Читать книгу His Miracle Baby - Kate Walker - Страница 8

‘MR STAFFORD will you please take the keys?’

He’d waited just too long for Ellie’s peace of mind. His silence and the way he was watching her, blue eyes slightly narrowed against the sun, made her feel desperately uneasy, the tangled mass of knots in her stomach tightening with every uneven heartbeat.

‘The keys…’ she repeated with as much emphasis as she dared. ‘I have to be going.’

‘No.’

It came so softly, almost thrown away, that for a moment or two she wasn’t at all sure she had heard him right and frowned her confusion.

‘What…?’ Bewildered she looked up at him, golden eyes wide in shock and confusion. ‘Mr Stafford—I…’

Did she know what it did to him when she looked at him like that? Morgan wondered. Did she know how it twisted deep inside him to see those amazing eyes burn with rejection where once he had seen them burn with love for him—or with what he had believed was love? Did she know how it felt to see her so anxious to leave when in the past it had seemed that she couldn’t have enough of him? Couldn’t protest her love for him often enough.

Or had all that been a pretence too?

‘The name is Morgan,’ he declared with cold precision. ‘And you go when I say you can—not before.’

That brought a flare of defiance into her flashing gaze.

‘But I have to go!’

‘No.’

Dammit, it had taken months to get to his moment. Had he spent so long looking for her only to have her turn and run at the very first meeting? She was as edgy as a cat on hot bricks, and it wasn’t just as a result of seeing him again. She was hiding something and he was determined to find out what.

‘I only want what I’m entitled to.’

‘Entitled?’

The need to see Rosie was uppermost in her mind, making it impossible to think straight. She knew that her daughter was safe and well cared for with Marion who doted on her first great-grandchild, but it wasn’t for Rosie’s sake that she wanted to be with her. It was for her own.

One look at her baby daughter would remind her why she was in the hateful position of lying to the man she had loved.

Morgan’s slow smile mocked her tense question, the spark of uncertainty in her eyes.

‘The contract said that I would be met, given the keys—and shown round the property.’

‘Shown round! Oh, come on! I mean, look at it…’

The gesture of her hand to indicate the cottage beside them was wilder than she would have liked, betraying too much of how easily he had rattled her. Get a grip! she warned herself inwardly. Morgan in this mood was like some watchful predator. Show a moment of weakness and he would pounce.

‘You don’t need to be shown anything—you could walk round the entire place in two minutes flat.’

‘Nevertheless I expect you to fulfil the agreement. Come on, Ellie,’ he cajoled, his voice deepening, softening, his smile an enticement in itself. ‘Indulge me in this.’

For a brief second Ellie actually had to close her eyes against the appeal of his voice that curled around her senses like a plume of warm smoke, soft as a caress. She had never been able to resist him when he’d switched on the charm like this, and to her horror she found that she still couldn’t.

‘Very well, then…’

Reaching back into her past, she dragged out from some hidden corner the image of the woman she had once been. The Eleanor Thornton who had been second in command of a large, profitable secretarial agency. The Eleanor Thornton that Morgan had first met.

Adopting a tone of voice that was all control, all businesslike and nothing more, she even managed to flash a swift and obviously insincere smile into his watchful face.

‘If you’ll just come this way, I’ll show you where everything is. And perhaps you’d like to know a little bit about the area too.’

This was better; she was in the swing of things now. After all, she had done this many times before. Meadow Cottage had been occupied almost every week since Easter, and Ellie had usually been the one to greet the new tenants.

‘Watch the floor here,’ she said when, after unlocking the door, she made her way into the narrow hall. ‘It’s a little uneven. As you will have seen in the brochure, Meadow Cottage was formerly one of the farm’s cowsheds, and these stone flags formed part of the original flooring.’

Her voice was perfectly steady as she went into the well-worn patter she had used so often before, but her control over the rest of her body wasn’t quite so complete. When a struggle with the slightly stiff door brought him to her side to help her, the brush of his tall, strong body against her own in the constricted, confined space sent her senses into overdrive.

He still wore the same aftershave that had been a favourite when they had been together; one that she had bought for him for the only Christmas and birthday they had shared. Just the scent of it was like an instant shot of memory, jolting her back in time to those gentler, happier days.

But underneath the evocative cologne was the subtler, more intensely personal scent of his body that stabbed straight to her heart as it stirred up the waters of the past, bringing to the surface the bitter-sweet recollection of how it had felt to lie in bed with him, her head pillowed on the strength of his shoulder, breathing in the clean, musky scent of his skin.

At once all her familiar spiel deserted her. Her head was buzzing, her senses stirring in a disturbingly primitive way. For a moment the memories that gripped her were so powerful, so real that her eyes burned with bitter tears and she had to blink furiously to drive them back.

‘The kitchen…’ was all she could manage, gritting her teeth against the sting of irony in his murmured, ‘Obviously.’

From then onwards all she wanted to do was to get the job done as quickly as possible. Not giving him time to look around, she marched him to the next door, opening it briefly.

‘The sitting room… The second bedroom is up there…’

A wave of her hand indicated the small gallery above the sitting room where a neat bedroom nestled under the eaves.

‘The bathroom is down here… And the main bedroom directly opposite. You can get milk and eggs from the farm—everything else from the store in the village, and they’ll cash a cheque for you in an emergency. I’m afraid there isn’t a bank anywhere nearer than St Austell. We provide fresh linen and towels on Mondays.’

There, she was done! Surely now he had to let her go.

‘Is there anything else?’

‘Just a couple of things. But why don’t we discuss them over coffee?’

‘No, thanks,’ Ellie managed through teeth gritted against the urge to scream in frustration. ‘I have other things to do.’

‘And I have things I want to discuss.’

Blatantly ignoring her protest, he turned and headed back down the white-walled corridor to the kitchen, leaving her with no option but to follow him.

‘Morgan, I don’t have time for coffee. I have to work…’

The need for her daughter was like an ache in her heart, a hunger that no food could possibly assuage.

‘Work?’

The look he directed at her burned with frank scepticism.

‘You working on a farm—that’s not at all what I’d have expected from the elegant Ms Thornton.’

‘I told you, I’m not the same person any more. I’ve changed a lot in the past eighteen months.’

‘So I see.’

His tone was a slow drawl and those brilliant eyes swept over her in a deliberately insolent assessment. She couldn’t miss the way that sapphire gaze lingered around the fullness of her breasts, the curves of her hips in the close-fitting skirt.

As a result of her pregnancy she had filled out noticeably, so that her shape was definitely more womanly when contrasted with her slenderness when they had been together. And Morgan, who had known her body with the intimacy of a lover, couldn’t be unaware of those changes either.

‘So I see,’ he repeated, and there was no mistaking the disturbingly sensual note on the words.

She knew that purring tone of voice. Knew only too well what it implied. She had heard it often enough when they had lived together. Then it had made her heart leap in anticipation, had set her body tingling in uncontrolled response. Just to hear her name spoken in that huskily appreciative way had been like a subtle form of foreplay, telling her instantly what was in his mind, and triggering off the same heated longings in her own.

But hearing it now shocked her rigid. Foolishly, naively perhaps, she had expected that the feelings Morgan had once had for her, every type of feeling, would have died, starved into non-existence by eighteen months of lack of nourishment. But there was no mistaking the heated desire that now flared in the brilliance of his eyes, the instant response that made his pupils so huge and dark.

‘Country life obviously suits you. You’re looking really well.’

‘I’m happy here.’

She had learned how to be happy but it hadn’t come easily to her. At first she had felt as if half of her soul had been cut away and it had only been the need to care for the baby growing in her womb that had kept her going.

‘So why don’t you make that coffee while I unload the car and then you can tell me all about it?’

Ellie’s breath hissed in through her teeth in a sound of exasperation.

‘Morgan, what part of what I said did you not understand? I don’t have time for this…’

But she was speaking to empty air. Morgan had already opened the door and gone out to the car. When she hurried after him it was to find that he’d opened the boot and was pulling a case from it.

‘Why won’t you listen to me? I can’t stay! Nan’s expecting me—she’ll be wondering where I am.’

‘I never thought of Marion as a slave-driver.’

He was coming back to the door again now, a suitcase in either hand so that Ellie had to flatten herself against the wall to let him past.

‘And I’m sure she’ll understand that you and I will need to spend a little time getting reacquainted.’

‘We’re not going to get reacquainted or re anything.’

Her words would have more emphasis if she didn’t have to keep trotting after him, forcing her shorter legs to keep up with the long, swift strides that took him through the cottage and into the ground-floor bedroom in the space of a few seconds.

‘I told you—the only reason I’m here is because you’re a guest and it’s part of my duties to make sure you’re settled in.’

‘And to arrange the other services you’ll provide,’ Morgan returned sharply, dumping the cases on the floor and heading back to the car again.

‘Services?’

It was a squawk of panic, both at the thought of just what he might have in mind and because he had come to an abrupt halt, whirling round to face her so that she had to screech to a stop herself, narrowly avoiding slamming straight into his chest.

‘I was given to understand by Mr Knightley that you provided a cleaning service.’

‘Well, yes…yes, we do. But surely—’

‘And some meals?’

‘Yes—for long-stay guests we can provide an evening meal…’

Too late she saw just where his thoughts were heading.

‘Oh, no! No way! I’m not—’

‘But it’s in the contract.’

Anyone else might only have heard the gentle reminder in his comment but, knowing Morgan as she did, Ellie was hypersensitive to the ominous undertone that threaded darkly through the words.

‘I know it’s in the contract, but surely now you can’t expect us to keep to it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well—isn’t it obvious? I mean, you won’t want me round the house every day.’

‘Won’t I?’ Morgan’s expression gave nothing away. ‘As a matter of fact I think it could work very well. You know my ways—know not to move papers, the crazy hours I work, the food I like. You’d be less likely to disturb me than a stranger.’

‘But Dee—the housekeeper—she usually…’

Her voice failed her as she saw the adamant shake of his dark head.

‘Not Dee,’ he stated in a voice that brooked no further argument. ‘I want you, angel. You and no one else.’

‘I won’t do it.’

For one thing she couldn’t be away from Rosie that long—and she certainly didn’t plan on bringing her little daughter along to the cottage with her. And for another, she already felt emotionally mangled after barely half an hour in Morgan’s presence. There was no way she could cope with the prospect of seeing him for long periods of time, day after day.

‘You’ll have to find someone else.’

‘I don’t want anyone else.’

The blue eyes were like shards of ice, hard and implacable. Past experience told her that arguing with Morgan at times like this was like banging her head hard against a brick wall; that she was only hurting herself by continuing, but she couldn’t give in.

‘What is this? Some sort of power game? A way of getting back at me for leaving you? Do you get some sort of perverse pleasure out of the prospect of seeing me skivvying for you?’

‘Is the idea of doing a few hours’ simple housework so humiliating?’ Morgan shot back at her.

Not for anyone else. But working for Morgan—working with Morgan was quite a different prospect. Where he was concerned nothing was ‘simple’ at all.

‘I don’t find it in the least humiliating—normally! Actually, I quite enjoy it. And as a matter of fact, the additional services were my idea. I suggested we put them…’

‘In the contract,’ Morgan finished for her with grim satisfaction when, seeing how her foolish outburst had trapped her, she let the sentence trail off weakly. ‘Believe me, Ellie, I intend to keep you to every letter of every word of that agreement. There’s no way I’m going to let you run out on this.’

He didn’t add the words ‘as you did before’, but they were there at the back of what he was saying, implied by his scathing tone and the black, burning look that seared over her skin.

‘I didn’t “run out”!’ she protested. ‘I explained.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

The harshness of his tone slashed into her heart like a savage sword.

‘You said that things had changed. You “didn’t feel the same way any more”.’

Hearing the words flung at her so brutally, Ellie could only wince inwardly at the realisation of how inadequate they sounded.

But she couldn’t possibly have told the truth. And even to protect her unborn child she couldn’t have told Morgan that she no longer loved him.

‘Well, my feelings had changed—I’d changed!’

Changed in the most fundamental way it was possible for a woman to do so. She had become pregnant and, knowing how he would react to that one basic fact, she had seen leaving him as the only course open to her.

‘You certainly had.’

Morgan leaned back against the wall, arms folded across the width of his chest, eyeing her with bleak cynicism.

‘If I’d been a betting man, angel, I’d have put money on the fact that we had something special…’

‘Well, you’d have been wrong.’

He would never know how much it cost her to say those words. Because she too had thought they had had ‘something special’ and she had dreamed of it staying that way. Of it growing and flowering into the sort of relationship you could build a lifetime upon. She had even let herself dream of marriage, maybe, one day.

But there had been one small flaw in the perfection of her love. Morgan didn’t want children. He had been absolutely emphatic on that matter right from the start. Had warned her that if she hadn’t been able to cope with the idea then he’d been prepared to break it off now, before either of them had got in too deep.

But Ellie had already been in too deep. She had told herself she could manage—that Morgan himself was enough for her. And he had been enough—until the day she had realised that an accident had happened and that in spite of her precautions she was going to have a baby.

Ellie came back into the present with a jolt, and, looking deep into those inimical blue eyes, she shivered involuntarily, fearful of the cold antipathy she could see in their depths.

‘Nothing stays the same for ever,’ she managed, ruthlessly suppressing her voice’s tendency to wobble revealingly.

‘Nothing stays the same…’ Morgan echoed viciously. ‘How true. Nothing—not even the protestations of undying love, the vows of eternal faithfulness, the declarations that you had never felt this way before, would never feel it again. How long did it last, my angel? Ten months? A year?’

‘Oh, stop it!’

Ellie longed to lift her hands and clap them over her ears, anything to drown out the brutal litany of scorn he was subjecting her to.

‘I never thought—I… I’m sorry…’ she finished miserably, knowing she had to say it, even though it was hopelessly inadequate and far, far too late. ‘I’m really sorry. If I could say anything—’

‘No!’ Morgan cut in harshly. ‘Don’t! Don’t say anything—and don’t say that you’re sorry—because I’m not! I was angry when you left—true. I was even a little hurt at the thought that you could discard me so easily, move on to someone else. But when I calmed down and started thinking rationally again, I realised that in fact you’d done me one hell of a favour.’

‘A favour?’

‘Yeah, a favour. I was close to making the biggest mistake of my life with you.’

He shook his head as if in despair at his own foolishness.

‘Something I would have regretted for as long as I lived. But by leaving when you did, you saved me from that. Really, instead of reproaching you, I reckon I should thank you.’

‘Don’t bother!’ Ellie snapped, unable to take any more.

For the first time she admitted to herself that she had come here with a tiny thread of a weak, foolish hope in her heart. Hopes of a reconciliation, of finding that Morgan, too, had suffered from their time apart, and so might be prepared to rethink his feeling about children. But his comments had not only taken that pathetic hope away from her, they had crushed it into tiny, irreparable pieces, impossible ever to put together again.

‘Well, at least you won’t expect me to stay after—’

‘Oh, but I do,’ Morgan cut in sharply. ‘In fact, now I want that coffee more than ever.’

‘Well, you can just go on wanting! I’m finished here, I—’

‘But I haven’t finished with you,’ Morgan came back at her with deadly quietness. ‘There are things we still have to talk about.’

He pushed himself away from the wall, straightening up lazily.

‘Make the coffee, Ellie,’ he said and it was a command, not a request.