“ I saw you,” he maintained, clearly not believing her. “Saw you with my own eyes!”“You were sliding in and out of consciousness; you were in shock and in pain . . .” she pointed out reasonably. “You don’t think that maybe you were delirious as well? Seeing things that were not there?”He frowned and shook his head.“No, of course not,” she scoffed. “Not Gerard , he never makes mistakes.”“God damn you,” he growled. “I know what I saw . . . you were standing there looking impassive and completely uncaring.”“This?” She waved her hand back and forth between their naked bodies. “This thing that just happened between us? It was a mistake that shouldn’t be repeated. I should never have let you touch me, but you got me in a moment of complete weakness. That ends now. I won’t allow a man who just hours ago said I made his skin crawl use me like this again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a shower,” she informed him unsteadily. There was really nothing she could say or do right now to prov

Cindy turned away angrily and carried Kayla back into the house. She headed straight for the baby’s room and after tucking her in, stood beside the cot and watched the baby sleep, her heart absolutely overflowing with love for the innocent child.“You’re worth everything, my darling,” she whispered, leaning over to kiss her short, silky curls. When she straightened up and turned around, Gerard was standing in the doorway, still wearing nothing but his board shorts. She frowned resentfully, annoyed that a deaf man could move so silently, and moved to pass him. He barely shifted, crowding her abominably as she tried to squeeze through the doorway and into the hall. She flushed crimson when she inadvertently brushed against his muscular naked chest. She frowned up at him, making sure he was looking at her before she spoke.“Get out of my way,” she demanded, and he grinned lazily.“Glad to see you’re getting your fire back, babe . . .”“Don’t call me that,” she reprimanded, and he grinned

“Gerard,” she tried to find a way to explain her decision to him and drew a complete blank. “After four months of constant and inexplicable rejection, I gave up on trying to reach you. By that point I didn’t think that you deserved to have the baby or me in your life. I wanted to move on and couldn’t do so with your money. I needed to do it on my own, without being beholden to the man who had made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with us. I didn’t feel entitled to your money after making that decision.”“You didn’t feel entitled to it?” Gerard latched onto those words, obviously dismissing the rest of what she had said. “To the father of your child’s money? I don’t even know how to respond to that, Cindy. You may not have felt entitled to it, but Kayla certainly was, and is, entitled to it. You could have set aside your pettiness and considered her in all of this!”“Oh please just stop throwing Kayla in my face. I did everything I could for her. I gave her the best I could

I don’t know what you’re saying,” Cindy all but screamed in frustration, and he smiled, a feral showing of teeth that bore no resemblance to his normally beautiful smile. He signed again and quite abruptly grabbed her upper arms and kissed her. Hard! His tongue forced its way into the tender interior of her mouth, assaulting and insulting rather than caressing and loving. There was nothing remotely affectionate in the embrace, nothing but contempt and anger.“I said,” he told her scornfully, when he lifted his head to end the vile kiss. “That since you refuse to leave, you might as well make yourself useful!”God, what on Earth had made her think she could deal with this man on an equal footing? Whenever she tried, he moved the goalposts and left her floundering. She couldn’t take him on and win; she couldn’t even hope to try. More fool her, for thinking that she could.“Not so eager to stick around now, are you?” he taunted when she took a step back. “Then again, you never were any g

“Apparently it was the first time he’s ever gone shark cage diving. He loved it but told me that he doubts he’ll do it again, now that he’s experienced it. I should hope not. It gives me jitters whenever I think of him down there with all those huge great whites circling the flimsy little cage he considers protection!”“He’ll settle down a bit now that he’s married with a child, I suspect,”Cindy stated confidently.“Sure he will.” Lisa rolled her eyes. “Or maybe he’ll simply drag Rhys and me along with him. Back when we were dating, before I got pregnant, he did a brilliant job of talking me into doing the crazy stuff with him! In fact I’m pretty sure getting pregnant so soon was my body’s defence mechanism kicking in to save me from Death by Crazy.”“No,”Cindy gasped, unable to picture the sweet, bookish-looking woman participating in some of the extreme sports Rick commonly did for fun.“Well let’s see: bungee jumping, parasailing, parachuting, hang-gliding.” She ticked off her fing