Bittersweet Passion

For tact, he took the biscuit! ‘My fingers got fat like the rest of me!’ she snapped and snatched her fingers back from his cool grasp. ‘Don’t you understand, Dane? No further sacrifices are necessary!’

His hard mouth curled. ‘I’m not of the martyr ilk. Now why don’t you get dressed? It’s a beautiful day and you’ll enjoy the drive down to the house.’

It was like beating her head up against a brick wall and she wanted it over with, wanted him gone before she started crying and Dane began to realise he had her exactly where he wanted her. So she yanked open the door. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you, so you can go and do whatever you would have been doing if Gilles hadn’t visited you yesterday!’ she blazed shakily.

‘I would have been working.’

‘Really?’ She raised a doubting, supercilious brow.

Tension sizzled in the air between them. ‘I warned you,’ he breathed softly and clamped a pair of firm hands to her non-existent waist and suddenly, quite unbelievably, lifted her into the air. Her mules fell off and she aimed a kick at him while he held her there. ‘Put me down, Dane! Do you hear me?’ she demanded.

‘Shut up,’ Dane said succinctly, bundling her half over his shoulder, but not before she had seen the pure, untamed glitter of purpose in his eyes. ‘I wonder what gave you the crazy idea that I would listen to you being sensible the second time around. Once was enough.’

‘Randy!’ Claire wailed at the top of her lungs, pummelling at his back with her fists but she was all at the wrong angle, thanks to her stomach.

Dane was hauling open the front door. ‘I’ll send someone over for Claire’s clothes later if you’d be kind enough to pack them,’ he was saying.

Randy stood by in shock and steadily gathering mirth.

‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ Claire cried furiously in the lift. ‘In my nightdress! You can’t take me out of here in my nightdress. Now take me back! Don’t you dare make an exhibition of me in public!’

‘You’re doing just fine on your own,’ Dane gritted.

Struggling for control, she choked on a very unladylike epithet. Cooler air hit her as they left the lift. A retired couple, who lived in the flat below Randy’s, were standing seemingly transfixed by the lift doors when she looked back. ‘Dane,’ she sobbed wrathfully in the fresh air. ‘How could you do this to me?’

He stowed her determinedly in the rear seat of the Rolls and swung in beside her. Only the convulsed look on the chauffeur’s face silenced her until the door slammed on them both.

‘Well, if ever anybody got what they asked for,’ Dane provoked, stretching out his long, lean legs in insolent relaxation, ‘you have. Stop fussing and shut up. I’ll buy you something to wear.’

‘And then you will take … there’s nowhere for me to get dressed!’ she realised on a new tide of near tongue-tied rage.

‘Little prude.’ Dane lifted the phone to communicate with his driver.

‘I think you’ve gone insane.’ Claire thrust her hair off her damp brow in utter frustration. ‘How dare you tell me to shut up?’

‘I should have told you that a long time ago,’ he murmured gently.

The rest of her recriminations were greeted by silence. When she eventually ran out of steam, Dane leant forward and opened the bar to extract a glass and what looked like fresh orange juice in a container. ‘Thompson’s compliments. He said Vitamin C would be good for you,’ he advanced. ‘But I don’t reckon you need more energy.’

‘It was the baby he was talking about.’ She took the glass with an unsteady hand.

‘He got driven down to the house last night to get things ready,’ he continued. ‘Once you’re installed you’ll be really comfortable there. Anyone would think I was threatening you with a prison sentence. I won’t be there all the time.’

He sounded so cool and uninterested that her eyes pricked with tears. He’d forced her out of the apartment because he wasn’t prepared to waste any more time discussing it.

He left the car in the vicinity of Bond Street. She curled up but she couldn’t get very comfortable. An odd little ache in her back kept on niggling at her and she finally rested her head back with a cross mutter. Yes, she was cross. In fact, she was in a filthy mood. I won’t be there all the time. No, indeed he wouldn’t be! He’d be jetting about the globe, free to savour all the wicked, wanton pursuits he thrived upon and which she would read about in the papers. The world would turn full circle for her again and she’d still be on the outside looking in.

Dane was ages, and when he returned he was loaded down with carrier bags. ‘We can stop once we get outside the city limits.’

‘Nothing will fit,’ she forecast.

‘I’m not a complete bozo. I went to a maternity shop. The rest of you is still the same size, maybe even a bit thinner.’ His appraisal was sharply critical and she shifted uncomfortably. ‘The ladies were very helpful.’

‘I just bet they were.’ Huffily she rummaged in the bags.

He cleared his throat. ‘When’s it due?’

‘It?’