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CHAPTER 23
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LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 24
“So then it’s me?” he stated matter-of-factly.“Is it ever anyone else?” she muttered snidely beneath her breath, but he couldn’t read her lips because she ducked her head as she said it. She tried to wriggle her arm and glared up at him when he wouldn’t release her.“ You’re hurting me!” she stated as clearly as she could, and he let her go abruptly.“I’m sorry.” His immediate release and apology took her by surprise, and she felt a little guilty when she saw a flare of genuine remorse in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”“You didn’t,” she admitted. “But I’m tired and I have nothing more to say to you tonight.”“You think you can dismiss me and expect me to obey like a whipped dog?” he sneered, taking hold of her elbow again and giving her a gentle shake to emphasize his point.No, I expect you to respect my wishes,” she told him tiredly, all of the fight leaving her. Her arm hung limply in his grip. He sighed and took hold of her other elbow before running his hands caressingly
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 25
“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
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 26
The house was in chaos when Cindy returned home half an hour later. Kayla was screaming her head off in the den while Gerard held her writhing little body in his arms as he frantically tried to soothe her. Celeste stood to the side, wringing her hands nervously, a concerned look on her plain face.Oh my God! What’s going on here?” Kayla’s crying worsened when she heard her mother’s voice. She managed to pull herself out of her father’s arms and launched herself toward her mother, her unsteady gait nearly sending her off balance.“Mummy! Kayla ouch! Kayla ouch, Mummy!” Cindy sank to her knees, and her heart dropped like a stone when she registered the genuine fear and pain on her little girl’s face. As the child crept into her mother’s open arms and snuggled against her chest, Cindy allowed her furious eyes to meet Gerard’s. His face had closed up like a shutter, a remote look in his eyes as he stood watching them, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets.“What did you do to her?” sh
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 27
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
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 28
“You need to rest,” he said as gently as he could, but he was an inaccurate judge of his own tone of voice at the best of times, and from the way she flinched, he suspected that his words had emerged a lot harsher than he had intended. Still she obeyed him and lay unresisting, looking utterly drained of any desire to fight him anymore. He tugged the covers up over her unmoving body and kissed her forehead tenderly before standing up. He hovered uncertainly, feeling faintly ridiculous in nothing but his black cotton boxers.“Try to get some sleep. Don’t worry about Kayla. I’ll see to her dinner and get her to bed . . .” He seemed to be rambling now and Cindy was confused by his uncertainty. “I’ll bring her up to say good night later. Things will get better now,Cindy ,” he vowed in an awkward rush, but Cindy refused to acknowledge his impulsive promise. “You’ll see. They’ll get better.”Well, things certainly felt better when she woke up the following morning. She felt warm and cherishe
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 29
“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
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 30
“. . . If she’s telling the truth about trying to call you, she may well be telling the truth about everything else, right?” He hid a wince as Lisa verbalized the words he had been unable to speak, and his eyes shut in horror at the mere idea of such an atrocity. God, how could he live with himself if his terrible treatment of her since her return had been unjustified? He met Rick’s gaze, wondering if the misery and overwhelming dread he felt were evident in his eyes.“She also said that she wasn’t there when I had my accident. That she didn’t leave me to . . .” He couldn’t even bring himself to say it, realizing now how ridiculous it was to believe that his soft-hearted wife would ever leave him, or anyone else for that matter, injured and alone at the scene of an accident. He sat down on the closest chair with a thump, feeling bewildered and sick to his stomach.“Oh my God,” he groaned. “Oh my God! I was so determined to blame her for this, but what if I was wrong, Rick? Do you know
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT CHAPTER 31
“The night you left,” he began quietly, trying to keep his voice level and calm, not wanting to come across as accusatory or angry. “After my accident,Cindy , I swear I saw you in the crowd and, even though I knew that I was the one who had driven you out of the house in the first place, in my mind, abandoning me there was completely unforgivable. I know that my reaction to your pregnancy was cruel and unwarranted, but despite that, you were my wife, the person I depended on the most, the woman who claimed to love me, and you left me there! It made no sense to me and it hurt so damned much. It also gave me an excuse to hate you because feeling anything other than that was just too . . .” He broke off awkwardly, aware of her frown and her confusion.“Gerard , I wasn’t . . .” she began but he held up a hand.“Please . . . I . . . let me speak.” He shut his eyes painfully. “I remember it so vividly; I looked up and saw you standing there on the fringe of the gathering crowd. You looked c
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