Modern Romance Collection July 2024 Books 1-4

CHAPTER NINE

GALESOFLAUGHTER greeted Sunny before she even made it into Pansy’s bedroom.

It was five-thirty in the morning and faint purple shadows lay like fading bruises below Sunny’s eyes. She had put on more make-up than usual because she felt like a mess and the sight of Raj down on the floor playing with their niece, who was still clad in her pyjamas, was the last thing she needed in the mood she was in. She had been hoping to leave his home without seeing him again.

Stunning dark golden eyes sought out her evasive gaze with determination. ‘I wanted to see her before you left. She hasn’t had her breakfast yet. Maria helped me change her...er nappy. Pansy thought that was very funny because I was fumbling and slow and she kicked me while I was trying to work out the tapes.’

‘This is the best time of the day for her. She’s always full of joy and nonsense,’ Sunny told him unevenly, bending down to lift her niece, who had come running with a smile as soon as she’d appeared. Pansy gave her a noisy kiss and then indicated that she wanted to get down again and return to playing with Raj.

Raj was down on the floor, sheathed in faded jeans and a T-shirt, the casual attire not screening an inch of his glorious long muscular frame. He had lined up little cars for Pansy to rearrange. ‘I thought she would only like girl things but she brought the cars to me.’

‘She changes her mind from one day to the next. She plays with everything. I’ll get her breakfast now and...I suppose, see you next month, however we organise it,’ she muttered, desperate to escape because he looked so natural down there on the floor with Pansy.

So natural and so very handsome with his high, sharply defined cheekbones, sculpted lips and hard masculine jawline, not to mention the lean, powerful body clearly defined by well-worn denim. He’d been correct when he had said he had changed, he had adapted. The guy she had first met in his designer suit would not have put himself forward in the same way, would not have worked at interacting with a toddler, would not have overcome his own misgivings and awkwardness to such an extent. And she respected him for the huge effort he had made and knew that she would never do anything to undermine his relationship with Pansy.

After all, he was still the man she loved, still the male she had dumped in a clumsy effort to get her own life back...only to finally register that perhaps getting her own life back would never be possible.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m sorry for some of what I said. ‘I know your intentions were good.’

‘Don’t doubt that,’ he told her with assurance. ‘You need space to think.’

No, she thought ferociously, she didn’t need space to think, she needed to work out how to raise a defensive resistance, how to remain pleasant and friendly without intimacy. It was no help to have Raj there on the floor in front of her, displaying all the characteristics that she found irresistible. That quick and clever mind, that cool inescapable grasp of logic in control. And then there was the long, sleek, utterly sensual length of him, able to offer so much amazing pleasure, that pleasure, that excitement that she had never known before and therefore was so much more vulnerable to receiving.

She craved him in the most basic ways and that was a wake-up call for her to be on her guard, not to settle for superficial stuff but to hold on hard to her defences. Raj had made her crave sex. Just acknowledging that embarrassed her in his radius. Here she was, a victim of a weakness that she had never dreamt even existed. She might have ditched him but she still wanted him.

Raj departed and she got Pansy dressed for breakfast and took her downstairs but still the recollection of Raj lingered. Raj trying,Raj adapting, Raj proving that he could change, just as she could change, she reminded herself ruefully.

Sunny was climbing into her car, ready to leave, when Raj appeared at her window. She lowered it, mindful of a desire not to behave as though she was running away like a coward. He gazed down at her, dark as night eyes brooding, and it was so sexy that her toes curled in response. He had amazingly long lashes, amazingly penetrating dark eyes. Wake up, girl, she urged herself, striving to escape from the charismatic spell he cast.

‘So, see you next month,’ she said brightly, feeling like an idiot.

‘Any doctor’s appointments that I need to know about?’ Raj enquired perfectly politely.

‘Well, yes, my first ultrasound,’ she confided reluctantly. ‘In a couple of weeks.’

‘I won’t want to miss that,’ Raj assured her.

‘But we never talked about this...about the exact level of your involvement...if any,’ she reminded him.

‘Be fair. You wouldn’t let me,’ he pointed out quietly.

‘I’ll send you the date,’ she proffered thinly, because stepping away from the intimacy, setting herself free from her longing for Raj meant going cold turkey and decreasing any closer connections.

‘Don’t try to shut me out,’ he breathed with sudden urgency. ‘This is my first child. This is very exciting for me.’

And she thought of that admission the whole drive home.

Excitingforme.

No, she hadn’t expected that from Raj. Something so basic and yet, so life-changing, she acknowledged ruefully. Of course, he was curious. Of course, he was excited. This would be his first child. Pansy had softened him up, made him aware of children in so many basic ways, and now he was ready for that challenge. And she? She had tried to shut him out, without intending that, without meaning to do that to him. She had leapfrogged over all the reasons that he couldn’t cut her off to pretend as though none of those things was happening.

She hadn’t allowed him to talk about his feelings about the baby she had conceived. She had denied him that outlet. My word, she had been selfish, trying to shut him out from what would soon be as much his business as hers. And all so that she could redraw her boundaries for his benefit to keep him at a distance. My baby, not yours, my child, none of your business.

She had behaved badly. She had forced him into a corner by making her own assumptions as to how he would react. Yet the truth was that Raj was not the guy she had assumed he was when they first met. He was a male ever willing to grow and move on to fresh territory. Her brain could not handle that conundrum when she was so very aware that she had ditched him.

A week later, Sunny wakened to the dogs barking and Pansy crying. Wondering weakly if she could have slept in, she rolled out of bed. Her mobile phone was ringing and the doorbell was buzzing and both at the same time. Grabbing up her robe with her brow furrowed, she hurried off to deal with Pansy first.

Through the glazed front door she saw dark shadows suggesting that more than one person was crowded on her doorstep. She sped into Pansy’s room to retrieve her niece. The toddler hugged close, she returned to her bedroom to answer the phone. It was Gemma.

‘Sunny? I had a journalist on my doorstep yesterday asking questions about you. I sent him about his business but my neighbour told me that there’s an article about you in the paper today. I’m bringing it round. It’s a lot of drivel!’

Conscious of the hubbub round her front door and that people with cameras were trying to look in through her windows, Sunny retreated to the kitchen to let the dogs out. She lifted her mobile to answer it when it rang again. Raj’s cool, level voice greeted her.

‘I’ve sent help to keep the crowd of paparazzi in control...and I’ll drop in later in person. Don’t read the newspapers for a day or two,’ Raj advised.

A knock sounded on the back door. Then it opened a mere few inches. ‘Miss Barker? Mr Belanger sent me with my team. I’m Sam and we’re clearing the paps from your garden back onto the road where the police will handle them if they obstruct the flow of traffic. I suggest you let the dogs back indoors again. I had to detach the little one from a man’s ankle.’ Bert was handed through the ajar door, little round eyes huge at the indignity, spindly legs pedalling frantically in mid-air. ‘He’s ferocious, isn’t he?’

‘Sometimes,’ Sunny conceded, because Bert could also be very cuddly, but she really didn’t care if he’d frightened off any unwanted intruders with cameras. As she grabbed Bert, Bear squeezed past Sam into the kitchen and sat down, relieved, it seemed, to be away from all the noise and fuss.

In twenty minutes, Sunny had changed and dressed Pansy, and contrived to freshen up in the bathroom. Then she fed the dogs, put on the kettle and gave Pansy her breakfast. By that time, Gemma was at the back door.

‘My word, there’s a huge number of journalists out on the road. A policeman was trying to move them on and then there are...private security people here helping out?’ she queried in fascination. ‘All suited and wearing sunglasses and those earpieces, looking like they belong in a James Bond movie.’

‘They’re courtesy of Raj,’ Sunny confided breathlessly.

Gemma was surprised. ‘But I thought that was over.’

‘Evidently he’ll still look out for our welfare,’ Sunny said with a slight shrug.

Gemma spread a crumpled tabloid newspaper on the table. There were far more photos of Christabel than there were of Sunny. But then her late half-sister had been both glamorous and well known. In fact there was only one photo of Sunny, depicting her by Raj’s side at the fund-raising event at Ashton Hall. She could have done, however, without reviewing photos of Christabel falling out of various nightclubs, obviously under the weather, and she certainly would have preferred not to see the scene of the car crash again that had taken her half-sister and brother-in-law’s lives.

‘They’re trying to insinuate that you’re a druggie too.’

‘No, I think they were short of dirt to serve up, so they rehashed poor Christabel’s worst moments instead. My only public profile is as an artist and you can’t get much mileage out of that.’

‘They’re madly speculating about you and Raj...and, er, that diamond.’

‘It was on loan. Raj did warn me that there’d be a lot of speculation.’

‘Apparently, he’s never shown off an actual girlfriend before and they’re wondering if it’s just a family connection linked to Pansy or something more,’ Gemma proffered as Sunny speed-read through the article, catching the use of certain words to describe her that suggested she might be a little weird with her penchant for long skirts, animals and wild foraging.

‘So, they know about Pansy.’ Sunny sighed. ‘That won’t please Raj.’

‘The press have probably always known about her. They just weren’t interested in the poor child until you came along and developed a bond with her uncle.’

‘Unca,’ Pansy said on cue.

‘Uncle,’ Sunny corrected.

Pansy went off into her ‘nose...eye...mouth’ spiel.

‘Look, I’ll clear off now. I know you have that painting to finish. Do you want me to take the dogs with me?’

‘Thanks, but there’s no need while I’m here.’ Sunny saw the older woman to the back door and recommended that she use the shortcut across the paddock to avoid the men with cameras.

She finished her painting while Pansy was enjoying a nap, and was getting cleaned up when she heard a helicopter overhead. She had put on a green sundress although in the autumnal cool it was a little chilly for it, but it still fitted her when so many other items had become too tight. When she heard the helicopter coming in to land, she ran outside, paused a moment to soothe Muffy, who was shifting anxiously in her stall, and then walked on out to see Raj arriving. A bunch of security men fanned out in a circle round the craft and then Raj sprang out, black hair ruffling in the breeze and so vital and so intensely masculine that she clenched her teeth together on a visceral inner tightening that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with desire.

He strode towards her, effortlessly elegant in a mid-grey designer suit that faithfully outlined his broad shoulders, lean hips and long powerful legs to the manner born. He looked amazing and utterly out of place in a paddock. He was metropolitan fashionable and immaculate and even as she watched cameras were lifting above the boundary hedge to catch photos of his arrival and she winced.

Raj ignored the cameras but several of his security team went running in their direction.

‘You didn’t need to come all this way.’

‘A slight detour. I’m on my way back from Scotland. It wasn’t a problem,’ he countered, striding ahead of her to thrust open the back door into the kitchen. ‘How are you managing all this? Have the paps been annoying you much?’

‘Not with your security men keeping them away from the windows and out of the garden,’ she fielded lightly. ‘In fact, I actually finished my painting this morning.’

‘You’ll have to let me see it.’ Raj sank down at the kitchen table right in front of the newspaper she had intended to cram into the recycling bin. ‘I see you didn’t take my advice... I can’t say that surprises me.’

‘Coffee?’ she prompted, keen to change the subject.

Raj assented with a nod but he was too busy scrutinising the article to look back at her. In any case, she was still in his mind’s eye, all soft and flowy in a simple green dress, relaxed, casual, golden hair a little rumpled. She was sort of squinting at him too, which meant that she hadn’t got her contact lenses in and probably had mislaid her spectacles again. There was a tiny streak of yellow paint above her brow. He breathed in deep and slow and strove to study the newsprint instead.

‘I hate the way they’ve associated you with Christabel. I shouldn’t say it, but she was very bad news for Ethan. He was a grown man but he was easily led. He liked anything that got him high and she was much the same and when the other men came into the picture, it was almost impossible to keep him steady and sober. I tried to get him into rehab but Christabel wouldn’t have it, said I had no right to interfere. And she was right, but their child was there by then and someone had to speak up and try to make a judgement call.’

Sunny had paused in making the coffee to stare at him. ‘Christabel had other men?’ she murmured in shock.

‘I’m sorry. I assumed you would know. She wasn’t exactly secretive or discreet about it. Ethan wasn’t enough for her and her acting career had crashed because of the drugs. She craved attention and her lovers gave her that. I should’ve got him out of the marriage, but he still loved her. I could’ve bought her off. If I had, Ethan would still be alive...they both might be. I failed him.’ Raj’s dark eyes were bleak with pain and regret and her heart went out to him. ‘He needed a save but I was the wrong person to help. He resented me, so I stepped back.’

‘I’m so sorry, Raj. I totally misunderstood the situation when I accused you of spoiling him by indulging him,’ she whispered gruffly.

‘My mother did the spoiling. Ethan was the centre of her world and when she died, he went to pieces. I had to pick up those pieces and he hated that too.’

‘And where were you when all this spoiling was happening?’ she asked curiously.

‘Studying at one or another university, winning prizes and newspaper column inches, setting up my first companies. I didn’t see much of either of them growing up, so I didn’t have the chance to develop a normal sibling relationship with Ethan.’

‘Someone has to be willing to accept help to be helped,’ she mused reflectively. ‘Sometimes all you can do is stand back and mind your own business. There’s nothing in that newspaper article that upset me, other than the writer choosing to rehash Christabel’s most public mistakes.’

‘The press won’t leave you alone now. That’s my fault too. I shouldn’t have shown you off at the fund-raiser at Ashton.’

‘You probably shouldn’t have come here to see me either. That will only incite more rumours.’ Sunny sighed.

Raj pushed back the chair, his lean, strong face taut. ‘I won’t let that keep me away from you. I want you and Pansy and the baby in my life. Surely you can understand that?’

The super-gifted male with everything had never had a proper family and quite naturally he now wanted what he had never had.

‘I do understand it,’ she conceded quietly.

The silent tension between them smouldered. Sunny looked away first just as Bear roamed a little too close to Bert’s basket and Bert leapt out and began to bark in a passion at the larger dog.

Raj stood up. ‘Stop it!’ he thundered down at the chihuahua.

Bert’s big round eyes bulged and he fell silent. Then he turned in his tracks and raced back into his basket.

‘He only needs a firm word.’

‘From a man, I suspect. His late owner was a man. Certainly, Bert doesn’t listen to me like that.’ Sunny viewed the little dog curled up in his basket as if he would not dream of hurling a rude challenge at another animal. He was perfectly calm.

Raj studied her with veiled eyes. They had a problem, a major problem, and he wasn’t even sure that she recognised the fact. Sunny was too busy trying to stay in control of everything, including him...had he been the sort of guy willing to accept that. He believed that, fortunately for all of them, he was not that guy. Look at the chaos she had already created with her determined attempt to keep him out of their lives! But, if they married, he would have all three of them under his protection. Sunny, Pansy, his child. That was what needed to happen. That would fix the situation, he decided with cold logic.

‘Sunny...’ Raj breathed without warning. ‘Marry me.’

Sunny blinked and stared incredulously back at him. ‘Raj—’

‘I mean it. I don’t want the three of you on a sporadic visiting basis. I want you all permanently. Marriage is the logical next step forward for us and it will overcome many of the irritations currently making your life difficult. If you’re my wife, I can shield you from all such annoyances. I will not have you depicted in the press as some temporary occupant in my bed, a target for insinuation and rumour. Nor do I want my child becoming a target.’

He closed his hands over hers and tugged her closer.

‘You’ve shocked me,’ she whispered truthfully, shaking her head as if to clear it of the mental fog that had engulfed her. ‘I really wasn’t expecting this.’

A big hand rested against her breast. ‘Your heart’s racing.’

Sunny tensed, wanting his fingers to stroke, cup, caress, colour flaring in her cheeks. ‘It’s not every day I get a marriage proposal. In fact, this is my very first.’

‘So, say yes,’ Raj husked softly.

‘And you’ll promise not to be bossy and overprotective any more?’

‘I don’t think you’d credit that kind of promise from me.’

The doorbell was buzzing again and she backed away with a sigh. ‘That must be a real visitor,’ she assumed. ‘Or your security wouldn’t have let them past the gate.’

She walked out to the hall and opened the front door and was completely disconcerted to find Jack Henderson on the step. Jack smiled warmly at her, something he hadn’t done in her vicinity since their breakup as teenagers. ‘Jack?’ she whispered questioningly.

‘I was worried about you in the midst of all this newspaper madness. It’s not you. You like a quiet life.’

‘I do, but Raj is here and I’ll be fine. The fuss will die down.’

‘Raj Belanger, right?’ Jack checked, his mouth twisting. ‘Pansy’s uncle?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘As soon as he leaves, you’ll be all right.’

A strong arm closed round her taut figure from the back. ‘Sunny will be leaving with me,’ Raj decreed.

Her lashes fluttered in bewilderment. ‘But—’

‘When I’m here, Sunny doesn’t have to worry about anything,’ Raj delivered with precision. ‘Thank you for the thought but she is not in need of assistance. Unlike you, I would never abandon her when life gets rough.’

Paling at that derisive challenge, Jack turned on his heel and walked back down the path.

Sunny was aghast. She twisted her head. ‘How the heck could you say that to him?’

‘Easily. He ran out on you when you needed support. I would never do that to you.’