Читать книгу Maddie's Love-Child - Miranda Lee - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

MADDIE’S reaction to Carolyn’s baby astounded her.

She hadn’t had much to do with babies during her thirty-one years, having always found them annoying, noisy creatures with little to recommend them. They cried incessantly and made the most awful messes from both ends of their restless, wriggling bodies.

But from the moment Carolyn handed over her newborn daughter and she nestled contentedly in her arms, Maddie was enchanted. When the baby’s pudgy fingers closed fiercely round one of hers, Maddie’s heart had squeezed as tight as the tiny girl’s grip. When those unblinking blue eyes looked up at her with total trust, everything inside Maddie just melted.

‘Oh, God,’ she groaned. ‘I never thought this would happen to me, Carolyn, but I think I want one of these for my very own.’

Carolyn laughed softly from where she was propped up against a mountain of pillows in her hospital bed, looking far too lovely, Maddie thought, for a woman who had given birth less than twenty-four hours before. Even the dark smudges under her eyes did nothing to detract from her blonde-haired blue-eyed beauty.

‘There’s nothing to stop you from having a baby, Maddie,’ she said. ‘All you have to do is marry Spencer, and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘Marry Spencer? Good Lord, I wouldn’t wish that on a dog.’

Carolyn gave her a perplexed look. ‘But... but only last month you told me you were crazy about him!’

Maddie grimaced. ‘Crazy being the operative word. The man’s an insufferable snob. Do you know he started criticising my taste in clothes? He actually said I looked cheap. You don’t think Auntie Maddie looks cheap, do you darling?’ she crooned at the baby, who seemed entranced by the huge silver hoops that were swinging from Maddie’s lobes.

Carolyn decided this was one of those moments when silence was golden. She, personally, would never describe Maddie as cheap-looking. Way out, perhaps. Or off-beat. Definitely Bohemian. Maddie was of ah artistic nature. One expected artistes to be different, didn’t one?

Carolyn could see, however, that if a man did not really know and love Maddie for the warm, generous and genuine person she was underneath her outwardly outrageous facade, he might mistakenly think her cheap.

Of course, it would help if she dressed differently. Her clothes were always outlandish and her jewellery garish, to say the least. Carolyn wished Maddie would wear a little less makeup and a lot more underwear....

Carolyn’s rueful gaze drifted over the outfit her friend was sporting that morning. Skin-tight black leather pants with a matching black leather vest held together with a single wooden button. Every time Maddie moved—or even breathed in—it looked like the precarious closure would pop right open to display her obviously braless state.

‘I don’t have to get married to have one of these little darlings,’ Maddie resumed, glancing up at Carolyn with a minx-like gleam in her flashing black eyes. ‘All I need is a suitable sperm donor. He’d have it all, of course. Brains. Beauty. Breeding. I have no intention of introducing an inferior specimen into this poor pathetic world. Someone like this splendid example of human perfection in my arms would be fine.’

She sent Carolyn a wicked smile at this juncture. ‘You wouldn’t mind lending me Vaughan for a few nights, would you, sweetie? He seems to be one of those prepotent sires who passes on all his good genes.’

Carolyn laughed.

There’d been a time when she’d worried Vaughan and Maddie were lovers. They’d been very close for many years, having been flatmates during their university days, after which they’d gone into business together—Maddie doing the interior decorating of Vaughan’s architectural projects.

But despite the intimacy of their ongoing relationship and their relaxed camaraderie, they claimed they had never been physically intimate.

And Carolyn believed them.

Maddie’s flamboyant sensuality might have worried a less secure wife, considering the amount of time they spent together. But Carolyn felt supremely confident in her husband’s love, as confident as she was of Maddie’s friendship.

‘You find your own sperm donor, thank you very much,’ Carolyn advised with mock tartness. ‘And I think I’ll have my baby back before your craziness goes off on another tangent and you become a baby stealer.’

‘You think I’m joking, don’t you?’ Maddie smiled as she handed back the tiny bundle. ‘About having a baby, I mean, not about wanting to borrow your Vaughan. Much as your hubbie’s a gorgeous hunk of male flesh, he’s not really my type. Never was.’

‘And what is your type, Maddie? Spencer?’

‘I suppose so,’ she agreed happily. ‘Lord knows I must be a masochist, but I always seem to be attracted to the sort of supercilious stuck-up silver-spoon who wouldn’t normally be seen dead with someone like me.’

‘And why’s that, do you think?’ Carolyn asked thoughtfully. ‘I mean ... I would have thought you’d find such men stifling.’

Maddie shrugged. ‘I do, in the end. Especially when they start wanting to change me—or hide me away. That’s the kiss of death as far as I’m concerned. Needless to say, dear old Spence got his walking papers the night he decided I would have to change my clothes before he could possibly take me out in public. He rang me every hour of every day for a while, but I simply clicked on my answering machines, both at home and at the office, and in the end, he gave up. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.’

Carolyn shook her head, sighing. ‘You have a mean streak in you, Maddie. Still, I can’t admit to feeling much pity for Spencer. He’s a male chauvinist pig, if ever there was one.’

‘Then why suggest I marry him, for pity’s sake?’ Maddie pointed out frustratedly.

‘I was only teasing. I knew darned well you wouldn’t. You’re never going to get married, are you?’ Carolyn said, a tender exasperation in her voice.

‘No.’

‘Is it because of what happened to your mother?’

‘You mean do I have some deep-seated Freudian aversion to marriage and commitment because Mama was loved and left by a married man, leaving poor little ol’ me behind?’

‘Something like that.’

Maddie laughed, tossing her long black curls from her shoulders. She really was a very striking woman, Carolyn thought. And far more complex than anyone realised. In a way, she felt some pity for the pompous Spencer. And any other man Maddie sank her teeth into.

‘What a perfectly interesting thought!’ Maddie exclaimed, her smile dazzling white behind her lushly scarlet lips. ‘It never occurred to me, but you could be right, I suppose. I never try to psychoanalyse myself. I am what I am, and to hell with anyone who doesn’t approve of me, which includes Spencer. The last thing I need in my life is some hypocrite of a man who wants to make me over into what he thinks is suitable to his narrow-minded stuffy life-style.’

‘Good Lord, Maddie! I didn’t realise you hated men so much!’

Maddie blinked, startled by her friend’s remark. ‘But I don’t!’ she denied. ‘I simply adore men!’

‘Do you, Maddie? Do you really?’

‘Of course I do,’ she insisted, though not meeting Carolyn’s eyes as she looped a stray curl behind her left ear. ‘Don’t be silly. I can’t stand not having a man in my life.’

‘Then why don’t you want to ever marry one?’

Maddie looked up, deflecting her friend’s serious question with a naughty grin. ‘Because I like men, darling heart, not a single man..I can’t think of anything more boring than having to sleep with the same man every night for the rest of my life. Actually, I can’t think of anything more boring than marriage in general!’

‘Are you saying my life is going to be boring?’

‘You and Vaughan are the exceptions to the rule.’

‘What about my mother and Julian? They’re blissfully happy.’

‘Chips off the same block,’ Maddie returned, smiling fondly as she thought of Carolyn’s still beautiful mother and her husband.

Isabel and Julian.

Such romantic names for such a romantic couple.

Maddie had met them the previous year when Julian, a successful businessman from Sydney, decided to semi-retire on the South Coast and commissioned Vaughan and herself to design, build and furnish a special surprise home for his new bride. Maddie had become good friends with Carolyn when Julian had asked his stepdaughter to oversee the decor while he was overseas on his honeymoon with Isabel. It was during this time that Carolyn and Vaughan fell madly in love, marrying within a few short weeks.

Now, twelve months later, they had this gorgeous little baby.

Maddie leant over and clucked the baby’s chin, goo-gooing at it as she’d never goo-gooed before. There was no longer any doubt in her mind. A baby she was going to have. And soon, before the years ticked away and she was too old. She could well afford it, which to Maddie’s mind was the only negative against bringing up a baby on her own. What did a child need a father for, anyway? She’d never had a father around and she was as happy and normal as could be!

‘You’re not really going to have a baby out of wedlock, are you?’ Carolyn asked worriedly.

Maddie chuckled. ‘Trust you to use a term. like that! I’ve never heard anything so old-fashioned in my life!’

‘What’s old-fashioned?’ Vaughan said as he walked in and strode over to the bed. ‘Hello, my precious darlings.’

He bent to kiss his wife and baby daughter, the tenderness and love on his face moving Maddie. She’d always known Vaughan was a warm, caring man underneath his outward machismo, but to witness the intensity of his feelings on display for all to see brought a lump to her throat and a tinge of envy to her heart.

‘Well?’ Vaughan straightened to throw Maddie a questioning glance. ‘What’s so old-fashioned?’

‘Your wife thinks I should be married before I have a baby,’ came her dryly amused reply.

Vaughan looked more shocked than in the thirteen years she had known him. ‘Good God,’ he blurted out. ‘You’re pregnant?’

‘No, of course not, you silly man. But seeing your lovely baby girl has sunk a deep well into previously untapped maternal instinct. Yet when I expressed my wish to have a baby, your dear wife insisted I marry Spencer first.’

Vaughan grimaced. ‘Good God, not him. Find someone else, for pity’s sake. He might be a top solicitor, but he’s the most arrogant bastard I’ve ever met.’

‘See?’ Maddie pulled a face at Carolyn, who pulled another right back. Both women started to giggle and the baby to cry.

‘Here, give her to me,’ Vaughan suggested, scooping up his daughter and walking around the room with her, whereupon she immediately stopped crying. ‘Speaking of arrogant bastards—’ he directed the words at Maddie ‘—you’ll never guess who rang me this morning.’

‘If I’d never guess,’ Maddie countered, ‘then perhaps you should save me the trouble of trying and just tell me.’

‘Miles MacMillan,’ he announced. ‘You probably don’t remember him, either of you, but he was at Julian’s house-warming party round about this time last year. The night we got engaged, Carolyn. He’s British and was out here at the time to plan the opening of a Sydney branch of his family’s finance company. Julian was having dealings with him.

‘Anyway, apparently he’s come back for another six-month stint in Australia and wants to buy a weekender within easy commuting distance of Sydney. Since he’d already seen the South Coast area and liked it, he contacted Julian, who told him about that house I’d nearly finished building at Stanwell Park—the one where the owner went bankrupt, bringing things to a halt. He’s driving down to have a look at it this afternoon, and if he likes it, he’s going to buy it.’

‘I don’t remember him at all,’ Carolyn admitted. ‘There again ... I did have my mind on other things that night.’ And she winked at her husband.

‘Wicked woman,’ he rebuked, but softly, lovingly.

‘I remember him only too well,’ Maddie said sharply, and Carolyn and Vaughan’s heads whipped round to stare at her.

‘No, I did not seduce him,’ she added.

Though it wasn’t for want of trying....

‘But he’s not the sort of man one easily forgets,’ she went on. ‘If one’s eyes were not already full of stars, that is.’ Her droll tone belied the squirming in her stomach as her mind flashed back to that night.

Miles MacMillan....

Vaughan was right when he called him an arrogant bastard, though Maddie doubted he was a bastard in the literal sense of the word. Not like herself. Miles MacMillan was blue-blooded through and through. If asked, he could undeniably trace his British ancestry right back to the dim dark ages, and there would not be a single entry from the wrong side of the blanket.

None in writing, anyway.

He was upper class through and through. Upper class, upper crust and up himself!

That said, he was also the most maddeningly attractive man Maddie had ever seen, Tall, dark and handsome, with superb bone structure, a squared jawline with a Cary Grant dimple, steely grey eyes and a perversely sensual mouth totally at odds with his coolly controlled air of haughty superiority.

Maddie had found him downright irresistible from the moment she’d spotted him across Julian’s living room, standing all alone, dressed in an impossibly stuffy pin-striped suit, not a hair out of place on his dark, well-shaped head, his aristocratically chiselled nose high in the air.

When she’d swanned toward him in her semi-transparent black chiffon dress, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Understandable, considering her seeming lack of underwear—the skin-coloured teddy she was wearing did give the illusion of nakedness underneath.

Maddie had foolishly believed he’d been hers for the taking that night, especially once she found out he wasn’t married.

How wrong she was!

Oh, yes, he’d been interested, in a sexual sense. She’d been too long on the end of male desire not to recognise the signs. But as much as he’d been aroused by her, he’d also been faintly repelled, she decided later, his ambivalence towards her making him run hot and cold all night. She wondered afterwards if he’d been unable to make up his mind whether to risk his reputation—or perhaps his soul?—by responding to such a shameless creature’s advances.

When she’d boldly asked him home for a nightcap, he’d stared at her as though she’d suggested something really depraved. He’d declined politely in a voice reminiscent of Queen Victoria’s we-are-not-amused remark, added a curt good-night, then decamped, leaving Maddie in a most unusual state of hurt, humiliation and anger.

Never before had a male prey of his ilk escaped once she set her sights on him. And never before had a man made her actually feel cheap.

But Miles MacMillan had. He’d made her feel lower than the lowest, vilest, slimiest reptile.

Unaccustomed as she was to rejection and humiliation, Maddie had taken some time to get over the incident. Now Miles MacMillan was coming back into her line of fire, and she didn’t know if she was excited by that prospect or terrified of it.

Both, she suspected.

‘Does Mr. MacMillan know about my business association with you, Vaughan?’ she asked archly. ‘Does he realise that if he engages your services, he also gets the services of Miss Madeline Powers, interior designer extraordinaire?’

She could not quite recall what she had told their British visitor about herself that night. His cryptic responses had rattled her somewhat. But she rarely prattled on about herself on first meeting with a member of the opposite sex, concentrating on him instead. Presumably he knew nothing about her job, not to mention her passion for painting nude portraits. She usually didn’t bring that up till the second meeting.

‘I haven’t mentioned you to him yet,’ Vaughan admitted. ‘But I doubt there’ll be any problem. Wealthy men don’t like doing their own decorating, unless they have some female in tow who needs to be pleased. Which there isn’t. No wife, fiancée or live-in girlfriend with him. I asked.’

‘So our esteemed Mr. MacMillan is still unattached,’ Maddie drawled. ‘How interesting.’

Carolyn groaned. ‘She’s off on the prowl again, Vaughan. Do you think you should warn this poor Miles person?’

Vaughan laughed. ‘The not-so-poor Miles is well able to take care of himself. If Maddie is silly enough to set her cap at his head, then she’s the one who needs warning. Men like Miles don’t lose their heads to any woman. They don’t have it in them. They have ice in their veins instead of blood, and computer chips where their hearts should be.’

Carolyn shuddered. ‘I don’t know what you see in men like that, Maddie.’

‘Neither do I,’ she returned airily. ‘But it’s been the same with me as long as I can remember. Still, it’s not as though I want to marry any of them. It’s strictly on a love ’em and leave ‘em basis.’

‘Sure is. Once they fall in love with you, you leave them,’ Carolyn muttered. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of soliciting this Miles person to be the father of the baby you’ve decided you want all of a sudden.’

Surprise sent Maddie’s black eyes rounding. The thought had never crossed her mind. But now that Carolyn had mentioned it ...

Why, Miles MacMillan would be the perfect candidate! Not only did he have the.brains, beauty and breeding she was looking for, but he was only staying in the country six months.

No doubt after his exile in the colonies was over, he would wing his way back to merry England, where he would eventually marry some peaches-and-cream-complexioned lady, raise an heir or two in the image of his own stuffy self and end up in . Who’s Who and the House of Lords!

Or was it Commons? No, no, she was the one who was common. Spencer had said so the other night, and Spencer would know, the hypocritical creep!

‘Vaughan, say something to stop her,’ Carolyn said in a panicky voice. ‘I can see it written all over her face. She’s going to seduce that man. I just know she is!’

‘What Maddie does in her private life is her business,’ Vaughan pronounced stolidly. ‘Besides, you don’t honestly think she’d take any notice of me if I tried to stop her, do you?’

Carolyn sighed. ‘I suppose not.’

Maddie didn’t defend herself, because Vaughan was right. There wasn’t a man alive who could stop her from doing what she wanted to do. Men, she’d decided from a very early age, would never play a controlling role in her life. Never!

But seducing Miles MacMillan was more a fantasy at that moment than a reality. Frankly, as perfect a sperm donor as the man might be, Maddie wasn’t about to put herself in a position to be humiliated yet again. Rejection was no good for the soul, or her self-esteem.

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head, Carolyn, love,’ she said. ‘I do not have my sights set on Miles MacMillan. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me last time we met, and I don’t want to have anything to do with him now, except in a business sense. So when is his lordship due, Vaughan? Is he coming to the office or are you meeting him on site?’

‘He’s coming to the office.’

‘What time?’

‘Around two.’

‘Bring him along to meet me then. Best we make sure he’s agreeable for me to do his decorating right from the start.’

‘You think he might object?’

Maddie shrugged. ‘It’s on the cards.’

‘He damned well wouldn’t want to. You’re the best interior decorator for miles. I’ve got no intention of having my perfectly splendid design ruined by a ghastly decor. I’ll make it abundantly clear when he arrives that if he wants one of my houses, he gets you, too!’

Maddie smiled and batted her eyelashes at him. ‘My champion.’

‘I’m not your champion, and you know it. I’m selfish to the core where my work is concerned. Object to you, indeed,’ he scorned. ‘He won’t object when I’m through with him, believe me!’