even now, Elan’s touch made her body hum with thrilling awareness. A dangerous awareness of his hard-sprung masculinity, his harsh beauty. Humbling awareness of the razor-sharp intellect that matched her own. But above all, awareness of the man who had loved her that night with a passion and tenderness that would haunt her as long as she walked the earth.
He pulled his hand back. “We must marry.”
The words, spoken low and fast, blew away the fog of sensation that had engulfed her.
“What?” She barely recognized her own voice. It sounded strangled, distant. With a tremendous effort of will she looked up at his face.
His eyes blazed with black fire. He looked directly at her, his features set in an expression of determination.
“You will be my wife.”
She fumbled with her shorts and T-shirt, covering the exposed flesh of her belly. She felt altogether naked and exposed in the face of his authoritarian command.
But she shook her head.
Elan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.
“I can’t marry you.” Her voice was clear, quiet but resolute.
“Why not?” The words flew from his mouth in a growl.
“Because…”
Because you don’t love me.
She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Certainly in her mental anguish she’d imagined the possibility of a proposal. It was, after all, the honorable thing to do. And Elan was an honorable man.
She was “in trouble” and he was the man who’d gotten her that way. Even in the twenty-first century it was still common politeness that he should offer to give the child a name. It was the same reason her father had proposed to her mother, decades ago, when her oldest sister had come unexpectedly into existence.
Elan regarded her with total astonishment. His brow lowered farther as he raised his hands to his hips. “You refuse me?”
Sara swallowed hard. Her hands flew to her belly and clutched each other, fingers trembling. “Yes,” she whispered. “I can raise my child alone.”
The confusion that darkened his face tore at her heart. For an instant she itched to step toward him, throw her arms around him and shout “Yes, I’ll marry you, I’ll be your wife and bear all your children and we’ll live happily ever after!”
And the thought brought a fresh flush of color to her cheeks. A twinge of embarrassment that she could harbor such childish fantasies. That she could dream even momentarily of a happy future with a man who’d made it crystal clear that ardent women were the bane of his existence.
No doubt her mother had nurtured those same foolish fantasies when she’d chosen marriage over single motherhood—a miserable marriage that had drained her strength and kept her constantly pregnant or tending to a baby, despite her increasingly poor health. That had kept her chained to a cruel man who cheated on her and to a succession of low-paying part-time jobs that would never give her the means to escape.
Sara didn’t intend to make that same mistake.
Elan tore his eyes off her and strode across the room. His mind whirled with confused thoughts and he couldn’t grab a single sensible one from the mix.
Sara is pregnant with my child.
He’d needed to place his hand on her belly to fully accept the truth of it. And nothing could prevent his heart from soaring with the knowledge.
He was assaulted with a vision of Sara living in his home, of the quiet desert ringing with the sounds of childish laughter. For an instant all the entanglements he’d dreaded seemed like the most blissful kind of bondage he could imagine. Sara in his bed each morning. A family to provide and care for the way a man is born to. A son or daughter—and the promise of more—to carry his legacy into the future.
Then she’d refused him.
His gut burned with unfamiliar emotion as he wheeled around to face her. She looked so small and delicate standing there, clutching her belly with both hands as if he might try to rip the baby right from her womb.
“You wish to deny me the right to raise my child?”
She flinched as he said my child. Blinked and looked down at the floor. An ugly thought sneaked up on him, bringing with it a cold chill of fear.
She’d said she was pregnant, but she had not said the baby was his.
Was it possible that she carried another man’s child and was merely informing him of her pregnancy as a professional courtesy? The image of Sara with another man assaulted him like a kick in the gut.
“Is it my child?” The words shot from his mouth like bullets from a gun. There was no dignified way to ask the question, but he had to know.
Sara nodded, her face flushing crimson. “Yes,” she hissed between closed lips.
Recrimination seized him as he realized how he’d shamed her with his doubt. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply…” He couldn’t bring himself to spell it out. The idea of Sara with another man stole his breath.
Since that one night in the desert he’d been tormented by the longing to gather her in his arms again. He was haunted by memories of her gentle touch, her fiery passion. But the memories were tainted by the realization that he’d taken advantage of her.
She was a young girl, barely out of college. Even if she had desired him, too—at that moment—he should have known better than to let the situation get out of control. Than to let himself get out of control.
He was her boss. The abuse of his authority was inexcusable.
When she’d accepted his apology without protest, she confirmed that night had been a terrible lapse of judgment. As he’d suggested, they had never mentioned it again.
Determined to rid himself forever of his craving to hold her, of the memories he couldn’t seem to shake, he’d done his best to challenge her beyond her capacity and drive her away.
When that hadn’t worked he’d planned to send her away. Push her out of sight, out of reach, out of his mind. To rid himself of the compulsion to take her in his arms, of the foolhardy urge to protect and care for her.
He didn’t need her.
But now there was a child to consider. That changed everything.
She regarded him steadily with those cool, pale eyes that haunted his nights. A few strands of golden hair had escaped her bun and curled around her face. She reached up and gathered them in her hands, tucking them back into the knot behind her head.
The movement of raising her arms pulled her T-shirt tight against the new fullness of her belly and the heavier curve of her breasts and he looked away quickly as his breath hitched. Her pregnancy did not dampen his desire for her.
Anger
