More Than a Convenient Marriage?

He watched her work the room filled with screen stars, diplomats, business magnates and overgrown titled children. For the first time he didn’t see a spoiled girl demanding attention. He saw a young woman who ensured everyone was noticed, greeting individuals affectionately and putting them at ease.

He did his duty, distantly thanking people for coming, but he couldn’t help acknowledging what a perfect foil Rowan made for his innately brisk demeanor, brimming with natural warmth and beauty. If their lives became bound by a child—

He refused to let the thought progress, still disturbed by the near yearning he’d felt as he’d contemplated becoming a father while saying goodbye to his own. He tracked down Franklin Crenshaw instead, waiting out the requisite expression of sympathy before nodding at the elegance of the wine and cheese reception.

“I appreciate all you’ve done. Please send me the bills.”

Frankie shook his head. “Rowan made all the arrangements. I only opened an account for her.” A rueful smile twitched the man’s lips. “But I’m not surprised she’s asked you to settle up for her. She doesn’t want to owe me, does she?”

Nic slipped into his investigative reporter guise. “Why do you say that?”

“Because she knows how I’ll ask her to repay me.”

“She can’t dance,” Nic asserted, instantly protective of her injured leg.

“No, but she can act. Look at her. What a way to spend your birthday,” Frankie said under his breath, stealing a glass of wine from a passing tray.

The date struck Nic like a bludgeon, taking his disgraceful behavior this morning to a new realm of discredit. “Never a good morning or a thank you...” His insides clenched against more evidence that he failed at interpersonal relationships.

“She’s hanging by a thread,” Frankie said with pained admiration. “No one else sees it, but when that girl can’t find a smile you know she’s on her last nerve.”

Nic took it as judgment. He was the reason her stress level was through the roof.

“I bet she hasn’t eaten either,” Frankie mused.

With a soft curse, Nic excused himself.

* * *

Rowan was wrung out by the time they returned to Nic’s suite. She could barely unzip her boots and pull them off her aching feet.

Nic shrugged out of his suit jacket, then poured two drinks—brandy, she assumed. He brought them to her and she did what she had done with the coffee, tea, and plates of food he’d handed her throughout the long day. She set it down on the nearest surface.

He sighed.

“Don’t be mad, Nic. I can’t do it,” she said lifelessly.

“I’m not mad, but we have to talk.”

“Not now. I just want this day to be over.” She saw him wince, and regretted being so blunt, but the service had been hard enough without the undercurrents between them. He’d never left her side and she was at the end of her rope. “I’m going to bed.”

Nic picked up her untouched drink as she walked away, considering going after her. But why? So they could continue battling to keep their emotions in check? He was done with crumpled tissues and weepy embraces. His wall of imperviousness couldn’t stand another hit. Ro had it right. Finish the day and start fresh tomorrow.

But his tension wouldn’t ease until they’d talked through the various scenarios and how they’d react to them. He couldn’t imagine sleeping with so much on his mind and resented her for dragging this out. How could she be so calm about it? Didn’t she realize what was at stake? That their lives could be changed forever?

Look who he was dealing with, though. Rowan was the first to turn anything into a joke.

Frustrated, he carried his drink in one hand and tugged at his tie with the other, heading for his bedroom and a fruitless try at sleeping. As he passed Rowan’s door he heard a noise. A deep, wrenching sob.

His heart stalled, then kicked in with a painful downbeat. Filled with dread, he slowly pushed the door open. She sat on the side of the bed, one arm out of her shirt, the fabric bunched around her torso as she rocked, keening, her face buried in her white hands.

The jagged pressure that swelled behind his sternum threatened to clog his lungs. Something between an instinct and a memory pushed him further into the room, even though his feet had gone so cold he couldn’t feel them.

He set aside the glass and touched her arm. “Ro, stop.”

She clutched at him, face running with makeup. “I’m trying,” she choked. “But nothing will ever be the s-same again...”

Her distress threatened his shaky control, urging him to run before his defenses fell completely, but he couldn’t leave her like this. Actress, he thought and felt like a heel for thinking she wasn’t affected by all that had happened today. Of course she was. Beneath the beautiful armor and impudent wit was a scared kid who kept taking on more responsibility than was hers to carry.

It struck him that he’d taken advantage of her when he took her to bed. She’d been at a very weak moment in her life. This was why she’d given herself to him. She was losing the life she’d known and now faced even bigger changes.

“It’s okay,” he lied, brushing away her ineffectual hands, desperate to sop up his guilt. He never should have touched her. He smoothed her hair, releasing the scarf when he came to it. “You’re going to be okay, Ro.” His shoulders throbbed with remorse. He stripped her to her undies and eased her beneath the sheet, desperate to tuck her in and close this day for her.

Tomorrow they’d talk. What he needed now was time to come to terms with the injury he’d done her if he’d got her pregnant.

“Don’t leave, Nic, please,” she pleaded, pressing his fingers to her soaked cheek.

He wavered. She was an iceberg. He compromised by toeing off his shoes and dragging his belt free one-handed, remaining clothed as he moved under the covers. With a tight embrace he tried to keep her shuddering frame from falling apart.

“Just until I fall asleep,” she murmured. “Then you can go. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said with deep anguish, and soothed the fresh tension that gathered in her. “Shh. Go to sleep. It’ll be okay,” he lied again, while the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy circled in his mind like a shark’s fin. “You’ll see.”

CHAPTER TEN

ROWAN STRETCHED AND the hot weight of blankets surrounding her moved.

When she opened her eyes Nic’s arresting blue eyes were right there, hooded and enigmatic, fixed on hers. His jaw was smudged with a night’s growth of bronze-gold stubble, his hair glinting in the morning sunlight pouring through the uncovered window.

Her breakdown last night came back to her in a rush. The day had been an endurance event of fielding enquiries about her leg and her future. She didn’t have any pat answers, and through it all Nic had loomed over her like a giant microscope, seeming to watch her every move.

The tension hadn’t let up, so it was understandable that after holding them back all day she had let her emotions get the better of her when she was finally alone. Letting Nic find her at such a low point and grasping at him like a lifeline, however, made her feel more raw and exposed than after the wicked things they’d done to each other in the throes of passion.

Flinching in vexation, she sat up to let her hair curtain her face while she tried to minimize how defenseless she felt. “Gosh, was that your virginity I just took? I can’t imagine you’ve spent many nights fully clothed in bed with a female without the precursor of sex. Be honest—not counting this one, how many?”

“She’s back,” he remarked under his breath, pushing away the covers and rolling to sit on the far edge of the bed. “As it happens, you’re not my first,” he stated flatly. “I used to let my baby sister snuggle up to me when she’d had a bad dream.”

Rowan stared at the wrinkled back of his shirt, barely able to process the information through her sleep-muddled brain. “You have a sister? But you said— On your mother’s side? Is she younger?”

“And two half-brothers, if you’re taking a tally.”

No surprise to learn he was the oldest, but the rest stunned her. “That’s a big family. Why do you never talk about them?”

His shoulders jerked, then he stood abruptly. Maybe she’d imagined his flinch.

“I don’t talk to them.” He stretched his arms toward the ceiling and his shirt came loose from his waistband while his joints cracked. “My aunt used to bring us together for a week in the summer when she lived in Katarini, but once she moved to America my mother’s husband put a stop to my seeing them. He didn’t like them coming home and talking about me.”

“That’s mean!” Rowan’s already peeled-thin heart was abraded further by his casual reference to what amounted to outright cruelty. “Your poor mother,” she couldn’t help adding, sitting in the pool of rumpled blankets and retrospective empathy.