Free Up Close and Personal by Maureen Child Page B

your job,” she said and turning away from him, walked into the narrow living room. He watched her go, her steps clicking softly against the wooden floor. She headed for the overstuffed couch with a bold print pattern and when she reached it, she dropped like a stone into the corner of the thing. Grabbing up a throw pillow in sunshine yellow, she hugged it to her chest and looked up at him through blue eyes that looked bruised with memory.
    “I called when I went to the hospital.”
    He would have remembered that. “Laura—”
    “I did,” she insisted. “Your cell was turned off, and I couldn’t leave a message—not that message anyway—so I called Cosain and talked to Brian. Your assistant. He told me he’d call you and have you get in touch with me.” She sighed. “You never did. Your meaning came through loud and clear, Ronan. No worries. I didn’t call again. I didn’t bother you with what I was going through.” She took a long, deep breath as if to steady herself, then her gaze fixed on his, she said quietly, “And now I want you to leave.”
    He hardly heard her. He was thinking, realizing the truth of what she said. The memory was there, Ronan thought in regret. Brian’s call, telling him that Laura was trying to reach him.
    He hadn’t called her back. Had told himself it was too soon after their end for them to speak again.
    That she was still hungering for him. That she was trying to win him back and though it had been a nice stroke on the ego, he’d been worried that talking to her would only tempt him to pick up where they’d left off. Ah, God.
    “You remember,” she said. “Brian did call you.”
    “Aye, he did.” He pushed one hand through his hair, tugging as he went and the sharp sting of pain cleared the fog in his mind.
    “And you did nothing.”
    “I didn’t know, did I?” And as that thought settled into his brain, he assured himself that if he had known the truth, of course he would have called her. Hell, he’d have come back from the road to be with her. He’d have done… something .
    But she didn’t give him the chance. She took that from him. From them.
    “You didn’t want to know, Ronan.” She tossed the pillow to one side, and stood up. Kicking her shoes off she stalked barefoot across the floor, headed to the front door. Her head up, hair flying like a honey-colored flag in her wake, she said, “Now that you know it all, you can go. And don’t come back this time, Ronan. We really are done now.”
    He stopped her as she passed him. It was instinct more than anything else that had him reaching for her, grabbing hold of her arm and turning her to look at him.
    “You can say that to me? That easily? We’re done, our child is gone and goodbye?”
    She pulled free of him, and the temper he much preferred to her pain flashed in her eyes. “You don’t get to say that to me. You’re the one who said goodbye and walked away, Ronan. And our child was hardly more than a wish when I lost it.”
    At those last words, her bottom lip trembled a bit until she made the effort to firm it, for which he was grateful.
    He reached out and set both hands on her shoulders, forcing her to be still. To stand there and meet his eyes. Hear him. “I’d have been here, Laura, had I known.”
    “I think I believe you,” she said. “But it’s probably better that you weren’t. Really. You were right to go when you did. It’s pointless to pretend that we had more than a few months of sex and fun.”
    “We almost had more,” he argued, his voice gentle, unsure still of what he was feeling.
    “And what would that have meant? That you would be with someone you didn’t want because of a child you hadn’t planned on?”
    She shook her head sadly and gave him the worst excuse for a smile Ronan had ever seen. “No, better this way. As hard as it was, as hard as it is to say, it’s better this way.”
    “It’s not,” he said, pulling her closer as his gaze moved over her face,