A Question of Pride (12 page)

He was hunched in the chair when she entered the lounge, elbows resting on spread knees, brooding again. Clea put the tray down and poured two mugs of coffee, passing him his in silence and receiving a silent nod of thanks in return.

'When did you find out?' he enquired once she was settled in the chair beside him.

'The Friday before you went away.'

He grimaced as some daylight dawned. 'No "friend" on a visit to London, then?'

'No, no friend.' By no stretch of the imagination could she call her doctor her friend. She took a sip of coffee. 'I had an appointment with my doctor; he confirmed my suspicions.'

'And you spent the rest of the day in a state of shock,' he presumed wryly as his mind flitted back to that awful day.

Clea nodded. 'While you had your
business dinner
—' she couldn't help the dig, it just came out '—I used my
quiet weekend
—' another dig, and Max winced '—to decide what I was going to do.' She took in a deep breath and let it out again, sounding weary as she continued. 'You were planning on being away from Tuesday, and it seemed an ideal opportunity for me to make the break without it causing too many—problems. Joe was very understanding ... He guessed almost immediately what was wrong—'

Damn him, she thought wryly. Max was thinking the same by the look on his face.

'He never gave a hint of it to me.' He confirmed her thoughts by accusing roughly. 'He just said you'd asked for an urgent release from your contract and that he saw no reason for not giving it you. I gave him plenty of reasons!' he added angrily. 'His actions were tantamount to being disloyal to me!'

'That's not strictly true, Max,' Clea argued quietly. 'Joe simply weighed up the situation and used his own experienced judgement. Your being informed any earlier would have caused friction—and made no actual difference to the final outcome.'

'Want to bet?' he challenged gratingly.

Clea smiled, but let that go. Max might believe he had the monopoly on character strength, but he didn't.

However, she wasn't going to argue the point with him just now.

'When is the baby due?'

She'd begun to think he would never ask. 'October,' she said, then let out a laugh that had nothing to do with amusement. 'Do you want to hear something quite bizarre?' She leaned back in the chair, her pale face marred by a cynicism new to its smooth planes. 'I went down to my mother's this weekend with the specific intention of breaking the news of the baby to them—only to have the wind taken out of my sails when they informed
me
th-that my mother is pregnant, too! And due to give birth at the same time!' Her voice was hoarse with too much emotion. Max had to look away. She let out another dull laugh. 'She feels a fool because she's thirty-eight years old and expecting, and I feel...'

She didn't finish—didn't need to. Max was learning more about her in these few tense hours than he had done in five months' intimacy with her. His mouth was drawn into a grim line, his expression dark and closed. Depression hung over them both and refused to allow the mood to lighten.

'So,' she continued on a sigh, 'I can look forward to becoming a sister at the same time as I make motherhood. And I mustn't, of course, forget my father's endowment policy—because, in all of this, that is the one good thing to come out of it. I will be financially secure!' Bitterness was welling up inside her again, and, though she tried to fight it, she had no success. 'That left only you to deal with, Max,' she said coldly. 'Have you any idea how predictable you are?' she taunted him, hating the way her heart enjoyed his discomfiture, the way the revealing flush skidded across his cheekbones. 'I knew from the moment I found out about the baby that you would think I'd done it on purpose. I could have predicted step by step your reaction, and you were good enough to prove me right... I had no intention of insisting you "do the right thing by me",' she mocked acidly. 'But I saw that you had a right to know, and—'

'Stop trying to play the bitch!' he exploded suddenly. 'It doesn't suit you. You're behaving like a child, and it—'

'But I
am
achild!' She came back with enough scorn to make him suck in his lips with barely controlled anger. 'A child, who thought she could play grown-up games, and I got my just desserts for my arrogance.'

Max jerked out of the chair, muttering a few choice words beneath his breath as he slammed his coffee-cup down on the tray. His restlessness was back with a vengeance, she noted, as he began pacing the floor like a cat on the prowl.

He turned on her suddenly, anger in every line of his lean hard frame. 'Now you've got that little lot off your chest, do you think we could talk about the child and its future?' he drawled with more sarcasm than Clea had managed to achieve. 'I must presume that all that—waffling you've been doing for the past quarter of an hour was for the benefit of letting me know what a clever, independent little thing you are!'

He sighed in an effort to control his temper, running a distracted hand through his dark hair and ruffling it out of its usual neatly groomed style. 'Yet in all these plans you've been making behind my damned back—I haven't heard you say one word about what you intend doing about the child! About my involvement in its upbringing and welfare. My right to some say in its destiny!' He glared at her for a second, then declared with husky verve, 'I don't want a child of mine growing up a bastard!'

The sheer cruelty of the word made her flinch. 'You didn't want to be a father, either,' she threw back hotly.

'And, if your claim of an accident is to be believed,' he sliced, 'then you didn't want to be a mother. But the choice has been taken from
both
of us—
both of us,'
he repeated harshly. 'And that, in my book, leaves only one course left for us to take. We get married.'

Clea surged to her feet, facing him with a fury all of her own. 'You must think I'm crazy if you think I'll tie myself in marriage to a man who can't remain faithful for more than a few months!' she raged. It would be all too easy to give in to him. Max was stronger than her in every way, his arguments were stronger, his determination stronger, but she would not—could not give in on this point.

She saw, through her own anger, the lid once again lift off his. 'I never bloody touched her!' he shouted.

'But you were on the look-out for someone new!' she accused. 'If poor Dianne Stone wasn't it, then it would have been someone else. I'm not blind, Max!' she cried. 'You made very sure from the beginning that I understood the rules of the game. "No heavy commitment",' you said. "Just sex!" '

'No!' he growled, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her hard against him, his face tight with fury. 'That isn't true. You know there was more to us than just
sex!'

'Do I?' Her soft mouth twisted in derision. 'It was all you ever wanted from me. You—you even cancelled last weekend because—because that commodity had been denied you! You took another woman to the theatre in my place. You said, "Poor Clea," ' she taunted recklessly, ' "you have a nice rest and I'll do the same." You—you even had the gall to come around here Friday night because she—she ...

'

What was she saying? Clea swayed within Max's grasp, shocked by the level of her bitterness. She was beginning to break up, she noted dazedly, her voice broken and bleeding as the bitter words poured out on a stunned Max.

'Clea, stop it! You'll make yourself ill!' he muttered, watching as the whiteness returned to her face, his own expression fading from anger into concern. 'You have me all wrong! I don't see you as just a sex object! It would shame me to think I treated any woman that way—I—what's the use?' he sighed when he saw the disbelief on her face.
'
You're a fool, Clea, if you can't see further than—'

'Yes, a fool,' she agreed thickly, cutting in on him because the close proximity of his body was turning hers to yearning jelly; his thighs tight against her thighs, his hard chest pressing against the heaving softness of her own.

She looked up at him with pained, appealing eyes, and the mood holding them changed, subtly shifting into the sensual. Max gazed down into her swimming eyes, and groaned hoarsely as his mouth softened and lowered on to hers. She met it, with her own lips parted and ready to receive him, her tongue slipping between his teeth to trace those sensitive areas within with an urgency born of fear. Her hands ran up the soft leather of his jacket and linked tightly around his neck, trembling fingers burying themselves into his hair, while Max pulled her closer to him, deepening the kiss with an urgent hunger of his own, his hands splaying over her arched back, moulding her to him so she could feel his instant, throbbing response to her closeness.

I love you, she told him with that kiss. Then, on a muffled sob, she broke away from him and crossed the room to lean against the sofa, struggling to find her composure.

'I won't marry you,' she stated thickly. 'You don't care for me enough for me to trust you, and I just couldn't cope with a life of not knowing whose bed you were warming when you weren't in mine. As for the baby ...' She turned slowly to face him with a look of deadness in her eyes. 'You must do what you feel is right for you. I won't deny you your rights as a father, but as far as the rest goes—' she waved a heavy hand '—it's over. W-will you go now?' she appealed dully. 'I feel—tired.'

And she looked it—achingly so. Max stood looking at her for a long time, his gaze narrowed and sombre. He pushed his hands into his pockets and glanced broodingly at his feet for a moment, then nodded grimly.

'OK, we'll leave it for now,' he agreed quietly, and made for the door. 'Take care of yourself,' he added as he left her. 'I'll call you.'

Then he was gone. Max had a superb repertoire of exit lines. Clea had heard most of them, since she'd spent a lot of her time watching him walk out of her life.

Brad Gattingswas easy to work for. Clea's duties were by no means as interesting as they had been at the Computer Electronics Company, but the job filled a gap—served a purpose—even though there was a ganging up afoot to force her into giving up work altogether.

The pressures placed on her were consistent, and, for Clea, irritating. She didn't need to work. It was too hot. She should be resting more. She should be thinking of the baby's welfare, if she couldn't be bothered considering her own!

But she
liked
working! Brad was no hard taskmaster. After the complexities and pressures of working for Max, this job was a doddle by comparison. And Brad was always so easy-going with her. He didn't look grim-faced with censure every time he saw her—like some she could mention. He made her laugh, he would flirt with her unmercifully and make her feel like a woman instead of the huge balloon she resembled. He thought she looked sexy pregnant, not worn out! He thought there was something distinctly desirable about waist-length, gypsy-black hair and sexy long legs on a woman swollen with child. He said her face had a sultry kind of serenity about it that made him want to kiss it. No one should be allowed big pansy eyes like hers, and lips that naturally pouted invitation, while morally being unavailable. He didn't go on and on about her looking tired, wearied to death.

Max did. But then, Max was uncomfortable with her condition.

He refused to stop coming around to see her, but he didn't like it. He even insisted on taking her out regularly, for dinner somewhere, or to see a show, but she considered them
duty
excursions. And if he went out of his way to be kind and patient and very indulgent with her, then he also took great care to touch her as little as possible. Not that she wasn't relieved at this reticence. Every time his hand made contact with her arm, helping her in and out of his car, or just simply guiding her somewhere, her senses reacted like an alarm, painfully reminding her of what used to be. He hated looking at her, because she was carrying his child and he didn't want her to. He hadn't picked her out to be the mother of his children. He had picked her out to satisfy other much more basic needs. If she consented to marry him—and he had never given up suggesting it—he would have been bitterly regretting it by now, because sometimes he could barely stand looking at her—never mind living under the same roof as her! She had actually seen evidence of it in the tight pulling of his mouth when he thought she wasn't looking at him, or in the way he tensed up like piano-wire if she unintentionally brushed against him. His visits were kept up with the monotonous regularity that reminded her of hospital visits. A necessity that had to be endured.

Her mother wasn't much better. Although there was more genuine concern in Amy's manner, she just nagged too much. 'I rest for two hours every afternoon,' she repeatedly told Clea. 'And I have someone who does all my housework for me. London is just too hot for someone in our condition; I wish you would stop being so stubborn and move out of that flat. You could come and live here with us, then you would have both me and James. No worries at all, you wouldn't have to do a jot if you didn't want to!'

James would sometimes turn up at lunch time and drag her out to some exclusive restaurant, sitting over her while she ate. He would frown and look concerned, tell her she wasn't eating properly, that she looked pale and drawn when she thought she looked and felt fine! Once he'd gone away again, however, she
would
be feeling decidedly haggard!

And now her doctor had joined in the fray. 'You aren't taking those iron tablets regularly.' Max would appreciate that, thought Clea wryly, she was lousy at taking pills. 'Your blood pressure is up—not much—but up. I think it's time you stopped working. This hot weather saps your energy. You're carrying around extra weight you aren't used to. The baby needs sustenance to develop, which it takes from you, and therefore leaves you tired sooner than you expect. You should give up your job.'

Only Brad abstained from nagging. But then, he had purely selfish reasons to keep her sweet, since he was relying on her work until his secretary got back from her travels. She knew she was indispensable to Brad, but at least he didn't nag!