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'Invite me in, Bryna,' he urged huskily.
' you're tired, and --' she broke off as she realised what he had said.
'You want to come in?' She blinked her surprise.
'More than anything,' he nodded, his expression intent.
'But you're tired, and --'
'Bryna, I'm wide awake, and I want you to invite me in!'
What could she say to a forceful request like that? She shrugged her
shoulders. 'All right,' she agreed a little dazedly. 'If that's what you
want ...'
'It is,' he said somewhat grimly, following her into the building.
Bryna eyed him warily across the width of the lift as it ascended to
her floor, aware that the moment of truth had come quicker than she
had thought it would, the evening spent with his children having
lulled her into a false sense of security where their own physical
relationship was concerned.
Raff was broodingly silent, filled with a tension of his own, and she
knew by just looking at him that he would never settle for the
basically platonic relationships she had shared with the other men she
had dated over the years. As they entered her apartment she knew
now was the time to make up her mind what she wanted from him.
'What are you thinking about?'
Raff's harsh voice cut in on her memories, and once again she opened
her eyes to look across the width of the plane at him. 'What do you
think?' she scorned irritably.
He gave an impatient sigh. 'I thought you were sleeping until I saw
your eyes moving under your lids!' he bit out. 'Why bother to fight it,
Bryna; you know you'll have to agree in the end.'
'Is that really the sort of marriage you want?' she flared. 'Two people
who don't love each other tied together because of a child they
accidentally created! Didn't the failure of your first marriage tell you
anything about that sort of arrangement?' she scorned.
'My first marriage didn't fail,' he snapped. 'Josey and I were too
young, too idealistic about our feelings, to survive all the pressures
we had put on us. But we did respect each other.'
'But it wasn't enough, was it?' Bryna reasoned forcefully.
'This time it will have to be,' he grated. 'You talk as if your pregnancy
were my fault,' he snapped. 'We may have created that child, Bryna,
but I don't believe it was my "accident".'
She felt her cheeks pale. 'I wondered when you would get around to
blaming me --'
'I'm not blaming you for anything,' he gave a weary sigh. 'But you did
tell me you would take care of birth control. I just presumed that you
had.'
As she had presumed nature had done for her years before! She had
seen no reason for either of them to use birth control when there was
no possibility of her becoming pregnant, although she hadn't chosen
to tell Raff that. 'I thought I had,' she told him gruffly, not quite able
to meet his gaze.
He shrugged. 'Then you did what you could, and it happened
anyway.' He pushed away his seat-belt, crossing the cabin to come
down on his haunches in front of her. 'Bryna, we've been lovers for
six months, we aren't strangers who stumbled into bed together, with
your pregnancy the result of that night. Would marriage to me really
be so terrible?' he encouraged, gently holding her hands within his
own.
She looked at him searchingly, wishing she could believe that a
marriage of necessity to him wouldn't be the nightmare she thought it
would be. Maybe if they were strangers it could have worked, at least
then she wouldn't hunger for his love the way she did now. But to live
in the same house with him, be married to him, and know she was
only the mother of his child, would be purgatory! And to be married
to him and have him make love to her out of duty would be pure hell!
She couldn't win whatever she did, not now that Raff knew about her
child.
Her head went back proudly. 'I've already told you that the only way
there would be a marriage is if we led separate lives.'
His expression darkened as he released her hands to straighten and
drop into the seat beside her. 'I believe I said separate beds, Bryna,' he
rasped. 'I have no intention of entering another marriage where we
each have our own sexual partners.'
The colour came and then went in her cheeks. 'That wasn't what I
meant at all,' she gasped, the thought of him leaving her in the
evenings to go to another woman making her feel ill. And yet he was
a sensual man; what else could she expect him to do in the
circumstances? 'I I suppose I could learn to live with the fact that
you you have other women --'
'I couldn't accept your having other men,' he grated. 'If you marry me
you'll occupy no one's bed but your own! And if I ever find out you've
broken that agreement our marriage will be at an end and I'll do
everything in my power to get custody of my child.'
Bryna was very pale, not doubting for a moment that he meant what
he said or his ability to carry it out. It was only because she was so
aware of the power he wielded that she was even considering
agreeing to his proposal.
His eyes were narrowed grey slits. 'You can carry on working, you
can hire a nanny to care for the child, you can do what you damn well
please, but you won't give any other man what you deny me!'
He was like a child refusing to let anyone else play with his toy even
though he didn't want it himself! Because that was all she would be if
she married him, a beautiful ornament for his home.
'Can't you see that it wouldn't work, Raff?' she tried reasoning with
him.
'I would make sure that it did work,' he told her arrogantly.
She sighed. 'I'm a person, Raff, with feelings of my own, not some
business deal you're putting together!'
'I'm well aware of the fact that you have feelings,' he bit out. 'Which is
why I offered you a normal marriage.'
So that she could be a charity case, with Raff making perfunctory
love to her so that she didn't need to go to other men! God, she
couldn't exist that way. 'The pregnancy is my problem, Raff, why
don't you just let me handle it?' she urged forcefully.
'The child,' he harshly emphasised the word, 'is mine. And I want it.'
Again she acknowledged that Raff was never denied anything he
wanted badly enough. She was like a caged bird trying to escape the
bars, even though those bars were made out of gold. A lot of people
would say she was being ridiculous by wanting to escape, but then
those people didn't love the man who had the key to the door of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]