Wanting His Child

Verity could remember how her heart had sunk when she had been forced to admit that she had met Silas when he had come to do the gardens at the house. She had hung her head in shame and distress when her uncle had demanded to know what on earth she, with her background and her education, could possibly see in someone who mowed lawns for a living.

‘It isn’t like that,’ Verity had protested, flying to the protection of her new-found love and her new-found lover. ‘He’s been to university but…’

‘But what?’ her uncle had demanded tersely.

‘He…he found out when he was there that it wasn’t what he wanted to do…’

‘What university has taught me more than anything else,’ Silas had told her, ‘is to know myself, and what I know is that I would hate to be stuck in some stuffy office somewhere. I want to be in the fresh air, growing things…It’s in my blood, after all. My great-grandfather was a gardener. He worked for the Duke of Hartbourne as his head gardener. I don’t want to work for someone else, though—I want to work for myself. I want to buy a plot of land, develop it, build a garden centre…’

Enthusiastically he had started to tell Verity all about his plans. Six years older than her, he had possessed a maturity, a masculinity, which had alternately enthralled and enticed her. He had represented everything that she had not had in her own life and she had fallen completely and utterly in love with him.

Automatically, she turned the car into the narrow road that led to the house originally owned by her uncle—the house where she had grown up; the house where she had first met Silas; the house where she had tearfully told him that her responsibility, her duty towards her uncle had to take precedence over their love. And so he had married someone else.

The someone else who must have been Honor’s mother. He must have loved her a great deal not to have married for a second time. And he had quite obviously cherished her memory and his love for her far longer than he had cherished his much-proclaimed love for her, Verity acknowledged tiredly as she reached her destination and drove in through the ornate wrought-iron gates which were a new feature since she had lived in the house. Outwardly, though, in other ways, it remained very much the same. A large, turn-of-the-century house, of no particular aesthetic appeal or design.

Both her uncle and her father had spent their childhood in it but it had never, to Verity, seemed to be a family house, despite its size. Her uncle had changed very little in it since his own parents’ death, and to Verity it had always possessed a dark, semi-brooding, solitary air, totally unlike the pretty warmth she remembered from the much smaller but far happier home she had shared with her parents.

After her return from America her uncle had sold the house. His own health had started to deteriorate, during Verity’s absence, so he had set in motion arrangements to move the manufacturing side of the business to London. It had seemed to make good sense for both he and Verity to move there as well, Verity to her small mews house close to the river and her uncle to a comfortable apartment and the care of a devoted housekeeper.

Stopping her car, she reached into her handbag for the keys the letting agent had given her and then, taking a deep breath, she got out and headed for the house.

She wasn’t really sure herself just why she had chosen to come back, not just to this house but to this town. There was, after all, nothing here for her, no one here for her.

Perhaps one of the reasons was to reassure herself that she was now her own person—that she had her own life; that she was finally free; that she had the right to make her own decision. She had done her duty to her uncle and to the business and now, at thirty-three, she stood on the threshold of a whole new way of life, even if she had not decided, as yet, quite what form or shape that life would take.

‘What you need is a man…to fall in love,’ Charlotte had teasingly advised her the previous summer when Verity had protested that it was impossible for her to take time off to go on holiday with her friend and her family. ‘If you fell in love then you would have to find time…’

‘Fall in love? Me? Don’t be ridiculous,’ Verity had chided her.

‘Why not?’ Charlotte had countered. ‘Other people do—even other workaholics like you. You’re an attractive, loving, lovable woman, Verity,’ she had told her determinedly.

‘Tell that to my shareholders,’ Verity had joked, adding more seriously, ‘I don’t need any more complications in my life Charlie. I’ve already got enough and, besides, the men I get to meet aren’t interested in the real me. They’re only interested in the Verity Maitland who’s the head of Maitland Medical…’

‘Has there ever been anyone, Verity?’ Charlotte had asked her gently. ‘Any special someone…an old flame…?’

‘No. No one,’ Verity had lied, hardening her heart against the memories she’d been able to feel threatening to push past the barriers she had put in place against them.

She’d had her share of opportunities, of course—dates…men who had wanted to get to know her better—but…but she had never really been sure whether it had been her they had wanted or the business, and she had simply never cared enough to take the risk of finding out. She had already been hurt once by believing a man who had told her that he loved her. She wasn’t going to allow it to happen a second time.

Squaring her shoulders, she inserted the key into the lock and turned the handle.

CHAPTER TWO

AS SHE stepped into the house’s long narrow hallway, Verity blinked in astonished surprise. Gone was the dark paint and equally dark carpet she remembered, the air of cold unwelcome and austere disapproval, and in their place the hallway glowed with soft warm colours, natural creams warmed by the sunlight pouring in through the window halfway up the stairs. The house felt different, she acknowledged.

Half an hour later, having subjected it to a thorough inspection, she had to admit that its present owners had done a wonderful job of transforming it. Her uncle would, of course, have been horrified both by the luxury and the total impracticality of the warm cream carpet that covered virtually every floor surface. Verity, on the other hand, found it both heart-warming and deliciously sensual, if one could use such a word about something so mundane as mere carpet. The bedroom carpet, for instance, with its particularly thick and soft pile, was so warm-looking that she had had to fight an urge to slip off her shoes and curl her bare toes into it. And as for the wonderful pseudo-Victorian bathroom with its huge, deep tub and luxurious fitments, not to mention the separate shower room that went with it—it was a feast for the eyes.

‘It’s the best we’ve got on our books,’ the agent had told her. ‘The couple who own it had it renovated to the highest standard and if his company hadn’t transferred him to California they would still be living there themselves.’

Well, at least she had plenty of wardrobe space, Verity acknowledged a couple of hours later, having lugged the last of her suitcases up the stairs and started to remove their contents.

It had been Charlotte who had decided that they should have a ceremonial clear-out of all the plain, businesslike suits Verity had worn during her years as Chief Executive and Chairperson of the company.

‘Throw them out!’

Verity gasped in shock as she listened to what Charlotte was proposing.

‘They’re far too good for that. That cloth…’

‘…will last forever. I know. I remember you telling me so when you originally ordered them—and that was five years ago.’

‘Just after Uncle Toby died, yes, I know,’ Verity agreed sombrely.

‘I hated them on you then and they don’t have any place in your life now,’ Charlotte reminded her, adding, ‘and, whilst we’re on the subject, I just never, ever, want to see you wearing your hair up again—especially when it looks so wonderful down. Nature is very, very unfair,’ she continued. ‘Not only has she given you the most wonderful skin, a profile to die for and naturally navy blue eyes, she’s also given you the most glorious honey-blonde hair. It’s every bit as thick and gorgeous-looking as Cindy Crawford’s and it curls naturally…’

‘Cindy who?’ Verity teased, laughing when Charlotte began to look appalled and holding her hands up in defeat as she admitted, ‘It’s okay. I do know who she is…’

‘What you need to do is to cultivate a more natural, approachable look,’ Charlotte counselled her. ‘Think jeans and white tees, a navy blazer and loafers, with your hair left down and just a smidgen of make-up.’

‘Charlie,’ Verity warned, telling her friend, ‘I’ve been in business far too long not to recognise someone trying to package an item for sale.’

‘The only person you need selling to is yourself,’ Charlotte countered. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of men I’ve introduced you to who you’ve simply frozen out…One day you’re going to wake up on your own heading for forty and—’

‘Is that such a very bad deal?’ Verity objected.

‘Well, there are other things in life,’ Charlotte reminded her, ‘and I’ve watched you often enough with my two to know how good you are with children.’

It wasn’t a subject which Verity wanted to pursue. Not even Charlie, who was arguably her closest friend, knew about Silas and the pain he had caused her, the hopes she had once had…the love she had once given him, only to have it thrown back in her face when he had married someone else, despite telling her…But what was the point in going back over old ground?

She had been nineteen when she and Silas had first met; twenty-two when he had married—someone else—and what time they had had together had been snatched between her years at university, followed by a brief halcyon period of less than six months between her finishing university and being sent to America by her uncle. Halcyon to her, that was. For Silas?

Face it, she told herself sternly now as she hung the last of her spectacular new clothes into the wardrobe. He was never really serious about you, despite everything he said. If he had been he’d have done as he promised.

‘I’ll love you forever,’ he had told her the first time they had made love. ‘You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I will ever want…’

But he had been lying to her, Verity acknowledged dry-eyed. He had never really loved her at all. And why on earth he had encouraged her to believe that he did, she really could not understand. He had never struck her as the kind of man who needed the ego-boost of making sexual conquests. He was tall, brown-haired and grey-eyed, with the kind of physique that came from working hard out of doors, and Verity had fallen in love with him without needing any encouragement or coaxing. She had just finished her first year at university and come home for the holidays to find him working in her uncle’s garden. He had introduced himself to her and had watched her quizzically as she had been too inexperienced, too besotted, to hide her immediate reaction to him, her face and her body blushing a deep vivid pink.

Verity tensed, remembering just how betrayingly her over-sensitive young body had revealed her reaction to him, her nipples underneath the thin tee shirt she had been wearing hardening so that she had instinctively crossed her arms over her breasts to hide their flaunting wantonness. He, Silas, had affected not to notice what had happened to her or how embarrassed she had been by it, tactfully turning his head and gently directing her attention to the flower bed he had been weeding, making some easy, relaxed comment about the design of the garden, giving her time to recover her equilibrium and yet, somehow, at the same time, closing the distance between them so that when he’d started to draw her attention to another part of the garden he’d been close enough to her to be able to touch her bare arm with his hand.

Verity could remember even now how violently she had quivered in immediate reaction to his touch.

Fatefully she had turned her head to look at him, her wide-eyed gaze going first to his eyes and then helplessly to his mouth.

He had told her later that the only thing that had stopped him from snatching her up and kissing her there and then had been his fear of frightening her away.

‘You looked so young and innocent that I was afraid you might…I was afraid that if I let you see just how much I wanted you, I’d frighten you, terrify the life out of you,’ he had told her rawly, weeks later, as he’d held her in his arms and kissed her over and over again, the way she had secretly wanted him to and equally secretly been afraid that he might that first day in the garden.

Looking back with the maturity she had since gained, she could still see no signs, no warnings of what was to be or the full enormity of how badly she was going to be hurt.

She had believed Silas implicitly when he had told her that he loved her. Why should she not have done? He, after all, had been the one who had pursued her, courted her, laid seige to her heart and her emotions, her life.

That first summer had been a brilliant kaleidoscope of warmth, love and laughter, or so it seemed looking back on it. She had still been talking to Silas hours later when her uncle had returned home, her bags still standing on the drive where the taxi driver had dropped them and her off. She had been blissfully unaware of just how late it had been until she’d seen her uncle draw up.

‘Still here?’ he asked Silas curtly, nodding dismissively to him as he turned to Verity and demanded frowningly, ‘I should have thought you’d have too much studying to do to waste your time out here, Verity…’

Chastened, Verity bade Silas a mumbled ‘goodbye’ and turned to follow her uncle into the house. But when she went to pick up her bags, Silas had got there first, gathering up the two heaviest cases as though they weighed a mere nothing.

To Verity, used as she was to the far more frail frame of her elderly uncle, the sight of so much raw, sexual, male strength was dizzyingly exciting.

Her uncle lectured her over supper about the need for her to allocate time during her summer vacation for working hard at her studies.

‘Of course, you’ll come to the factory with me during the day,’ he informed her, and Verity did not attempt to argue. Every holiday since she had turned sixteen had been spent thus, with her learning every aspect of the business from the factory floor upwards, under her uncle’s critical eye.

But fate, it seemed, had had other plans for her. The following morning when she went downstairs—her uncle always insisted on leaving for the factory well before seven so that he could be there before the first workers arrived at eight—she learned that her uncle had received a telephone call late the previous evening informing him that the firm’s Sales Director had been taken to hospital with acute appendicitis, which meant that her uncle was going to have to step into his shoes and fly to the Middle East to head a sales delegation.

He would, he informed Verity, be gone for almost a month.

‘I shall have to leave you here to your own devices,’ he told her. ‘I can’t have you going into the factory without my supervision. Had this happened a little earlier I could have made arrangements for you to come with me. It would have been excellent experience for you but, unfortunately, it’s far too late now for you to have the necessary inoculations and for me to get a visa for you. Still, you must have brought work home with you from university.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed meekly, eyes downcast, her heart suddenly bounding so frantically fast against her chest wall that she felt positively lightheaded.

Even with her uncle gone she was still unable to acknowledge the real reason for her excitement and sense of freedom, nor for her sudden decision to work in the sitting room which overlooked the part of the garden which Silas had been working on the previous day and to wear a pair of cotton shorts which showed off her long slim legs.

Silas arrived within an hour of her uncle’s departure, and from her strategic position in the sitting room Verity was able to discreetly watch him as he worked. As the day grew hotter he stopped working and stood up, stretching his back before removing his soft cotton tee shirt.

Dry-mouthed, Verity watched him, her body shaking with the most disturbing sensation she had ever experienced.

‘Lust,’ she told herself angrily now as she folded the last few pairs of briefs and put them neatly into one of the wardrobe drawers.

Lust: she had been too naive to know just what that was or how powerful it could be then. All she had known was that, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on her work and the words on the paper in front of her, all that she could really see was Silas’ image imprinted on her eyeball.

At lunch time she had gone outside to offer him a cold drink and something to eat. Gravely he had accepted, following her into the kitchen, and it had only been later that he had admitted to her that he had brought his own refreshments with him but that the opportunity to spend some time with her had been too much of a temptation for him to resist.

Over the light salad lunch she had quickly and nervously prepared for him—Verity had possessed very few domestic skills in those days; her uncle had considered that learning them was a waste of time when she was going to take over his business and they had a housekeeper who lived in, but who fortuitously was away at that time taking her annual period of leave—Verity had listened wide-eyed whilst Silas had described to her his work and his plans.

‘That’s enough about me,’ he announced gruffly when they had both finished eating. ‘What about you? What do you intend to do with your life?’

‘Me? I’m going to take over my uncle’s business,’ Verity told him gravely. ‘That’s what he’s training me for. I’m the only person he’s got to inherit it, you see. It’s his life’s work and—’

‘His life’s work, but you have your own life and the right to make your own choices, surely?’ Silas interrupted her sharply, before telling her pointedly, ‘My parents originally wanted me to train as a doctor like my father, but they would never impose that kind of decision on me, nor would I allow them to…’

‘I…my uncle…My uncle took me in when my parents were killed,’ Verity explained low-voiced to him. ‘I’ve always known that he expects me…that he wants me…I’m very lucky, really, it’s a wonderful opportunity…’

‘It’s a wonderful opportunity if it’s what you really want,’ Silas agreed, ‘otherwise it’s…Is it what you want, Verity?’

‘I…I…It’s what’s expected of me,’ Verity told him a little unsteadily. It was proving virtually impossible to concentrate on what he was saying with him sitting so close to her—close enough for her to be intensely, embarrassingly aware of his body and its evident physical masculinity, its tantalising male scent. He had asked her permission to ‘clean up’ before sitting down to lunch with her and his discarded shirt was now back on.

Every time she dared to look at him she was swept with such an intense and heightened awareness of him that she could feel her face starting to flush with hot self-consciousness.

‘What’s expected of you? Listen,’ Silas commanded her, reaching out and taking hold of her hand, keeping it between his own with an open easiness which robbed her of the ability to object or protest. ‘No one has the right to expect anything of you. You have the right to choose for yourself what you do with your life. It is your life you’re living you know, and not your uncle’s…’

Verity bit her lip.

‘I…I know,’ she responded uncertainly, ‘but…’

‘I’m having a day off tomorrow,’ Silas told her, changing the subject. ‘There’s a garden that’s open to the public twenty miles away—I was planning to go and see it. Would you like to come with me?’

Shiny-eyed and flushed with delighted happiness, Verity nodded.

‘Good,’ he told her. ‘I’ll pick you up at nine, if that’s okay.’

Once again Verity nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Silas was still holding her hand and she had to tug it before he released it, giving her a rueful smile as he did so.

Of course, she didn’t do any work for the rest of the day, nor did she sleep that night.

Three outfits were tried on and discarded before Silas arrived to pick her up, and she blushed betrayingly at the appraising look he gave her as he studied her jeans-clad figure and the neat way the denim hugged her small firm bottom.

Jeans. How long had it been since she had worn a pair of those? Verity wondered grimly now, as the rest of her underwear joined the items she had already put away.

She had acquired a couple of pairs from Charlotte, designer labelled and immaculately tailored.

‘You could have taken these with you,’ Verity had protested when Charlotte had handed them over to her.

‘What? Wear Lauren where we’re going? Do you mind? The jeans I’ll be wearing now are a pair of sturdy 501s,’ she had told Verity, her face breaking into a wide grin as she had caught sight of the raised-eyebrowed look her friend had been giving her.

‘Oh, 501s. Poor you,’ Verity had commented dryly.

‘Well, they might be “in” fashion-wise but they are also ideally designed for working in and, besides, the Lauren ones are too tight. I can barely move in them. They’ll fit you much better—you’re slimmer than I am right now.’

Jeans. Verity went to the wardrobe and pulled them out, touching the fabric exploratively, smoothing it beneath her fingertips.

The jeans she had worn on that first date with Silas had been a pair she had bought from her allowance. Thus far, she had not worn them in front of her uncle, knowing that he would not have approved. He had been a rather old-fashioned man who had not liked to see women wearing ‘trousers’—of any kind.

Courteously Silas had held the door open for her on the passenger side of his small pick-up. The inside of the vehicle had been spotlessly clean, Verity had noticed, just as she had noticed that Silas was a good and considerate driver.

The gardens they had gone to see had been spectacularly beautiful, she acknowledged, but she had to admit that she had not paid as much attention as she ought to have done to them, nor to Silas’ explanation of how the borders had been planted and the colour combinations in them constructed. She had been far too busy studying how he was constructed, far too busy noticing just how wonderfully dedicated to her task nature had been when she had put him together with such spectacular sensuality. Even the way he’d walked had made her heart lurch against her ribs, and just to look at his mouth, never mind imagining how it might feel to be kissed by it…by him…

‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?’ Silas asked her at one point.

‘I’m fine,’ Verity managed to croak, petrified of him guessing what she was really feeling.

He had brought them both a packed lunch—far more tasty and enjoyable than the meal she had prepared for him the previous day, Verity acknowledged, assuming, until he told her otherwise, that his mother had prepared it for them.

‘Ma? No way,’ he told her. ‘She believes in us all being self-sufficient and, besides, she works—she’s a nurse. My two brothers are both married now and I’m the only one left at home, but Ma still insists on me making my own packed lunches. One thing she did teach us all as a nurse, though, was the importance of good nutrition. Take these sandwiches. They’re on wholemeal bread with a low-fat spread, the tuna provides very important nutrients and the salad I’ve put with it is good and healthy.’

‘Like these,’ Verity teased him, waving in front of him the two chocolate bars he had packed.

Silas laughed.