BACKING away from him, Antonia put the length of the sofa between them before permitting herself to meet his eyes. But the intensity of their expression was hardly tempered by the distance, and she shifted a little nervously beneath the censure of his gaze.
‘Would you mind telling me what all that was about?’ he demanded quietly. ‘I realise it’s late, and I’ve probably got you out of bed, but it surely must have occurred to you that my being here must be important.’
Antonia shrugged, her eyes defensive. ‘I—I assumed you’d come to see Celia,’ she declared, hiding her shaking hands in her pockets. ‘Isn’t it a little foolhardy, coming here at this time of night, even for you?’
Reed put up a hand and pulled the knot of his tie away from the collar of his pale grey shirt. The tie was silk, like the shirt, Antonia noticed inconsequently, his suit several shades darker and, as usual, immaculately pressed.
‘I suppose I deserve that,’ he said, when his collar button was unfastened, and his hand through his hair had made it attractively dishevelled. ‘I should have got here sooner, and I would have if the eight o’clock plane hadn’t sprung a fault.’
Antonia blinked. ‘The plane?’ she echoed blankly. ‘What plane?’
‘The plane from Dublin,’ replied Reed, glancing about him. ‘Can I sit down? I really am pretty bushed!’
Antonia shook her head confusedly, and then made a hasty gesture of acquiescence. ‘You’ve been to Dublin to see your parents,’ she essayed carefully. ‘To—explain about our weekend at Stonor.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Reed wearily, subsiding on to the sofa and resting his head back against the cushions. ‘I had to speak to my father. And my mother deserved an explanation.’
‘Of course.’ Antonia drew her hands out of her pockets and gripped the arm of the sofa. ‘I assume they don’t condone your profligacy. Or perhaps they do. I’m not very expert when it comes to judging people’s characters!’
Reed regarded her blankly, and then he shook his head. ‘What old-fashioned words you use,’ he remarked, pushing himself up from his lounging position. ‘Perhaps you’d tell me what you mean by that assessment. Do I take it you consider my character beyond redemption?’
Antonia shivered. ‘I think we should stop playing games.’
‘Oh, so do I.’ Reed’s face was broodingly intent.
‘So?’
‘So what?’ Reed frowned. ‘What particular game are we playing now? The same game you’ve been playing, ever since you realised there was something between us?’
‘No.’ Antonia flushed. ‘There is—nothing between us. You know it, and I know it, so I think you should stop pretending there ever was.’
Reed blinked and then, deliberately, he got up from the sofa again. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What’s happened? Why are you acting like I was the prodigal son? I know what you said this morning, and I know why you said it, but that doesn’t apply any more.’ He bent his head, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked in his breath. ‘Cee and I are through. We split up this morning. The reason why I went to Dublin was to tell my parents about us!’
Antonia’s reaction was a disbelieving gasp, and she let go of the arm of the sofa to step further away from him. ‘I—I—how can you say such things?’ she got out incredulously. ‘I spoke to Celia this afternoon, and she told me in no uncertain terms that you were not through at all.’
Reed’s head jerked up. ‘You spoke to Cee this afternoon?’
‘I’ve just said so.’ Antonia quivered. ‘She told me all about … all about the relationship you have with her! It was what I expected—what I deserved, I suppose—but it really wasn’t necessary. I had already decided what I had to do.’
‘Had you?’ Reed’s face was grim. ‘And I suppose that’s what this little charade is all about! It’s your—futile way of demonstrating that you still have a choice in the matter!’
‘It’s not futile——’
‘Isn’t it? Isn’t it?’ Without giving her a chance to escape him, Reed obliterated the space between them, grasping her wrists with brutal fingers and twisting her arms behind his back. The action brought her up against him, her shocked reaction coming too late to save her. Using his superior strength, Reed ground his hard mouth down on hers, and as she struggled to free herself, she felt the taste of her own blood in her mouth.
She fought him then, but after that first bruising assault, Reed’s lips softened and gentled. With insistent persuasion, his tongue coaxed her lips to part, and the moist invasion that followed made a nonsense of her efforts to resist him.
Sensing her confusion, Reed released her wrists to permit his hands to slide possessively across her back, and arching her body towards his, he allowed a shuddering sigh to escape him. ‘Dear God, don’t you know I love you?’ he muttered, in a voice that was amazingly unsteady. ‘Why do you persist in believing anyone else but me?’
Antonia trembled. ‘Celia said——’
‘Yes, I can guess what Celia said,’ he cut in harshly, ‘but she was lying.’ His fingers slid into her hair and holding her head between his palms, he added emotively: ‘Give me a little credit, will you? I was an attractive financial proposition, if nothing else, and Celia was always aware of it.’
Antonia looked up at him uncertainly. ‘You’re—not—going to marry her?’
‘Haven’t I just said so?’
‘I don’t know.’ Antonia could hardly take this in.
‘Are you sure this isn’t just another ploy to confuse me?’
‘Confuse you?’ Reed closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them again to reveal a nerve-shattering tenderness. ‘Oh, love! If anyone’s confused here, it’s me!’
‘But … but Celia——’
‘Yes?’ Reed inclined his head resignedly. ‘Go on. You’d better tell me what Cee said, then I’ll tell you what really happened.’ He glanced behind him as he spoke, and with a determined expression, he sank down on to the sofa again, pulling her across his knees as he did so. ‘But first——’ and with devastating thoroughness his lips reduced her protests to a quivering submission. ‘Go on,’ he added, when her arms were about his neck, and she was weakly clinging to him. ‘Before I lose all sense of this conversation.’
Antonia shook her head. ‘You don’t make it easy …’
‘Nor do you,’ he responded, toying with the cord of her dressing gown. ‘Please: let’s get it over with.’
Antonia moistened her lips, intensely conscious of the muscular strength of his thighs beneath hers. ‘I … I … she came here at teatime, when I got home from work. She … she knew all about—Susie, and about the weekend we had spent together. She said you had told her.’
‘I had,’ agreed Reed laconically. ‘Go on.’
Antonia swallowed. ‘Why did you tell her?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Reed shrugged. ‘Isn’t it reasonable that I’d have to give the reasons why I was breaking our engagement?’
Antonia’s lips parted. ‘You’ve—really done that?’
Reed’s mouth parted to accommodate hers. ‘Do you doubt it?’ he demanded, his breath almost suffocating her, and suddenly she didn’t.
Almost incoherently she blurted out the rest of what Celia had said, glossing over the worst of her excesses, but leaving Reed in no doubt of his ex-fiancée’s bitterness towards her. ‘I … I suppose we had hurt her,’ she finished at last. ‘Poor Celia!’
‘But you believed her,’ he reminded her quietly, his fingertips stroking an invisible line from her shoulder to her waist, and Antonia bent her head.
‘Yes,’ she said, not excusing herself. ‘I … I still can’t believe that … that you could want me and not … not her.’
‘Is that so?’ Reed abandoned his line-drawing to cradle her cheek in his palm. Then, seeing the brilliance of unshed tears in her eyes, he added softly: ‘I have to say, you don’t deserve me.’
Antonia sniffed. ‘Don’t tease.’
‘I’m not teasing,’ he told her huskily. ‘I’m just trying to make you see it’s not important. All that unpleasantness with Cee, it doesn’t mean a thing to us. And we have the rest of our lives to prove it.’
‘Do you mean that?’ Antonia touched his cheek, and he turned his lips against her palm.
‘I’m not in the habit of making extravagant statements unless I mean them,’ Reed assured her unevenly. ‘And if you’d let me explain before jumping to conclusions, I’d have reassured you on that point.’
Antonia caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And will you believe me if I tell you I’m not in the habit of lying—to anyone,’ he appended drily. ‘Nor did I give Cee any reason for jealousy until you came on the scene.’
‘But why me?’
‘Do you think I haven’t asked myself that question?’ Reed demanded ruefully, nuzzling her nape. ‘My life was so carefully mapped out. There was never any question but that I would take over my father’s position in the company, and Celia seemed a suitable addition to my status. I was fond of her, and we seemed compatible enough. It was only when I met you, I started questioning my complacency.’
‘A most—unsuitable complication,’ put in Antonia softly, and his hand ran possessively down her throat.
‘Well, I will admit I fought it,’ he muttered roughly. ‘My feelings for you were anything but complacent, and I didn’t want the aggravation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much choice in the matter.’
Antonia hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Am I sure of what?’ He turned her face towards him. ‘Am I sure of what I’m doing? Oh, yes.’ His mouth brushed hers and then he drew back to look into her face. ‘Or do you mean, am I sure I love you?’
Antonia drew a trembling breath. ‘Are you?’
‘Let me put it this way,’ he murmured, his tongue tracing the delicate contours of her ear, ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I can’t contemplate my life without you. Does that answer your question?’
‘Oh, Reed—–’
She tightened her arms around his neck, and she felt his instant response to the lissom provocation of her yielding body. ‘Oh, God, I want you,’ he groaned, sliding the dressing gown off her shoulders and uttering a frustrated sound at the enveloping folds of her nightshirt beneath. ‘Why do you always wear so many clothes!’
‘I didn’t know I’d be sleeping with you, did I?’ Antonia responded huskily, assisting his removal of the offending nightgown, and Reed gave a sigh of approval when she was naked in his arms.
‘Help me!’ he said, shrugging off his jacket and tugging off his tie, and her fingers moved obediently to the buttons of his shirt.
But when he gathered her warm body against his, he didn’t carry her into the bedroom as she had anticipated. ‘I want you here—and now,’ he told her thickly, wrapping his lean flanks about her, and Antonia discovered there was something rather erotic about making love on a sofa …
It was weeks later before Reed told her all of what had occurred the morning he visited Celia’s apartment. And by then, he and Antonia were married, and spending their honeymoon on the exotic island of Tahiti in the south Pacific.
Everything had happened so quickly, sometimes Antonia had to pinch herself to ensure she wasn’t dreaming. But she wasn’t. It was all marvellously real, and since the night Reed had talked his way into her flat, they had never been apart. She had moved out of the flat and into Reed’s apartment the day after he had visited his parents in Ireland, and although she continued working at the institute until they were married, they had spent every free moment together.
The weeks before their wedding had flown. Antonia had had a long telephone conversation with her mother as soon as she was settled in the St James’s Street apartment, and Mrs Lord had adopted a very knowing tone when she heard her daughter’s news. But it had been Susie—and Reed’s parents—who presented the biggest obstacle, and Antonia had not looked forward to her first visit to his family’s home in County Wicklow.
And at first, there had been a certain restraint on the part of Reed’s mother and father. It was to be expected, Antonia told herself, knowing she was marrying into a staunchly Catholic family, to whom her divorce from Simon made a church wedding out of the question.
But somehow, she didn’t quite know how, the visit had not proved to be the disaster she had anticipated. Maybe, as Reed had intimated, when he came to her room that night, his parents could see that she was making him happy, and in the days that followed, Antonia had come to accept his assessment of the situation.
It was Tricia who eventually told her that it was much more simple even than that. ‘They like you,’ she said, pulling a wry face at her brother. ‘They were always a little doubtful about Celia. She was never quite relaxed when she came to stay in the country.’
Susie’s reactions had been reassuringly uncomplicated. She already liked Reed, and the knowledge that when her mother married again they would have a proper home life once more was a very persuasive factor.
‘Will we live in the country?’ she asked Reed, the first weekend they took her and Antonia’s mother to Stonor, and he had smiled.
‘Would you like to?’ he asked, and at her nod, he continued: ‘Then, we’ll have to see about finding you a pony, so that you can get about more easily,’ and her whoop of delight had made her mother shake her head.
‘Bribery and corruption,’ she had teased Reed, and he had waited until later to exact a sweet punishment.
Waking on the morning of their last day in Tahiti, Antonia lay for several minutes without stirring, just looking at the man who had made her world so complete. It hardly seemed possible it was less than four months since they had first met. Now, she couldn’t remember a time when he had not been an integral part of her life.
‘What are you thinking?’
Reed’s eyes had opened as she lay musing, and Antonia snuggled nearer to deposit a lingering kiss at the corner of his mouth. ‘I was thinking how much I love you,’ she admitted, shifting so that his possessive arm could close about her. ‘I wish we never had to leave here.’
Reed’s eyes were openly caressing. ‘I thought you might be eager to get back home. That you might be missing Susie.’
Antonia sighed. ‘Well, I do miss her, of course, but I know she’s happy.’ She ran her hand across his chest, loving the fine whorls of hair that curled confidingly about her finger. ‘Your parents have been absolutely marvellous. Letting her stay with them.’
‘Well, she seemed to take to them,’ remarked Reed modestly, and Antonia’s lips tilted.
‘They spoil her,’ she declared, remembering Susie’s excited voice, the last time they had spoken to her on the phone. ‘A pony and a dog of her own. She’s never going to want to leave Drumbarra.’
‘I think that’s their idea,’ said Reed, allowing a lazy laugh to escape him. ‘Still, at least that takes the onus from us. They’ve got the granddaughter they always wanted.’
Antonia nodded, wondering how to phrase her next words. ‘But would you mind?’ she ventured carefully, watching his expression, ‘if we added to our family rather sooner than you expected?’
Reed levered himself up on one elbow to look down at her. ‘You’re pregnant.’
‘Hmm.’
‘God!’ He bent his head to give her a very disruptive kiss. ‘How long have you known?’
‘Since about the first week we were here,’ admitted Antonia reluctantly, and his eyes widened incredulously.
‘So why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t want to—spoil our honeymoon.’
‘How could that spoil anything?’ demanded Reed huskily, his eyes running possessively down her body. ‘Hell, we’ve been here four weeks, and you’ve known all that time!’
Antonia ran her fingers along the roughened curve of his cheek. ‘Well, not definitely,’ she murmured, colouring. ‘These things take time.’
Reed shook his head. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Do you?’
‘That’s a crazy question,’ he muttered huskily. ‘Of course I don’t mind! Just so long as you don’t shut me out.’
Antonia moistened her lips. ‘I—Simon was never interested’ she confessed, by way of an explanation. ‘When I told him I was going to have Susie, he asked if I wanted to get rid of it.’
‘I’m not Simon,’ said Reed forcefully, brushing back the silky hair from her temple with caressing fingers. Since their wedding, Antonia had allowed her hair to grow, and now it tumbled softly down her back. ‘And—as it happens—I have something to tell you, too.’
‘You do?’ Antonia was apprehensive. Her eyes darkened. ‘What is it?’
As if sensing her uncertainty, Reed lowered his length beside her and gathered her closer to him. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he told her softly, as anxious anticipation feathered along her spine. He brushed her lips with his thumb. ‘I heard from my father a week ago, as you know. But I didn’t tell you everything he wrote.’
Antonia’s tongue circled her lips. ‘It’s not—Susie, is it?’
‘No.’ Reed was very definite on that point. He paused. ‘Do you remember, we tried to contact Sheldon to organise the adoption order?’
‘Yes.’ Antonia held her breath.
Well—I didn’t want to tell you sooner, but Toni—love; Sheldon was drowned in the South China sea more than six months ago.’
‘I think we should have a second honeymoon,’ declared Reed, coming into the bedroom at Stonor with a towel draped carelessly about his hips. ‘What do you think? Would you let Maria and my mother take care of our son as well as our daughter?’
Antonia, who was seated before the vanity unit in the master bedroom, rhythmically brushing her hair, lifted her slim shoulders. ‘I thought you had that deal with the Canadians to attend to,’ she reminded him. ‘Didn’t you tell me Cohen and the others were coming to dinner on Tuesday?’
‘Well, yes, I did.’ Reed came behind her, running possessive fingers under the thin straps of her slip and sliding them off her shoulders. ‘But I’ve learned to delegate,’ he added drily, bending to stroke sensuous lips across her soft skin. ‘Wouldn’t you like to spend a couple of weeks in the south of France? It’s marvellous there at this time of the year.’
Antonia lifted her shoulder to facilitate his caress, and shivered in pleasurable anticipation. ‘Reed, the Turners will be here in fifteen minutes,’ she protested, when his questing hands slid beneath the lacy bodice to find the swelling fullness of her breasts, and he tossed the towel aside before drawing her up into his arms.
‘They can wait,’ he told her huskily, pressing the slip down over her hips. ‘You did say Miss Forrester had taken the children to bed, didn’t you?’
‘I did say that, yes,’ Antonia conceded laughingly, winding her arms around his neck. ‘Oh, Reed, can we really take another two weeks to ourselves? Won’t your parents think I’m a very indifferent mother?’
‘My mother will be overjoyed to have charge of our family once again,’ her husband assured her firmly, drawing her gently, but insistently towards their enormous four-poster. ‘We went along with her wishes and had a second wedding in the church at Drumbarra. How could she deny us a second honeymoon?’
Antonia sighed reminiscently. ‘It was a lovely wedding, wasn’t it?’ she murmured, remembering the tiny church at Drumbarra; the white surplices of the choirboys; the fragrant perfume of the flowers. ‘I didn’t think when you sent me that gorgeous bouquet last year that this year the same flowers would remind me of our wedding.’
‘You did get them then,’ remarked Reed drily, pulling her down on to the bed beside him and crushing her slender form beneath the muscular weight of his body. ‘You never told me.’
Didn’t I?’ Antonia’s slim fingers entwined in the hair at his nape. ‘No—well, I didn’t want to encourage you, did I?’
‘That’s the truth,’ murmured her husband ruefully. ‘Be thankful I didn’t take no for an answer!’
‘Oh, I’m very thankful for that,’ responded Antonia fervently, and then gave herself up to the blissful possession of his mouth …