A Secret Birthright(9)

She started fumbling with the briefcase’s zipper as she neared him, and another idea occurred to him.

If this would be only a consultation, he owed her a full one after all the suffering she’d endured for the mere hope of it.

He should also give himself a dose of shock therapy. Seeing her with her baby, with her whole family, might cure him of this insidious malady he’d been struck with at her sight.

He stayed her hand with a touch, withdrew his as if contact with her burned him, and before he tugged her against him.

“I won’t be able to give you an opinion based on those investigations. I don’t rely on any except those done to my specifications.” Alarm flared in her eyes. He couldn’t believe the effect her distress had on him. It…physically hurt. He rushed to add, “Anyway, my preferred and indispensable diagnostic method is a clinical exam. Is your baby downstairs with his father?”

Her gaze blipped, and she barely suppressed a start.

Before he could analyze her reaction, she murmured, her voice deeper, huskier, “Ryan is with his nanny at our hotel. They both got too tired and Ryan was crying nonstop and disturbing everyone, I had to send them away.” Agitation spread across her features like a shadow. “I thought I’d bring them back as soon as I got an appointment with you. But the hotel’s near the airport, and at this time of day, even if I’d told Rose to come as soon as I knew you’d see me, it would have taken her too long to get here. I didn’t even tell her, because Mr. Elkaateb said you had only minutes to spare. That’s why I said an hour won’t do.…”

He raised a hand, stopped her anxiety in its tracks. “I’m going home on my private jet, so the timing of my departure is up to me. Call your nanny and have her bring Ryan over.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, God, thank you…”

A hand wave again stopped her. He hated the vulnerability and helplessness gratitude engendered in others, was loathe to be on its receiving end. Hers took his usual discomfort to new levels.

She nodded, accepting that he wanted none of it, dived into her purse for her phone.

In moments, with her eyes fixed on him, she said, “Rose…” She paused as the woman on the other side burst out talking. Realizing he must hear the woman, Gwen shot him an apologetic, even…shy glance. “Yes, I did. Get Ryan here ASAP.”

He barely stopped himself at a touch of her forearm. “Tell her to take her time. I’ll wait.”

The look she gave him then, the beauty of her tremulous smile, twisted another red-hot poker in his gut. He had to get away from her before he did something they’d both regret.

He turned away, headed back to the desk and blindly started gathering the files he’d scattered.

When she ended her phone call, without looking up he asked the question burning a hole in his chest, trying to sound nonchalant, “Isn’t your husband coming? Or is he back home?”

He needed to see her with her husband. He had to have that image of her with her man burned into his mind, to erase the one he had of her with him.

She didn’t answer him for what felt like an eternity. His perception sharpened and time warped with her near.

He forced himself to keep rearranging the desk, didn’t raise his eyes to read on her face the proof of her involvement with another. He should, to sever his own inexplicable and ongoing one. He couldn’t. It would be bad enough to hear it in her voice as she mentioned her husband, the father of her child.

When her answer finally came, it was subdued, almost inaudible. He almost missed it. Almost.

His heart kicked his ribs so hard that he felt both would be bruised. His eyes jerked up to her.

She’d said, “I don’t have a husband.”

He didn’t know when or how he’d crossed the distance back to her. He found himself standing before her again, the revelation reverberating in his head, in his whole being.

He heard himself rasp, “You’re divorced?”

She escaped his eyes, the slanting rays of sunset turning hers into bottomless aquamarines. “I was never married.”

He could only stare at her.

A long moment later, he voiced his bewilderment. “I thought you were engaged when I saw you at that conference.”

He thought, indeed. He’d thought of nothing else until he’d forced himself into self-inflicted amnesia.

Color rushed back into her cheeks, making his lips itch to taste that tide of peach. “I was. We…split up soon afterward.” She snatched a look back at him, her lips lifting with a faint twist of humor. “Sort of on the grounds of irreconcilable scientific differences.”