Yesterday's Bride

‘Tell me how hot I make you,’ he urged. ‘Better yet—’ he paused only until her eyes lifted to his, then straddled her with slow, easy grace ‘—show me.’

As he said the words, the cube made contact with her nipple, sending her bucking from the mattress. Desire seared her bones as furiously as his hardness branded her belly. She made a futile grab for him but in one smooth motion he snared her wrists and stretched her arms above her head.

‘Easy, honey, I’m not through cooling you.’

The taste and temperature of his kiss had Taylor equating hell with the North Pole, and as passion engulfed her, she wondered if a person could drown in fire, or combust from love. Dimly she became aware of his reaching for another ice cube from the tray by the bed, but nothing in her wildest dreams had prepared her for what he did with it.

Placing it between his teeth, he began guiding it from the base of her throat along the length of her, the combination of her overheated skin and his breath creating melting rivulets that trickled along the ridges of her ribcage as slowly as he flowed down her body. With both her blood and flesh growing more heated by the moment, each time Craig replaced one spent ice cube with a cooler, fresher one, Taylor expected to hear it sizzle as it met her skin and evaporated on contact. By the time his trail of torture reached her navel, her breathing was as ragged and erratic as the reactionary tremors that surfaced across her belly, but erupted from a far deeper core.

Millimetre by erotically slow millimetre, he orally steered the ice lower and lower until her nerve endings were ablaze to the point where she thought she would explode into a zillion pieces without ever finding the completion she craved. Her experience with this man’s torrid sensuality meant there was no question as to why the ice didn’t feel cold against the most sensitive part of her femininity. Every pulse in her body was screaming at sound-barrier pitch for release and her hips lifted with wanton demand for its delivery.

She was almost frantic with need for him when his dexterous mouth and hands stilled. Tossing her head, she writhed beneath him. ‘Now!’ she cried. ‘Don’t stop...now!’

‘Look at me, Tay....’ His words were breathless and strained, but the touch of his hand on her forehead signified their importance.

Forcing her lashes open, she stared at up the sweat-drenched male perfection poised above her and her heart almost exploded at the depth of emotion shining from his eyes into hers.

‘I love you, Tay. I love you more than you’ll ever believe. And nothing will ever change that.’

‘Oh...Crai—’

His mouth claimed hers in a humid, hungry kiss that she never had a chance of controlling. Then he eased away and, with a smug, satisfied smile, moved his hips intimately against her. ‘Now?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes...now. Now...’

Taylor struggled to shrug free of the hand shaking her shoulder. It wasn’t Craig’s hand...it was too small. Too fragile...

‘Mummy! Mummy, wake up! You’re having a bad dream!’

Panting for breath and blinking against the glare of the bedside lamp, Taylor tried to sit up. To speak. To ignore the fact she was quaking with unsatisfied desire. To comprehend what the wide-eyed child hovering by her bed was doing in her and Craig’s tiny apartment in the middle of the night.

‘It’s okay, Mummy,’ the dark-haired child assured her. ‘You must have been dreaming about being on Grandpa’s farm.’ She giggled. ‘You kept yelling “Cow! Cow!”’

Reality struck with a crippling blow, catapulting Taylor from past pleasures to present pain. It hurt her to breathe, nearly killed her to think. Acid tears burned her eyes and throat. Tears for what she’d lost with the only man she’d ever loved and for what she’d gained with her daughter. His daughter.

‘Mummy, if you want, I could get in bed with you so you aren’t scared any more.’

Taylor pulled her daughter into a fierce hug, silent tears scalding paths down her face and her body trembling, as despair clawed her heart.

What had happened to them? What the hell had happened to the all-consuming love they’d shared? And when, dear lord, when would she stop feeling its loss?

It was well after midnight before Craig had the luxury of removing his tie and stretching out in his favourite reclining chair. He sighed wearily, lifting the glass of bourbon to his lips and savouring its soothing warmth.

His dinner meeting had gone on far longer than he’d anticipated or wanted. He allowed himself a smile as he ruefully admitted that part of the reason had been his inability to keep his mind on what was being discussed. If Taylor had consented to seeing him tonight, he’d have cancelled the engagement without a second thought. Considering the way the events of the day had distracted him from the business at hand, he would have been best served to have done so, regardless! His mind had been constantly sidetracked from the topic under discussion by images of a beautiful, green-eyed, honey-haired woman.

Taylor was back. Sexier and more beautiful than ever. And with her she’d brought a small, almost porcelain fragile, child who by rights should never have survived beyond a few days of life. He shivered as an image of his daughter’s face imprinted itself in his mind. His daughter. The reason Taylor had walked out on him.

He took another sip of his drink, wondering if the confused emotions he felt towards the child were genuine or simply a side-effect of those he felt for her mother. And what exactly was he feeling?

Guilt? Yeah. Well, sure. He’d always felt he’d failed Taylor in some way from the moment she’d suggested they consider having a child, but suddenly the guilt felt different. Fresher, more biting.

His anger was nothing new; it had remained just below the surface of his day-to-day existence for the past five years. He’d never been sure if the bulk of it was directed at Taylor for walking out or himself for letting her. He also allowed himself to admit that until today a huge chunk of it had been focused on Melanie.

Melanie. Until scant hours ago, he’d rarely thought of the child and never by name. It had been the easiest way of managing the gut-wrenching jealousy that consumed him. Jealousy.

God! Yet another ugly emotion he’d fallen victim to, made worse by the fact it had been directed towards a tiny premature baby. The notion left a sick taste in his mouth and he quickly poured himself another drink, tossing it down in one gulp. Sighing, he contemplated the empty glass. For five years his life had been equally empty. Ever since the love Taylor always claimed was exclusively his had been redirected.

If she’d turned her affection to another man, Craig knew he’d have fought tooth and nail to win her back; he was cocky enough to believe no man was capable of taking her from him. But he hadn’t counted on losing her to a baby. How did a grown man compete with a helpless child? Of course, back then he’d never really tried to compete; shattered by the discovery he’d been relegated to a distant second on Taylor’s list of priorities, it had been easier to simply let her go.

And now? Well, now she was back. He didn’t delude himself it was because she loved him—oh, no. It was maternal love that had prompted her to introduce him to his daughter. And neither did he delude himself he could forgive her for deliberately falling pregnant, but he sure as hell intended to make amends for the way he’d held the child responsible for what had happened between them.

There was an unaffected honesty about Melanie that intrigued him and he had little doubt he’d grow to like the child. To be honest, he hoped she’d grow to like him, too, for reasons other than the fact he was her father. But he knew he had no love to give his daughter; her mother had that and she always would. It was his trust Taylor had forfeited.

He might never have wanted to be a father, but he sure as hell was going to be one now.

Strangely, having made that decision eased some of the tension from his body. Then again, he thought drily, perhaps it was simply the Jack Daniel’s kicking in. Pouring another glass, he forced his mind to that part of his life he normally only confronted in nightmares—The Past....

In the sterile surrounds of the hospital waiting room, Craig’s hand shook as he took the polystyrene cup from Taylor’s closest friend, Liz O’Shea. Emotional turmoil made him oblivious to the hot liquid that spilled onto his hand.

‘Why, Liz? Why did she have to go and put herself at risk like this? I never wanted or needed a baby. She knew that! But I can’t live without her. I can’t live without Taylor!’

‘Craig, her doctor is the best. She’s in good hands. There’s not a thing on God’s earth you can do now except wait.’

It had seemed like a lifetime later that Craig looked up and saw the obstetrician striding towards them.

‘Well?’ he demanded of the older man. ‘Where is she? What’s happened?’

‘She’s resting, Mr Adams. But things aren’t good.’

‘What do you mean, aren’t good? If anything—’

‘Mr Adams, your wife is in labour.’

‘But it’s too early!’

‘Taylor has a condition called placenta previa, caused by—’

‘I don’t give a stuff what it’s called or what causes it! I want to know if she’s going to be all right!’

‘I expect so, yes. But your wife is going to have to remain here. It’s the baby we need to concern ourselves with—’

‘Forget the baby! It’s Taylor I care about. You put her first!’ He grabbed the front of the doctor’s coat. ‘You understand me? It’s Taylor who’s important here!’

‘For heaven’s sake, Craig! Pull yourself together and listen!’ Liz urged, shaking his arm.

Realizing what he was doing, Craig released the doctor’s coat and stepped away.

‘I...I’m sorry, Doctor. It’s just that if anything happened...’

The doctor’s face relaxed. ‘Believe me, I do understand.’

‘So,’ Craig said wearily, ‘what’s the bottom line in all this?’

‘Your wife is in labour at twenty-five weeks along. Far, far too early. However, if we can keep the baby at bay until even twenty-seven weeks, I’ll be a lot happier. I’ve made arrangements to have the baby transferred to the hospital with the best antenatal facilities in the city as soon as it’s born. But I’ll be honest with you. Even then, the child’s chances of survival aren’t good.’

‘Taylor is your first priority,’ Craig reminded him.

From then on, Craig haunted the hospital, going home only to shower, change and snatch a few hours’ sleep. Twice more he had to stand helplessly by as Taylor again went into labour despite all the drugs administered to forestall such occurrences and the millions of dollars’ worth of equipment monitoring both her and her unborn child. He watched, too, as she endured painful steroid injections aimed at accelerating the unborn child’s lung capacity, physically flinching when agony distorted her beautiful face and squeezed tears from her exhaustion-glazed eyes. When he voiced his feelings about how much it hurt him to watch her suffer, Taylor gave a weak smile and clutched his hand.

‘Darling, every bit of prodding, poking and pain is worth it, if it delays delivery. The doctors said if I can hang in for two more weeks, our baby will have a much better chance of surviving.’ Fierce determination lit her weary features. ‘I’m going to do it, Craig. I have to.’

And she did, just. Exactly fourteen days after her admission, Taylor went into labour for the final time, haemorrhaging heavily, but Craig wasn’t with her, and by the time he reached the hospital, Taylor was undergoing an emergency Caesarean, and a short time later he learned he was the father of a three-month-premature baby girl.

He rushed straight to Taylor expecting to find her still recovering from the effects of the anaesthetic, but was shocked to learn only a spinal block had been administered and that she’d been conscious throughout the operation. Yet joy made Taylor oblivious to his anger about the procedure.

‘Craig, she’s so beautiful! So very, very beautiful!’

At the obvious awe in her voice, he felt a stab of rage; having seen the child, she would find its death that much harder to bear. Taylor seemed totally unaware of what was bound to happen.

‘Oh, darling! She’s only nine inches long but wait till you see her! She’s perfect! She even cried all by herself! Not many babies that early can!’ Taylor’s voice was as bright with pride as her eyes were with tears and Craig had to swallow hard before speaking.

‘I know, honey,’ he said. ‘But how are you feeling? That’s what I want to know.’

‘I’m great!’ she responded, ashen face and sunken cheeks refuting her words. ‘But don’t worry about that! Go and see your daughter!’

‘I will. Later. Right—’

‘No, Craig, now! She’s being transferred to one of the larger hospitals. One with better facilities.’

‘Okay, I’ll go,’ he said, wanting to pacify her. ‘But I’ll be back here quick smart, so don’t go anywhere!’ he teased, brushing his hand gently along her cheek.

Taylor smiled and shook her head. ‘They want to baptize her here before she’s moved...I’d like to call her Melanie Brooke. Is that all right with you?’

He nodded. ‘Sure, honey. Melanie Brooke is fine,’ he replied, feeling he was making promises he couldn’t keep.

Taylor received daily videos of her daughter from the hospital the child was transferred to, right up until she was discharged a week later with the proviso she take things extremely slowly. Despite the doctors’ warnings, she insisted on spending eighteen-hour days with her daughter, ignoring Craig’s pleas for her to get some rest, to spend more time at home, more time with him. Taylor obsessively followed her own agenda. So it was a pleasant surprise when one Saturday, while he was going over some work he’d brought home, she walked into the study in the middle of the afternoon.

‘You’re home early.’

She slumped wearily onto the sofa. ‘I’m going back later.’

Craig crouched before her, stroking her hair and her pale, fatigue-etched face. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you rest for a couple of hours, then we can go out for a romantic dinner, followed by dancing and—?’

Recoiling from his touch, she shrieked, ‘Dancing! My daughter stopped breathing today and you expect me to go dancing?’

‘Taylor! I had no idea...I’m sorry!’

She leaped to her feet, rage energizing her. ‘Sorry! Sorry! Craig, you’re probably only sorry that they revived her!’

‘Honey, that’s not true!’

‘Good!’ she screeched through her tears. ‘Because Melanie isn’t going to die! She’s tough! Like me! She’s not a quitter like her father! She won’t die! I won’t let her. I tell her that every day....’

‘Tay, honey, you have to be prepared for the worst.’ He reached for her, but she jumped away as if fearing contamination.

‘You’re a quitter, Craig Adams! I hate you!’ She was beyond reasoning with. ‘You never wanted a baby and the first time you saw this one you decided she was too small and too weak to survive, and that suited you! Well, she will survive! You hear me? She will!’

The strain between them from that point on became unbearable and Craig felt her drifting farther and farther away from him. In an effort to hang on to some semblance of the life they’d once shared, he threw himself into their business with maniacal ferocity. He even tried to establish a deal with the biggest staffing agency in Japan as he and Taylor had once wistfully discussed doing. But Taylor wasn’t interested in talking about it, about anything. She rarely even mentioned the baby to him, and when she did, it was always ‘my daughter, my Melanie’.

The final most bitter blow came when he arrived back from a three-day trip to Tokyo, which Taylor had insisted he take despite his reluctance to leave her. He’d walked into a silent house to discover an envelope with his name on it. Its handwritten contents read:

Dear Craig,

The doctors have said Melanie is well enough to leave hospital now so I’m taking my daughter home. Since you always believed I trapped you into fatherhood, I’ve decided to set you free—I think this is best, not just for us, but for Melanie.

I’m going to stay with my parents in Adelaide. You can contact me there to sort out whatever legal things have to be done about the business. But since the business was always more your ‘baby’ than mine, I know it’s better off with you, just as Melanie is better off with me.

There was no signature, but then none had been needed.

Now, nursing an empty bottle and a potential hangover, Craig wondered if five years later there was anything left to salvage between Taylor and him.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘YOU stupid, great useless animal!’ Taylor muttered as the huge, lumbering St Bernard raced to beat her up the stairs. ‘I’m not going to bed! I’m only getting changed!’

‘You better hurry,’ Melanie advised from the floor of the family room. ‘Daddy’ll be here in seven minutes.’

Taylor forced a smile. Like she needed reminding! Mel had been acting like the countdown voice for Mission Control ever since they’d got home from basketball practice. She on the other hand had been hoping for a phone call from Craig saying he had to cancel.

Glancing across at her daughter carefully colouring a picture intended for Craig, Taylor instantly regretted her selfish thoughts. It was important to Melanie that her father come—vitally important. She bit her lip as doubts that had kept her sleepless since she’d arrived back in Sydney assailed her yet again.

Had she done the right thing in coming back and practically forcing Craig to acknowledge Melanie’s existence? Even more disturbing was the question that had kept her awake each night since she’d walked into his office. Had she really come for her daughter’s sake, or was she simply using Melanie as an excuse to get Craig back into her own life?

Melanie called her and held up the drawing she’d been working on. ‘I tried to stay inside the lines. Do you like it?’ she asked.

‘Yeah! I think it’s great!’ Taylor replied.

‘It’s for Daddy to put in his office. Think he’ll like it?’

‘I’m sure he will.’

Realizing she was still in her bathrobe, her hair wet, and wasting time, she hurried up the stairs. Would Craig see any merit in the less than artistic scribbling of a five-year-old?

‘He’d better!’ she said, sliding open her wardrobe. ‘Or he’ll wear the meal he all but invited himself to!’ And that was something she meant to have out with him. His manipulative use of Melanie was inexcusable!

After extracting a simple white flared ankle-length dress in embroidered cotton, she tossed it onto the bed, next to the sleepy-looking dog now sprawled across it.

‘There, Bernie,’ she said. ‘No one could accuse me of dressing to impress! In fact,’ she added smugly, ‘I’m not even going to bother putting on make-up.’

Sitting on the bed, she plugged in the blow-drier and began drying her hair, but even the appliance’s droning hum didn’t drown out her daughter’s excited yell. ‘He’s here!’

Pulse skittering, Taylor dropped the drier and jumped to her feet. Already? Dammit, she wasn’t ready!

Craig owned up to more than a touch of apprehension as he climbed out of his car. He’d been sweating on this night for five days and now it was here he wasn’t sure he was ready for it. He didn’t know what to expect, or more importantly, what was expected of him.

As he made his way up the path, the front door opened and Melanie stood waiting for him.

‘Hello,’ she said, offering a smile.

‘G’day, Melanie,’ he said, then wondered if it was acceptable to hand a bottle of wine to a five-year-old. He was still considering this when she tugged at his arm and led him from the tiled entrance foyer into a modern, comfortably furnished lounge.

‘What’s in the bag?’ she asked.

‘A bottle of wine.’

‘I’ll put it in the ’frigerator,’ she told him, extending two small hands towards it.

‘Well, it’s red wine. You don’t put it in the fridge.’

She frowned up at him. ‘Are you s’posed to drink it hot?’

‘Eh, not exactly. It’s supposed to be served at room temperature.’

‘So how do you know the temperature of the room?’

Craig blinked. ‘Um, where’s your mother?’

‘Upstairs. Uncle Bernie hasn’t come down yet so she’s probably still getting dressed.’

Knowing Taylor had no living relatives and he had none called Bernie, the child’s casual revelation that there was a man upstairs while Taylor was dressing did ugly things to Craig’s blood pressure.

‘Who,’ he asked through clenched teeth, ‘is Uncle Bernie?’

‘My dog. He’s really, really big, but don’t worry,’ she advised. ‘He’s friendly.’

The force of Craig’s relieved sigh was such that he marvelled that it hadn’t blown the tiny girl off her feet. Yet his original anxiety hadn’t been caused by a fear of canines; a killer Rottweiler upstairs wouldn’t have worried him as much as a flesh-and-blood man! He wasn’t shocked by the strength of his possessiveness towards Taylor; many a night he’d tortured himself by imagining her in the arms of another man and felt pain and anger claw at his gut. Yet only now did it occur to him that in five years there may well have been more than one. Looking at Melanie, he fleetingly speculated whether she could provide him with an answer to the question foremost in his mind. Was she his only rival for Taylor’s affections or was there another?

No! He would not stoop so low as to pump the kid about her mother’s love life. It was a sleazy, underhanded thing to do. He tuned out the inner voice suggesting his pseudo-nobility only disguised his real reason for not quizzing Melanie—fear she might tell him things he didn’t want to know!

‘Hi, Craig, sorry I wasn’t ready when you got here.’

He pivoted at the voice of the woman he’d been aching to see for five days. Now he was seeing her, the ache intensified rather than lessened. Her hair was seductively tousled as if someone in the throes of passion had run eager fingers through its soft, tawny length, but how those hands could have strayed from the tempting curves of her body, detailed by the short black stretch dress she wore was beyond Craig’s comprehension. He swallowed hard, his eyes following the shapely lines of her naked legs down to the spike-heeled shoes on her feet.

‘Dinner shouldn’t be too much longer,’ she informed him. ‘Unfortunately I’m a little behind schedule, but I’m sure Melanie will keep you occupied until I’m ready to serve.’

Her glossy smile was smooth, but the quick flick of her tongue at the corner of her mouth was enough to tell Craig she wasn’t as cool or collected as she pretended. Past experience also told him she was every bit as hot as she looked.

He grinned at her. ‘Well, I’m not averse to pitching in and helping with dinner,’ he offered. ‘You used to find me pretty...handy in the kitchen.’

Taylor blushed, her traitorous mind immediately flashing back—as he’d intended—to the times in their marriage when the kitchen counter had been utilized for purposes other than cooking. She tried to produce a patronizing look. ‘No thanks. These days I manage very well on my own.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Effective, but not nearly as much fun.’ Taylor gasped so hard she started to choke. ‘At least let me fix the drinks,’ he insisted.

Her eyes still watering, she spoke to her daughter. ‘Melanie, show your father where the bar is, please.’

‘Then can I take him upstairs and show him Uncle Bernie?’

Then you can take him to hell! she thought. ‘Sure, honey, whatever you want.’ Without so much as glancing at Craig, she turned and hurried to the kitchen.

Taylor crouched in front of the open refrigerator, a thousand different emotions exploding within her, but anger held centre stage. Anger at herself. Looking down at the dress she’d hastily changed into at Craig’s arrival, she wanted to scream. Dammit to hell, she was supposed to be trying to establish a relationship between her daughter and Craig! Not re-establish her own! And he’d been amused by her obvious attempt at self-promotion. Smugly amused! What was worse was that she still found his cocky, self-assured attitude as arousing as she had as a teenager! When he’d suggested giving her a hand in the kitchen, she’d damn near salivated.