Rhys's Redemption Read online

  She could feel Rhys’s gaze on her even as she worked. She wished she’d taken the time to brush past him and into the bathroom where she could dress. She knew her nightgown was barely covering her rear end. And she knew he knew it, too.

  Still, she wasn’t sure he’d care.

  He might have made love with her last time he was home, but Mariah wasn’t fool enough to think it had meant anything to him. Even if she wished it had!

  She ripped the sheets off the bed quickly and efficiently, not even glancing his way. Then she was aware of him edging around her, and realized that he was trying to get to his dresser to get some clothes.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, face flaming. “I’ll get out of your way.”

  She tried to. And he grabbed his stuff and yanked it on. Mariah tried not to notice him out of the corner of her eye. But it was difficult. He had a beautiful body—hard and lean and muscular. His chest was lightly dusted with dark hair that arrowed down toward his groin and—

  She let out a harsh breath and reached for a clean sheet with trembling hands.

  “I can do that,” Rhys said. “Really. It’s okay. And it’s fine that you stayed here. It’s what I gave you a key for, remember? Because we’re friends.”

  Yes, they were friends. Or they had been.

  She didn’t know what they would be now.

  “I wouldn’t have stayed,” she told him, bending to tuck in the sheet, “if I’d known.”

  “Why not?”

  She wished he wouldn’t press the issue right now. She wanted to be calm, together, in control. But he was. She sighed and flung open a sheet. “You know why not.”

  “Because of what happened,” Rhys said flatly.

  For a second the only thing moving was the sheet as it fluttered into place on the bed. Then Mariah nodded her head.

  “We have to talk about that.”

  No kidding. “Yes, we do. I know how you feel about—”

  “Right,” he said quickly. “And you do, too. Don’t you? Why ruin a good thing, right? So we just go on from here.”

  She blinked. “Huh?”

  He shrugged. “It was a one-off. A fluke. It just… happened. It doesn’t have to change anything.”

  Mariah stared at him. She felt a wave of nausea begin to overtake her. Her skin felt cold and suddenly clammy. She thought the color must have drained from her face and was angry that it had. After all, this was what she’d expected.

  “It doesn’t,” he insisted. “We were friends. Are friends,” he corrected himself. “And what we… what we did… that night, it doesn’t have to wreck that.”

  “No, but—”

  “It won’t,” he insisted. “We won’t do it again. Look, Mariah,” he said and she thought his tone was almost gentle now. “I know you were being kind when you… When you thought I needed…”

  He stopped. She saw him swallow. She saw, too, that he wouldn’t say the words. He wouldn’t admit that he had needed.

  Now he ran his tongue over his lips and took a steadying breath. “It was a hard time for me. The funeral. Jack dying like that.”

  But it wasn’t only Jack, Mariah knew that. Jack had been the catalyst. But the need had gone deeper. It had gone back to Sarah, the wife he wouldn’t talk about unless he’d had too many beers and was too far gone to remember to keep his mouth shut.

  Sarah, the only woman he’d ever loved.

  Mariah held herself very still.

  Rhys took a breath. “You were being kind and… I shouldn’t have… shouldn’t have done… what I did. I was… out of my head. I took advantage. I broke my rule.”

  “What rule?”

  “About sex. About not having sex with friends. You know that. I don’t have sex with friends.”

  “You have sex with your enemies?”

  A harsh breath hissed through his teeth. “No. Of course not! But I don’t have sex with women I care about, either! Not… not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  Rhys raked a hand through his hair. She saw the exhaustion in him, the confusion, and she knew she shouldn’t press him. This wasn’t the time.

  But it had gone too far, and he was going to finish. “I shouldn’t have slept with you. Had sex with you.” He forced himself to be blunt. “It complicates things. If we’re not careful it could change things. Between us. I don’t want that. It was a mistake.”

  So, there it was. She’d asked for it.

  Their lovemaking had been, in Rhys’s eyes, a mistake. “Obviously it was,” she said in a voice kept determinedly colorless. She wouldn’t let him see the pain his words caused. She should have known.

  Damn it, she had known! But that night she couldn’t help herself.

  Rhys smiled. He held out a hand. “So,” he said briskly after a moment, “no hard feelings?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t take his hand cither. She looked at him and then away. She tried to regroup. To become the person he wanted her to become.

  His friend.

  His buddy.

  His pal.

  When she didn’t take his hand, he dropped it to his side. But he couldn’t let it rest. “Mariah?” He smiled hopefully, encouragingly, once more. “Are we friends?”

  She gathered up her clothes and the sheets, then clutched them against her heart as if they were a shield. Then she dipped her head. “We’re friends,” she managed.

  He grinned. He let out a whoosh of relief. “Great.”

  She brushed past him, headed down the hall, still cold, still clammy, more nauseated than ever. At the end of the hall she turned back. “But things won’t ever be quite the same,” she told him.

  He frowned. “Why not? You said—”

  “I’m pregnant, Rhys. I’m going to have your child.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mariah hadn’t expected him to be thrilled.

  She, better than anyone, knew Rhys’s attitude about family.

  “Not interested," he’d said bluntly the first time they’d discussed it when they’d known each other only a few months. She’d asked him to go with her to her friend Lizzie’s wedding and he’d gone willingly enough. They’d been at the reception when the topic of marriage had come up, and just as quickly Rhys had put it back down again.

  “I’ve been married. Never again,” he’d said adamantly.

  At the time she didn’t know about his background, and she remembered staring at him, astonished at his vehemence. While most guys she knew carefully shied away from the matrimonial lasso, they’d seemed merely skittish, not fierce in their determination.

  Not Rhys.

  “So if you meet the right girl, you’ll just tell her to get lost?” She’d teased him a little for his uncompromising stance, expecting he’d relent a little.

  But Rhys had said flatly, “It will never get that far. There will never be another right girl. I won’t let it happen.”

  So she’d been warned. She couldn’t say she hadn’t been.

  But, warned or not, it hadn’t made any difference. She’d fallen in love with him anyway.

  She’d known him for three years, ever since she’d bought the flat above his in the brownstone co-op where they lived. She’d lived by him, talked with him, eaten with him, laughed with him, played with him. Discovered that he was everything she’d ever wanted in a man.

  And he never knew.

  Because by the time she’d been aware of it herself she knew he wasn’t looking for a relationship.

  He didn’t want another love.

  And so she’d never asked for more than he would give. For three years she had been what he wanted her to be; his friend. His buddy. The one he called to go jogging or to toss a Frisbee around in the park. The one he called to say, “How about catching that Brazilian film tonight at Lincoln Plaza?” The one he nursed a beer with at McCabe’s, the neighborhood bar. The one he tried out the newest trendy restaurant with, or went to the latest museum exhibit, or to a Yankees game, or to the Cloisters with.

/>   She was the only person he’d ever been to the Empire State Building with. Though once he’d thought maybe they should take Jack.

  Now they never would.

  Now they might never go there again together—because Mariah had seen the shock on Rhys’s face. She’d seen the swift denial in his eyes. She’d seen the mixture of fury and pain flickering in them.

  Any hopes she might have had that, faced with the reality of her pregnancy, he’d change his mind about things died right then.

  But reality was still the same.

  In seven months Mariah was going to have Rhys Wolfe’s baby—whether he liked it or not, whether he wanted it or not.

  She wanted it.

  Now that she’d had time to come to terms with it, Mariah very definitely wanted it.

  Not that getting pregnant had been her intention when she’d gone down to Rhys’s apartment that evening nine weeks ago.

  She’d gone out of curiosity—and concern.

  She knew as well as anyone that Rhys’s schedule was never cut in stone. As a member of an elite firefighting unit, one called in wherever oil rig, well or refinery fires got out of hand, he never knew when he might be taking off for a distant spot on the globe.

  He never cared.

  “What do I have to stay home for?” he’d once said with a shrug. “I like what I do.”

  Besides the actual firefighting, he spent a fair amount of time teaching firefighting skills in clinics worldwide. Those were a little more predictable. But Mariah never knew exactly when he would be back until she heard a rap on her door and found Rhys standing there with a heart-stopping grin on his face, saying, “You wanta go up the Empire State Building, lady?”

  That night, when she’d seen his light on, she’d been surprised as he’d only left less than a week before to go to England. It was unusual for him to be back so soon. She’d been afraid something might be wrong.

  So she’d gone down and knocked on his door. When he hadn’t answered, she’d let herself in with the key he’d given her so she could keep an eye on things.

  She’d called his name. He hadn’t replied.

  She knew which light he’d rigged to turn on when he was gone. But it wasn't the one she’d seen from her terrace, the one in his bedroom, which opened onto the small back garden.

  So she’d called his name again. “Rhys? Are you home?”

  Then she’d spotted his duffel bag next to the desk, and for just a moment she felt happiness quicken her heart as it always did when she knew he was home.

  Because she was always glad to see him.

  And if there was more to it than that on her part, she deliberately tried never to think about it because she didn’t want to ruin what they had by asking for more than he could give. What she had, she was determined, would be enough.

  When she’d gone down the hall, she’d found the door of his bedroom open and the lamp by his bed spilling light across the polished oak floor. “Rhys?”

  She’d stopped at the door, then peered in. The sliding door that led into the garden was open, too, and the vertical blinds rattled lightly in the late-night breeze.

  She smiled, sure she would find him outside looking up at the stars, drinking in the relative quiet of the city at nearly midnight. They’d sat back here many times late into the night, talking about everything under the moon. He liked to do that. He said it helped him unwind.

  Perhaps, if he wasn’t too tired, they would do that tonight. So she didn’t hesitate to join him.

  He was there, as she’d thought, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs, his head thrown back, eyes shut. His lean cheeks seemed almost hollow in the moonlight, his firm mouth tight. His arms lay limply on the armrests. An almost empty glass sat beside his hand. On the ground, next to the chair, there was a whiskey bottle.

  Mariah’s brows lifted in surprise. Rhys rarely drank hard liquor. He liked a cold beer on a warm day, but that was all.

  “Rhys?”

  He didn’t move, and she thought he might have fallen asleep. Then his jaw tightened further. He swallowed. She saw his Adam’s apple move in his throat. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair, and slowly he opened his eyes and turned his head her way.

  There wasn’t enough fight from the bedroom for her to see his expression. But she could see the way he moved.

  Like an old man.

  She hurried toward him.

  “Rhys?” She knew something wasn’t right. She didn’t see exhaustion. She saw pain. She knelt beside him, taking his hand in hers. It was icy as it clenched hers. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t speak. He just stared. And then he said, “Jack.”

  It was like a blow. She knew at once.

  She’d met Jack O’Day several times. She’d been charmed by his dark good looks, his unfailing good cheer, his Irish wit and casual grace. He had none of Rhys’s dark, brooding intensity, none of his fierce determination. Jack was the embodiment of hail-fellow-well-met. The opposite of Rhys.

  They were, in Jack’s words, “O’Day and O’Night.”

  But, for all their differences, they were closer than brothers. Two halves of a whole, Mariah had thought. Complementary souls.

  Best friends. Had been since their rookie days on the team.

  And, seeing the stark pain on Rhys’s face, she knew. He didn’t need to say more.

  She reached out and put her arms around him, drew him close, held him tight.

  And without a word Rhys wrapped his arms around her. He clung to her like a drowning man, pressing his face into the curve of her neck. Silent tears scalded her, and she felt the tremble of his hard body against her own.

  She didn’t know how long she held him there, didn’t know when they rose and moved from the garden into the house. She didn’t know when their embrace ceased to be comfort and became something more, when the feelings became something stronger, and when Rhys’s need became desperate and something that only she could give.

  Maybe she should have stopped it.

  She, of the two, had a better chance at control, at calling a halt, holding him off, saying no.

  Or maybe she didn’t.

  Maybe, if she was honest, she never had. Not for months. Or years.

  Because that was how long she’d loved him.

  So she didn’t say no when his lips found hers. She didn’t say no when he ran his hands up under her shirt, when he peeled off her shorts and stripped off his jeans, when they fell onto the bed in each other’s arms, and found solace in each other’s bodies.

  She didn’t want to say no.

  She wanted the night. The love. The sharing.

  She wanted Rhys.

  She had hoped—had spent the last nine weeks hoping— that their one night of loving would become something more. Something deeper. Something lasting.

  She hadn’t intended the lasting part to be his child.

  Of course, she should have taken precautions. But what had happened hadn’t been premeditated.

  Making love with Rhys Wolfe had been the last thing on her mind. When it happened, it had surprised her as much as it had him. But she wasn’t sorry.

  And maybe she should be, she thought now as, still clutching his sheets and her clothes, she made her way slowly up the steps to her own apartment.

  But she wasn’t.

  She had regrets, yes.

  But not for their lovemaking—and not for the child they’d made.

  What she regretted was that Rhys still thought it was a mistake.

  She didn’t know how to change his mind. She only knew she had to.

  And she would. Later.

  Right now she had to make it back to her apartment before morning sickness overtook her.

  “What do you mean you’re going to—?” Rhys stopped dead and glared at the brown-haired young woman who had just opened Mariah’s apartment door. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Erica, Mariah’s cousin.” The brunette blinked nervously at his vehem
ence, then managed a smile. “And you must be Rhys.”

  “Why?”

  Did she know? he wondered. Had Mariah told everyone before him?

  Erica swallowed rapidly, nervously. “I just… guessed. When she came back just now, Mariah said you were home. I hope you don’t mind that she was using your apartment while we were here. She said you wouldn’t, but…” The look she was giving him said she didn’t necessarily believe that. But she didn’t look at him as if she knew anything about him and Mariah and a child.

  Rhys breathed marginally easier. “I didn’t mind if she uses my apartment,” he said curtly. “Now where is she?”

  He’d followed her upstairs the minute he’d got his wits together. He still wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. He couldn’t have heard her right! She hadn’t said she was pregnant.

  Had she?

  “She’s in the bathroom. Taking a shower, I think.”

  Rhys’s fists clenched. Hiding out, he translated. He ground his teeth, then brushed past the cousin and stalked into the living room. “I’ll wait.”

  He wanted to throttle her. How could she say something like that, then just bolt up the stairs, leaving him standing there, pole-axed? He still couldn’t fathom it. Pregnant?

  With his child?

  He glowered around now, trying to fix on something to vent his frustration. Something to shatter or smash or strangle. There was nothing.

  Not even Mariah’s apartment looked familiar. Her normally neat, albeit comfortably homey living room was messy and cluttered. It looked as if it had been taken over by aliens. With children.

  There were toys scattered on the floor and clothes piled on the chairs. There was nowhere to sit. The sofa had been pulled out to make a bed and a little boy in pajamas was sprawled on it, staring at a cartoon on the television. He glanced at Rhys with minimal interest, then went back to the animated violence.

  Somebody was bopping a rabbit over the head with a mallet. The rabbit’s head was spinning. Stars wheeled around his ears. He had a stupefied look on his face.