CHRISTMAS had always been a time of joy and laughter in Bryna’s family, with a visit to church on Christmas morning, a happy closeness as they all prepared the lunch together, sitting around a glowing fire together after they had eaten the sumptuous meal, occasionally dozing in front of its warmth as the food and peace of the day washed over them.
Never having spent Christmas with Raff and his family before, Bryna was a little uncertain about what to expect, although she soon realised that even Raff became caught up in the festivity of the day, the two of them being rudely awakened by an exuberant Kate at only seven o’clock in the morning.
‘Time to get up,’ she announced cheerfully, wearing her nightgown and robe, looking very young with her face free of make-up and her hair a tumble of glossy black curls.
The transition of shielding their affair from Raff’s children to having one of them burst in on them the day after their wedding was a difficult one for Bryna, and she looked awkwardly at Raff as she burrowed under the bedclothes.
Raff looked younger with his hair falling darkly across his forehead, blinking sleepily, a dark growth of beard on the firmness of his chin. ‘Shouldn’t you have knocked, young——’
‘I did,’ his daughter told him happily, perched on the end of their bed. ‘You didn’t answer.’
‘Obviously because we were still asleep,’ he drawled, moving to sit back against the headboard. ‘And if we hadn’t been sleeping we certainly wouldn’t have welcomed the interruption,’ he taunted.
Embarrassed colour darkened Kate’s cheeks as she stood up. ‘Really, Daddy, you shouldn’t make too many of those sort of demands on a woman in early pregnancy,’ she told him reprovingly.
He scowled as she neatly turned the tables on him. ‘How the hell do you know that?’
Kate gave him a derisive look before giving Bryna a conspiratorial smile. ‘Maybe now that he’s actually going to have a baby in the house he’ll realise I’m not one any more,’ she mocked with a cheeky grin. ‘Now do hurry up and come downstairs, Daddy, I want to open my presents.’ She abandoned her air of sophistication at the thought of the gifts waiting under the tree for them all, hurrying downstairs to wait for them—and probably to prod and poke about her own parcels until they arrived!
Bryna gave an indulgent smile, feeling closer to Raff than she had for weeks as he returned the smile.
‘In one breath she tells me how grown up she is, and in the next moment she looked eight years old again,’ he shook his head ruefully.
‘We all like to open presents,’ she smiled, the fatigue of the night before completely erased after a good night’s sleep. She wished the same could be said of the memory of Raff’s hand caressing her body.
‘Do we?’ he frowned. ‘I seem to recall you insisted I didn’t give you any presents during the last six months,’ he added harshly.
‘That was because I was your mistress, and not your wife,’ she reasoned.
‘You weren’t my mistress,’ he rasped. ‘That implies dependency of some kind, and we both continued to live our own lives. We were lovers. And I certainly wouldn’t have objected if you had bought me presents. In fact, I would have welcomed the knowledge that you thought of me at other times than when we were in bed together.’
The shadow in their depths made her eyes purple. ‘Raff, please let’s not argue——’
‘No,’ he grated, shifting in the bed so that he leant over her. ‘Happy Christmas, Mrs Gallagher.’
‘Happy Christmas,’ she barely had time to murmur before his lips merged with hers.
After days of knowing only his cold remoteness she blossomed to the sensual search of his lips like a flower opening to the sun, wrapping her arms about his neck to draw him down to her, returning his passion with a fierce longing of her own.
‘Dad, are you——Don’t you know you should treat a woman with extreme gentleness during the early months of pregnancy?’ a concerned Paul burst out, his cheeks colouring with a ruddy hue as both Raff and Bryna turned to look at him in surprise. ‘Well, you should,’ he muttered uncomfortably, wearing a robe over his rumpled pyjamas, his dark hair tousled. ‘I read it somewhere,’ he added resentfully.
Raff gave a strangled groan as he rolled over on to his back, glowering at his son. ‘I was only kissing Bryna, not making love to her,’ he bit out irritably. ‘What chance do I have of doing that when you and Kate keep bursting in here unannounced?’
Paul shifted uncomfortably. ‘I did knock, but——’
‘We didn’t hear you,’ his father acknowledged wearily. ‘We are on our honeymoon, Paul.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry,’ he sighed. ‘But if you don’t come downstairs soon Kate’s going to open everyone’s presents!’
Bryna laughed softly once her stepson had gone back downstairs. ‘Why do I get the impression that for all their sophistication the rest of the year Kate and Paul become children again at Christmas?’ she said drily.
‘Probably because they do.’ Raff threw back the bedclothes to get out of bed, strolling unselfconsciously across the room to get his dark bathrobe. ‘And Paul isn’t joking about Kate opening all the presents; one year Josey and I only just got downstairs in time to stop her opening Paul’s things; she’d already opened her mother’s and mine besides her own! I think we’d better join them now before they come to blows!’
Bryna had seen Raff naked dozens of times the last six months, had even shared in that nakedness, but in the light of their arrangement she felt a little embarrassed about the longing she had to just look and look at him, knowing she was only torturing herself with what could never be.
She turned away abruptly. ‘Actually, I think it’s a good sign that Paul is taking an interest in the welfare of the baby.’
‘You’ve noticed he’s been less than enthusiastic?’ Raff sounded troubled.
Bryna gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Put yourself in his place, Raff, and see how you feel!’
‘Hm,’ he grimaced ruefully. ‘I suppose it is awkward for him.’
As she watched Kate and Paul dive into their presents under the ten-foot tree that they had all decorated together the previous weekend it was difficult to imagine there would be much of an age gap between her child and them! They were as enthusiastic over the small gifts she and Raff had chosen for them together as they were over the gold watches they also received, and they were obviously truly touched by the thoughtfulness that had gone into the purchase of the books they received from their new grandparents.
Her parents had taken to their new role with gusto, and had already decided that Kate and Paul would be as much their grandchildren as the new baby would be, and Bryna had been delighted to help them choose gifts for both them and Raff, knowing how much he would love the silk tie of pale grey.
She deliberately kept to the background as she watched the rapport between her new family and her parents, relieved beyond words that they were all getting along so well together, giving a start of surprise when Kate dropped a pile of parcels in her lap. She had completely forgotten her own presents.
Her parents had bought her a range of her favourite perfume, from bath-oil to body lotion, and she smiled at them gratefully. Kate had bought her some books on pregnancy and childbirth, and the two of them shared a smile of understanding. Paul looked a little sheepish about his gift, and she understood why as the rather large box revealed a maternity nightgown.
‘Kate helped me pick it out for you,’ he put in quickly as his father looked at him with raised brows.
His sister grinned. ‘What he means is that he sent me in to buy it and approved it afterwards!’ she mocked.
Paul shot her a glowering look. ‘Well, I wanted to give her the books, but you insisted that was your gift, and——’
‘I love both my presents, thank you.’ Bryna kissed them both on the cheek, knowing by the mischievous twinkle in Kate’s eyes that she was enjoying teasing her brother about their expected sibling.
‘And now mine.’ Raff placed a small parcel in the palm of her hand.
She frowned up at him. ‘But you’ve already given me so much, the necklace and——’
‘They were wedding presents,’ he cut in arrogantly. ‘Besides, you bought me a Christmas present,’ he reminded her abruptly.
And she knew that he genuinely liked the sculpture she had given him. It was by a relatively unknown English sculptor who they had both agreed would one day be very much in demand. Unfortunately, as with all the greats, it would probably be after his death.
Her fingers shook slightly as she unwrapped the parcel, the small box revealing an even smaller box inside, and Bryna gasped her stunned delight as she flipped open the lid to reveal a ring. Not an engagement ring, as she had suspected once she saw the size of the box, but a thin gold band topped by seven diamonds. An eternity ring. She looked up at Raff questioningly, but his expression revealed none of his thoughts.
‘It’s lovely, Daddy!’ Kate was the one to enthuse.
It was lovely, and like the wedding band Raff had placed on her finger only yesterday, it was a perfect fit.
Bryna still looked up at him uncertainly, not understanding the significance of the gift. ‘It’s beautiful, Raff, thank you.’
He nodded abruptly. ‘I’m glad you like it. Now I suggest we all get dressed and have some breakfast before my parents arrive and we have to leave for church.’
Because she preferred it, and because she knew her parents felt the same way, Bryna had asked Raff if she and her mother couldn’t do the catering for at least Christmas Day, knowing the housekeeper had a sister in Kent she would like to spend the day with. Surprisingly he had agreed to her suggestion, and the cosy family atmosphere increased as the four men talked in the lounge while the four women prepared the meal in laughing camaraderie.
The day passed very much as it would have done at her parents’ home, a late lunch of turkey and all the trimmings, she being the one to doze off in front of the fire, Raff insisting he and the children would prepare the supper while the rest of them sat down and chatted together. Bryna had been unsure how Raff’s parents would react to the marriage, especially once they knew there was a baby on the way, but they couldn’t have been nicer.
Only one thing happened to mar the perfection of the day.
They had finished supper and were clearing away when Kate gave a sudden frown. ‘In all the excitement I’ve only just realised that Uncle Court didn’t join us for the day.’
Anger, cold and biting, flickered in Raff’s eyes before it was quickly masked. ‘He had other commitments,’ he shrugged.
Kate wasn’t satisfied with that answer. ‘But he always spends Christmas Day with us.’
‘And after twenty years don’t you think he’s entitled to a change?’ her father demanded.
‘But——’
‘Kate, we aren’t his only friends,’ Raff cut in, his tone brooking no further argument.
The subject was dropped, sulkily by Kate, determinedly by Raff, and yet Bryna knew that, in some way she didn’t completely understand, she was the one who had caused the friction between the two men that now meant Court no longer even felt welcome in his friend’s home.
She felt guilty without really knowing what she had done. It didn’t seem possible that Raff could be so angry just because she had told Court about the baby, neither could she accept that it had been because she had danced with Court at the wedding. She had danced with him dozens of times before at parties, and Raff had never objected then. He was behaving unreasonably; she only hoped he soon realised that!
Nevertheless, the incident ruined the rest of the day for her slightly, and she couldn’t help wondering if Kate had connected her father’s remarriage with Court’s absence today, and resented her for it. The girl gave no indication she felt that way, but Bryna couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about the situation. She felt somewhat uplifted by Raff’s mother before she left later that night.
‘I can’t tell you when we’ve enjoyed a Christmas more.’ She kissed Bryna on the cheek; she was a tall woman, as imposing as her son, until you saw her eyes, warm blue eyes that smiled as she talked.
Raff had inherited his grey eyes from his tall and still-handsome father, although in the older man they had mellowed and warmed. ‘We had a lovely time, my dear.’ He kissed her too.
Michael Gallagher had been a force to be reckoned with himself until his retirement from the business world, and as she watched father and son shake hands Bryna couldn’t help thinking what a formidable pair they must have once made.
Raff looked so handsome today, casually dressed in a grey shirt and black fitted trousers, the gold band that perfectly matched her own glinting on his left hand, the watch she had bought him as a wedding gift strapped to his wrist.
Last night she had been too tired to care about their sleeping arrangements, but tonight, despite feeling weary, she was all too aware of them, as she picked up her nightgown to go through to the adjoining bathroom.
No one had guessed at the strain between Raff and herself today, she felt sure, and she knew that was mainly due to Raff and the way he had cared for her in a way that didn’t smother her. Was it only because he was concerned about the health of his child, or did he genuinely care about her welfare? The answer to that question was all too obvious—and painful.
She had turned on her side and was pretending to be asleep when he came back from the bathroom and climbed into bed beside her, turning to face her as he had the previous night, his hand moving to rest possessively on the baby.
The heat began between her thighs and radiated outwards, the warm ache making her tremble.
‘Are you cold?’ Raff questioned gruffly.
Cold—she was on fire! The trembling increased, her breathing becoming ragged, the instructions her brain passed to her body to calm down were completely ignored. How could she calm down when she wanted him so much!
‘Do you want me, Bryna?’ he huskily voiced her pained longing.
To say yes would be to completely abandon her pride, to accept the charitable lovemaking he offered. And she couldn’t do that.
‘I’m sure you’re perfectly well aware from your first wife’s pregnancies that women often feel highly—emotional during pregnancy,’ she dismissed curtly, remaining rigidly turned away from him.
‘Highly sexed, you mean,’ he amended bluntly. ‘I told you, Bryna, you only have to ask.’
She closed her eyes in pain, gritting her teeth in an effort to resist the impulse she had to turn into his arms and plead for his lovemaking. ‘I’m really not in the mood, Raff,’ she lied, the ache as intense as ever. ‘Did you ask Court not to come here today?’ she abruptly changed the subject, hoping talking about Court would help her forget the ache.
The hand that had been moving rhythmically across her stomach stopped for a moment, before continuing more determinedly. ‘No, it was his own decision,’ Raff returned harshly.
‘Because of yesterday?’
‘Among other things,’ he bit out.
‘What other things?’ she queried tensely, blinking in the darkness.
‘I don’t want to talk about this just now.’ His hand was removed as he turned to lie on his back.
With that intoxicating hand removed she felt able to turn and face him. Raff was making no effort to go to sleep, his eyes clearly open as he stared up at the ceiling. ‘It’s important to me, Raff,’ she began.
‘I know that,’ he scorned, his eyes glittering dangerously in the darkness.
Bryna’s cheeks were flushed. ‘Kate and Paul will resent me if they think I had anything to do with your argument with Court,’ she snapped.
His mouth twisted. ‘I’m sure Kate’s and Paul’s opinion is very important to you.’ he sneered.
‘Of course it is,’ she defended heatedly. ‘Also I don’t like to be the cause of a rift between you and Court when there’s no reason to be.’
‘No reason?’ Raff loomed up out of the darkness as he moved to a sitting position, anger in every taut line of his body, the politeness of the day obviously over. ‘You flaunted your affair with Court at our wedding and you simply expected me to accept it without retaliation?’ He sounded incredulous—and furious.
The ringing in her ears made her head spin. Affair with Court—? Raff couldn’t be serious!
But as he viciously flicked the switch on the bedside lamp, the cold fury in his face unmistakable, she knew that he was perfectly serious. But why? She had never given him cause to think such a thing
‘Raff, how could I have been having an affair with Court when I was already having an affair with you?’ she reasoned in bewilderment.
His mouth thinned. ‘I admit, being unfaithful to a lover is a little unique?’
‘And untrue,’ she claimed incredulously. ‘What on earth made you think such a thing? I——’
‘I didn’t just think it, Bryna,’ he rasped. ‘I have proof.’
She became suddenly still, wondering if she could possibly have fallen asleep without realising it and this was all a nightmare. But as she pinched herself and felt the pain she knew she was wide awake, that this was all very real. ‘What proof?’ she asked dazedly.
‘You were seen having lunches together, cosy little dinners for two——’
‘I told you about them,’ she defended.
‘Not all of them,’ he grated.
‘Most of them.’ Guilty colour darkened her cheeks. Her decision not to discuss her business with Raff in an effort to make him realise how he shut her out was backfiring in a way she could never have envisaged! ‘They were business meetings.’
‘Your contract with Court ended weeks ago,’ Raff dismissed coldly.
‘I was trying to interest him in using several of my models again,’ she told him heatedly.
‘Of course you were,’ Raff said with obvious scepticism.
‘But I was! I—have you spoken to Court about any of this?’ she asked exasperatedly.
‘Of course,’ he nodded abruptly. ‘He denies that the two of you are having an affair.’
‘There you are——’
‘But of course he would,’ Raff insisted unrelentingly. ‘But you’re married to me now, expecting my child, and I don’t have to pretend ignorance any more.’
‘If you really believe that we had an affair behind your back how do you know this isn’t his child?’ Bryna challenged, hurt and confused by the unexpectedness of his attack.
‘That’s the one thing I can be sure of.’ He looked at her coldly as he climbed out of the bed. ‘You see, Court is sterile!’
Bryna knew she must have paled, but the irony of Court’s tragedy after years of believing herself incapable of ever having a child made it too unbearable to contemplate his torment.
But it didn’t diminish the fact that as far as Raff was concerned the only thing he could be sure of was the paternity of her child!
It also explained his threats to force her into marriage with him. Maybe he had thought, knowing of Court’s sterility, that the other man would be more than glad to marry her himself once he knew she carried a child. She realised now that it was probably also the reason he hadn’t told Court about the baby.
Oh, now she understood what he had meant that day in Scotland when he had told her he ‘didn’t care what other plans she had made, she was marrying him’! He couldn’t take the risk that Court would welcome her pregnancy with open arms.
My God, she thought, was the affair he believed her to have been having with Court the reason he had been acting so coldly towards her the last couple of months, the reason he had been so unreasonable and hurt her by flirting with Rosemary the night of Court’s party, before making love to her so exquisitely?
If that were so, did it also mean that he hadn’t tired of her at all but had believed she was being unfaithful to him?
She looked at him with wide eyes as that last thought occurred to her, realising for the first time that he was in the process of dressing, black trousers already fitted to his narrow hips and legs, a cream shirt unbuttoned down his chest. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked in dismay; he couldn’t walk out on her now, not without discussing this further!
‘Out,’ he rasped.
‘But——’
‘Don’t worry, Bryna, I’ll be back before morning,’ he bit out derisively. ‘And I’ll think of a good excuse for you to move back into your own bedroom tomorrow night!’
‘Raff, we have to talk——’
‘It’s too late for that,’ he grated, thrusting his shirt into the waist of his trousers. ‘It was too late the moment you decided to take Court as your next lover!’
‘But I didn’t——’
‘Was he as experienced as me, Bryna?’ he demanded coldly. ‘As “skilled"? Of course he was,’ he answered disgustedly. ‘But no other man, not even one I once called friend, is going to bring up a child that I know is mine!’
‘Raff!’ Bryna cried out as he reached the door. ‘Raff, it isn’t true,’ she pleaded. ‘None of it’s true!’
‘I told you, you were seen together,’ he rasped contemptuously. ‘And even if you hadn’t been, do you think I can’t tell when a woman changes towards me in bed? My God, I’ve had one wife who preferred another man to me, so I should know!’ he scorned.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘If I did change it was only because——’
‘Yes?’ he prompted harshly.
‘Because you changed,’ she accused, standing up agitatedly. ‘Oh yes, you did,’ she insisted at his sceptical expression. ‘I thought you were getting tired of me. I thought——’
‘You would line up another lover for when our affair was over,’ he finished disgustedly. ‘What’s the matter, Bryna, now that you’ve discovered the “joys of sex” can’t you do without it for even the length of time it would have taken you to find my replacement once our affair was over?’
‘Stop twisting things to suit your own warped accusations,’ she cried. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ she insisted emotionally. ‘Court isn’t, and never will be, my lover!’
‘The past I can’t do anything about, but you’re right about the future,’ Raff told her grimly. ‘No other man is going to know your body but me in future. And now that I know how much you like to make love I don’t expect I’ll have to wait long before you come begging me to take you!’
Bryna stared at the door he had closed forcefully behind him without actually slamming it and waking up the rest of the household.
Did he really believe all that he had accused her of? Of course he did, he wouldn’t be acting this way if he didn’t!
Court and her? How could he have come to such an erroneous conclusion? She and Court were friends, yes, and Court flirted with her endlessly, but surely no more than he did with every other female he came into contact with.
Proof, Raff had said, but surely he couldn’t count a few meals together where they discussed business as that? He did, she knew he did, and it seemed there was nothing she could say to change his mind.
No wonder his cold indifference had actually seemed to turn to hate since he had found out about the baby and he had forced her into marriage!
Only now he was making no secret of that hate—or the reason for it.