MacAllister's Baby (18 page)

He might mean something very different when he had to take care of a baby he hadn’t wanted.

But for now, he was convinced that he was telling the truth, as he believed it.

She nodded. Angus’s face broke into a smile. He reached over and pulled her into his lap.

So close to his body, her face next to his clean-shaven, lemony-smelling skin. She saw the whorl of his ear, the small smile lines near his mouth, how his dark hair just touched his collar at the back. Every detail was exquisite, exciting, dear to her.

‘I’ve thought about you every minute we haven’t been together,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve been dying to touch you and talk to you. I nearly drove over and burst into one of your lessons but I was afraid I’d get banned from the school.’

‘If you’d brought in MacNugget again you would’ve assured your popularity for life.’

‘I didn’t want to play show and tell with a chicken. I wanted to abduct the teacher and sweep her away and make love to her.’

His words sent a shudder through her, made her entire body want to melt into his. Made her recognise, at last, the truth about this situation.

She could worry about the future and his sincerity and being pregnant all she wanted. But the pure reality was that Elisabeth wanted Angus so badly that none of those worries made a blind bit of difference.

She wound her fingers in his hair and kissed him. His wonderful, sensual, talented, charming mouth. She let herself taste him, lose herself in his body and his pure joy at life. And she knew she’d wanted to do this every second she’d been away from him.

He shifted her slightly on his lap and she felt his arousal against her thigh, proof that his passion was as volatile as hers. Her fingers desperate, she began to unbutton his shirt, pushed her hands inside to feel his naked skin while he slipped his own hands up beneath her top to hold her breasts.

‘Our take-away’s going to go cold, isn’t it?’ she said, and then gasped as he teased her nipples with his thumbs through her bra.

‘That,’ he said, pressing kisses down her throat, ‘is exactly what I hoped would happen when I brought it here.’

‘Nefarious Plan C,’ she agreed.

He manoeuvred her so that she was facing him, her legs around his waist, and pulled her up snug against him. Even through their layers of clothes she could feel the length and heat of his erection between her legs. She remembered all the pleasure they could give each other. How he felt hard and slick, pounding into her, the scent of his body musky with sweat.

Angus looked down into her face. He touched the corner of her eye with the tip of one finger, the place where her tears would have fallen if she’d let them.

‘Don’t shut me out,’ he said to her. ‘I can’t bear it.’

So, so tempting to believe. She pushed herself still closer to him and covered his face with kisses. Rubbed her lips over his eyebrows: rough velvet.

‘I can’t resist you, Angus,’ she whispered. She tested the lobe of his ear between her teeth, such a tender morsel on such a strong man, and heard him groan.

Sex, between them, had its own reality, built its own world that she could believe in.

She slid off his lap onto her knees on the carpet before him, and looked up into his face with eyes she knew were as mischievous as his own could be.

‘I’m very hungry,’ she said, and slid his belt from its loops.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘A
BSOLUTELY
brilliant.’

The Angus on television grinned at the camera and raised his glass of wine in a toast as the credits rolled.

Christine hit ‘off’ on the remote. ‘It’s a fantastic series, Angus. Funny, stylish, sexy. The camera loves you. This one’s going to send the ratings through the roof.’

The real Angus slumped in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. ‘I don’t like it.’

She stared in surprise. ‘You’re joking. It’s even better than your last series. The production is great, the food looks amazing, the music is trendy. What is there not to like?’

He got up and poured them each a coffee from the pot on the table of the boardroom. ‘I don’t like myself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have I always been—’ he gestured at the blank television ‘—like that? Always smiling, talking fast? Superficial?’

‘It’s your public image, Angus. It’s a TV show, not an anatomy of your soul.’

‘I know.’ He sat back down and slid her coffee over to her. ‘The thing is, I don’t know if there’s much difference between the TV show and who I really am.’

Christine looked hard at him. ‘You’re becoming very introspective these days, Angus. Aren’t you happy?’

He thought about it. His restaurant was the most popular it had ever been, he was very good at a job he loved, he’d spent the last five weeks really helping some kids, and for the past week he had repeatedly had the best sex of his life with a woman he thought was wonderful in every way.

He should be happy.

He looked at his watch and pushed back his chair. ‘I’m going to be late for the kids.’

Christine was watching him with concern. ‘Do you want me to do something about the show?’

‘No.’ He picked up two heavy carrier bags near the door. ‘The show will be fine. And you can’t do anything about who I am. Thanks, Christine.’

Outside the studio he hailed a cab to the school. As he watched Soho slip away into Piccadilly, he remembered what Elisabeth had said last Sunday in Luciano’s.

You so deeply want to be liked that you chose a profession that exists purely to give others pleasure.

Was that really what he was about? Pleasure? Trying desperately all the time to be liked?

That was how he’d appeared on TV, he thought grimly. It had been a shock to see it—even more so because he’d seen himself on television plenty of times before, and never noticed it. He’d always liked how his TV shows turned out.

Maybe he’d been satisfied with pleasure and being liked before. But something had definitely changed. Because Elisabeth Read liked him, and the two of them over the past seven days had shared more pleasure than he’d believed possible.

But that wasn’t enough.

He banged his fist on the cab door.

He’d been happy with Elisabeth. On that first weekend she’d been open, laughing, honest, herself. She’d met his eyes every time she’d talked with him.

And she’d been that way in the five days since, at times. At moments when she’d tell him a funny story about her odd upbringing, or confide about a child she was worried about at school. Or when he caught her looking at him when she didn’t think he could see.

And always, always when they were making love. Then, she was open with him, frank with her pleasures and her desires, surprising him with her depth and the emotion he could see in her face.

But other times, she had her defences up as high as they could go. She’d be teasing him, laughing, but he could see she wasn’t there. She was lost in some private thought, some private doubt, and she wouldn’t let him in. It had been that way as soon as the condom had split. The shutters had come down with a clang, and she hadn’t raised them fully since.

Was that his fault? Was it because in reality he was exactly as he appeared on TV: a people-pleaser, someone who charmed and laughed and stayed on the surface of things?

Who were his close friends? Everybody he knew liked him. But who went deeper than that?

He frowned at the cars passing the other way, and saw his reflection in the window. He didn’t have time to have close friends; he’d been working like a man possessed since he was an apprentice at sixteen. He’d had to. He’d refused his parents’ money, started at the bottom, forged everything he had with his own hands.

The cab stopped at the gates of Elisabeth’s school and he got out and paid the driver. There were a lot fewer kids than there normally were when he arrived, and when he looked at his watch he saw he was nearly twenty minutes late.

He swore and ran to Reception lugging the heavy bags. Danny and Jennifer were doing a trial run for the competition today, creating their menus in timed conditions without any help, and they couldn’t start without the ingredients he’d promised them.

A few words with Harjeet and a guest badge on his lapel, and he was running through the now-familiar school corridors to the food technology room.

When he arrived Jennifer and Elisabeth were talking quietly at one end of the room and Danny had spread his ingredients out all over his work space.

‘Hey, Angus!’ Danny greeted him loudly. ‘You’re late, man!’

The smile Elisabeth sent him across the room kicked at his heart. He loved the quiet camaraderie she’d forged with little Jennifer. She was so kind and careful with the girl. He remembered Elisabeth’s touch on his own hand when he’d told her about his lonely childhood.

‘Sorry, mate, I was watching my next TV series, lost track of the time.’

As soon as he said it he was mentally slapping himself. Did he really want to teach Danny that success was public attention?

‘Wicked!’ the boy cried.

‘No, it was irresponsible. I should have been here on time. I expect Miss Read will tell me off.’ He put his carrier bags on the table and handed bottles and packages to Jennifer and Danny. ‘And you’d better get on with it if we’re going to finish before midnight. I’m starting the timer in five minutes.’

‘Yes, Chef,’ the students said and hurried to their workspaces to arrange their ingredients and equipment.

Elisabeth came to his side, touched his arm secretly. ‘You’re in trouble.’

‘I intend to take my punishment like a man,’ he said. ‘As long as it’s you giving it to me.’

‘Do you think they’ll get everything done on time?’ she asked him. ‘There’s only a week until the competition. I’m worried that we should’ve practised all of this before.’

He welcomed the serious question. ‘It’s a balance. We want them to be confident, but we don’t want to practise so many times that they get bored.’

‘I don’t think Jennifer would get bored. She has a lot of discipline, that girl, though she doesn’t show it.’

‘Danny would. He’s good, but he loses focus if he hasn’t got somebody standing over him, and there will be a lot of distractions at the competition. I want him to know what he’s doing but not be able to go into autopilot.’ He watched the kids checking through their ingredients. ‘The practice runs next week will be useful, but I think they’ll be ready by Saturday.’

‘It’s just that it’s so important for them.’ She bit her lip. He looked at the indentation her teeth made, and wanted to press his own mouth to it.

‘Yes, but we want it to be fun, too. They’re kids.’

‘Trust you to put fun first,’ she said, and her tone was teasing, but it got him.

Putting fun first. That was what she thought of him. It wasn’t surprising she didn’t trust him.

He picked up a plastic timer and set it for two hours. ‘All right, kids, time to get to work. Remember, you’re doing all this yourself. Miss Read and I will be watching but we won’t be doing anything except for washing up. It’s your show now. Ready?’

‘Yes, Chef,’ both of them answered, and he started the timer. They immediately got to work.

‘I’m not all fun and games, you know,’ he said to Elisabeth.

She smiled at him. ‘Whatever you say, Chef.’

It was always difficult not to hold her and kiss her when the children were around. He wondered if Elisabeth would ever think it was appropriate to show affection at school. He understood why she wouldn’t want to involve the children in her private life. But it seemed so unnatural not to slip his arm around her waist, push her glossy hair back with his fingers.

Of course she wouldn’t want him to touch her in public, at her place of work, if she only saw their relationship as a fling.

He prowled the kitchen watching the kids. Jennifer was sure-handed, thorough, careful. Danny made a mistake, swore under his breath, and then did it perfectly.

Angus felt irritable and impatient, as if he’d had too much caffeine and sugar, but he did his best to hide it. He praised them quietly, offered no advice, though he saw Danny working over too high a flame and Jennifer mistiming her pasta. He bit back the orders he wanted to give. They’d learn from their errors, just as he had. Just as he was trying to do now.

Trust me!
he wanted to tell Elisabeth.
Tell me what you’re thinking!
And he wanted her to reply,
Yes, Chef,
and magically be the real Elisabeth again.

Why couldn’t he enjoy the good things they had together? Why was he constantly wanting more than she gave him?

What was
wrong
with him?

Jennifer was making a velouté and even from halfway across the room he could see it was about to curdle. He pressed his mouth closed and turned on a hot-water tap, squeezed some frothy liquid into the basin and put the dishes and equipment he’d gathered into it.

Years of working in a kitchen and he was doing the washing up. Years of being an adult and he still couldn’t figure out his own emotions. He scrubbed a pan and banged it onto the draining-board.

As he was washing the next thing he looked up. Elisabeth was directly across from him, watching Jennifer.

The velouté curdled. He heard Jennifer’s quiet sound of dismay. And saw Elisabeth’s face, so full of support and encouragement, fall. As if she felt everything Jennifer felt, as if she were the velouté herself.

She cared so, so much.

And he loved her.

At the thought, his hands fumbled underneath the water, and the knife that he was holding slipped. A sharp knife, as he’d taught them. So sharp, he understood its slice before he registered the pain in his left thumb.

He swore. The water turned pink much more quickly than he expected.

Danny, Jennifer, and Elisabeth were around him in an instant. ‘Are you all right?’ Elisabeth asked, and she blanched when she saw the sink full of water, blood-coloured now.

‘Yes. Danny, Jennifer, get back to your work. You haven’t got a lot of time left.’

Obediently, they left him. Elisabeth stayed.

‘First-aid kit is by the door,’ he told her. He wrapped his fist around his thumb and watched her. Slender, tall, and every inch of her body focused upon making life better for others.