The Three-Year Itch. Liz Fielding
with sweat.
As he rolled away from her and lay staring at the ceiling a long shuddering sigh escaped him. ‘You’ve been away too long, Abbie.’ Then he turned to her. ‘Did I hurt you?’
She shook her head. ‘Surprised me a little, that’s all.’ She touched the score-marks her nails had riven in his shoulders in the heat of passion. ‘But I like surprises.’ And she reached forward to lay her lips against the slick salty warmth of his skin, sighing contentedly as he gathered her into his arms.
Tomorrow she would ache a little, but it would be a good feeling and she would carry it with her as a secret knowledge, a constant reminder of the fact that she was desired, loved.
Abbie was the first to wake, the weight of Grey’s arm across her waist disturbing her as she moved. For a moment she remained perfectly still, soaking in the pleasure of having his face buried against her shoulder, the pleasure of being home. Going away had its miseries, but without separation there would never be these blissful reunions. She lay quietly, her face inches from his, reminding herself of every feature, every tiny line that life had bestowed upon him, very gently touching an old childhood scar above his brow.
She could tell the exact moment when he woke. He didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes. There was just the faintest change in breathing, the tiniest contraction of the muscles about his eyes. She grinned. It was an old game, this.
How long could he maintain the pretence? She began slowly to trace the outline of his face with the tip of one finger, moving slowly up the darkening shadow of his chin to his lower lip. Did it quiver slightly under the lightest teasing of her nail? She gave him the benefit of the doubt, this was not a game to be hurried. She dipped her head to trail a tiny tattoo of kisses across his throat, his chest, her tongue flickering across flat male nipples that leapt to attention.
Still he did not move, and she continued her teasing quest across the hard, flat plane of his stomach until the tell-tale stirring of his manhood could no longer be ignored. But, before she had quite registered the fact that the game was over and won, he had turned, flipping her over onto her back, his hands on her wrists, holding her arms above her head, pinning her to the bed, utterly at his mercy. ‘So, you want to play games, do you, Mrs Lockwood?’
She lowered her lashes seductively. ‘Why, sir, I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Then I’ll have to show—’ The telephone began to ring. For a moment Grey gazed down at her, then he dropped the briefest kiss on her mouth. ‘It appears that you have a reprieve.’ He released her, rolling away and rising to his feet in one smooth movement.
She didn’t want a reprieve and reached out for him. ‘Whoever it is will leave a message, Grey. Don’t go.’
‘It’ll be Robert. I should have phoned him an hour ago.’ He raised her hand absently to his lips. ‘Why don’t you go and see if you can rustle up something for supper?’
‘Well, gee, shucks, thanks, mister,’ she murmured as he disappeared in the direction of the study. It was the first time she had ever come third. To a phone call and food.
‘Grey?’ He lifted his head from his distant contemplation of the supper Abbie had thrown together from the rather sparse contents of the refrigerator. ‘Can we talk?’
‘Mmm?’ He had been distracted ever since he had talked to Robert; now he seemed to come back from a long way off, but as he looked up he caught her eye, became very still. ‘Go ahead, I’m listening.’
I want to have a baby. Your baby. It sounded so emotional, almost desperate put like that. Not a good start. But that heartfelt ‘You’ve been away too long …’ gave her the courage to press on.
‘I wondered what you thought about starting a family,’ she said.
He looked up, momentarily shaken, his eyes dark with something that might almost have been pain. Then he shook his head. ‘Leave it, Abbie. This is not a good moment.’
Whatever reaction she had expected, it certainly wasn’t that. ‘Not a good moment’? What on earth did that mean? ‘You did say we were apart too much …’ she began, trying to lift an atmosphere that had suddenly become about as light as a lead-filled balloon.
‘And a baby would fix that?’ Grey sat back in his chair, abandoning any further attempt to eat. ‘That’s a somewhat drastic solution, isn’t it?’
Drastic? The second she had opened her mouth Abbie had realised the moment was all wrong, but it shouldn’t ever be that wrong, surely? Confused, hurt, she said, ‘I … I thought we both wanted children.’
‘Eventually,’ he agreed coolly. ‘But we had an agreement, Abbie. No children until you’re ready to give them your full-time care.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Do you really think you can have it all?’ he demanded, cutting off her protest, and she saw to her astonishment that he was now genuinely angry with her. ‘Most of your friends manage it, I know, by cobbling their lives together with nannies and living from one crisis to the next. But they don’t disappear into the wide blue yonder for a couple of weeks whenever a tantalising commission is dangled in front of them.’
‘Neither do I! I never go anywhere without discussing it with you first.’
‘But you still go,’ he declared. ‘That was the deal we made. God knows I miss you when you’re away, Abbie, I’ve never made any secret of that fact—but it’s a choice we both made right at the beginning. You said you’d need five years to establish yourself in your career, then you could take a break.’
‘I don’t remember carving it on a tablet of stone!’ Suddenly the discussion was getting too heated, too emotional, but she couldn’t stop. ‘I … I want to have a child now, Grey.’
‘Why?’
Because I love you and having your baby would be the most wonderful thing that could happen to me. His detached expression did not invite such a declaration.
In the absence of an immediate answer, he provided one for her. ‘Because all your friends are having babies,’ he said dismissively.
‘Rubbish!’
‘Cogently argued,’ he replied.
‘God, I hate it when you go all lawyerish on me,’ she declared fervently. ‘What would you do if I simply stopped taking the pill?’ The words were out. It was too late to call them back.
But his expression betrayed nothing. ‘Is that emotional blackmail, Abbie,’ he asked, very quietly, ‘or a statement of intent?’
Her face darkened in a flush of shame. She had always considered their marriage an equal partnership. Right now it didn’t feel that equal, but a child needed two loving parents and it was a decision they had to make together. Slowly, deliberately she shook her head. ‘I’ve been thinking about this for months, Grey,’ she told him.
The planes of his face hardened imperceptibly. ‘And now you’ve made up your mind, you’ve decided to inform me of your unilateral decision?’
‘It wasn’t like that, Grey. I … I just wanted to be sure.’
‘Well, I want to be sure, too,’ he declared. Then, as if trying to claw away from the edge of some yawning precipice, he went on, more gently, ‘What about your career? You’re beginning to make a real name for yourself—’
‘I don’t intend to stop working, Grey,’ she said, interrupting. Lord, if that was his only concern then there was no problem. ‘I thought if we had a nanny I could get on with—’
The tight constraint finally snapped. ‘Damn it, Abbie, a baby is not an accessory that every professional woman needs to prove that she’s some kind of superwoman. I won’t have a child of mine dumped at six weeks with a nanny while her mother gets on with her real life.’ He flung his napkin on the table, pushed back his chair and rose to his