He grimaced. "Nonna is into matchmaking. She found Gina for Alex, inviting her to the castle as a wedding singer. And she hired Hannah as the cook for Tony's prized catamaran, Duchess, putting her right under his nose. I know she wants all three of us married, having families. I thought she'd picked you for me."
She stared at him in total disbelief. "That's... that's crazy!" Another grimace. "Not as crazy as it sounds."
"You don't think I might have a say in whom I marry?"
"I'm trying to explain..." He looked harassed, raking a hand through the tight curls above his ear, frowning, gesturing an appeal for patience. "I wanted her to be wrong. And when I remembered you from New Orleans..."
"You concocted a scenario that put me in the light of a totally unsuitable wife," she hotly accused.
"Yes," he admitted fiercely. "And grabbed at every other reason I could think of, too. Anything to stop me from even thinking of pursuing the attraction I felt. I was pig-headedly determined not to fall into Nonna's marriage trap, even though..." He shook his head self-mockingly. "...she had nothing to do with the attraction I felt for you ten years ago."
"You mean...in New Orleans?" she asked, confused by his previous interpretation of her work there.
"I tagged on to your tour that night, just to watch you, listen to you. If I hadn't been a tourist...if I could have met you in some appropriate way...but my time there was at an end and I told myself it was fantasy."
Amazed at this turnabout in his view of her, she ruefully murmured, "I wouldn't have had time for you anyway."
"Our paths were at cross-purposes, but does it have to be like that now, Nicole?"
Pain washed through her. The cross-purposes couldn't be worse. Pregnancy was the oldest marriage trap in the world. It was too late to simply pursue an attraction to see where it might lead and he'd just made it impossible for her to admit the truth. He didn't want to be trapped.
She stared at him, hopelessly torn by the possibility he offered, wishing time could be turned back, wishing it was just the two of them, a man and a woman, free to start out on a promising journey...but it wasn't so. It just wasn't so.
Her silence pressed him into more speech, his eagerness to convince her of his sincerity permeating every word. "When I read your book, I realised what a fool I'd been to even question your integrity and your ability to do anything you set out to do. I hadn't meant to hurt you. I'm sorry I did. Genuinely sorry."
The passion in his voice stormed around her heart, squeezing. She wrenched her gaze from his, afraid of being swayed into clutching at some way to have another chance with him. But the idea of deception was sickening. The truth about her pregnancy would have to come out. No choice at all. And she couldn't bear him to feel bound to her because of their baby. This nerve-tearing impasse had to be ended.
"I forgive you that hurt," she said flatly, staring at the long red streaks in the sky, the bleeding tatters of a dying day. "You don't have to worry about it anymore."
"That night in Brisbane..."
She tensed, instinctively armouring herself against letting that memory invade and undermine her resolution.
"...you wanted me, too, Nicole," he said softly.
"Yes, I did. You have nothing to blame yourself for on that account," she clipped out as coldly as she could.
"Can you forget it?"
It was a biting challenge, determined on getting to her, arousing all the feelings they had shared in the heat of the moment. No cold then. And he wanted to remove the chill now, reminding her...
She closed her eyes, determined on sealing off all vulnerability to him. If she didn't see, didn't feel...
"I can't. I don't think I ever will," he said with skin-prickling conviction. "It was as though we were meant for each other. Perfectly matched. You tapped things in me I've never felt before."
Nicole gritted her teeth. Just sex, she savagely reminded herself. Great sex, admittedly, but still only sex.
"It was like...all of me reaching for all of you...and finding a togetherness which went beyond the merely physical. And because it was so...so incredible...I was impatient to experience it again, not taking the time to..."
"It's okay!" she choked out, unable to bear his recollections. "I didn't anticipate what happened, either. We didn't plan it. We didn't...choose it."
In a spurt of almost-frenzied energy she turned on him, desperate to finish it. "That's the one right we hold unassailable in our lives...to choose for ourselves. You didn't want your grandmother's choice thrust upon you. I understand that. And I don't want a...a fling with you."
"That's not what I want, either," he shot back.
"Then what do you want?" she cried helplessly, her hands flapping a frantic protest. "What's all this about? Why try to stop me from leaving?'' "Because I love you!" he retorted vehemently, stunning her, stunning
himself with the force of feeling he'd hurled into the maelstrom of need that was tearing at both of them.
They stared at each other, a mountain of emotion churning between them. He scaled it first, charging ahead with all the pent-up ferocity of a warrior committed to battle.
"I just need the time to give you every reason to love me. I know I haven't done that yet, but I will. I will!"
Still she couldn't believe her ears. "You...love... me?"
He drew in a deep breath, but his gaze did not waver even slightly from the incredulity in hers. "I do. I love you," he stated again. "You're in my mind, night and day. If you'll just stop pushing me away, I'll show you I can and will look after you, that I do care about the person you are.
Whatever your needs are, I'll answer them. I want to answer them."
She stared mutely at him, feeling as though her whole world had just shifted on its axis. "You hardly know me." The words spilled from a swirling abyss of doubts.
"Nicole, I've read parts of your book over and over again." He stepped forward and gently cupped her cheek, his eyes burning into hers as his tenderly stroking fingers burnt into her skin, seeking every path to the torment in her soul. "I love the child who had the courage to lead her father away from the darkness he was in danger of falling into. I love the young woman who gave the end of his life as much meaning as she could. You shine through the whole story..."
"It's not about me," she protested, her voice reduced to a husky whisper.
"It reveals the heart of you. The kind of heart a man would be a fool not to love."
"Maybe..." She swallowed hard, trying to work some moisture into her mouth. "Maybe you...you think that. But feeling it is something different."
"How does this feel?"
He tilted her chin and she was too stunned to take any evasive action before his mouth claimed hers, not with blitzing passion but with a tantalisingly seductive sensuality that wooed her into accepting the kiss, testing it for herself, feeling the electric tingle of his restraint, letting it happen because she needed to know his truth beyond any niggle of doubt before she could surrender her own.
"I love you," he murmured, feathering her lips with the feeling words, then drawing back to look into her eyes with mesmerising fervour. "I love everything about you."
He smiled whimsically as his fingers softly nudged her hair behind her ears. "Your hair is like a brilliant beacon calling to me."
A moth to a flame, he'd said before.
His hands trailed down to her shoulders. "I love the way you hold yourself. It shouts—I am a woman and proud of it. And so you should be proud of who you are, all you are, Nicole."
I am, she thought, ashamed of nothing, not even the slip in sensible caution that had made her vulnerable to falling pregnant. Maybe it was meant to be because he was the man, she thought dizzily, and as though he could read her mind, his next words melted the armour she'd tried to hold around her heart.
"It excites me simply to look at you. It's like all my instincts immediately start clamouring—this is the woman... the woman for me. It happens every time I see you, and it's so powerful I have no control over it. You can call it primitive. I don't care. It's there...and I believe it's there for you, too, Nicole."
He shook his head at her, negating any denial she might make. "You wouldn't have let us come together in Brisbane if you didn't feel the same way," he pressed on. "You would have shot me out of your room. It was right for us. It was how it was meant to be between us, and would have been all along if I hadn't put up barriers to keep you at a distance."
Was that true? If she hadn't sensed antagonism in him at their first meeting, if he hadn't been so cynically challenging, if he'd been welcoming, charming... she probably would have fallen in love with him on the spot, dazzled right out of her mind. As it was, she'd resented his sexual impact on her, hated it. Yet when she'd surrendered to the intense desires he stirred, it had felt right, beautifully wonderfully right. Could it be that way again if...but there was still the baby.
"All I'm asking is that you stay on here," he said earnestly. "Let me show you..."
"I'm pregnant!" she blurted out, then instantly averted her gaze from his, frightened of the effect of such a stark statement on his plans for whatever relationship he wanted with her. Only a golden rim of the sun was left shimmering above the dark hills. Twilight hovered above it, a purpling sky that signalled the end of this day. The night would come. And then tomorrow...
"I wrote you a letter. It's posted to KingTours. It says we...we made a baby...when we came together," she said in a desperate rush, needing him to understand the emotional dilemma of a future neither of them had planned or even foreseen. "I would have written again when the baby was born. In case...in case you wanted to be a real father. Like you said..."
Silence.
Silence so fraught she couldn't breathe.
The trap, she thought. He's seeing the trap now.
It was no longer a case of winning her over with a promise of love. It wasn't about today or tomorrow or her staying on at the castle for the last three months of the history project. It was about being bonded by a child for the rest of their lives.