Maddie's Love-Child

“Are you saying you’d marry if you met the right man?” About the Author Title Page PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“Are you saying you’d marry if you met the right man?”

Maddie laughed. “Now don’t go putting words into my mouth, Miles. I’m not a marrying kind of girl.”

“So what kind of girl are you?”

“I love the way Miranda Lee confronts today’s relationships with riveting honesty. Her books sizzle with pace and sensuality—always an exciting and compelling read.”

—Emma Darcy

From Here to Paternity—romances that feature fantastic men who eventually make fabulous fathers. Some seek paternity, some have it thrust upon them. All will make it—whether they like it or not.

MIRANDA LEE is Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding-school educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

Look out for Miranda Lee’s next riveting romance, A HAUNTING OBSESSION (Harlequin Presents #1893), available in July.

Maddie’s Love-Child

Miranda Lee

PROLOGUE

‘I JUST don’t understand you, Miles,’ Annabel said in an aggrieved tone.

True, Miles thought. Though to be fair, he didn’t understand himself, either. Most men would be more than content with his lot. He seemed to have it all. Money. Position. Power. Not to mention a beautiful and elegant fiancée. A lady, no less.

Their wedding was to have taken place in just over four months’ time. In June.

But not now.

Miles had broken his engagement to Annabel last night as kindly as he could. He’d had to confess, of course, that he did not love her. It was the truth, after all.

Luckily, the invitations had not yet been sent out, though they had been printed. And Annabel had unfortunately already ordered her wedding gown. He’d offered to compensate her family for any financial loss. He’d also told Annabel to keep the ring—a generous gesture, since it had set him back twenty thousand pounds.

Annabel hadn’t quibbled about that, he noticed. Miles didn’t think she would. She came from an aristocratic family, complete with mansions and titles, but little cash.

He’d thought the matter had been settled till Annabel had shown up in his office this morning, demanding not further compensation, but further explanation. It seemed she was not going to give up being Mrs. Miles MacMillan lightly.

‘Is all this something to do with your father having left control of the family company to Max?’ she asked impatiently. ‘Is that why you’re running off to Australia on the pretext of overseeing the new branch out there instead of taking over the position of vice-president here in London? Because your pride’s been hurt by your older brother wielding the whip hand, so to speak?’

Miles’s smile was wry as he turned from where he’d been staring blankly out at the rain. What an apt turn of phrase where Max was concerned! His brother did have some peculiar private practices. But no one was supposed to know that. Publicly, he was a perfect English gentleman, complete with stiff upper lip and impeccable manners.

‘No, that’s not it at all,’ he said. ‘Max is welcome to the running of the company. Father chose rightly in giving him the job. He’s not only better suited, but it’s what he’s always desperately wanted.’

‘And what do you desperately want, Miles?’ came the caustic question. ‘Or don’t you desperately want anything?’

An image flashed into his mind—of a woman, a witch of a woman with black hair and black eyes, the palest of skins and the reddest of mouths. Blood red. He could see her now, sashaying towards him across that crowded room, her floaty black dress swirling about her long, long legs, its semitransparent material hiding not an inch of her slender yet sensual curves.

The memory must have projected something into his face, for suddenly Annabel gasped, then glared, her peaches and cream complexion flushing angrily.

‘Dear God, it’s another woman, isn’t it?’ She bit the words out. ‘You fell in love with some colonial bitch while you were out in Australia on business last year. That’s why you’ve tossed me over, to run back to the arms of some leather-skinned blonde bimbo who probably spends all of her life on Bondi Beach in a bikini!’

Miles was startled by Annabel’s viciousness. Plus her capacity for jealousy. Or was it just hurt pride?

There was no doubt Lady Annabel Swanson was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. And he’d met a good few in his thirty-three years. Far more beautiful than a certain outrageous creature he hadn’t been able to get out of his head, no matter what he’d done.

‘That’s not so, Annabel,’ he said with some of the superb British control his public school education had managed to finally beat into him. ‘There is a woman ... yes. But I have not fallen in love with her. I’m beginning to doubt I’m capable of falling in love at all,’ he said truthfully enough. ‘If I was going to fall in love, don’t you think I would have fallen in love with you?’

Annabel preened at this, and Miles felt a right hypocrite. More and more he could see her type would never capture his heart, or even retain his desire. She was far too snobbish, far too ambitious and far too mercenary. -

As for her performance in bed... she was also far too fond of showers for his liking. He never did relish the feeling that she couldn’t wait to wash him from her oh so perfectly painted, powdered and perfumed body. Frankly, he could not bear the thought of touching her ever again.

He simply ached to get away. Yes, to some sun and sand. And yes, into the arms of that witch.

He didn’t want to marry her, of course. Heaven forbid. What he wanted was to sink himself deep into her gloriously sexy body, to wallow for a few months in the pleasures of the flesh and not think about England, other people’s expectations of him or the infernal family company!

Maybe, after six months, he might be ready to return and get on with the life that had been mapped out for him since birth.

Maybe,..

If not, he might do something else, go somewhere else. He had the money to travel indefinitely. His grandmother—his mother’s mother—had made him her sole heir. God knows why.

Perhaps because she thought her son-in-law had unfairly favoured his older son. Perhaps because Miles had taken after her side of the family and not the MacMillans. She’d been quite delighted, apparently, when she first saw the dimple in Miles’s chin, declaring it was identical to her brother Bart’s, the black sheep of the family who’d run off to sea and drowned when only a lad.

Who knew what the old lady’s reasons had been? She’d died twenty years ago now. Her estate had been put into trust for Miles, and at thirty, he’d become a far wealthier man than Max would ever be. He could afford six years in Australia, if that was what he wanted.

Not that he thought he would need that long. A few months’ solid bedding of that black-eyed Aussie witch would no doubt cure the unrequited lust that had besieged him ever since meeting her that fateful night twelve months before.

Looking back, he could see that he should have taken her up on her none too subtle invitation. Then maybe his desire for her would not have grown into such an obsession.

But he’d been involved with Annabel at the time and had planned to ask her to marry him on his return to London. His damned sense of honour had stopped him from indulging in a tacky one-night stand, and he’d cut and run before temptation got the better of him.

On coming home, he’d proposed straight away to Annabel, then valiantly tried to forget the way he’d felt in that witch’s company. So full of desire and reckless passion. So much a man!

But it had been impossible. In the end, he’d had to face the fact that he did not want to make love to Annabel anymore. He wanted that fiery-eyed witch in his bed, and no one else.

‘So it’s just sex, is that it?’ Annabel snapped.

Miles flashed her an irritated look. ‘I’ve already said I don’t love her.’

‘Then why on earth didn’t you say so earlier?’ She heaved an exasperated sigh. ‘I’m not a child, Miles. I know what men are like. I have no illusions about their carnal natures. There’s not a married woman I know who hasn’t had to occasionally turn a blind eye to their husband’s disgusting behaviour.

‘So you have the hots for this ... female. I can understand that. No doubt she appeals to you because she’s different from what you’re used to. Go to Australia, by all means, and get her out of your system. But when the six months is over, come back, Miles. Come back to me...’

She came forward, the softly understanding smile on her lovely mouth not at all matched by the calculating coldness in her arctic blue eyes. Miles almost shuddered when she put a hand on his arm.

He took a step backwards so that it dropped away. ‘I do not want that kind of wife, Annabel. And I do not want that kind of marriage. When and if I marry, I will be faithful. And I will expect the same of my wife!’

‘Yes, of course you will,’ she cooed. ‘But I’m not your wife at the moment, am I? I’m not even your fiancée any more. But I’m still prepared to wait. Don’t say no, dearest. Don’t dash all my hopes. Let me at least wait till you get back. Then, if you still don’t want to marry me, I’ll go quietly. I promise.’

Miles made an impatient sound. ‘I don’t want to give you false hopes, Annabel.’

‘I know you don’t. You’re a dear, dear man, and a proper gentleman through and through. Any other man would have just had this woman on the side and not said a word. I can’t tell you how much I admire you, Miles. You’re a man of honour. Why do you think I love you as much as I do?’

Miles refrained from mentioning his bank balance.

He was glad when she left, glad to be able to breathe easily again. He’d been half-holding his breath from the moment she’d walked In.

At last he could return to the report he’d received from the private investigator only that morning, barely minutes before Annabel’s unexpected arrival. Now he dragged it out of the top drawer and sat down to peruse it at further length.

The quarry had recently broken up with her latest lover, he read again with satisfaction. If she ran true to form, she would not resume the relationship under any circumstances and would not take another man into her bed for several weeks. Though a woman of modern morals, she was, surprisingly, not promiscuous. She rarely had more than one lover a year, and she was always faithful to him.

Miles liked what he read.

He would be presenting himself into her life right at the right time. She’d already showed him she fancied him, so he didn’t think he’d have too much trouble becoming her next lover.

His flesh leapt fiercely at the thought. Dear God, he’d never wanted a woman as he wanted Miss Madeline Powers. Never!

Maddie, her friends called her. Darling, she called most men, he’d noticed that night.

He could not wait for her to call him darling.

He could hear the word now, coming low and husky from those scarlet lips. She would whisper it to him as those lush lips travelled over his body, moan it when they fused as one, gasp it every time she came.

Miles could feel his heart hammering away within his chest as he thought of her. He had never met such an overtly sexual creature. She was everything Annabel wasn’t. Flamboyant and exotic and wild. She would be hot in bed, he knew. Hot and hedonistic and his!

‘Maddie,’ he said aloud, and savoured her name. It conjured up images of carnality that would make women like Annabel blanch. ‘Maddie,’ he repeated, and leant back in his chair, his eyes shutting.

‘Maddie...’

CHAPTER ONE

MADDIE’S reaction to Carolyn’s baby astounded her.

She hadn’t had much to do with babies during her thirty-one years, having always found them annoying, noisy creatures with little to recommend them. They cried incessantly and made the most awful messes from both ends of their restless, wriggling bodies.

But from the moment Carolyn handed over her newborn daughter and she nestled contentedly in her arms, Maddie was enchanted. When the baby’s pudgy fingers closed fiercely round one of hers, Maddie’s heart had squeezed as tight as the tiny girl’s grip. When those unblinking blue eyes looked up at her with total trust, everything inside Maddie just melted.

‘Oh, God,’ she groaned. ‘I never thought this would happen to me, Carolyn, but I think I want one of these for my very own.’

Carolyn laughed softly from where she was propped up against a mountain of pillows in her hospital bed, looking far too lovely, Maddie thought, for a woman who had given birth less than twenty-four hours before. Even the dark smudges under her eyes did nothing to detract from her blonde-haired blue-eyed beauty.

‘There’s nothing to stop you from having a baby, Maddie,’ she said. ‘All you have to do is marry Spencer, and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘Marry Spencer? Good Lord, I wouldn’t wish that on a dog.’

Carolyn gave her a perplexed look. ‘But... but only last month you told me you were crazy about him!’

Maddie grimaced. ‘Crazy being the operative word. The man’s an insufferable snob. Do you know he started criticising my taste in clothes? He actually said I looked cheap. You don’t think Auntie Maddie looks cheap, do you darling?’ she crooned at the baby, who seemed entranced by the huge silver hoops that were swinging from Maddie’s lobes.

Carolyn decided this was one of those moments when silence was golden. She, personally, would never describe Maddie as cheap-looking. Way out, perhaps. Or off-beat. Definitely Bohemian. Maddie was of ah artistic nature. One expected artistes to be different, didn’t one?

Carolyn could see, however, that if a man did not really know and love Maddie for the warm, generous and genuine person she was underneath her outwardly outrageous facade, he might mistakenly think her cheap.

Of course, it would help if she dressed differently. Her clothes were always outlandish and her jewellery garish, to say the least. Carolyn wished Maddie would wear a little less makeup and a lot more underwear....

Carolyn’s rueful gaze drifted over the outfit her friend was sporting that morning. Skin-tight black leather pants with a matching black leather vest held together with a single wooden button. Every time Maddie moved—or even breathed in—it looked like the precarious closure would pop right open to display her obviously braless state.

‘I don’t have to get married to have one of these little darlings,’ Maddie resumed, glancing up at Carolyn with a minx-like gleam in her flashing black eyes. ‘All I need is a suitable sperm donor. He’d have it all, of course. Brains. Beauty. Breeding. I have no intention of introducing an inferior specimen into this poor pathetic world. Someone like this splendid example of human perfection in my arms would be fine.’

She sent Carolyn a wicked smile at this juncture. ‘You wouldn’t mind lending me Vaughan for a few nights, would you, sweetie? He seems to be one of those prepotent sires who passes on all his good genes.’

Carolyn laughed.

There’d been a time when she’d worried Vaughan and Maddie were lovers. They’d been very close for many years, having been flatmates during their university days, after which they’d gone into business together—Maddie doing the interior decorating of Vaughan’s architectural projects.

But despite the intimacy of their ongoing relationship and their relaxed camaraderie, they claimed they had never been physically intimate.

And Carolyn believed them.

Maddie’s flamboyant sensuality might have worried a less secure wife, considering the amount of time they spent together. But Carolyn felt supremely confident in her husband’s love, as confident as she was of Maddie’s friendship.

‘You find your own sperm donor, thank you very much,’ Carolyn advised with mock tartness. ‘And I think I’ll have my baby back before your craziness goes off on another tangent and you become a baby stealer.’

‘You think I’m joking, don’t you?’ Maddie smiled as she handed back the tiny bundle. ‘About having a baby, I mean, not about wanting to borrow your Vaughan. Much as your hubbie’s a gorgeous hunk of male flesh, he’s not really my type. Never was.’

‘And what is your type, Maddie? Spencer?’

‘I suppose so,’ she agreed happily. ‘Lord knows I must be a masochist, but I always seem to be attracted to the sort of supercilious stuck-up silver-spoon who wouldn’t normally be seen dead with someone like me.’

‘And why’s that, do you think?’ Carolyn asked thoughtfully. ‘I mean ... I would have thought you’d find such men stifling.’

Maddie shrugged. ‘I do, in the end. Especially when they start wanting to change me—or hide me away. That’s the kiss of death as far as I’m concerned. Needless to say, dear old Spence got his walking papers the night he decided I would have to change my clothes before he could possibly take me out in public. He rang me every hour of every day for a while, but I simply clicked on my answering machines, both at home and at the office, and in the end, he gave up. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.’

Carolyn shook her head, sighing. ‘You have a mean streak in you, Maddie. Still, I can’t admit to feeling much pity for Spencer. He’s a male chauvinist pig, if ever there was one.’

‘Then why suggest I marry him, for pity’s sake?’ Maddie pointed out frustratedly.

‘I was only teasing. I knew darned well you wouldn’t. You’re never going to get married, are you?’ Carolyn said, a tender exasperation in her voice.

‘No.’

‘Is it because of what happened to your mother?’

‘You mean do I have some deep-seated Freudian aversion to marriage and commitment because Mama was loved and left by a married man, leaving poor little ol’ me behind?’

‘Something like that.’

Maddie laughed, tossing her long black curls from her shoulders. She really was a very striking woman, Carolyn thought. And far more complex than anyone realised. In a way, she felt some pity for the pompous Spencer. And any other man Maddie sank her teeth into.

‘What a perfectly interesting thought!’ Maddie exclaimed, her smile dazzling white behind her lushly scarlet lips. ‘It never occurred to me, but you could be right, I suppose. I never try to psychoanalyse myself. I am what I am, and to hell with anyone who doesn’t approve of me, which includes Spencer. The last thing I need in my life is some hypocrite of a man who wants to make me over into what he thinks is suitable to his narrow-minded stuffy life-style.’

‘Good Lord, Maddie! I didn’t realise you hated men so much!’

Maddie blinked, startled by her friend’s remark. ‘But I don’t!’ she denied. ‘I simply adore men!’

‘Do you, Maddie? Do you really?’

‘Of course I do,’ she insisted, though not meeting Carolyn’s eyes as she looped a stray curl behind her left ear. ‘Don’t be silly. I can’t stand not having a man in my life.’

‘Then why don’t you want to ever marry one?’

Maddie looked up, deflecting her friend’s serious question with a naughty grin. ‘Because I like men, darling heart, not a single man..I can’t think of anything more boring than having to sleep with the same man every night for the rest of my life. Actually, I can’t think of anything more boring than marriage in general!’

‘Are you saying my life is going to be boring?’

‘You and Vaughan are the exceptions to the rule.’

‘What about my mother and Julian? They’re blissfully happy.’

‘Chips off the same block,’ Maddie returned, smiling fondly as she thought of Carolyn’s still beautiful mother and her husband.

Isabel and Julian.

Such romantic names for such a romantic couple.

Maddie had met them the previous year when Julian, a successful businessman from Sydney, decided to semi-retire on the South Coast and commissioned Vaughan and herself to design, build and furnish a special surprise home for his new bride. Maddie had become good friends with Carolyn when Julian had asked his stepdaughter to oversee the decor while he was overseas on his honeymoon with Isabel. It was during this time that Carolyn and Vaughan fell madly in love, marrying within a few short weeks.

Now, twelve months later, they had this gorgeous little baby.

Maddie leant over and clucked the baby’s chin, goo-gooing at it as she’d never goo-gooed before. There was no longer any doubt in her mind. A baby she was going to have. And soon, before the years ticked away and she was too old. She could well afford it, which to Maddie’s mind was the only negative against bringing up a baby on her own. What did a child need a father for, anyway? She’d never had a father around and she was as happy and normal as could be!

‘You’re not really going to have a baby out of wedlock, are you?’ Carolyn asked worriedly.

Maddie chuckled. ‘Trust you to use a term. like that! I’ve never heard anything so old-fashioned in my life!’

‘What’s old-fashioned?’ Vaughan said as he walked in and strode over to the bed. ‘Hello, my precious darlings.’

He bent to kiss his wife and baby daughter, the tenderness and love on his face moving Maddie. She’d always known Vaughan was a warm, caring man underneath his outward machismo, but to witness the intensity of his feelings on display for all to see brought a lump to her throat and a tinge of envy to her heart.

‘Well?’ Vaughan straightened to throw Maddie a questioning glance. ‘What’s so old-fashioned?’

‘Your wife thinks I should be married before I have a baby,’ came her dryly amused reply.

Vaughan looked more shocked than in the thirteen years she had known him. ‘Good God,’ he blurted out. ‘You’re pregnant?’

‘No, of course not, you silly man. But seeing your lovely baby girl has sunk a deep well into previously untapped maternal instinct. Yet when I expressed my wish to have a baby, your dear wife insisted I marry Spencer first.’

Vaughan grimaced. ‘Good God, not him. Find someone else, for pity’s sake. He might be a top solicitor, but he’s the most arrogant bastard I’ve ever met.’

‘See?’ Maddie pulled a face at Carolyn, who pulled another right back. Both women started to giggle and the baby to cry.

‘Here, give her to me,’ Vaughan suggested, scooping up his daughter and walking around the room with her, whereupon she immediately stopped crying. ‘Speaking of arrogant bastards—’ he directed the words at Maddie ‘—you’ll never guess who rang me this morning.’

‘If I’d never guess,’ Maddie countered, ‘then perhaps you should save me the trouble of trying and just tell me.’

‘Miles MacMillan,’ he announced. ‘You probably don’t remember him, either of you, but he was at Julian’s house-warming party round about this time last year. The night we got engaged, Carolyn. He’s British and was out here at the time to plan the opening of a Sydney branch of his family’s finance company. Julian was having dealings with him.

‘Anyway, apparently he’s come back for another six-month stint in Australia and wants to buy a weekender within easy commuting distance of Sydney. Since he’d already seen the South Coast area and liked it, he contacted Julian, who told him about that house I’d nearly finished building at Stanwell Park—the one where the owner went bankrupt, bringing things to a halt. He’s driving down to have a look at it this afternoon, and if he likes it, he’s going to buy it.’