Their Newborn Gift (12 page)

Lea’s eyes fell away. What would that be like, coming home to this man? Being loved by him? His body heat seemed to reach out to her.

Conversation…conversation…
She cleared her throat. ‘So, how long has Mrs Dawes worked here?’

He leaned casually onto the kitchen table, crossing his
booted feet. ‘My whole life. She and her husband were hired when my parents bought Minamurra.’

‘Did I meet her husband?’

Reilly shook his dark head. ‘He lives out with the ringers.’

That got her attention. ‘Isn’t that a bit…unconventional?’

He smiled, the first look of affection she’d seen him give for anything other than a horse. And Molly. ‘This coming from you?’ He chuckled. ‘I think it keeps the romance alive for them. They sneak around like clandestine lovers to spend time together, and when they’re not they have their own space, their own interests. Plus, I’m not convinced they’re actually married.’

‘Really? How scandalous. Good on you, Mrs Dawes.’ Her laugh was too loud for the quiet kitchen.

Reilly suddenly realised how few laughs this whole house had absorbed into its serious walls. ‘You don’t mind a bit of scandal?’

She sat in the chair closest to his crossed legs and tipped her head up to him. ‘Not if it paves the way for true love.’

‘You don’t strike me as someone who’d put much stock in true love.’

Lea’s face shuttered over. ‘Really? Why’s that?’

‘I had you pegged more as a “love the one you’re with” type.’

Her eyes darkened. ‘Appearances can be deceptive. But, as it happens, that’s what I had you pegged as.’

‘You’d be right.’
To a point.

‘So, tell me about your first love,’ she asked.

Whoa.
Unexpected turn, and no good way to answer that. ‘I have. Grita, the Swedish backpacker.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘First
love
, Reilly, not first lover.’

‘There’s a difference?’ He knew that would earn him one of her tight smiles. ‘Why so interested?’

‘I’m not interested.’ Colour streaked up the ridge of her cheekbone. It suited her. ‘We’re going to be in each other’s lives for months. I thought we could get to know each other a little bit. You know…pass the time.’

It was too easy to slip back when she kept handing him openings like that. ‘I can think of better ways of passing the time…’

Her eyes glittered. ‘No doubt. But, as we’ve established, I’m over four months’ pregnant.’

She thought that was the slightest deterrent? It only made her more attractive.

Her pink lips twisted and she changed tack. ‘Okay, first kiss, then.’

If not for her determined expression—that face said conver-sation-or-death—he’d think she was working up to a proposition. Who talked first kisses with a man they had once slept with? Near midnight. Alone in the middle of nowhere.

Lea Curran did, apparently.

He smiled and shuffled his feet so the other one was on top. ‘Same answer, as it happens. Grita was a great few weeks.’

She tossed her head and went to stand. ‘Okay, forget it—’

He met her on her feet and pushed her by the shoulders gently back down into the seat, taking the opportunity to sink back down onto the table edge much closer than before. ‘This conversation was your idea, there’s no bailing now. What about you? First kiss.’

She glared up at him. Almost didn’t answer. ‘Jared.’

His stomach hit the floor. ‘You shared your first kiss with Jared? As in, your brother-in-law?’

Her chin lifted. ‘Get your mind out of the gutter, Martin. We were sixteen. Friends. Curious. He was pretty much the only decent boy my age for two-hundred kilometres.’

‘How was it?’ A question like that should have earned him a slap. But there was something about this night, this conversation.

‘With Jared?’ She smiled. ‘Wet. Gross. Pretty sure he agreed. I gather my sister’s a better kisser.’

Hard to imagine. He still remembered the shape of her mouth from those years ago. He swallowed hard. ‘I wouldn’t take it personally. Kissing’s all about science.’

She snorted. ‘Science? Not very romantic.’

He slid an inch closer. Their bodies were almost touching, the heat from his extended legs merging with the kiln of her body. A body burning from more than just incubating a baby, if he wasn’t mistaken.

‘Kisses aren’t about romance,’ he said, ‘They’re about sex. A good kiss is about chemistry. Or don’t you remember?’

Her voice dropped slightly, and the blaze in her eyes told him she remembered very well. Was she thinking about that motel? He certainly was. There’d been a lot of kissing then, bold, brave kisses. But nothing like the chemistry pinging between them now. Yet they weren’t even touching. This woman should come with a caution sign for the residual current running through her.

His entire lower half pulsed erotically in synch.

‘I beg to differ,’ she said softly, exciting his body with promise. ‘A good kiss is about timing, anticipation, connection.’

He bent forward, closer to her face. ‘Show me.’ Her pupils widened, marginalising the flecks of green, blue and brown to the very rims of her irises. But she didn’t move away. ‘Show me how a kiss is about more than sex.’

For the life of him, he really wanted to know.

She wavered, her enormous eyes locked fast on him, and then invisible threads lifted her face towards his. She looked one-hundred-percent woman now and completely awake. His heart started to hammer against his chest wall, wanting out.

Their entire conversation since she’d unwittingly stumbled on him in the kitchen had led to this moment. And they both knew it.

‘If a kiss was just about sex…’ Lea breathed the words against his lips, tipping her face so that her forehead almost rested against his, a sweet, trusting little move that roused every primal instinct lurking deep in his body. ‘Then we’d be kissing now.’

Reilly snatched forward with his lips to prove his point. She avoided him with a quick twist that put her mouth perilously close to his throat. His ear. Awareness shivered down his neck as her hot breath danced around him. Her hair brushed against his hypersensitive flesh.

‘But what makes a kiss romantic, about so much more than sex…’ she drew his face like a magnet, curling towards those pink, ripe lips ‘…is the question mark. How will it taste?’ She rubbed his stubbled cheek with her own soft one, dragging the corner of that delicious mouth closer to his. ‘How will it feel?’

His eyes fluttered shut as she traced the lids lightly with her lips.

God above, she was going to kill him. Five-year-old memories surged around the room, practically crashing into the furniture. His mouth was at once dry with anticipation and wet with desire as her lips returned to hover just millimetres from his.

‘And, most importantly…’ She raised smoky eyes, a tiny smile shaping her mouth. Her hands were braced either side of his hips on the kitchen table and he closed his eyes as she leaned that final inch forward.
Thank God.
‘How will I possibly survive never knowing?’

She pushed herself to her feet and away from him, and crossed back to the hob to see to the bubbling kettle. His eyes opened in disbelief, his body screaming with the denial. ‘Never knowing’ was no longer an option.

And it had nothing to do with romance.

Lea gasped as strong, masculine hands spun her back just as the simmering kettle started to sing. Its mounting pitch matched her fever exactly. Reilly folded her into strong arms and tipped her half off her feet before she could even suck in a breath to protest. Her hard, pregnant midsection pressed against his hard, flat one.

His blazing mouth—soft and powerful, familiar and new—slid over hers, demanding a response she was gasping to give. Hot and wet and urgent. Exactly as she’d remembered in her dreams. Her little lesson in romance had sapped her of resistance, and she literally panted for a kissing lesson from someone she was fast considering to be the sexiest man alive.

Never mind that he held such a low opinion of her; he kissed like a god. Her breath ached in her tight, trembling chest.

He consumed her, feasting on her lips and pressing her body perfectly into his, his tongue burning the inner reaches of the mouth she helplessly opened to him. The heady lip-work seemed to strengthen him everywhere she was weakening, and he held her up as her legs gave out.

The oxygen that should have been surging through her body
pooled into her core, prioritising her vital organs as though her life was in danger.

In danger of being kissed out of her, perhaps.

The kettle was piping now, spewing steam out of its angry top and forming a layer of sweat on the overhead cabinets that rivalled the rapidly forming dampness on her own skin. Some desperate, distant part of her consciousness ordered her hands to remain clenched, not to join the fray. But the roaring thunder of her blood drowned out the request, and her hands did what she suddenly realised she’d wanted to do since that first day at Yurraji. They fought their way under the layers of his clothing and spread out against the furnace of his muscular back.

She knew those muscles like Braille. Every dip. Every rise. Every sinew.

God, how she’d missed them.

Her mind screamed a protest at her body but it came out as a choked mix of fury, frustration and desire. Reilly must have felt it more than heard it over the protesting kettle, but he righted her up onto her feet and let his hands slip up into her hair. Her shirt rode up against him as she swayed to her feet, and she realised she was stretching up to prevent their lips from breaking apart.

She
was kissing
him.

He closed his fists in her hair and gentled his mouth. Slower, wetter, more rubbing, more heavy breathing. Lea rubbed her body against his as the kettle kept up its piercing aria. Undeniable, one-hundred-proof
sex.

The man had made his point.

She pushed away, gasping and dragging her wrist across her throbbing mouth. With trembling hands she turned and put the kettle out of its misery, and the ear-splitting crescendo died away instantly.

In the new silence, her chest heaved. His chest heaved. Tortured breathing filled the air. It was a tiny comfort that Reilly looked as stunned as she felt. His molten eyes assessed her warily as she backed towards the door. But he didn’t stop her leaving.

‘I’m just…I think I’ll…Bed.’ Words just would not form on her swollen lips. ‘Alone,’ she added hastily as a dangerous gleam sparked in his eyes.

Again, silence.

She turned and wobbled to the doorway on jelly legs. But as she disappeared through it she heard Reilly’s voice as he cursed, thick and low.

T
HE
more she learned, the stranger it became. There was no end to the ramifications of her decision to create a life that could also save Molly’s. For example, learning that her daughter’s blood type would eventually change to match the baby’s.

Lea shook her head, frowning. ‘Did you know that Molly will end up with two types of DNA? Her flesh will be her own but her blood will match the new baby’s.’

Reilly looked up from a sheath of accounts spread across his desk and considered that. He wasn’t startled enough; it must have already occurred to him. ‘Handy if she wants to become an arch criminal, I guess.’

Lea chuckled and conceded the point from her comfortable position on the sofa. Molly slept stretched out the length of it with her head on Lea’s rapidly diminishing lap as the rain drummed hypnotically on Minamurra’s tin roof.

It felt like it had been raining the best part of the month.

She sobered. ‘The more I learn, the more I realise how many lives could be affected by this decision.’

Reilly glanced back up at her, leaving his figures again. ‘You hadn’t thought about all of that?’

She’d never been much good at hiding her blushes and one broke free right now. ‘I…Yes, of course. But I hadn’t…The long-term implications weren’t…’ She took a deep breath, then looked at Molly. Then back at Reilly. She sighed. ‘Actually, no. At least, not for long. I figured that all of those things would
be surmountable. None of them had much impact against the chance to save Molly’s life.’

He regarded her steadily. She held her breath. This was where the inevitable criticism would come, the preaching and speechifying, Bryce Curran style.

He lowered his eyes carefully back to his desk. ‘Gotta say, I’d just be happy to make some impact on this spreadsheet.’

Lea blinked. ‘That’s it—no sermon? You don’t have an opinion to share about how irresponsible that was? How I should have thought about it longer? How careless I’ve been?’

He looked back up and shrugged. ‘I’m sure you don’t need my condemnation stacking up on top of your own.’

Lea drew in a tight breath. He was right.

‘Why the frown?’ he asked.

Lea forced the furrows away and answered carefully. ‘I’m more used to people using the ammunition I give them.’

He lowered the spreadsheet to the desk. ‘Someone else might have lied about not having given the ramifications due thought. Covered their butt.’

Her answer was simple. ‘I don’t lie.’ She’d made some bad choices in her life, but she’d lasted thirty years without letting a lie knowingly cross her lips. She wasn’t about to start now. ‘It was the last thing my mother asked of me.’ The only thing she’d asked.

Let no lie into your heart, baby girl.

Reilly’s eyes went straight to Molly. He was right; she’d been Molly’s age at the time. Her heart squeezed, imagining for one moment that Molly might go through what she had. Watching her mother just waste away. Begging her—literally, on her tiny, scabbed knees—not to go. That she’d be a good girl. A
better
girl. Her tiny heart fracturing.

Lea’s throat thickened now and her hand tightened in her daughter’s hair.

‘You’ve kept that pledge your whole life?’ His voice was gentle. ‘I’m sure that’s not what she would have wanted.’

‘No. But it’s something I could do. For her.’ She sucked back the sting of tears and met Reilly’s eyes again. ‘It became a habit.
And then an obsession. It was so hard at times—at school, with my sisters, my father. I feel like going back on it now would make all of that pain worthless.’

The clock ticked quietly. ‘So I could ask you anything and you’d have to tell me the truth?’

‘Not
have
to. Choose to, yes.’ She glared at him warily. Necessity had forced her to become queen of the loophole: it wasn’t a lie if you didn’t answer. It wasn’t a lie if you talked around it. It wasn’t a lie if you tackled a question with another question.

Deflection. Avoidance. Fast talking.

Reilly nodded, then went back to his spreadsheet.

Lea’s heart thundered. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me something?’ His eyes lifted back to hers. ‘You look like you’re burning to.’

He stared at her hard. The room lost some of its air. ‘I want to know a lot of things about you, Lea Curran. But I figure it’s like gentling a horse; just because I
can
force it to my will doesn’t mean I want to. I figure you’ll tell me when you’re ready.’

When—not if. Reilly could have taken her bared throat and sliced her to ribbons, but he hadn’t.

He dropped his lashes for a moment then lifted them again, his eyes blazing, his voice a kiss. ‘I tried to find you.’

She sucked in a breath.

‘I’d almost convinced myself that you were a figment of my imagination. If not for a few of my mates who’d seen us leave the pub together, if not for the significant muscle-strain from our…marathon, you might have been a dream.’

They’d spoken before of that night but not like this. Never as though it had been a good thing.

‘I couldn’t believe in a community as small and fragmented as ours that I couldn’t find one woman. I had a handful of facts and a physical description, and I traipsed around town like Prince Charming with the glass slipper, but no one from the district knew you. I ended up thinking you were a tourist from the Eastern States. And all along you were right round the corner.’

In the sparsely populated Kimberley, three hours away was.

Lea sat up straighter and stroked Molly’s hair reassuringly. ‘I didn’t want to be found. I never meant to tell you anything about me at all that night. But you were easy to talk to. You listened. You seemed to understand.’

His smile had her heart flipping. ‘I had incentive. The longer I kept you talking, the longer you would stay.’

A complicated silence fell on the toasty little room. Lea cleared her throat.

‘I’m sorry I left like that.’

His smile was wry. ‘I understand now. And it turned out to be good for me—a lesson of sorts.’

‘That’s very zen of you.’

Reilly chuckled. ‘Seriously. A taste of my own medicine. You were exactly as anonymous as I usually liked women. But not being able to find you when I wanted to was very irritating. And the way you left…’ He sighed. ‘I’d done that myself on occasion. It wasn’t fun.’

Lea blushed. ‘You can’t say I wasn’t memorable, then.’

His eyes grew serious. Darker. ‘Lea, that’s the least of the reasons you were memorable.’ He glanced back down briefly. ‘Knowing you as I do now, I can see how out of character that night must have been for you. Why you might have crept out at first light.’

Accord. She’d not expected to have that between them.

She cleared her throat, dropped her eyes to the pile of papers under his fingers. ‘Would you like some help with your books?’ His eyebrows lifted and her hackles twitched, ready to spring into action. ‘Are you more surprised I’m offering to help you or that I can count?’

Laughter rumbled through the room like the thunder that rolled across the horizon; it skirted the edges of her skin and left raised hairs in its wake. ‘You didn’t strike me as a numbers girl,’ he said.

She frowned. ‘Who do you think does all my finances? Did you notice a team of assistants littering Yurraji?’

He let the papers drop to the table. ‘You mentioned a stockbroker.’

‘To broker my share-trading. I manage the portfolio. I do the accounting.’ Had he never noticed the commerce degree framed on her wall? What did he think she’d filled the years between school and Molly with?

‘You? You track the stock exchange?’

She dropped her magazine to the floor on a soft exclamation, conscious of the sleeping child on her lap. ‘You are the father of at least one girl, Reilly. You’re going to have to become accustomed to females being able to do things.’ The spectre of Bryce Curran shivered through the room. ‘I fully expect you to doubt every part of
my
capacity, but I hope you won’t treat Molly that way. She’s going to have enough self-doubt to manage.’

He finally managed to blink; he sat back in his chair and turned the spreadsheet slightly in silent invitation. Lea tucked a cushion carefully under Molly’s head then padded around to Reilly’s side of the desk. She stepped in next to him and rested one hand on the gorgeous mahogany desk.

She scanned the top page and then quickly reviewed the pages under it, specifically not thinking about how close she was standing to him, and how all that heat coming off his body was affecting her.

‘What am I looking for?’

Reilly explained the discrepancy he was trying to locate—missing funds from a half-shipment of stock-feed. Lea located the original payment and then scanned the following figures. She settled in more comfortably next to him, slightly in front, conscious on her periphery of his eyes watching her. She sensed them travelling from her fingers that moved briskly down the rows of figures in his spreadsheet, up her arms and to her shoulders. To the curve of her ever-expanding breasts. Up to the angle of her jaw. Down to her pregnant belly.

How was a woman supposed to count with all that looking going on?

She hissed sideways at him. ‘I can see you, Reilly.’ She leaned further forward to block his gaze and only managed to dislodge it for a moment before it fluttered to rest on her bottom—also expanding rapidly, these days.

‘Reilly…’ She straightened, frowning.

His apology was the least sorry she’d ever heard. But he let his expensive chair roll back so that she could get right in between him and his computer without practically sitting in his lap. She set to work on the electronic version of the data, collecting, tagging, dragging. A couple of formulas here, a few linked fields there; nothing she wasn’t used to. It was first-year accounting.

All the while she was conscious of the man behind her, probably still examining her denim-clad bottom as closely as he’d run through his figures.

‘Bingo.’ Her eyes narrowed just as they fell on a number that seemed suspiciously out of place in its column. The discrepancy, an error in a single formula. Reilly pushed to his feet behind her and peered over her shoulder as she highlighted the guilty cell on the screen. ‘You have a one in this formula, where a point-five should be.’

This close, the clean cotton smell of him tantalised her receptors. He practically cloaked her with his body. And he knew it, guaranteed. His breath was warm against her ear as he spoke; his confusion, at least, was completely genuine.

‘How did you find that?’

She couldn’t turn to speak to him without ending up pressed against him, and she couldn’t step away easily. Standing still was presently the best option. Never mind that it felt fabulous, like she was born to fit into his body. ‘I fragmented your data, subbed it out and it was fine. It was just on this page that it went hinky. So I traced it back, and…’

She saw his face turn towards hers in the reflection of the computer monitor. Felt his words against her ear.

‘You make bookkeeping sound so much better than dirty talk.’

His voice was husky and his closeness drugged her. Her eyes glanced briefly at a soundly sleeping Molly and then fluttered closed. She tipped her head imperceptibly away from him, lengthening her throat. She needed his lips there—needed, not wanted. Her body was responding in total violation of her mind.

‘Shall I talk to you about vectors?’ She threw the joke out
like a lifeline and then clung to it, bobbing dangerously in a tide of attraction.

Reilly chuckled again and leaned past her to alter the formula on his computer. His broad chest rubbed against her shoulder—only her shoulder—but Lea doubled her hold on that lifeline.

Breathe! In…out…
‘I take it you’re not so good with figures?’

‘Not the mathematical kind.’ His lopsided grin caused her pulse to hitch. ‘I don’t see the logic. I don’t know most of the rules.’ He studied her closely—microscope-close. She stiffened. ‘Lea, would you consider doing my books while you’re staying here? Maybe teach me how you work them?’

Her eyebrows plunged into a wrinkle-forming frown. ‘You’re asking for my help?’ Admitting he wasn’t good at something—the great Reilly Martin? What was she supposed to do with that? She hadn’t really seen that happening in her life, and certainly hadn’t expected it from him. It dawned on her that maybe he was baring his throat just a little bit too.

Just that simple act had her heart thumping. She forced it to slow. Having warm and fuzzy thoughts was not going to help her situation. She didn’t want to start connecting with him. Liking him.

Needing him.

He regarded her seriously. ‘I haven’t built Minamurra up to this level by doing everything myself, or kidding myself that I can. I play to the strengths of my team, and right now your accounting strengths are looking pretty good to me. I’m not too proud to stand back and let you help me.’

Lea took a deep breath. She was officially out of her depth. The men she knew were all doers—obnoxious and painful with it—like her father, who believed he simply could not make a mistake. Or determined, resolute and uber-capable, like Jared.

Here was a man’s man—a hundred-proof outback ringer—not only admitting he couldn’t do something as well as she, but giving her the chance to run with it. Letting her have her head.

Lea took it, but not without a healthy dose of humour to shelter behind. ‘Sure. After all, we can’t have you blowing our children’s inheritance on bad bookkeeping.’

A crack of thunder overhead made them both jump.

Reilly fought hard to keep his face neutral, knowing that was as close to a breakthrough with Lea as he had ever got. ‘
Our
children?’

Furious heat flared into her face. ‘Your children, of course.’ The flush worsened. ‘That is, your child. I don’t expect…for Molly…’

He rested a calming hand on her forearm. ‘Molly will always be my daughter, Lea, no matter who she lives with. If she wants Minamurra when I’m gone, she’ll have it.’

Our children.
The all-too-familiar kick in his guts was back, but this time it felt good, less of a kick and more of a tug. Like someone had reached low into his belly and yanked. A strangely pleasurable sensation. It wasn’t sexual, although it could easily become so with very little encouragement from him. There was just something disturbingly right about sharing the office all afternoon with this woman and their child as the first big rain of the wet dumped down outside. Molly napping, Lea resting and reading, him doing the books.