there had been no next-day phone call, no contact at all until she had studied the portfolio as she’d promised, and then phoned him with a list of suggestions.
He listened, then said briskly, “We need to discuss these ideas of yours. Lunch? How are you placed tomorrow?”
So businesslike that she had no excuse to refuse.
On her arrival at the restaurant he’d skimmed her with a look and accepted her handshake and deliberately cool smile with knowing amusement in his eyes, making her straighten her shoulders and tighten her hold on her leather briefcase as she returned him a blank, frosty stare. He’d given her a longer look then, a keenly observant look, as if sizing her up, coming to some conclusion.
But from then on his manner had matched hers, and she’d been impressed by his quick mind, his consideration of another viewpoint before putting forth his own, and not least by his willingness to accept that she knew her job.
He had made no suggestion of seeing Shahna socially, sticking strictly to business and making her feel foolish about the stern reminder she’d given herself to be thoroughly professional.
When she walked away from him after thanking him for the lunch, she wondered if it was her own imagination persuading her that she could feel his gaze as a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades.
Oh, Kier had been clever. Clever and calculating. When she discovered just how carefully he had played her, with a campaign as subtle as it was dead on target, she had been faintly chilled. But by then it was too late.
Sitting across the scrubbed wooden table from him, she felt an echo of that chill. Once Kier made up his mind to do something, nothing would deter him. Any setback to his plans was merely a goad to achieve his object another way, coming at it from some unexpected direction.
Her mug in her hand, she stood up, hoping this time he’d take the hint. But although his own cup was empty he kept it cradled in one hand. “So what do you do all day?” he asked.
Shahna couldn’t stop herself from casting a hunted glance at the clock. “I have a studio outside.” She indicated the visible corner of a small building just a few feet away. “A converted washhouse, actually where I work.”
“Nine-to-five?” Kier queried. He too glanced at the clock.
“Not exactly. Whenever I…well, whatever hours I please.” Shahna placed her mug in the sink. She was not going to offer him a refill. “If you want to catch Timoti…” she started to say in desperation.
“I told him I wasn’t going back to Rawene today.”
“Oh?” She looked at the backpack on the settle. “You’re taking a holiday?” Not his usual kind for sure, although she remembered him telling her he’d backpacked through Asia when he was nineteen. “What are your plans?”
It was a moment before he answered. “I haven’t made any definite plans.” Another pause. “Except to see you, talk with you, catch up on what you’ve been doing. Why are you so anxious for me to leave?”
As if he’d given the cue, from the next room came a tiny whimper, another louder one, and then a series of babbling sounds and a childish call of “Mum-mum!”
Kier went very still, his body immobile and his face a study in stone. Shahna too felt momentarily paralyzed. A sickening sensation made her stomach drop, and her temples throbbed.
Then Kier spoke, hoarsely, his knuckles going white as his hold on the cup in his hand tightened. “That’s a baby!”
Chapter 2
Shahna unglued her tongue from the top of her mouth. “Yes.”
She could claim she was baby-sitting, fob him off somehow. But Kier, she knew, wouldn’t be fobbed. And what was the point of lying? He’d find out sooner or later if he wanted to.
“Mum-mum!” More peremptory this time. She heard the rattle of the cot side as the baby hoisted himself up and clung, waiting for her to come to him.
“You’d better go,” she told Kier. “I have to pick him up.”
Kier rose from his chair, rocking it back so that it teetered. Automatically he steadied it and shoved it under the table, using both hands. His voice grated. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“Mum-mum…” Forlorn now, followed by a short silence and then a loud wail.
“I have to pick him up,” Shahna repeated distractedly and headed for the bedroom.
A baby. Kier’s hand clutched the back of the wooden chair so hard the edges cut into his palm. He felt as though someone had punched him in the gut.
Shahna had a baby. He couldn’t get his head around the idea. In all the time they’d been together she’d never said anything about wanting children. After they’d both obtained medical certificates, she had relieved him of the responsibility for contraception and he’d been glad of that. He’d trusted her not to slip up on taking her pills, just as she’d trusted him to keep to his word on the exclusive nature of their relationship.
Minutes ago she’d told him she wasn’t living with a man.
That didn’t necessarily mean she was celibate—after all, she had never lived with Kier, either, only slept with him on a regular basis, and kept a few clothes and toiletries at his place, as he did at hers.
A convenient arrangement, she’d reminded him.
And it had suited him, as she’d said. At first.
He wasn’t sure when he’d begun to find it less than satisfactory, when he’d started toying with the idea of asking her to move in with him—and put it off because Shahna seemed quite content as they were. And because he needed to be sure of her before he risked rocking the boat. Risked, perhaps, losing her—a prospect that had roused sensations he hadn’t felt in years, uncomfortably close to fear and a sense of powerlessness; a prospect that made him hesitate to endanger the status quo.
Despite three years of great sex and equally enjoyable companionship, he still felt he’d hardly peeked beneath the smooth, unruffled and intriguingly impenetrable surface she’d presented to him at their first meeting. He hadn’t been sure how she would react to his surprising desire for a greater intimacy.
Somehow Shahna had got under his skin as none of his previous lovers had. There was something different about her, something that had him hankering for more…not just of her beautiful body and her quick mind with its unusual blend of practical and imaginative that made her so good at her job, but the essential Shahna inside, of which she allowed only tantalizing glimpses.
And while he had been considering and strategizing how to persuade her to live with him, she’d left—vanished without warning, without explanation. Nothing but a three-line note thanking him for the good times and wishing him well.
He had never been so angry in his life. No use telling himself she had every right, that he had asked for no more, promised no more. Or that he’d probably had a narrow escape from making perhaps the biggest blunder of his life, allowing a woman to breach the barriers he’d carefully preserved for years. The suddenness of her departure, the lack of any discernible reason, had outraged him.
