Jefferson wasn’t amused. He looked into her dark blue eyes and saw a river of emotions shining out at him. They were shifting, changing even as he watched, so that he wasn’t sure if she was going to throw something at him or rush into his arms, however belatedly. A moment later, he had his answer.
“Why’re you here?”
The music of her accent didn’t soften her words any. She faced him down as the wind lifted her long black hair into a dance about her head. She was beautiful and stubborn and the most fascinating woman he’d ever known.
Because of her, he’d hopped a plane and flown thousands of miles only to be treated like a leper by people he’d considered friends.
“You mean, why am I standing in the rain in front of a hardheaded woman who isn’t honoring the contract she signed?” He snapped the words out and noticed she didn’t so much as flinch. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”
“Your people are littering the street in front of my house at this very moment,” she challenged, “so I’m thinking I’m honoring what was between us a good deal more than you have.”
“You know,” he said, shoving the monstrously huge dog off his legs so that he could stalk toward the porch. And her. “I’ve been back in Ireland about an hour and in that short amount of time, I’ve been rained on, had a flat tire, got mud in my shoes and been insulted by everyone I’ve spoken to. So I’m not in the mood to listen to more obscure references to what a bastard I am. If you’ve got a problem with me,” he added, stopping just short of the porch, “then tell me what it is so I can fix it.”
Her eyes narrowed on him. She crossed her arms over her chest, lifted her chin and said, “I’m pregnant. Fix that.”
Chapter Six
She slammed the door an instant later.
Eyes wide, heart pounding in her chest, Maura leaned back against the door and tried to catch her breath. She shivered slightly and couldn’t be sure if it was the bitter spring weather or the ice in Jefferson’s pale blue eyes that had made her feel cold down to the bone. She only knew that seeing him again had shaken her. Shaken her so badly she couldn’t afford to let him see it.
Bad enough he’d shown up on her doorstep without so much as a phone call in warning. “But then,” she murmured aloud, “the man obviously doesn’t know how to use a bloody phone now, does he, since I’ve been calling him for more than three months now with no success.”
And yet here he was.
At her front door, looking half-drowned and furious with it and still so tempting everything in her wanted to shout for glee at seeing him again. Even though she knew better, Maura felt that familiar need for him rise up inside her. She should have been prepared for this. Somehow, she should have known.
Of course he’d come back to Ireland. If not to see her, then to check on his blasted movie people. Yet, even if she had expected to see him, she doubted she would have been prepared for the delicious licks of want and desire that swept through her with just a single look into the man’s eyes.
“He had the right of it. He is a bastard.” She leaned her head back against the closed door and waited for him to start pounding on it.
Jefferson wasn’t the kind of man who’d hear the news she’d just delivered and then disappear as quickly as he could. Oh no, he’d be demanding entry in another moment or two. And then he’d be righteous and full of himself and expecting explanations and details.
Though she’d been trying for months to give him exactly that, right now, she was in no mind to speak with him at all.
Mostly because her stomach was still spinning from that first sight of him. And because her hands itched to slap or hold she wasn’t sure which and mostly, because he was Jefferson.
God help her, it didn’t seem to matter that she was furious with him. Her heart was still full of him and she couldn’t seem to dig him out despite how hard she tried. Which only made her even more furious with herself than she was with him.
And who would have thought that possible?
A heartbeat later, several loud thuds came from right behind her head. She knew without looking out the window that he was using his fist to batter at her door. Her heartbeat quickened and low in her belly something stirred, buzzing awake feelings that had been lying fallow for weeks now. Like a limb waking from a deep sleep, there were pinpricks of awareness tingling across every inch of her skin.
“Damn it, Maura, open the door!”
She might have if he hadn’t ordered her to. As it was, the anger she’d been carrying around for months suddenly swamped her and she pushed away from the door. “Go away, Jefferson!”
“Not gonna happen!” he shouted back. “Now, do we have this conversation loud enough for everyone to listen in or do we talk in private?”
Private.
That got her moving. She wasn’t interested in having half of Hollywood listening in on her private business. Maura flung the door open and stepped back as Jefferson marched inside, followed by King, who promptly shook the rainwater off his coat and onto everything else.
“For heaven’s sake,” she muttered as the dog sprinted off the long hallway toward the kitchen and his bed.
Wiping water off her face, she stared up into Jefferson’s eyes and almost took a step back from the glittering wrath shining there. Then she remembered just which of them had the right to be angry.
“You’ve nothing to be snippy about,” she told him before he could speak.
“Snippy?” He pushed both hands through his wet hair, shrugged out of his suit jacket and tossed it onto the umbrella stand beside the door. His white dress shirt was soaked as well, clinging to the muscled contours of his chest and abdomen in a way that made Maura’s mouth water, though she wouldn’t have admitted it even with a knife to her throat.
“I’m way more than snippy,” he told her. “What the hell do you mean you’re pregnant?”
She forced herself to calmly close the front door before she turned to answer him. “Just how many things could I mean, do you think, Jefferson?” Oh, she’d imagined this scene too many times to count and the reactions she’d given him in her mind had been wide and varied. But in none of them had he looked as though someone had hit him over the head with a stick.
He was stunned, pure and simple, which told her flat out that no one had given him the countless messages she’d left over the last couple of months. Why did the man employ so many people if none of them could be trusted to pass on a message?
Her temper built steadily as she met his shocked gaze. “It’s easy enough to understand. I’m pregnant. With child. Carrying. Bun in the oven.” She tipped her head to one side. “Shall I draw you a picture?”
A tension-filled second or two ticked past, the only sounds in the house that of the rain battering at the windows and the wind whistling beneath the eaves. Finally, he spoke and his voice was tight with controlled emotion.
“If you think you’re being funny, you’re mistaken. And if you’re really pregnant why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Really pregnant?” She repeated the words, spitting them back at him. “Instead of only a bit pregnant, is that it?”
“That’s not what I meant. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hah! You’ve quite the nerve asking me that question, I’ll say.” She closed the space between them with two quick steps and poked her index finger against the center of his chest. “With me calling and calling that bloody studio of yours, leaving messages both long and short with that crowd of people standing between you and the public?”
“You