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“Rafe?” She knew he was gone from the bed before she opened her eyes. She stretched out her hand to the other side, his side.
Empty.
And then she sat up and switched on the lamp.
“Rafe?” She pushed back the covers and got out of the bed.
He wasn’t in the bathroom or the dressing room or the smaller bedroom beyond. The sitting room was empty, too.
She returned to perch on the edge of the bed and told herself to get back under the covers and go to sleep. He’d probably just gone down to the family’s kitchen for a snack. He did that now and then.
But she found herself feeling a little needy, a little lonely. She put her hand on her rounded belly and whispered to her baby, “I want your papa now.”
So, then. She would go and get him. If he was snacking, she would sit with him until he finished and they could come back up together.
She put on her kimono and slippers and left the suite. Tiptoeing along the first-floor hall, she turned down another hall to the back stairs, which were narrow, lit by low-wattage bulbs in the ceiling at each landing and descended at a sharp angle to the lower floor.
At the ground floor she stopped on the landing. Four more stairs led down into the family’s kitchen, which was smaller than the original main kitchen beneath the center of the house. The family kitchen had been created from a back sitting room forty years before and updated now and then as the decades went by.
But the back stairs didn’t look modern at all. The back stairs was a catacomb of narrow passageways all through Hartmore. They remained pretty much as they’d been over two hundred years ago, when Hartmore was built.
She hesitated there on the old, narrow landing, before turning and going the rest of the way down. The low light directly overhead cast odd shadows on the whitewashed wall. The kitchen wasn’t visible, not from there, not until she went down those last few stairs and emerged from the narrow back hall, which connected to the stairway there.
But she could hear something—movement?—in the kitchen. A dish clattered against a counter.
And a man said something.
Rafe. She couldn’t make out the words, but she knew the sound of his voice, knew it instantly, knew it to her bones, to the deepest core of herself.
A woman spoke in a passionate whisper.
Genny’s stomach went hollow and her heart was suddenly pounding out a sick, hard rhythm under her breast.
She didn’t want to go down.
But she had to go down.
Her feet in the little red slippers felt as though they weren’t even connected to the rest of her. She looked down and they were moving, one step, and another.
She descended the last step and emerged from the short hallway. And saw Rafe in track pants and an old T-shirt. He stood by the big Wolf cooker, his back to her. On the counter, there was toast on a plate, something hot in a cup, a curl of steam rising up.
Melinda stood with him—right there next to him, oblivious to anything but him. The woman stared up at him in the same haunted, hungry way she’d done that morning three weeks before.
He lifted one powerful arm and raked his hand back over the top of his head.
And then Melinda was reaching for him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, spearing her fingers up into his hair—and going on tiptoe to press her open mouth to his.
Chapter Eleven
Genny didn’t remember making a noise.
But she must have—a cry of shock and hurt. A gasp of outrage, maybe.
There must have been something.
Because Rafe not only swiftly grabbed Melinda’s hands from around his neck and pushed her away, he also whirled to find Genny standing there. “Gen.” He looked...hurt. Brokenhearted.
Or maybe just sorry.
Yes. Sorry that she’d caught him.
Melinda grabbed him by the shoulders. “Oh, Rafe...”
He shrugged Melinda off. His black eyes were only for her. “Damn it, Gen. Don’t.”
She almost wished he hadn’t seen her. That she could turn and sneak away.
Now there was nothing left but to draw the shreds of her dignity around her, to stand tall and ask in a voice that only shook a little bit, “What, exactly, is going on here?”
Rafe said, “It’s simple. You were right.” He never let his gaze stray from her face. “I should have listened. But I swear, I didn’t know. I’m an idiot, yes. But I’m no cheater. I didn’t know.”
“Rafe, please, darling.” Melinda tried to clutch at him again. “I only—”
“Hands off.” He jerked his shoulder free of her grip. “Wait,” he said to Genny. “Right there. I’m going to turn away and get rid of her. Do not go.”
Fine. She could do that. If it killed her, she could do it. “All right.”
