Honeymoon Baby
Susan Napier
DO NOT Disturb Anything can happen behind closed doors!Jennifer had taken drastic measures to become pregnant, and she was saving every ounce of love she had for her baby. There was no room in her life for marriage - but now the father of her unborn child had arrived on her doorstep!Jennifer's first problem was that her entire family believed Raphael Jordan was actually her husband - and that, at last, the happy couple could have a honeymoon! Her second was that Raphael was delighted to oblige… so Jennifer was forced to share a bed with her gorgeous, sexy, pretend husband!
“My baby...” (#u309548c1-c627-5da8-b16e-cf19b997fc72)Title Page (#u6d640002-edb0-59c1-9a7e-f9d89acd93a7)CHAPTER ONE (#uaba2d9c3-14ca-5aa0-9710-b7af58fb2d0a)CHAPTER TWO (#ub54ecf03-507c-5ea1-87a1-f0860e9bc446)CHAPTER THREE (#u66ef9a7a-b75e-5917-aabd-05a9f55953fe)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“My baby...”
All her protests had been futile. Rafe had known all along she was pregnant.
“So, Jennifer...you and I are going to be parents in a little under six months. We’re practically strangers, we’ve hardly spoken and barely touched, let alone made love, but we’ve engaged in the most intimate act two human beings can share...the procreation of life.”
She blushed. “That was a medical procedure. You had nothing to do with it!”
Rafe’s hand crept under the band of her jumper, and found the silky skin of her belly.
She jumped. “What are you doing?”
“I just want to see if I can feel my baby....”
Anything can happen behind closed doors!
Do you dare find out...?
Some of your favorite Harlequin Presents
authors are exploring this delicious fantasy in our sizzling, sensual miniseries DO NOT DISTURB!
Circumstances throw different couples together in a whirlwind of unexpected attraction. Forced into each other’s company whether they like it or not, they’re soon in the grip of passion—and definitely don’t want to be disturbed!
Coming next month:
The Bedroom Incident
by
Elizabeth Oldfield
Harlequin Presents #1994
Honeymoon Baby
Susan Napier
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
JENNIFER was filling a vase at the kitchen sink when the sleek, low-slung dark green car came gunning around the tree-lined curve of the driveway, almost fish-tailing into a bank of ferns as the driver belatedly realised the bend was a lot sharper than it looked. She frowned out of the window as she watched the unfamiliar car recover from its near-skid and continue at a more cautious pace up the narrow, rutted gravel drive to park in front of the low dry-stone wall which enclosed the cottage garden in front of the house. With the heavy dust coating the tinted windscreen she couldn’t make out the driver, but the lone pair of skis strapped to the moulded black roof-rack suggested a stray single hoping for a bed.
Whoever it was would be out of luck. Jennifer disliked having to turn custom away, but all her rooms were currently occupied and—she unconsciously crossed her fingers—apart from a few odd days, booking was fairly solid for the rest of the month...providing the mountain minded its manners.
She glanced out of the corner window at the billowing, dirty grey mushroom-cloud of steam and ash which boiled up from the snowy summit of Mount Ruapehu, blotting out the formerly blue sky. The scenery was spectacular but living on the borders of a National Park, within twenty kilometres of an active volcano, had its drawbacks. Although there had been no major eruption here for thousands of years, the 2797-metre-high mountain itself was a powerful reminder of man’s vulnerability to the forces of nature, and lately a series of minor eruptions had put a serious crimp in the local economy of one of New Zealand’s premier ski resorts.
Jennifer’s wide mouth turned down at the corners at the thought of another disappointing winter. Vulcanologists and government scientists had been closely monitoring the mountain since it had exploded back into life just over a year ago, coating the ski fields with successive layers of brown ash for months, causing the closure of the mountain to skiers, sightseers and climbers, and creating great financial hardship for the local businesses who were heavily reliant on a good ski season for the greater portion of their annual income. There had been no loss of life or property, but the damage in terms of adverse publicity had been considerable.
Now, just as the public alert level had finally been dropped and early snowfalls presaged a long ski season that would enable the local tourist industry to recoup some of the previous year’s losses, Mount Ruapehu was rumbling again, sending steam and sediment from its crater lake streaming into the atmosphere. Although the scientists claimed there was no indication that the new eruption would be any bigger than last year’s, casual skiers were already cancelling their holidays in droves. Only the hard-core snow-junkies seemed willing to gamble on parts of the ski fields remaining open for the duration of their stay.
Fortunately a small, quiet bed and breakfast establishment like Beech House appealed more to mature tourist couples and lone travellers than to groups of avid skiers, so Jennifer hoped to weather the crisis better than some of the other, larger moteliers and resort operators, whose advertising was focused on pre-packaged ski deals. Some of her guests were even booked in because, rather than in spite of the possibility of a more fiery eruption.
Jennifer’s mouth curved up again, tawny brown eyes glowing in a secret smile of contentment behind her tortoiseshell spectacles. At least this year she didn’t have to suffer the black panic of wondering whether she was going to be able to meet the next mortgage payment...
The sound of a car door opening switched her attention back to the new arrival as a slight figure glided into the kitchen to place some garden produce and a bunch of brilliant yellow chrysanthemums on the bench.
‘Snazzy car. Who is it?’ asked Susie Tang, going on tiptoe to peer out of the window.
Even so, her glossy black head barely came up to Jennifer’s collarbone. Although five feet ten wasn’t much over average height for a woman, she always felt like a veritable Amazon next to her diminutive part-time employee. ‘My guess is foreign, lost or illiterate...or maybe just someone who doesn’t believe “No Vacancy” signs.’
‘Uh-oh!’ Susie clapped her hand over her mouth, her almond-shaped eyes widening under her jet-black fringe. ‘I said I’d hang it out for you when I left yesterday, didn’t I? Sorry, Jen, I forgot...’ The mournful mobility of her expression banished any illusion of oriental inscrutability. Susie’s every thought and mood registered on her face.
A masculine hand splayed on the roof of the car as the driver hauled himself out of his bucket seat. ‘Never mind—if he gets a look inside and likes what he sees, maybe he’ll come back and stay another time,’ said Jennifer, reaching for the flowers. A lot of her custom came from repeat business or via word-of-mouth recommendation.
‘Wow!’ Susie was nearly falling out of the window. ‘He’s even snazzier than his car! Since there’s no room at the inn do you think I could interest him in bed and breakfast?’
Jennifer’s laughing reply died in her throat as the man lifted his head in a quick, predatory motion to stare up at the house. The sun flared off hair the colour of old gold and the black wrap-around sunglasses couldn’t disguise the distinctive jut of his high cheekbones and the hollow cheeks bracketing the unshaven chin. A wave of nauseating disbelief washed over her, making her knees sag against the kitchen cupboards.
Surely fate couldn’t be so cruel!
She clutched the vase to her stomach, slopping water onto the tiled surface of the bench, praying that her eyes were deceiving her.
Gravel crunched under his feet as he strode around to the back of the car and opened the boot. Faded jeans moulded long legs and lean hips, and a cream woollen jumper under the black hip-length leather jacket studded with snaps and zips completed the image of threatening masculinity. He hefted a suitcase out of the boot, moving with the easy confidence of a man in the prime of his life, at the peak of his virility...
And definitely no wild illusion.
‘Oh, God—!’
‘Jen, what’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost?’
Worse than a ghost. Much, much worse! She was staring into the face of grim reality. A nightmare complication to an already convoluted existence. A living, breathing reproach to her unquiet conscience.
She had thought him safely ensconced in London. What hellish coincidence had landed him here, in her own private little corner of the world?
Oh, God!
‘Jen, you’re not going to pass out on me, are you? Jen?’
Susie’s sharp anxiety penetrated her ringing skull, beating back the icy chills of disbelief which had frozen her brain. She shook her head violently, self-preservation screaming to the fore as she jerked back from the window.
‘No, I’m fine,’ she lied, grabbing the bunch of chrysanthemums and haphazardly stuffing them into the pottery vase.
‘Is it him? That man? Do you know him?’ Susie angled herself against the glass to watch him vanish around the corner of the sprawling bungalow, in the direction of the front porch. ‘If he’s bringing in his bag perhaps he’s not just cold-calling. Maybe there’s been a mix-up in the bookings. If he spoke to Paula on the phone—you know she’s not big on writing things down...’
At the mention of her mother Jennifer’s heart leapt in her chest. Thank goodness she wasn’t here! She and Aunty Dot had driven over to The Grand Chateau for a Gourmet Club luncheon at the hotel restaurant; they should be away for at least another hour.
There was a welcoming bark and the loud scrabble of claws on the wooden porch, and seconds later the harsh grind of the old-fashioned doorbell reverberated in the entranceway. To Jennifer it sounded uncannily like the knell of doom.
‘Uh, shouldn’t you go and see what he wants?’ suggested Susie when the bell rang a second time.
If the newcomer got impatient and tried the door, he would find that it wasn’t locked. He could just walk in, and then, and then...
Oh, God!
‘You do it,’ she blurted.
‘Me?’
Guests and potential guests were always dealt with by either Paula or Jennifer at their own insistence—the personal touch was a hallmark of Beech House. Susie’s job was only peripheral to the bed and breakfast business—helping run Paula’s afternoon cooking classes and delivering the jams, pickles and jars of edible and decorative preserved fruit, which she sold to stores as far away as Taupo.
‘I have to put these flowers in the Carters’ room. Mrs Carter complained that the vase of daphne that Mum put in there was too highly perfumed,’ babbled Jennifer, conscious of the feebleness of her excuse.
She couldn’t blame Susie for looking bewildered at her urgency over the floral arrangements. Mr and Mrs Carter had gone on a cruise on Lake Taupo for the day and wouldn’t be back until late evening.
‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’
The doorbell rang again and Jennifer flinched, splashing water from the crammed vase down the leg of her fawn trousers.
‘I do feel a bit sick,’ she admitted bluntly, grabbing at the straw. ‘Look, all you have to do is say that we don’t have any vacancies for the foreseeable future, and direct him to another B&B or one of the hotels. Don’t go into details. And don’t give him one of our new advertising leaflets; I haven’t decided how to use them yet,’ she tacked on hastily, remembering the glossy reprints that her mother had ordered as a surprise, with ‘Jenny Jordan and Paula Scott, proprietors’ in flowing bold type on the front.
‘But, how—?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Susie, I’m only asking you to answer the door, not perform brain surgery!’ she snapped.
Susie blinked, more surprised than offended by the implied insult. In the three months that she had worked at Beech House she had never known Jennifer be anything but kind, considerate and polite, if a little wicked in her sense of humour. Perhaps, though, a little moodiness was only to be expected from now on...
‘OK, OK—don’t get your hormones in a bunch.’ She grinned. ‘I’ll go...but, uh, what if he asks—?’
‘Just get rid of him!’
Jennifer bit her lip as Susie shot out of the kitchen, propelled by the low-voiced shriek. She was going to have to apologise, but later—when the immediate danger had passed and she had control of herself again.
Not wanting to compound her sins by being caught out in another lie, she forced her shaky legs into action, slipping through the dining and living rooms and sneaking out along the sweeping back verandah, leaving a faint trail in the thin mantle of volcanic ash. She let herself into the large double bedroom which was considered the best in the house for its unobscured view of Ruapehu. Closing the French doors on the icy southerly wind, she picked up the crystal vase with its artfully arranged sprays of daphne and replaced it with the flung together chrysanthemums.
She looked blankly around the room that she had tidied earlier. Should she wait in here until she heard his car leave? She eyed the door to the passage, which was slightly ajar. She longed to creep up to the sanctuary of her bedroom and bolt the door, but the narrow staircase to the converted attic was in full view of the front door.
She turned away, catching sight of her glazed expression in the old-fashioned mirror atop the dressing table. No wonder Susie had looked at her with such concern! She had never considered herself a beauty, but right now the too-square face with its too-sharp nose and slightly asymmetrical mouth was starkly plain—her dark brown hair, tumbling in careless waves to her shoulders, contrasting with a complexion as pale and waxy as the daphne blooms that she held in her hand. The bright red jumper that her mother had knitted the previous winter further accentuated her pallor, and snugly defined full breasts which trembled as if she had just run a marathon. With her left eyebrow twitching above the thin amber curve of her round spectacle frame, she looked like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Which was exactly how she felt.
The cloying sweetness of daphne clogged her nostrils as she paced. Why on earth was Susie taking so long to get rid of him?
A vivid picture of golden male confidence sketched itself in her head and she halted on a silent moan. What if Susie couldn’t handle it?
What if he chose to flex his insufferable arrogance and argue?
What if he exercised his brutal charm and insinuated himself over the threshold?
And what if his being here wasn’t simply a rotten piece of malignant bad luck?
She stared out at the smouldering mountain, so busy agonising over the possibilities that she didn’t notice the door to the hall swinging open until a squeak of the hinges made her stiffen.
‘Playing hard to get, Mrs Jordan?’
Jennifer’s quickened breathing hitched to an uneven stop as she slowly turned around, to be impaled by green-gold eyes which were every bit as cruelly condemning as she remembered. But now their contemptuous coldness was super-heated to a vaporous fury that made her wish he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses.
Her face was on fire while her hands and feet felt like lumps of ice. Black dots prickled across her vision and her tongue suddenly felt too big for her dry mouth.
‘R-Raphael. What a surprise. Wh-what are you doing here?’ she managed threadily.
Raphael Jordan advanced into the spacious room, shrinking it to the size of a jail cell, his cynical smile oozing pure menace.
‘What do you think, Mrs Jordan?’
She swallowed, trying to work moisture into the dryness of her throat, wishing that he would stop sneering her name in that ominously insulting fashion.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, meaning she didn’t dare speculate. ‘Are—are you just passing through on holiday?’
He bludgeoned aside the frail hope. ‘Not a holiday—a hunting expedition.’ He kept on moving, forcing her to back up until her calves hit the dressing table drawers. ‘For certain very valuable—and very elusive—kiwis...’
Jennifer’s stomach lurched sickeningly at his use of the plural. ‘K-kiwis are a fully protected bird,’ she stuttered stupidly. Although she knew he was only just over six feet, he seemed to loom for ever. ‘It’s against the law for people to hunt them.’
His feral gaze gloated over her white face. ‘In their native habitat, yes, but what happens to greedy kiwis who venture where they don’t belong and violate the laws of nature...? I’d say that makes them fair game, wouldn’t you?’
He made no attempt to touch her, yet she sensed his straining muscles yearning to do physical violence. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, her eyes sliding away from his grim expression to search the empty doorway behind him.
‘Where’s Susie? What did you say to get her to let you in?’ Her cold hands were suddenly as clammy as her brow and her voice sank to a horrified whisper. ‘What have you told her?’
His shrug was a ripple of expensive leather. ‘About our relationship? How about the truth?’
She fought against the bile rising in her throat. ‘What truth?’
His full-lipped smile was cruelly taunting.
‘Why, that you’re my father’s wife, pregnant with my child!’
The heavy vase slipped through Jennifer’s nerveless fingers, smashing to pieces on the polished hardwood floor as she tumbled headlong into the smothering darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
‘JEN? Hello! Are you in there?’
Jennifer’s eyes fluttered open to find Susie’s round face filling her vision.
‘Thank goodness! How do you feel?’
Jennifer moistened her dry lips, momentarily disorientated by the discovery that she was lying flat on the living room couch, with Susie kneeling on the floor beside her.
‘OK...I think,’ she wavered, remembering her awful anxiety dream. Had she been taking a nap? Was her guilt now going to pursue her even into sleep? ‘What happened?’
‘You fainted. Switched out like a light, apparently. Luckily your husband caught you before you fell face first into all that glass.’
‘Husband?’ she echoed feebly.
‘I guess you were too busy feeling rotten to really look at our visitor, huh?’ Susie suggested with a wry grin. ‘I felt horribly embarrassed when I found out who I was giving the bum’s rush to, but fortunately Rafe seems a forgiving kind of guy.’
‘My husband?’ Jennifer struggled up onto her elbows, her whirling head causing her to sink back against the padded arm of the couch. ‘Rafe?’
‘Yeah—he said not to worry about it, that he knew you weren’t expecting him. He wanted to surprise you, but I suppose it wasn’t such a hot idea when you were feeling so wonky...’
So it hadn’t been a dream!
‘He’s really here?’ Jennifer cast a hunted look around the room, her eyes skipping over the comfortable, well-used furniture. Everything was still fuzzy around the edges. She groped at her face.
‘My glasses—where are my glasses?’ She needed a barrier, however flimsy and transparent, to hide behind.
Susie picked them up off the coffee table and handed them to her to fumble on.
‘Now, don’t fret,’ she said, misunderstanding Jennifer’s panic. ‘He’ll be back in a moment. I got him to carry you out here because your clothes got splashed and I knew you wouldn’t want the Carters’ bedclothes all damp when you’d just made all the beds. He’s just in the kitchen getting you a drink. See, here he is back!’
Susie scrambled to her feet to allow the tall, whipcord-lean man to weave around the coffee table and perch sideways on the broad couch. He wedged his right hip against Jennifer’s side as he braced one arm on the cushioned back and leaned over to offer her a sip from the glass of water in his other hand, effectively caging in her body with his chest.
Satisfied that her employer was in good hands, Susie backed away. ‘I’m going to leave for home before this volcanic fog gets any worse, but don’t worry about that mess in the Carters’ room, Jen, I’ ll clean it up for you before I go. That way you two can just concentrate on each other...’
‘Thanks, Susie.’ Rafe’s deep, warm tone cut off Jennifer’s spluttering objection as he pressed the glass to her pale mouth. He threw a burnished smile over his shoulder. ‘You’re a sweetheart, but...’ He trailed off, raising silky brows.
Susie laughed, as if she had known him for years rather than merely minutes. ‘I know, I know—three’s a crowd. I guess I’ll see you later then...much later!’
Jennifer pushed at the glass which had been used to gag her as Susie scampered away. ‘Take it away! I don’t want a drink.’
Trust Jordan to have suborned her ally while she was unconscious. As a former male model, and former editor of a raunchy men’s magazine, he was no doubt used to women falling over themselves to be friendly.
There was no smile for her. Just a probing look. ‘Too bad. You need extra fluids to counteract shock—and don’t tell me you’re not shocked to see me. Drink!’
The glass clinked against her resistant teeth, forcing her head back against the arm of the couch, and, knowing his stubbornness, she took a single swallow, defiantly tiny.
‘Again,’ he insisted.
Another, even tinier sip. ‘Bully,’ she muttered, wondering if she dared spit it in his face.
‘Cheat. Gold-digger,’ he retaliated softly. ‘Thief.’
At the heavy significance placed on the last insult she almost choked on the small mouthful, the blood surging up into her face.
‘Good. You’ve got a little of your colour back,’ he said, studying her clinically. The simmering violence with which he had confronted her in the bedroom was gone, superceded by an implacable air of purpose that was even more threatening. He had taken advantage of her unconsciousness to firmly establish himself in her household, leaving her no option but to fight a rear-guard action.
Close up, his lightly tanned face revealed the imprint of thirty-three years rich with experience, fine lines fanning out from the corners of his knowing eyes and cynical curves bracketing the corners of his sensual mouth. The slight stubble softening the hard line of his jaw sparkled like gold glitter on a Christmas card, and the short, spiky tufts of deep blonde hair, sun-bleached almost white at the tips, created an improbable halo above the narrow temples. However, apart from his name, any similarity to an angel was purely illusory—no angel possessed Raphael Jordan’s decadent past!
‘More?’
He tilted the glass, ignoring her sullen resistance, and a trickle of water repelled by the compressed seam of her lips skated down from the corner of her mouth.
To her intense shock Rafe bent his head and licked the droplets off her chin before they could drip into the cowl-neck of her angora jumper.
‘Stop it!’ she gasped, wiping the back of her hand over the spot where his moist tongue had lashed her tender skin with fire. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
She gulped as he lifted his head, just enough for her to see the sexual taunting in his emerald eyes.
‘Just my husbandly duty, Mrs Jordan...’
She hated the ease with which he could disrupt her senses. From the first time Sebastian had introduced her to his son she had been deeply aware of the dangerous undercurrents, and was secretly grateful for the strained relationship between the two men which had kept their association to a minimum.
‘You said you told Susie the truth,’ she said, her voice ragged with the effort of controlling her fear.
He placed the barely touched glass on the beechwood coffee table without releasing her from his tormenting gaze. ‘Actually, she didn’t give me the chance,’ he admitted with a cool lack of remorse for the fright he had given her. ‘I told her my name and before I could say that I was looking for my father’s wife—’
‘His widow!’ It was a distinction that was vital to Jennifer’s bruised sensibilities.
He inclined his head, his eyes glinting as if her fierce correction had accorded him some kind of important victory.
‘Whatever... As soon as I said I was Raphael Jordan, she began talking as if I was your husband. She seemed so certain that your husband’s name was Rafe, and so positive that you’d be over the moon to see me that I thought it best not to argue with her romantic delusions.’
Best? He meant most useful to his own purposes!
Jennifer clenched her hands at her sides, hating the helplessness of her position but knowing she would be no match for Rafe in a physical tussle. He clearly had no intention of letting her up until she was intimidated into giving him some answers.
She would have to rely on her wits to extricate herself and somehow persuade him to leave before he encountered loose-tongued Susie again, or—God forbid—her mother!
‘It seems funny that she should get so mixed up,’ he mused perilously, ‘because she seemed otherwise a fairly intelligent and switched-on young woman. Could it be, dear stepmama, that you’ve been purposely vague about the whereabouts of your husband? Haven’t you let on that he’s no longer in the land of the living? Been keeping your widow’s mite secret from your impecunious friends and relatives?’
Her stomach roiled at his clever guess. But not clever enough!
‘Don’t call me that! And how can you be so flippant about the death of your own father? I know you two didn’t get on, but you might at least have some respect for his memory—’
‘If you’d bothered to hang around for the funeral you would have seen me paying my respects,’ he ripped at her. ‘I even shed a few tears for the stiff-necked old bastard. But don’t expect me to elevate him to sainthood just because he’s dead. He was a good doctor and a brilliant businessman, but he was a poor husband and a rotten father; his ambitions always got in the way of his relationships and he never stopped trying to force me into his own mould. So don’t preach to me about my filial duty, Stepmama—’
Worms of horror squirmed across her skin. ‘Stop calling me that!’
‘Why, isn’t that what you became when you married my father?’
‘Because it’s—it’s...’
His eyes followed the inarticulate workings of her crooked mouth.
‘Ridiculous? Distasteful?’ A lethal pause before he leaned forward and added insinuatingly, ‘Obscene?’
He was close, too frighteningly close. She steadied herself and got her tongue to shape her choppy breath into a crisp, ‘Definitely ridiculous.’
‘But technically correct. And Sebastian was always big on getting the technicalities right, wasn’t he? That’s how he was able to create such a truly unique inheritance for us to share...’
She could feel the warmth of his breath swirling around her face, causing the blood to sing in her cheeks. Hadn’t she read somewhere about a predator which breathed on its trapped prey before tearing it to pieces? The animal version of a ritual act of gloating possession...
‘I didn’t expect Sebastian to leave me anything in his will—he told me he wouldn’t,’ she said, in the desperate hope that he was referring to the money. She silently cursed Sebastian for breaking his promise. His God complex at work again. Even from the grave he couldn’t resist trying to get his own way! If he had stuck to their original agreement there would have been no reason for anyone from the Jordan family to search her out.
‘I don’t want to cheat anyone in the family out of their inheritance,’ she told him, her light brown eyes owlishly earnest behind the little round spectacles. ‘When Sebastian’s lawyers wrote to tell me about the shares and bonds, I wrote back and said I didn’t want them, that I’d sign a waiver of claim so they could be returned to the estate—’
His crack of cynical laughter cut her off.
‘Sure, why bother with the petty change when you’ve already got your hot little hands on the main prize, right?’ he growled, abruptly dropping his arm from the back of the couch and planting his hands on the arm of the couch, on either side of her head.
‘I—I don’t know what you mean,’ she said warily, excruciatingly aware of his thumb-tips brushing the straining cords of her neck and the metal zip of his open jacket sawing at the soft wool over her breasts as the heavy sides enfolded her like black leather wings.
‘No? Apart from all the hard cash you gouged out of him while he was alive, under the terms of the Jordan family trust, as my father’s legal wife at the time of his death you’ve inherited his position as trustee of a multi-million-dollar investment fund! I notice you’re not of fering to waive that family privilege!’
She bit her pale lower lip. ‘That’s only a nominal title—the trust is still going to be run by the three professional trustees, exactly as it was when Sebastian was alive. And if you’re familiar with the deed then you must know that as a named trustee I have no legal access to any of that money.’
‘Not for yourself personally, I agree,’ he said silkily, ‘but any child conceived during your marriage to Sebastian would be a blank cheque in your hands...’
‘No...! Never!’
Her appalled cry of rejection was followed by a short, electric silence.
Jennifer felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck and a metallic taste flood her tongue. How could he have found out? she thought hysterically. Sebastian had assured her that his exclusive London clinic guaranteed total confidentiality and that his staff were well trained in protecting the anonymity of both donor and recipient. Ethics had obliged him to hand over her case to one of his senior colleagues, and Sebastian’s rapidly failing health had meant he rarely visited the clinic himself, but he had promised to sequester her case-notes amongst his own inactive files as an extra precaution.
Of course, those staunch ethics of his—which had been so vital to her trust—had in the end turned out to be tainted by self-interest. Maybe he had been unforgiveably lax in other ways, too... Or maybe Raphael was just making guesses based more on his cynical certainty that Jennifer was a greedy bimbo out for everything she could get than any real hard evidence.
Her hands instinctively crept to protect her flat abdomen.
Rafe’s eyes flickered down as he registered the movement and returned to hers, gleaming with yellow fire.
‘Scruples, Jennifer? From a woman who married a dying old man for his money?’
He was making it all sound so sordid, when in fact it had been an eminently practical arrangement on both sides.
‘It wasn’t like that—’
‘You’re not trying to claim it was love?’ The word was uttered with a deep contempt that seemed to sum up Raphael Jordan’s views on relationships in general, and Jennifer in particular.
She flushed and tried to cling to her fast-dwindling courage. She recognised his interrogation technique. He was harrying her in ever-decreasing circles, slipping under her defences to nip painfully at his target and then retreating to prowl around another topic before darting in for another bite.
Somewhere in the background she heard Susie carol out a goodbye, and the front door bang, and a little of her tension eased. At least now if there was a messy scene there would be no witnesses.
She would have liked to fling Raphael’s cynicism back in his teeth with a passionate declaration of emotion, but instead chose the dignity of the literal truth. ‘I liked Sebastian from the time I first met him. I had a lot of respect for him—’
She broke off, for that respect had taken a severe beating the day he died...
‘And I’ll bet you liked him a whole lot more when you discovered he had inoperable cancer, hmm?’ said Rafe crudely. ‘He told you about it, didn’t he? When he was staying here?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘So—out of pure altruism, of course—you instantly agreed to abandon your home and business and travel back to England with Sebastian as his—now how did he introduce you to the family?—ah, that’s right, his “nurse-companion”...the one with a murky past and no credentials!’
A sunburst of anger overrode Jennifer’s guilt. She still vividly remembered the humiliation she had suffered at the hands of three of Sebastian’s bickering ex-wives and his numerous, spoiled, grown-up stepchildren when they realised that an Antipodean nobody was threatening their future access to the Jordan gravy-train.
Only Raphael, Sebastian’s eldest son and sole natural child, had remained aloof from the outpourings of spite which followed. Never having allowed his father to bankroll his lifestyle, he was immune to the bribes and rewards by which Sebastian had manipulated his greedy brood of dependents-by-marriage. Although Rafe had bluntly disapproved of his father’s precipitous marriage to a woman thirty-six years his junior, in keeping with his own history of rebellious independence he had not disputed Sebastian’s right to make a bloody fool of himself.
‘I did train as a nurse—I just never got to complete the practical part of the course for my formal qualification,’ she flared now.
‘Yes, well, you were obviously better qualified as a companion than a nurse, because lo and behold, only a month after you land in England you’re married to your patient—and three weeks after that your very wealthy new husband, whose heart was never a contributor to his health problems, has a heart attack in his own bed and is dead within days. And what does his doting bride do to mourn his passing? She skips out on the funeral, leaving only a post office box on the other side of the world as a forwarding address...’
Jennifer gasped. ‘If you’re trying to imply that I had anything at all to do with Sebastian having heart failure—!’
‘Oh, no, I’ve read the autopsy report and spoken to his doctors...I have to absolve you of murder,’ he conceded, with what she thought was insulting reluctance.
‘Kind of you!’ she snapped recklessly.
He raised silky eyebrows. ‘It does happen: energetic, lusty young wife entices her elderly, ailing husband to prove that he’s still a man...’
Her tawny eyes flashed up at him, her fingers itching to slap his face, but before she could act out the impulse his eyelids drooped and he purred, ‘Only we both know how unlikely that scenario is...since my father’s cancer treatments had made him impotent well before he ever left on that round-the-world trip. Your marriage was never actually consummated, was it, Jennifer—?’
Her fingers curled into her palms. ‘You have no right to—’
‘I saw his medical records after he died... I know that claim of paternity you got him to sign isn’t worth the paper it’s written on!’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
‘I’m talking about the “bargain” you made with Sebastian, the one that you’re going to use to unlock the trust.’
She clapped her hands over her ears. ‘I refuse to listen to—’
His strong fingers wrapped around her wrists, wrenching them away from her head. He pinned them against the centre of his chest with one hand and used the other to cup her chin, forcing her to acknowledge what he was saying.
‘Oh, no, you’re not getting out of it that easily. If you won’t tell this story, then I will—and you’re going to listen to every single, solitary word!’
While his eyes, feasting on her every reaction, were no doubt going to be her judge, jury and executioner! Jennifer tried to congeal her expressive features into a stony mask.
‘It’s one of life’s little ironies that my father the fertility specialist discovered not long after his divorce from my mother that he’d become sterile himself,’ Rafe said harshly. ‘But typically he never reconciled himself to it. Practically from the time I hit puberty he was nagging at me to find a steady girlfriend. As far as he was concerned my sole purpose in life was to become a doctor like him and marry early so that I could have lots of little Jordan brats. When I told him I didn’t intend to do any of those things—ever—he began taking wives with children of their own, and when that proved unsatisfactory he started throwing genetically desirable women in my path, offering bribes to the first one to get pregnant and to the altar.’
His voice hummed with remembered fury, his pupils smouldering coals ringed with green fire. Ignoring the curiosity that was eating away at her outrage, Jennifer pushed ineffectually against his thick cabled sweater as she tried to twist her wrists out of his unyielding grasp. He responded by adjusting his grip on her chin, his long thumb sliding under the point of her jaw to dig into the soft flesh and find her furious pulse.
‘Finally, last year, I figured out the perfect way to get him off my back. I went to his clinic’s IVF sperm bank and made a generous donation to his fertility programme. Afterwards I told him that now he could populate the whole damned world with his precious genes—I was out of the loop!’
Jennifer’s struggles were momentarily eclipsed by a wickedly inappropriate desire to laugh. Sebastian’s telling had differed greatly from Rafe’s, and no wonder! Sebastian had regarded his work with an almost religious seriousness, and his son’s act of cheeky irreverence must have been a grave offence to his pride.
‘Funnily enough, he was furious at what I’d done,’ confirmed Rafe sardonically. ‘It turned out that mere genetic reproduction wasn’t his aim, it was the family connection that was the vital requirement—another legitimate Jordan heir to perpetuate the name along with the genes. Then his cancer was diagnosed and he suddenly seemed to lose interest in the idea.
‘I should have known better than to think he’d given up his pet obsession. He just went off on his annual world trip and did what he’d done so often in the past—he bought himself what he wanted. He bought himself a wife: a strong, fertile, healthy woman who would pander to his sick fantasies and allow him to father his own grandchild—’
‘No!’ Jennifer began to struggle again, kicking out helplessly with her legs as she squirmed in his hold.
‘He paid you to undergo artificial insemination at his clinic, in a new IVF procedure with a high rate of success: my sperm injected directly into your egg—’
‘No!’
‘—and re-implanted in your body. Of course, this all happened in the weeks before your wedding, because there was no point in him marrying you until you had been confirmed with a viable pregnancy.’
‘You’re mad!’ she panted. ‘I don’t know where you get your bizarre ideas from but you know what you can do with them. I’m not pregnant.’
He had to believe her. He had to!
‘No?’ He let go her captive hands, sliding his palm down to rest firmly on her lower belly.
‘No!’
She blinked defiantly back at him, confident that there wasn’t even the hint of a swell under her waistband. Against her silence he could prove nothing. Nothing!
He splayed his fingers and applied a light pressure, just enough to make her aware of the heat of his hand seeping through the damp-splashed woollen fabric.
‘Do you always faint like that—at the drop of a hat?’ he asked, his thumb discovering the front placket that concealed her zip.
‘It wasn’t a hat you dropped, it was a bombshell,’ she pointed out. ‘An ox would have fainted!’
He smiled, that full-lipped smile of bitter scepticism. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me how I know all the gory details?’
‘Since there are no details to know, gory or otherwise, I’m not in the least interested in your speculations,’ she bluffed wildly, jerking her chin from his hand. ‘I think you’re the one who has been having the sick fantasies.’
For some reason he seemed to find that genuinely amusing. ‘You could be right.’
She pounced on the faint lightening of his mood. ‘So, would you mind letting me up? I can’t lie around here all day. I have work to do.’
His smile faded. ‘Actually, I do mind. I still haven’t finished my examination.’ His thumbnail tauntingly flipped the tiny metal tab of her zip and her hand slapped down over his.
‘Don’t you dare!’
It was the wrong thing to say to a man who lived life strictly on his own terms, and who, according to his disgruntled father, cared nothing for history or tradition or polite behaviour. A man who flaunted his vices before the world without the least consideration for the embarrassment he had caused his family.
He gave the tab a sharp little downward tug, and when Jennifer screeched and clutched at her gaping zip with both hands he swiftly transferred his attention to her heaving breasts, cupping and lifting them for his bold appraisal.
‘Is it just my imagination, or are these a bit more lush than they were three months ago?’ he baited her, fluffing the red angora with his swirling fingertips as he traced her generous contours. ‘Mmm, I certainly don’t remember them being a D-cup, and there are plenty of people who can testify that I’m an infallible judge of a woman’s breast size...’
He also was the most despicable man she had ever met!
Jennifer yanked up her zip with shaking fingers, hunching her shoulders to try and evade his provocative touch. ‘You, you—’
‘Oh, yes, definitely bigger,’ he decided, cuddling the firm mounds together so that they were plumped into even greater prominence. ‘I understand pregnancy makes them more sensitive, too...’ He rubbed his thumbs goadingly across the soft tips, and to her horror Jennifer felt them tingle and begin to push against the lace constriction of her bra. In a few moments he would be able to feel her treacherous response for himself.
Shame and fear exploded the last of her caution. She slapped his mocking face, hard, his gold whiskers rasping like sandpaper against her furious palm.
‘Take your hands off me! How many times do I have to say it? I am not pregnant!’ she shrieked at him. ‘I’m nothing. Can’t you get that through your thick head? Yes, I was your father’s wife for a very brief time but now he’s gone and it’s over. It’s history. I came back here because this is my home. This is where I want to live my life. I don’t care what you think you know about me, unlike you and your paranoid family of snobs, I don’t happen to enjoy living in a world where everyone is judged by how they dress and what they own rather than who they are and what they’ve achieved. I told you I won’t interfere with the estate, so why can’t you just go back to where you came from and leave me alone?’
His blond-tipped head had snapped to the side, his cheek scorched by the outline of her angry fingers, and now he slowly turned back, working his jaw cautiously to and fro in his hand.
At least he had stopped touching her. Jennifer pushed herself up on stiff arms, scooting backwards with her hips so that she was half sitting, no longer helplessly submissive to his will. She had never struck anyone in anger before, and was miserably conscious that this man was responsible for a number of unfortunate firsts in her life. An apology was edging forward on her tongue when she caught sight of the punishing expression in his eyes.
‘So, you’re saying that my father couldn’t even be honest with me on his deathbed? That the last words he ever said to me in this world were an ugly, pointless lie?’
Her blow had been a butterfly kiss in comparison. Jennifer felt as if she had been hit on the head with a brick.
‘Your father?’ she croaked, devastated by this latest betrayal. If she hadn’t been already sitting she would have keeled over again. ‘I—I don’t believe you... Sebastian told you those things?’
‘In hospital on the night he died. The night you did your moonlight flit.’
She winced at his clipped contempt, utterly incapable of defending herself. There was no denying the fact that when she had angrily fled the hospital that afternoon she had made herself deliberately inaccessible. And later, when she had phoned the hospital and learned that Sebastian had died...well, she had been extremely distressed, confused and frightened—because she had still felt so angry with him for abusing her trust. Running away from an untenable situation had seemed the best and safest option.
‘He deteriorated suddenly and became agitated and disorientated. He kept saying your name, but no one could find you or knew where you’d gone, and by the time I got to the hospital he was in a bad way,’ said Rafe, making no attempt to spare her the brutal details. ‘He was pretty heavily sedated but he knew what was going to happen, and I guess he realised it was his last chance to clear his conscience—so it all spilled out, how you had leapt at his cash-for-a-kid deal.
‘He kept asking me to forgive him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, kept saying that he’d made a bad misjudgement about you, that he was worried about what you might do, what might happen to the baby if he wasn’t around to protect it, babbling about betrayal and blackmail...’
‘And you believed him?’ she forced herself to say steadily. ‘You didn’t think it might have just been the wanderings of a drugged mind?’
‘Yes. That’s why I checked to see whether you’d ever been treated at the clinic.’
Her heart clenched. ‘There’s no way you could have had legal access to that kind of information—’
His smile mocked her naïveté, ‘Who said my access was legal?’
‘You—’
‘Legal or not, I know to the exact minute how and when our baby was conceived.’
‘My baby—’
The cry was out before she realised it, never to be taken back. All her protests, all her stonewalling had been futile. He had known all along and he had enjoyed watching her twist and turn until she had tangled herself up in her web of lies and evasions and more lies. She felt sick, but also oddly liberated.
‘So, Jennifer...you and I are going to be parents in a little under six months.’ He stroked his faintly marked cheek, and then touched hers with a gentleness that was far more blood-curdling than his former aggression. ‘We’re practically strangers, we’ve hardly spoken and barely touched, let alone made love, but we’ve engaged in the most intimate act two human beings can share... the procreation of life.’
His knuckles touched her chin and then ran down the centre of her jumper between her breasts, dissolving away one or two faint pearls of vase-water still nestling amongst the strands of wool, gliding down to stop in the folds at her waist. This time she made no effort to stop him, so stunned was she by his lyrically soft words. It almost sounded as if...
She shivered. ‘We haven’t shared anything—’
‘I beg to differ. My seed is growing in your womb. I’d say that made us pretty damned intimate, wouldn’t you?’
She blushed. ‘That was a medical procedure. You had nothing to do with it.’
He laughed, and for once she couldn’t detect a single cynical note in his amusement. ‘I had everything to do with it—me and my little jar and my wicked stock of fantasies.’
Her blush deepened, her hands fisting on her thighs. ‘You know what I mean.’
He sobered. ‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And you’re wrong. I may not have been a partner in the highly questionable deal you and my father struck but I am involved. You’re a rich, pregnant widow because of me. If I’d thought about it at all I presumed that my sperm would go to help happily married infertile couples have the children they desperately wanted...not to a selfish, egotistical old man and a soon-to-be-widowed wife with extremely questionable values. As I see it, I have a responsibility here.’
‘Responsibility?’ Jennifer echoed, her eyes widening in horror.
‘To my father—may God have taken pity on his manipulating soul—and to you.’
‘But you don’t have to feel responsible for me. I don’t want you to!’
‘And of course to my son or daughter,’ he said calmly, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I suppose it’s too early to tell which?’
She nodded her head dumbly. ‘You can’t—you told your father that you never wanted brats of your own,’ she accused shrilly.
‘But you and Sebastian took that decision out of my hands. Instead of giving my gift of life to some anonymous couple, Sebastian took it for himself, and in asking me to forgive him for it—the first time I’ve ever heard him admit he was wrong about anything—he was trusting me to repair the harm he might have done. I’d be a despicable bastard if I turned my back and ignored his dying wish.’
‘But I want you to turn your back!’ she wailed. He was tormenting her again, that’s all, she told herself. He was just saying those things to wind her up. He just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to try and hold the family to ransom over child support. ‘I told you, I don’t need anything. I’ll even sign a paper saying so, if that’s what you want!’
‘You’re very emotional, aren’t you? I never noticed that when you were in London. You always seemed very quiet and practical, very restrained...a colonial country mouse in the big city. So maybe all the extra hormones flooding your system are making you touchy.’
His hand had crept under the band of her jumper while he was talking, and found the silky skin of her belly.
She jumped. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I just want to see if I can feel my baby.’ He pushed up the band a little way, so they could both see his tanned hand contrasted against the white skin of her stomach.
His use of the word ‘my’ made her nervous. ‘Well, you can’t—even I can’t feel anything yet. Stop it. I don’t like you touching me.’ She wished it were true. The pads of his fingers were surprisingly soft, while his palm was faintly dry and abrasive. Just below the cuff of his jacket she could see silky threads of dark blond hair dusting the back of his wrist.
‘You’re very pale here,’ he murmured, his thick lashes masking the glitter of his curiosity. ‘Don’t you wear a bikini in the summer?’
‘No.’ He was running his finger around and around the rim of her navel, making her skin feel too tight for her body. ‘Do you mind? You’re making me queasy.’
He stilled the movement, but left his hand where it was. ‘Have you been having morning sickness?’ he asked, studying her flushed face.
‘No, I’ve been as healthy as a horse,’ she said. ‘Another reason why you’re not needed.’
‘Well, we’ll wait and see, shall we?’ He began to withdraw his hand, and whether by accident or design his middle finger slid into the indentation he had been lazily circling.
Jennifer sucked in her breath and his finger snugly rode the sudden movement of her diaphragm.
‘Perfect fit,’ he murmured wickedly, glancing down, then up again, catching the streak of sinful speculation in her startled gaze.
His lids drooped as he slowly withdrew his finger, and to Jennifer the whole world seemed to darken and shiver in awareness.
She knew then that the devil had green eyes and an English drawl. How else could he offer so much temptation with so little effort?
‘What did you mean. wait and see?’ she asked belatedly.
‘Why, you don’t think I came all this way just to turn around and go home again, do you?’ he said, pulling her jumper back down over the top of her trousers. ‘I think I need to know a great deal more about the mother of my baby before I make any decision about whether to trust her with the raising of our child. And what better place to plumb the depths of her character than in her own home?’
Her jaw dropped. ‘You can’t mean you intend to stay in New Zealand!’
‘Not just New Zealand. Here. In this house. With you. I’m sure you could put me up for a few days, or however long it takes. You could put me in the room my father had...’
However long it takes?
Just as Jennifer was about to shoot him down in flames she heard the sound of the front door opening and two female voices mingling with excited barking, one rising to a familiar contralto lilt.
‘Hello, Jenny darling, we’re home! What a nightmare, I hope you’ve got the kettle on...’
‘It’s my mother! Oh, God—’ Jennifer clutched at Rafe’s jacket.
‘Good. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’
‘You can’t!’ She looked around, wondering frantically where to hide him. He was too big to stuff under the furniture. ‘You can’t let her see you.’
‘I think it’s too late for that,’ said Rafe, rising politely to his feet as a stocky grey-haired woman in a baggy beige suit marched into the room, followed by a slender, bird-like woman in a wheelchair, whose thin face lit up at the sight of the hovering man.
‘Rafe! How wonderful that you could come! Oh, Jenny darling, why didn’t you tell me—or did he surprise you, too?’ Paula Scott didn’t seem to notice Rafe’s dazed expression as she coasted forward to hold out her delicate hands. ‘Oh, come down here, you wonderful man, and give me a kiss. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet my daughter’s husband at long last—I was beginning to think you didn’t exist!’
CHAPTER THREE
JENNIFER sat tensely upright on the soft couch, balancing her cup of tea on her lap while Raphael sprawled comfortably beside her, his jacket discarded, his long legs tucked under the coffee table and his arm extended along the back of the couch so that his fingers could idly play amongst the tousled waves at the nape of her stiff neck.
‘Yes, I flew into Auckland yesterday, shortly before they closed the airport because of the spreading volcanic smog,’ he was telling her mother. ‘I had been going to catch a connecting flight here, but when the airline said it had no idea when any of the local airports might be reopened I decided to hire a car and drive down. And I’m glad I did—it gave me a chance to see something of your wonderful countryside.’
He was certainly turning on the friendly charm, thought Jennifer sourly, brushing at the faint damp patches which still lingered on her trousers.
After being briefly disconcerted by Paula Scott’s words of welcome, Rafe had quickly summed up the situation and deftly turned the scenario to his advantage. And her mother had fallen for him like a ton of bricks, leaning forward in her wheelchair, her blue eyes sparkling with animation, as Rafe described his drive and his dramatic first view of the rumbling mountain with its ash column rising thousands of feet in the air, casually comparing it with some of the world’s other active volcanoes which he had witnessed in action.
Even Aunty Dot, an eccentric elderly spinster who generally treated all males with brusque impatience—being of the opinion that there were no ‘real men’ left in the world—was looking at him with grudging interest. An amateur naturalist and inveterate shoestring traveller, Dot was a semi-permanent resident of Beech House, living there between her long trips abroad, and anyone who brought news of fresh vistas for her to explore would be welcome grist to her mill.
‘Well, thank goodness you came when you did! That was what I wanted to tell you when I came in, Jenny,’ said Paula excitedly. ‘We just heard on the car radio that they’ve upgraded the volcano alert level to three. That’s on a scale of five, and it means they’re classing it as a hazardous local eruption,’ she explained in an aside to Rafe, before switching her attention back to her daughter.
‘They’ve closed the mountain completely, and with the ash cloud blowing this way they’re issuing a general warning for residents not to go outside without masks and to stay off the roads unless absolutely essential. Driving conditions are awful on the main road already, aren’t they, Dot? We had to crawl along and the headlights didn’t seem to help at all. Did you feel that earth tremor just as we arrived? That must have been another massive ash blast going up!’
Earth tremor? Taking a sip of her untasted tea, Jennifer instinctively glanced at Raphael and found him looking back, a knowing quirk at the corner of his mouth. He knew that neither of them had been aware of any external shocks. She remembered that moment of shattering temptation. A volcano had been erupting outside her window and she had still assumed it was Rafe who had made her world shudder!
Her cup rattled in her saucer as she replaced it with a trembling hand.
‘Careful, darling,’ said Rafe, leaning over to still the teetering crockery. He had already drunk half of his own tea, and eaten two of her mother’s feather-light scones while inveigling his way into her good graces.
Jennifer’s eyes told him she would like to dump the contents of her cup over his head. She wasn’t fooled by his amiable air of relaxation. He knew now why Susie had made her apparently inexplicable mistake and had accepted his assigned role as her husband purely for some nefarious purpose of his own as smoothly as if he had planned it for himself.
He was relishing seeing her hoist by her own petard, knowing that he now had her precisely where he wanted her—totally at his mercy. One word and the whole elaborate charade she had created to protect her sweet, unworldly mother would come tumbling down.
If she had been the crying type she would have burst into tears. But then she doubted that even a Niagara of tears would soften Rafe’s cynically hardened heart.
‘I’ve got it, darling,’ she responded through her beaming teeth.
‘It’s so lovely to see you two together,’ her mother sighed, getting back on the subject that her daughter had spent the last fraught fifteen minutes trying to obscure with meaningless small talk. ‘Poor Jenny has been missing you so dreadfully since she got home; she could hardly bear to talk about you—I had to base most of my impressions of you on her letters and phone calls before your marriage, and your photograph—so I hope you won’t mind if I’m rudely inquisitive.’
‘Of course not, Paula. If you don’t mind the reverse.’ Rafe’s hand massaged Jenny’s neck under her veil of hair, a possessive, lover-like caress that didn’t go unnoticed by the two older women. ‘Jenny and I didn’t seem to talk about anything other than ourselves when we were together. I just hope that photo was a flattering one...’ He trailed off invitingly.
As anticipated, Paula Scott glided innocently into the trap. ‘How could it not be? Having been so often in front of the camera when you were a model, I suppose it’s second nature to show it your best side—not to say your other sides haven’t turned out to be very attractive too,’ she added, looking him over with a twinkle. ‘Actually, it was your wedding photo.’
Rafe stiffened slightly, although his voice remained casually amused. ‘Oh? Which one was that?’
Jennifer considered herself lucky he hadn’t asked which wedding...
‘Would you like to see?’ Paula bent and felt in the tray under the seat of her wheelchair, pulling out her handbag. Her long battle against the debilitating effects of a back injury might have worn her frame thin, but not her valiant spirit. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Jenny—’ she smiled a trifle guiltily, her gamine grin making her look more like a girl than a fifty-five-year-old woman ‘—but I had a copy taken off for my wallet A mother has to have something to boast over!’
‘Of course I’d love to see it,’ said Rafe, with a gentle courtesy that Jennifer would have appreciated if she hadn’t known he was merely sucking up for more information.
‘I’m sure Rafe isn’t really interested—’
‘Oh, let him speak for himself, girl,’ Dot chipped in, creaking heavily in her chair as she scooped another scone off the plate. ‘The man has a mind of his own, doesn’t he? Maybe after three months apart he needs to remind himself that he’s married. I notice you don’t wear a wedding ring, young man.’
Jennifer nervously fingered the heavy gold band on her left hand. ‘Aunty Dot—’
‘I don’t believe in them, Mrs Grey,’ said Rafe without turning a hair.
Dot’s deep voice broke on a crack of laughter. ‘Neither do I, sonny, neither do I. Never could abide a man wearing jewellery. Namby-pamby, I call it. And you may as well call me Dot, seeing as we’re as near as dammit related. Jenny calls me Aunty, but I’m really just an old friend of the family.’
‘A very valued friend, I’m sure, Dot.’
This time Rafe’s smoothness backfired on him. ‘No need to butter me up, young man. I’ve already decided you’ll do. Jennifer’s always had a good head on her shoulders. If she chose you then that’s good enough reason for me to like you.’
‘Thank you,’ Rafe chuckled, proving that unlike his father he had no problems admitting his own faults. ‘I suppose a backhanded compliment is better than an insincere one.’
‘Here you are!’ Jennifer’s mother finally produced the result of her rummaging in her untidy bag.
Jennifer had one more lame attempt at deflecting the inevitable. ‘He probably already has that print anyway—’
‘We ex-models are terribly vain; we can never resist drooling over shots of ourselves,’ Rafe interrupted her coolly, half rising to take the slim leather pocketbook from Paula’s deceptively fragile fingers. He settled back beside his rigid companion and inspected the small coloured photograph displayed under the plastic window.
‘Oh, yes, I remember that moment very vividly,’ he murmured, causing Jennifer to shift uneasily on the cushions and rub her neck, which strangely seemed to still feel his phantom fingers. She didn’t have to look to know what Rafe was seeing: a study in deception.
In deference to Sebastian’s insistence that their wedding appear as normal as possible, to subvert any potential future threat to the legality of Jennifer’s position, she had worn an expensive white silk suit, paid for by Sebastian, and had carried an exquisite bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath, and afterwards they had posed for the register office photographer. She had been wearing her contact lenses, and a visit from a hairstylist and make-up expert had prettied her unconventional features, but it was the secret which she happily carried inside her which had made her truly bloom like a genuine bride.
To Jennifer’s extreme discomfort, and Sebastian’s startled satisfaction, Rafe had turned up to hear them exchange their brief vows—the only one of the extended family to attend. Although he had refused to act as a formal witness, his father had insisted on him joining them for a photograph. He had broken off one of Jennifer’s white roses and thrust it through the buttonhole on the lapel of his son’s grey suit, lining them up with Jennifer in the middle.
In hindsight she could appreciate the irony of the pose, but at the time only Sebastian had known that the man on the other side of his wife was in fact the true father of her child. As far as Jennifer had been aware, her baby’s father was irrelevant, a number on the label of an anonymous test tube of frozen sperm, chosen from hundreds of others. The anonymity was a necessary part of general fertility programmes, she had understood, to prevent genetic parents launching bids to reclaim the offspring created from the sperm or eggs they had previously donated...or birth parents trying to sue donors for maintenance!
While in the originally posed photograph she and Rafe had been wearing identical fake smiles, a few seconds later the accidental triggering of the photographer’s remote control had caught an informal shot of Sebastian nudging Jennifer into accepting Rafe’s polite kiss on her cheek. Frozen on film in embarrassed mid-stumble, she had been pressing her bouquet-filled hand against Rafe’s dark jacket to steady herself, and in profile it seemed as if she was looking up at him, pink-cheeked and adoring, while the three-quarter angle of his head showed clearly his smiling intent to kiss her as his arm encircled her silk-clad waist.
What didn’t show up in the photograph was the angry pride in Jennifer’s eyes and the sardonic contempt behind Rafe’s teasing smile...and the gaunt, elderly groom, neatly excised from the negative she had taken to the camera shop to be reprinted.
‘Jenny has a larger, framed version up in her bedroom,’ said Paula fondly, wheeling over to retrieve her wallet. ‘Since all our living areas are used by our guests, we like to keep our private things to ourselves.’ She looked down at the photo and smiled. ‘I thought this looked so lively, full of warmth and fun. It was such a relief to know that Jennifer had found someone wonderful—and for it to be Sebastian’s son of all people! Your father was such a pleasant guest, so helpful and undemanding.’
Jennifer bit back a nervous giggle when she saw Rafe’s eyes widen at this description of his exacting, imperious father.
‘Mum always sees the best in everyone,’ she said, obliquely warning him against trying to shatter her mother’s rosy illusions.
‘A rare and admirable quality,’ Rafe murmured, looking thoughtfully from Jennifer to her mother, obviously racking up more evidence for the prosecution. ‘Of course, people often act quite differently from their usual selves when they escape the pressures of their normal environment. Some of them see it as an excuse to go wild and do dangerous things that they’d never dream of doing at home...and later live to bitterly regret it.’
Jennifer knew the message was explicitly aimed at her, but as usual Paula took the words at face value.
‘Oh, your father came here for the peace and quiet we could provide, not to go adventuring. But he was so very exhausted by the time he got to our section of his holiday that I was rather worried for him. Thank goodness Jenny was on hand, with her home-nursing experience, because Sebastian refused to see a doctor or alter his plans for the rest of his trip. I encouraged her, you know, to accept his offer to accompany him back to England after he said he didn’t like the idea of employing a total stranger. I thought the travel would be a good chance for Jenny to broaden her mind a little—she’d never been overseas before...’
From the cynical heft of an eyebrow Jenny could see Rafe thinking that she had been plenty broad-minded by the time she had married his father.
‘I was so sorry when she arrived back and told me that he had died,’ Paula continued. ‘You have my very deepest sympathy, Rafe. But at least he had the chance to see you happy first,’ she added, always ready to stress the positive. ‘Jenny never said, but I supposed his being in such a precarious state of health was the reason why everything happened in such a rush between the two of you...’ She paused delicately.
‘Thank you,’ said Rafe in simple acceptance of her sympathy, warmed, as people usually were, by Paula’s natural empathy. ‘But the rushing part was just as much Jenny’s idea. Your daughter is one determined lady once she’s made up her mind about something.’
Jennifer almost choked on her tea. A lady was the last thing that he considered her to be! Coughing, she let Rafe whisk her cup and saucer out of her hands and pat her on the back with what she felt was unnecessary firmness.
‘I know. She was very stubborn as a girl,’ said Paula. ‘And very quiet. She never seemed to need a lot of friends. Always daydreaming and scribbling and inventing her own private games with her own rules that nobody else could follow.’
‘She hasn’t changed much then,’ said Rafe, and the tiny blade of sharpness concealed in his words made a small nick in his carefully presented image of a totally besotted husband.
‘I expect you still have a lot to learn about each other,’ Paula said mildly. ‘It was a pity you had to dash off up the Amazon, Rafe, so soon after the wedding, and your father’s death, but Jenny said that invitations to join an expedition like that are few and far between, and you had to grab the opportunity while it was offered. She said it had been a secret dream of yours for years to help the indigenous peoples of the rainforest, and she didn’t want you to sacrifice it for her sake...’
Now it was Rafe’s turn to choke, on nothing more than his own astounded tongue. ‘The Amazon?’
‘She said you’d be away at least four months, possibly six. I hope nothing went wrong that you’re back early? Jenny said it could be dangerous working so far out of contact with civilisation.’ Paula’s head tilted in motherly concern.
‘Fascinating place, the Amazon,’ commented Dot, washing down the last of her scone with the dregs of her tea. ‘Been there myself a few times. Marvellous specimens. Going to go back some day, I hope. Like to talk about it with you some time.’
‘Uh, well, I...’ It was the first time Jennifer had ever seen Raphael Jordan speechless, but unfortunately she couldn’t afford to enjoy the sight of him floundering in his own witlessness.
‘He just got a little unexpected R&R,’ she said hurriedly. ‘He had to catch all sorts of odd flights to get here, and now he has virtually to go straight back to be able to rejoin the team in time. Don’t you, Rafe?’
He looked at her, her heavy-handed emphasis wiping the stunned glaze from his green eyes, replacing it with a wicked admiration that made her creamy pale cheeks pinken. How she wished she had never embarked on this agony of deceit!
She nervously brushed non-existent crumbs from her lap, and her hand touched her stomach and stilled, acknowledging that she was fiercely glad her wish could never be granted. She had what she wanted and nobody, nobody, was going to take it away!
Rafe folded his arms over his chest, the thick cabling on his sweater pulling tight over his shoulders, letting his silence stretch until Jennifer was on the verge of panic before he drawled, ‘Actually, darling, I can take longer if I like. Everything’s been going so well we’ve pretty much done what we originally set out to do...and various members of the team are already splitting off to take up other projects. It won’t be a problem if I send a message that I’ve decided not to return...’
‘I thought there was no way to get communications in or out of your area of the rainforest?’ said Paula innocently.
Rafe pursed his lips to disguise his amusement. Jennifer had thought of everything.
‘Before, no—but I made special arrangements at every step along the way on my trip out,’ he replied with bland aplomb.
‘Well, that’s wonderful news!’ Paula beamed. ‘Isn’t it, Jenny?’
Her mother’s joyful exclamation was punctuated by a low rumble and a shimmer of windows in their wooden frames. Mount Ruapehu obviously had the same opinion as Jennifer.
Dot got up and crossed to the glass doors, peering towards the mountain through a fine haze of grey powder interspersed with twirling, fingernail-sized ash flakes.
‘It’s pretty black up over there now,’ she said. ‘There’s hardly a glimpse of clear sky left. I bet the colour of that plume means most of the crater lake has gone. We could see some real pyrotechnics soon.’
She rapped at the dust-coated glass with a stubby finger. ‘I hope the wind changes again, or I’m going to lose some of the plants to this damned ash. I’ve covered the most delicate ones, but at this time of the year they need as much sunlight as they can get.’
In spite of the fact that she travelled for about four months of every year, Dot had put herself in charge of the flower and vegetable gardens, and whenever she was in residence she worked with a passion amongst her beloved plants and planned all the new plantings. Over the years she had built up the grounds of Beech House to the point where they were regularly featured in ‘open gardens’ tours during local festivals.
Rafe went to join her at the window, the seams of his close-fitting jeans whitening as he stepped across Jennifer’s legs, dragging her unwilling attention to his taut backside as he moved away. To her chagrin, her mother caught her looking and grinned, miming a silent whistle.
Jennifer smiled weakly in return as she began stacking the tea things on the tray. If her mother had never met her ‘husband’, the discreet long-distance ‘divorce’ that she had been planning to blame on their extended separation could have been achieved with minimum fuss. Now it would be that much more difficult.
‘Are we likely to be in any danger at this distance?’ she heard Rafe ask Dot.
‘Not from molten material. In an eruption the size they’re predicting the danger zone for that is only a few kilometres.’ Geology was another of Dot’s hobbies. ‘But the radio said that there’d already been several big lahars through the ski fields, and once the mud-flows reach the river systems they can cause havoc downstream. There was a big train-wreck in ’53, when a rail bridge over the Whangaehu River got washed away and a hundred and fifty people were killed. But our main problem will probably just be the ash flying around and clogging things up, and then you get water shortages when people try to clean it up. And it can be toxic when it’s breathed in, of course, so we’d better make sure the animals come inside...’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Paula. ‘Do you want to put a canvas over your car, Rafe? We have some spare covers in the garage that we bought after last year’s big blow. I know it’s only a rental, but heaven knows what this dust might do if it gets into the engine.’
Jennifer stopped what she was doing, aghast at the tacit invitation contained in the suggestion, but before she could think of an objection Rafe turned from the darkening view and strolled back to smile down at his eager hostess.
‘I suppose that would be a good idea, but I don’t want to impose, Paula.’ His diffidence was a beautifully calculated pre-emptive strike. ‘I know you weren’t expecting me, and Susie told me when I arrived that you had a full complement of guests. Actually, since I wasn’t quite sure of the set-up here, or what Jennifer’s immediate plans were, I had made a reservation at a hotel...’
‘Rafe! Of course you’ll stay here with us!’ Paula was visibly shocked by his offer. ‘We always have room for family, no matter how full we are. Jenny has a lovely big bedroom which takes up the whole of the upstairs, with en suite bathroom and outside access via the balcony, so you can both have tons of privacy. Goodness!’ she laughed, as the loaded tea tray crashed back down onto the coffee table. ‘Jenny would never forgive me if I tried to chase you away—look at her face, she’s horrified at the very thought!’
Rafe knew full well what she was horrified by, and it wasn’t the thought of their separation.
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