Читать книгу Reclaiming His Pregnant Widow - Tessa Radley - Страница 8

The photograph sealed it.

The newspaper Brand Noble had bought at JFK International Airport on his return to the United States had carried a story about tonight’s black-tie museum exhibition opening. But it was the photo of Clea standing beside a statue of a stone tiger that had caused his heart to stop. It had been four years since he’d seen his wife, and she looked more beautiful than ever. Her raven hair unchanged, her eyes still wide and green.

Brand was not about to allow anything as insignificant as the lack of an embossed invitation to keep him from her. He’d waited long enough.

Now, two hours later, Brand slammed the door of the yellow-and-black cab that had ferried him to Manhattan’s Museum Mile. Turning his back on the midweek bustle of commuters hastening home in the fading light, he focused on the Museum of Ancient Antiquities towering ahead.

Clea was in there….

A uniformed guard, almost as wide as he was tall, blocked the entrance, and his scrutiny reminded Brand that in his haste to see Clea he had yet to don the rented tuxedo jacket still slung across his left arm.

Brand’s mouth slanted in a wry grimace. What would the man have thought of the battered fatigues he’d worn for the better part of four years?

Impatience and anticipation ratcheted up another notch, and the ache to see Clea—hold her, kiss her—consumed him.

Breaking into a lope, Brand headed for the glass doors, shrugging on the dinner jacket as he went. He pulled the collar straight and smoothed down the satin lapels with scarred and callused fingertips. As the security guard examined the invitations of the group in front, Brand tagged on behind the tail-enders. To his relief, the guard waved him through with the rest of the party.

He’d negotiated the first barrier.

Now to find Clea …

Brand would’ve loved the tiger.

As always, the sight of the stone figure transfixed Clea. The chatter and clinking of champagne glasses faded away as she studied the powerful feline. Crafted by a Sumerian stone carver eons ago, the leashed power of the piece was compelling, calling to her on a primal level that she could not explain.

Without question Brand would have loved it. That had been her very first thought when she’d spotted the half life-size cat eighteen months earlier—she’d had to have it. Convincing Alan Daley, the museum’s head curator, and the acquisition board to acquire it had taken some doing; the financial outlay had been considerable. But the statue had proved to be a crowd pleaser.

And it was inexorably linked in her mind to Brand, serving as a daily memorial to her husband.

Her late husband.

“Clea?”

The voice that broke into her thoughts was softer than Brand’s rough velvet tones. Not Brand, but Harry …

Brand was dead. Tossed without honor into some mass grave in the hot, dry desert of Iraq. Years of unending questions, desperate prayers and daily flashes of hope were finally over. Ended, irrevocably, in the most unwelcome manner nine months ago.

But he would never be forgotten. Clea had vowed to make certain of that.

Determinedly shrugging off the shroud of melancholy, she brushed a curl off her face and turned away from the statue to her father’s business associate and her oldest friend. “Yes, Harry?”

Harry Hall-Lewis set his hands on her shoulders and gazed down at her. “Yes? Now that’s the word I’ve been waiting a long time to hear you say.”

The playful note in his tone caused Clea to roll her eyes. How she wished he’d tire of the game he’d made of the arranged-marriage plan their fathers had hatched for them two decades ago. “Not now, Harry.” On cue her phone beeped.

Relieved, she extracted her cell phone from her clutch and glanced at it. “It’s Dad.” As chairman of the museum’s board of trustees, Donald Tomlinson had been giving prospective patrons a private tour of the exhibit.

After listening to her father for a few moments, Clea hung up and said to Harry, “He’s finished the tour, and yes, he has secured more funding. He wants us to come join him.”

“You’re changing the subject.” Harry’s hands tightened momentarily on her bare shoulders, making Clea aware of the brevity of the bodice of her floor-length gown. Then the moment of self-consciousness was gone as Harry released her from the friendly hold with a chuckle. “One day I’ll convince you to marry me. And that will be the day you realize what you’ve been missing all these years.”

Clea stepped back, unaccountably needing a little distance from him. “Oh, Harry, that joke wore thin a long time ago.”

The humor evaporated from his face.

“Is the thought of marrying me so repulsive?”

His hangdog expression added to her guilt. They’d grown up together. Their fathers had been best friends; in all ways that mattered Harry was the brother she’d never had. Why couldn’t he understand that she needed him in that role, not as the husband their fathers had cast him as decades ago?

Gently touching the sleeve of his tailored jacket, she said, “Oh, Harry, you’re my best friend, I love you dearly—”

“I sense a but coming.”

The winking glitter from the chandeliers overhead gave his eyes an unnatural sparkle. Despite his carefree persona, Harry had always been perceptive. And he was right, there was a but. A great big, tall, dark and heartbreakingly absent but.

Brand …

The love of her life … and utterly irreplaceable. Grief had created a black void in her life that drained her of joy. How she missed him!

Clea shut off the line of thought that always led to unstanched pain and wild regret, and focused instead on Harry. “I’m just not ready to think of marriage again.”

She doubted she’d ever be ready.

“Surely you don’t still harbor hope that Brand is alive?”

Harry’s words caused the frenetic buzz that had been driving her for months to subside, forcing her to confront the pain she’d so carefully kept from facing. Weariness—and a lonely longing—overtook her. All at once Clea wished she was home, alone in the bedroom she’d once shared with Brand, cocooned in the comfort of their bed. The familiar ache of loss swamped her.

Dropping her hand from Harry’s sleeve, she wrapped her arms around her tummy and said in a high, thin voice, “This is the wrong time for this discussion.”

Harry caught her arm and said quietly, “Clea, for the past nine months, since you received confirmation that Brand is dead, you never want to talk about him.”

Clea flinched at the reminder of that awful day.

“I know you did everything in your power to find him, Clea, that you never gave up hoping that he was alive. But he’s not. He’s dead, and probably has been for over four years—however much you tried to deny it. You have to accept it.”

“I know he’s—” her voice broke “—dead.”

Harry looked as shocked by her disjointed statement as she felt.

Coldness crept through her.

Defeated, Clea’s shoulders drooped and the soft satin of the sea-green dress—the color of Brand’s eyes—sagged around her body. She shivered, suddenly chilled despite the warm summer evening.

It was the first time she’d admitted Brand’s death out loud.

For so long she’d refused to stop hoping. She’d prayed. She’d kept the flame of faith alive deep in her heart, in that sacred place only Brand had ever touched. Clea had even convinced herself that if Brand had been dead a piece of her soul would have withered. So all through the months—the years—of waiting she’d stubbornly refused to extinguish the last flicker of hope. Not even when her father and friends were telling her to face reality: Brand wasn’t coming back.

Harry spoke, breaking into her thoughts. “Well, accepting he’s dead is a major step forward.”

“Harry—”

“Look, I know it’s been a tough time for you. Those first days of silence.” Harry shook his head. “And then discovering he’d gone to Baghdad with another woman—”

“I might’ve been wrong about Brand still being alive,” Clea interrupted heatedly, “but Brand was not having an affair with Anita Freeman—I don’t care what the investigators say.” Clea wouldn’t tolerate having her memory of Brand defiled. “It’s not true. Their minds belong in some Baghdad sewer.”

“But your father—”

“I don’t care what Dad thinks, I absolutely refuse to believe it. Besides we both know Dad never cared much for Brand. Let it rest.” She hesitated. “Brand and Anita were colleagues.”

“Colleagues?” Harry’s voice was loaded with innuendo.

“Okay, they dated a few times. But it was over before Brand met me.” How Clea hated this. The way the gossip tarnished the love she and Brand had shared.

“That might have been what Brand wanted you to believe. But the investigators found proof that they’d lived together for over a year in London before he met you—hell, that’s longer than he was married to you, Clea. Why did he never mention that? Your husband died in a car crash with the woman in the Iraq desert. Stop deceiving yourself!”

A quick scan around revealed no one close enough to overhear their conversation. Thank God. Clea stepped closer and spoke in a low tone: “They did not live together—Brand would’ve told me that. The relationship was brief. They only kept contact because of work. Brand was an antiquities expert, Anita was an archaeologist. Of course they ran across each other.”

“But you’ll never know for sure. Because Brand never even told you he was going to Iraq.”

Unable to argue with Harry’s logic, Clea straightened and said, “I have no intention of conducting a postmortem on this.”

Her husband was dead. It was tragic enough that her bone-deep conviction that he’d been out there somewhere—hurting … maybe suffering memory loss … waiting to be found—had been misguided.

But then, everyone had always thought she was mad to hope he might still be alive in the face of the mounting evidence that he must be dead. The burned-out wreck of Brand’s rented vehicle had been found in the desert, and nearby villagers had confirmed burying the charred remains of a man and a woman in a local mass grave.

Despite the investigators’ certainty that Brand had perished in the desert, Clea had wanted proof. That it had indeed been Brand who had died, not someone else. Not even the fact that no one had seen or heard from Brand since his disappearance or the fact that his bank accounts had remained untouched could quell her hopes.

But nine months ago, after years of lingering hope, Clea had received the proof she’d dreaded.

Brand’s wedding ring. Stolen off one of the corpses by a member of the burial team and later turning up in a pawnbroker’s stall at the local village market.

Brand would never have taken his ring off. Never. Finally, no choice remained but to face the truth: Brand had died in that wreck in the desert. He was not coming back.

Her beloved husband was dead.

There’d been nothing left for her to do but complete the formalities.

The court accepted what her father, the investigating team and the lawyers dispassionately called “the facts” and made an order confirming that Brand was dead, authorizing a death certificate to be issued.

The day she’d received the death certificate, the final document charting Brand’s life, Clea’s heart had shattered into glass-sharp fragments. She’d believed she would never come to terms with the harsh finality of it.

Harry’s familiar features became a blur as her vision teared up. Yet amid the ashes of despair she’d found a way to combat her loneliness …

“Now I’ve upset you.” Harry looked more wretched than ever. “I never meant to do that.”

“It’s not you.”

Clea blinked furiously. How could she explain that everything made her feel tearful? The doctor said that was normal—it would pass.

“It’s me. I’m just all over the place right now.”

That caused Harry to take a hurried step back.

Patting the front of his dinner jacket, Clea gave a wan smile. “It’s okay, I promise I won’t bawl my eyes out.”

Harry gave a hasty glance around, then said gamely, “You can cry on my shoulder anytime you want.”

Her throat ached. “I’m done crying. I know—and accept—that Brand is dead. I know that I have to move on. Everything is going to be all right.” If she told herself that often enough she might one day start believing it. For good measure she added, “And I’ve got something to live for.”

“Clea, if you need me—I’ll be there for you. You know that.”

Yet despite his brave words Harry looked so alarmed by the prospect of her falling apart here, in front of New York’s high society, that Clea couldn’t help smiling. “Harry, thank you. You’re the best.”

Relief lit Harry’s expression. “Isn’t that what friends are for?”

In the foyer of the Museum of Ancient Antiquities, Brand paused midstep and looked around. It was different from the last time he’d been here … yet still very familiar.

Dated black-and-white tiles had given way to glossy white marble. And the flooring wasn’t the only change. An imposing, curved marble staircase with an ornate bronze balustrade wound upward in the space once occupied by creaky wooden stairs covered in threadbare, mustard-colored carpeting from the 1950s. To the right of the stairs, a magnificent bronze immortalized a pre-Christian goddess. The wreath of corn she wore allowed Brand to identify her as Inanna, the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, fertility and war.

The dark, old-fashioned entrance hall had been transformed into a sophisticated, inviting space just as Clea had sketched one snowy winter’s evening while they’d reclined beside the glowing fire at home. Brand had listened as she’d shared a vision of how the museum could become New York’s most exciting collection of ancient treasures.

Brand moved forward slowly.

A rush of pride filled him. His wife had clearly accomplished what she’d once only dreamed of. The museum was no longer a somewhat dowdy haunt of scholars and art aficionados. It was thriving … alive … exactly as she’d envisaged.

At the foot of the stairs a flock of women in high heels and designer frocks were being served oversize cosmopolitans by a white-jacketed waiter.

There was a buzz of excitement in the air.

Brand’s gaze searched the group.

No Clea. Beyond the fashionistas lurked more clusters of people. His gaze sharpened. Men. All of them. Formally clad in black-and-white and scattered beneath the bronze of Inanna.

Where was his wife?

His heart hammering, Brand advanced, passing under a gilded chandelier, its iridescent crystals dispersing flecks of light across the domed arch of the ceiling far above. He made for the spectacular staircase he knew must lead to the second floor and the upper galleries. He couldn’t wait to watch Clea’s incredible green eyes light up with unrestrained joy when she saw him, couldn’t wait to touch her, feel her soft warmth, her femininity within his arms. How he’d dreamed of that.

His wife. His lover. His lodestar. Every minute away from her had almost killed him.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Brand paused. The long gallery was crowded. The sparkle of jewels and riot of color was blinding. He fought an unexpected wave of claustrophobia as the crowd enveloped him.

Perhaps he should’ve called ahead, let her know he was coming home….

But with the worst of the long and dangerous trek through the mountains bordering northern Iraq behind him, he’d wanted to get the less risky journey back to the United States done. Sure, there’d still been the chance that he could be arrested for carrying a fake passport. And, beneath reason, there’d lurked the blind terror that calling Clea might jinx everything.

Too late for second thoughts now.

Brand scanned the throng crammed between glass display cases holding priceless ancient treasures and tables loaded with canapés. Still no sight of the woman he sought. He edged past a trio of gossiping older women, their hungry eyes incessantly sweeping the packed room for fresh fodder before they turned to each other and cackled. His lips started to curl … then relaxed into a rusty smile. In the past he would’ve dismissed them as social hyenas; but now, after his months of deprivation, any laughter was a welcome sound.

He met the heavily mascaraed eyes of one of the group. Saw the disbelief as recognition dawned. Marcia Mercer. Brand remembered that she used to pen an influential society column. Perhaps she still did.

“Brand … Brand Noble?”

He gave her a nod in brief acknowledgment before advancing with ruthless determination, ignoring the turning heads, the growing babble that followed in his wake.

And then he saw her.

Brand’s mouth went dry. The cacophony of rising voices faded. There was only Clea …

She was smiling.

Her mouth curved up, and her eyes sparkled. A shimmering ball gown clung to her curves, her arms bare except for a gold cuff that glowed in the light from the opulent chandeliers … and on her left hand the wedding band he’d chosen for her glinted.

Brand sucked in his breath.

For an instant he thought she’d cut off the riot of curls he loved. But as she turned her head he caught a glimpse of curls escaping down behind her back from where the dark tresses had been pulled away from her face. He let out the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding in a jagged groan. She looked so vital, so alive and so stunningly beautiful.

Longing surged through him and his chest expanded into an ache too complex to identify.

Clea’s hand reached out and touched a jacketed arm. Brand’s gaze followed. The sight of the bronze-haired man she was touching caused Brand’s eyes to narrow dangerously. So Harry Hall-Lewis was still around. When she tipped her face up and directed the full blast of her smile at the man, Brand wanted to yank Clea away. To pull her to him, hold her, never let her go.

Mine.

The response roared through him. Basic, primal … and very, very male.

“Champagne, sir?”

The waiter’s interruption broke his concentration on Clea. Brand helped himself to a glass from the tray with hands that shook, and he gulped the golden liquid down to moisten his tight, parched throat.

Then he set the empty glass down and drew a steadying breath.

He had his life back … and he had no intention of spending another moment away from the woman who had lured him back from beyond the darkness with the memory of her smile.

There was no time to waste.

Yet, when he looked across the room again, Clea and her companion had vanished.

After a terse exchange with her father near the Egyptian room, Clea then sneaked behind a tall pillar while Harry ventured into the crowd to fetch her a drink. Leaning against the cool column, she shut her eyes. If her father saw her he’d lecture her about duty, about the importance of networking and getting out in front of all the television cameras in attendance. Clea pursed her mouth in a moue of resignation. Of course he was right. But she needed a little time alone. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk, and the growing whispers were causing the latent tension within her to spiral out of control.

“Clea.”

That voice. She jerked around like a puppet on a string, eyes stretched wide, shock punching the air out of her lungs.

Breathless, she whispered, “Brand …?”

It couldn’t be. Disbelief made her blink. Brand was dead.

The man coming toward her was tall, dark and very much alive.

A ghost from the past.

Heat seared her, instantly followed by an icy chill. He was a dead ringer for her very dead husband—the man she’d officially had declared dead eight months ago, a month after being given his ring back.

This was cruel. Brand was gone. Forever. Hadn’t she spent the past nine months trying to come to terms with the final proof of his death after nearly four years of terrible, traumatic uncertainty?

Blood rushed to her head. The sudden airlessness of the room pressed in on her.

Clea couldn’t breathe, and she felt horribly ill. Her father would never forgive her if she was sick all over the marble floor … with press cameras everywhere to immortalize the moment.

“Clea!”

The hands that came down on her shoulders were so intimately familiar … yet so painfully strange. She shook her head, resisting the cold mist closing in on her. He was dead. Yet the fingers cupping her shoulders were warm, strong and very much alive.

This was no ghost.

This was a human being. A man she knew too well.

“Don’t faint on me,” he warned in that deep, slightly hoarse voice.

“I won’t.” She’d never fainted in her life. Yet she had to admit that she felt weak, dizzy … dazed. “You’re supposed to be dead!” She sucked in a ragged breath, and then added inanely, “But you’re back.”

Clea!

A raw, burning hunger he hadn’t experienced for more than a thousand nights overpowered Brand. He pulled the woman he’d dreamed of every day—every night—toward him, drinking in the scent of her, a heady mix of honey and jasmine. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Her warmth and fragrance flooded him.

Beneath the exploring pads of his fingers her shoulders were more slender than he remembered, the bones fragile, but her skin was as soft as ever. “You’ve lost weight.”

She stiffened under his touch. “Maybe.”

Brand buried his face in the side of her neck, iron bands of emotion constricting his chest.

“I’ve missed you,” he breathed, “so much.” Without her, a void had replaced the man he’d been. His arms tightened around her slender frame, words pouring from him, rough guttural sounds against her smooth skin.

“Brand, I can’t hear you.” Clea drew away a little. “It’s too loud in here—let’s find somewhere quieter.”

She slipped out of his hold and a sense of loss swamped Brand.

Clea held out a hand. “Come.”

He took the fingers she offered, the delicate link frighteningly fragile.

She pulled him along with her, threading between the press of staring people until they broke clear, escaping through open double doors into a carpeted corridor beyond. Clea halted outside a set of glass doors in the clear floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Letting go of his hand, she fished in her evening purse looped over her shoulder by a delicate chain and extracted a keycard, which she swiped in the security slot. The doors sprang open and Brand followed her into a reception area and the corridor beyond. “My office is through here.”

Brand paused. “You used to be down in the basement.”

Her chin tilted up in a gesture that was pure Clea, and his heart clenched.

“I’ve moved up in the world,” she told him, her eyes hungrily searching his face. “I’m more important now.”

Clea pressed a wall switch and light flooded the room, catching forgotten glints of precious copper in her long, dark curls, hinting at the fire that lay beneath.

Lust caught him by the throat.

He’d missed her so damn much. Missed talking to her. Missed touching her.

Most of all he’d missed loving her.

Clea.

In a flash, Brand closed the space between them and took her in his arms again. He couldn’t get enough of touching her, reassuring himself that she was here, in his hold. Not a wraith that would vanish with his dreams as dawn cracked over the endless, empty horizon. Bending his head, he slanted his lips across hers. She gave a surprised gasp, and a beat later melted into his embrace.

She tasted so sweet, and his hunger soared.

Tracing the indent of her spine with shaking fingers, Brand’s hands moved up … up … until his fingers speared into the soft, glossy mass of constrained curls. Her head fell back and he deepened the kiss.

Her breasts pressed against his chest, and despite her weight loss they seemed fuller than he remembered. Clea had always bemoaned her lack of curves, but now she was positively lush.

Another change.

But this one he would savor …

He brought his hands forward to shape her ripe flesh and his fingers skimmed her belly. Fuller there, too. A curious anomaly given the slenderness of her shoulders, the sharp definition of her high cheekbones. His hands rested on the rise, his fingers exploring … and he felt her still.

Blood roared in Brand’s ears. He couldn’t absorb what his fingertips were telling him.

No!

His first reaction was denial. But his hands had developed a life—a reasoning power—all their own, even as his mind sputtered then stalled. His palms stroked over Clea’s curves, sending bursts of unwelcome information back to his struggling brain until he could no longer deny the truth of what lay beneath his hands.

Raising his head, he glared accusingly down into her startled green eyes. “You’re pregnant!”