reasonable enough for her to use, as well.
“Same here,” she answered, speaking just as carefully. “With a man, I mean,” she added for clarity.
“I didn’t come in here to do that.” A trace of shock in his voice.
“I didn’t expect you at all.” Maggie was pleased to make that point. “I thought it was Mrs Featherfield knocking.”
Another silence, not quite so tense, carrying more a stunned quality which they both accepted now they had spoken. Maggie thought how strange it was... both of them sprawled stark naked on the bed, yet wrapped in separate worlds, despite the incredible intimacies there’d been between them. Clothes didn’t seem to matter. Nothing could cover up what they’d done together. It felt ridiculous to even try.
“I watched the funeral,” he said.
“Oh!” Maggie puzzled over why that was relevant in the current circumstances. “I hope it was all you would have wanted for your grandfather,” she said gently, wondering if grief had knocked him sideways.
“Yes.”
At least she had done something right in his eyes. Though it was a bit late to change anything between them.
“I wanted to tell you...wanted to apologise for my attitude today,” he said in a rush. “I should have respected the position my grandfather gave you. And I will,” he added determinedly.
Maggie gave it some thought but couldn’t see how it would work, given his predilection to always thinking the worst of her. “I was planning to leave tomorrow,” she stated bluntly.
She could feel him frowning. It took him a while to reply. “I don’t want to drive you out.” It was said stiffly.
He didn’t really want her here, either. He’d made it perfectly clear their connection tonight was a total aberration. As it was for her. She found it difficult to even look at facing him tomorrow.
“It’s best I leave. You needn’t worry I’ll take much with me. I tend to travel lightly and most of the clothes Vivian bought me won’t fit into my usual life. You can sell them. The accountant, John Neville, will tell you where.”
“But it’s right for you to stay,” he argued, uncomfortable with the outcome of his gold-digging accusations. It stirred him to move. He propped himself up on his elbow and frowned down at her. “It’s in the will. My grandfather wanted it.”
Even with a beetling frown on his face, he was an incredibly handsome man. But looks weren’t everything. Sex wasn’t, either. With a heavy sigh, filled with disappointment and resignation, she stated the reality she had faced earlier.
“Vivian is gone. You made me realise that today.”
He expelled a deeper sigh. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. Except I do want you to stay.”
She searched the shadowed green eyes, trying to see what was driving him now. Was it only the will? Was tonight’s cataclysmic folly influencing him? Was he thinking he might want more of her? Horror suddenly billowed through her mind. She jackknifed up, sitting with her hands clapped to her face before jerking around to face him with the dreadful truth.
“You didn’t use protection!”
He shot up from an elbow to a hand prop. Her shock was echoed in his fast retort. “You’re not on the pill?”
“No. I had no reason to be.”
“Hell!” He thumped his forehead with the heel of his palm.
Maggie was struck by visions of him having explosive one-night stands all over South America. “Are you safe? I mean...medically clear of...”
“Damned right I am!” He whipped away the hand that had slid from his forehead to pinch his eyes. “Are you?”
“Yes. I haven’t had sex for years!” she defended hotly.
The green laser beams retracted into dark turbulence. “Is there a chance of...of your falling pregnant?”
Maggie took a deep breath and calculated. It was the worst possible time. Which had probably contributed to the mad wanting to mate with him. Didn’t they always say that was the danger period for women to fall to temptation?
“Yes. I’m afraid there is,” she said flatly, scarcely able to believe she had been so stupid, so wilfully, wantonly stupid.
“Bloody hell!” he said, not liking it any more than she did. He swung his legs off the bed and sat hunched away from her, his head in his hands.
Maggie drew up her knees, hugging them, feeling more alone than ever.
The silence was filled with pregnant things.
“Well, you can’t leave now,” Beau said tersely, twisting around to direct his decision at her. “Not with this hanging over our heads.”
Like the sword of doom, she thought, her heart sinking on the horns of their dilemma. She met his eyes, schooling herself to expect nothing. “Would you want the baby if I had one?’ she asked, hating the idea of forced acceptance.
“Of course, I would!” He stood up, stiff with indignation. “Do you think I’m the kind of man who’d abandon his own child?”
People did.
Who knew that better than she?
Maggie never would. She couldn’t. Impossible for her to trust anyone but herself to do right by her child. If she had one.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “I only met you today and you certainly haven’t struck me as someone I could trust and depend upon. I think you’d do what suits you.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” he declared, affronted by her opinion of his character. “And there’s plenty of people who’d back me up on that.”
She shrugged noncommittally. “I guess time will tell.”
“Yes, it will.”
He left her with that dark comment as he walked around the room collecting his scattered clothes.
Maggie sagged into dismal despondency. Maybe God would be merciful and let her get away with this one night of madness. When she did have a child she wanted to be in a true love relationship where abandonment would never be a possibility. She had no idea what kind of father Beau Prescott would make. Probably a resentful one and what good was that?
She didn’t look at him. Didn’t want to. In her mind he’d moved from being a possible mate to one who’d hate a lasting connection with her. Yet if he had fathered a child on her she couldn’t shut him out of their lives. Not if he wanted in. She couldn’t deprive her child of its natural father, couldn’t let it feel abandoned by him.
“It’s settled then,” he said decisively, having gathered up his clothes and hung them over his arm, still careless of his nakedness. The green eyes held steely resolution. “You stay, Maggie. At least until we find out if you’re pregnant.”
“Yes,” she agreed. It was the only sensible course to take.
Trapped, she thought.
Satisfied the matter was settled, he left, shutting her door on the most regrettable episode of her life.
BEAU leaned back against the door to the Rose Suite and shut his eyes in sheer anguish at having committed the worst folly of his life.
Trapped!
Trapped by the oldest method in the world.
Impossible for him to shun a woman he might have made pregnant. What’s more, if she had his child he was tied to her for life!
And