She was looking at him as if he were some sort of monster now. And maybe he was. But he wouldn’t back down on this. He couldn’t. There was too much at stake. He couldn’t let this second chance at being a father pass him by.
She swallowed hard. ‘You would really do that…?’
‘If I’m forced to, yes,’ he bit out tautly.
‘Even if it meant I’d end up hating you?’ she said emotionally.
Having Hebe hate him from the onset was not a good idea, he knew, but what choice was she giving him…?
‘Even then,’ he said grimly.
Hebe was looking at him now as if she had never seen him before—or as if she wished she never seen him in the first place!
She shook her head, turning away. ‘I think I would like to be alone now for a while, if you don’t mind,’she said abruptly.
Nick did mind—was reluctant to leave her. Even for a moment. He wasn’t sure, now that she knew he was insisting on marriage rather than the settlement she had hoped for, that she wouldn’t attempt to run away from him and hide if he left her on her own. Unless he could convince her beforehand that there was nowhere she could go that he wouldn’t find her!
‘We are getting married, Hebe,’ he told her softly. ‘You are going to move into my apartment. And we are going to see your parents on Saturday. And don’t think I wouldn’t find you if you tried to run away from me,’ he added challengingly, knowing by the way her cheeks paled that she had at least been thinking about doing exactly that.
Hebe looked at him with dull eyes. ‘You’re really serious about this?’
‘Most assuredly,’ he bit out.
She nodded. ‘I’ll call my parents and tell them to expect us some time in the afternoon,’ she said.
‘And you’ll move into my apartment on Sunday?’
She sighed. ‘Let’s just take one step at a time, hmm?’ They didn’t have time for ‘one step at a time’, damn it!
But one look at her pale and drawn face told him that she really had had enough for one day.
Maybe he shouldn’t have said those things to her in her condition. They were the truth, but maybe he shouldn’t have been so harsh.
Or told her about Luke…!
But he hadn’t felt he could do anything else in the circumstances. He had been fighting for his life—and his baby—and if that meant he had to fight dirty, then he was willing to do it.
Maybe he shouldn’t have made love to her in that way, either. She was pregnant, after all. But he hadn’t, as she chose to think, just wanted to prove a point to her. He had needed to hold her, to make love to her, and he knew he had been needing to do so ever since he’d seen her again in the gallery earlier this afternoon, his body responding uncontrollably just at the sight of her.
Even before that…!
He had tried to put her from his mind these last six weeks, in the same way he had every other woman he had been involved with since he and Sally parted, but Hebe had persisted in popping into his mind at the most inconvenient of times.
Because she had been so delicious to make love to, he had told himself. Because she had made love to him so deliciously too.
But neither of those things explained why he had still been able to imagine the delicate curve of her cheek, the beauty of those unusual gold-coloured eyes, the way a dimple appeared in her left cheek when she smiled, the husky sound of her laugh.
And then he had seen the portrait.
A portrait he had been convinced on sight was Hebe, the woman who had been haunting his days—and nights—for the last five weeks.
He had been filled with a mindless fury the first time he’d looked at the portrait, his imagination running riot and his mind going into overdrive thinking of the scenario that might have preceded the painting of it. Hebe’s face and body were exactly as they had looked that night five weeks before, when he had made love to her.
He had known then and there that he had to have the portrait—and that, despite it being an almost priceless Andrew Southern, once he had it no one else would be allowed to look at it but him.
He had also known in that moment that he didn’t want anyone else but him to see the real Hebe like that again, either—that he wanted to take her back to his bed and keep her there.
He hadn’t expected it to happen quite in this way, but the ultimate result was the same. And this way he didn’t have to admit to any of these feelings. He could take Hebe as his wife whether she wanted it or not.
For better or for worse…!
‘Okay,’ he conceded huskily. ‘I’ll call round tomorrow evening and let you know what I’ve managed to sort out about the wedding.’ No matter what Hebe said he wasn’t letting go of that; she would marry him. And soon. ‘Maybe the two of us could go out to dinner?’
Hebe gave him a rueful smile. ‘I think it’s a little late for us to start dating, don’t you?’
‘You said it yourself, Hebe. We need to start getting to know each other,’ he insisted. ‘By my reckoning, we have precisely seven and a half months in which to do that!’
By her reckoning too, Hebe mused dully, feeling as if a trapdoor were closing behind her. She had no doubts whatsoever that Nick meant it when he said she wouldn’t be able to hide from him and that he would find her.
He meant what he said about marrying her too.
Just as he meant his threat regarding a fight for custody of the baby she carried deep inside her if she didn’t agree to marriage.
It was obvious why he felt so strongly about it too. Luke’s death meant that he had no intention of losing this second child.
But by this time tomorrow she would have been to see David Gillespie, Andrew Southern’s agent, and would have at least set that situation in motion.
Once she had the answers she needed she would take great delight in telling Nick just exactly how wrong about her he had been!
In regard to the portrait, at any rate…
This pregnancy she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, do anything about.
Which meant she either had to marry Nick or fight him.
With all the Cavendish millions behind him, it was a fight she already knew Nick was sure to win!
That trapdoor closed with a resounding bang!
CHAPTER SIX
HEBE knew she was no closer to accepting her fate, when she opened the door to Nick’s knock the following evening, than she had been the previous day.
But she had taken the day off as he’d suggested—it had fitted in with her appointment to see David Gillespie, anyway. An appointment that had been as frustratingly unsatisfactory as the secretary had warned her on the telephone that it would be.
No, David Gillspie had told her. He couldn’t possibly reveal Andrew Southern’s address. No, he certainly couldn’t give her the artist’s telephone number either. No, it didn’t matter that her mother was an old friend of the artist. He still couldn’t give her the address or telephone number.
Hebe had even tried mentioning the portrait—also to no avail. It wasn’t catalogued in the artist’s work, so it was probably a fake, the elderly man had claimed regretfully.
The best that Hebe had been able to get was a promise that yes, he would forward a letter on to the