alone to sort his head out.
If only he had given her enough time to explain, to tell him the whole truth. He would still be hurting... But not this much.
Pushing her fist against her teeth, to stop herself throwing her head back and howling her pain to the burning bowl of the sky, she ran to a rocky outcrop, uncaring of the sharp edges cutting into the soles of her bare feet, and watched until the cloud of dust disappeared on the valley floor. Then walked slowly back to the house, defeated, wretched.
Jed would come back in his own good time, and all she could do was wait. But for the first time ever she could find no comfort in her beautiful home, the symbol of her fabulous success. Lovingly recreated from what had been little more than a near derelict shell, her home, her gardens, her slice of Andalucian mountainside, had previously reinforced her belief in herself, in the financial and emotional independence she’d made for herself.
As she’d confided in Sam, on what had turned out to be his last night in Spain, ‘When I left my husband ten years ago and came out to Cadiz, I had nothing—not even my self-respect, because Liam had taken that away. I worked in bars and lived in a miserable oneroom flat and took to writing in what spare time I had as a way of forgetting. Luckily, it paid off, and what had begun as therapy became my whole existence.’
The wine had been flowing freely on that dark February evening, and she’d lighted a fire in the great stone-hooded hearth, because the evenings were chilly in the hills. Sam’s mood had been strangely reflective, almost sombre, the atmosphere—that of long-standing easy friendship—conducive to soul-baring.
‘And now, because my books took off in a big way, I have everything. A successful career and pride in my work, a beautiful home in a lovely part of the world, a wonderful circle of friends—more financial security than I ever dreamed of having. Everything except a child, and sometimes that hurts. I guess I hear my biological clock chiming out yet another passing hour. But as I have no intention of ever marrying again...’
She shrugged wryly, sipping her wine to deaden the ache of her empty womb, her empty arms. Liam had adamantly refused to contemplate fatherhood. He’d wanted a glamorous wife on his arm, not a worn-out rag of a woman, stuck at home tied to a bunch of grizzling kids.
‘We have a lot in common, you and L’ Sam levered himself out of the comfy leather-upholstered armchair on the opposite side of the crackling log fire and opened the last of the three bottles of wine he’d brought when he’d invited himself for supper earlier. ‘You want a child, but you can’t stomach the idea of a husband to go with it—once badly bitten and all that.’ He withdrew the cork with a satisfying plop, and although Elena knew she’d already had more than was wise, she allowed him to refill her glass.
Over the two years he’d been coming to this corner of Spain, to snatch a few days’ relaxation between assignments for one of the more erudite broadsheets, he had become her dear friend. There was something driven about him that she could relate to, and nothing remotely sexual so she was doubly comfortable with him.
She smiled at him with affection. Too right, she didn’t want or need a husband. Never again—the one she’d had had turned out to be a disaster.
Sam kicked a log back into place with a booted foot and stood staring into the flames, his glass loosely held in his hands. ‘I’m dead against marriage, too, but for different reasons. With my dodgy lifestyle, it’s not on. Besides—and I wouldn’t admit this to just anyone—I’ve a fairly low sex drive. Unlike my brother.’
Jed. Sam often talked about him. He lived in the family home, somewhere old and impressive in the shires, and headed the family business—gobbling up any opposition, sitting on a fat portfolio. And now, it appeared, he was a womaniser too.
But Sam was telling her, ‘Since his late teens he’s always had women making a play for him—nubile, dewy-eyed daughters of the landed gentry, women who lunch, tough career cookies, the lot. But, to give him his due, he’s picky and very discreet. Mind you, he’ll marry some day, to get an heir. He wouldn’t want the family business to die out with him. But not me. All my emotional, mental and physical energies go into my job. I only feel properly alive when facing danger, grabbing photographs and copy from volatile situations.’
Elena hated it when he talked like that; it made her feel edgy. She watched him drain his glass, heard him say, ‘Like you, the only regret I have is knowing how unlikely I am to ever have a child of my own. To my way of thinking, passing on one’s genes is the only type of immortality any of us can ever hope for.’ He turned to watch her then, his lean, wiry frame tense. ‘There is an answer, though, for both of us. I’d be more than happy to offer myself as a donor. I can think of no other woman better to carry my child. I’d make no demands, other than the right to visit with you both when possible. Never interfere. Think about it.’
He put his empty glass on a side table and bent to kiss her lightly on the forehead. ‘You would never have to lose your freedom and independence to a husband; you wouldn’t have to go through the messy business of sleeping around to get the child you’re beginning to crave. No risk of nasty diseases! And I’d get my single claim to immortality.’ He smiled into her. shell-shocked eyes. ‘Sleep on it, why don’t you? I’ll call you in the morning. If you want to go for it, we can get straight back to London and start things moving. There’s a private clinic headed by a professor of gynaecology who owes me a favour—it’s useful, sometimes, to have friends in high places! Night, Elena—I’ll let myself out.’
At first she’d dismissed his idea as utterly preposterous, but the longer she’d sat over the dying embers the more deeply she’d thought about it, and the less outlandish it had become.
He’d talked about her craving for a child, and he was right. Sometimes, the need to hold her own baby in her arms was an actual physical pain, a deep, regretful sorrow that wouldn’t go away. And when that happened—with increasing regularity—everything she had achieved for herself seemed suddenly worthless.
She would never marry again, and the thought of sleeping around in order to get pregnant was deeply repugnant. And she liked and respected Sam Nolan, didn’t she? Admired him. The child who carried his genes would be blessed.
When he called the following morning her answer was an affirmative.
She’d made the necessary trip to the London clinic with Sam, never once imagining that almost six weeks later she would be at his funeral. Deeply saddened by the loss of a talented young life to a stray sniper’s bullet in a war-torn East African state, and more than devastated because only that morning after a month of hope, she’d discovered that his idea hadn’t worked. Sam hadn’t achieved his claim to immortality and she would never have a child to hold and love.
She’d met Jed at that simple, heart-wrenching ceremony, and from that moment on everything had changed. For both of them.
It was dark when Jed finally returned. Elena, pacing the courtyard, heard the sound of the approaching car and panicked.
Would he view her pregnancy differently when he learned how the baby had been conceived? Would he believe she and his younger brother had never been lovers? Accept the fact that they had been merely good friends who’d found themselves in a similar frustrating situation and had gone for a rational solution?
The dim outside lights were on—soft golden light reflecting from the surrounding whitened stone walls of her sprawling home, tendrils of soft mist trailing gently around terracotta planters burgeoning with foliage and sweetly scented flowers.
The silence
