The Army Doc's Baby Secret. Charlotte Hawkes
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be heard.
He was a few years older, maybe, but that face was just as sharp, and masculine, and devastating as it had always been. Those cool blue eyes could still pierce through any soul, and that strong jawline, which she had traced countless times over the years, still housed a mouth that had been her undoing more times than she cared to remember.
Without warning, desire zipped through her, horrifying and thrilling all at the same time. His beaten-up leathers moulded to every broad, muscled inch of him, reminding her of a time when—as teenagers—they had raced the length and breadth of the country on that prized motorbike of his.
Suddenly, she felt like that adoring kid again.
Had she really been so naïve as to believe that the mere passage of time would mean she would no longer be attracted to the man? Had she really told herself that she would be immune?
She’d convinced herself of it, yet now the mere idea that she wouldn’t be affected by him was laughable.
Even his silence was dark. Edgy. Lasting only a beat but feeling like an eternity.
‘That you’re back.’
Another moment of silence. So thick and heavy that she almost imagined she could wear it as a cloak. Maybe one that could chase out the sudden chill that had pervaded her very bones.
Almost against her own volition, Tia let her eyes track lower. Her heart kicked up yet another gear as she fought to control the shallow breaths that jostled inside. Zeke had once been the epitome of a deadly, dangerous, ruinous barracuda.
Something she didn’t care to identify pooled low in her belly at the memory of the SBS man with a body that had always defied belief and was worthy of any Rodin or Polycleitus sculpture.
If she didn’t know better, she might have thought that nothing had changed. He looked as fit, as honed, as lethal, as ever. And her fingers practically itched to reach out and test it for herself.
Discreetly, she moved her arms behind her back and balled her fists into each other.
And then, finally, she let her gaze travel lower. Down the snug, black motorcycle leathers, which did little to disguise impossibly muscular thighs, and down...
She froze.
For a moment, the fluttering receded as a wave of nausea threatened to close over her head. She couldn’t tear her gaze away, couldn’t even breathe. Like a swimmer caught in a riptide, fighting to stay focussed and keep their head above the surface.
What had he been saying? Asking her?
Think. Think!
Slowly, so slowly, her brain kicked back into gear. Something about her being back...?
Her tongue took a moment to work loose again.
‘It’s true,’ she confirmed stiffly.
And perhaps needlessly. After all, it was self-evident, wasn’t it? Or maybe Zeke was simply giving her the opportunity to rethink her decision and get out of there. Out of Delburn Bay. Out of his corner of the country. Out of his life.
Just as she’d done the last time he’d commanded it.
And if it weren’t for Seth, then maybe she would have done just that.
‘Although, I’d hardly say I’m back.’ She licked her dry lips even as she silently berated herself for such an outward show of nervousness. ‘I’m far enough up the coast from Westlake.’
‘I think you can call that back—’ his voice was like a hot cocoa river running through her, and warming her, even as she tried to fight it ‘—given that it’s the closest you’ve been to coming home in around fifteen years.’
Coming home. It sounded so...easy, when dropped from Zeke’s lips, and suddenly the realisation terrified her. It meant that home wasn’t Westlake where she’d grown up, or Delburn Bay where her father had moved to. Home was where Seth was.
But it was also where Zeke was.
And that absolutely, positively, was not acceptable.
‘I disagree,’ she lied, aware that folding her arms across her chest was a defensive, negative gesture, yet wholly unable to stop herself.
‘No, you don’t. You might be here, but you desperately wanted to come all the way to Westlake. You just couldn’t bring yourself. It’s obvious. You were never very good at lying to me, Tia.’
God, she’d made a monumental mistake coming back here.
It was too soon. She wasn’t ready.
‘I’m not lying,’ she lied, desperation reverberating through every syllable.
Zeke’s mouth curled up at one corner, making it seem as if that were actually a bad thing. But she had to concede that he had a point. Which only made it all the more ironic that he’d never realised she’d told him the biggest lie of all.
Before she could answer, he moved into the room—or maybe prowled was more accurate—and she couldn’t drag her gaze away for even a second. Every bit the most virile, red-blooded, lethally powerful man she’d ever known. Something fluttered low in her belly, like a thousand butterflies all taking flight at once.
She couldn’t still want him, still ache for him, after all this time. Surely? It was ridiculous. Unconscionable. She couldn’t allow it.
She wouldn’t.
‘Then why Delburn Bay, Tia?’
Was she really ready to answer that?
Anyway, Tia was the naïve fifteen-year-old girl who had fallen for the handsome, charismatic seventeen-year-old boy the moment they’d volunteered together at Westlake lifeboat station a lifetime ago. Tia was the twenty-eight-year-old whose life had changed in a single instant and everything had been turned on its head.
She hadn’t been Tia for five years.
‘It’s Antonia now.’
Whether she’d intended it as a distraction or a feeble attempt to take control of the situation, she couldn’t be sure. Either way, it fell about as heavily as an anchor on a freight ship.
‘The truth, Tia,’ he pressed her, with deliberate emphasis.
The truth was something she wasn’t ready for. But, just like that, just because Zeke had spoken, she was Tia again. As though the last five years had never happened.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘The lifeboat community is tight-knit. People talk. You should know that.’
She ignored the voice in the back of her head whispering that was precisely why she’d come to Delburn Bay. She’d banked on that same tight-knit community to relay the news to Zeke that she had returned.
Just...not so unbelievably quickly.
‘Did my father tell you I was here?’
The bark of laughter—if that was what it could be called—was less amused and more incredulous.
‘Your father?’
‘I’m staying with him. At least, until I find a place of my own.’
‘And here I was thinking you were as much persona non grata as I am. The man who warned you that I couldn’t love you, that I didn’t even know what love was, and that we’d never last. Did you tell him you were only too happy to leave, or does he think it was all me?’
She had no idea whether he intended to wound her with the offhand remarks, or not. Probably the former. Then again, she deserved it, even if not for the reason Zeke could have known about. Another surge of guilt coursed through her.
She hadn’t exactly been fair to Zeke when