Free Wedding at King’s Convenience by Maureen Child Page B

soften her words any. She faced him down as the wind lifted her long black hair into a dance about her head. She was beautiful and stubborn and the most fascinating woman he’d ever known.
    Because of her, he’d hopped a plane and flown thousands of miles only to be treated like a leper by people he’d considered friends.
    “You mean, why am I standing in the rain in front of a hardheaded woman who isn’t honoring the contract she signed?” He snapped the words out and noticed shedidn’t so much as flinch. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”
    “Your people are littering the street in front of my house at this very moment,” she challenged, “so I’m thinking I’m honoring what was between us a good deal more than you have.”
    “You know,” he said, shoving the monstrously huge dog off his legs so that he could stalk toward the porch. And her. “I’ve been back in Ireland about an hour and in that short amount of time, I’ve been rained on, had a flat tire, got mud in my shoes and been insulted by everyone I’ve spoken to. So I’m not in the mood to listen to more obscure references to what a bastard I am. If you’ve got a problem with me,” he added, stopping just short of the porch, “then tell me what it is so I can fix it.”
    Her eyes narrowed on him. She crossed her arms over her chest, lifted her chin and said, “I’m pregnant. Fix that.”

Chapter Six
    S he slammed the door an instant later.
    Eyes wide, heart pounding in her chest, Maura leaned back against the door and tried to catch her breath. She shivered slightly and couldn’t be sure if it was the bitter spring weather or the ice in Jefferson’s pale blue eyes that had made her feel cold down to the bone. She only knew that seeing him again had shaken her. Shaken her so badly she couldn’t afford to let him see it.
    Bad enough he’d shown up on her doorstep without so much as a phone call in warning. “But then,” she murmured aloud, “the man obviously doesn’t know how to use a bloody phone now, does he, since I’ve been calling him for more than three months now with no success.”
    And yet here he was.
    At her front door, looking half-drowned and furiouswith it and still so tempting everything in her wanted to shout for glee at seeing him again. Even though she knew better, Maura felt that familiar need for him rise up inside her. She should have been prepared for this. Somehow, she should have known.
    Of course he’d come back to Ireland. If not to see her, then to check on his blasted movie people. Yet, even if she had expected to see him, she doubted she would have been prepared for the delicious licks of want and desire that swept through her with just a single look into the man’s eyes.
    “He had the right of it. He is a bastard.” She leaned her head back against the closed door and waited for him to start pounding on it.
    Jefferson wasn’t the kind of man who’d hear the news she’d just delivered and then disappear as quickly as he could. Oh no, he’d be demanding entry in another moment or two. And then he’d be righteous and full of himself and expecting explanations and details.
    Though she’d been trying for months to give him exactly that, right now, she was in no mind to speak with him at all.
    Mostly because her stomach was still spinning from that first sight of him. And because her hands itched to slap or hold she wasn’t sure which and mostly, because he was Jefferson.
    God help her, it didn’t seem to matter that she was furious with him. Her heart was still full of him and she couldn’t seem to dig him out despite how hard she tried. Which only made her even more furious with herself than she was with him.
    And who would have thought that possible?
    A heartbeat later, several loud thuds came from right behind her head. She knew without looking out the window that he was using his fist to batter at her door. Her heartbeat quickened and low in her belly something stirred, buzzing