The Millionaire's Redemption (23 page)

They shared breakfast. Lilly was a messy eater but she wanted to feed herself and Holly didn’t have the energy to argue with her. It was pathetic being so alone and unloved.

Don’t fret about the mess
. It will still be there tomorrow or the next day, or whatever day she felt strong enough to clean it up. Caring for Lilly and the baby were her main priorities. Anything else would have to wait. She couldn’t remember feeling so weak or lethargic after Lilly’s birth, but Robbie had been there for support.

Her chest grew tight, her breathing more rapid. “Don’t go to pieces, woman, don’t go to pieces.” She repeated the words a couple of times.

After changing Lilly’s nappy she dressed her warmly in pink stockings, overalls and a jumper with a cardigan on top. A terrible draft gusted in from under the outside door. It froze her legs so she stuffed a couple of towels under the gap. What a bleak day. A glance out the kitchen window confirmed her most pessimistic view. It was going to be an absolute shocker.

For once she was glad the place only had a tiny kitchen, lounge room, bedroom and small bathroom and laundry combined.

She played with Lilly for a while, every now and again checking to see if the pilot light had miraculously turned itself on again. No such luck. The temptation to call the real estate man and ask him to fix the heater was great, but she paid a pittance in rent. If she caused him any hassles he night ask her to leave. She had no lease, nothing in writing. Her head ached, and she trembled with the cold.

Desperation
finally
had her dialing the real estate agent’s number. She would have to take the risk and throw herself on his mercy. The phone rang and ran, but no one answered. She dialed a second time and still no one answered. Her throat started getting scratchy. Surely she wasn’t getting a cold. That would be the absolute end.

After checking that there was nothing dangerous Lilly could get into, she crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over herself and lay there shivering. That’s how she spent the day, feeding Robert or Lilly, changing them and dozing. Sometimes Lilly lay down with her and slept, most times she didn’t.

She started to get cramping pains in her stomach and her head ached, but she dared not take any painkillers in case it affected the breast milk. Lilly pulled out all the saucepans and started crashing them together. The noise grew louder, intensifying the pain in her head until it became unbearable.

“Stop it!” she yelled.

The racket increased. Something snapped inside her. She couldn’t stand it a moment longer without going mad. Staggering out into the kitchen, she stopped dead in her tracks. Lilly had just about emptied every cupboard. The flour and sugar canisters lay open on the floor, their contents spilling out, while Lilly hammered a packet of biscuits into the floor with the frying pan.

“You naughty girl.” Holly slapped her on the hand and she started screaming. It was hard to know which of them got the biggest shock. She had never hit the toddler before.

“I’m losing it, I’m losing it,” she wailed, bending down to pick up Lilly. “I’m sorry baby. Mummy didn’t mean to hit you.” She stood up and slipped on the flour, landing flat on her back with Lilly on top. She felt a sudden pain at the side of her forehead as it hit the corner of the cupboard.

A million stars exploded in front of her eyes. The room spun and a black veil descended over her. Oh, God, she couldn’t lose consciousness. What would happen to Lilly and the baby?

Visions of her death and them slowly starving because no one was around to care for them, rose up to torture her. Lilly, thinking this was some new kind of game, pulled at her hair, which made her headache worse.

Holly dragged herself up into a sitting position, fighting nausea, pain and a seesawing room. She felt her head. Thank God, no blood. Robert chose this moment to start crying. Too scared to stand upright in case she fell down again, she lifted Lilly to one side and crawled on her hands and knees. Those few yards felt like miles. She was shaking by the time she made it to the bedroom.

Levering herself upwards, she used the wardrobe and wall for support. She had to lift him out of the crib somehow, but her vision blurred. Her trembling hands were clumsy. The crib tipped over, and she grabbed Robert just before he fell out. She didn’t have the strength to right the crib. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to stagger over to the bed and collapse on it.

She shivered now, not from cold but fear, a stark overwhelming fear that opened up like a black bottomless pit wanting to swallow her. The baby could have been killed or seriously injured had she not been able to catch him. He screamed so hard he became distressed, his little face turning red, his legs and arms moving wildly.

“It’s all right, baby, it’s all right. Mummy will feed you in a minute. She leaned against the pillows, pulling the blankets up to her waist. Thank goodness she hadn’t bothered putting on a bra. Pushing up her top, she guided the baby’s head and his mouth clamped on her nipple.

“See, Mummy wouldn’t let you go hungry,” she crooned, brushing his downy black hair with her fingertips.

After Robert finished feeding, he lay there staring at her with his deep blue eyes. Would they change later, turn to
gray
like his father’s? His dark hair looked just like Justin’s; he had inherited the cowlick at the nape of his neck.

Oh, Justin she thought sadly, how different things could have been if you’d cared for me, been prepared to make some kind of commitment. Lilly wandered in whimpering with hunger. It was well past their normal teatime. In desperation, Holly shifted Robert to one side and offered Lilly her breast. She had been drinking from a bottle over the last few weeks but didn’t hesitate to take the breast again.

Lilly sucked for about five minutes before drifting off to sleep. Robert slept now as well. If she rested her eyes, the pain might go away.

What if she were suffering from concussion? If she fell asleep, she mightn’t wake up? Fear reared its ugly head again. She lay still with her eyes closed, imploring herself not to fall asleep. It would be bliss to slip into oblivion for a little while, but a single mother with two babies didn’t have the luxury. They needed help. Common sense told her this. How could she look after two babies when she struggled to get out of bed?

I want Justin. Desperation overwhelmed her. I don’t care if he’ll never love me, that he’ll despise me for letting myself get pregnant and for running away. He had always been kind to Lilly. Surely he wouldn’t turn his back on them now at this, their darkest hour. He wouldn’t reject his son, even if he hadn’t wanted him in the first place. She must believe this or she would go to pieces completely.

The logical solution would be for him to come over and make everything right again. She could relax and have a proper sleep. A few hours of uninterrupted sleep instead of broken catnaps, would get her back on track again. A couple of hours of his time, would he begrudge them that?

Pride had to be booted out the door if it interfered with the welfare of her children. She argued with herself, her pounding heart becoming a desperate echo of the howling wind and rain lashing at the windows.

Lilly slept now. Wrapping Robert in his bunny rug, she picked him up and maneuvered herself off the bed. Slowly, with infinite care, she stood up. The room didn’t tilt, but her head ached and she still felt nauseous.

She trembled with the effort of putting the baby back into his crib and tucking him in. Her mobile phone, her lifeline to the outside world, lay on the dressing table. Grabbing it, she stumbled into the lounge room and collapsed in a chair. With a blanket wrapped around her shoulders she rested the phone in her lap while she argued with herself a little more.

Holly woke up with a start. She must have dozed off in the chair. She didn’t have a clue how long she had been asleep, but the rest didn’t make her feel much better. It was pitch black outside now. She didn’t have the energy to get up and check the time. Her hands trembled as she picked up the phone.

Chapter Seventeen

Justin cursed as the ringing phone woke him up. Damn it all, couldn’t a man get even one night’s sleep without interruption? He decided to ignore it, but in a reflex action, his arm automatically shot out and picked it up.

“Devereux,” he snarled.

“Justin.”

He heard the tremulous voice that had disturbed his sleep for months and wondered whether in fact he was dreaming.

“It’s a matter of life and death. Don’t hang up.” The desperate plea stopped him from cutting her off straight away.

“What do you want at this hour of the bloody night?”  He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months thinking and worrying about Holly.

“I need you to come over and help me. I can’t cope on my own anymore.” She started crying, and he swore under his breath.

“Is Lilly all right?”  What if something had happened to the child? God, he would never forgive himself for not trying to find them to make sure they were okay.

“Yes, it’s me, Justin. I’m sick. I hit my head, and I’m so frightened. What if something happens to me? If I become unconscious? What happens to Lilly and...?”

“All right.” He cut off her almost incoherent babble. Holly could be a bit of a drama queen, but she sounded on the verge of hysteria. “Calm down and tell me where you are.”

She told him.

“Back at the bungalow?” he repeated incredulously. “I thought you were in
Queensland
.”

“No, no, I lied, so you wouldn’t follow me. Please come straight away or something terrible might happen,” she pleaded.

Oh God, surely she wouldn’t be contemplating...

He broke out in a cold sweat. “Don’t do anything
. S
tay put until I get there.”

He leapt out of bed and dashed over to the wardrobe to grab some fleecy track pants and a top. What a shocker of a night. He couldn’t remember the last time the weather had been so foul.

A man must be crazy going out in such a fierce storm, but Holly sounded so distraught. He charged out of the apartment. Why the hell did he let her get to him again? He had just about gotten her out of his system, hadn’t he?

As he drove out of the underground car park, he cursed under his breath. No matter what she had done, how she messed up his emotions, he couldn’t turn his back on her when she sounded so desperate.

He should have checked on her, but didn’t want to spoil things if she had found happiness with someone else. A man carrying the emotional baggage he did, couldn’t give Holly the stability she needed, but he missed the pair of them. Lilly’s chubby baby arms wrapped around his neck, her sloppy kisses. Holly’s warmth and spontaneity, the passion they had shared. He had fallen in love with her, but fought it every step of the way because of a crazy ideology he had manufactured years ago. Holly accused him of making her feel cheap, and he had. Wincing, he remembered the ugly accusations he threw at her, how he tried to humiliate her to hammer home a point. He hadn’t taken her anywhere, but it wasn’t for the reasons she thought. Hell, he wanted her all to himself. Possessiveness was the driving force, pure and simple.

Would she come back to him if he begged her to? Holly was a romantic. If he confessed his love, surely he would stand a chance of winning her back.

The windscreen wipers struggled with the volume of driving rain. The roads were empty. The yellow light thrown out from the street lamps cast ominous shadows on the glistening, wet roadway. Like battery acid, fear ate away at his insides. He literally felt the deep, corrosive pain.

Eventually, he made it to the tree-lined street where Holly lived. Driving slowly, he checked the house numbers as he did so. Number twenty-six was in darkness, but he peered down the side drive and spied a light cutting a swathe through the shrubbery. She must be living in the old bungalow she had told him about. He parked the car in the street and sprinted up the drive.

As he fumbled with the catch on the side gate, water poured down on his head from both the sky and the tall overhanging shrubs. Damn it. He felt like kicking the gate down.

Finally, he dragged it open and hurried towards the bungalow. It looked forlorn squashed between the dark shrubbery. Most women would be scared witless living alone behind an empty house, but Holly was a gutsy little thing.

He hammered on the door. Why the hell didn’t she answer? He was getting drowned. “It’s Justin, open up.”

The door opened. The moment he stepped over the threshold Holly hurtled into his arms.

“You came, you came.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him like a limpet and he held her close. What a welcome. His heart leapt with hope. She still cared about him.

He pushed the door shut with his foot. His euphoria quickly turned into a feeling of dread. The place felt as cold as the morgue. Holly was even thinner than he remembered, and she was trembling.

Her soft, flyaway hair smelt like he remembered. He tugged it gently to bring her face up so he could taste her lips again, savor their sweetness.

Shock shuddered all the way through him when he realized the state she was in. She looked white as death. Her tear-filled eyes had sooty smudges under them. A nasty bruise flawed the alabaster skin at the side of her forehead.