Contract with Consequences

John suddenly had the most appalling thought. What if she was ringing to tell him she was finally pregnant? It was possible, he supposed. She might think he would like to know.

‘Why are you ringing, Scarlet?’ he asked abruptly.

Scarlet’s heart sank at his brusque tone.

‘You’ve changed your mind about your offer, haven’t you?’ she said.

The tension in John’s gut immediately melted away.

‘Not at all,’ he replied.

‘Really?’ she gasped, renewed hope flooding her heart.

‘Yes, really. So what happened, Scarlet? Given the time lapse since we last spoke, I presume you went back to the clinic for another go and it didn’t work.’

‘I got my period today,’ she confessed with a sigh.

‘Like I said in my letter, my offer is open.’

Scarlet had reached the stage where she would have given anything a try. But she wasn’t so desperate that she still wasn’t slightly bothered by one thing. ‘I know I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, John, but I still can’t work out why you’re doing this for me. Aside from the sex angle, that is. Which I also still can’t fathom. I mean, if you always fancied me, then why didn’t you do something about it before this?’

They were logical questions, John accepted. He wished he had some logical answers for her. He had to tell her something, he supposed, something which would satisfy her intelligence. Scarlet was no dummy.

‘Can I be blunt with you?’ he said.

‘Please do.’

‘I didn’t do anything before this because I thought you would just knock me back,’ he said, not untruthfully. ‘Until we met again last month and I realised that the attraction was mutual. However, contrary to your belief, I also like you a lot, Scarlet, and I want to help you get what you obviously want very much-which is a baby. And, as strange as it seems, I also quite like the idea of having a child of my own. But if I’m to be brutally honest, what I want most is you, in my bed, for a good deal longer than you spend at that wretched clinic each month.’

Scarlet’s silence at the other end of the line indicated a degree of shock. Or deep thoughtfulness. John suspected the former. He had gone overboard a bit in his attempt to focus on the sex angle. But he didn’t want her questioning him further over his motives. He didn’t understand them fully himself! All he knew was that his blood was racing through his body with a surge of entirely male, powerful satisfaction at her agreement. For a short time, Scarlet was going to be his.

Scarlet had been rendered speechless by the decidedly R-rated images which had sprung into her mind. She was seriously glad that John couldn’t see the burst of heat which flamed into her cheeks.

‘Come now, Scarlet, you must know how very desirable you are.’

Now Scarlet felt hot all over. A shiver ran down her spine at the realisation she might shortly find out just how desirable he thought she was.

‘I hope your silence doesn’t mean you’ve changed your mind about this?’ he said, his voice sounding curiously expressionless.

‘No,’ she choked out, still blushing at her earlier train of thought. Thank heavens they weren’t face to face!

‘Good.’ His voice relaxed again. ‘When can you get yourself up here?’

Scarlet swallowed, then sat up straighter. She’d always been more comfortable following a plan.

‘I thought as soon as possible,’ she said briskly.

‘How about the beginning of next week?’

‘Well, I’ll have to get stuff organised at work…’

He rode over her objections. ‘I’m sure you can sort it. Once you’ve booked your flight next week, text me your time of arrival and I’ll be at the airport waiting for you.’ He sounded equally brisk, and it was as difficult as ever to guess what he was feeling. ‘Don’t send the text to this number. Send it to my mobile. I’ll be back in Darwin by then.’

Scarlet rolled her eyes in exasperation. Why was it then men wouldn’t listen? ‘Where are you, anyway?’ she asked.

‘Camping out in one of the national parks.’

Scarlet had been doing some mental calculations. ‘Wait-next week is way too early. I can’t possibly fall pregnant till a week after that. I never ovulate before day fourteen on my cycle. I know this for a fact because I’ve been taking my temperature every day for the last year and-’

‘Scarlet,’ he interrupted. ‘If you want to get pregnant, then let’s try this my way.’

Truly, he could be as irritating a man as he’d been an irritating boy! ‘Which is?’ she snapped.

‘Not taking your temperature every day, for starters. Not caring about when you bloody ovulate either. Because, let’s face it, that method hasn’t been working too well for you up till now, has it?’

‘I guess not,’ she admitted grudgingly.

‘I suggest you leave this whole operation up to me. Put yourself entirely in my hands. No arguments, no more buts.’

‘Yes,’ she bit out.

‘Good,’ he said, smiling wryly to himself at the thought that ‘yes’ wasn’t a word Scarlet was used to saying. But she was going to say it a lot during their time together. He would make her say it. No, he would make her want to say it. For that was what he craved all of a sudden. Not just Scarlet’s compliance but her complete surrender.

The thought excited him unbearably. Was this what had been lurking at the back of his mind? Not just desire for sex, but a desire to seduce? To possess? To control?

The idea perturbed him. He’d never been into that kind of thing. Sex for him was usually just a physical release with no strings attached. He’d always steered well clear of becoming emotionally involved with the women he slept with. John could see, however, that this was a different situation entirely. If truth be told, his emotions were already involved. The problem was which ones?

He almost told her to forget it then; that he’d changed his mind. But it was too late. The roller coaster of destiny was already moving and he was solidly strapped in. There would be no escape till it came to rest at the end of the ride.

CHAPTER TEN

BECAUSE she had a window seat and her head was too fuzzy to read, Scarlet spent most of the four-and-a- half-hour flight to Darwin staring down at the landscape below. With no clouds in the sky, there was nothing to hinder her view of what was really an incredible sight. What a big country Australia was, big and rugged and mostly uninhabited. The last frontier, some people called it.

Scarlet had never flown over the outback of Australia before. Or been in the outback, for that matter. Holidays before her dad had died had been confined to trips to Sydney, or the Gold Coast. Once, they’d gone to the Blue Mountains where they’d visited the Three Sisters and the Jenolan Caves. After her dad had died, she and her mother hadn’t gone on holidays for years. Eventually, they had started going to Fiji each year, because it was reasonably close to Australia and good value for money.

She’d never been to Darwin. But she knew quite a bit about the place. Or she did now, having looked it up on the Internet this past week. Scarlet was not a girl who ever liked to appear ignorant. Up till now her knowledge of the capital city of the Northern Territory had been rather superficial and sketchy. Although she already knew that Darwin had been struck by a cyclone in the seventies, she hadn’t realised it had happened on Christmas Day, of all days, which she found very sad. She also hadn’t appreciated the devastation it had caused. The photographs of the aftermath had been horrendous. Understandably, it had taken decades to rebuild the city but it was now a thriving mining town and tourist Mecca, the gateway to Kakadu National Park and lots of other famous Aboriginal sites. Its harbourside position in the extreme north of Australia meant its climate was very hot and humid in the summer, but wonderfully mild in the winter.