No Longer Forbidden(51)

“I won’t need it after I leave.” She had to leave. She accepted that now. She looked up the stairs, her mind already jumping back into sorting her mother’s things. Better that than hanging on to adolescent dreams that could never come true. Nic would never love her. She even understood why he was incapable of it. It was time to move on, no matter how hard and scary.

“Rowan.”

His tone stopped her, commanding yet not entirely steady. Height disadvantage or not, he still had the benefit of innate power and arrogance. He still managed to take her breath away with the proud angling of his head. But an uncharacteristic hesitancy in his expression caused her to tense instinctively.

“If you were pregnant …” he began.

She didn’t want this conversation, and tightened her lips to tell him so, but then she realized what he was intimating. She flicked her gaze from the muscle that ticked in his cheek to the bronze key he pinched in his sure fingers.

She felt the blood leave her face. Light-headed, she clung to the rail, trying to hang on to her composure, but it was too cruel of him to hinge keeping her home on something completely impossible.

“If I’m pregnant … what?” Despair gave way to pained affront. The high-ceilinged entryway exaggerated the quaver in her voice with a hollow echo. “I can have Rosedale as a push present? I’m not pregnant, okay? I can’t get pregnant!”





CHAPTER ELEVEN


THE key in Nic’s fist was hot as a bullet he’d snatched from the air to prevent it lodging in his chest. It was circling from another direction to make a precise hit anyway. His upper body was one hard ache of pressure as Rowan ran up the stairs.

He took a step, helpless to call her back when words were backed up in his throat behind shock. His foot caught on their bags and he stumbled. His legs became rubber, clumsy, and started to give out. He sank onto the stairs, elbows on his knees, and pressed the knuckles of his hard fists into his aching eye sockets.

Had he really let himself think it could happen? He was a fool! Of course it wasn’t meant to be if it was for him. His insides knotted in a tangle of sick disillusionment.

He swallowed, his chest so hollow it felt like a gaping wound had been cleaved into it. His reaction was as much a sucker punch as the news. When had he started to care?

He hurt for Rowan. For a second, as her defenses had fallen away and she had let him see to the bottom of her soul, she’d revealed such a rend in her soft heart …

The urge to go after her drummed in him. But what could he do about something as absolute and irreparable as infertility?

He rubbed his numb face, dragging at the torn edges of his control. He was fine with not getting the things that meant something to others. Mostly fine. He knew how to live with it. But it gutted him that Rowan, who openly yearned for a proper family, should be denied something that was such a perfect fit for her. He wished …

But he knew better than to wish.

Slowly he stood and climbed the stairs, every joint rusted and stiff. His goal was the sanctuary of his office and work, but he found himself walking past it like a zombie. He followed noises down the hall beyond the open door to Rowan’s suite. The double doors to the master bedroom were thrown open and Rowan was taping a box propped on the bed.

She paused briefly when he appeared, just long enough to betray that she’d noted his appearance before she continued screeching the tape gun.

Nic took in the disarray. Boxes were stacked against the walls. Photographs and knickknacks were moved or had disappeared. He didn’t care what she was taking. He didn’t have any attachment to any of it. But it hit him how many decisions he’d burdened her with. She was a sentimental little thing. She wore a cheap wedding ring that had sealed an unwanted marriage, for God’s sake. Digging through all this couldn’t be easy for her. What had seemed like the right thing to do suddenly seemed wrong. Unkind.

He wondered if it was his imagination that she looked as if she’d lost weight since yesterday. It might be the baggy T-shirt over braless breasts, but she looked incredibly slight and fragile.

She set down the tape gun and moved to the corner near the balcony. “Did you know Olief was planning an autobiography?” Her sunny tone sounded forced as she pulled the lid off a box and retrieved a packet of yellowed letters. “These are to his wife, talking about the places he was in. There are other things. Photos, awards, columns. It’s interesting stuff.”

She held out the letters but Nic didn’t take them. All his focus was on Rowan. She was so on edge the air was sharp. Her flash of wary vulnerability when she met his gaze was quickly tucked away as she replaced the letters in the box and closed the lid.