Interrupted Lullaby

“I might have believed it once, but three times is a little hard to swallow.”

“Oh, Zeke.” Her heart went out to the small boy whose trust had been so badly betrayed. No wonder he was reluctant to show affection after learning that it could be snatched away at a moment’s notice. “What about your mother’s family?” she’d asked.

He’d looked away. “Her father was a religious type who didn’t want to know her or me. I only tried to see him once, to tell him his daughter had died in a car accident. It was made clear that I needn’t have bothered.”

“It’s his loss,” she’d said firmly, wrapping her hand around his. His fingers had felt cold. “I’m sure he regrets it now that you’re so successful.”

“Too late. So now you know why I object to supporting something that did me more harm than good. If a parent puts a child up for adoption, at least everybody knows where they stand.”

To Tara, things weren’t always so simple, but she had known it was futile to argue with Zeke when his mind was made up. And who knew, she might have felt the same if her early life had been as disrupted as his. She had also understood why he’d resisted making promises to her. Their life was wonderful as it was, he’d insisted. Why tamper with perfection?

As a result, when she found out she was pregnant she had known she couldn’t force him into a commitment he didn’t want. Nor could she go with him, for the same reason. She had hoped he would stay in Australia of his own accord, but he hadn’t. From his comments tonight, it seemed he hadn’t changed at all.

Awareness of him played through her thoughts like background music as she went on to explain how the foundation had started when a woman on her own had unexpectedly given birth to triplets without the resources to clothe and equip them.

Tara had been a patient at the same hospital, although she avoided mentioning that part, especially with Zeke in the room. She had expected to be in the maternity ward and her heart had been torn in two when she had been moved to a surgical ward instead, with a woman who coughed all night. It was a long way from a baby’s healthy cries, she remembered thinking.

The single mother with the triplets had been the talk of the hospital and as soon as she was discharged, Tara had buried her aching sense of loss while making telephone calls to colleagues and persuading them to donate clothes for the babies. One of her favorite designers had gone further, creating an adorable miniature wardrobe for the triplets. The resulting publicity had led more of Tara’s colleagues to offer money and assistance, and before long the foundation was a reality.

She had never expected to become the charity’s spokesperson. At first she could barely be around children without falling apart, but slowly it dawned on her that there was healing here, too. Seeing so many babies and children being given hope for the future had renewed her own sense of hope. Her pain had slowly eased to a distant ache that only caught her unawares every now and then.

In helping others, she had helped herself to go on. She called on that strength now to keep her voice steady and her body language serene, describing work the foundation had done and the work still to do, and how the audience could play a part.

When they broke for coffee she was immediately surrounded, but even as she answered questions she was aware of Zeke across the room, a coffee cup untouched in his hand, his gaze on her. His look felt like a flame, licking at her body.

Time to take the bull by the horns. Excusing herself, she strode up to him, her own coffee cup held like a shield in front of her. “Hello, Zeke.”

“Nice talk. Very persuasive,” he said evenly.

“Wasted on you.”

“I didn’t come to be recruited,” he denied. “You know my philosophy—charity begins at home.”

“Then why are you here?” she demanded.

In the confined space, his body brushed hers and she felt her pulses leap in instant response. When they were together, his hard body hadn’t always been encased in expensive tailoring. More often, it had been encased in nothing at all and the image sent shards of desire spearing through her.

Chemistry, that’s all it was, she told herself desperately. Zeke had never had to do much to send her into orbit. Sometimes merely touching her was enough. This time she owed it to herself to keep her feet firmly on the ground.

“I want to learn about your work,” he insisted, his deep voice close to her ear.

The warmth of his breath curling around her nape made the room seem to recede.

“Isn’t it a bit late?” she managed to whisper around a throat as arid as the Australian Outback. They both knew she wasn’t referring to her work.

“According to our speaker, it’s never too late to do your bit,” he murmured. He shot a deliberate look at the reporter taking notes at the back of the room. “Unless you don’t practise what you preach.”

Of all people, Zeke should know she did, she thought with a sinking heart. “I suppose you hope to make a fool of me in front of the magazine people.”

He looked mildly insulted. “I don’t need Australian Life as a mouthpiece. My column has as many readers a week as they do in a month.”

Her spirits sank even further. “You’re writing about the foundation in your column?”

His smile twisted her insides in an instant, an unwelcome response but she forced it away as he said, “It’s possible.”

“For your series on charities that help themselves more than others.”

It wasn’t a question. The leaden feeling in her stomach told her she was right even before his smile became wolfish. “Since starting that series, I’ve visited charities whose headquarters would make the Taj Mahal look modest. Debunking them has been a pleasure.”

“Model Children isn’t a publicity stunt,” she denied, keeping her voice low although it was an effort. “We’ve saved whole families by helping the children.”

“Too bad our family wasn’t one of them.”

Stopped in her tracks, she stared at him. “You can’t blame me for what happened. You were the one who went to America, then moved in with someone else.” His eyebrows lifted and she added, “Gossip travels fast in the media. How is Lucy, by the way?”

“You’ll have to ask her new husband,” Zeke said flatly.

For the first time she saw genuine pain cloud his startling pewter eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

A cynical smile tilted his full lips. “If you’d come with me to the States you would have known. Of course, if you’d been with me in the States, I wouldn’t have turned to Lucy.”

She felt anger flash into her gaze and didn’t care if he saw it. “You’re saying it was my fault?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“I couldn’t go with you.” She was well aware that the desire to keep this between them wasn’t the only reason her voice came out as a strangled whisper.

“You never did say why.”

“I told you—”

He cut across her savagely. “You gave me excuses but no real reason.”

“I had my work.”

He glanced around the room, part of a technical college by day. There was little of glamor about it and she saw his gaze absorb the fact. “Nineteen months later you’re not modeling at all. You’re stumping around the country talking business people into parting with their cash. Yet you couldn’t take the time to come with me where your career could have really taken off. Were you afraid of failing or succeeding?”

“Neither,” she insisted, feeling her heart gather speed. She hadn’t been able to share her reasons with him then, and there was no point now. “I had other priorities.”

His mouth twisted into a sneer. “Evidently I wasn’t among them.”

“Must we always bring this back to you?”

His finger stabbed the air. “This time it’s to you. You were the one holding the reins. You could have come with me but you refused.”

“So you drowned your sorrows in Lucy. It took what? Just over a year to love her and leave her. You didn’t pine for very long.” Not nearly as long as Tara herself had.

At his startled look she wondered what she had said wrong. “I didn’t leave her, she left me,” he stated, astonishing her. “It seems I wasn’t sufficiently in touch with my feelings.”