Rachel Bailey - Return of the Secret Heir

He walked in with a sports bag, a suit hanger and an expression of determined cheerfulness. Even with the grimly false expression, his face had such masculine beauty that it stole her breath-the full bottom lip, the shadowed jaw, the brown waves falling across his forehead.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. No greeting, no pleasantries.

“I’m fine,” she said, closing the door behind him and scowling. Partly about her reaction to him, but also because of his way of handling the situation. She might be worried about the baby, but JT regularly checking on her would only make her more anxious. “If you’re going to stay here-”

“I am.”

“-then I don’t want you hovering and asking me how I feel all the time.”

The corners of his mouth twitched, but he resisted the grin that lurked. “How would you like me to ascertain your condition?”

She stepped back. “I’ll tell you if there’s something wrong.”

“Another ground rule, Pia?” he drawled, eyes lazily resting on her lips.

Her thoughts strayed to the last time they’d discussed ground rules…and the heated kiss that had followed. Goose bumps erupted across her skin. Dare she start them down that path once more? She folded her arms under her breasts. Things were different now. Neither of them would be that irresponsible or rash again. Would they?

“Yes, it’s a ground rule,” she said, lifting her chin.

He folded his arms over his muscled chest, mirroring her pose. “Then I get to add another one. I won’t ask you how you feel, but you’ll accept the things I do for the health of the woman who’s carrying my baby.”

Their gazes locked for timeless moments in a mini battle of wills until she looked away and sighed. He had as much investment in this pregnancy as she did. He might seem devil-may-care to the rest of the world, but she’d known him when they were teenagers, had seen how excited he’d been about becoming a father. The memory still brought searing tears to her eyes. And she’d witnessed his raw grief only weeks ago when he’d shown her the cross he’d carved.

Her health was the baby’s health for now, so how could she deny his request?

“As long as it’s within reason,” she conceded.

“I’m always reasonable, princess.” He dropped his bag beside the couch, his burgundy tie falling askew with the movement. He held up his suit bag. “Is there somewhere I can hang this?”

She considered suggesting the coat stand beside the door because he’d called her princess again, but that would be unfairly bad-mannered. Now-when she needed to keep distance-was not the time to lose her manners or composure.

She reached for the bag. “I’ll hang it in my closet.”

And so the blurring of boundaries begins, she thought. Although, to be honest, that had started when he’d made love to her under the stars. No, when he’d appeared from her firm’s elevator and started a chain reaction of events, each more disastrous for her than the last.

“I appreciate it,” he said as she walked into her room and hung his clothes among hers. When she came back he was leaning a hip against the dining room table, fingers sampling the texture of a roll of pale cream netting.

He looked up and smiled his crooked smile. “This reminds me of the fabrics and ribbons you used to have strewn across your bedroom.”

A vision of a younger, leaner JT taunted her, of him climbing through her bedroom window and kissing her senseless. Her breaths began to come faster even as she tried to regulate them, and she frowned. Had he mentioned the past on purpose? It seemed he was always throwing her off balance by reminding her of the girl she’d once been, and the boy she’d known then. It was hard enough to deal with the present circumstances without his constant reminders of their past.

She picked up the netting, rerolled it into a tight ball, and spoke over her shoulder. “I’m not that girl, you’re not that boy, you’re not climbing into my bedroom and this is nothing more than a purely practical hobby.”

“That’s right,” he said pokerfaced. “It’s purely practical.”

“They’re expensive to buy and I have a difficult head shape to fit. I only make what I need.” Yet today-for the first time-she’d started a hat she didn’t need, and that made her uneasy. She chewed on one side of her bottom lip.

He opened his mouth to reply, but he met her eyes for a long moment, then closed it again before turning away. “I’ll start on dinner if you want to take a shower or something else you need to do while I’m in the apartment.”

She hesitated, bag of millinery supplies in her hand, and watched him drop his jacket on the back of a chair and walk into her kitchen with long strides. “You don’t have to make dinner,” she said. “There’s no health risk in my cooking.”

He shrugged as he opened a cupboard and scanned the contents. “How about we say I’m cooking myself dinner and making extra to share with you.”

She sighed. They were having meals together now. Merrily sharing chores. Long past the concept of blurred boundaries. She hugged the bag of ribbons, velvet and elastic to her chest. While her heart struggled with the changes, her practical side warned not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Thank you,” she said, dropping the bag back on the table and headed for the shower.

It was going to be a long couple of months until her second trimester.

A week later, JT threw down his pen, yawned and stretched at his desk-sleeping on Pia’s couch was a killer on his spine. He had a pile of work in his in-tray, but all he could think about was Pia at home, driving herself crazy with boredom. She’d been doing menial work that other lawyers in the office were sending home on Arthur’s daily courier visits, which obviously wasn’t enough to keep her mind off her anxiety about the pregnancy.

Worse, Dr. Crosby had said Pia’s stress would adversely affect the baby. He’d done some research on the web since then that had confirmed it-he needed Pia to be as relaxed as possible. The only times he’d seen her anywhere near being relaxed was when she created things with ribbon, wire and fabric. She got into a rhythm and her shoulders lost some of their tension.

He glanced across at his diary. The only appointments he had for the rest of the day were with people who worked for him-easy enough to reschedule. He picked up his briefcase and strode out to his personal assistant’s desk.

“Mandy, clear my calendar for the rest of the day.”

Displaying the efficiency and calmness he’d hired her for, she didn’t bat an eyelash. “Certainly, Mr. Hartley. Will you be back?”

“Not this afternoon.” He hit the elevator’s down arrow. “You’ll be able to reach me on my cell if you need to.”

Once he was in the basement garage, he pulled out his phone and checked for the location of the closest millinery supplies shop, and by the time he reached Pia’s apartment, he had three bags of assorted products.

He buzzed the intercom and waited for her to release the lock to the outside door. He’d suggested she give him a key, but she’d been less than enthusiastic-citing reasons like the short length of his stay.

Truth was, she was keeping him at arm’s length and that wasn’t a bad strategy given that every moment he was in her apartment he wanted to take her in his arms and back her over to that bed in her room. Or the table. Or the wall. Most times, he wasn’t fussy. He simply wanted her with an intensity that was difficult to hide.

But he had pretty much kept it under wraps for the same reason she’d refused him a key-he wasn’t prepared to be lulled into any false states of security, and letting down his guard.

When Pia opened the apartment door, her gaze dropped to the bags. Her hair fell in waves about her shoulders and as she tucked some behind her ears, the elegant, pale skin of her cheek was exposed. A slow burn began down low.

He cleared his throat and handed one of the bags over. “I thought you could use these.”

As she opened the handles, her eyes flicked to his, wide with surprise. “You didn’t have to do this.”

Dragging his gaze from the radiance in her eyes, he shrugged and handed her the other bags. “You’re stuck here all day. I thought it might help.”

Her violet eyes glistened. “That was thoughtful. Thank you.” She peeped into the second bag. “You came home early just for this?”

“Pretty much.” He walked in and slipped his arms from his jacket.

At one end of the dining table Pia had legal documents in piles and at the other end was a pea green creation with a wide brim. Seemingly unable to help herself, she was drawing a roll of snowy white ribbon from the bag he’d brought and was holding it against the hat.

“The woman in the shop said it was a versatile ribbon,” he offered. He’d been unsure how versatile ribbon could be, but he’d taken her word for it.

“It’s double-faced satin. There are a few things I could do with it.” She looped it around a few fingers and it became a flower which she held against the hat again, judging its effect. She’d always been able to do that-transform rudimentary materials into a work of art. Dresses, jewelry, shawls, whatever she tried.

Among her family of hard, dull stones, she’d been a polished ruby, bright and dazzling. And the pull of that luminescence had been stronger than a siren’s call for a hard-edged boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

“Why did you give up dreams of fashion design, Pia?” he asked, moving behind her.

She turned, her startled eyes meeting his, and he glimpsed endless depths of sadness. His chest constricted at being confronted by that bleakness in eyes he’d seen shine with passion and joy.

Then she blinked it away and methodically packed the ribbon into the bag it’d come in. “I grew up.”

Something told him this was too important to her, to them, to brush off. Perhaps it was her repeated use of that phrase. Perhaps it was the stark sadness he’d seen in her eyes. He sat on the edge of his couch bed, resting his loosely linked hands between his knees. “So you’ve said. What does that mean?”

She grew still, then laid the bag he’d given her on the table and sat on the edge of the couch with him. “I guess it’s better you understand,” she said, her voice tentative. “When I fell out that window and our baby…” Her voice trailed off and she swallowed. “I realized I had to stop acting like an indulged child. That included choosing a more sensible career and facing some hard truths about us.”

Hard truths? Every muscle in his body clamped down, as if preparing for a blow. “That’s when you broke up with me,” he said without looking at her.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her flinch. “I had to, JT. Being with you brings out the worst parts of me. Every whim, every reckless impulse. And that’s not a safe way to live. If we’d stayed together we would have self-destructed. It was too much. We were too much together. Surely you can see that now looking back?”

His mouth opened to reply, but words failed him. He’d be damned if he’d lie to make her feel better about her actions. The only self-destruction that would have happened was from her doing a cut and run later rather than sooner. If she’d had the courage to stand with him, to simply stay, they could have achieved anything together. So, no, he couldn’t see that they’d been “too much together” when he looked back.

But what he could finally see was how she’d justified her actions for all these years. He shook his head. “You’ve been with safe men in the intervening years, I gather?”