Her Pregnancy Surprise: His Pregnancy Bargain / The Pregnancy Secret / Their Pregnancy Bombshell

Luc’s jaw clenched as he bit back the oath that rose to his lips. ‘If you stop sniping for thirty seconds I might be able to explain. I was going to tell you who I was, but—’

‘But you thought it was a shame to waste the opportunity of a few more make-a-fool-of-Megan moments,’ she inserted bitterly.

‘I didn’t want to make a fool of you, but you’ve got to admit you were phenomenally patronising when you rolled up at my place…’

‘I was not patronising!’ How could you be patronising when you were faced with a man who was, not only intimidatingly perfect and off-the-scale sexy, but quite obviously capable of delivering killer put-downs in his sleep?

‘You wrote me off as the hired help, nice body but not much between the ears, the moment I walked in.’

‘Your body isn’t that good,’ she lied. ‘And I never thought you were stupid.’ The intelligence in his eyes had been the first, well, maybe not first thing, but it had definitely been one of the first things she had noticed about him.

‘Admit it,’ he challenged. ‘You’re an intellectual snob of the worst kind.’

Her face got hot with anger at this totally unjust assessment. ‘And you decided to teach me a lesson? That’s why you came here pretending to be someone you’re not.’

‘Can you deny you needed a lesson? And I came here pretending to be me…’

‘Being pedantic doesn’t make you any less a total sleaze. Tell me, because I’m curious, what part of my lesson involved having sordid sex with me?’

‘You seemed to enjoy sordid at the time,’ he rebutted with brutal accuracy.

Megan flushed bright pink. ‘Carry on thinking that if it makes you happy.’ Without taking her eyes off his face, she reached for the bedside lamp; the lamp toppled and fell to the floor with a loud crash.

Megan didn’t try and retrieve it. It wasn’t as if the room wasn’t bright enough—the moonlight streaming in through the window made the room as bright as day. The moon was so bright that she could see things she’d have been happier not seeing. Things like the shadow of body hair through his shirt…something that she was trying very hard not to see.

Besides that, this wasn’t an occasion when moonlight was appropriate. Moonlight suggested romance and lovers.

‘Are you going to pick that up?’

‘No!’ she snapped as he bent down. His head lifted. ‘Leave it,’ she snarled. ‘You’ve got a cheek, I’ll give you that. How dare you creep into my room? Get the hell out before I call for someone!’

Luc effected innocence. ‘I thought we had a date?’

Her hands balled into fists. ‘You must be joking!’ she hissed. ‘What you did was sick.’

‘Stupid maybe,’ came Luc’s grim-faced admission.

Suddenly Megan wanted to cry. ‘You’re a cold, callous bastard, and I’m so glad I entertained you.’ Her feathery brows twitched. ‘Do you generally have to pretend to be someone else to get a woman to sleep with you?’

Luc was starting to look exasperated. ‘Look, I really regret what happened tonight.’

‘Why—was I that bad?’ In case he thought she was seeking reassurance, she added belligerently, ‘You should know that I happen to know I was great.’

‘You were great and then,’ he drawled, ‘you opened your mouth.’ Even as he spoke an image flashed into his head of those soft, moist lips running over his naked skin. His eyes half closed, Luc’s respiration started to come significantly faster as his body responded with painful urgency to the steamy image of Megan kneeling in front of him. It was so real that his long fingers flexed as he imagined himself winding them into the silky honey tresses as she knelt before him.

He touched the back of his hand to the beads of sweat along his upper lip and struggled to regain some control of his imagination.

Dear God, Luc, he told himself, you’re acting like a teenager with his first rush of hormones!

‘You seemed to think I was great too. In fact I seem to recall you saying you thought you were falling in love with me…?’

Megan froze. ‘I did not!’

‘I could say did too, but not being five any more I won’t. I’m prepared to give the benefit of the doubt…’

This man was quite simply unbelievable!

‘The fact is I’m not happy with unquestioning adoration. I hate clingy women.’

‘Do I look like I’m suffering from a case of adoration?’

‘For crying out loud, woman!’ he grated, an expression of seething frustration on his lean, strong-boned face. ‘I came here to apologise but you make me so damned mad.’ His heavy-lidded glance slid downwards from the twin beacons of her blazing blue eyes.

At about the same moment Megan awakened to the uncomfortable fact she was standing there in a skimpy, short nightie. Her discomfort would have been ten times worse had she realised that the moonlight had rendered the fabric virtually transparent.

Luc was not similarly unaware and hadn’t been since she had leapt from her bed. He was painfully aware of the outline of her slim, supple body. As much as he tried not to let them, his eyes were continually drawn to the gentle upward tilt of her rosy-tipped breasts and the strategic darker shadow at the apex of her long legs.

Megan resisted the urge to tug down the hem, and endured his scrutiny impassively. It isn’t what you wear, it’s the way you wear it—isn’t that what Mum always says? Of course her mother, who bought sexy silk pyjamas half a dozen at a time from her favourite designer, would never have been caught wearing a cheap chain-store nightdress.

‘Was it all a joke to you?’ Megan asked.

His smoky gaze returned to her face; his manner was uncharacteristically distracted. ‘Of course it wasn’t a joke…I didn’t expect tonight to go the way it did.’

‘Well, I don’t believe you,’ she countered furiously. ‘I think you planned everything. I think you’re a cold, callous, manipulative snake.’

‘Right, then, I don’t suppose there’s anything more to say.’

He’s going now…say something. ‘Fine, you know where the door is.’

Face like stone, Luc turned. ‘See you around, Megan.’

‘Not if I see you first,’ she hissed.

The moment the door closed she crumbled.

CHAPTER NINE

MALCOLM, wearing silk pyjamas and a dressing gown, looked relieved when he saw Megan.

‘I thought for a second you were your mother. I’ve been outside to have a couple of puffs on a cigar. You couldn’t sleep either, huh?’ He looked sympathetically at Megan, who was seated at the long scrubbed table in the cavernous kitchen.

Megan shook her head and nursed her mug of tea, which had gone cold while she’d sat there. She summoned up a weak smile and hoped her face had recovered from the worst of the tear damage. ‘Bad night, Uncle Mal?’

‘I never sleep in the country. Quite frankly I don’t see how anyone does. It’s so darned noisy,’ he complained, dragging himself up a chair.

Despite her bleak frame of mind Megan was amused by his comment. As a country girl born and bred she couldn’t let this comment go unchallenged.

‘What about London traffic?’ Even she, a sound sleeper—normally—found that hard to cope with sometimes.