Her Baby Secret

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.’

CHAPTER THREE

ROWENA woke up, and for several horrid moments experienced total amnesia. It didn’t last long, but realising where she was, with whom and, worst of all, why was no less horrid than the original empty void.

She stretched sleepily in the confined space. There was a dull ache behind her eyes and her stiff limbs felt as though she hadn’t moved in an age. A glance at her watch revealed this wasn’t far off the truth; they couldn’t be far off Inverness.

‘You’re awake.’

The soft drawl somewhere east of her right ear was extremely welcome, not that she had any intention of allowing her travelling companion to see just how welcome. ‘Very obviously.’ Rowena raised a hand to cover her yawn as she adjusted her seat from its reclining position. Someone, she noticed, had placed a blanket over her while she’d slept. Had it been Quinn? The thought made her throat feel achey and tight. God, this has to stop, she rebuked herself sharply. Carry on broadcasting emotional and vulnerable signals like these and they’ll pick them up in the Shetlands, girl!

‘How are you feeling?’ With raised brows Quinn took in her aggressive frown. ‘Other than grouchy.’

‘I’m not grouchy.’

Was she particularly shallow? Or was it normal to fret stupidly about trivial matters like the fact your hair was sticking up and your eyeshadow had probably run when you were on a mission that should, and did, take precedence over everything else? How was there room in her head, given her anxiety levels over Gran, to take on board the fact that Quinn looked overpoweringly virile and as vital and energetic as she felt jaded and weary?

‘And I feel perfectly fine.’ It occurred to her that she ought to be displaying more gratitude than she was, considering what he had done for her. ‘Thank you,’ she added awkwardly.

There was no polite way of putting it—she had fallen apart! It was still kind of shocking to accept that this had happened—maybe if Quinn hadn’t been there she would have pulled herself together and done what needed to be done…. Perhaps it was the security of having someone she trusted to take care of her and the situation that had enabled her to temporarily relinquish her iron control.

Her blue eyes fluttered wide with amazement; she did trust Quinn—utterly! When, she wondered, had that happened? Aware of his questioning regard, she lowered her eyes abruptly and began to fold the discarded blanket, her slim fingers trembling slightly as she fussed, lining the corners up with meticulous precision.

It was herself she didn’t trust! If she allowed sexual attraction to dictate her actions, Rowena knew she wouldn’t be doing either of them any favours. Quinn deserved a woman who could give him the things he probably didn’t even know he wanted yet. Things like a home—not just four walls and a roof, but a real home. There would be babies, of course—babies!

Talk about catch-22, she thought, resisting the impulse to place her hands protectively over her belly. Is this really me feeling wistful over a dewy-eyed version of domestic bliss…? She shook her head—this had to stop before she started listening to that voice in her head that kept saying a child needed two parents.

You couldn’t make a decision on the basis of physical attraction. If she did that she might even, in a moment of weakness and self-delusion, convince herself she could provide what Quinn wanted. The result would be disaster—she’d end up resenting him from stopping her doing what she wanted to do in her career, and in turn he’d resent her because she wouldn’t be able to put him first. Quinn was a man who needed to be put first.

‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep.’

His eyes skimmed her delicately flushed face. ‘No problem,’ he responded easily.

‘I’m not used to drinking brandy in the middle of the day.’ Actually she wasn’t used to drinking it at any time, which was why the tiny amount she’d had had gone straight to her head. The stuff Quinn had discovered in her kitchen cupboard had been for culinary purposes only up to that afternoon.

‘I’d say you’re not used to drinking much any time,’ Quinn mused with his usual perception. ‘But you make a fairly amiable drunk.’

Maybe she was being paranoid, but it seemed to Rowena that his expression hinted at some private joke. She just hoped she hadn’t said or done anything too awful or disastrously revealing when she was being amiable.

‘I’m sorry about the fuss with Security…’ Fuss was a pretty mild way of putting it. It was ironic, really—normally she would have applauded their stubborn attempts to detach her from Quinn.

It had actually taken Rowena some time to convince the suspicious employees anxious to do their duty that a kidnap was not in progress. She closed her eyes, mortified to even think about that terrible scene when they’d attempted to leave the magazine offices.

Give it twenty-four hours and the already juicy tale would have been embellished beyond recognition.

‘Bernice is a bit overprotective.’

‘So I gathered,’ Quinn responded drily.

‘You did have…’ Rowena felt her colour rise but doggedly she continued ‘…your arm around me.’ She saw no reason to remind him or herself how hard she had been clinging to it!

‘Kidnapping seems a pretty drastic leap to make.’

‘Well, she did see us arguing,’ she reminded him in Bernice’s defence. ‘And I’m not normally the sort of person who goes around leaning on…anyone.’

‘I’m touched you made an exception in my case.’

Rowena hardly noticed his wry interjection. ‘I can’t believe I just walked out like that.’

‘You were in shock.’

Rowena’s expression made it clear that shock was a poor excuse in her eyes for deserting her post.

‘What will people think?’

‘Do you care?’

‘Of course I care, this is my professional reputation we’re talking about.’ Somehow she doubted if Quinn would be quite so laid back if it were his job they were discussing. ‘And in my business,’ she told him grimly, ‘there’s always someone willing to stab you in the back.’

‘Perhaps we should ask them to turn the plane around.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Quinn!’ she flared. ‘I want to go to see Gran, of course I do. I just wish I’d been thinking straight. I should at least have had the common courtesy to explain to Bernice, she would have cancelled my appointments…’ She frowned, trying to recall her busy schedule for the next few days.

‘Well, it’s not too late, is it?’ he pointed out practically. ‘And if you’re fretting about working I did pack your laptop.’

Rowena could have done without this reminder that, not only had Quinn arranged a private flight, treating the whole procedure as though it were no different from hiring a car, when he’d discovered that there were no seats available on the scheduled departures, but he had also packed her clothes too.

Anaesthetised by the small glass of brandy he had forced between her bloodless lips, she had watched him from her cross-legged position on her bed, occasionally shouting instructions in what she seemed to recall had been a loud and stroppy tone.

‘Not those pants, decorative but far too uncomfortable!’ she’d explained as he’d pulled out a racy-looking thong from her knicker drawer to add to the clothes crammed in her case.

The memory made her groan and clutch her head.

‘Could you do with a coffee?’ her attentive escort asked.

Escort…hell! Quinn on escort duty meant hours and hours of contact, and far too much opportunity for her to let things slip…It was nothing short of miraculous that she hadn’t so far!

The last shreds of muddled sleepiness left her as, galvanised into action, she shot upright, and, discovering there was nowhere much to go, sat down again with a bump.

‘You can’t come to Scotland!’ she exclaimed in an anguished tone. She really must have been out of it earlier to have let him get on the plane with her!

‘Short of parachuting I’ve not much option at this point.’

‘Obviously you’ll be flying straight back.’

Quinn looked down into her worried face and smiled—but it wasn’t a comforting sort of smile.

‘I promised Niall—’

Rowena’s expression hardened. What was this, some male conspiracy. ‘Niall had no right to ask you anything. I don’t need a minder!’

A lick of flame appeared in his eyes as they stilled on her angry face. ‘No, you need a lover of the live-in variety!’ Then he smiled benignly and patted her on the back as she began to choke. ‘I promised Niall that I’d see you safely to the hospital,’ he intoned virtuously.

‘Like you never break a promise,’ Rowena snarled, placing the glass of water she’d taken several panicky gulps from down again.

His steady green gaze captured and held her furtive, darting glance. ‘Actually, no, I don’t.’

A slow, steady pulse of heat throbbed through Rowena, infiltrating every individual cell. She could hear the rasp of his voice in her head. ‘You’ll like this, I promise.’ He’d said it more than once before he’d introduced her to a new sensual experience that had reduced her to incoherent, babbling worship. He’d not broken his promise or exaggerated a claim once that night.

‘Some escort you’d be,’ she croaked, trying to fight her way through the sexual thrall. She was pretty sure that it had her staring at him like some sex-starved bimbo. ‘You don’t even know where Gran and Grandpa live.’

‘Actually I do, but I’m having a job getting my tongue around the Gaelic pronunciation. A musical language, but not exactly phonetic.’

The way she recalled it, his tongue could be pretty amazingly dextrous! Rowena, her expression fixed and horrified, barely stifled a groan at this fresh evidence of her moral disintegration.

‘And it wouldn’t really matter if my geographical knowledge of the Highlands was nil, would it? Because we’re not heading for your grandparents’ home.’

Rowena thought it wise to establish pretty quickly, for her own benefit as much as Quinn’s, that there was no we.

‘Precisely. Even I am capable of getting from the airport to the hospital.’

‘You might well be right, but unfortunately it’s not going to be that easy…’

Rowena’s expression grew warily suspicious.

‘The plane’s been diverted to Glasgow. Inverness is closed due to bad weather.’

‘Weather!’ She squinted through the window into the darkness. ‘What weather?’