‘Deidra O’Shea! Are you denying that I look like her?’
It took a moment for her words to register, and when they did his accompanying feeling of rage was tempered only by the reminder that she was pregnant.
‘You have a look of her about you,’ he said carefully. ‘But so what?’
‘So what?’ Catherine turned a furious face to him. ‘Don’t you realise how insulting that is for a woman?’
‘What? That I happen to be attracted to dark-haired women with green eyes? Where’s the crime in that, Catherine? Don’t you normally lust after men who look like me? Isn’t that what human nature is all about? That we’re conditioned to respond to certain stimuli?’
What would it reveal about her if she admitted that she didn’t usually lust after men at all? That Peter had been the very opposite of Finn in looks and character. Peter didn’t dominate a room, nor did his charisma light it up just as surely as if it had been some glorious, glowing beacon. Peter had not been able to make her melt so instantly and so responsively with just a glimmering look from his eyes.
‘Did you pretend I was her?’ she demanded heatedly. ‘Close your eyes and think it was her?’
‘But I didn’t close my eyes, Catherine,’ he answered seriously. ‘I was looking at you all the time. Remember?’
Oh, yes, she remembered. She remembered all too well. The way his eyes had caressed her just as surely as his fingertips had. The things he had said about her body. He had compared her skin to silk and cream, in that musical and lilting Irish accent.
‘And what about you?’ he questioned suddenly. ‘What’s the justification for your behaviour? Was it perhaps a way of striking out at a man who had hurt you badly?’
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
‘Peter,’ he said deliberately. ‘The man who left you.’
‘How on earth did you find out about Peter?’ she breathed.
‘Oh, come on, Catherine! When the article was brought to my attention by my cuttings service, I had a check run on you. Suddenly everything made sense. Why a woman, seemingly so aloof, should go to bed with me without me really having to try. You wanted to get back at your ex-boyfriend, didn’t you?’
She let him believe it. Because the truth was even more disturbing than his accusation. That she had been so besotted by Finn she had scarcely given Peter a thought. Didn’t that fact damn her more than redeem her?
Catherine felt tired. Weary. Unable to cope with any more.
‘Oh, what’s the point in remembering? What’s done is done and we just have to live with the consequences.’
‘Don’t go back to London today,’ he said suddenly.
She looked at him. ‘Can you give me a good reason why not?’
‘You’re tired. And we have things to discuss.’ His blue eyes gleamed with resolve, and he continued in a quieter voice, ‘Just as there are consequences to what happened between us, there are also consequences to your visit here. Come on.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Go where?’
‘I’ll take you back to the flat. You can rest there, and then we can talk.’
It wasn’t so much his strength or his determination which made Catherine weakly nod her head. She was pregnant, she told herself. She was allowed to be persuaded.
‘Okay,’ she agreed.
Finn stared out of the window at the distant waters of the Liffey—grey today, to match the sky. And to match his mood, he thought, with a heart which was heavy.
He turned silently to look at where Catherine lay, asleep on the king-sized sofa. She had been fighting sleep ever since he had brought her back here and at long last she had given up the battle.
Her hair lay in tousled silken strands of black, contrasted against a Chinese silk cushion, and her dark lashes feathered into two perfect arcs on her high cheekbones. She slept as peacefully and as innocently as a child, he thought. He stared at the curve of her belly as his thoughts repeated themselves in his mind.
A child.
A wild leap of something like joy jumped unexpectedly in his chest.
A child!