Читать книгу The Package Deal - Marion Lennox - Страница 16

CHAPTER TEN

SHE WOKE AT MIDNIGHT, thirsty beyond measure, and also hungry. She woke regretting those nibbled lunchtime sandwiches.

She headed out to the kitchen. The apartment was in darkness—or maybe not. Back in New Zealand the darkness at night was absolute. Here, the lights of the city glimmered through the drapes. Glamorous footlights were placed strategically around the skirting boards so no one could lose their way at night. There was a light on in the sitting room.

She was in New York. More, she was in Ben’s fabulous apartment. Marble, glass, discreet lighting, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park...

Money plus.

Her inheritance gaffe was still smarting. ‘I never should have come,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Of course he’ll think I’m after his money.’

But it had seemed wrong not to. She’d needed to tell him and for some reason she’d felt she had to do it soon. Before the time had come where she could terminate?

Not that she’d considered terminating. She wasn’t sure why this little life was so precious, why she’d discovered she was pregnant and felt joy rather than dismay, but she had.

‘And maybe I sort of wanted Ben to feel that way, too,’ she muttered.

‘Feel what way?’

He was on a window seat in the sitting room, working on his laptop. Wearing a bathrobe. Silk. She was in a T-shirt and jogging pants.

She felt like a poor relation.

He looked...hot.

Put it aside, she told herself, and somehow she stopped looking at him. It took an effort.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said, heading for the kitchen. She hauled open the massive refrigerator doors and thought, Whoa... ‘How many people live here?’

‘My housekeeper caters for every eventuality.’

Yep, money.

Get over it, she told herself. ‘I just need toast.’

‘I’ll make it for you.’

‘I can do it. Go back to bed.’

‘I don’t sleep much,’ he said.

‘It’s a biggie.’ She was staring into the refrigerator, thinking all sorts of things—like how hot he looked with his silk bathrobe open and...and forcing herself to think of condiments. Three types of jam. No, make that four. The raspberry looked good, but then there was quince...

‘What’s a biggie?’

Deep breath. The conversation couldn’t all be about jam, and it surely couldn’t be about silk bathrobes. ‘Learning you’re about to be a dad.’

He walked over and set about making toast while she went back to deciding on condiments. Tricky.

She was so aware of his body.

The island bench—approximately a mile long—gave her a couple of yards’ clearance from Ben. She hauled herself up on the bench to watch toast-making.

‘Most people sit on the stools,’ Ben said mildly.

She peered behind the bench to see a row of fancy designer stools. Chrome and leather. Four different colours. Or make that shades. Designers did shades.

‘How could I choose which one to sit on?’ she demanded. ‘I had enough trouble with jam.’

‘You want tea?’

‘No, thanks.’ Actually, she would like tea but it’d mean she had to stay out here for longer. With this body.

Um...Ben. His name was Ben.

Maybe she should start calling him Mr Logan.

‘I’ve been thinking I’m glad you don’t want a termination,’ he said.

She stilled. He was watching the toast. She was watching the breadth of his back. To all intents and purposes they were a couple talking cosy domestic things—like termination.

‘Why?’ she managed, and he abandoned the toast and turned to face her.

‘It’s been a shock,’ he said softly. ‘All afternoon...all tonight. Heaven knows how you slept but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have wished for it but now it’s happened...I do want this child.’

And he said it so fiercely that it was lucky she’d put the jam down.

There was a lot to think about in that statement. A lot to make her heart falter.

‘One part of me’s pleased to hear you say that,’ she admitted at last. ‘I was never going to terminate, not for a moment, but in a way I think that’s why I came here so early in the pregnancy. I needed to know your reaction. I wanted my choice to be your choice.’

‘But the other part?’

Say it like it is, she decided. Just say it. ‘Another part of me almost had a heart attack, just this minute,’ she admitted. ‘Do you want this child like you want another Logan? And how much do you want it? Enough to sue me for custody? I hadn’t even thought about that.’

‘I would never do that to you. And she’s your baby.’

‘She?’

‘I thought tonight...’ He looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, but when he spoke, it was all tenderness. ‘I thought, what if she’s a girl, just like her mother?’

What was there in that statement to take her breath away? What was there in that statement to make her forget toast and jam, to forget where she was, to forget everything except those words?

What if she’s a girl, just like her mother?

She’d been terrific when she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d decided. She’d surprised herself by how calm she’d been. She’d set about making plans, figuring how she could manage.

She’d decided to tell Ben, rationally and coolly. She’d prided herself on her efficiency, getting a passport, deciding on flights, choosing the hotel Ben had so rudely rejected.

She’d told him calmly. Everything was going as planned.

But one little statement...

What if she’s a girl, just like her mother?

She sat on the bench and stared, and suddenly the cool control she’d kept herself under for the last couple of months snapped.

She couldn’t help it. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She couldn’t speak. She just sat there and cried like a baby.

Ben looked like he didn’t have a clue how to handle it. That made two of them.

‘Mary, I didn’t mean...’ He sounded appalled. ‘Mary, stop.’

That’d be like asking the tide to turn. She gave her tears an angry swipe but nothing could stop these suckers.

She didn’t have a tissue. She didn’t have thirty tissues. Where were tissues in this über-rich mausoleum of a marble apartment?

* * *

One minute he was standing by the kitchen bench, talking to a woman he’d decided he hardly knew. The next moment the woman had turned into Mary. His Mary.

He knew this woman like he knew himself.

Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she was making no effort to check them. It was as if she didn’t know what to do with them.

This was a woman who seldom cried. He knew that. What was happening now was shocking her—as well as shocking him.

She needed tissues, but his shoulder was closer. He stepped forward, gathered a sodden Mary into his arms and held her.

He should wear a towelling robe, he thought ruefully. Silk didn’t cut it with tears.

Silk didn’t cut it when the feel of her body was soaking through. But he held her and held her, until the shuddering eased, until she’d cried herself out, until he felt the imperceptible stiffening that told him she’d realised what she’d done, where she was.

He still held. He was cradling her like a child but this was no child. She’d slumped against him but the slump had turned to something more. Her face was buried in his shoulder but the rest of her... She was moulded to him. Her breasts were pressed to his chest. His face was in her hair.

‘I can’t...’ It was a ragged whisper.

‘I have it in hand,’ he told her, and before she could make any objections he swung her into his arms and strode with her into his bedroom.

The woman needed tissues. There were tissues in his bedroom and that’s where he was headed.

* * *

One minute she was cradled against Ben Logan, sobbing her heart out, releasing months of pent-up emotion and who knew what else besides. The next she was in his arms, being carried into his bedroom.

She should make some sort of protest, but who was protesting? She was making no protest at all.

They’d made love before as complete strangers. They weren’t strangers now. Or maybe they were, she thought, dazed. How did she know this man?

She did.

He lived in a different world from her, a world he pretty much owned.

She felt she knew him inside out.

To the world this man was a hero, a rich, smart, controlling wheeler and dealer in the world’s finances. But she’d seen what lay beneath. She’d seen the core that was pure need.

Who was she kidding? The need was entirely hers and she couldn’t resist it for a minute.

She was catching her breath, finding control of a sort. The dumb weeping had stopped so when Ben set her on the bathroom bench and handed her a wad of tissues she could do something about it.

She blew her nose, hard, and Ben blinked.

‘There’s my romantic girl.’

She choked on something between a chuckle and a sob, but it was erring more towards the chuckle.

Something was happening inside her. She was in this man’s bathroom. He was looking at her with such concern...

‘Your face is puffy.’

‘And there’s a truly romantic statement,’ she managed. ‘I bet you say that to all the women in your life.’

‘There are no women in my life.’ He picked up a facecloth, wet it and gently wiped her eyes. Then her whole face. ‘Just the mother of my child.’

What was it about that statement that took her breath away? That made her toes curl?

That made her drop her tissues into the neat designer trash slot and look up at him and smile.

‘Ben...’

It was all she had to say. All the longing in the world was in that word. It was a question and an answer all by itself.

She put her arms up and looped her hands around his neck. He stopped and lifted her yet again.

‘Your place or mine?’ he asked huskily, managing to smile.

‘I’ve only got a king-size bed,’ she managed back. ‘Puny. I bet yours is bigger.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ he said, and she did.

And that was practically the last thing she was capable of thinking for a very long time.

* * *

She woke and the morning sun was streaming over the luxurious white coverlet. She woke and the softness of the duvet enfolded her.

She woke and Ben was gone.

For a moment she refused to let herself think it. She lay and savoured the warmth, the feeling of sheer, unmitigated luxury, the knowledge that she’d been made love to with a passion that maybe she’d never feel again.

He’d made her feel alive. He’d made her feel a woman as she’d never believed she could feel.

He’d made her feel loved.

But he wasn’t here now.

She’d slept, at last, cocooned in the strength and heat of his body. She’d slept thinking everything was right in her world. What could possibly be wrong?

She’d slept thinking she was being held by Ben and he’d never let her go.

She stirred, tentatively, like a caterpillar nervous of emerging from the safety of its dreamlike cocoon.

The clock on her bedside table said twelve.

Twelve? She’d slept how long? No wonder Ben had left her.

He’d left her.

Hey, she was still in his bed. Possession’s nine tenths of the law, she decided, and stretched like a languorous cat.

Cat, caterpillar, whatever. She surely wasn’t herself.

There was a note on his pillow.

A Dear John letter? She almost smiled. She was playing make-believe in her head. Scenario after scenario. All of them included Ben.

The note, however, was straightforward. Not a lot of room for fantasy here.

I need to go into work. I left loose ends yesterday and they’re getting strident. Sleep as long as you want. It’s Saturday, no cleaners come near the place so you have the apartment to yourself. I’ll be home late but tomorrow is yours. Think of what you’d like to do with it.

Ben.

And then a postscript.

Last night was amazing. Please make yourself at home in my bed.

There was more stuff to think about.

She was interrupting his life, she thought. She really had pulled him out of his world yesterday. He’d need to pull it back together.

And then come back to her?

Just for tomorrow.

‘But if that’s all I can have, then that has to be enough,’ she told herself. ‘So think about it.’

Food first. What had happened to last night’s toast? Who could remember? But she’d seen juice in the fridge, and croissants. And then...the bath in Ben’s bathroom was big enough to hold a small whale.

‘Which is what I’ll be in six months...

‘Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything but tomorrow,’ she said severely. ‘Or maybe not even tomorrow. Let’s just concentrate on right now.’

* * *

The office was chaos. One day out and the sky had fallen. Still, it had been worth it, he decided, making one apologetic phone call after another, trying to draw together the threads of the deal he’d abandoned the day before.

Mary was worth it.

She was with him all day, her image, the memory of her body against his, the warmth of her smile, the taste of her tears.

He was getting soft in his old age. He’d vowed never to feel this way about a woman.

About anyone.

He didn’t want to feel responsible for anyone but somehow it had happened. Ready or not, he was responsible for Mary. The mother of his child.

His woman?

He wanted to phone Jake.

Why? To tell him he’d met someone? Jake’s attitude to women was the same as his. His brother had made one foray into marriage and it’d turned into a disaster. The woman had needed far more than Jake would—or could—give.

The Logan boys weren’t the marrying kind.

But Mary...

No. He would not get emotionally involved.

Who was he kidding? He already was.

Which meant he had to help her, he thought as the long day wore on, as the deal finally reached its drawn-out conclusion, which meant the financial markets could relax for another week.

He thought of what the lawyer back in New Zealand had told him. ‘She really is alone.’

If she was alone and in trouble...with his baby... There had to be a solution.

Finally at nine o’clock he signed the last document, left it on his secretary’s desk and prepared to leave. But first one phone call.

Mathew Arden. Literary agent for some of the biggest names in the world.

‘Well,’ he said, as Mathew answered the phone. ‘Am I right?’

* * *

She walked her legs off. She strolled down Fifth Avenue, she checked out Tiffany & Co., was awed by the jewellery and chuckled as the salespeople were lovely to her, even though they must know she could hardly afford to look at their wares.

She took the subway to Soho, just so she could say she’d been there, and spent time in its jumble of eclectic shops. She bought a pair of porcelain parrots for her next-door neighbour who was looking after Heinz.

She bought a truly awesome diamanté collar for Heinz. He’d show up every dog in the North Island.

She took the Staten Island ferry and checked out the Statue of Liberty from close quarters.

‘You’re just as beautiful as the pictures,’ she told her ladyship, and felt immeasurably pleased.

She ended up on Broadway and got a cheap ticket to see the last half of a musical she’d only ever seen on film.

She bought herself a hamburger, headed back on the subway to Ben’s apartment—and was weirdly disappointed when he wasn’t home.

She’d sort of wanted him to be impressed that she hadn’t hung around all day waiting for him, but maybe she’d done too much trying to prove it. Her feet hurt.

She ran a bath and soaked, all the time waiting for his key in the lock.

‘Just like I’m the little woman,’ she told herself. ‘Waiting for my man to come home.’

She let herself imagine it, just for a moment. If she and Ben were to take this further...

This’d be her life.

‘Um, no,’ she said, reaching out for a gorgeous-looking bottle of bath salts. Sprinkling it in. Lying back to soak some more. ‘You know you never want to commit to some guy who’ll turn out to be just like Dad. This is fantasy and nothing more.’

* * *

It was after ten when Ben reached home and he was feeling guilty.

This was what it’d be like if he ever tried marriage, he told himself. This was why Jake’s marriage had foundered. The Logan boys’ lives didn’t centre round women. But still, the thoughts of the night before were with him. The memory of Mary in his bed was enough to make him turn the key with eagerness.

‘Mary?’

No answer.

Her purse was on the counter. Her jacket was hanging on the chair. It felt good to see them. He liked it that Mary was in his apartment.

He checked his bedroom, half-hopeful that she’d be lying there as she’d lain last night.

‘In your dreams,’ he muttered. ‘To have a woman wait for you...’

He checked her bedroom. She was curled in the centre of her bed, cocooned in pillows. She looked exhausted. She looked small and vulnerable and alone.

She looked...like Mary.

This woman was planning on returning to New Zealand to bear his child. With no support.

He didn’t wake her. He headed to his study to think, and think he did. The idea that had been idling in the back of his mind all day was starting to coalesce into a plan.

It made sense—and Mary was a sensible woman.

He wasn’t entirely sure how Heinz would fit in with the pedigree pooches who strutted round Central Park but he was pretty sure Heinz could hold his own.

Could Mary hold her own?

He was sure she could. In her own way she was as independent as he was.

He flicked open his laptop. There was work to be done, though not business. The financial world could manage without him tonight. Tonight Ben Logan was plotting a future for his child.

And his woman?

Be sensible, he told himself. There are levels of responsibility. You can take the practical route; just don’t let the emotional side interfere.