Her Baby Secret

‘Wasn’t I meant to?’

‘It was no secret.’ Recovering a little composure, Rowena managed to continue in a persuasively reasonable tone. ‘I’ve just started a new job. I’ve hardly had time to make contact with every casual acquaintance I have.’ She gulped, but the sound was drowned out by the sibilant hiss of his indrawn breath.

Oh, God, that had come out all wrong and then some…!

‘Casual acquaintance,’ he said very softly and deadly silkily. Then, even softer, ‘Casual acquaintance. Tell me, Rowena, how do you say hello to people you know quite well?’

She closed her eyes as an image appeared in her mind’s eye of herself walking down the crowded New York street three months ago, surrounded by a seething mass of humanity. Maybe it had been the mild culture shock of moving to another city where she knew nobody, or maybe it had been the stress of proving herself, but she had never felt so alone in her life.

Then she’d seen him. She hadn’t even needed to get a proper look at that unmistakable profile—his innately elegant, long-legged stride would have been sufficient proof. Two men in the world couldn’t move that way. Without thinking she had barged through the people separating them, breaking every rule of pedestrian etiquette and probably bruising a few shins to get to him.

Waving her bag above her head, she’d shrieked his name like a demented banshee until she’d been hoarse. She’d almost been at his shoulder when he’d finally turned around and Rowena, her face flushed, breathing hard, had come to an abrupt halt.

Shock of recognition in his eyes had morphed into hot desire. An answering desire had shimmered hot and liquid through her.

‘You’re here,’ she said stupidly. ‘I can’t believe it.’

And then he kissed her.

‘Convinced now?’ he asked, when he lifted his head.

Rowena stared dizzily up into his face unable to focus properly—unable to do anything much except stare at him.

The native New Yorkers, a tolerant bunch and not easily surprised, had parted around the embracing couple.

‘I always knew you’d be a good kisser, you’ve got such a beautiful mouth.’ Her hands, pressed flat against the hard surface of his chest, felt his responsive rumble of laughter.

He continued to display his proficiency at kissing in the taxi, then in the lift going up to his hotel room. The kissing didn’t stop once the door had closed behind them but other things started, things she couldn’t even think about without blushing.

Hurtling back into the present, Rowena was still faced with Quinn’s anger at being called a casual acquaintance. ‘You caught me at a weak moment,’ she defended herself.

‘There was no catching involved—the way I recall it you did the running.’ He reached across and touched her chin with his forefinger.

‘And you wonder why I’ve been avoiding you,’ she said, jerking her chin away from his grip.

‘I thought that was all in my mind.’ Quinn spun around on the smooth surface of the desk until his legs were the wrong side of it—her side.

‘I knew it would be like this,’ she muttered, grabbing two handfuls of silvery fair hair and shaking her head from side to side. ‘I thought you understood New York was a mistake, not the start of something.’ Nothing that she had any intention of telling him about just now, anyhow.

‘The only mistake I made was allowing you to persuade me to leave.’

Rowena’s heart dropped as far as her narrow, expensively shod feet. His inflexible tone and grim expression suggested that he was about to compensate for that mistake.

She closed her eyes, incredibly frustrated by his unyielding, downright mule-headed attitude. ‘Talking to you is like…like talking to that wall!’

Which, if things went on like this, she’d be doing in next to no time. She could see it now—crazy fashion editor carted away by the men in white coats. How her enemies would love that…another fast-track hot shot hits the dust!

‘You want me,’ he insisted.

At least this was one subject he didn’t have any doubts about—he couldn’t be in the same room as her without knowing that Rowena craved his touch just as much as he did hers. This knowledge only increased his frustration. Hell, the sizzling, sexually fuelled static between them was nothing short of a fire hazard!

Rowena glared at him for about twenty seconds before her defiance deserted her. ‘That’s as maybe,’ she conceded, concentrating hard on controlling her wildly fluctuating complexion—women in her position did not blush like schoolgirls; neither did they ache inside the way she did.

Quinn’s grin had a worryingly predatory look to it.

‘No maybe about it.’

A small shrug of her slender shoulders conceded his cocky claim. ‘You’ve only yourself to blame—laying down rules and conditions,’ she brooded darkly. ‘Whatever happened to spontaneity and free love?’ She quivered, working herself into a resentful lather as she contemplated her bad luck. She’d found the lover of her dreams—a man not noted for his steadfast devotion—and he had to get all moralistic and possessive on her.

‘Free love?’ Quinn mused. ‘I’m trying to see you as a flower child, but it’s not easy,’ he admitted.

‘You’re nothing but a reformed rake!’ The old-fashioned term seemed to suit him oddly well—he definitely had the legs for tight-fitting Regency breeches as well.

Quinn’s lips quivered at this hot accusation. ‘Just for the record, in my book spontaneity is good, but you get nothing for free. You’ll have to learn to live with the fact I’m not available on a casual, nocturnal basis only. There are people who provide such services, I believe—for a price!’

Her hand flashed out but Quinn’s reflexes were faster. Rowena found her wrist enclosed in a steely grip. Feet braced on the floor, he drew her in between the confines of his iron-hard muscular thighs as he pulled her hand back down to her side, clicking his tongue in mocking disapproval.

‘I want to be part of your life, Rowena—an integral part.’ Rowena stopped struggling, at least physically. Her inner conflict was less easily subdued! Their eyes meshed and she instantly got herself lost in his sea green gaze. ‘I’ve no interest in the sort of hole-in-the-corner affair you were suggesting in New York.’

‘Private is not the same as sordid.’ Most men would have been flattered by the sort of civilised arrangement she had offered him—no complications, no emotional dramas.

‘I’m not good at subterfuge.’

Rowena’s bosom swelled with incredulous indignation. ‘There speaks the man who’d just conned his way into this building!’

‘If you hadn’t been so unreasonable I wouldn’t have needed to resort to less than open tactics.’

‘Dirty tactics, you mean,’ she retorted, pulling her wrist free from his grip and waving an admonitory finger in front of his nose. ‘We both know that when you want something there’s just about nothing you won’t do!’ she snapped furiously.

Quinn gazed levelly back at her, not the least disturbed by her heated indictment. He reached forward and ran a finger slowly down the soft curve of her cheek, his piercing eyes darkening as she flinched back as if burnt.

‘And at the moment I want you…’

Her angry flush faded with dramatic abruptness leaving Rowena marble pale. Her breath emerged as a shaky tremulous gasp. Where was the scornful put-down when she needed one?

‘Is that meant to be some sort of turn-on? Well, I’ve got news for you…’ It worked extremely well. ‘Your problem is you like everyone to know about your trophy girlfriends,’ she jeered hoarsely. ‘It makes you feel the big man to see yourself plastered all over the gossip columns.’

‘I think that’s slight exaggeration, Rowena, I barely rate a couple of lines in Country Life.’

‘Your false modesty makes me sick.’

‘You’ll get used to the idea, you know,’ he promised.

‘What idea?’

‘The idea of being part of a couple.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘You don’t have any choice, angel.’

‘How do you figure that one?’

‘You need me.’

Rowena gasped. His arrogance was simply unbelievable! ‘Have you always been delusional?’

His expression abruptly softened as he assimilated the torment in her wide-spaced eyes. ‘You need me, about as much as I need you. See, I can do it, and I’ve had as little practice at it as you have. It hardly hurts at all to admit it. I’m going to teach you to say it,’ he promised.

Eyes wide with horror and lips clamped defiantly shut, she shook her head vigorously from side to side.

‘We’ll see, shall we?’

There was no challenge in his statement, just total, complete conviction—whether this conviction stemmed from a misplaced notion that she was female and therefore weak and malleable, or a belief in his own ability to bend anything or anyone to his will, Rowena didn’t know. She did know a challenge would have been much easier to deal with.

Rowena wanted to put him right, but she felt strangely disinclined to do anything, move, speak, breathe even—perhaps it had something to do with the almost narcotic quality of the combination of his level, deep voice and the sexily slumbrous gleam in his eyes.

‘I did knock, Rowena…’ Her PA’s tentative voice made Rowena start.

‘Yes, Bernice?’ she responded, putting as much clear space rapidly between herself and Quinn as was possible. Her mind wasn’t functioning with its usual clarity, but at least she wasn’t staring up at him like a hypnotised rabbit screaming ‘eat me’ any longer.

This was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to see him. He walked in a room and her wits flew out the nearest window, which made no sense! Rowena had experienced sexual attraction before and stayed firmly in charge of her feelings at every level—the person involved only knew about it if she wanted him to. With Quinn she didn’t have that luxury, she was clumsy, inarticulate and painfully needy.

‘There’s a call from your sister and she says it’s urgent…’

Rowena frowned. Holly had taken her new fiancé up to Scotland to show him off to their elderly grandparents who lived in a remote part of the country called Wester Ross.

‘Fine, I’ll take it, Bernice,’ Rowena replied to her normally discreet assistant who was shooting surreptitious looks in Quinn’s direction.

The young woman withdrew, blushing, when Quinn smiled at her.

‘Holly, it’s me…do you mind? This is private!’ she hissed, covering the mouthpiece and glaring across at Quinn.

‘Say hello to Holly for me,’ he requested, unperturbed by her hostility as he strolled to the far end of the room and began to read the titles on the spines of the files that filled the shelves there.

‘What? Yes, it is Quinn. No…yes, he is here. It doesn’t matter, I’ll explain later. What’s wro—?’ Rowena grew silent as her sister broke into impetuous speech the other end of the line.

Rowena had her back turned to him, but Quinn could almost feel her distress as the slim, supple line of her back grew tense. Her next faltering exclamation confirmed his suspicions—Holly didn’t have good news.

‘Oh, God, no!’ Rowena raised her hand to her mouth, compressing the quivering line of her lips—not Gran!

The image of Elspeth Frazer floated before her eyes. Five feet nothing with rosy cheeks, startling blue eyes and snow-white hair, she could have come straight from the glossy illustrations in a book of fairy tales. The illusion of a cosy grandmother was shattered the instant Elspeth opened her mouth. The octogenarian had never suffered fools gladly and, not only did she have a bawdy sense of humour, she possessed a will of iron.

Elspeth had been a consultant paediatrician in the early fifties, when women consultants had been very few and far between. Rowena had left Holly to follow in Gran’s footsteps and become a doctor, but nonetheless Elspeth Frazer had been her own inspiration, the person she thought of when the going got tough. Rowena could never understand how a woman like her grandmother, who had fought so hard to get where she wanted, had turned her back on everything and buried herself in general practice in the back of beyond. She’d eventually asked.

‘Why, I saw your grandfather, my dear, and I loved him.’

Perplexed, a much younger Rowena had asked, ‘Well couldn’t he have come to live in the City?’

‘He could, but he’d have been unhappy.’

‘Well, I’d never do that for a man!’

‘We’ll see…’

Rowena heard the familiar soft accent in her head and her eyes filled with tears. She blinked back the moisture and forced herself to ask the thing she didn’t want to.

‘Is she…? Do they think…? Don’t cry, Holly, and don’t get too technical,’ she pleaded as her doctor sister began to go into details about the suspected stroke that their grandmother had suffered that morning.

She wasn’t aware that Quinn was beside her until she felt the warm imprint of his hand on her shoulder. No matter what the state of their personal relationship, she wasn’t about to reject his support. Rowena was proud, but not stupid—Quinn was the sort of man whom people automatically turned to in a crisis.

She made no objection as he slid a chair under her shaky legs and urged her gently down into it.

She held the receiver a little way from her ear. ‘She’s crying again.’ She gulped, raising tear-filled eyes to his face. ‘Holly never cries,’ she added, her own lower lip quivering madly.

‘Let me have it.’

Rowena relinquished the phone without a second thought. For once she didn’t resent Quinn’s air of calm authority.

‘Hello, Holly, sweetheart, it’s Quinn,’ she heard him say warmly to her sister. ‘Yes, I know, but…is Niall there? Good, put him on. Hi, Niall, it’s Quinn.’

Rowena, her head in her hands, could hear the male rumble as Holly’s fiancé responded at length. Quinn didn’t interrupt him. ‘Yes, I get the picture. It’ll be quicker if we fly up. Can you organise some transport from Inverness? Right, I’ll ring when I’ve got more details.’

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