Price of Passion (14 page)

But just as she was resigned to having been eclipsed by his soaring imagination his gaze focused back on Kate’s flustered face, and he hooked her around the waist, arching her lissom body back over his arm for a long, lush, lascivious kiss. He hadn’t shaved or showered—he must have staggered straight out of the house from his bed—but Kate loved the sexy scrape of his jaw and the earthy male ripeness exuded by his hard body beneath the rumpled clothes. It made her think of long, sweaty nights of passionate exuberance and torrid delights.

‘You said you haven’t been with anyone but me since we met,’ he murmured, his warm breath feeding into her mouth as he reminded her of the words she had blurted out last night. ‘Was that true?’

‘Of course it’s true,’ she sighed, knowing that to deny it now would be a gross self-betrayal. If the truth of her fidelity made him gloat it would at least show him capable at some level of enjoying normal human possessiveness without confusing it with pathological obsession. And if it made him feel nervous or trapped by the implied commitment on her part, then he would just have to deal with it!

‘Quite a pair, aren’t we?’ She felt his smile shape her lips. ‘Free to do what we please—and what we do is please each other so well that celibacy becomes an active pleasure when we’re apart.’ He broke away from her mouth and saluted her stunned brow with a departing kiss. ‘I didn’t stop looking at other women the night we met, but I certainly stopped wanting them—it’s surprising how sexy a stretch of celibacy can be when you know what’s waiting for you at the other end, or should I say
who
…?’

Having made his stupendous admission with breath-taking nonchalance, he cruised out the door, careful to close it against escaping felines.

Kate felt winded—and perversely betrayed. Her proud portrayal of serene indifference to all the gossip and rumours about other women had been a wasted effort. Drake
had
been faithful to their relationship despite the no-strings caveat he himself had insisted upon. For months…
years
…she had forced herself to accept his tacit policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
when there had been nothing for Drake to tell
!

It was typical of Drake to slip her a life-altering revelation about himself under the guise of flippancy, and even more typical of him to disappear afterwards. The characters in his books might be dissected to within an inch of their lives, but in reality Drake preferred his own character armour to remain firmly in place and to dole out psychological insights with miserly reluctance. He knew that knowledge was power and he was very careful not to put the balance of power in any hands but his own. He had just handed a little more over to Kate. He would now pull up the drawbridge until he felt comfortable with what he had done.

She wasn’t in the least surprised when she didn’t see him for another day, and when he did reappear he made no reference to their previous conversation, dropping back into the safe realm of daily walks, teasing arguments and sexy banter and the occasional shared meal. There was a new physical awareness between them, however, unrelated to sexual tension that was always there in the background, and Kate knew that the next step was hers to take. She was in no hurry to make it, knowing that it could destroy the painstaking trust that they had been slowly building up, and take him away from her for ever. From attempting to seduce her at every turn, Drake was now playing a waiting game and she was slightly chagrined to recognise that she had half wanted him to take the decision out of her hands and use his sexual dominance to
force
her to tell him what he needed to know.

Drake continued to also hold himself aloof from Koshka’s eager pursuit of his affections and after a few days of keeping the cat indoors, on Ken’s advice, Kate was amused to see Prince as disdainful as his master of this pretender to the throne of her attention.

Koshka, however, wasn’t in the least oppressed by her failure to charm, the disparity in their sizes, or the supposed natural enmity between cats and dogs. Tail wagging, she would greet Prince with friendly squeaks whenever he appeared, trotting curiously in his shadow and ignoring his gummy show of yellow teeth when she tried to steal the scraps that fell from his food bowl. When he snored in his favourite shady spot beneath the hedge she would prowl over, batting at a floppy ear or sleepy twitch of the tail, and when he grandly ignored her teasing she would curl up beside him in a sunny spot of grass for a quick catnap before wandering off to find some fresh, feline challenge.

It was Koshka’s habit of making sudden, thundering sprints up and down the house for no apparent reason that was the reason for Kate’s literal, and figurative, downfall a few days later.

She was carrying her sun-lounger, book and water bottle down the verandah steps when a glossy black ball of lightning shot out of the house behind her and streaked between her feet, tripping her up and pitching her head first down the stairs. Her flailing hand made a frantic grab for the wooden hand-rail, but only her fingernails made painful contact with the splintered paint, throwing her at an angle over the side of the steps. Seeing the rocky garden edge looming up she desperately tried to twist and protectively curl up her body, missing the rocks but landing heavily on top of the metal bar of the sun-lounger, which had hit the ground sideways, unfolding as it fell.

She lay, dazed and breathless in a tangle of bent metal and canvas, the bar that had painfully folded her in two still jammed into her bare abdomen. It took her several attempts to struggle free but she eventually managed to roll over onto her back, weakly pushing away the wreckage of the lounger, wincing at the long scrapes she could feel on her hip, elbow and thigh. Her bikini top had been dislodged and she twisted it back into place, tiny beads of perspiration jumping out on her forehead as she became aware of an ominous, cramping pain low in her belly.

Koshka returned to nuzzle at the shiny pool of hair flared out around her head, and discover the delicious, salty moisture at her temples, and Kate raised her head to escape the gentle rasp of her abrasive tongue, bracing herself on one arm to start pushing herself upright.

Then a big hand was there, cupping her neck, a strong arm supporting her shoulders.

‘My God, Kate—that bloody cat! I had the shutters open—I saw the whole thing. You could have broken your neck!’ Drake knelt down beside her, shooing Koshka away as he helped her sit up, curving her against his supporting chest, brushing the dirt and grass clippings from her damaged side, anxiously tilting up her white face and examining her dazed eyes beneath the damp fringe sticking to her forehead, looking rather grey-faced himself. ‘Just sit here for a moment; don’t try to get up until you feel a bit steadier,’ he said huskily. ‘A knock like that can really take it out of you. Thank God you fell on that lounger and not on your head. Anything broken, you think?’

‘No…’ It was as much an answer as a thread of protest as he gently unfolded the arm that Kate had tucked protectively across her middle.

‘Shall I carry you inside?’

‘No, I want to stand up…I need to stand up,’ she insisted shakily, hoping against hope that when she stretched out she would find that she was just experiencing a muscular spasm from the shock of the fall.

Murmuring reassurances, Drake helped her to her feet, letting her lean on him as she tested her ankles and gingerly flexed her shoulders and wrists. To her relief the pulling pain in her stomach started to fade away, just as she’d hoped it would, once the blood started pumping freely around her extremities again.

They took it very slowly going back up the stairs, and when she limped back inside the house Drake made her lie down on the couch for a few minutes with her feet propped on a cushion. She accepted an offer of sweet tea when the alternative seemed to be having him hover over her or pace up and down. When Koshka wandered back inside innocent of all the commotion she had caused, Kate petted her forgivingly as she sipped her tea, covering the little ears to block out Drake’s dark threats of discipline.

When she felt a little less fragile, she persuaded him to let her go and pull on a tee shirt over her bikini, but when she emerged from her bedroom she was white-faced again, fully dressed, wearing shoes, and carrying her purse.

‘I think you’d better take me to the doctor,’ she said thinly to Drake, who was standing in the kitchen stirring sugar into a mug of tea for himself.

‘Why? What’s the matter?’ He put the mug down abruptly and strode over. Before he reached her side she went even paler, biting her lip and blinking hard as she dropped her purse and pressed both hands to her stomach.

‘Oh, God—’ she choked.

‘What is it?’ He slid his hands over the top of hers, feeling their icy tremor, fearing she was sliding into delayed shock. ‘Come on, Kate, tell me,’ he ordered harshly, to jolt her consciousness. ‘Don’t fade out on me—do you think you’ve hurt something inside?’

‘Yes.’ She looked at him, her silver eyes wild and tormented. ‘The baby…I think something’s happening to the baby!’ She caught her breath on a frightened sob. ‘I feel this pain in my side and all around my middle, like a tearing…I think I must have hurt my baby when I fell. Oh, God, what if I’m losing it? I don’t want to lose my baby—’

‘Baby? You’re
pregnant
?’ He looked as if he had been hit in the face, but his stunned bewilderment only lasted a split second and then he was as white-lipped as she, his eyes burning black holes in the stony mask of his face as he made all the right connections. ‘You’re carrying a child?
My
child?
That’s
why you came to Oyster Beach?’ He read the truth in her agonised expression. ‘You want to have the baby and keep it?
Damn you all to hell, Kate!
’ he exploded. He spun, slamming his fist against the wall.

She put her hand on the sleeve of his polo shirt, feeling the iron muscle underneath quivering with tension as his fist continued to grind against the caved wallboard. ‘Please, can we talk about it later?’ she begged his averted profile. ‘I need to go to a doctor now and I suppose the nearest medical practice is in Whitianga—I don’t think it’s safe for me to drive. Drake?’

He didn’t move and her fingers curled into the unyielding muscle. ‘Unless you
want
your baby to die!’ she cried in panicked desperation, shaking at his rigid arm. ‘Maybe you’re thinking that if you delay long enough you can force me into a miscarriage—get rid of the baby and save yourself some grief!’

He tore himself from her grasp and away from the wall, his handsome features for once ugly. ‘If you believe I’m capable of murdering an innocent child for selfish gain, then what in the hell made you think I’d ever be any kind of fit father?’ he said savagely. ‘No, don’t bother to answer that—you were going to sucker me into playing Daddy to your kid and now you know better than to even try,’ he added with incandescent fury. ‘Where are your keys? We’ll take your car—it’ll be quicker.’

He stopped, not looking at her as he demanded harshly; ‘Are you bleeding?’

‘No,’ she said, breathing shallowly, ‘but I have these sharp, low-down, stabbing pains…’

This time there was no supportive arm around her shoulders. He escorted her out and into the car without touching her, or even glancing at her until she temporarily emerged from her desperate anxiety to remember, ‘Oh, could you make sure that the kitchen window’s open before we go, so that Koshka can get out when she needs to—there’s plenty of water and dry food down but no litter box inside…’

With a curse and a black look of angry incredulity, he got out of the car again with violent, jerky movements and slammed into the house. When he came back he jammed the key into the ignition and grimly started to drive.

Wrapped up in her pain and fear for her baby, and the bitter knowledge that her sins of omission had caught up with her, totally damning her in her lover’s eyes, Kate hugged herself in silent despair until Drake’s question pierced her mental anguish.

‘How pregnant are you?’ he asked with ferocious reluctance, the words seemingly torn from deep in his chest.

‘I think about eight or nine weeks by now—’

‘You think? What does your doctor say?’

She didn’t want to tell him she hadn’t seen a doctor yet. She knew her GP didn’t handle pregnancies so she would have to ask him to recommend a specialist or midwife as her lead carer. She hadn’t been ready to take any of those official steps—not until she herself had felt ready to accept the giant changes that it would immediately bring to her life.

‘I—it must have happened just before you left—’

‘
Happened?
A pregnancy doesn’t just
happen
when you take the kind of serious precautions we do! At least I
thought
we were both on the same page about contraception. When did you stop taking the pill?’

She had known he would accuse her of trying to trap him, but it was still a blow. ‘I
didn’t
—not until I missed my period the week you left, and the pregnancy test came up positive…
twice
,’ she emphasised, twisting to look at him and biting her lip against another sharp spasm of pain. ‘I might have occasionally missed taking a pill, but never deliberately, and you always use condoms, so tell me how I could have planned this. And why would I, knowing how you feel about children—?’