'Aren't you back at Charlcot?' he said with a frown.
'I have a flat of my own.'
'With Gavin?'
She ignored the thin-lipped query. 'A job, at least a temporary one.' Her legacy from her maternal grandmother would prove very useful in the months to come, when she wouldn't be able to work.
His eyes continued to rake her face. 'There's something else…something different.'
Emily's eyes opened wide with fearful horror. He couldn't put his finger on it now, but he would… Luke almost seemed to be able to see into her skull on occasion.
'You two are making a spectacle for the bored and curious.'
Her father's voice woke Emily from her private world. She flushed, looking around the half-empty floor, aware that they were the target of curious gazes. The expression on Luke's face at being interrupted was so savage that even Charles Stapely lost his edge of suavity and assurance.
'Keep out of this,' Luke ground out. 'I don't know where you get the nerve to warn me to keep away.'
'It was the only way I could ensure you came.'
The music began, leaving the trio a small island of inactivity. These enigmatic words had Luke's complete attention, Emily saw. She could see that once more she was surplus to requirements. She was gone, swallowed up in the well-groomed crowd, before either man had noticed.
Emily sat cross-legged on the polished oak floor, the one she had expended so much energy on restoring. Better to fill her time with mindless, exhausting tasks than to be torn by the gut-wrenching longings.
The evening had been a nightmare. She felt numb… Seeing Luke with no prior warning like that had been overwhelming. She had taken a taxi back to her small sanctuary. In a trance-like condition she had thrown off her shoes, undone the clips from her hair, and sunk into her present position. Only the strident peal of the doorbell broke into her abstraction. At first she thought she would ignore it, but it went on and on…
The Smiths, the elderly couple who leased her the top floor of their Victorian villa, were fortunately hard of hearing. The stairs leading to her own private entrance were steep, so she negotiated them with care, ever conscious of the life in her safe-keeping. She was frowning as she wondered how she was going to cope with a pram and this incline as she unbolted the door.
The breath was sucked from her lungs in one great gasping breath. 'Luke!' The possibility of hallucination was discarded. He was totally solid, a tower of savage, simmering rage. How had he found her?
She had sworn Gavin to secrecy.
'You remember my name, then.' He shouldered his way into the narrow hallway and his presence was too overpowering. The greyhound-lean toughness of him was so close she could sense the hard strength of muscles she knew were beneath the formal dress suit he still wore. At some point he'd discarded his tie, and his hair was wildly untidy. She was breathing in air that carried the scent of his body, the unique concoction of odours that produced a natural perfume that made her achingly aware of a deep starvation of her senses.
Her mind was whirling; she refused to look up. Instead she fixed her eyes on the middle button of his pristine shirt. 'I don't know what you're doing here, Luke, but I'd like you to leave,' she said in a surprisingly calm voice. 'We've said all that was necessary.' He'd told her father all those lies, finally gone through with his threat. She'd been waiting for the past ten weeks, wondering why he hadn't, but obviously he'd been waiting for the ideal moment to relish the humiliation. He was here to gloat, punish her with the details.
'Well, what a shame. I don't give a damn what you'd like.'
'Will you lower your voice?' she responded. 'This is a respectable neighbourhood.' He hadn't changed. Still arrogant, overbearing, so bloody sure of himself and to hell with the rest of the world. How did I fall in love with him? she wondered, furious at the elemental response she'd suffered the instant she'd seen him again.
'Then how will they take to having an unmarried mother as a resident?'
Emily looked up, her face swept clear of all colour. 'How… Marty…no, Marty wouldn't,' she stammered in a stunned half-whisper. Martine had promised not to contact Luke even when Emily had confided her condition, and no one else knew yet. The agreement had been grudging, she recalled.
'So glad I have your undivided attention finally,' he drawled. His expression was menacingly aggressive, the blue eyes pure steel. 'Who's Marty, Emmy? Another new boyfriend? Doesn't Gavin come up to scratch?' he asked with a smile that made her swallow down the instinctive scream.
'If you like,' she said defiantly, the air of unconcern spoiled by the spasmodic tremors which swept her entire body.
'It's true, then, you are pregnant?' He watched her, his body coiled like a high-tension spring, the errant nerve in his cheek clenching.