Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

Megan was wearing a faded chenille dressing-gown, the sort of shapeless garment she’d been wearing for months. But as she turned against the moonlight streaming in from the window at the end of the passage, Honey had caught her profile.

For months she’d been looking at that profile, thinking no, surely not, that would be the one thing that would kill Jim, please no. It was just weight gain. Megan had been overeating. It had to be the reason.

And now…

‘Oh, God, you’ve lost it,’ she whispered. ‘Meg, you’ve lost the baby.’

‘What baby?’

‘You were pregnant.’

‘So what?’ Megan said wearily, and Honey grabbed her shoulders and propelled her back into her room and shut the door behind her.

‘You really were.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not any more.’ The girl’s voice sounded exhausted. Defeated.

‘What…what happened?’

‘It was dead,’ Megan whispered, still in that awful, inhuman voice. ‘It came early and it was dead. A miscarriage. I miscarried a baby and now it’s over. So you don’t have to worry. I’m fine.’

‘Oh, my dear…’ Honey reached out to hug her daughter but Megan flinched away.

‘Leave me alone,’she said dully. ‘Go back to Dad. Tell him there’s no need to worry. I’ll go on being his good little girl and he doesn’t have to have a heart attack.’

‘Megan, that’s not fair.’

‘My baby’s dead,’ Megan flashed at her. ‘Is that fair?’ Then she crumpled back onto the bed, sinking her face into her hands. ‘Nothing’s fair. The whole world isn’t fair.’

‘I’ll take you to the hospital,’ Honey said uncertainly, and Megan’s hands dropped from her face so she could stare at her mother in fury.

‘You think I shut up for all these months for you to tell Dad now?’she snapped. ‘Protect Dad at all costs? Well, I have and there’s nothing to do now but go to bed and forget about it.’

‘You’ll need to be checked.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Love…’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’Megan whispered. ‘I’m not doing anything. You tell anyone and I’ll deny it absolutely. The whole thing is over, Mum. Go back to bed.’

She sat, rigid and unmoving, waiting for Honey to leave. Waiting to be alone again. Waiting.

Honey was left with nothing to do. With nowhere to go.

She stared down at her daughter for a long, long minute and Megan glared back, unflinching.

‘The baby’s dead and it’s over,’she whispered. ‘There’s an end to it. An end to everything.’

‘Oh, my love…’

‘There’s no love about it, ’Megan said bleakly. ‘Leave me be. ’

‘Honey?’

It was Jim’s voice calling from down the hall, and with a last desperate glance at her daughter Honey turned away.

Megan flinched again.

But she sat unmoving. Then, as the door finally closed behind her mother, the girl hauled herself under the covers—and she started to shake.

CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS almost noon when Gina woke and for a moment she didn’t have a clue where she was or what was happening.

Then remembrance flooded back and with it horror.

The events of the day before were a jumbled kaleidoscope of surging emotion. A desperately ill baby. Dead children. Appalling injuries. Cal…

CJ. She reached out and his warm little body wasn’t beside her. Of course. He was with the Grubbs.

Still?

She checked her watch and gasped. What was she thinking of, sleeping this late? The baby, CJ—she’d have been needed and no one had called. She threw back her covers and then gasped again as a man’s silhouette blocked the sun.

‘You might like to reconsider getting out of bed,’ Cal drawled. ‘Unless you’re wearing more than it looks like you’re wearing from out here.’

He was on the veranda. She’d left the door open last night to let in the sea breeze, and he was blocking the doorway. And as for what she was wearing…Last night—or early this morning—she’d simply stripped off her sea-soaked clothes, stood under a cold shower until her burning body had cooled and then fallen straight into bed.

And now here was Cal, right in the doorway.

‘Go away,’she snapped, and hauled her sheet up to her chin.

‘I brought you your luggage,’ he told her, not going away at all but walking into her room and dumping her gear at the foot of the bed. ‘You could at least sound grateful.’

‘I’m grateful,’ she told him, glaring enough to give the lie to her words. But then she looked at the single red bag he was carrying and was distracted enough to be deflected. ‘I had two bags. A red and a green one.’

‘The red one’s heavy enough.’

‘I had a small green one.’

‘It didn’t come back, then,’ he told her. ‘The coach-line people delivered one red bag this morning but that was all there was. Problem?’

She caught herself. ‘Um…no.’ No problem. She was staying next door to a hospital after all.

Right. Where was she? Glaring.

‘There’s no problem if you go away,’ she told him, and he had the temerity to smile.