Free To Make a Marriage by Carole Mortimer Page A

his, rolling away from him to gather up her shimmering silver gown and hold it protectively in front of her nakedness. ‘Go, Adam,’ she told him woodenly.
    He drew in a short breath, still not quite looking at her. ‘I—’
    â€˜Just go, Adam,’ she bit out, turning away from him so that he shouldn’t see the sudden tears that welled up in her pained green eyes. ‘Please!’
    He swallowed hard, gathering up his own scattered clothes, not speaking again until he was once again fully dressed—and looking remotely unapproachable. ‘Andie, I—I don’t know what to say,’ he began shakily.
    Her mouth twisted into the bitter semblance of a smile. ‘Then it’s probably best that you say nothing,’ she told him tersely. Anything he said now could only make the situation worse. If that were possible!
    Adam shook his head. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said. ‘One minute we were furious with each other, the next—!’ He gave another shake of his head. ‘I’m sorry, Andie,’ he added wretchedly.
    Not as sorry as she was. Because, in the absence of the woman he really wanted, she had only been a substitute enough like her in looks to allow Adam the fantasy. As Andie knew only too well, that woman was her own, dead, mother!
    She knew it as surely as if Adam had spoken the wordsout loud—and she knew she would never forgive him for using her in that way.
    She stirred herself now, finally opening her eyes to look across the terrace of the villa to where Adam stood grimly in the shadow of the purple bougainvillaea that ran along one side of the mellow stone building.
    She knew as she looked at him that, despite everything, she still loved him…!
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    She hated him.
    Adam could see it in the dark green of her eyes as she looked over at him with such cold contempt.
    She had never looked lovelier to him, the week she had spent in the warm Majorcan sunshine having given a healthy tan to the silky skin visible above the green bikini, the gentle glow of early pregnancy having given a warm allure to the curves of her body.
    That was his child that lay nestled inside that curvaceous body, he acknowledged possessively. His child! And Andie’s…
    He watched warily as she swung her legs to the floor, sitting up now as she looked across at him with enquiring eyes. It had been this way between them since—since that night, he acknowledged wearily.
    He hadn’t left her apartment that night only because she’d asked him to. No, he had also seen the shocked dismay in her face when she’d realised what they had just done, a wishing that it had never happened.
    He had left her that night knowing they could never go back now, that the easy friendship that had existed between them was no more. That it never would be again.
    He hadn’t gone straight to his own apartment but had parked his car and walked. And walked. And walked. Desperately trying to find a way back from the dark abyss they had fallen into. There wasn’t one, he had finally accepted.
    That conclusion had been borne out over the next few weeks, Andie not around whenever he’d visited Rome at the estate. And Andie had returned the flowers he had sent to her office on the Monday morning following that fatal night, having obviously read the card that had accompanied them, her own message written clearly beneath his apology—‘Not as sorry as I am!’
    Not as sorry as she must have been when she’d found she was pregnant with their child…
    Adam moved out of the shadows of the villa, having already removed his jacket on the drive from the airport, the heat of the late August Majorcan sunshine having hit him like a blanket as he’d stepped out of the air-conditioned airport.
    â€˜Who told you?’ Andie demanded as he came to stand beside her. ‘Or do I really need to ask?’
    â€˜It wasn’t Rome,’ Adam