In Bed With...Collection

Despair dragged at his determination. He’d dug his own grave and made the walls too high for him to climb out of it. Or maybe he was using the wrong approach. He had to keep trying, no matter what.

“What do you want to do, Maggie?’ he asked, humbled by her painfully accurate reading of the situation. ”What would make you feel...right?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ud535c0fb-8216-5cc4-a273-7d8e9771b73f)

MAGGIE didn’t know what would make her feel right. She didn’t know what to do. She lifted her gaze to a sky so endlessly blue it seemed to stretch on to infinity. Her heart ached with so many griefs, her mind couldn’t encompass them all. They slid into a desperate, silent plea for help.

Vivian... Vivian...

Where was he? Did he see it had gone terribly wrong? It was such wicked, painful irony...the marriage he’d wanted between her and Beau...the child to carry on his family line...it was in her power to deliver on the promise...yet her soul revolted against accepting the form it was taking.

Give it a chance...

I did. I tried. It can’t work like this, she cried, exonerating herself from the burden laid on her.

Yet the needs of others kept pulling her back to it, denying her release.

Sedgewick... You must cultivate a positive attitude. Was she being too negative in the face of Beau’s desire to keep her and the child?

Mrs. Featherfield...A new baby at Rosecliff. I can’t imagine anything more perfect. Was it fair to deprive her child of its natural inheritance?

Wallace seeing sexual attraction as the answer... and she couldn’t deny it had led to this shared parenthood. Given more open expression, might it not bridge this dreadful gap between them and soften their differences?

Mr. Polly... Nature will take its course. A little help and care and you can always get the result you want.

Could Beau learn to care?

Did a baby help?

Would anything change if she gave it more of a chance, or would the prison gates inexorably close her in if she stayed on here?

She took a deep breath and looked at him...this man who knew her intimately yet did not know her at all. Vivian’s grandson. The father of her child.

Her heart fluttered at that last thought. It was real now. The father of her child. She couldn’t deny him, yet...what would it lead to?

“How can I trust you?” she blurted out, anguished by her uncertainties.

A muscle in his cheek contracted but his eyes didn’t waver from hers, dark pools of green, seemingly reflecting the pain she felt. “It would need you to take a risk, Maggie,” he said quietly. “I can’t prove your trust is not misplaced unless you’re willing to chance it.”

“Marriage is too big a risk for me, Beau.”

He nodded, then managed a wry smile. “A classic case of fools rushing in...I’m sorry, Maggie. My understanding has been very amiss. I seem to have blundered all the way along the line with you and I wish like hell I’d done everything differently. But I know that doesn’t make anything better for you.”

His regretful attitude soothed some of her jangling nerves. He probably thought she was mad, rejecting his offer of marriage out of hand, and so fiercely. Impossible to explain just how threatened she’d felt at that moment, with him looming over her in a pose of commanding authority and the bank of distrust forming too dangerous a current for her to ride.

He looked...almost kind now. Caring. Of course, it could be another pose. On the other hand, there had to be good in him. Everyone at Rosecliff couldn’t be entirely deceived on that point. Maybe with their child, he would show his best side. He couldn’t hang anything nasty on an innocent baby.

What was it about her that brought out the mean judgments he made? If they were to be linked by their child, she needed to understand where he was coming from with her. At least that way she would be more prepared for handling the situation. She searched for some meeting ground and instinctively homed in on the person who’d brought them together.

“Vivian loved you, Beau. Very much.”

“I know,” he murmured encouragingly.

“He expected...because we were both dear to him...he wanted us to like each other.”

“Yes, he would,” came the ready agreement.

“I warned him it might not happen. I was always prepared to leave if you didn’t like me. After all, you were his grandson. His real family. I thought you might see me as a usurper of his affections...”

“Maggie, I don’t see you like that,” he quickly assured her. “Nothing and no one could have changed the bond between my grandfather and me. It was unique to us. Just as I’m sure what you shared with him was unique to you.”

Yes it was. Wonderfully, unbelievably unique. No one could ever guess, ever comprehend what it had meant to her. Which was why she had to be as fair as it was reasonably possible to Vivian’s grandson.

“You could have been jealous,” she suggested, still unsure of his feelings where she was concerned.

“No. Not in any possessive way, Maggie. My grandfather gave of himself to many people. It never diminished what he gave to me.”

He sounded so genuine, so reasonable, it made no sense of what he’d done. “Then why have you been so mean to me?” she bluntly asked, searching his eyes for the true answer.

He grimaced, guilt and shame flicking over his face. “I was upset over not having seen my grandfather for so long. I guess I felt cheated by his dying when he did. And when I first arrived home you did seem like a usurper, acting the mistress of the house, the staff taking their lead from you. I simply wasn’t prepared for what I walked into, Maggie, and it chewed me up. I’m sorry you became a target of distrust.”

A target...the focus of all his bad feelings. Yes, she could accept that explanation. But it didn’t make her feel any safer with him.

“You aren’t anymore, Maggie,” he assured her, an earnest plea for forgiveness in his eyes. “I realise they’re probably empty words to you but they’re true.”

She wished she could believe them. “Vivian asked me...he made me promise...to give it a chance. Liking you, I mean. Being open to liking. He knew...understood...I tend to be wary of people.”

“I wish he’d still been here to say the same to me,” Beau said ruefully. “It would have been different, Maggie. I am genuinely sorry for all the misunderstandings.”

“I’m sorry, too. Because I don’t trust you now, Beau. I’d leave here today except...it’s Vivian’s grandchild and I know I wouldn’t feel right, not giving it every chance to work out something we can live with... amicably.”

“Then may I make a suggestion?”

She nodded, having no ready answers in her own mind.

“Come away with me for a while. People get to know each other very well when travelling together. I want to scout a tour through Europe so it’ll be a business trip for me.” He suddenly grinned, a sparkle of gentle teasing in his eyes. “You can accompany me as my nanny, if you like, looking after the kind of things you did for my grandfather.”

Laughter bubbled out of her throat. Maybe it was the absurdity of the idea or some form of hysterical relief from nervous tension. Maggie shook her head, feeling too limp and drained to care.

“No pressures, I promise you,” Beau went on, his voice eager with the wish to persuade. “Separate rooms. And you’ll have your ticket home so you can leave me anytime you choose.”

A trip to Europe...fantasy, she thought, but a very seductive one. Vivian had always been referring to places there.

“It’s a break away from here, Maggie. It’ll make it easier for you to leave Rosecliff, if you must. You won’t be upsetting Sedgewick and the others. I think they’d all approve of me taking you with me.”

He was right about that, she thought ironically, though it couldn’t really be done.

“And I will look after you, Maggie,” Beau pressed. “If you’ll risk the chance to let me show you, it’s a step towards resolving the future, isn’t it?”