The #1 Bestsellers Collection 2011(155)

“Holly!” he shouted as he rounded the landing at the top, his heart hammering in his chest. He tried to tell himself it was just the baby he was worried about, but he had to be honest with himself. It wasn’t. Not anymore.

“Holly!” he shouted again, and sagged in relief when he heard her muffled voice.

He raced towards the turret bedroom, the one he’d suggested as a nursery the night before. The door was closed and another thump echoed under the door. As he reached his hand to the doorknob he heard something he hadn’t heard before. Surely that wasn’t Thompson laughing? The door opened abruptly beneath his hand and swung inwards.

The carpet had been rolled back from the polished floor and the heavy carved wooden furniture in the room was all shoved in the centre and draped in dust covers. Thompson, wearing a baggy set of coveralls, was on his hands and knees, sanding the foot-high moulded skirting boards.

Holly, to his horror, stood on a makeshift scaffold, a scraper in her hand, and balanced precariously on a plank that to his eyes looked far too narrow. A strip of wallpaper hung drunkenly from the wall. She turned, twisting to see him, simultaneously losing her balance and sending the narrow plank skittering to the floor. Connor leapt forward to catch her in his arms and held her against him before lowering her feet to the floor.

His heart beat double time. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. A fierce wave of anger swiftly replaced the fear that had torn through him when he’d seen Holly lose balance.

She pushed away from him and free of his hold. Her eyes sparkled and colour flushed her cheeks. A strand of long dark hair had worked free of the crooked ponytail she wore. A smudge of paint dust streaked across her forehead. Connor lifted a hand and wiped it away and watched as her expression froze and changed from one of relief to defensiveness.

“What do you mean, what are we doing? You have eyes in your head don’t you?” She turned and defiantly replaced the plank and stepped back up onto it. “We’re preparing a nursery.”

“Not now you’re not.” Connor stepped forward and lifted her back down off the makeshift trestle. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous. If you hadn’t burst through the door and startled me like that I would never have fallen. Besides, Edgar is here with me.”

“Edgar?” Did she mean Thompson?

“Yes, sir. I offered to do the wallpaper, but in light of my frozen shoulder, Miss Christmas insisted she do it.” Thompson levered up from his knees and stood as he spoke, brushing clouds of dust off him as he did so.

Thompson had a frozen shoulder? He’d never so much as complained once. What the hell was going on?

“Well, whatever the two of you have decided to embark on together it stops right now. I’ll get contractors in.” He spun Holly around to face him. “And the most risky thing you will do from now on is choose paint and fabric swatches.”

“Excuse me, I think I’d best go and finish dinner while you discuss this.” Thompson edged past the bristling pair and disappeared down the hall.

“There is nothing further to discuss,” Connor said through clenched teeth. He wheeled around and stalked from the room, fury building up inside him until he felt as if he’d erupt into a seething, spitting cauldron of molten metal.

The solid thump of the wooden-handled scraper hit him square between the shoulder blades and stopped him in his tracks.

“How dare you dictate to me like that?” Holly’s voice followed with equal force.

He turned slowly, his hands fisted on his hips. “I dare because you endangered my baby. Remember? The one I’m paying you to have.”

“You can’t wrap me in cotton wool! Make up your mind for goodness sake. First you tell me to decorate a nursery, now you tell me I can’t. Well I have news for you, Connor Knight, and it’s all bad. I’ll decorate that room if it kills me. You’ve taken my job from me. You’ve taken my home from me. You will not take my will away from me, too.”

Her eyes flashed, burning blue like heated cobalt. Connor closed the distance between them, aware of the emotion that poured from her, of the way her breasts heaved under an old T-shirt he thought he’d discarded years ago. The worn white cotton draped over her, shaping to her gently rounded shoulders—the sleeves coming halfway down her arms. She looked soft and feminine and extremely desirable. Rigidly he slammed the brakes on his thoughts before they further roused his disruptive libido.

“I don’t want to take your will away from you. I just want to keep the baby safe.”

“That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? Just some damn incubator for your blasted baby! What about me? Me?”