Andrew Southern and Jacob Gardner had made him seem almost a stranger.
Which, she accepted resignedly, was precisely what he still was!
‘Why?’ she prompted softly.
Nick shot her a brief, sardonic sideways glance. ‘Maybe I just want to be alone with my fiancée for a while?’
Hebe drew in a ragged breath, knowing exactly what that meant; and Nick making love to her in anger was not something she wanted. ‘I don’t think so, Nick.’
‘Why the hell not?’ he bit out roughly.
‘You don’t need me to tell you that,’ she said quietly.
He inhaled and exhaled noisily before answering her. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Hebe,’ he finally murmured, self-derisively.
Maybe not physically—after all, he had the baby’s welfare to think of!—but emotionally this man would rip her to shreds.
But he didn’t need to be in the privacy of his apartment to do that. He could do it with just a glance!
‘The opposite, in fact,’ he added huskily. ‘I’m going to make love to you until you cry out for mercy!’
Hebe knew he could do it too, and there was a melting warmth inside her just at the thought of making love with him again. ‘I would rather just go straight home, Nick,’ she told him determinedly.
His mouth thinned. ‘Am I not to get to spend any time alone with you today?’
‘We’re alone now,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘We just don’t seem to be communicating too well!’
‘We communicate better when we’re in bed together, I agree!’ he rasped.
Which was exactly where Nick wanted to be right now—in bed with Hebe, breathing in her perfume, touching her, caressing her, feeling her response to him as he buried himself deep in the engulfing warmth of her body.
He ached with wanting her!
In fact, he couldn’t ever remember wanting any woman as much as he wanted Hebe. All the time. Able to think of nothing but her when they were apart. Just wanting to kiss and caress her when they were together.
It was like a heated madness, one from which he could find no respite even in sleep. Lying awake most of the previous night as he thought only of the time when he would be with Hebe again.
He had fallen in love with her, he had finally admitted that to himself some time around dawn this morning.
Fallen in love with a woman whose motives he still couldn’t trust.
Madness.
But it was a madness that he knew he could do nothing about. He loved Hebe. And even if she hadn’t been expecting his baby he knew that he would still have had to make her his own—that he couldn’t bear the thought of any other man near her, let alone sharing the intimacies that they had together.
Although he was still unsure why, even though Hebe might have wanted to confirm that Jacob Gardner had still owned the portrait when he died, she had done so in front of her parents.
Despite the explanation he had just given for the other men being in Hebe’s life, and the fact that she must have talked to her parents about Jacob Gardner, at least in the past, it just didn’t add up for her to involve her parents in that way…
Oh, to hell with it! He was giving himself a headache just thinking about it. Obviously Hebe had been involved with both men, and that was an end to it.
‘Hebe…?’ he prompted tersely at her continued silence.
‘What do you want me to say?’ she came back wearily, her head resting back on her seat.
‘I don’t want—’ He broke off, drawing in a deep, controlling breath. ‘Oh, just forget it. I’m not going to beg!’ he assured her hardly; he would rather take another cold shower followed by a restless night than do that!
Hebe eyed him frowningly. She didn’t understand him at all. How could he still want to make love to her when he believed she had been involved with one man who had been old enough to be her father and another surely old enough to be her grandfather?
But he obviously did. And he just thought she was being difficult by refusing.
She didn’t want Nick making love to her when he was angry, as if to prove a point of ownership. Even in her inexperience, she knew that wasn’t how two people making love should be.
She sighed. ‘We’ll be married soon, Nick. Can’t you wait until then?’
His jaw clenched tensely. ‘Why the hell should I?’
She gasped. ‘I’m not just an object for you to pick up and put down when you please, Nick!’
His jaw clenched grimly. ‘I have never used you as an object, damn it!’
‘That’s exactly what you’re proposing to do now,’ she came back heatedly.
His eyes glittered dangerously as he gave her a brief scathing glance. ‘I wouldn’t touch you now if you begged me to!’ he snapped.
‘And that isn’t going to happen,’ she assured him, just as angrily. If Nick’s plans worked out—which she was sure they would—the two of them would be married in a few weeks, and then she would be sharing Nick’s bed on a permanent basis.
Oh, God…!
‘This way,’ Nick instructed her abruptly the following evening, as Hebe began to take her things through to his bedroom. Instead, he lead her into the bedroom next to his, also overlooking the river, and put her suitcase down on the bed before turning to look at her.
If anything, she looked in worse shape than he did!
Which was precisely why, on the journey from her apartment, he had actually decided to put her in the bedroom adjoining his, rather than sharing a bedroom with him.
It had been a tough few days for both of them, he had acknowledged last night, after dropping Hebe off at her apartment and returning home alone, to call his parents and then his younger sister to tell them about the wedding. Natalie had been absolutely agog at the speed with which he was contemplating remarrying.
Explaining about the baby—something that had made his mother cry with happiness and his sister exclaim with joy—had helped, of course, but their curiosity about his future bride, the questions he hadn’t been able to answer about Hebe, had made him realise that he and Hebe really did need to take a little time, a step back, in order to get to know each other better before they were married.
Out of bed, that was.
Hebe looked surprised at being put into the spare room.
‘After what you said yesterday, I decided it would be better for both of us if you had your own room until after the wedding,’ he explained quickly as he easily interpreted her questioning look.
Hebe
