The Christmas Baby's Gift

‘But you’ll have to get rid of the posh suit. You wouldn’t want to ruin it…’

The provocation was too much. His heart lurched, his blood heating, a stinging tightness below his belt telling him instantly how much at the mercy of her seductive teasing he was. He had never been able to resist. Couldn’t do so now.

For the space of another couple of heartbeats he almost followed her lead. The habits of the past year almost reached out and entangled him in their grip again, unthinking response driving him in an automatic direction before he had time to reconsider. He had even tugged at his tie, loosening it at the knot, smiling into the darkness of her eyes all the time, when reality caught up with him sharply, kicking him hard in the ribs, and made him rethink.

‘Perhaps not…’

He tried to make it sound relaxed, casual, indifferent even, and wasn’t at all sure whether he’d come anywhere close. Then he saw the change in her expression, the shadows that had clouded the clear blue, and knew that he had succeeded better than he had ever anticipated. Better than he had ever wanted.

But it was too late to back out now.

‘Here…’

He held out the white towel, forcing himself to ease the revealingly tight grip on the soft material.

‘Better wrap yourself up.’

Reproach flashed from those beautiful eyes, a reproach he fully expected her to put into words. If there was one thing he had learned about this wife of his, over the past year, it was that she didn’t mince matters. If she felt angry, or disappointed, or dissatisfied, she said so. But to his surprise she bit her lip visibly, and a faint shiver shook her slender form.

‘You’re cold.’

He was grateful for the extra impetus to get her to move. A single drop of water had escaped from the darkness of her hair at her shoulders and was trailing a slow, delicate path over the creamy surface of her skin, and down… It slipped across the curve of one lush breast, touched the rose-tinted tip and hung for a composure-shattering second from the tight bud of her nipple.

Once more hot desire gave him a harsh, burning kick in the gut. Liam swallowed hard, spoke hastily, hunger making his voice rougher than he had anticipated. ‘Come on, Peta—don’t just stand there! Wrap yourself in this towel and get dry.’

Perhaps he’d been mistaken. Seeing reluctance where there was none. Now she moved forward, into the enveloping folds of the towel, without hesitation, without protest.

The towel enfolded her slim form easily. So easily that it twisted something deep inside Liam. That slenderness was part of the problem. Part of what was fretting away at the fabric of the marriage they had built up together. Peta wasn’t still supposed to be as slim as on the day he had married her. Kids had been a major part of their agreement—and one year later there was no sign at all of any baby on the way.

‘Thank you—I’m fine now.’

Peta forced herself to say it. She had to say something to fill the uncomfortable silence that had descended. Something to distract him from his awkward question. How could anyone be cold in the superbly heated, luxurious bathroom of Liam Farrell’s home?

But of course it hadn’t been cold that had made her shiver so revealingly. Instead it had been the disturbed state of her thoughts.

‘I’d better go and dry my hair or I’ll never be ready in time.’

The ease with which he let her go only added to her confusion and mental discomfort. She had been prepared for an argument, some sort of protest at least. This wasn’t the Liam she knew so well. This Liam was in a very different mood from the one she’d assumed he was in from the moment he’d first made that provocative remark about the shower, pushing her to reply in similar vein.

She’d expected that he would try to kiss her, to hold her close. To assert once more the powerful sexual attraction that always flared between them. The same attraction that had had her whole body throbbing in response simply to the sound of his voice. And she had been prepared to handle that.

But not this strange, almost cold indifference.

Something was very wrong here. Something that she had been aware of for days, like the throbbing ache of a tooth that needed filling and wouldn’t stop nagging.

Dear God, please let it not be that he had guessed the way she was feeling.

‘What’s wrong?’

The question came so unexpectedly from behind that she actually jumped like a startled cat as she padded her way, bare-footed, across the rich bronze carpet towards her dressing gown.

‘Wrong? What do you mean, wrong?’

Her voice was uneven and rough, revealing her inner turmoil, and the hand that reached out to grasp her hair-brush was not perfectly steady.

‘How could anything be wrong?’

‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

Unhelpful as well as enigmatic.

‘Liam, I’m fine.’

His response was an inarticulate sound of sceptical disbelief that had her clamping her fingers too tightly round the brush handle, the skin showing white at the knuckles.

‘All right!’

Impetuously she swung round to face him, then immediately wished she hadn’t as she met the full force of those brilliant, stunning green eyes head-on.

‘All right,’ she tried again, less forcefully this time as a new wave of tension gripped her. ‘Seeing as you obviously don’t believe me—why don’t you say what’s wrong? Why don’t you explain what made you ask that question in the first place?’

His shrug was a masterpiece of controlled indifference, one that seemed to shake off her question as totally unimportant. But the casual nonchalance of the gesture was belied by the laser-like intensity of his gaze, the burning focus of those deep eyes on her face. Peta shifted uncomfortably under its scrutiny, feeling as if a much-needed protective layer had been scraped away from her skin, leaving her disturbingly raw and vulnerable.

‘I would have thought that today of all days you’d be feeling happy and relaxed. That you’d be looking forward to the party tonight with excitement and anticipation. Instead I find that you’re nervy and distant…’

She was distant? What about the way he had been the past few weeks? What had made him so difficult, so unapproachable, just at the moment when she had most needed to try and talk to him?

The question almost escaped Peta but she bit it back just in time.

‘And if I am distant as you say—have you ever considered that it might just be the party tonight that’s making me feel that way?’

Another rough sound of disbelief escaped him and he actually shook his proud head in dismissal of her comment.

‘Oh, come on, darling! You know that isn’t true—I know it can’t be true.’

‘And why not?’

‘You know why.’

‘Tell me.’

Liam moved away from the doorway at last, strolling across the room to stand beside her, looking down into her wary blue eyes.

‘I’ve never seen you nervous—or even unsettled before any sort of social event. Nothing fazes you. And especially not tonight.’

‘No.’ Peta shook her head, sending her drying dark hair flying around her face.

‘No?’