He handed her the cool cloth, ignoring the residual buzz as their fingers brushed.
‘Thank you,’ she said, wiping her mouth before folding the cloth with infinite care and pressing it to her burning cheeks. ‘It’s okay, that’s the worst of it over,’ she murmured, as if this had happened before.
He crouched beside her, unable to resist the urge to swipe his finger across her clammy forehead and tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She trembled, but didn’t draw away from his touch. Her gaze met his at last. The guilty flush highlighted her pale cheeks.
His what-the-hell-ometer shot into the red zone and the wodge of confusion and concern threatened to gag him.
‘Why did you come to me?’ he demanded, his guts tying into tight, greasy knots. Was she seriously ill?
‘I told you, I need money to save my business,’ she said, but she ducked her head again.
‘Don’t give me that crap,’ he said, annoyed with her now, as well as himself. Why had he believed so readily that the bold, beautiful, belligerent and stunningly defiant woman he had left behind in Wales had become some conniving little gold-digger in the space of a few months?
He grasped her chin, losing his patience as the sense of detachment, cynicism and ruthlessness which he had relied on for so long became dull and discordant. He shouldn’t care why she was here, why she needed his money so badly, but he did.
‘Tell me the truth. Are you seriously ill?’ he asked.
She puffed out a breath. ‘No.’
The relief he wanted to feel didn’t come. ‘Then why did you just lose your lunch in my toilet?’
The guilty flush became so vivid it would probably be visible from Mars. ‘Because I’m pregnant,’ she replied. ‘With your child.’