THE EARL'S PREGNANT BRIDE (10 page)

Genny poked at her sweaty, falling-down ponytail. The elastic came loose and she stuck it in her pocket, then swiftly raked the tangled mess behind her ears. She wanted a shower and to put on something really pretty.

And then to kill Melinda Cartside.

All these overwhelming emotions. Was this what falling in love did to you? It wasn’t fun in the least, and she was growing so tired of it.

“Gen?” Twin lines drew down between Rafe’s black brows: worry. He looked worried.

And he
should
be worried if he was fooling around with this Melinda person. They might have gotten married because of the baby. He might not love her the way she’d begun to love him. But still. They
were
married. She needed to have a little talk with him about what marriage meant to her.

And what it had better mean to him.

He was still watching her, still looking worried.

Genny put on her friendly face and entered the Blue Drawing Room. “Hello.” She aimed a thousand-watt smile at the other woman. Rafe put out a hand to pull her close to his side. She jerked away. “I’ve been out running, throwing sticks for the dogs. You’ll be covered in mud.”

“I don’t mind.” He pulled her close anyway, up nice and snug against his beautifully cut jacket and gray silk trousers. It felt so good—his warmth and size, the smell of his aftershave that was fresh and green, a little bit musky. And so, so manly. “Gen. Melinda.”

The woman gushed, “Your Highness. I’m so pleased.” She actually managed to sound sincere.

“You must call me Genny,” she said, and thought she sounded friendly and gracious and not the least bit murderous after all.

“Melinda grew up in the village,” Rafe said. “But she lives in London now.”

“I own a shop,” Melinda provided. “Women’s fashion.”

Right. The shop. Brooke had mentioned the shop and all the clothes that she’d bought there....

“I hear you’ve made a big success,” Rafe said.

“It’s going rather well, I must admit.”

Genny needed more information. “And what brings you to Hartmore?”

“I invited her,” said Brooke from the doorway—which meant that Rafe hadn’t.

Good. And Genny should have remembered that. Brooke had said that the woman was coming for a visit.

Dear God, this was awful. Love had addled her mind and stolen her memory. She could hardly recall the things she’d been told night before last.

“Brooke, hello!” exclaimed Melinda.

Brooke took a step into the room and pirouetted on her heel. She wore a bubblegum-pink blazer over a wonderful featherlight blush-colored dress. “All Fresh.”

“I’m flattered,” said Melinda. She explained to Genny, “Fresh is the name of my shop.”

“That’s right.” Genny hoped her smile didn’t look like a grimace. “Brooke has told us all about it.”

Brooke was still preening. “I love everything I bought.”

“I’m so pleased.” Melinda glowed and gave a little wave of her left hand. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

Brooke asked, “Genevra, did you fall in the lake?”

Genny laughed. It sounded easy and natural and she was glad about that. “No, but the dogs and I did have a good run around it.” She eased out from under Rafe’s arm. “Excuse me, everyone. I do need to wash the mud off.” She aimed herself at the foyer and she kept going until she was through it, up the stairs, down the hallway and safely in the East Bedroom.

* * *

Genny didn’t hear the shower door open.

She was too busy rinsing the sweat and mud away—and trying not to wonder what Melinda Cartside and Rafe were doing downstairs. Then a hard arm hooked around her waist. She knew it was Rafe, but a shriek of surprise still got away from her as she found herself reeled in tight against his big bare chest.

“Rafe!” She bopped him one, using the heel of her hand against the giant bulge of his shoulder. “You’ll give me a heart attack.”

He gazed down at her, looking all lazy and pleased with himself. Water plastered his hair to his head, ran down his cheeks and off the end of his nose. It also splashed over his broad chest, catching in the dark trail of hair there, making little sparkling rivulets that joined into bigger rivulets and trickled lower. And lower... “I’m happy to be home.” He was definitely glad to see her. It was in his eyes as he looked at her—and there was also that lovely hardness rising against her belly.

Apparently, he would rather be with her than Melinda. That was gratifying. She stared up at him and thought about kissing him, about climbing all over him right then and there, with the shower raining down on them.

But then she thought about all the things they never seemed to talk about. And she decided they really needed to start somewhere.

Why not Melinda?

Oh, please. She knew very well why not Melinda.

What if he really was having an affair with her?

She didn’t want to know.

But then again, she
needed
to know.

Was this where married people went wrong? They avoided the difficult things and before they knew it, everything was difficult and there was nothing true left between them.

“You’re looking at me strangely.” He dipped his head and pressed his cheek to hers. The water streamed between them, tickling a little. “What?” he whispered into her ear.

She pushed on his shoulders until she could meet his eyes. “I need to tell you something.”

He tried to keep teasing her. “This is sounding much too serious.”

She just gazed at him somberly through the veil of running water. “Well, yes, Rafe. It is rather serious, as a matter of fact.”

He stepped back clear of the shower spray then. His expression was not the least encouraging. The scar pulled harder than ever at the corner of his mouth—but it didn’t come close to making him look as if he might smile. “What is it?” he asked again, this time in a thoroughly discouraging tone.

She backed from under the shower head, too, putting even more distance between them. “Don’t look so worried. It’s not about Edward or the night that he died.”

He leaned near again, but only in order to reach around her and shut off the water. Then he pushed open the shower door and grabbed a fluffy bath sheet from the heated rack on the nearest wall.

She stood silent, watching his unreadable face as he blotted water from her hair and then wrapped the toasty towel around her. “Thank you,” she whispered finally, tucking it, sarong-style, above her breasts.

He said nothing, just grabbed another towel, rubbed himself down quickly and hooked it around his waist. They got out of the shower, went into the bedroom and sat, side by side, between the curtains, on the edge of the bed. She tried to think how to start.

When the silence stretched too long, he said, “All right, then. Whatever it is, tell me. I’m waiting.”

Her insecurities tried to take control. They urged her to get on his case, to take the offensive. She longed to demand hotly,
Are you, or have you ever been, Melinda Cartside’s lover?

But that was hardly fair. And what would she accomplish by jumping all over him? What would that do but push him away?

No. She wanted him to talk with her, to be frank with her. And she really needed him to understand what was bothering her. He should know upfront why she had suspicions about him and the Cartside woman.

And that meant she had to share the little secret she’d been keeping since she was fourteen years old.

She gulped and got after it. “Eleven years ago, when I came for a summer visit, I went looking for you. You know how I was then, always with a thousand things I needed to tell you immediately or sooner.” She tried a laugh. It came out all strangled sounding. He didn’t laugh with her. He only waited, watching her guardedly. So she said the rest. “I ran down to the lake and I saw you sitting out on the jetty with a woman I’d never seen before.”

He knew then. “Melinda.”

She nodded. “You were laughing together. And you kissed her. I ran away, back to the house, before you could see me. I never saw her again until today.”

“You never said a word...”

She fiddled with the towel, tucking it a little tighter. “I felt...embarrassed. Confused. Angry, too, though I knew I had no right to be.”

He touched her then, easing a soggy curl away from her cheek with a slow caress of his index finger. Something hard and painful inside her softened, melted. “You were angry?”

“Yes. Well, actually, I was furious. Do not ask me to explain that. I don’t think I can.”

“What else?”

“Today, before I came into the Blue Room, I heard you two talking. You sounded...affectionate toward her. You told her never to change and she laughed. I didn’t know at that moment that she was the woman from the jetty. But it was a husky, too-friendly laugh, I thought.” She straightened her shoulders. “And it bothered me. A lot.”

“There’s nothing between Melinda and me.” His voice was calm. Level. “Not anymore.”

“But there
was
something eleven years ago?”

“Gen...”

“I want to know, Rafe. You were lovers then, is that what you’re saying?”

“For that summer, yes.”

“But how? I never saw her again, though I followed you everywhere during that visit. When did you have time to be her lover?”

He made a low sound. It might have been a chuckle. “I got away on my own now and then, believe it or not.”

“Hmph. Eloise never mentioned her. Neither did Brooke or Edward, or your mother. Were you keeping things secret, the two of you?”

“We were, yes.”

“But why?”

He frowned a little. “We always we knew it wasn’t going to last forever. She wanted to keep what we had just between us, didn’t want her parents or anyone getting ideas about some kind of future between her and me—or worse, having people deciding that I was somehow taking advantage of a nice village girl. Melinda always planned to get out, to see the world. And that fall, she did. She went to France. We drifted apart. It’s nothing mysterious.”

“And since then?”

“That first year after she left the village, I went to Paris to see her a couple of times. And then, well, she got on with her life. I had mine. I ran into her once after Paris, a chance meeting in the village about five years ago. She was home on holiday. We said hello, wished each other well. And that was it until today, when I found her waiting in the Blue Room. I was surprised to see her. When you came in, she was telling me about her shop, about how much she loves living in London.”

“All very innocent, then?”

“Gen...” His voice teased her. So did the light in his eyes. He wrapped an arm around her. She allowed him to ease her back across the bed. He braced on an elbow and gazed down at her. “Did you think I was having a little something on the side with Melinda, is that it?”

She started to deny it, just out of pride. But truth was the point here and pride only got in the way of the truth. “Well, yes. I did wonder.”

“I’m not.” He leaned closer. “You’re the only one I’m having a little something with.” He breathed the words against the still-damp skin of her throat. “Scratch that. With you, it’s a whole lot of something.” She did like the sound of that.

She liked it a lot. “Really?”

“Really.”

She knew she was blushing. “It’s only that we got married so fast...”

“We’ve known each other since you were five. Twenty years, Gen. For at least the first fifteen of those twenty, you told me all your secrets.”

She pulled a face. “Whether you wanted to hear them or not.”

“Except now I learn that you saw me kissing Melinda Cartside and never told me until today. How many other secrets are you keeping from me?”

How many are you keeping from me?
she thought, but couldn’t quite make herself ask.

Yet.

And that had brought her back around to the ugly things Fiona had said Monday night. Should she go there now, try to get him to talk about the cruel old stories concerning who his real father might be?

Maybe not. They’d covered enough dangerous emotional territory for one day.

He added, “A wife should tell her husband everything.”

“Of course you would say that. You’re the husband.”

He caught the edge of her towel. She tried to hold on, but he wouldn’t stop tugging on it. With a low, nervous laugh, she let go. He peeled it back. Then he took the other side and peeled it back, too. When she tried to wrap her arms across her bare breasts, he shook his head. “Don’t.”

“You’re very bossy.” She put her arms down.

“I like to look at you. It was bad in London.”

“Bad? Why?”

“You weren’t there.”

Gratifying. Definitely. “So you missed me?”

He nodded. “I find I’ve grown accustomed to having you in my bed. I don’t like it when you’re not there...to look at. To touch.” He put his big hand, fingers spread, on her belly. “A little fuller, I think.”

She blew out her cheeks with a breath. “Yes. I’ll be fat as an old cow in now time.”

“You’re not the least old.”

“Oh, you...” Her hand was wedged between them. All it took was a twist of her wrist and she was tugging on his towel. It came undone.

“Careful.” He bent over her and pressed those wonderful lips to her stomach, right where his hand had been.

She sighed. It ended on a tiny moan. “We never talked...”

“About?”

“Being true...”

“Do you want us to be true?” He kissed the words onto her skin right over where their baby slept.

“Yes. I want only the two of us in this marriage—you and me. Nobody on the side.”

He opened his mouth, brushed her belly with his tongue, nibbled on her belly button. Pleasure shimmered through her veins, flashed across her skin.

She murmured, “I know we started all wrong...”

“There are worse ways to start.” He laid a sweet string of nipping kisses up over her ribs to her left breast.

She moaned again as he sucked her nipple into his mouth. “I want a
real
marriage, Rafe. I’m a Bravo-Calabretti after all. We marry for...”
Love,
she thought, but didn’t let herself say. She let a moan of pleasure suffice.

He sucked more strongly and did something amazing with his tongue. She closed her eyes. A thread of pleasure seemed to connect her breast to her core. Fire licked along that thread.