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But each time he’d picked up the phone, intending to call her and demand to know why she’d left, he’d kept c
oming back to their final parting—and he hadn’t been able to do it. Maybe it was pride, more likely just the survival instinct that had been bred into him as a lad, but he’d needed her to come to him. For the first few weeks he’d even fostered this stupid daydream that he might have got her pregnant and she’d be forced to contact him. But it hadn’t happened.
He slammed into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Grabbing a bottle of mineral water, he rolled the chilled plastic against his forehead. As he leaned back against the countertop his eyes fixed on the chair in which she’d been sitting the last time she’d had breakfast with him.
The hum of the air-conditioner was the only sound to break the silence. The empty silence that had started to suffocate him.
‘Stop being such a damn coward, Brody,’ he snarled into the deathly quiet.
Unscrewing the cap, he gulped down the water and then lobbed the empty bottle into the trash. She wasn’t coming to him, so he’d have to go to her.
He strode through into the living room and went to pick up the phone, then jerked his hand back when the ring tone blared out. The silly little spurt of hope that it might be Juno was ruthlessly quashed. Hadn’t he just got over wishing for the impossible?
He grabbed the handset and shouted into the receiver. ‘Brody here, who is this?’
‘It’s Connor.’
The shock of hearing his brother’s voice was so great he was momentarily struck dumb. ‘Connor?’
‘Yeah, your big brother, remember me?’
He heard it then, the brittle sarcasm, but the hope overcame his usual caution.
‘How’s Juno?’ he asked, not even attempting to disguise his eagerness for news.
He didn’t care why his brother was calling or even if the guy hated his guts. Connor lived right next door to the woman who he had just this second admitted to himself meant more to him than breathing. This had to be fate finally doing him a favour, surely.
Connor laughed, the sound harsh. ‘That’s rich. How is she? How the hell do you think she is?’
‘I don’t know how she is,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’
So Connor had good reason to despise him. So what? He didn’t have time to go into that now.
‘What was it all for, Mac? Just tell me that much.’ The edge had gone from Connor’s voice to be replaced by sadness. ‘Was this some kind of payback? Did you want to punish her because you couldn’t punish me? Because if that’s the case, she never deserved to become—’
‘I’ve not a single clue what you’re talking about,’ he interrupted with a panicked shout. ‘Has something happened to Juno? Just tell me how she is, damn it.’
He was sweating like a pig, the phone slipping in his grasp. Visions of all kinds of imagined carnage running through his mind.
‘Yeah, something’s happened to her,’ Connor said, the hint of bitterness now layered with resignation.
‘What? What’s happened? Is she sick? Has she been hurt?’ If he had to ask again he was going to climb down the phone line and throttle Connor himself, brother or not.
‘I’d say she’s both,’ Connor replied. ‘She’s pregnant, with your child. Which she’s decided to have even though she’s scared to death. And she—’
Mac slapped the phone onto its cradle, cutting Connor off. He’d not heard much after the second sentence anyway.
Juno was pregnant, with their child, and she hadn’t told him? She’d be at least a month gone by now—and yet she hadn’t once thought to pick up the phone? Did she think so little of him, then? He forced the anger forward to dull the pain. He didn’t care what her reasons were any more.
She was his. She always had been. He should never have let her cut him out of her life in the first place. And he’d be damned if he’d let her cut him out a moment longer.
Chapter Twenty
‘WHERE’S Juno?’ Mac hurled the question at Connor as soon as his brother opened his front door. ‘The old girl next door said she’s staying with you.’
He pushed past his startled brother but was stopped in his tracks by the irate shout that followed him down the corridor. ‘Get the hell back here. You’ll not come barging into my home without an invitation.’
He turned to see Connor stalking towards him in his stockinged feet, his face furious.
