His Miracle Baby

‘Oh, so nothing of what was reported is true?’ Her eyebrows shot up in cynical query and scepticism dripped from her voice.

The scowl darkened, his strong jaw tightening aggressively.

‘Not nothing,’ he snarled.

He wasn’t proud of the way he’d behaved during the first month or so after Ellie had left him. Wasn’t proud of the lengths he’d gone to to fill the emptiness she’d left behind, the women with whom he’d tried to forget her. He’d tried to go back to the sort of life he’d lived before Ellie only to find that he had moved further away from it than he’d ever dreamed.

None of it had worked. All that had happened was that he’d managed a few hours of oblivion, but the morning had always come. He’d always had to face reality again, and reality had meant the dreadful irony of knowing that now he’d been free to do whatever he wanted with his future—but that freedom and that future had meant nothing without this one woman. A woman who had turned his life upside down, changed his perspective on everything, and then walked out, leaving behind an empty hole he’d found impossible to fill.

‘But at least any women I had a relationship with were free to be with me. They weren’t committed to anyone else, emotionally or otherwise.’

He was pushing his shirt into the waistband of his jeans as he spoke, the brisk efficiency of his movements as he fastened the zip, buckled his belt, expressing forcefully the distance that had now come between them.

‘Unlike you and your precious Pete. So what is it, my angel? Are you and your headmaster a couple or not? Or is your new man not the lover you thought he was?’

‘How dare you?’ Ellie threw the words into his cold face, amber eyes burning gold with fury. ‘Pete has been very kind to me.’

‘Oh, yes, and we both know how “kind” he’s been. But perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps you don’t want “kind” any more. Perhaps it doesn’t satisfy you, and you’re looking for something a little different—something more exciting?’

‘Well, if I was, then it wouldn’t be with you!’

‘No?’

Sceptical ice-blue eyes went to the bed, drifted over to the suitcase he had kicked aside so violently, and then came back to her flushed and indignant face.

‘No?’ he questioned again on a new and very different note, one eyebrow drifting upwards in cynical query.

‘Excitement wasn’t the word for that!’ Ellie injected every ounce of contempt she could manage into her tone. ‘It was more like a form of masochism—an exorcism of any lingering delusions I might have had about you.’

‘Believe me, angel,’ Morgan drawled with silky menace, ‘the feeling is entirely mutual. Like I said, I very nearly made the biggest mistake of my life.’

And he’d been hers, Ellie reflected bitterly. The worst mistake she had ever made in her life had been allowing herself to love him. Not that there had been any choice in the matter. She had been out of her depth almost from the very first moment she had met him. And nothing that had happened had done anything to change that.

‘So at least we both know exactly where we stand,’ she stated, somehow managing to make herself sound every bit as cold and uninvolved as he had done. All she wanted now was to get away from here as quickly and quietly as she possibly could. ‘Would you mind passing me my blouse? I’d like to get dressed.’

Morgan stooped, picked up the discarded shirt and tossed it disdainfully in her direction. Ellie just caught it and, pointedly ignoring his hard-eyed stare, turned her back to pull it on. The brush of the soft cotton over her sensitised skin, the still-aching peaks of her breasts, was a new form of torture, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it, fastening the buttons with determined movements.

Clothed, at least she felt better, even if the shirt was dreadfully crumpled and must look like nothing more than a rag. Her hands awkward and unsteady, she tried to smooth down the tousled strands of her hair, knowing that her attempts were having very little effect at all as she swung round to face Morgan again.

He hadn’t moved. He was still standing just feet away, tall and dark and devastating to her peace of mind, long hands resting loosely on the leather belt around his narrow waist, blue eyes hooded and watchful.

Ellie forced the polite, meaningless smile she used for really difficult customers, all lips and teeth, flashed on and off again, with nothing in the eyes at all.

‘Well, I don’t think there is anything more we need to discuss, so I’ll leave you to settle in.’

He waited until she reached the bedroom door, until she was thinking thankfully of escape, of finally getting away and hiding somewhere, licking her wounds in peace.

‘And you’ll be back—when?’ he enquired sardonically.

Never—if she had a choice.

‘Back?’

‘The “extra services”,’ Morgan reminded her harshly. ‘Cleaning—meals…’

‘Under the circumstances, I really think that you’d prefer it if Dee did your housekeeping after all.’

‘No way.’ It was a flat, emotionless statement but one that made it plain he had no intention of yielding or offering any concession on the point at all. ‘I don’t want this Dee, or your grandmother, or anyone else at all. I want you.’

‘But why? Why me?’

Why? Morgan asked himself the same question even as he phrased the words, ‘I want you’, not quite sure he had actually heard himself speak them.

Why when she had made it plain that she hated him, that she wanted nothing more to do with him, was he still so determined to play the only cards he had left in order to keep her near him? Why the hell did he want an unwilling, hostile, spitting alley cat coming to the house every day to perform tasks that she clearly resented with every cell in her body?