A Delicious Deception (22 page)

But was it? he asked himself as he carried her into the softly lit, splendid opulence of the master bedroom. Because how much thought had he given to what she might want? And
what was right for her? And now he answered himself truthfully. Very little.

But now, as he set her on her feet and she turned to let his jacket slip off her shoulders onto the bed, he saw from the lamplight, and for the first time, how shockingly desolate she looked. Her face, cleansed of make-up, looked pale and gaunt, and he could see that her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy with crying.

And suddenly it dawned on him how much she must have wanted this baby. Wanted it—even though she hadn’t wanted him.

‘Oh, my poor love …’ His arm was still round her middle and now he caught her to him, not caring how weak it might make him seem or how he sounded as he buried his lips in her hair and, in a voice that seemed wrenched from him, he uttered, ‘I’m sorry. I’m really so very, very sorry.’

For what? Rayne wondered wretchedly, aching to clasp him to her but only allowing her hands to rest lightly on the straining contours of his muscled back. For making her love him in the first place? For making her pregnant and having to watch her lose the most precious gift he could ever have given her? Or for not being able to love her and for leaving her just as soon as he considered it felt right for him to do so?

‘Don’t,’ she demurred, and wished it had come out sounding less like a plea when he didn’t let her go, but urged her gently down to sit on the bed beside him.

Just as gently, then, he put an arm under her knees and lifted her legs onto the mattress so that she could relax against the mountain of cushions that were still stacked up on his side of the bed.

‘It meant everything to you, this baby. Didn’t it?’ he said with a surge of hope that was quickly quashed when she looked down and away from him with her lips pressed almost mutinously tight.

‘What did you imagine?’ she invited him to tell her, and
with such a wobble in her voice that he realised it was threatening emotion that was making her look like that.

She didn’t look at him, but kept staring at some point between the door and the mirrored wall of endless wardrobes, waiting for him to tell her that she was young and strong. That one day she’d have more babies, and with someone she really wanted to be with, but he didn’t. He just kept looking at her with that fathomless emotion etching his face, understanding at least that that wasn’t what she needed to hear right now.

Unless, of course, he’d guessed that she’d only ever wanted his, and that this baby was so special to her because of all they had already shared and because of how hopelessly she loved him. In which case, was that emotion she would have so dearly liked to believe was shared anguish in him really only generated by sympathy for her?

‘You’re going to have to cancel the wedding,’ she advised him, choked, because if pity was all he felt for her then she couldn’t bear it.

He didn’t look at her as his breath shuddered through his lungs. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ he said, starting to get up.

Rayne shot out a hand to stop him and, feeling the bunching muscles of his arm, quickly retracted it, reminded too poignantly of how exquisite he was and of just how much pleasure they had known together.

‘No, now,’ she stressed, steeling herself against the emotional pain.

‘All right, then.’ His shoulders seemed to slump from the heavy breath he exhaled, a resigned posture that matched the note of resignation in his voice. ‘Fire away.’

‘We’re going to have to lose some deposits. And I know this hasn’t exactly gone the way you planned …’ She dragged in a breath, finding it took every ounce of her mental strength to put on a brave face. ‘I can bear some of the expense myself, but I can’t yet pay you back for what you’ve already arranged
for Mum. But if you let her treatment go ahead, I’ll slave … I’ll slave day and night to save up and—’

‘Enough!’ His fist came down on his knee, punctuating his barely rasped command and, through her misery, Rayne was amazed to realise that he was trembling. His voice was trembling too and his eyes were darkened by an emotion she could almost touch. ‘What sort of hard, insensitive individual do you think I am?’

He had asked her something like that before. Ten weeks ago. When they were in Monaco. But she couldn’t think about that right now, only why the groan that seemed to come from deep in his chest sounded like that of an animal in pain.

‘Have you ever considered for one moment that I might be just as cut up over losing this baby as you are? Why can a woman only feel pain? Loss? Regret? And had it even occurred to you that I might not want to cancel the wedding?’

‘What?’ Through the mire of her unhappiness, his question awakened a spark of something in her not unlike hope.

‘Yes,’ he affirmed on a laboured breath. ‘Crazy though that might seem to you, I still want to go ahead and do everything we were planning.’

‘Why?’ Rayne enquired, stupefied. Then, as it suddenly dawned on her, ‘Because you feel sorry for me?’ she remembered, hurting. ‘Because you think you owe it to me?’

His body had been half-turned away from her, but now he shifted his position so that he was facing her full on and she could see the pained incredulity in his eyes.

‘Hadn’t it occurred to you either that I might … just might …’ it was a soft reprimand ‘… be in love with you?’ he rasped.

Now it was her turn to look incredulous, and yet there was warmth starting to trickle through the cold emptiness she had been feeling inside.

‘But … how can you be?’ she challenged breathlessly. Her head felt cloudy and yet her heart was racing. ‘I mean … we haven’t …’

‘Haven’t known each other long enough?’ he supplied. The ghost of a smile was trying to play around one side of his mouth now. ‘You already admitted to being mad about me before. And if your response to me whenever I touch you is anything to go by, I’d say you still are,’ he took the chance on saying. After all, he thought, what was there to lose? ‘All right,’ he went on, bolder now that he could see incredulity being dissipated by the warmth that lit her eyes. ‘You might think I’m crazy. And perhaps I am,’ he said with a self-mocking pull of his lips. ‘But I’ve never been in love before so I can’t judge what this feeling is. But if love is never wanting to let you go, that it would devastate me if I were to lose you, and wanting you—and only you—to be the mother of my children, then I’m in love.’

‘Oh, King …’

She sat forward and grasped his arm, laying her head against the strong, hard support of his shoulder. There were tears in her eyes as his arms came round her now, but they were shining with love and warmth and the knowledge that while she was losing something so precious, she could bear it if he was beside her, loving her. Sharing, not just the good times, but times like now, when she needed him. So much …

‘There’s no one who’s ever made me feel like you do,’ he murmured huskily into the perfumed silk of her hair, holding her as though he would never let her go.

‘You mean drive you to distraction,’ she suggested, sniffing back emotion, feeling suddenly that there was so much to hold on to, even if right now there was such a dark cloud hanging over her—over them both.

‘Like I want to take care of you,’ he scolded softly, proving it to her as he set her tenderly back against the pillows just in case it might be harming her to give into this need to hold her and keep her sitting there, locked in his arms. ‘Like I want to grow with you. Learn with you and from you—because we both have so much to learn from and about each
other, dearest. Comfort you—as you so badly need that from me now …’ His voice was thickened by emotion and when he placed his hand lightly over her abdomen she could so easily have wept. But she didn’t, for his sake as well as her own, battling against her hormones and a whole flood of feeling for this wonderful man as he murmured, ‘Would you let me do that for you, Rayne?’

‘Oh, King,’ she expressed again. ‘If you only knew how much I want that. Have wanted it. And not like the lovesick teenager you called me and that I know I was, but as I am—as we are—now. I feel I’ve known you all my life. Even when you thought I was too young for you and you weren’t even aware of me.’

‘Oh, I was aware of you,’ he confessed, smiling down at her from where he lounged, his head resting on his bent arm, his long length stretched out on the bed beside her now. ‘Or at least of your presence. And very much so,’ he admitted, trailing an index finger down the soft curve of her cheek. ‘From the first time I saw you, until the last. While you were there in the office for that short time I couldn’t stop looking at you—or at least the outline of you—through that frosted glass, and I had to keep pulling myself up short and reminding myself that I shouldn’t. You were a crazy kid and I was just starting out. And, to test my resistance even further, when you weren’t there your father never stopped talking about you,’ he remembered wryly.

Her eyes darkened a little as he mentioned her father. ‘Talking about me?’ she asked, curious. ‘In what way?’

‘Like how, after slipping a disc and losing the use of its legs, you sacrificed a trip to the States with your friends to look after the family dog. Which meant carrying him everywhere,’ he outlined, sounding impressed, ‘until he could walk again.’

‘Well, he recovered,’ she stated assertively, remembering now that rare moment in the office when King had singled
her out to enquire about the spaniel; remembered how she’d hugged that moment to her for weeks.

‘But only thanks to you,’ he reminded her. ‘The same girl who wanted to support every children’s and animal charity that posted a flyer through her door, while training to run a half marathon for Oxfam. The girl who looked like a cross between the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz and the Bride of Dracula. The girl who was crazy about Dvorák’s music …’

A flush touched her cheeks from the pleasure of knowing how King had retained so much about her. It surprised her, too, to learn about all her father had said.

‘No matter where he was planning to go, or how much he might have thought he wanted my stepmother, he never stopped loving you, Rayne,’ King told her, cannily sensing everything that she was feeling. ‘And I don’t think
I
have—subconsciously,’ he admitted candidly—amazingly—to her, ‘because it was one hell of a testimonial to deal with for a young man who was trying to stay immune. I was planning to ask you out—given a year or two. When you’d grown up a bit and I didn’t have so much on my mind. But within weeks your father and Mitch had that blow up. And then, after that night when I called round to your house to see Grant and you flew at me like I was some sort of demon, I knew I’d blown whatever chances I’d had of getting to know you better.’

What he was saying amazed her and, looking up at him now, she wondered how any man could be so handsome, as well as having such inner strength and tenderness, as she allowed her fingers to revel in the texture of his dark, unshaven jaw.

‘I know I came over all possessive and overbearing about … the baby,’ he went on with some hesitancy, ‘but ultimately I knew it was the only chance I had of keeping you with me—in my life,’ he disclosed hoarsely, making her tremble with the depth of her feeling for him as his thumb moved lovingly
over the soft outline of her mouth. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ he asked.

‘Only if you’ll promise to always stay as determined to keep me with you,’ she murmured, feeling as if her heart were overflowing. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I lost you.’ And realising that she hadn’t actually told him in as many words, she whispered from the depths of her soul, ‘I love you, King.’

‘I promise,’ he whispered back, bending to kiss her, oh, so softly on her mouth. ‘And now, my love, I think it’s time you got some rest.’

The wedding was going ahead as planned for the end of the following week but, sitting there in the waiting area of the pregnancy unit while Rayne had gone for her ultrasound scan, King wished fervently that she wasn’t having to go through all this beforehand. Seeing doctors. The check-ups. Having to be prodded and poked about. All quite routine and happily anticipated when it was to assess how your little one was developing, but not under these circumstances. Agitatedly, he tossed down the magazine he had been thumbing through without having read a word. Not like this.

He had wanted to be with her but she had insisted that he wait outside and, very reluctantly, he had complied with her wishes. He guessed she didn’t want him to see how upset it made her to be told categorically that her pregnancy was over.

She’d need a lot of care and consideration over the weeks ahead, he realised, hiding his own regret and disappointment behind his usual practised calm as he promised himself he would do everything it took to make this difficult time easier for her.

She was crying when she came out of the room beyond.

She’d promised him she would be brave, but he could see at once that the ordeal had proved too much for her, even if she was doing her best to hide it from the other happily expectant couple who had been sitting opposite him.

‘I should have been there with you,’ he said, berating himself as he reached her side and put a consoling arm around her shoulders. ‘I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have come in.’

He took her hand in his—the one with the emerald and diamond engagement ring he had brought back from Edinburgh and placed on her finger this morning—a token of his love, a sign that he was marrying her for who she was: the woman he was crazy about—and understood how, right then, she was too over-wrought to speak.

It wasn’t until they were outside in the mellow sunshine that she finally gave rein to her emotion, sobbing against his shoulder while he held her close and felt each convulsive sob like a pain in his heart.

At last she managed to get a grip on herself and, as she looked up at him now, he could see that she was trying to shrug off her outpouring of emotion, to even smile at him through the mist of her tears.

‘Our baby …’ She was trembling; choking on the words. ‘They found a heartbeat. It was visible on the ultrasound! They said it was good and strong and it’s got the right number of beats per minute! I’m still pregnant, King! That doctor was wrong.’