Rescued: Mother-To-Be. Trish Wylie

a dig at my size?’

      There was brief moment of tense silence, and then he laughed at her deadpan expression, the oh-so-male sound echoing around the cavernous room. ‘No-o. It was a query in case anything I made would make you sick.’

      Her mouth pursed momentarily in thought, before she sighed dramatically. ‘Not really. I’ve been past all that stuff for a while. But if you put a pickled anything in it, it would taste one heck of a lot better.’

      Inside a few minutes he had made sandwiches, with pickled onions on one side of hers, and two steaming mugs of tea. To distract herself from watching him move around the kitchen, Colleen allowed herself to glance at his laptop screen. It had no effect on her pulse whatsoever.

      He pulled up a chair beside her. ‘It’s work.’

      Flushing slightly at having been caught looking at what could have been private information, she avoided his gaze. ‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’

      ‘Apparently not. In which case I must have been really bad at some point.’

      Concentrating on her sandwich for a moment, while her mind did outrageous translations of ‘really bad’, she then risked a sideways glance at his face as she raised the sandwich to her lips. ‘Sharon Delaney being a good example, I suppose?’

      Eamonn’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘You knew about that?’

      ‘Half the village knew about it.’

      ‘Nothing actually happened.’ There was no reason for him to explain that to her, but he continued. ‘Staying out all night got us in enough trouble.’

      ‘Oh, I remember.’

      Eamonn’s attention was drawn from the teasing light in her blue eyes to her mouth as she bit into the sandwich. He watched her lips close around it, watched as she licked bread-crumbs away with the tip of her pink tongue. It was one of the most sensual things he’d ever witnessed. Who knew that a sandwich could have such an effect? It never had before that he could recall.

      ‘What else do you remember?’

      Colleen turned her face away from his intensive gaze, her voice dropping. ‘I have the memory of an elephant.’ She smiled. ‘Size of one at the minute too.’

      ‘You keep on doing that. You’re not all that big. You’re having a baby, and that’s one of the most amazing things a woman can do.’

      The softly spoken words touched a chord in her heart. She looked over at him, but he had turned his face away, leaving only his profile to her inquisitive gaze as he bit into his own sandwich.

      It was one of the nicest things anyone had said to her of late. And at a time when she could stand a compliment or two. Waddling around every day certainly didn’t make her feel amazing.

      But her guilt was still present, and she just didn’t know how to answer him because of it. She didn’t deserve compliments from him.

      While she thought, Eamonn was doing some thinking of his own. Without changing position, he stared straight ahead and asked, ‘How long since he left?’

      In a split second the warm glow from his words disappeared and was replaced by an icy chill. ‘Six months.’

      Out of his peripheral vision he saw her head bow, her attention back on her food. So he turned his face towards her and watched the slow flutter of her long lashes against her cheeks. ‘What happened?’

      Setting her sandwich back on the plate, she reached for the warmth of her mug, wrapping cold fingers around it. ‘He left with one of the stable girls. They’d been carrying on for a while.’

      Eamonn might be many things, but slow wasn’t one of them. Maybe that was part of the reason she’d been so defensive earlier, when he’d been talking to the girls? It had brought back bad memories for her. But he let it go. One step at a time, Eamonn. Pushing Colleen didn’t always have the desired result, after all.

      ‘You had no idea it was going on?’

      ‘I think I knew, deep down. But I’m stubborn, remember? I thought it would all work itself out.’ She spoke over the rim of the cup, shrugging her shoulders. ‘He could be very charming, and I think a part of me was swept off my feet by him. At least at the start. So I could hardly blame some naïve girl for falling for him.’

      She touched her mouth to the mug, hesitated, and glanced briefly at Eamonn’s face. ‘We see what we want to see sometimes, I guess.’

      ‘Did he know you were pregnant?’

      ‘Yes. No man who’s about to be a father shouldn’t know, don’t you think?’

      Eamonn tilted his head and nodded briefly as she sipped out of her mug. ‘I’d want to know if you were having my baby.’

      Colleen almost choked on her tea, her eyes watering as she forced it to go down the right channel without too much fuss. Dear Lord. Had he any idea what that statement did to a mind already full of night-time images? If he’d said something like that to her when she’d carried all those unrequited dreams before…

      ‘But then if it was mine I would never have left.’

      Oh, c’mon! Her eyes widened at the statement as she turned to look at him. Why did he have to say things like that? Why did the words just have to roll off his tongue as if he was discussing the weather? Had he really no idea of the dreams she’d had as a teenager? Had he no idea at all that hearing parts of them spoken aloud now was like a kick in the teeth to a woman who had so seriously managed to pick the wrong man to be father to her child?

      When she found words, they were almost a plea for him to understand how ridiculous his own words had been. ‘Right—that’s what you’d do. Even if it meant staying in a place where you hated being. That makes a lot of sense.’

      ‘I didn’t hate it here.’

      She made a small snort of disbelief.

      But his voice remained steady. ‘I just didn’t feel like I fitted in, and I was young—I thought there was more to life. That I should have a go at finding out.’

      ‘And was there?’

      There was a brief electric pause as he looked her in the eye. Then he shrugged. ‘I’ve made more money in the States than I would ever have done here, that’s for sure.’

      ‘And is that enough? Are you happy, Eamonn?’

      The sound of his name in such a soft tone caught him. Without thinking, he brought his gaze back to her mouth, and he stared for a long moment, mesmerised, before forcing himself to look up. He blinked—once, twice. Then, still not thinking it through, he reached a finger out and tucked the ever-errant strand of hair behind her ear again, before pushing his chair back, his voice low. ‘I’m not so sure it is enough.’

      Looking down at her stunned expression, he smiled wryly. ‘And, just for the record, that’s the first time I’ve said that out loud.’