Chapter 45

SHOCK held them all silent. Except for the blonde.

Megan burned with humiliation as the woman rubbed her body provocatively, invitingly, against Johnny's and babbled on about how fantastic he was and she'd do anything

—anything he wanted—just to be with him.

A blatant groupie.

And Johnny had to have given instructions for her to be brought to him.

Well, he was certainly caught in a spotlight now! Yet there was no guilt on his face.

With an air of grim self-containment, he reached up and forcibly pulled down the arms that held him, stepping back out of body contact as he spoke with biting distaste. 'You picked the wrong mark.'

'But you sent for me,' the blonde protested. No escape from that truth.

Megan's heart died.

If she hadn't come backstage, seen this for herself… 'Please…just go.' Johnny nodded to Megan. 'My wife is here.'

The blonde whipped around to see. Her gaze skated over the group who'd entered, fastened on Megan, raked her from head to foot in angry frustration, pausing at the now obvious bump of her pregnancy. 'So, you got him with

that trap,' she said nastily.

'Go!' Johnny thundered, as though he could barely tolerate the offence, his expression fighting both pain and fury.

Trap was right, Megan thought miserably.

Having realised there was no choice but to accept defeat, the blonde flounced around them to the open doorway, jeeringly tossing back, 'You don't know what you're missing, Johnny.'

A stony pride settled on his face as he muttered, 'I do. I know exactly what I'm missing.' But he spoke to empty space. The blonde was gone. And his eyes had emptied of all feeling, too. There was suddenly a sense of dreadful emptiness permeating the whole room.

No-one spoke.

Megan sensed they were all hanging out for an acceptable explanation, possibly embarrassed at being witnesses to a scene none of them liked. Her hand instinctively moved to spread over the hump which held her baby, a fierce protective love welling up and choking her.

Wretched thoughts jumbled through her mind. There'd been no need for Johnny to marry her. She hadn't asked him to. Nor had she wanted him to feel he was missing out on anything. She hated that he did. How could she hold him to their marriage, knowing it got in the way of…his life?

Johnny visibly regathered himself and flashed a derisive look at Ric and Mitch. 'She claimed to be my long-lost sister.'

As though they would understand.

Not his wife.

'I thought…it was possible,' he added with a grimace that somehow expressed a world of loss.

A sister? Megan's mind whirled, trying to fit this idea into the train of circumstances she had watched, trying to understand how Johnny could have believed such an unlikely claim…what it might have meant to him.

'We're your family, Johnny,' Mitch said quietly. 'You'll always have us,' Ric backed up.

The three men…who'd been boys at Gundamurra…a brotherhood…but not linked by blood.

Johnny nodded, acknowledging the bond between them, yet his eyes were still bleak as his gaze fastened on the hand Megan had placed over her tummy and she intuitively knew what he was thinking. This baby was the only blood link to him…flesh of his flesh. No sister. But he would have a son or a daughter.

It was her baby, too, but she didn't think that counted to him. He wanted this child. Regardless of the cost to himself on any other level, he needed to have this child in his life, filling a hole she could not really imagine because she'd never been in his situation. Mitch had a sister and a son.

Ric had a son and a daughter. Johnny was still alone in the world in any biological sense.

'Will you come back to the hotel with me tonight?' he asked her, a hollow quality in his voice that seemed to expect nothing, just a yes or no.

'Yes,' she said, all her nerves knotted with

apprehension, yet the need to know what was on his mind was paramount—how their marriage really was for him, good or bad. He could put all his willpower behind a commitment, but feelings were something else.

He heaved a tired sigh. 'Ric, Mitch…' A wry appreciation flitted into a brief curl of his mouth. 'Good of you to be here for me, but…' He gestured an apologetic appeal.

'We'll leave you to it,' Mitch swiftly interpreted.

'Don't let this get you down, Johnny,' Ric quietly advised. 'We have to let the past go.'

'Guess it got up and bit me tonight, Ric.' He shrugged. 'Took me off guard. I'll be okay.'

He made a dismissive gesture and his two old friends moved out, taking their wives with them, closing the door to give him privacy with Megan.

Feeling totally ill-equipped to deal with emotions Johnny had never revealed to her, and painfully aware that she had not been invited backstage, she couldn't bring herself to go to him. Hopelessly tongue-tied, she stayed where she was, waiting for some sign that he actually welcomed her being here. Although he'd asked her to stay, the request had been made in front of others and might only have been some kind of test for loyalty from her, trust in his word.

Johnny seemed to be viewing her from a great distance, perhaps weighing her silence, her stillness, perhaps seeing a chasm between them that he didn't have the energy to cross. Was it up to her? Panic seized her mind, inducing a terrible torment of indecisiveness.

Finally he spoke, his mouth taking on an ironic twist. 'I guess you thought it was something different.'

Megan inwardly writhed over the doubts and suspicions that had driven her backstage to check what was true or not. After what had just unfolded here she couldn't confess to them. It felt too wrong. As though it might be the end of any possible relationship between them if she did. Yet she had to say something. He had surely noticed her shock on seeing him with the blonde.

With a helpless little gesture of appeal she weakly offered, 'I'm sorry, Johnny. It looked…'

'As though I'd lied to you,' he drily finished for her. 'I haven't, Megan. Not about anything.'

He turned and picked up a photograph from the make- up bench behind him. 'This was passed to me by the singer who came offstage just before I went on. I would have tossed it away, but for what was written on the back.'

He held it out to her, making her feel forced to step forward and take it, forced to read the words that had swayed him into checking out the woman who had claimed to be his long-lost sister. She looked just as tarty in the photograph as she had in real life, heavily made up, sexily dressed, provocatively posed.

'Did you want her to be your sister, Johnny?' she asked, unable to hide her distaste.

'You mean she might be a prostitute…like my mother?' The derisive remark whipped heat into Megan's cheeks—shame at having forgotten what was clearly unforgettable to him. She scrambled to excuse the slip. 'I meant…she doesn't look anything like you.'