‘Let me in. I have to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘You expect me to talk through a crack in the door? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not about to mug the woman carrying my child.’
She sighed. Did it really matter if he found the truth out now rather than later? There was no way she could hide the truth for ever. She pushed the door closed, released the safety chain and reluctantly opened her house to him, knowing it would inevitably result in baring her soul.
‘I’ve got a proposal for you,’ he said, oblivious to her discomfort as he strode past her, the woody tang of his masculine scent curling into her senses. She breathed it in, wondering how just a scent could convey a sense of power and luxury. ‘When will your husband…’
He stopped, staring at the near empty room and she saw it through his eyes—the sole armchair and old television set, a rickety side table with a stack of library books on pregnancy and birth and a star-shaped ticking clock on the wall that had been there for ever.
He turned, slowly and purposefully. ‘What the hell is going on? Is this how you live?’ He peered closer at her face. ‘Have you been crying?’
Lids fell shut over eyes that still felt scratchy raw. She prayed for strength. Because the disdain was back in his voice and his words and his body language. The censure was back. And if he offered her pity she’d have the whole damned trifecta.
‘There was more furniture,’ she said, avoiding the second part of his question.
‘What did you do? Sell it to buy a tin of beans?’
No, damn it! She wheeled away. Headed for the kitchen. She was wrong. She couldn’t do this now. She didn’t need it.
She snapped the kettle on again, determined this time to have that cup of tea she’d promised herself, but then she turned to get the milk and he was right there, shrinking the kitchen with his height and those damned broad shoulders as he took in the boxes in one corner, stacked with crockery and glasses from the dresser Shayne had decided he’d like. ‘Are you packing? Are you going somewhere?’
‘No!’ He was standing between her and the fridge. She gave up on the milk. Pulled a cup instead from a cupboard and dropped in a herbal tea bag. Stood there with her arms crossed and her back to him while the kettle roared back into life.
‘Then do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?’
The roar from the kettle became a burble, the burble became a shrill thin whistle and her nerves stretched to breaking point.
‘What are you trying to hide?’
She reached out a hand to turn it off but he caught it and spun her around so fast she was left breathless. Or maybe it was just the touch of his big hand around her wrist, the heat of his fingers imprinting on her flesh and the impact of six foot something of potent male standing within inches of her. ‘Tell me!’
‘Fine!’ she said over the noise from the kettle. ‘Shayne took the furniture, okay!’
‘Why? Why would he take it?’
The kettle screamed, steam billowing in hot damp clouds around her. ‘So he could shack up with his teenage girlfriend. Why do you think? And now do you think I might turn that off?’
‘Shayne’s gone?’ He let her go and stepped back as she turned and pulled the plug and the fever pitch screaming wound down. Pieces of the puzzle slipped into place—her unwillingness to talk about him, her circling the issue whenever he was mentioned, the fact she’d gone to their meeting today alone.
Because her jerk of a husband had left her for someone else. ‘When did this happen?’
She shrugged, filled her cup with water and dunked her tea bag. He waited while she performed the action the requisite number of times before dropping the tea bag into the sink, where it landed with a splat. Then she turned and leaned back against the sink, cradling the cup in her hands. ‘He moved in with his girlfriend two months ago.’
She could have been reciting a shopping list, her voice was so calm, belying the obvious trauma that underpinned her words.
Two months ago? How long had they known about the mix-up? Was it a coincidence? ‘Why did he leave you?’
Her blue eyes turned misty and desolate as she stared into her tea. ‘Because I refused to have the abortion.’
He wheeled away, his hands in his hair. ‘Your husband didn’t want you carrying someone else’s child.’
‘Strangely enough, no.’
‘So you sacrificed your marriage for the sake of my child?’
She laughed, or attempted to at least before it became a hiccup instead and jerked her hands so that hot tea nearly sloshed over the top of her cup. She put it down on the bench beside her. ‘I’m hardly that noble. I think my marriage was over a long time ago. I was just the last to know. He decided he might as well move in with his girlfriend when he learned it wasn’t his baby I was carrying and when I refused to accept the clinic’s offer to fix things.’