed to write Kyle a note first.

  Berating herself for not thinking to do that last night, she looked for pen and paper. There were pens in her tote, but the only paper was the back of an envelope. Beginning to feel a little frantic, because it was almost fully light now and she knew Kyle was an early riser, she quickly scribbled a note, explaining that she was leaving him and that she relinquished all rights to her inheritance until she was forty and that he could have the house.

  The plumbing gurgled as if the upstairs shower had just been turned on, which it probably had. Adrenaline pumped. That meant Kyle was awake.

  She picked up her overnight bag and checked that the hall was empty. Walking as quietly as she could, she made her way downstairs, wincing as a tread on the steps creaked under the extra weight of the bag.

  She placed the note on the hall table, along with her wedding and engagement rings and paused at the door to take a last look at the house. Throat aching, tears misting her eyes, she unhooked the chain then slowly turned the big old-fashioned key in its lock so it wouldn’t make a loud clunking noise and pushed the door wide.

  Cool morning air swirled around her as she gently closed the door, groaning at the audible click it made. Jogging to her car, which she had parked around by the garage so that wedding guests would have plenty of room out front to park, she loaded her tote and bag.

  She glanced at the kitchen windows, her heart pounding because she half expected to see Kyle, then climbed behind the wheel, started the engine and backed out. Gravel crunched beneath the tires, preternaturally loud in the early morning air. Certain Kyle must have heard, she spared a last glance for the house, but the front door was closed and windows were blank. Depressing the accelerator, she took off down the drive.

  * * *

  Kyle wrapped the towel around his waist when he heard the sound of Eva’s car starting. Cold knowledge hit him as he strode past her room and noted that the dressing table was bare. Cursing beneath his breath, he made it down the sta
irs and outside in time to see the taillights of her little sports car wink as she went down the drive.

  Stomach tight, he strode upstairs, found his phone and called her. When he got her answering service, he tried again just in case she was stuck in traffic and hadn’t had time to pull over and answer the call. He rang a couple more times then gave up.

  He found clothes, pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt then tried the phone again. Jaw tightening, he retrieved the keys to his Maserati from the top of his dresser and took the stairs two at a time. It was possible Eva had gone to work, although he didn’t think so. He knew for a fact that she didn’t have any weddings happening for a couple of weeks, and Jacinta was running the office meantime.

  He yanked the front door open then stopped when something fluttered to the floor. He picked up the envelope, which was covered with scrawled writing, as if Eva had written it in a hurry, and read then reread the words. His stomach hollowed out.

  Eva had left him.

  She knew that meant that she would not receive her inheritance, but she would manage without it. Without the inheritance she couldn’t buy the house, so Kyle could keep it.

  Except that Kyle didn’t want the house if Eva wasn’t going to be in it. He had bought it for her.

  Correction, he thought grimly, he had bought it for them, in order to make marriage to him more palatable for Eva.

  When push had come to shove, he had been just as manipulative as Mario in trying to entice Eva back into his life.

  She had left him.

  His heart was pounding, and he was having trouble thinking. The last time he had felt like this had been in Germany when he had lost Nicola and Evan, but at that point there had been nothing he could do.

  He had to think. Something had happened. It had to be that Eva was pregnant.

  In the moment he also understood that the secrecy about Eva’s past—a past he had only just begun to probe—was somehow tied in with the pregnancy. He didn’t know how, but it was a fact that Eva reacted to children in a way that wasn’t normal. She adored them but had seemed to recoil from the idea of being pregnant and having her own.

  Setting the note back down on the hall table, he decided there was no point in driving to Eva’s house or her business premises. She wouldn’t be at either place, because she knew he would look there.

  He did a quick search of her room. The jewelry case with the pendant and earrings was on top of a dresser. All of the dresser drawers were empty. The wedding gown and the shoes she’d worn were in the closet, but nothing else. There was no sign of the pregnancy test kit.

  He checked his bedroom and the bathroom, but the small trash can was empty. Frowning, he went back downstairs and did a systematic search of the rooms. In the first-floor bathroom, he found the pregnancy test kit discarded in the trash. When he pulled out the little stick, he noted the two lines. At a guess, that meant she was pregnant. He scanned the instruction leaflet, which confirmed it.

  He stared at the stick with its positive result, took a deep breath then another. He felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. Eva was pregnant with his child. He was going to be a father. Again.

  The thought filled him with a crazy pastiche of emotions—delight and the cold wall he’d hit when Nicola and Evan had died; horror and grief and self-recrimination.

  One other salient fact registered. He loved Eva.

  Correction, he was in love with her, because just saying the word love didn’t seem to encompass the intense out-of-control emotions that kept gripping him. He was in love with Eva Atraeus, and if he was honest, by varying degrees he had been in love with her since he was nineteen. But Mario’s complete veto of their relationship had closed that door.

  She loved him.

  There was no other reason for her to run. But he had been too concerned with guarding his own emotional safety—the protective habit that had dominated the past four years—to appreciate that love.

  He had fallen for Eva, but he had ruthlessly suppressed any softer feelings and focused on the sex. He had played it safe, using the surface image Eva projected as his compass north, even when he knew it was just a facade.

  Now there was a child, and in that moment, he knew that nothing mattered but Eva and their child.

  The specter of the past and his failure to protect his wife and child was just that, a burden of guilt he’d hung on to for too long and which hadn’t changed anything. Logically, he had always known that he could never have saved them. The terrorist attack had not been predictable.

  But he would not fail again. Eva was pregnant. They were going to have a child. He needed to be there for Eva and the baby—if she would let him.

  That long-ago conversation with Mario suddenly made him go cold inside. He had said Eva needed protection. Protection from what? He could remember asking Mario at the time and not getting a straight answer. He had assumed Mario had meant emotional protection, but what if it was protection from something or someone else?

  Suddenly the break-in at Eva’s house took on an added significance. A lot of items had been strewn over the floor, but a family photo had been set on the dining room table. Annoyed with himself for missing clues that should have alerted him to the fact that Eva had a problem, he walked through to the kitchen, picked up the phone and rang Gabriel.

  Gabriel picked up on the second ring, his voice gruff.

  Kyle explained he was taking a few days because Eva had run out on him. “She’s pregnant.”

  There was a small silence. “And the pregnancy’s a problem?”

  Put like that, Eva running out sounded like a simple reaction to an unplanned pregnancy, but Kyle knew it was a whole lot more than that. “She knows how I feel about having a child. She’s gone, Gabe. She’s prepared to end the marriage and let the inheritance go into trust.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Kyle filled Gabriel in on the break-in and his suspicion that someone from Eva’s past was putting pressure on her, maybe with blackmail.

  Kyle heard a voice in the background, Gemma, and Gabriel’s voice, muffled, as if his hand was over the receiver. “I had a conversation with Mario shortly before he died. Eva had a stepfather. Apparently, he stole all of Eva’s mother’s possessions shortly before she died. Not content with that, he tried to blackmail Mario. There was also a medical issue, although Mario didn’t go into detail about it.”

  The thought that Eva could be sick made Kyle frown. She had seemed perfectly healthy, but plenty of illnesses were invisible until the last stages. “I need to know more about Eva’s past. I think I need to access Mario’s safe deposit box.”

  “Meet me at the bank in thirty minutes.”

  Kyle hung up. Until the moment he had seen her car disappearing down the drive, he had been able to fool himself that what he and Eva had was controllable and, for want of a better word, convenient for them both.

  It wasn’t. Control had been an illusion. He had wanted her from the beginning. But it was more than that now. Somewhere along the way, the wanting had turned to a need that was bone deep and inexplicable.

  He had always thought that love between a man and a woman came down to a romantic cocktail of sex and companionship, but what he felt for Eva was raw and primitive. She had made him see her and not the savvy businesswoman, and she had stunned him with her capacity to love.

  She loved him.

  Until that moment, he hadn’t understood what it must have cost her to say those words. Still locked into the failure and guilt of his own past, the goodbyes he had said at the graves the morning of the wedding, he hadn’t been able to respond.

  When he hung up, he remembered the note, which was written on the back of an envelope. Walking back to the hall, he found it and reread it then turned it over. All the hairs at the base of his neck lifted when he noted that the address on the used en
velope was for a PI.

  Walking through to his study, he found his laptop, Googled the PI and found that Zachary Hastings specialized in locating missing persons and covering domestic situations. Certain he was close to discovering exactly what was going on in Eva’s life, he checked the time. Hastings’s office wouldn’t be open for an hour. Frustrated, he forced himself to make coffee while he tried to phone Eva again. When she refused to pick up, he left a message, asking her to call him.

  He made one more call to the young detective, Hicks, who had been investigating the break-in at Eva’s house. The information that Hicks provided, that they had a suspect and that Eva had made a statement to the effect that the same suspect had been harassing her, made his jaw compress.

  Hicks wouldn’t provide him with the name of the person they were investigating, because all of the paperwork was under Eva’s name, but Kyle was willing to bet it was the stepfather. It was just another example of how Eva, with the self-sufficient streak she had, out of necessity, acquired as a child—and which he had seen as a hard, brassy confidence—was used to managing on her own.

  * * *

  Gabriel was grim faced as they stepped into the sterile vault that housed their safe deposit boxes. He produced the two keys required, and Kyle opened the box, which was filled with family jewelry and documents. Kyle found the adoption papers with Eva’s birth name and those of her parents. He made a note of all three names and their birth dates. He flipped through the documents, which were mostly investment portfolios. At the bottom of the box, he found an envelope addressed to Mario. It was filled with Eva’s medical reports.

  “Bingo,” he said softly.

  Suddenly, he was beginning to have a glimmer of what Mario had meant all those years ago by Eva needing “protection.” Eva had a genetic disorder. He didn’t know what the implications of the disorder meant, exactly, but by the end of the day he would.