Midwife's Mistletoe Baby

He stood up and put his plate in the sink. Rinsed it, like he always did because he’d been responsible for any cleaning he’d wanted done for a long time, and internally he smiled because she didn’t say, Leave that, I’ll do it, like most women would have. She leant on the doorframe and watched him do it.

‘Simon said you’ve just finished a relationship?’ Seemed like his subconscious wanted to get to the bottom of it because his conscious mind hadn’t been going to ask that question.

‘Hmm. It didn’t end well, and I’ve been a dishrag poor Simon had to put up with for the last month. You’ve no idea the lift I got when Simon said you were coming.’

No subterfuge there. He had the feeling she didn’t know the meaning of the word. ‘Thank you. But you know I’m here only for one night. I fly back tomorrow.’

She turned her head to look at him. ‘Do you have to?’

That was ironic. ‘No choice.’ Literally. ‘And I won’t be back for a long time.’ A very long time maybe.

She nodded. ‘Then we’d best make the most of tonight.’

He choked back a laugh. ‘What on earth can you mean?’

‘Catch up on what we’ve both been doing, of course. Before Simon monopolises you.’ She was saying one thing but her body was saying something else as she sashayed into the lounge again, and he may as well have had a leash around his neck because he followed her with indecent haste and growing fatalism.

‘Simon will be back soon.’ A brief attempt to return to reality but she was standing in the centre of the room looking suddenly unsure, and that brief fragility pierced him like no other reaction could have. Before he knew it he had his arms around her, cradling her against his chest, soothing the black hair away from her face. Silk skin, glorious cheekbones, a determined little chin. And she felt so damn perfect in his arms as she snuggled into him.

‘Take me to bed, Rayne. Make me feel like a woman again.’

‘That would be too easy.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetheart.’

‘I’m a big girl, Rayne. Covered for contraception. Unattached and in sound mind. Do I have to beg?’

He looked at her, squeezed her to him. Thought about the near future and how he would never get this chance again because things would never be the same. He would never be the same. Searched her face for any change of mind. No. Bloody hell. She didn’t have to beg.

So he picked her up in his arms, and she lifted her hands to clasp him around his neck, and he kissed her gorgeous mouth and they lost a few more minutes in a hazy dream of connection. Finally he got the words out. ‘So which bedroom is yours?’

She laughed. ‘Up two flights of stairs. Want me to walk?’

‘Much as I have enjoyed watching you walk, I’d prefer to carry you.’

And with impressive ease he did. Maeve rested her head back on that solid shoulder and gazed up at the chiselled features and strong nose. And those sinful lips. OMG, did she know what she was doing? Well, there was no way she wanted this to stop. This chemistry had been building since that first searing glance that had jerked and stunned them both like two people on the same elastic. She tightened her hands around his neck.

He felt so powerful—not pretty and perfect like Sean had been—but she didn’t want to think about Sean. About the pale comparison of a man she’d wasted her heart on when she should have always known Rayne would stand head and shoulders above any other man.

Speaking of shoulders, he used one to push open the door she indicated, knocked it shut with his foot, and strode across the room to the big double bed she thought he would toss her onto, but he smiled, glanced around the room and lowered her gently until her feet were on the floor.

His breathing hadn’t changed and he looked as if he could have done it all again without working a sweat.

Ooh la la. ‘I’m impressed.’

He raised his brows quizzically and freed the French drapes until they floated down to cover the double window in a flounced bat of their lacy eyelids and the room dimmed to a rosy glow from the streetlights outside. Slid his wallet out of his pocket and put it on the windowsill after retrieving a small foil packet.

Then he pulled her towards him and spun her until her spine was against the wall and her breasts were pressed into his hardness. Shook his head and smiled full into her eyes. Felt her knees knock as he said, ‘You are the sexiest woman I have ever seen.’

She thought, And you are the sexiest man, as she lifted her lips to his, and thank goodness he didn’t wait to be asked twice. Like falling into a swirling maelstrom of luscious sensation, Maeve felt reality disappear like a leaf sucked into a drainpipe then she heard him say something. Realised he’d created physical distance between them. Her mind struggled to process sound to speech.

‘Miss Maeve, are you sure you want to proceed?’

It was a jolting and slightly disappointing thing to say in the bubble of sensuality he’d created and she looked up at him. Surprised a look of anguish she hadn’t expected. ‘Are you trying to spoil this for a particular reason?’

A distance she didn’t like flashed in his eyes. ‘Maybe.’

She pulled his head forward with her hands in his hair. ‘Well, don’t!’

Rayne shrugged, smiled that lethal smile of his, and instead he lifted her silk shift over her head in a slow sexy exposure, leaving the covering camisole and the dark shadow of her breasts plainly visible through it.

He trailed the backs of his fingers up the sides of her chest and she shivered, wanted him to rip it off so she could feel his hands on her skin. And he knew it.

This time the backs of his fingers trailed down and caught the hem of the camisole, catching the final layer, leaving her top half naked to the air on her sensitised skin.

She heard him suck in his breath, heard it catch in his throat as he glimpsed her body for the first time—and the tiny peach G-string that was all that was left.

Her turn. He had way too many clothes on and she needed to look and feel his skin with a sudden hunger she had no control over.

She reached up and danced her fingers swiftly down the fastening of his black shirt, as if unbuttoning for the Olympics way ahead of any other competitor, because she’d never felt such urgency to slip her hands inside a man’s shirt. Never wanted to connect as badly as now with the taut skin-covered muscle and bone of a man. The man.

This was Rayne. The Rayne. And he felt as fabulous as she’d known he would and the faster she did this the faster he would kiss her again. Her fingers seemed to glow wherever she touched and she loved the heat between them like a shivering woman loved a fire.

While her fingers were gliding with relish he’d unzipped and was kicking away his trousers. They stood there, glued together, two layers of mist-like fabric between their groins, two flimsy, ineffectual barriers that only inflamed them more, and his mouth recommenced its onslaught and she was lost.

Until he shifted. Moved that wicked mouth and tongue lower, a salutation of her chin, her neck, her collarbone, a slow, languorous, teasing circle around her breast and exquisite tantalising pleasure she’d never imagined engulfed her as he took the rosy peak and flicked it with delicate precision.

She gasped.

His hands encircled her ribs, the strong thumbs pushing her breasts into perky attention for his favours. Peaks of sensitive supplication and he took advantage until she was writhing, aching for him, helpless against the wall at her back, unable to be silent.

She. Could. Not. Get. Enough.

Rayne lifted his head, heard the moan of a woman enthralled, saw the wildness in her eyes, felt his own need soar to meet hers, dropped his hands to the lace around her hips and slid those wicked panties slowly down her legs, savoured the silk of her skin, the tautness of her thighs under his fingers, and then the scrap of material fell in a ridiculously tiny heap at her feet. There was something so incredibly sinful about that fluttering puddle of fabric, and he’d bet he’d think about it later, many times, as he reached for the condom and dropped his own briefs swiftly.

Then his hands slid back to her buttocks. Those round globes of perfection that fitted his hands perfectly. Felt the weight of her, lifted, supported her body in his hands, and the power of that feeling expanded with the strain in his arms and exultantly, slowly, her back slid up the wall and she rose to meet him.

Rayne slowly and relentlessly pinned her with his body and she wrapped her legs around him the way he had known, instinctively, she would, and it felt as incredible as he’d also known it could be, except it was more. So much more. And they began to dance the ancient dance of well-matched mates.

The rising sun striped the curtains with a golden beam of new light and Maeve awoke in love. Some time in the night it had come to her and it was as indestructible as a glittering diamond in her chest. How had that happened?

Obviously she’d always loved him.

And it was nothing like the feelings she’d had for other men. This was one hundred per cent ‘you light my fire, I know you would cherish me if you loved me back, I want to have babies with you’ love. So it looked like she’d have to pack her bags and follow the man to the States.

At least her mother lived there.

But Rayne was gone from their tumbled bed and someone was talking loudly downstairs.

Maeve sat up amidst the pillows he’d packed around her, realised she was naked and slightly stiff, began to smile and then realised the loud voice downstairs was Simon’s.

A minute later she’d thrown a robe over her nakedness and hurried into Simon’s study, where two burly federal policemen had Rayne in … handcuffs?

The breath jammed in her throat and she leant against the doorframe that had supported her last night. Needed it even more now.

Simon was saying, ‘What the hell? Rayne? This has to be a mistake.’

‘No mistake. Just didn’t get time to explain.’ Rayne glanced across as Maeve entered and shut his eyes for a moment as if seeing her just made everything worse. Not how she wanted to be remembered by him.

Then his thick lashes lifted as he stared. ‘Bye, Maeve,’ looked right through her and then away.

Simon glanced between the two, dawning suspicion followed swiftly by disbelief and then anger. ‘So you knew they’d come and you …’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. Sent Maeve an, ‘I’ll talk to you later’ look, but the federal policemen were already nudging Rayne towards the door.

Simon was still in the clothes he’d left in last night so he hadn’t been home long. Rayne was fully dressed, again in sexy black, and shaved, had his small cabin bag, so it looked like he’d been downstairs, waiting. She would never know if it was for Simon or the police.

She wondered whether the police hadn’t come he would have woken her to say goodbye. The obvious negative left her feeling incredibly cold in the belly after the conflagration they’d shared last night and her epiphany this morning.

He’d said he was going and wouldn’t be back for a while but she’d never imagined this scenario.

Then he really was gone and Simon was shaking his head.

CHAPTER ONE

Nine months later.

Looking for Maeve.

RAYNE’S MOTHER DIED of a heroin overdose on the fifteenth of December. He was released from prison the day after, when the posted envelope of papers arrived at the Santa Monica police station, and he put his head in his hands at his inability to save her. The authorities hadn’t been apologetic—he should have proclaimed his innocence, but he’d just refused to speak.

Her last written words to him …

My Rayne

I love you. You are my shining star. I would never have survived in prison but it seems I can’t survive on the outside either with you in there. I’m so sorry it took me so long to fix it.

With the other letter and proof of her guilt she’d kept, the charges on Rayne were dropped and he buried her a week later in Santa Monica. It had been the only place she’d known some happiness, and it was fine to leave her there in peace.

He had detoured to see his old boss, who had been devastated by the charges against him, explained briefly that he’d known she wouldn’t survive in jail, and the man promised to start proceedings for the restoration of his licence to practise. Undo what damage he could, and as he’d been able to keep most of the sensation out of the papers, that was no mean offer.

Then Rayne gave all his mother’s clothes and belongings to the Goodwill Society and ordered her the biggest monumental angel he could for the top of her grave. It would have made her smile.

Then he put the house up for sale and bought a ticket for Australia and Maeve. The woman he couldn’t forget after just one night. Not because he was looking for happily ever after but because he owed it to her and Simon to explain. And if he was going to start a new life he had to know what was left of his old one. If anything.

All he knew was the man he was now was no fit partner for Maeve and he had no doubt Simon would say the same.

On arrival it had taken him two days of dogged investigation before he’d traced Maeve to Lyrebird Lake and he would have thought of it earlier if he’d allowed himself to think of Simon first.

Simon’s birth father lived there and Simon often spent Christmas with them—he should have remembered that. With Maeve’s mother in the US it made sense she was with her brother.

Who knew if she’d say yes to seeing him after the way he’d left, if either of them would? He guessed he couldn’t blame them when they didn’t know the facts, but he had to know they were both all right. Maybe he should have opened the letters Maeve had sent and not refused the phone calls Simon had tried, but staying isolated from others and keeping the outside world out of his head had been the only way he’d got through it.

Looked down at the wad of letters in his hand and decided against opening the letters now in case she refused to see him in writing.

Two hundred miles away from Lyrebird Lake, and driving just over the legal speed limit, Rayne pressed a little harder on the accelerator pedal. The black Chev, a souped-up version of his first car from years ago, throttled back with a throaty grumble.

He didn’t even know if Maeve had a partner, had maybe even married, but he had to find out. She would refuse to see him. It was ridiculous to be propelled on with great urgency when it had been so long, but he was. He should wait until after the holiday season but he couldn’t.

The picture in his head of her leaning against the doorframe as he’d been led away had tortured him since that night. The fact that he’d finally discovered the woman he needed to make him whole had been there all the time in his past, and he’d let her down in the most cowardly way by not telling her what would happen.

He couldn’t forgive himself so how did he think that Maeve and her brother would forgive him? All he just knew was he had to find her and explain. Try to explain.

So clearly he remembered her vulnerability before he’d carried her up those stairs. Blindingly he saw her need to see herself the way he saw her. Perhaps it was too late.

If she had moved on, then he would have to go, but he needed her to know the fault was all his before they said a final goodbye. It wasn’t too late to at least tell her she couldn’t have been more perfect on that night all those months ago.

A police highway patrol car passed in the opposite direction. The officer glanced across at him and Rayne slowed. Stupid. To arrive minutes later after nine months wouldn’t make the difference but if he was pulled over for speeding then the whole catastrophe could start again. International drivers licence. Passports. He didn’t want the hassle.

It was lucky the salesman had filled the fuel tank last night because he’d only just realised it was early Christmas morning. Every fuel stop was shut. He had no food or drinks except the water he’d brought with him. Big deal except he was gatecrashing Simon’s family at a time visitors didn’t usually drop in. Hopefully the rest of the family weren’t assembled when he arrived.

It wasn’t the first time he’d done this. He remembered Simon taking him home to his other parents’ one year while they’d been in high school. Rayne’s mother had ended up in rehab over the holiday break, it had always been the hardest time of the year for her to stay straight, and his friend, Simon, had come to check on him.

He’d been sixteen and sitting quietly watching television when Simon had knocked at the door, scolded him for not letting him know, and dragged him reluctantly back to his house for the best Christmas he’d ever had.

Simon’s parents had ensured he’d had a small Christmas sack at the end of his bed on Christmas morning and Maeve had made him a card and given him a Cellophane bag of coconut ice she’d made for everyone that year. He’d loved the confectionary ever since.

Well, here he was again, gatecrashing. Unwanted.

It was anything but funny. The truly ridiculous part was that in his head he’d had an unwilling relationship with Maeve for the last nine months. She’d made an irreversible imprint on him in those hours he’d held her in his arms. Blown him away, and he was still in pieces from it. He’d kept telling himself they’d only connected in his last desperate attempt to hold onto someone good before the bad came but he had no doubt she would always hold a sacred piece of his heart.

In prison he’d separated his old life out of his head. Had kept it from being contaminated by his present. Refused any visitors and stored the mail. But when his defences had been down, when he’d drifted off to sleep, Maeve had slid in beside him, been with him in the morning when he’d woken up, and at night when he’d dreamt. He’d had no control over that.

But he’d changed. Hardened. Couldn’t help being affected by the experience, and she didn’t need a man like he’d become—so he doubted he’d stay. Just explain and then head back to Sydney to sort out his life. Start fresh when he could find some momentum for beginning. Wasn’t even sure he would return to paediatrics. Felt the need for something physical. Something to use up the coil of explosive energy he’d been accumulating over the last nine months.

So maybe he’d go somewhere in between for a while where he could just soak up nature and the great outdoors now that he had the freedom to enjoy it.

Funny how things were never as important until you couldn’t have them. He’d lusted after a timeless rainforest, or a deserted mountain stream, or a lighthouse with endless ocean to soothe his soul.

Or Maeve, a voice whispered. No.

CHAPTER TWO

Maeve

MAEVE PATTED HER round and rolling belly to soothe the child within. Christmas in Lyrebird Lake. She should have been ecstatic and excited about the imminent birth of her baby.

Ecstatic about the fact that only yesterday Simon had declared his love to Tara and was engaged to a woman she couldn’t wait to call her sister. She put her fingers over the small muscle at the corner of her eye, which was twitching. But instead she was a mess.

Her only brother, or half-brother, she supposed she should acknowledge that, seeing she was living in Lyrebird Lake where his birth father lived, was engaged to be married. That was very exciting news.

And it wasn’t like Simon’s family hadn’t made her welcome. But it wasn’t normal to land on people who didn’t know you for one of the biggest moments of your life even if Simon had always raved about Lyrebird Lake.

The place was worth raving about. She’d never been so instantly received for who she was, even in her own family, she thought with a tinge of uneasy disloyalty, but that explained why Simon had always been the least judgemental of all her siblings.

Until she’d slept with Rayne, that was.

Simon’s other family didn’t know the meaning of the word judgmental. Certainly less than her mother, but that was the way mum was, and she accepted that.

And she and Simon had re-established some of their previous closeness, mostly thanks to Tara.

The fabulous Tara. Her new friend and personal midwife was a doll and she couldn’t imagine anyone she would rather have in the family.

She, Maeve, was an absolute bitch to be depressed by the news but it was so hard to see them so happy when she was so miserable.

She gave herself a little mental shake. Stop it.

Glanced out the window to the manger on the lawn. It was Christmas morning, and after nearly four weeks of settling in there was no place more welcoming or peaceful to have her baby.

So what was wrong with her?

It was all very well being a midwife, knowing what was coming, but she had this mental vision of her hand being held and it wasn’t going to be Simon’s. Have her brother, in the room while she laboured? Not happening, even if he was an obstetrician.

No. It would be Tara’s hand that steadied her, which was good but not what she’d secretly and hopelessly dreamt of.

That scene she’d replayed over in her head a thousand times, him crossing the floor to her after that first glance, and later the feel of his arms around her as he’d carried her so easily up the stairs, the absolutely incredible dominance yet tenderness of his lovemaking. Gooseflesh shimmered on her arms.

She shook her head. The birth would be fine. It was okay.

She tried to shake the thought of needing Rayne to get through labour from her mind but it clung like a burr and refused to budge as if caught in the whorls of her cerebral convolutions.

Which was ridiculous because the fact was Rayne didn’t want her.

He’d refused to answer her letters or take the call the one time she’d tried to call the prison, had had to go through the horror of finding out his prison number, been transferred to another section, the interminable wait and then the coldness of his refusal to speak to her.

Obviously he didn’t want her!

Simon had told her he’d found out he would be in prison for at least two years, maybe even five, and that the charges had been drug related. She, for one, still didn’t believe it.

But she hated the fact Rayne didn’t want to see her.

Her belly tightened mildly in sympathy, like it had been tightening for the last couple of weeks every now and then, and she patted the taut, round bulge. It’s okay, baby. Mummy will be sensible. She’ll get over your father one day. But that wasn’t going to happen if she stayed here mooning.

Maeve sat up and eased her legs out of the bed until her feet were on the floor. Grunted quietly with the effort and then smiled ruefully at herself for the noisy exertion of late pregnancy.

She needed to go for a walk. Free her mind outside the room. Stay fit for the most strenuous exertion of her life.

It was time to greet Christmas morning with a smile and a gentle, ambling welcome in the morning air before the Queensland heat glued her to the cool chair under the tree in the back yard. The tables were ready to be set for breakfast and later lunch with Simon’s family and she would put on a smiling face.

She wondered if Tara was up yet. Her friend had come in late last night with Simon, she’d heard them laughing quietly and the thought made her smile. Two gorgeous people in love. The smile slipped from her face and she dressed as fast as she could in her unbalanced awkwardness and for once didn’t worry about make-up.

Self-pity was weak and she needed to get over herself. She was the lucky one, having a baby when lots of women ached for the chance, and she couldn’t wait.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a family who loved her, even if her mum was in the States.