Modern Romance Collection: January Books 5 - 8. Jane Porter

at the private clinic he’d insisted she went to.

      What was she going to do? How could she have allowed herself to be talked into this charade, this pretence that everything was going to be just fine? As the questions flowed through her mind in a turbulent rush the nausea returned, bringing with it this time sheer panic.

      ‘You should be resting.’ Max’s accented voice cut through her thoughts and she looked up at him, the image he created as he dominated the entire room, and as usual made her heart skip a beat. She didn’t want to feel anything for him. That would only lead to more disappointment and pain. For her and her baby.

      ‘I can’t do this any more, Max.’ The words rushed out, desperate to be heard, believed.

      ‘I’m not having this discussion now. You need to rest.’ The tension in his body was palpable, but she didn’t heed its warning.

      He’d confessed that love and happiness were not on his radar, so what else could be making him so cold and distant? News of his brother? Her conscience reminded her that the very same day, even the very same moment she’d told him he was to be a father, he’d seen the true extent of his father’s treachery emblazoned across the headlines. Wouldn’t that be enough to make any man fear the idea of fatherhood? Well, there was no way she was going to give him the satisfaction of beating down her dreams, of accusing her of things she didn’t do—would never do.

      ‘I’m pregnant, not ill.’ The fierceness of her voice surprised her as much as it did Max if the quick rise of his brows was anything to go by. ‘I should be at work.’

      The distance between them seemed to open up and the luxury of his living room became a vast ocean. One she no longer wanted to cross, not when she had no idea what waited for her on the other side. He was the one holding out on her, holding back his emotions. If he forced her to stay she’d keep up the pretence of cold indifference, guard her heart well, until New Year’s Eve and then she would leave. At least she could never be accused of not trying to involve him in his son or daughter’s life.

      ‘No, Lisa, you should not. If you return to work, it will not be until after New Year and only when I am satisfied you are perfectly well.’ The command and control in his voice were clear and she tried hard to fight the need to rebel, the need to revert once again to the capricious teenager she’d hidden behind.

      ‘I can’t stay here like a pampered princess. That’s not me, Max. I need to be out doing something.’ She swung round and glared at him, instantly regretting the fast movement as her head spun. ‘Like buying a Christmas tree.’

      ‘A Christmas tree?’ He looked perplexed and if she weren’t feeling so headstrong she might have laughed at him then kissed him. But that was before she’d discovered who he really was. Actions such as those belonged to the short and very false marriage they’d shared.

      ‘Of course, a Christmas tree. It’s only a matter of days until Christmas and there isn’t one bit of sparkle and cheer in this apartment.’

      ‘I don’t do Christmas.’ He glowered at her.

      ‘Too emotional for you?’ She prodded him, like the mouse that just couldn’t leave the sleeping cat alone. ‘What about visiting family? Do you indulge in that?’

      The thought of staying here locked away in an apartment that didn’t have any hint of Christmas in it was too much. She loved Christmas. It was the one time of year she felt hope, felt that dreams could come true. She loved the magic of the season even though it had never reached inside her childhood home. Now she was trapped here with a man who didn’t believe in love or the festive season. How had she ever fallen for a man so opposite to her?

      Because he never revealed his true self.

      ‘Visit family?’ He crossed the room toward her and even though they were physically closer the distance between them seemed as vast as it had when he’d walked into the room. ‘Do you need to visit your family?’

      Shock hit her like icy water. Visit her family? She wished now they had talked more before their short marriage, wished that she’d confided in him about her past, one she’d always strived to hide. But she hadn’t been able to tell him how much she resented her mother for the unsettled childhood she and her older stepbrother had experienced. How she now blamed her mother for all the trouble he had got into? She hadn’t wanted to taint what she and Max had found by sharing the darkness of her childhood with him. Better it stayed hidden away.

      ‘No, I do not.’ She snapped the words out as emotions cascaded over her. Whatever was the matter with her? Was it simply pregnancy hormones that made her so sensitive, so very emotional, or was it being forced into close proximity with the man she’d once loved with abandon, hoping it would be enough, that one day he would love her too?

      She moved to the window and focused her attention on the view of London beyond the apartment, thinking of her mother and older stepbrother that’d made up the mainstay of the dysfunctional family she was part of. The constant visits by the police looking for her brother and the ever-changing partners in her mother’s life were exactly what she’d hoped to escape when she’d married Max. How very wrong she’d been. Now her child seemed doomed to be part of a family where broken promises and part-time fathers were normal. It was the last thing she’d ever wanted and not at all what she would have chosen.

      ‘Then I want you to rest as the doctor suggested—especially as we will be travelling to Madrid tomorrow.’ Max’s words snapped her back into the moment, but the fizz of anger didn’t abate.

      She turned to look at him, frowning in confusion. ‘Madrid?’

      ‘Sí, Madrid. Raul and Lydia are getting married.’ There wasn’t a drop of emotion, good or bad in his words. Did he still resent his brother?

      She kept her thoughts to herself. Safer to stay on the topic of discussion. ‘On Christmas Eve?’

      ‘Sí, on Christmas Eve.’ He crossed the room and joined her at the window. His profile was stern as he looked absently out over London. ‘And I have promised we will be there. He is my family.’

      The pointed remark to their discussion of moments ago wasn’t lost on her. Did he really consider Raul Valdez as family? She wasn’t entirely convinced a man who rebuffed emotions as if he had a bat in his hand could suddenly become sentimental over a brother.

      * * *

      Max glared at the skyline of London and tried to push down the annoyance of what he’d learnt of his brother’s impending nuptials. He felt a failure in the shadow of the love Raul had admitted he had for Lydia, the woman who’d been at their first meeting for a short while. As he stared unseeingly at London, beneath a winter-grey sky, he became acutely aware of Lisa’s questions as if she’d spoken the words aloud. Was Raul his family? Did he belong or deserve to be named as such when the only other person he thought of like that was the mother he’d lost when he was fourteen and his little sister, now almost twenty-one and living her own life.

      ‘It was obvious there was something between them from the very first moment I saw them, but I did not expect this.’ He tried to divert the attention from himself, from what was happening here between him and Lisa. As his wife, wasn’t she his family too?

      ‘Didn’t you expect it, Max? Do you think all men should be so against committing themselves emotionally—for life?’

      Her green eyes fired her anger at him, anger he knew would take a long time to cool, unless his rapidly forming plans would salve it. He had no intention of pretending that all was okay. He knew she still wanted that happy-ever-after nonsense and that his mixed messages, thanks to his wildly changing emotions, were making her colder toward him. Angry, even, and he had no intention of arriving in Spain with a wife that was obviously angry at him. He didn’t want Raul to think he had triumphed where his new older brother was failing—completely and utterly failing.

      ‘I didn’t expect Raul to rush into marriage, not when they were so obviously poles apart the day I met him.’

      ‘Some couples fall