Anne McAllister - A Baby For Christmas

He’d been furious to reach them and discover a shy, innocent girl being preyed upon by hooligans. He hadn’t hesitated to step in.

He remembered as if it were yesterday—the drunken shove, the satisfying smack when his fist had connected with the drunk’s jaw, the adoring gray eyes that had looked up into his.

His hands, clenching now, remembered too. They could still feel the petal-softness of her skin as he’d held her briefly in his arms. The same softness they’d felt when she’d reached out her hand to help him up less than an hour ago.

In scant moments he’d become her hero. And he’d wanted to be her hero.

Until he’d found out whose daughter she was.

Then he’d felt as if he too had been duped. Her innocence hadn’t seemed so innocent any longer. Her shyness had seemed calculated.

It had made him furious then because he’d seen it for what it was.

Pure animal magnetism. Sexual chemistry. Hormones. Exactly the same things that had drawn his poor foolish father to Carly’s gorgeous shallow mother.

Piran was damned if he was going to let it happen to him!

And so he’d stayed away as much as he could.

Probably he’d only seen her half a dozen times over the not quite two years of his father’s marriage to Sue. But every time he had Carly had changed. She’d grown more desirable than ever.

Her curves developed. Her eyes sparkled with tantalizing laughter and heady promise. Her lips grew full and tempting, just made to be kissed.

But Piran had refused to kiss them. He wasn’t weak like his father. He knew there was more to a woman than a pretty face.

Ever since he was a tiny child, he’d idolized Arthur St Just, had grown up wanting to be just like him. He’d even taken his father’s side in his parents’ divorce.

In his eyes, Arthur St Just could do no wrong—until he’d met and married, in the space of a few short weeks, the blowsy, beautiful dancer Sue O’Reilly Delgado Gower Tremaine.

God, Piran thought, his fist clenching at his side and pounding on the mattress, even now he could remember the litany of her names!

Carly had told them to him once—recited them, actually, her wide gray eyes watching for his reaction. He’d gritted his teeth then. He gritted them now.

He couldn’t believe his father had fallen for a tramp like Sue—a dancer, for heaven’s sake! A woman with no education, no background, nothing—except a daughter.

Carly.

Carly, whose laughter and smiles and serious silvery eyes had tempted him increasingly each time he’d seen her, until at last, on her eighteenth birthday, he hadn’t been able to resist what she was offering.

Or what he thought she’d been offering.

To his everlasting shame he could still remember how ready he’d been for her. God, yes, he’d been ready! More than ready, he recalled with chagrin even now.

In another few moments he would have fallen completely under her spell. But then she’d opened her mouth and he’d found out that she hadn’t really been offering at all. She’d been trading—just like her mother.

Sex for marriage.

Piran might be one kind of fool, but he was never going to be the fool that his father had been. Marriage to Carlota O’Reilly had never been on the cards.

‘Marry you? You must be kidding!’ he’d said, incredulous. And he’d turned away from her stricken look.

He’d never seen her again after that night. Not even at his father’s funeral. He’d missed it, made up an excuse, hating her because he felt he had to, because he knew she would be there.

After that he’d put her—and her mother—out of his mind. He hadn’t thought of her in years. And yet the moment he’d seen her this afternoon he’d recognized her at once.

And wanted her just as much as ever, God help him.

‘What do you mean, there’s no room at the inn?’ Piran glowered at her from the doorway. The passage of four hours hadn’t improved his mood any, that was certain.

‘I was speaking metaphorically,’ Carly said. She drooped on to one of the wicker chairs on the veranda, feeling as if she’d been dragged backwards through the mangrove swamp. ‘There are no rooms available in Conch Cay.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course there are.’ Piran shoved a hand through sleep-tousled hair.

To say that he’d been unhappy to see her come back would be something of an understatement.

He’d said, ‘You!’ in a horrid voice and fumbled to fasten the top button of his trousers.

Carly had watched with undisguised interest. ‘Perhaps you were expecting someone else?’ she’d suggested, and fluttered her lashes at him, irritated that he would disbelieve her about a thing like this.

‘I was taking a nap,’ he’d retorted stiffly.

‘Oh. Right. Sorry to disturb you.’

‘You’re not,’ he’d said, which was the absolute truth.

He said now, ‘What about Maisie Cash’s house?’

‘The Potters are there from Phoenix for the holidays,’ Carly recited from memory.

‘It’s not the holidays yet.’

‘Tell that to the Potters.’

‘Well, what about the Kellys?’ he said impatiently. ‘They take in visitors.’

‘Lots of people take in visitors, Piran. Tourism is the prime industry on the island.’

‘I know that. So—’

‘So Conch Cay has a bumper crop. It might not look like Christmas out here, but everyone is here to celebrate it. I stopped at the grocery. Old Bill gave me a list.’

‘And?’

‘And they were all full.’

‘You can’t have looked everywhere!’

Carly unfolded the list and shoved it at him. ‘Then you look. I’ve looked until I’m ready to drop.’ She lay back on the floor of the veranda and closed her eyes.

Piran muttered under his breath. He prowled up and down the veranda, then stood glowering down at her.

Carly opened one eye. ‘And don’t tell me to go over to Eleuthera and take the launch back every day, because I won’t.’

He muttered again and paced the length of the veranda once more. ‘I suppose that means you expect to stay here?’

‘Unless you have a better idea, I don’t see any other option.’

‘Go home.’

‘We’ve been through that already.’

Piran made a furious sound deep in his throat.

‘What’s the matter really, Piran? Are you afraid I’ll take advantage of your virtue?’

He let out an explosive breath. ‘Maybe I’m afraid I’ll take advantage of yours?’

‘I didn’t think you thought I had any virtue.’

His teeth came together with a snap. ‘Don’t bait me, Carlota. If you want to stay here, don’t bait me.’

‘I have no intention of baiting you,’ Carly said hastily.

‘Good. Remember that. This is work. That’s all.’

‘You’re damn right it is,’ Carly said, incensed, sitting up and glaring at him. ‘And you’re a jerk if you think I want it to be any more than that!’

He met her gaze. ‘Just so we understand each other.’

‘We do.’

The look went on…and on. Finally he nodded curtly. ‘Use your old bedroom. But leave me alone. We can start work in the morning.’

She was surprised Piran remembered which bedroom had been hers.

Or maybe he didn’t, she thought when she finally got up and made her way toward the small bedroom next to the kitchen. Maybe he just assumed that she would remember and didn’t care as long as it wasn’t anywhere near his.

It wasn’t. It faced away from the ocean, bordering the narrow drive up which she’d come. The room Piran was using had been her mother’s and his father’s the last time they’d come here. It was on the other side of the house with access to the deck and the stairs to the path leading to the beach.