‘Do you want me to pass on any messages?’ Tom shouted above the roar of the rotor blades starting up overhead.
It was better to make a clean break—better for Lucy. He’d known his destiny since Ra’id had explained it to him when he was just thirteen. He was going back to Isla de Sinnebar to put on the robes of duty and devote himself to the service of a country. In doing so he would lose his freedom. He did this gladly, but a pure, free spirit like Lucy Tennant deserved something better than a man who had to be so single-minded for the sake of his country.
‘Razi?’ Tom pressed him as the engine noise increased.
Guilt and longing swept over him. He felt so bad leaving Lucy. The first of many times he would experience such feelings, he suspected as the image of her open, trusting face remained steady in his mind. ‘If she needs anything, anything at all—a job, a reference…’ Tom and he were almost as close as brothers and there was no need for explanation—they both knew he was talking about Lucy.
He felt diminished as he handed Tom his no-frills business card. He’d signed it so it carried his authority. ‘See she gets this, will you, Tom?’ Before Tom had chance to answer or he had chance to change his mind, he gave the signal and the helicopter lifted off.
What was this? She felt sick inside as she sank down on the bed. She had just switched on the bedside light and seen the money someone had left on the nightstand. Before this moment she hadn’t even known there was such a thing as a five-hundred-euro note—and now there was a stack of them within touching distance.
Not that she wanted to touch them, even though they were crisp and new and looked as though they hadn’t been touched, other than to have whatever paper bands had held them together removed.
There must have been tens of thousands of euros in the neat pile, Lucy realised, staring at them. And there was ice in the pit of her stomach, because she knew. She didn’t need it spelling out to her—she didn’t need to think about it. Mac hadn’t come home with the other men and his bodyguards had gone too. Whoever he was—and she had shut the possibilities out of her mind just to live the fantasy—fabulously wealthy Mac had returned to whatever world he belonged to, leaving her with a small fortune in pinkish, purplish notes, as if sufficient money could paper over the cracks in her heart.
He thought money could do that?
She turned her face to the wall, biting down on the back of her hand so she wouldn’t cry out and the other men wouldn’t hear her. Drawing a deep shuddering breath, she told herself she’d got what she’d deserved—a lot more than she’d deserved, in fact; there was enough money here to open her own restaurant…
And even that didn’t begin to ward off the chill creeping through her veins. Her legs felt like lead as she dragged them up onto the bed. Tugging up the duvet to her chin, she lay unsleeping, fully clothed and shivering as she contemplated a world that was not just empty now, but irrevocably changed—by Mac’s opinion of her, and by his pay-off.
Change was inevitable at the end of the ski season. Change was all-encompassing when a pregnancy test turned out to be positive.
Lucy rested against the wall of her bathroom with her eyes shut. When she opened them again the betraying blue line was still there. She’d been feeling sick every morning recently, and all-over funny—different—changed—as if she weren’t alone in her body any longer. There was a very good reason for that, as she now knew for sure…
Stroking her hands down her still-flat stomach, she felt an incredible sense of wonder—instant love—instant fight-tothe-death protective instincts towards the little bud of life sheltering and growing inside her—someone to love—someone she hoped would love her—a family all of her own…
And Mac?
Why did he have to know?
Remembering the pile of money he’d left her and the way he’d left her—leaving Tom to pass on his business card of all things—he didn’t deserve to know.
Grit her teeth against the pain as she might, she still loved him. She would always love Mac. Though she hated what he’d done, she couldn’t fight the flood of memories—so many good memories and so few bad—until that last bitter blow, when he’d left the resort without saying goodbye—without leaving a proper message, nothing but that wretched business card that Tom had put in an envelope and sealed. ‘You never know when you might need something,’ Tom had said in his kindly way, after explaining what the envelope contained.
‘I’ll never need anything from Mac,’ she had assured him tightly, planting the unopened envelope deep in her apron pocket.
‘A job, maybe?’ Tom had said with a shrug as if he sensed her hurt and wanted to ease it.
‘No, nothing,’ she had insisted, shaking her head. When she’d returned to her room she had stuffed the envelope to the back of a drawer where it still lay to this day, untouched.
Well, it gave her a use for the stack of untouched banknotes currently residing in a large padded envelope with her name on it in the company safe, Lucy reflected, throwing away the third pregnancy test she’d done that morning. There was so much to consider. She could hardly arrive at her parents’ house with a baby. She would need a home for one—a home with a proper garden where a little girl could play. She was so sure it was a little girl. There was a business to think about. She’d get a job to start with to help with the fund and then she’d strike out on her own.
She was going to be a mother…
The thought had not only filled her with joy, but with renewed ambition. She had someone to fight for now—someone who would need a college fund and a prom dress and every advantage she could give her.
And Mac?
Unfortunately, she had to tell him. She had to relent. She didn’t want anything from him, but he should know. Mac should be given the opportunity to know he was going to be a father. She had to give him that chance. She had no choice. Telling him was the right thing to do.
R. Maktabi. CEO Maktabi Communications. Having dived into her sock drawer in a frenzy of ‘let’s-get-this-over-with’, she found that was all that was printed on the card. She almost laughed out loud to think Mac was in the wrong business—communicating was hardly his forte. But there were three telephone numbers: London, New York and somewhere in the Arabian Gulf called Isla de Sinnebar. So that explained Mac’s exotic looks, Lucy mused, staring blindly out of the window. Mac had contacts in both east and west and now he had returned to…She shrugged and dialled the London number. Mac wasn’t there, a frosty secretary told her. She could practically see the woman flinching over the phone when she’d asked for Mac. She realised now that Mac was an abbreviation of his surname, and guessed not many women used it—or, at least, not to the old battleaxe on the other end of the phone. ‘Sorry to have troubled you—’
She drew a blank with New York too—but she’d saved the best ’til last. Closing her eyes, she allowed the vision of a desert encampment complete with billowing ivory silk tents to flow
through her mind—and had to stop that thought dead when she discovered how many gorgeous women dressed in rainbow hues like so many lovely butterflies were queuing up to serve canapés to a recumbent Mac, who was reclining on silken cushions as they fed him dainty morsels. That wasn’t such a great image.
‘An appointment with the CEO of Maktabi Communications?’ a very polite man enquired in the softest, creamiest voice Lucy had ever heard when she got through to Mac’s office in the Arabian Gulf. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’