She didn’t want to hear the answer—she didn’t need to hear it. She already knew the truth. Still, she couldn’t stop the question from slipping off her lips.
‘Were you avoiding me, Malachi? Were you so concerned that if I saw you at the centre again I’d take it as some sort of sign that we were in a relationship?’
CHAPTER FOUR
MALACHI COULD BARELY remember getting Saskia back into the car, or telling his driver to continue. His mind was too full of emotions so tightly entangled that he couldn’t hope to begin to unravel them.
But suddenly he was tapping in the code to let them into his penthouse suite, and the moment Saskia stepped over the threshold he was assailed with images of the last time she’d been there.
He hadn’t felt this out of control, this blindsided, since he’d been a kid.
It had been one thing to suspect that Saskia was pregnant, but quite another to actually hear her confirm it. His worst fear.
At least that was what he’d always thought it would be. That was why he’d always been so fastidious about using protection with all his other women.
Only now it wasn’t fear he was feeling. It was guilt. Because Saskia was right—ever since their weekend together he had been avoiding her. Not because he was afraid, as she’d suggested, that if she saw him again she’d take it as some sign that he wanted more, but rather because a foolish, traitorous part of himself did want exactly that, and he was afraid she saw him as nothing more than a much-needed rebound. A fling to be dismissed and forgotten.
Which was why it made no sense at all.
He should have welcomed that—the lack of complication. He might not have the playboy reputation his brother did, but he’d had his fair share of women seeking a relationship with him when he could offer them nothing more than the physical.
Yet, as much as he’d kept telling himself that the weekend with Saskia had just been about sex, deep down he suspected there had been more to it than that. Some deeper, inexplicable connection had drawn him to her from the moment she’d walked into his centre and volunteered her skills as a paediatric doctor.
At a time when other people might have focused on themselves, on what they were personally going through—in Saskia’s case, the breakdown of her engagement—Saskia’s instinct had been to reach out and try to help others. It said more about the kind of person she was, about her generosity of spirit and her selflessness, than anything she could have told him.
Malachi busied himself trying to get his head around this new, unwanted revelation. This wasn’t the time for overanalysing what he did or didn’t feel. Or for reading something into nothing. This was the time for taking a problem, looking at it logically and dispassionately, and finding the best response.
Something he usually excelled at.
But he was failing today.
‘So, what now?’ Saskia managed, in an impressive show of confidence.
Especially after the way she’d halted so abruptly, not allowing herself to progress much further into his apartment before she spun back to face him. And the way her eyes slid away from the room to focus on some point just over his left shoulder, where the front door now closed slickly behind him.
Almost, he considered, as if she couldn’t bear to look at the room where he’d stripped her naked the moment they’d tumbled through the door—it felt like a lifetime ago—and knelt at her feet to bury his face in all that glorious heat.
It was certainly the first image which had raced into his own head the moment they’d stepped into his apartment.
It didn’t help that she’d been dressed to kill that night, too. In a dress which had been infinitely sexy, if not quite as stunning as the creation she was wearing now. An emerald green thing, which complemented her dark skin tones to perfection.
Before he could stop himself, his mind leapt to the question of whether she was wearing the same delicate bra and thong set. And were those infinitely long legs encased in the same style of sexy lace-top hold-ups?
God, what was the matter with him?
Malachi fought to drag his mind back to the present and failed, almost despairing of himself—until he saw the quickening, jerky pulse thud at the base of her elegant neck and realised that his wasn’t the only mind that had wandered.
Good! Satisfaction pounded through him. Maybe he could use that to his advantage.
‘We should have this conversation somewhere a little more comfortable than standing in the entrance hall, don’t you think, Saskia?’ he murmured, moving to usher her through to the main lounge.
‘I seriously doubt this is going to be a comfortable discussion wherever we have it,’ she shot back crisply.
He had to force himself to keep sauntering into the living area without glancing around, as though he felt as casual and self-contained as he miraculously appeared.
‘Surely all the more reason not to exacerbate things, then?’
Moving around the space, he busied himself with a drink he didn’t even want for himself, and