The Mother of His Child Read online

  “I’m asking you, Charisse. Will you marry me?

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Laurey Bright

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Copyright

  “I’m asking you, Charisse. Will you marry me?

  “Of course, if you can’t stand the thought of being married to me, you’ll have to say no.” Daniel’s voice became deeper, husky. “But if the way you kissed me just now is any indication—would it be such a hardship?”

  Charisse shook her head. It wouldn’t be a hardship at all, if he meant just the sexual component. But marriage entailed a whole lot more than that.

  How could she put her reservations into words? She wanted nothing more than to be with him, to share their delight in watching Kristy grow, to have him by her side in sickness and in health. Increasingly, she couldn’t bear the thought of life without him.

  But what would he do once he learned her secret?

  Dear Reader,

  We’ve got a special lineup of books for you this month, starting with two from favorite authors Sharon Sala and Laurey Bright. Sharon’s Royal’s Child finishes up her trilogy, THE JUSTICE WAY, about the three Justice brothers. This is a wonderful, suspenseful, romantic finale, and you won’t want to miss it. The Mother of His Child, Laurey’s newest, bears our CONVENIENTLY WED flash. There are layers of secrets and emotion in this one, so get ready to lose yourself in these compelling pages.

  And then...MARCH MADNESS is back! Once again, we’re presenting four fabulous new authors for your reading pleasure. Rachel Lee, Justine Davis and many more of your favorite writers first appeared as MARCH MADNESS authors, and I think the four new writers this month are destined to become favorites, too Fiona Brand is a New Zealand sensation, and Cullen’s Bride combines suspense with a marriage-of-convenience plot that had me turning pages at a frantic pace. In A True-Blue Texas Twosome, Kim McKade brings an extra dollop of emotion to a reunion story to stay in your heart—and that Western setting doesn’t hurt!

  The Man Behind the Badge is the hero of Vickie Taylor’s debut novel, which gives new meaning to the phrase “fast-paced.” These two are on the run and heading straight for love. Finally, check out Dangerous Curves, by Kristina Wright, about a cop who finds himself breaking all the rules for one very special woman Could he be guilty of love in the first degree?

  Enjoy them all! And then come back next month, when the romantic excitement will continue right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Leslie Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.. 3010 Walden Ave., PO. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: PO. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILD

  LAUREY BRIGHT

  Books by Laurey Bright

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Summers Past #470

  A Perfect Marriage #621

  The Mother of His Child #918

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Deep Waters #62

  When Morning Comes #143

  Fetters of the Past #213

  A Sudden Sunlight #516

  Games of Chance #564

  A Guilty Passion #586

  The Older Man #761

  The Kindness of Strangers #820

  An Interrupted Marriage #916

  Silhouette Romance

  Tears of Morning #107

  Sweet Vengeance #125

  Long Way From Home #356

  The Rainbow Way #525

  Jacinth #568

  LAUREY BRIGHT

  has held a number of different jobs, but has never wanted to be anything but a writer. She lives in New Zealand, where she creates the stories of contemporary people in love that have won her a following all over the world.

  Chapter 1

  “Charisse!”

  In the act of placing a packet of cornflakes into her supermarket cart, Charisse Lane turned to the source of the masculine coffee-and-cream voice. Not many people got the pronunciation of her name so right—Shah-reess, with the accent on the second syllable. Some of her friends still stumbled over it.

  So she was surprised to find herself staring at a total stranger.

  A handsome stranger, quite a few inches taller than her own above-average height. Sorrel-brown hair was disciplined by a medium-short cut, emphasising the slightly angular planes of his face, with narrow cheeks and a determined mouth above a strong, clean-shaven chin. His eyes were an unusual grey-green, flecked with amber about the irises and fringed by long, dark lashes.

  Something about those eyes made her uneasy—perhaps the intent way they were staring at her, with a mixture of disbelief and challenge and a curious kind of anger. Not the way men usually stared.

  Charisse’s spine straightened in instant reaction, and she lifted a hand to push a strand of flyaway dusk-dark hair away from her cheek, her own deep-sea blue eyes questioning and wary. “I’m sorry?” she said.

  Other Saturday shoppers skirted round them, children clamoured and carts clanged metallically, while a muffled announcement came over the speaker system, yet Charisse had the strangest impression that she and this man were locked in a little island of silence laced with a startling tension.

  “Charisse,” he repeated, coming closer so that she took an involuntary step back, stopped by the shelves behind her. “It is you.”

  Caution kicked in. She didn’t know him and he was rather formidable, his size and stance very nearly threatening. Charisse’s hand tightened about the metal handle of her shopping cart, “I think you’ve made a mistake”

  A frown appeared between his decisive black brows. “No.” The word was flatly unequivocal. “You answered to your name.”

  “I didn’t answer.”

  “Responded, then,” he argued. “You certainly recognised it. Why deny it now?”

  “I haven’t denied it,” she said, “but I don’t know you.”

  A flicker of uncertainty entered his eyes, then disappeared. He said, his voice going hard and gritty, “I don’t believe you.”

  Anger heated her cheeks and she tilted her chin to a defiant angle. “That’s your problem.” She turned and blindly reached for another box of cereal that she really didn’t need, presenting her back to him.

  When she made to push the cart on, he placed a lean, determined hand over one of hers and stopped her.

  Adrenaline surged through her in a hot tide, every tiny hair on her skin rising. Her astonished, furious gaze flew to his purposefully set face. Gritting her teeth and keeping her voice low, she said, “If you don’t take your hand off mine this instant, I’ll yell for security and charge you with assault.”

  After the merest flicker of apparent surprise the unsettling sage-green eyes held hers, now only inches away. She could smell the masculine scent of him, a mixture of clean fabric, soap and male warmth.

  “Perth, Australia,” he said rapidly, “five years ago. Two New Zealanders who met in a strange city on the other side of the Tasman Sea—not to mention across the entire continent of Australia. I never thought I’d find you again back here in Auckland.”

  With a jolt of appalled sh
ock it dawned on her why his eyes had so disturbed her. Because they were so familiar.

  Fingers clenched on the metal bar under her hands, she was suddenly cold and disoriented. Her voice thinned. “I’ve never been to Perth.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Never?”

  “No,” she said desperately. “Never.”

  Abruptly he let her go, thrusting his hands into the pockets of the casual jacket he wore over jeans. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”

  Why? Because he had frightened and confused her. And because she knew now, with incredulous and sickening certainty, who he was.

  Instinct told her to run.

  She didn’t, of course. She stood her ground and kept her voice cool and even, despite the anxious pounding of her heart. “I told you, you’ve made a mistake. Whoever you met in Perth, it wasn’t me. Now, I have to go.”

  Although she’d only got half of what she’d meant to buy, she almost mowed down an elderly shopper in her haste to get to the checkout, scarcely pausing to make sure the woman was unhurt as she flung a guilty apology in her wake.

  She could feel the man’s gaze on her all the way but forced herself not to look back.

  In the car park she threw the groceries hastily into the boot of her shabby secondhand car. She was inserting the key in the driver’s door with shaking fingers when she sensed someone at her shoulder, and whirled round, her eyes wide and defensive.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the man said patiently. “Here.” He held out a white business card. “In case you change your mind.”

  She looked at the card and saw Daniel Richmond scrawled on it in large, looping print Silently she took it from him and waited for him to leave.

  He didn’t move for a moment or two, then he made to swing away, glanced into the back window of her car and halted, staring.

  Charisse followed his gaze to the child’s empty booster seat, the teddy bear and the picture book lying beside it.

  A leaden feeling of foreboding settled in her midriff.

  Daniel Richmond’s head slowly turned until he was looking at her again. “You’re married?” he queried, his tone curiously distant. “Or in a relationship. Is that what it was all about in there?”

  “It isn’t about anything,” Charisse denied. “And whether I’m married or not is none of your business, Mr. Richmond.”

  His accusing stare became baffled. “All right,” he said at last “I don’t intend to harass you. I’m glad to see you’re well and...happy?”

  Under his searching gaze she almost flinched. It seemed a long time since she’d been truly happy; deep down there was always a continuing ache of grief and loss, an emptiness that nothing—and no one—could fill. But she said, “I’m quite happy, thank you. Goodbye.”

  He stepped back while she unlocked the door. Then, as she climbed into the driver’s seat, he placed his hand on the door, and she panicked. But he only cast her a puzzled look, closed the door behind her and waited while she drove out of the parking space.

  She kept peering into the rearview mirror all the way home.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone coming after her, but she couldn’t help feeling jumpy. Her hands, damp with sweat, slipped on the steering wheel.

  With relief she turned at last into a quiet cul-de-sac in one of Auckland’s older suburbs. The houses were mostly mature bungalows set in neatly kept gardens, and trees grew on the grassed verge. In the long summer evenings children would often play on the wide road, watched by adults who called them to the side whenever a car nosed into the end of the street.

  Slowing, she took the car into the driveway between the tall, scarlet-flowering hedge and the painted weatherboard wall of the house. She parked in the garage that had been extended to double its size when she’d had the big old villa divided into two flats, with a double-locked door between them.

  Rent from the other half of the house was a major part of her limited income. Maybe when Kristy turned five and went off to school Charisse could get a part-time job that would improve their finances. And one day they might be able to afford to have their home to themselves.

  Snowdrops, jonquils and daffodils pushed through the grass under the old plum tree shading a corner of the back lawn. With a pang Charisse remembered her mother planting the bulbs, and her father putting in the lemon tree near the kitchen—the tree that was now taller than she was, and laden with small green fruit promising future abundance.

  Her father had laid the tiles for the patio outside the back door and built a trellis to enclose it on two sides, while Charisse and her sister helped with the enthusiastic ineptitude of the very young.

  The tiles had weathered with the years, a little mossy under her feet as she carried the grocery bags inside, and climbing vines had long since latticed the pergola roof of the patio. The pink clematis already bore a few starry flowers.

  In the kitchen Charisse put away the groceries, noting with relief an unopened packet of macaroni in the cupboard—she’d fled the supermarket before getting to the pasta section.

  And she wouldn’t dare shop there again. She would have to find another supermarket—preferably on the far side of the city.

  Glancing at the stove clock, she saw there was plenty of time before she had to pick up Kristy from her friend’s birthday party.

  She’d retrieved Daniel Richmond’s card from the dashboard shelf of the car before coming inside. Now the small, threatening rectangle of white lay on the table. Underneath the bold black lettering of his name were the words “Geological Engineer.”

  There were two addresses—an Australian one in Perth and another on the fourth floor of a city office block in Auckland

  Uneasily she stared at the card, wanting to throw it away and forget about it.

  But maybe she didn’t have the right to throw it away. And she knew that even if she did, she would never forget this morning’s encounter. That chance meeting had changed everything.

  What was she going to do?

  Chapter 2

  Two days later Charisse stood in a wide shop entrance in downtown Auckland, staring up at the fourth floor of a building across the road.

  Blue-tinged glass walls reflected other high-rises and the clouds floating above, giving no clue to the building’s inhabitants.

  Her hand was clutched tightly about the strap of the shoulder bag that held Daniel Richmond’s card, and her mouth was dry with nerves.

  She’d come here on impulse, unable to banish the memory of an unnervingly familiar, intense grey-green stare, and troubled by guilt and uncertainty every time she thought about Daniel Richmond. But this was probably one of the silliest things she’d ever done. She wasn’t even sure now what she hoped to achieve.

  This morning when another child’s mother had invited Kristy to come home with her daughter after morning kindergarten, Charisse had accepted gratefully.

  At home she’d taken out the textbooks for her Open University course in business studies and read the same page over and over without understanding a thing.

  Deciding that cleaning the kitchen cupboards would be more productive, she had found herself staring at a packet of lentils, ostensibly trying to decide which shelf to put it on, her mind instead replaying the disturbing meeting in the supermarket for the umpteenth time since Saturday.

  Finally she’d given up and changed from her faded jeans and misshapen T-shirt into a respectable if hardly up-to-the-minute skirt, blouse and jacket, and travelled into the city.

  But the half-formed plan she’d had was now all too glaringly absurd. She should go away and think about this some more, maybe get expert advice.

  Stepping out of the doorway, she came up short. Because there he was—Daniel Richmond—leaving the building with another man.

  The casual clothes had been replaced by a business suit, a pristine white shirt and a burgundy tie, but she had no trouble recognising him even at a road-width’s distance.

  He came down the building’s
several steps and stood with one hand in a trouser pocket as he talked to his companion.

  Within seconds the other man shook his hand and nodded, turning to walk away. Daniel Richmond seemed about to walk in the other direction when for some reason he paused and looked across the road.

  Maybe her concentrated gaze had led him to sense someone watching him. Charisse was sure she saw his eyes flash with recognition, and then he strode to the edge of the pavement before a passing van obliterated him from her sight.

  Charisse swung about and hurried along the busy pavement, dodging past slower pedestrians, intent on putting as much distance between her and Daniel Richmond as she could.

  But it was only minutes before a hand gripped her arm firmly enough to bring her to a halt. And that dark, rich voice was saying her name again. “Charisse.”

  She tried to look surprised. “Mr. Richmond!”

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  Charisse lifted her brows. “It’s a public thoroughfare.” She looked at the people walking around them—one or two shooting curious stares—and then back to his face.

  His eyes hardened metallically. “More games, Charisse? You weren’t lurking outside my office by accident. Why did you run when you saw me?”

  “I didn’t run!” She wasn’t a coward. Thinking better of a course of action was a different thing altogether.

  “Have lunch with me,” he said abruptly.

  “What?”

  Someone bumped into her, shoving her closer to the man who still held her arm.

  “We’re in the way.” Moving aside, he took her with him. “There’s a café over there—” he jerked his head to indicate it “—where we can sit and talk.”