Bestselling Authors Collection 2012(35)

A sound alerted him—a splash that hadn’t come from the low swell on the rocks below. Someone was in the pool? Curious, he went to investigate, rounding the wall that screened off the pool area.

Someone was in the pool, submerged dolphin style halfway along the bottom. Angelina, he realised, with those long limbs, although it was hard to see anything more than two brief splashes of colour through the water. A few more underwater strokes and she neared the end, rising to the surface with a gasp. Not bad, he acknowledged. He knew what it took to get from one end of that pool to the other on one breath. Not bad at all.

And then she climbed out of the pool and his own breath was punched out of him. She was long and sleek and glowing wet, the bikini top struggling to cover her breasts, her upper arms slim rather than skinny now, even managing to look toned.

She’d put on weight, he realised approvingly. And as his gaze travelled down, he saw her belly, softly rounded, and felt a surge of masculine pride that was aeons old.

That was his child growing. His child swelling this woman’s body and turning her lush like fruit ripening on a tree. As he watched, she turned her face up to the sun and squeezed the water from her hair, the action lifting her swelling breasts and emphasizing the long, fluid lines of her body.

God, but she looked sexy with his baby in her belly. And he was hit by a surge of lust so sudden and overwhelming that he had to force himself not to bridge the distance between them and snatch her up and bury himself in her long, sleek depths.

A moment later, appalled, he strode into the house. What the hell was wrong with him? How long had it been since he’d had sex? Clearly too long if he was starting to have fantasies about the likes of Mrs Cameron.

Rosa met him inside. ‘Welcome home, Dominic. I trust everything went well. Is there anything you need?’

‘A shower,’ he said thickly, having no trouble working out the order he wanted things now, unable to meet Rosa’s gaze in case the images he’d seen were still burned on his eyes for all to see. A long cold shower. ‘That’ll do for starters.’





CHAPTER EIGHT


HE WAS doing it all wrong. He was in his office, showered, with a cold beer in a frosted glass beside him, poring over the article.

He was only on page two of Bonding with Your Unborn Baby, but he didn’t have to finish it to know he was doing it all wrong.

It was important, the experts advised, to start bonding with your child even before it was born. Women had an advantage over men, the article maintained, the bond developing naturally over the course of nine months of pregnancy. Women naturally connected with the baby sooner. Men had to make an effort.

He rubbed his jaw with one hand. He wasn’t making an effort. He’d done everything he could in the last month to avoid contact with the woman who bore his child. Which might have been all right if Angelina was picking up the slack.

But she wasn’t going to be around after the baby was born. She didn’t even want a baby. She was the last person who was into forming bonds or making connections. Hell, she was so not into this child that she hadn’t even wanted to have anything to do with organising a nursery for it!

Which meant he had no choice. He was just going to have to become more involved. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t survive the odd encounter with Angelina for his baby’s sake. And he might as well start with organising the nursery.

‘Do you have a list?’ he asked as he steered the car onto the road.

‘A long one. Not that you need everything now. Some things can wait.’

‘Best to get it all now,’ he said. ‘Rosa will be too busy with the baby afterwards.’

‘Rosa is going to be looking after the baby? Does Rosa know that?’

‘It was her idea. Do you have a problem with that?’

She tried to suppress her objections. It wasn’t her place to be concerned with how he intended to manage the care of a new baby with the hours he worked. But still… ‘Rosa would do anything for you and you know it. But she already does so much. How’s she supposed to manage the house and the cooking and a new baby?’

He glanced sideways at her. ‘I thought you were happy to walk away. Why should you even care what happens after you’re gone?’

‘I don’t care,’ she huffed, tired of the direction the conversation was taking, blinking against the sun emerging from behind the dark cloud responsible for the last rain shower and now slanting through her window. ‘You do what you like.’ She tried to tell herself she didn’t care. But he couldn’t be serious, surely? There was no way he could expect Rosa to do all she did and lumber her with a new baby as well.