Shadowing Shahna. Laurey Bright

paralyzed. A sickening sensation made her stomach drop, and her temples throbbed.

      Then Kier spoke, hoarsely, his knuckles going white as his hold on the cup in his hand tightened. “That’s a baby!”

      Chapter 2

      Shahna unglued her tongue from the top of her mouth. “Yes.”

      She could claim she was baby-sitting, fob him off somehow. But Kier, she knew, wouldn’t be fobbed. And what was the point of lying? He’d find out sooner or later if he wanted to.

      “Mum-mum!” More peremptory this time. She heard the rattle of the cot side as the baby hoisted himself up and clung, waiting for her to come to him.

      “You’d better go,” she told Kier. “I have to pick him up.”

      Kier rose from his chair, rocking it back so that it teetered. Automatically he steadied it and shoved it under the table, using both hands. His voice grated. “I’m not going anywhere!”

      “Mum-mum…” Forlorn now, followed by a short silence and then a loud wail.

      “I have to pick him up,” Shahna repeated distractedly and headed for the bedroom.

      A baby. Kier’s hand clutched the back of the wooden chair so hard the edges cut into his palm. He felt as though someone had punched him in the gut.

      Shahna had a baby. He couldn’t get his head around the idea. In all the time they’d been together she’d never said anything about wanting children. After they’d both obtained medical certificates, she had relieved him of the responsibility for contraception and he’d been glad of that. He’d trusted her not to slip up on taking her pills, just as she’d trusted him to keep to his word on the exclusive nature of their relationship.

      Minutes ago she’d told him she wasn’t living with a man.

      That didn’t necessarily mean she was celibate—after all, she had never lived with Kier, either, only slept with him on a regular basis, and kept a few clothes and toiletries at his place, as he did at hers.

      A convenient arrangement, she’d reminded him.

      And it had suited him, as she’d said. At first.

      He wasn’t sure when he’d begun to find it less than satisfactory, when he’d started toying with the idea of asking her to move in with him—and put it off because Shahna seemed quite content as they were. And because he needed to be sure of her before he risked rocking the boat. Risked, perhaps, losing her—a prospect that had roused sensations he hadn’t felt in years, uncomfortably close to fear and a sense of powerlessness; a prospect that made him hesitate to endanger the status quo.

      Despite three years of great sex and equally enjoyable companionship, he still felt he’d hardly peeked beneath the smooth, unruffled and intriguingly impenetrable surface she’d presented to him at their first meeting. He hadn’t been sure how she would react to his surprising desire for a greater intimacy.

      Somehow Shahna had got under his skin as none of his previous lovers had. There was something different about her, something that had him hankering for more…not just of her beautiful body and her quick mind with its unusual blend of practical and imaginative that made her so good at her job, but the essential Shahna inside, of which she allowed only tantalizing glimpses.

      And while he had been considering and strategizing how to persuade her to live with him, she’d left—vanished without warning, without explanation. Nothing but a three-line note thanking him for the good times and wishing him well.

      He had never been so angry in his life. No use telling himself she had every right, that he had asked for no more, promised no more. Or that he’d probably had a narrow escape from making perhaps the biggest blunder of his life, allowing a woman to breach the barriers he’d carefully preserved for years. The suddenness of her departure, the lack of any discernible reason, had outraged him.

      Today all the anger and outrage had come flooding back.

      She looked different, a little more rounded than he remembered, softer. Her hair was shorter, the slight natural curl unconfined, and with no makeup she presented an intriguingly scrubbed look that he’d previously seen only rarely.

      But she was as desirable as ever. Without his even touching her, his body responded the same way it always had since the first time he’d taken her hand and looked into her clear, momentarily startled and then wary hazel-green eyes. Responded in a way it had failed to do to any woman since she left.

      It wasn’t that she was any more beautiful than numerous other women who entered his orbit. Or even that she was smarter. He knew plenty of highly intelligent, talented, beautiful females. In the last eighteen—no, twenty—months, far too long to brood over losing a lover, he’d deliberately cultivated a few of those other women. Had even vowed that he would take one of them to bed. But before it came to that he had lost interest. None of them were Shahna.

      It was Shahna who inconveniently haunted his dreams. Shahna he reached for in the mornings before he was fully awake, only to encounter a cold, untouched pillow beside his own. Shahna whose body fitted so well with his, whose mouth was a miracle of softness and passion, whose lightest touch could bring him to instant responsiveness, whose subtle woman-scent had lingered in his apartment, catching him unawares when he opened his wardrobe long after she’d removed the clothing once stored there, or the drawer from which she’d forgotten to take several lace-and-silk scraps of underwear, or the bathroom cupboard that still held a perfumed body spray. Perhaps she’d left it on purpose because he had given it to her. Just as she’d scrupulously left the several pieces of jewelry that had been his gifts on her birthday or at Christmas, the only times she’d been willing to take anything expensive. Her rejection of the fruits of his wealth had maddened him, but he recognized and respected the integrity behind it.

      Removing his hands from the chair back, he studied the red marks on his palms. He could hear the baby cooing, and Shahna murmuring words he couldn’t catch. An unpleasant, peculiar dread churned his stomach.

      Then she appeared in the doorway, carrying the child.

      Kier didn’t know much about babies, but this one wasn’t newly born. Its sturdy little legs splayed as Shahna held it firmly on her hip with one arm, the other hand supporting a plump bottom encased in some kind of red-and-white-checked overall worn with a tiny yellow T-shirt.

      It struck Kier immediately, with a sense of unreality, how competent she looked, how—motherly. He had never seen Shahna with a child in her arms before.

      The baby turned a round head capped with dark, loose curls, stared at him for a second with big deep-blue eyes, and then buried its face in Shahna’s shoulder.

      “This is Samuel,” she told Kier. “Commonly known as Scamp.”

      Shahna made herself meet Kier’s eyes squarely. There was no getting out of this now.

      Kier looked poleaxed. He was still standing where she had left him, and he stared as though he’d never seen a baby before.

      Samuel turned his head for another peek. But when she would have put him down he clung to her, nervous of the stranger. She walked across the small living area to the settle and sat with him in her lap, letting him inspect their visitor from a safe distance.

      She saw Kier pull air into his lungs, and then he said raggedly, “You should have told me.”

      Maybe she should have, instead of hoping he would be long gone before Samuel woke, avoiding any need for explanation. Now Kier was bound to ask questions—questions she didn’t want to answer.

      Samuel looked up at her inquiringly and she smiled at him, reassuring him that everything was all right, that she wouldn’t let the big, angry man hurt him.

      Because Kier was angry. She could see it in the telltale jut of his jaw, the blue fire burning in his eyes, the tight-drawn contour of his mouth. His voice when he spoke was raw and iron-hard. “You buried yourself in this place