by Susan Napier
Duncan was the only other person at work who had known about her pregnancy—something that he had guessed for himself even before her suspicions were medically confirmed. Dismayed by the acuteness of his perception, she had reason to be grateful that he had respected her plea not to mention her condition to anyone else, for it was barely two weeks later that tragedy had struck—two weeks during which she and Harry had hugged their secret joy to themselves, savouring the fact that they were to become parents at last.
The loss of her unborn child had been such a deeply personal grief that Kalera had been unwilling to expose it to the harsh glare of publicity which had surrounded Harry’s death and subsequent funeral. Her parents had chided her for dropping out of the grief therapy provided for the surviving victims of the massacre but the gruel-ling sessions had reminded Kalera too uncomfortably of the mind-games played by the so-called spiritual gurus of her youth.
Shivering in Duncan’s arms, she finally acknowledged that she couldn’t escape her pain by pretending it didn’t exist; she was merely prolonging the agony of her bereavement. But she was terribly afraid that the feelings of guilt and abandonment which she was experiencing would never go away…
When Kalera’s tears had finally dwindled into shuddering sniffles, Duncan tucked his handkerchief into her hand and hoisted her from the couch.
‘Come on, I’m taking you home—’
‘No, really—I’ll be all right,’ she protested automatically, brushing the back of her hand across her swollen eyelids.
‘No, you won’t—you look terrible,’ said Duncan ruthlessly. ‘As if you’ve been beaten with a rubber hose.’
It was precisely how she felt—fragile and pulpy, inside and out. Every bone seemed to be bruised to the marrow and her head felt stuffed with cotton wool.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. We’re both finishing early for the day.’
Unprecedented orders from a self-acknowledged workaholic. ‘But—you’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes—’ she protested weakly.
‘So? I’ll tell Anna to reschedule. Get your things and we’ll slip out the back way before anyone knows we’re gone.’ He was tapping out a message to Anna on his keyboard even as he spoke and, exhausted by emotion, Kalera allowed herself to be whisked out of the office and into his little-used private lift.
At that moment she would have meekly followed Duncan Royal into the jaws of hell.
Instead he turned out to be her guide, and helter-skelter ride, to a brief slice of heaven.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONCE down in the underground car park a firm hand in the small of her back steered Kalera towards the red McLaren F1 that was Duncan’s most spectacular extravagance.
‘But what about my car?’ she fretted belatedly, glancing over her shoulder at the sedate family saloon which Harry had always kept in immaculate condition.
‘It’ll be safe enough here overnight. If you think I’m going to let you drive in the state you’re in, you’ve got another think coming,’ Duncan said, handing her into the passenger seat of his car and brushing aside her fumbling fingers to buckle her into the safety harness and tuck her skirt under her slender thigh, the gentleness of his touch a direct contrast to the sternness of his words.
Kalera’s reserves of energy were too low to generate even a token objection to his high-handedness. She shut her mind to the difficulties of getting to work the next day and sank into the plush leather, closing her eyes and allowing the deep, throaty purr of the powerful engine to act like a sedative on her tired brain.
To her relief Duncan made no effort to engage her in conversation and, instead of surging onto the streets with his usual impatience, drove with an exaggerated care that she realised with detached amusement was a positive insult to the rampant machine under his control.
Insulated by her weary lassitude, Kalera wasn’t prepared for the icy attack of panic that hit her when she opened her eyes and saw the signpost for her street.
‘No! Wait—don’t turn here—’ She flung out a hand, clutching at the flowing sleeve of Duncan’s loose-fitting white shirt, urgently tugging his arm away from the wheel, causing the car to shy like a nervous thoroughbred.
Duncan cursed violently under his breath as he braked, skilfully controlling their sudden swerve. ‘Why? This is where you live…’
Only because Harry’s life insurance had paid off the hefty mortgage, otherwise Kalera wouldn’t have been able to continue to afford the payments on her single income. She could see the green roof of the house which they had saved so hard to buy…a family home in a suburban neighbourhood bustling with children, within walking distance of the local shops and primary school. A house purchased on hope and dreams…
Kalera’s breath caught in her throat, her restraining grip tightening, her skin creeping with an inexplicable dread. ‘I don’t want to go home yet!’ she declared flatly.
Duncan pulled into the kerb and looked down at her tense white face.
‘I wasn’t just going to dump you on the doorstep and run, Kalera,’ he said, disentangling his crumpled shirt from her stiff fingers. ‘You won’t have to be by yourself—I’ll come inside with you—’
‘No!’ She shuddered, unable to articulate her nameless fear. He thought the house was empty, but it wasn’t. Memories crouched in the very walls, waiting to leap out at her the moment she let her guard down. ‘No! I don’t want to go in there. Please—can’t we go somewhere else?’
‘Where would you like me to take you?’
‘I don’t know—it doesn’t matter…anywhere!’ she said, her voice rising shrilly. ‘I don’t care—please—can’t you just drive?’
That was how she had ended up at Duncan’s home and, ultimately, in his bed.
Some of the details were a blur. For instance she didn’t remember the drive to his house in Ponsonby, and only vaguely recalled the cup of sweet tea and sugary snack that he had forced her to eat in his aggressively modern kitchen when he had discovered that she had skipped lunch. She did remember the blooming headache that had made her grateful to accept his offer of a lie-down in a cool, mint-green room with a soft-sprung bed and dark teak shutters with which she could shut out the strident afternoon sun. Sleep was the perfect escape, both from her own pain and the subtle pressure of Duncan’s curiosity.
When she woke up it was pitch-dark, and she was sweating and trembling violently from a familiar nightmare, her throat dry and raw, her legs cramping as if she had been running too fast for too long. Except for her shoes she was still fully dressed and her twisted clothes stuck clammily to her skin as she fought free of the light blanket that had been placed over her as she slept.
She groped her way off the bed, her heart hammering as she tried to orientate herself in the smothering darkness. She knocked against something with sharp edges and cried out as she fell and suddenly Duncan was there, picking her up and setting her back on her unsteady feet.
‘Kalera? Are you all right? I heard you shouting something.’
‘I…woke up,’ she said stupidly, her heart easing its frantic beat as she recognised the harsh, rasping tone. She stepped away from his touch. ‘I—for a moment I didn’t know where I was. Wh-what time is it?’
‘Late.’ There was a whisper of sound and a wall-light clicked on, and she found herself blinking at a dishevelled-looking Duncan, his jaw roughened with dark whiskers, his hair lightly matted on one side of his head, a faint pink crease-mark impressed on his hard cheek. A short black towelling robe was insecurely belted at his waist, the sagging lapels revealing a silky swatch of dark hair curling across his deep chest.
‘Too late for you to bother going home.’ His voice was blurred around the edges with sleep but his eyes were sharp and alert as he watched her fold her arms around her waist in an unconscious gesture of self-protection, her gaze jerking away from his bared chest. ‘When you didn’t wake up for dinner I thought you’d probably sleep through until the morning.’
Her ar
ms tightened about her waist as she looked enviously at the bed, wishing that oblivion were as easy as he made it sound. She rarely had an unbroken night’s sleep these days.
‘You may as well go back to bed for what’s left of the night,’ he added softly, persuasively. ‘My room is just across the hall if you need me—near enough to hear you call out. You know nothing can happen to you here.’
Her tautly strung nerves quivered. Didn’t he realise that it was when you felt most safe that you were most vulnerable? Innocent places and activities could harbour a danger all the more horrific for being so unexpected.
When Kalera didn’t answer immediately, his voice roughened. ‘Do you want me to get dressed and get the car out?’
He would do it, too, if she said yes. He made her feel both guilty and foolish with the gruff offer. She couldn’t be so churlish as to accept.
‘No.’ It came out as a husky whisper and she tried again. ‘No, you don’t have to do that…but I—’ Her hands plucked distastefully at her crumpled grey suit and high-necked maroon blouse, more suited to an air-conditioned office than a warm spring night. ‘I feel so hot and sticky—I’m not used to sleeping in my clothes…I suppose that’s what woke me up.’
He didn’t point out that people didn’t usually wake up screaming from the heat.
‘There’s a bathroom next door; a warm shower might make it easier for you to get back to sleep. I always have one before I go to bed.’ And before she could begin to feel uneasy at the thought of taking her clothes off in his domain Duncan yawned hugely, stretching his arms so that his robe sagged even more, sliding off one sleek, muscled shoulder. ‘I put a clean towel and some things in there for you earlier. Meantime you won’t mind if I turn in…I’m definitely not very scintillating company this early in the morning. G’night, Kalera.’
He turned and shuffled out of the room in a manner that suggested his brain had already checked the close-box on the window of his consciousness.
The ‘things’ he had left in the bathroom were neatly arranged on the top of a folded bath sheet, hand-towel and face-cloth—shampoo and a fragrant feminine soap pristine in its wrapper, a toothbrush still in its packet and a black silk pyjama top with a monogrammed ‘R’ on the pocket.
Kalera used the toothbrush and then, ignoring the shampoo, wrapped her hair in the hand-towel while she stood under the warm, pulsing water. The clear red soap slicked over her smooth skin, the bubbles bursting in a strawberry-scented flurry that made her sharply aware of how long it was since she had bought anything but utilitarian supermarket toiletries. Since Harry died she had avoided anything that served to emphasise her femininity. To want to feel attractive or sexy seemed a betrayal of their love.
She lifted her face to the spray, helpless to prevent the insidiously arousing memories that were suddenly swirling around her, like the rising steam in the small glass cubicle. Harry had loved to join her in the shower. Her dear staid, stodgy husband had been a secret sensualist and anything but stodgy in his lovemaking. It was through his unashamed delight in the physical side of their relationship that Kalera had learned to revel in her own deeply sensual nature.
From the time she was old enough to realise what her parents’ ‘open marriage’ really meant she had nurtured a strong distaste for casual promiscuity. Unlike the rest of her schoolfriends’ parents, Kris and Silver Donovan had expected their daughter openly to indulge her adolescent sexual curiosity and had been bewildered when she’d shown no interest in exercising her freedom. But Kalera had yearned for a conventional morality where sex was cherished as something special—personal and private between two people, not just another physical appetite to be satisfied with whomever happened to be convenient and willing. She’d been wary of the strong passions that seethed through her maturing body, repressing her sexual urges out of fear that she was destined to roam in her intemperate mother’s footsteps.
It was Harry who had freed her from her inhibitions. He had shown her that enjoying sex with the man she loved didn’t mean she had a predisposition for promiscuity, that it was possible to be wild and out of control in bed and still be utterly faithful out of it. After Harry she had never looked at another man, never been tempted, not even in her fantasies.
As her hands moved over her soapy skin Kalera ached for her husband’s slow touch, for the obliterating pleasure that could block out everything but the moment. She missed the physical side of their relationship with a fierceness that shocked and dismayed her—it seemed so selfish to be dwelling on what she had lost, when it was Harry who had lost everything…
Her eyes closed as her palms glided up over her slim hips and supple waist and cupped her firm, high breasts, shaping them with yearning fingers. She imagined that she had Harry back, that he was right there behind her, that they were his hands slipping and sliding erotically over the slick, wet hills and valleys of her flesh…
She groaned, the involuntary sound jolting her out of her forbidden fantasy into a horrified awareness of what she was doing. Her hands shook as she hurriedly turned off the shower and grabbed the fluffy bath sheet, quickly towelling the moisture off her tingling skin.
Her whole body felt tight and hot and achy, and a treacherous weakness trembled in her limbs. Avoiding her image in the steamy mirror, she unwrapped the towel from her head and shook out the loose pins from her sagging hairstyle, raking her fingers through the tangles. She shrugged into the pyjama jacket, shivering as the cool silk settled against her sensitised skin, and rolled up the too long sleeves, but when it came to the elegantly small buttons the fine tremor in her fingers made her so clumsy that she gave up, wrapping the slithery fabric across her front and folding her arms under her breasts to keep it in place. The jacket, designed to be roomy on a tall, muscular male, swamped her in loose folds to below her knees—like a black shroud, she thought with sudden revulsion.
From outside in the quiet street came several short, sharp reports as a cranky car sputtered past with a backfiring engine. The small explosions echoed like gunshots in Kalera’s overwrought mind and her mouth flooded with the metallic taste of terror as she was catapaulted back into her worst nightmare.
Half crouching in an instinctive effort to make herself as small and insignificant a target as possible, she darted blindly for sanctuary. The door to Duncan’s bedroom was ajar but the interior was dark and silent and she faltered, her ears straining for the reassuring sound of his presence, but she was unable to distinguish anything over the violent pounding of her pulse.
He had promised he would be there if she needed him. He had to be there! Her panic-stricken sense of disorientation was fading, but fear clogged like pack-ice in her veins as logic battled with her unreasoning dread of abandonment. If Duncan was only asleep, surely she should be able to hear the sound of his breathing? Oh, God! Even young, apparently healthy people sometimes died of heart attacks, or suddenly, in their sleep, for no reason…
She pushed the door wide, the muted light from the hall projecting her blurry shadow across the pale carpet as she crept into the room. She could see a motionless lump in the centre of the wide bed and a thready whimper escaped her lips, her heart stopped momentarily, only to resume its frantic beat as Duncan abruptly reared up on one elbow, his reactive speed indicating that he had been lying there awake in the dark.
‘Kalera? What’s wrong?’
Unutterable relief throttled her speech. Nothing was wrong. Not now. In the dim light she could see that Duncan was bare-chested, his broad shoulders gleaming like polished wood, the muscles of his supporting arm bulging in a manner that proclaimed him strong and vigorous and pumping with life. She had never looked at Duncan as a man before and now suddenly there he was—blatantly, inescapably, irrefutably male, a potent symbol of the passion that had been wiped out of her life by a bitter stroke of fate.
‘Can’t you go back to sleep?’ He pushed himself further upright and the sheet slid down his ridged abdomen to pool across his lap.
Kalera mois
tened her lips and shook her head, her hair streaming down her back, her anchoring clutch on the pyjama top falling away as she stepped towards the bed, driven by a compulsion she couldn’t deny. The unbuttoned jacket gaped, displaying a wide strip of pale flesh from the pulsing hollow in her throat to the soft shadow of fluff at the base of her belly.
Duncan’s shoulders went rigid with disbelief, his eyes glinting in the darkness as he wrenched them back up to her face.
‘My God, Kalera—what are you doing?’ His deep voice was hoarse with shock as she shrugged her shoulders and the black garment whispered to the floor in a slither of silk.
Silhouetted against the light from the hall, she looked as slim as a boy, but as she scrambled onto the high bed the tilt and flex of her body revealed the tantalising sway of sweetly rounded breasts tipped with dark, pointed nipples and the feminine curve of her bottom.
‘I’m cold,’ she said truthfully, burrowing under the covers until her body collided with his, the burning heat of her skin making nonsense of her words as she slid her arms around his rigid torso, tugging until he collapsed back onto the white pillows. ‘Hold me…please…I need someone to hold me, to make me warm again…’
She tangled her legs in his and nuzzled her face into his hairy chest, inhaling the aroma of clean, healthy male. She had wondered if he was wearing anything under the bedclothes and now her curiosity was searingly satisfied. His big, nude body was a patchwork of deliciously contrasting textures and tiny thrills of anticipated ecstasy shivered across her skin as she measured herself boldly against his rigid length. Her parted lips brushed one of his flat nipples and he groaned, his hands gripping her upper arms as he tried to hold her squirming body discreetly at bay.
‘For God’s sake, Kalera—’
She arched her back, rolling her pelvis against the broad saddle of his hips, and revelled in the hot thrust of desire he was unable to hide, a glorious reaffirmation of his life-giving potency. An answering response rippled through her empty womb, flooding her with bitter-sweet yearning.
