turned his head and looked her full in the face. ‘I’m not going to have sex with you but I’m happy to lie beside you while you rest.’
She pulled a face at him. Her own desire to snuggle up to him was withering like a dehydrating leaf. ‘I wouldn’t want to force you to do anything you didn’t want to.’
He grinned at her but there was a definite flare in his dark eyes that left her in no doubt she was wrong. A flare that made all the saggy disappointment feelings sit up and take notice again. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to get closer.’ He was telling the truth and at least that made her feel a little bit better. ‘But I think we need to talk a whole lot more before we fall into …’ he hesitated, didn’t even offer a word for what they were both thinking about ‘… first.’
Talk? When she was sitting here in her lacy bra and panties—admittedly with a huge shiny belly out in front—behind a closed door with all those pregnancy hormones saying ooh-ah. ‘Talk?’ She fought back another sigh. ‘That sounds more like a girl thing than a guy thing.’
He shrugged, stood up again and then leaned down, slipped an arm behind her knees and the other under her shoulders and placed her in the middle of the bed. Oh, my, she loved the way he did that.
Then he bent, unlaced his shoes and removed them, loosened his belt and then sat back down on the bed in his jeans. Reached for the folded light sheet at the bottom of the bed she’d been resting under in the afternoons, swung his legs up and draped the sheet over both of them.
Then he slipped his arm around her shoulders so her head was resting on his chest and settled back.
She was still smarting from the ‘not having sex with you’ comment. ‘Is this the pillow talk I missed out on last time?’
He didn’t seem perturbed. ‘You do have a nasty little bite when you don’t get your own way, don’t you?’
She hunched her shoulders. ‘It comes with not knowing where I stand.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I see that. But I can’t tell you what I don’t know. And if you want me to make something up then you’re resting your head on the wrong chest.’
It was not what she wanted to hear and yet it was. And this particular chest felt so good to lean on. She relaxed and snuggled in a little closer. ‘So you’re saying you won’t lie to me.’
The sound of his heart beating in a slow, steady rhythm reverberated under her ear. God, she’d missed this. ‘I won’t lie to you.’
She lifted her other hand slowly and ran her fingertip down the strong bulge of his bicep. An unfairly sexy bicep. Her girl parts squirmed in remembered ecstasy. Conversation. Remember conversation. ‘Not lying to me is a good start.’
‘You’re supposed to say you won’t lie to me either.’ She could tell he was dead serious. Fair enough.
She wriggled awkwardly, trying to shift her weight until she’d managed to roll and could see his whole face. Said just as seriously, ‘I will not lie to you.’
She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes but his mouth was firm. ‘So if you want me to go, you tell me. Not telling me is a lie too.’
She frowned at him. ‘I’m not sure I want to hear about it if you want to go.’ Then she sighed and lay back down again. ‘But I guess that’s fair.’
He was shaking his head. ‘You don’t understand and you need to get where I’m coming from. I may not be good at this whole father thing, Maeve. I’ll try but I don’t have a lot of family experience, and no paternal role model, to draw on.’ She could hear the slight thread of panic in his voice. Had to remind herself that a few hours ago this guy had had no idea he would be having a child some time in the next few days.
She thought about his ‘no family experience’ statement. Well, she guessed he’d never had a father to learn from or even subconsciously copy. Maybe he was finding that pretty daunting. ‘Did you know your father at all?’
‘Nope. I asked. All my mother said was he was dead and didn’t offer any clues. Not even his name. And my mum wasn’t into men staying over so no “special” uncles. If she spent the night with a man, she usually stayed out.’
Maeve thought about that. ‘So when you were young you stayed home alone? At night?’
Maeve squeezed his arm in sympathy and Rayne could feel himself begin to freeze her out. Had to force himself to let her offer comfort because if he was going to try to make this work he had to at least attempt to learn to do these things too. Apparently it was what families did and he needed to at least give it a shot.
He dispelled the myth that he had been alone. ‘We lived in a dingy block of flats. You were never alone. You could always hear people in the other units.’
She nodded against him. ‘So you never got scared on your own at night?’
He nearly said no. But he’d said he wouldn’t lie. ‘When I was younger I got scared. Especially if someone was shouting or I could hear someone yelling on the footpath. The worst was if a woman screamed down on the street. I always worried it was my mum and I wasn’t doing anything to help her.’
He’d never told anyone that. Didn’t know why he’d told Maeve. He moved on and hoped she would forget he’d said it. ‘Guess I’d make sure my kid was never left alone until they wanted to be left.’
She squeezed him again. ‘Perhaps your mum thought the people she was with were more disturbing than the idea of you being alone.’
His mum had actually said something like that. He hadn’t believed her. Had there been a grain of truth in it after all? And Maeve had picked up on it all these years later. ‘You don’t judge her, do you? My mother?’
Maeve shrugged on his chest. ‘Who am I to judge? I know nothing about her. I just know I’ve always admired you and she must have had a part in that. She was your mother.’
That heavy carpenter’s rasp was back down his throat. Sawing up and down and ripping the skin off his tonsils. Or at least that’s what it felt like as his throat closed. He searched for some moisture in his mouth. ‘Even when I said I’d been in prison because of her, you were sad for me that she was dead.’
He’d been thinking about that a lot. Couldn’t get his head around the fact that Maeve saw the part of him he hadn’t shown to many people. Except Simon. But he doubted her brother would have discussed it with his little sister.
She snuggled harder and his arm protested and began to cramp. He told it to shut up.
Then she said, ‘Even though you didn’t meet your father, I think you’ll be a good dad. And you certainly tried to look after your mum from a very young age. You’re probably better father material than many men who had dads.’
He grimaced at the fact that maybe he had become a little parental with his mum, but that didn’t change the fact he hadn’t been able to save her.
Maeve was like a dog with a bone. ‘You’ll be fine. You’re a paediatrician so at least you’re good with kids.’ She settled back. The law according to Maeve.
‘At least I’m that,’ he said dryly. ‘I’m good with sick
