The Secretary's Secret / Rodeo Daddy: The Secretary's Secret / Rodeo Daddy

He turned grey. She shrugged. ‘I just want you to know that you don’t have to feel guilty about that. At least, not on my account.’

If he really did mean to walk away from his child, though, she hoped guilt would plague him every day of his sorry life.

He moved to fiddle with her CD player on the other side of the room. The sound of lapping water and soft squeals and gurgles filled the room.

She stared at him when he turned back around and then at the CD player. ‘What on earth is that?’

‘It’s called Sounds of the Sea.’ He shrugged and held up the CD case. ‘It’s supposed to be calming and relaxing.’

He’d bought her a relaxation CD!

‘I got it from one of those hippy places when I went shopping earlier.’ He rubbed the back of his neck and didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘You know the doctor said you needed to relax. I thought the CD … ‘

‘I thought you went shopping for a change of clothes, a toothbrush.’

‘I did. And for food—your refrigerator was practically empty!’

‘There are plenty of frozen TV dinners.’ She shrugged at his stare. ‘I don’t cook.’

He planted his legs, hands on hips. ‘What do you mean, you don’t cook?’

She waved her hands in front of her face. ‘This is all beside the point. Alex, you’re doing my head in!’

One corner of his mouth kinked up. ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that to Caro.’

The silence between them filled with the laughter of dolphins—oddly hypnotic. She shook herself out from under its spell. He might find this amusing, but she’d lost her sense of humour. There was too much at stake for laughing. Her baby …

‘I just don’t get you at all. You wanted me to terminate my pregnancy—’

‘No, I didn’t! I—’

‘You threw up when I told you I was pregnant but now you’re doing everything you can to make sure the baby stays healthy.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘You want this baby, Kit. You’ve already given your heart to it. You love it. I would never take that away from you.’

Her chest clenched. Frustration, remembered joy and then the ensuing crushing desolation, Alex’s generosity as a lover and then his callousness the next day, it all rose up through her now. She didn’t understand him at all and yet she’d agreed to let him stay in her house.

She was having his baby!

She needed to understand at least some of what had happened between them or …

Or she’d have learned nothing.

‘You were the most incredible lover, Alex, generous and thoughtful. You made me feel beautiful and cherished.’ And loved, which just went to show how skewed her judgement had been.

He leapt up, going white at her words.

‘And then the next day you acted as if what had happened between us meant nothing. No, even less that that, as if what had happened between us was an aberration.’ She lifted her hands. ‘Why?’

‘It wouldn’t have been fair to let you think we had a future.’

‘But you were so utterly cold, so callous. You didn’t even bother trying to let me down gently. What did I do wrong? Please—I don’t ever want to make that same mistake again.’ She had a baby to think of. Her heart jammed in her throat. What if next time it wasn’t just her heart she broke but her child’s too? If her judgement about him could be so off, how could she ever trust it again?

‘How could you have changed so completely? What was that all about? Was it you? Or did I do something?’ She couldn’t hold the questions back. Her voice rose as each one burst from her. ‘Why?’

Alex’s face twisted in an emotion she couldn’t identify—anger? Panic? Horror? He thrust an arm towards her stomach. ‘Because I didn’t want that!’

The shouted words reverberated in the quiet of her cool, shady bedroom. They pulsed in the air like live things. Her hands crept across her stomach in an attempt to block her unborn baby’s ears. In an attempt to protect it from pain and hurt. In an effort to console it. Her knees drew up beneath the covers to form a barrier between him and her.

‘You really don’t want this baby, do you?’ She’d known that before, but now she knew it in a harder, more real way. And it hurt. It died, that part of her that hadn’t been able to give up hope. Hope that once he’d recovered from the initial shock he’d come around, perhaps even welcome this baby into his life.

Alex was never going to accept this child.

‘I’m sorry.’ He’d gone a hideous kind of grey. ‘I shouldn’t have yelled.’

Perhaps not, but she couldn’t really blame him. She’d pushed him. She hadn’t meant to, it had just happened. But now she had her answer.

He dragged a hand back through his hair, eyed her uncertainly. ‘Time for us to get calm again.’

‘I am calm.’

Strangely enough, that was true. She felt icily and preternaturally calm. It didn’t stop her from suspecting she may well cry buckets over all this later. ‘I’m tired,’ she whispered.

‘I’ll leave you to rest.’

CHAPTER SIX

ON WEDNESDAY evening Kit woke to the smell of something divine coming from the kitchen.

Alex poked his head around her bedroom door as if he had some finely tuned radar that let him know when she was awake. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Good, thank you. Actually, really good.’ Back-to-normal good. She pushed herself into a sitting position and smiled when her back proved totally pain-free. ‘I can’t believe how much I’m sleeping, though.’

‘Your body needs the rest.’ He shuffled his feet, glanced away. ‘Dinner will be ready in five if you need to …’ He waved towards the bathroom.

‘Freshen up?’ she supplied.

‘Uh, right.’

No sooner had she made it back to bed and settled the covers around her when Alex walked in with a tray. Kit groaned as he set it on her lap. ‘This smells heavenly.’

‘It’s just a beef and potato salad.’

She could tell he was pleased, though. She speared a piece of beef, popped it into her mouth and closed her eyes in bliss as she chewed.

When she opened her eyes she found Alex frozen to the spot, his eyes glued to her mouth. Her stomach, skin, even her ears, all tightened. ‘I … um …’ She cleared her throat and tried to tamp down on the heat rising through her. She set her fork to her plate before she dropped it, and searched her mind for something to say. ‘You’re … um … not going to eat out there on your own, are you?’

He snapped back. ‘I thought—’