Their Newborn Gift Page 19

  A rock-ball of emotion lodged in her chest. This was it, the thought of never seeing Reilly again. Or, worse, seeing him once a year on Molly’s birthday, still loving him. Seeing him every day in the smiles of her children. Suddenly, that seemed a very real possibility.

  He stood, his eyes heavily shielded. ‘Good luck, Lea. You deserve to be happy. Tell Molly I’ll ring her.’ He gently kissed her forehead and walked out of the room. Out of her life.

  The heart-rate monitor hooked up to her went berserk.

  ‘Reilly!’

  His footsteps disappeared down the hall.

  ‘God damn you, Reilly Martin.’ The furious curse helped power her up. She struggled free of the covers on the bed and swung her legs over the side, wincing as the row of surgical staples bit savagely into her flesh. The cables connecting her to a half-dozen monitoring devices tangled like parachute cords as she tried to remove them. In the end she ripped all but the IV drip off her skin and threw them to the floor. Her skin bled where the fixings should be.

  The wheeled stand holding the IV-drip proved a terrific walking stick and she used it to haul herself onto shaky legs and propel herself out the door as the heart monitor went into alarm behind her. A concerned nurse tried to intercept her but Lea pushed past with a brisk apology.

  Her flimsy hospital gown fluttered open at the back but she didn’t care. The whole world could look at her naked butt if it meant catching up with Reilly.

  She couldn’t let him walk away thinking he wasn’t loved by someone, no matter how humiliating for her. She’d been doing things the easiest way for too long.

  The automatic doors opened out into the hospital car-park that was awash with seasonal rain. The cool splatter immediately hit her. ‘Reilly.’

  He turned, far across the car park, and sprinted back towards her when he saw her lurching out, unprotected, into the rain. Her heart thumped like a drum, high on adrenaline and thrilling one last time at the sight of his powerful body coming towards her. In seconds she was drenched, her light gown slaked to her naked skin, covering nothing. Her staples pulled painfully too.

  She didn’t care about either.

  Reilly peeled off his jacket as he got closer and wrapped it around her, pulling her close to him. ‘Are you trying to kill yourself, Lea?’

  His voice was furious but his body was warm and familiar. And like home. That didn’t make this any easier.

  Warm rain poured down on them both. Reilly’s body and thick oilskin coat shielded her from the worst of it. It was such a beautiful, tragic metaphor for their whole relationship. Would anyone ever protect her like this again? She pushed the thought away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Reilly. I’m sorry I can’t stay.’ She appealed up into dark eyes. ‘I don’t want you to be alone…’

  He shook his head, shutters dropping on those beautiful eyes. ‘It’s not your problem, Lea. I’m not some kind of charity case.’

  She bled for the pain in his voice. She could hear the child behind the man. ‘I know how it feels, Reilly. It’s why I kept Molly.’ She shivered even though the rain wasn’t cold. He pulled the coat tighter around her. ‘I told myself all kinds of things. Justified going ahead with the pregnancy a hundred ways. But I did it for selfish reasons, because I wasn’t strong enough to be alone. I should have been stronger.’

  Her eyes fell from his and touched on his lips before settling somewhere around his throat. ‘I’m trying to be strong now, Reilly. I’m trying to do the right thing, not the easiest thing. Staying with you would be so easy. But, in time, it would only hurt both of us.’

  He lifted her chin with a gentle finger. His gaze was tragic. ‘I know, Lea. I understand.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ She took a breath as rain trickled down her face, over her lips. ‘Staying is so seductive because I could see you every day, smell you, watch you with our daughter. Our son.’ Her voice broke on that one. ‘I’ve even caught myself thinking—just for a nanosecond—that if our baby wasn’t a match for Molly I’d get to stay with you longer.’ Her heart bled. ‘What kind of person does that make me?’

  Reilly shook his head but she rushed on. ‘But, ultimately, staying would kill me. I love you, Reilly, but I need to be loved back.’

  His eyes flared like her wild horses’, and he opened his mouth to speak. Lea cut him off. ‘I can’t go back on my commitment to myself. Even though it’s hurting you. I’m so sorry.’

  She let her head fall forward to rest on the strength of his chest. She felt his words rumbling in his body as much as heard them. His hand came up to thread through her saturated hair. His strength rushed into the vacuum within her.

  ‘You’re leaving because I don’t love you?’

  She lifted her face back to his scowling one. ‘I’m not trying to blame you. I just want you to know why I’m leaving. I wondered if just knowing I could love someone would be enough, because I was seriously starting to wonder, but it’s not. I want to be loved, Reilly. I need to be loved. I know that seems weak.’

  His smile was bittersweet and he stroked her wet hair from her face, shaking his head. ‘It’s not weak.’

  She blazed up at him. ‘I want you to know you will always be welcome in your children’s lives.’ No matter how hard that will be. ‘We’ll work something out.’

  His stare was intense. Finally he spoke. ‘It’s not enough, Lea.’

  The air sucked out of her and she stumbled a pace back. ‘What?’

  ‘Knowing I have a family somewhere, seeing them occasionally. It’s not enough. I want the whole package. I deserve more too. Daughter. Son. Wife.’ He blazed down at her. ‘People to love.’

  Lea shook her head. Had he not heard her? ‘Reilly…’

  ‘People I already love,’ he clarified.

  Daughter. Son. Lea gasped.

  Wife.

  ‘You love Molly.’

  ‘I love you both, Lea.’

  The ground shifted beneath her and she clung half to Reilly, half to the IV drip. He held her up at the elbows. Intense heat rained down on her from his eyes, warming her chilled body.

  ‘I’ve loved you since you rode wild with the brumbies.’ He risked a fleeting kiss on her frigid lips. Warmth leached out from the contact. ‘It took me a while to recognise the sensation.’

  He loved her? She became aware of the nursing staff hovering anxiously with umbrellas. She clung to Reilly. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to be away from him.

  Her voice broke. ‘You love me?’

  ‘So much it hurts. I thought you’d guessed. Weren’t we talking about that when we came in yesterday?’

  ‘I thought we were talking about me. My feelings.’

  Reilly groaned and pulled her against his lips. ‘We’re going to have to talk more.’

  Lea clung to him. ‘I thought you just wanted a family. Badly enough to take me too.’

  His angry growl was answer enough. ‘I didn’t want just any family. I wanted this family. I wanted you.’

  ‘You wanted the baby.’

  He nodded. ‘I did, at the beginning. But I could have just turned up on delivery day and taken him if that’s what it was really all about. I wanted you, Lea. And Molly. I love you.’

  His scorching mouth bled heat into hers, a crazy, thrilling kind of life support. She pressed herself to her toes to feed on his strong, full lips. Then he pulled away, his voice a smooth tumble of river stones. ‘Unless you can think of any reason that two people who love each other can’t be together, then I really, very badly, would like to marry you, Lea Curran. If you’ll have me.’

  Lea held her stitches together as she stretched up to find his mouth again, pressing a dozen acceptances into his blazing mouth, laughing and crying all at once. His hands drifted around behind her to tuck the open folds of the saturated gown more modestly together. She felt him smile against her lips.

  ‘We need to get you inside without anyone else seeing you,’ he whispered. ‘Bad enough that I’m ogling the wet body of a woman who’s jus
t had surgery.’

  Lea laughed and slipped her arms into the sleeves of his coat, sliding it on properly. The movement temporarily revealed the pink flush of her breasts, rounded and aching with milk, through the translucence of the wet hospital gown.

  Reilly’s eyes darkened further. He blew out a steadying breath and nodded to the hospital entrance. ‘It seems impossible, but I think there’s someone inside who needs those even more than I do.’

  A nurse darted forward and pointedly handed Reilly a large umbrella then sprinted back into the cover of the foyer. He steadied Lea’s IV-drip as she turned, curled in his embrace, and limped barefoot back into the hospital towards their daughter. And their new son.

  The rain poured on.

  Epilogue

  BABY Harrison certainly had a decent set of choppers on him. Lea winced as the emerging teeth grated on the sensitive flesh of her breast as he hungrily fed. She shifted on the comfortable swing-chair on Minamurra’s wide veranda as the fabulous June sunshine sprinkled down on them.

  Definitely time for solids. That would disappoint the little man in her arms, but she knew an older one who’d be delighted to have exclusive access at long last. She smiled at the thought. Her eyes found Reilly out in the left paddock, working one of the heavily pregnant mares in broad circles. Without the distraction of a hot-blooded stallion prancing about the place looking for trouble, the females had settled down well, showing Reilly what an intelligent and bombproof breed the brumbies were.

  He had two orders for new-blood foals that weren’t even conceived yet.

  Frank Dawes had trucked God’s Gift back to his mob at Yurraji, and then he’d trucked his wife and forty boxes of lord-knew-what out there. They were to become caretakers. Agnes had been only too happy to hang up her apron after a lifetime of caring for Reilly, and Frank had finally felt ready to call the love of his life ‘wife’ in the true sense and live with her. At the ripe age of sixty-two.

  They were as happy as clams in her grandfather’s little house.

  Lea swapped Harrison to the other breast and settled back into the cushions. Life was good. Despite the best attempts of Adele, the nightmare mother-in-law, their wedding had been simple, homely and crawling with children—Liam and Sapphie’s Harry, and Anna and Jared’s surprise sisters from India. Lea had caught Reilly clearing his throat thickly a number of times as he’d looked around him in dazed appreciation of the crowded, crazy family he was about to join.

  Not that he had a moment’s doubt, as he reminded her in very tangible terms every evening.

  She stretched in satisfaction. Yes, putting two loners together had worked out pretty well. Very well, in fact.

  Max the cat sprinted wildly across the house-paddock, a squealing Molly in hot pursuit. Molly with the flushed, pink cheeks and salmon-coloured lips of perfect, miraculous health. Lea caught herself as she was about to call out, ‘Walk!’

  She swallowed back a lump and let her daughter run.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  First published in Great Britain 2010

  Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Nikki Logan 2010

  ISBN: 978-1-408-92846-2

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Everyone’s Reading

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Other Books By

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Copyright