a sudden, totally unexpected fierce possessiveness.
Apparently a hug was enough for Samuel. He squirmed, giving a clear signal that he wanted to be put down, and Kier bent and let him go.
Samuel made straight back to the toy basket, and when Kier straightened, his arms felt oddly empty. The warmth of the baby’s body still clung to his T-shirt.
“If you’d told me,” he said, unable to keep a certain righteousness from his tone, “I would have helped. I would have looked after you.”
“I didn’t need anyone’s help.” Shahna seemed almost desperate as their eyes met over Samuel’s head. “And certainly not yours.”
As if he were the last person she would have turned to. Kier’s temper nearly boiled over. He resented her assumption that he’d have reneged on his responsibility.
Her tongue momentarily flicked over pale lips. “I’ve already told you, Kier,” she said with careful clarity, “you’re not Samuel’s father! Another man is.”
Chapter 3
Another man?
Another man had made love to Shahna, had shared the intimate secrets of her body, had made a baby with her?
Inwardly Kier reeled, his mind in turmoil again. The only emotion he should be feeling was relief. Instead he felt cheated, and disappointed, and downright red-rag furious. He had to swallow hard and clamp his jaw firmly shut so as not to frighten the baby again.
“I didn’t expect,” Shahna said defensively, “that you’d jump to conclusions so fast.”
“How old is he?”
Her eyes met his full on, her head held high. “Eleven months.”
There was a short, prickly silence while he rapidly calculated. “You didn’t waste any time.”
He knew he sounded accusing. And that he had no right to accuse her of anything. But his bed must have hardly cooled from her leaving it before she’d been hopping into someone else’s. All ready to have the someone else’s baby.
His stomach plunged. “Were you sleeping with his father before you left me?” he asked.
Her eyes went glass-green with temper and color flared in her cheeks. “You know me better than that. At least, I thought you did.”
“I thought I did too,” he said. “But as you mentioned before, maybe I didn’t know you so well after all. Are you sure you know who the father is?” If she was lying to him that should force the truth from her.
“Of course I’m sure! It wasn’t you,” she said. “There is no way it’s possible.”
She sounded quite definite, and he supposed she’d know. Assuming she was telling the truth. “So where is this guy?” he shot at her, still not wholly convinced. “In Sydney?”
He thought at first she wasn’t going to answer. She looked away, then back at him. “Actually, in New Zealand.”
“You came straight here when you left me?” No wonder his inquiries hadn’t found her.
“Yes, I did. I mean, I was working in Auckland for a while before coming north.”
“You met him there? How? When? How long had you known him?”
She blinked as if he’d shocked her, then said steadily, “None of that is any of your business.”
She couldn’t have known the man long. It had certainly taken him a hell of a lot less time to find his way to her bed than it had Kier.
Yet earlier she’d told him she meant to get pregnant! “If your biological clock was sending off alarm signals,” he asked, “why didn’t you talk to me about it?”
“You were very clear that babies didn’t figure in your plans.”
He’d never thought they figured in hers, either. She’d given him no reason to think it. “I don’t recall that we ever discussed the possibility,” he said. “Except in the context of making sure it didn’t happen by accident.”
He’d been just as much concerned for her and her career as for his own freedom. It was all very well for women to think they could have it all, and for men to promise they’d do their share, but he’d seen female colleagues and employees juggling work and family, seen them drive themselves to exhaustion and turn down promotions, miss out on the top jobs because their energies were divided.
Some of them maintained it was worth it, but dammit, Shahna had never said she wanted a baby.
Had she?
He couldn’t recall the details of every conversation they’d ever had, but he was pretty sure he would have remembered that. “Why didn’t you say you felt differently?” he said, trying not to sound affronted. “That isn’t why you left?” Without even mentioning any desire for a child?
Shahna hesitated. “In a way…I suppose it was.”
What the hell did that mean? She hadn’t wanted his baby, but she’d been perfectly willing—eager—to have someone else’s? “So what did you do?” he demanded, his anger spilling over. “Sleep with the first man who came along? Use a sperm donor?” It had never occurred to him before that she might be one of those women who wanted a child to fulfill their womanhood, without the bother of having to share its parenting with a man. But then it had never occurred, either, that she’d walk out of his life without a backward glance.
To his considerable surprise she looked stricken. “I…it wasn’t like that,” she said, leaving him none the wiser. “And anyway, it’s not your business.”
About to hotly dispute that, Kier clamped his teeth together. She was perfectly correct, of course. If Samuel wasn’t his—he looked at the oblivious little boy, who had found a colored metal xylophone and was inexpertly banging on it with his hands—then he had no rights. And no obligations.
For some reason the thought didn’t please him.
Shahna went down on her knees and fished in the basket, coming up with a wooden baton for the xylophone. She put it into Samuel’s hand, and after gently removing it from his mouth, encouraged him to use it. Samuel grinned at her, attacked the keys with gusto, then looked back to his mother for approval.
Staring at her bent head as she folded her fingers around the pudgy baby hand and picked out the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” Kier felt excluded. Restlessly, he shoved his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, shuffled his feet.
Shahna got up from the floor. “Well,” she said, obviously waiting for him to leave, “I’m sure you can get a ride to the ferry if you want to go back to Rawene the quickest way. Or on to another town if you intend to explore the Far North. The locals are good about picking up hitchhikers.”
He’d promised himself that seeing her one more time would complete the sense of something unfinished that had haunted him since she left; rationalized that the occasional nightmares about Shahna caught in some terrible,
