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It was a snarl, but quite a nice one as snarls went, Anne decided as she snuggled down again, the hollow feeling in her chest easing. At least he was prepared to acknowledge that she was still alive. She sniffed again, just to let him know that she wasn’t totally cowed, and there was a corresponding growl that degenerated into a drowsy rumble. Her eyes closed and the gentle rumble continued and she smiled. He was snoring. It was something to tease him with and, God knew, she would need every advantage she could rake up to handle their next encounter.
Ivan woke her out of a deep sleep at six and she staggered out to the living-room, bleary-eyed, to find Katlin and Dmitri holding hands on the couch, still talking, their voices as rusty as old cans. While Dmitri played with his son, Katlin followed Anne into the kitchenette and, while she started getting breakfast for them all, told her some of the plans that the two of them had made in the night. Anne was vastly relieved to discover that none of them included her.
Dmitri was due some leave and he thought that he could take it immediately on compassionate grounds, by pleading that he wanted to spend some time with his newly discovered New Zealand son, and rejoin his ship in Sydney in a fortnight’s time. If that could be done, he and Katlin would go back to Golden Bay together, to sort out what they wanted to do long-term and so that Dmitri could begin to learn to know his son, although he was already talking about applying for residency and building a new life for himself in the peaceful, evergreen country he had so admired on his last visit.
On a more practical note, he had pointed out that he could help care for his son, so that Katlin could have the bonus of a little more writing time.
‘I’m not just using him either, if that’s what you think,’ murmured Katlin when Dmitri was occupied with Ivan. ‘It was never just the casual fling I pretended it was. He was my first, you see, and it’s a pretty traumatic thing to give your virginity away at my age. I just panicked when Dmitri started getting too intense and I didn’t know how to handle it so I scuttled home…and then when I found I was pregnant…! I really didn’t think there was room in my life for anyone…Maybe Dmitri will be able to show me differently. I hope so. He’s nice, isn’t he…?’
He looked even nicer when he returned in jeans and a sweater, carrying his captain’s permission and—as indication of his sincerity as well as his efficiency—a sheaf of immigration forms and leaflets.
Meanwhile Katlin had checked flights and frantically tossed out most of her clothing from her old battered suitcase and crammed in Ivan’s, parcelled up his toys in a large plastic shopping bag and folded up and secured his port-a-cot and high chair in a tight bundle.
An hour after that Anne was alone and wondering what had hit her. The hollow feeling had returned with a vengeance and so had the self-pitying tears. Trailing back up the stairs after waving the taxi off to the airport, she could hardly see where she was going, so it was not surprising that she walked into the solid wall of muscle hovering outside her door.
‘My God, what’s happened? That worthless bastard’s run out on you again, hasn’t he? I told you not to trust him. And now I suppose you expect me to pick up the pieces!’
CHAPTER NINE
‘I HOPE you used some form of protection this time.’
Anne froze in the act of handing back the snowy white handkerchief, now crumpled and damp. She must look a mess—a headache from her tears and lack of sleep, her hair in a half-hearted ponytail, her nose pink and shiny as it always was when she cried, her swirling floral print skirt bunched up around her legs where Hunter had plonked her on the couch after literally carrying her into the flat.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she wavered, unnerved by the ferocious expression on his face, the waves of silent anger she could feel beating the air between them as he crouched down in front of her, his eyes glittering with some fiercely repressed emotion. She noticed with a detached part of her brain that those black eyes were definitely bloodshot, his hair was uncombed and his denim shirt only half tucked into his jeans. All in all he had the aura of a man who was distinctly frayed around the edges.
‘There’s a vital difference between sexual liberation and sexual irresponsibility,’ he told her forbiddingly. ‘You were lucky with Ivan. You have the support of your family and the talent and drive to make somethi
ng of yourself in spite of the handicaps of solo parenthood.’ He plucked the used handkerchief from her astonished hand and tossed it aside as he frowned critically at her.
‘Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you’ve been too insulated from the consequences of your actions to realise the risks you’re taking. Reckless behaviour doesn’t just lead to accidental pregnancy…For God’s sake, Anne, indiscriminate sex can also be a sentence of death. And don’t look so shocked,’ he added roughly. ‘I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about him.’
He jerked to his feet and began pacing up and down in front of her. Anne, whose jaw had dropped open when she’d realised she was being delivered a stern lecture on sexual responsibility, closed it with an audible click as Hunter abruptly veered from his tone of strained reason to one of unrestrained fury.
‘What in hell were you thinking of? You’re supposed to be a bloody intelligent woman, yet you acted like a gullible sixteen-year-old. Even if he convinced you that you were still in love with him, how could you let a guy whom you haven’t seen for over a year—during which he’s been doing God knows what with God knows whom—talk his way into your bed on the strength of a few hours’ reacquaintance? Surely you didn’t fall for that line about fate? I saw the way he looked at you and, believe me, it wasn’t the way a man looks at a woman he’s in love with—’
‘That’s because he was never in love with me,’ said Anne, shaking off her dumb shock in the soaring knowledge that she was finally free to confide in him.
He halted in front of her, hands on hips, voice dripping with ice. ‘You know that and you still let him make you so desperate for human comfort that when he crawled into your bed you welcomed him—?’
‘Of course I didn’t!’ Anne yelped at him, as outraged as he by the notion.
‘The hell you didn’t!’ he stormed, the ice turning to fire. ‘Don’t lie, on top of everything else. I’m not stupid. I saw him leaving this morning—he was here all night, wasn’t he?’
He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Whatever you thought I did to you, I didn’t deserve that.’ His tone became savage. ‘Was he lying there beside you when you made that touching little plea through the wall? Were you both snivelling with laughter at the thought of having driven me to drown my sorrows like some pathetic bloody caricature of rejection—?’ His face was a mask of loathing as he vomited out the humiliating vision of himself as the drunken butt of their sly jokes.
‘No! No, I would never do a thing like that to you, Hunter, never. And certainly not with Dmitri! He didn’t sleep with me last night because it wasn’t even me he came to see—’
‘I suppose he’s told you he wants Ivan,’ he interrupted harshly. ‘He knows all the right buttons to push, doesn’t he? He probably realises that you’d do anything for your son. He’s manipulating you, can’t you see that?’ Hunter clenched his teeth and drew a savagely controlling breath, briefly bowing his head as he visibly struggled to master his emotions. ‘Where is he, by the way?’ he asked in a voice taut with the effort.
‘Dmitri?’
He flared up at the conjured image. ‘No! Ivan.’
Anne looked around her strangely empty flat. No nappies airing, no scattered baby paraphernalia, no toothy grin and fearsomely questing button-black eyes. No one to listen to her daily delights and devastations, to light her life with his innocence and joy, a world away from adult woes.
She swallowed, hard. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ He looked at her with puzzled impatience. ‘Gone where?’
