been away from me far longer than enough. ‘You’re making excuses. She can’t possibly roll off the bed with every chair in the house surrounding her—she’s not that strong. And you made a deal,’ he growled, hating himself for pulling a blackmail stunt on her but knowing that the longer he let her stay away, the farther her heart went from him. ‘You need me if you want to adopt the kid, and in return I get what I want. You’re my wife. I want you to sleep with me.’
The eyes he’d always loved looking into, like a rich, warm snugly brown blanket of love made just for him, were cold and hard. ‘I just spent the past few hours giving you what you want. I need to check on Melanie.’ She rolled over and got to her feet—and with a flash of fury at her defiance, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her back to the bed.
She struggled against him. ‘She’s not the kid,’ she panted. ‘She’s the only baby I’ll ever have in my life, and I will stay with her. I won’t lose her the way I lost Adam because you have to win again, to own me. You wouldn’t be stopping me now if it was Adam in that room!’
The bitterness inside her words turned him cold. Without thinking, he released her arm. Anna meant it. She really loved that baby—and she truly believed she would never have children of her own.
Would she ever begin to heal, come back to reality?
‘This is the twenty-first century,’ he said, low and fierce, yet with a sense of feeling his way. ‘There are a dozen other ways to have babies—’
‘Not for me.’ Flat, angry words, with an underlying certainty that haunted him. ‘You don’t understand. You’ll never understand.’
Her ire roused his. ‘I understand that you gave me your word today, and you’re already breaking it. I’m doing my part. I keep my promises.’
Her lips pressed together, so hard they were rimmed with white. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
Totally naked, she walked out of the room, and he heard the door opening to the room where the baby slept. He heard her croon softly to the kid, her voice rich with long-thwarted mother-love. Then, in exactly a minute, she returned and lay back down on the bed, but she remained rolled away from him, letting him know without words how little she wanted to be there, even after making love three times. Every pore and cell of her screamed, Don’t touch me.
He’d never been very good at taking orders—and not touching her wasn’t something he was prepared to negotiate. He pulled her against him, loving the lush curves of her body against him after so long away … and he’d be willing to bet she loved it, too, despite her silent resistance.
But when she only lay stiff and cold against him, refusing to touch him voluntarily, and her breathing was uneven, choppy as she chewed on her anger and fear that the longer she stayed away, the higher the risk the baby would be hurt, Jared knew he’d made an enormous mistake. Lying beside his wife, holding her naked body close, he discovered anew a distance far greater than anything that could be measured in kilometres.
Seducing her had seemed the perfect solution only a few hours before. Making love had always brought them closer.
In the loving and its aftermath, she poured out her affection, her love for him, as well as showing him the hidden tigress when they touched.
Tonight all he’d seen had been the sensual woman. His body was sated, but his heart was empty. He’d gambled high stakes on finding his Anna, the Anna he missed so badly, in bed—that she’d come back to him in the loving—and he’d lost, big time.
Aching for what seemed forever gone, the wife who’d loved cuddling him at night, his haven in a world gone wrong long before his father had put a rope around his neck, Jared moved his arm, giving her the choice, the freedom. Anna immediately rolled onto her stomach, finding a spare pillow to use beneath her body.
She was with him, beside him, and told him without words that it was the last place she wanted to be.
I might enjoy the sex, but that’s all it will be. She’d warned him, and he’d ignored her, ploughing ahead with his own plans for victory.
Maybe it was time he started not just asking but listening to her.
‘Go back to the baby.’ It was a rough growl filled with anger, but it was surrender. It was listening to her, giving her more than he’d ever had to before. ‘I’ll bring the mattress in.’
She rolled back to face him, staring at him in obvious surprise—and after a moment’s searching glance, her mouth curved in a tiny smile. ‘Thank you.’
It was far from the ‘I love you’ he’d once taken for granted as his right, his due, and now craved to hear; but he’d take it—a smile was a step in the right direction.
Yeah, it looked like it was definitely time he started listening to what she was actually saying, not what he thought she wanted—and he’d watch her body language. If he got really lucky, maybe she’d seduce him next time, and stay because she wanted to.
Her strong, curvaceous working woman’s body made him ache again as she gathered her scattered clothes and made a beeline for the bathroom—but he’d made a forward step, and he wasn’t about to blow it.
As he dragged the mattress into the other room for her, finding space for it in a corner beside the plethora of chairs she’d used for the baby’s safety, he wondered how he could have made so many mistakes with her and missed them—and how he’d lost her love without even noticing when it had gone missing.
Unfamiliar shame washed through Anna when she’d awoken with Melanie’s cries at seven the next morning to find a bottle made ready in the kitchen, apples steamed and strained for the baby and already mashed through his arrowroots. He’d even left coffee hot in the pot.
He’d made everything for her before he’d flown out, so all she had to do this morning was bond with Melanie. After her ungracious refusal to stay with him—which she guessed he probably had the right to expect after making love three times—he’d still kept his word.
The plane moved slowly into the hangar again at eleven, during Melanie’s morning nap. ‘Can you help me unpack the gear, Anna?’ he yelled over the beat of the rain.
‘Coming.’ She ran out to the hangar, drenched before she made it into the massive double doors. She blinked in surprise when she saw the plane stacked to the roof. ‘What’s all that you’ve got there?’
Opening the back doors of the plane with care, Jared grinned at her, his black hair plastered to his forehead just by the twenty seconds he’d been outside calling for her. And the brightness of his eyes, that slow, sure smile sent her insides into silly flips. How did he still do that to her after all these years? ‘I brought back lunch and dinner from the pub in Kununurra,’ he said, ‘meat pies and chips to reheat in the oven, and a lasagne with garlic bread for dinner.’
She frowned. ‘You went to the pub?’
He kept smiling at her. ‘Don’t worry about gossip. The tom-toms are already out on us. I got a call outside the grocery store from Jim Turner’s missus. She wanted to feed us to say welcome home to you, and happy second honeymoon.’
‘The Turners didn’t see the nappies and cereal?’ she asked anxiously.
He
