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A mobile phone started ringing on another table, a shrill rendition of Greensleeves, intruding on her thoughts.
‘What about Naomi’s? Her parents?’ she asked, irritated by the sound. ‘Do they know?’
Brant turned a grim face from the neighbouring table as the ringing was answered. ‘Naomi was an orphan.’
‘Oh.’ She hadn’t expected that, imagined that anyone just a little older than herself, as Naomi must have been, might be without the parental love she had always taken for granted. But at least that was one less complication to worry about.
‘There’s just my mother and me,’ Brant told her, unwittingly answering the question she had silently posed a few moments before.
‘How is she taking it?’
‘She’s naturally upset. Concerned. You can’t expect anything else. Ever since Jack was born, she’s looked on him as her own flesh and blood. Her own grandchild. She’s helped with his upbringing, looked after him when it’s been difficult for me to be there. She’s begged me not to let him go.’
‘And you?’ Annie asked, the fear and conflict in her eyes all too apparent. If he was prepared to give up the child he had raised, it would mean him having to sue for custody of Sean, because she wouldn’t give him up without a fight.
‘As I said yesterday, I only want what’s best for both boys. Our own emotions and needs shouldn’t even come into it.’
And what did he think was best? To wrench each child from the only home, the only family, it had known for two years so that it could grow up with its biological parent, regardless of how much it hurt—the child as well as its family; regardless of the emotional and psychological cost?
‘I’ve got to pick up Sean.’
She leaped up, not caring how it looked. She only knew she had to get to her baby.
She was out in the street, gasping the polluted air. She had to get him back from Katrina’s now! She needed to cuddle him. Hold him close. Know that he was safe from anything that threatened.
She almost jumped at the strong, warm hand on her shoulder.
‘We’ll pick him up together.’ Through the roar of traffic, the blaring of car horns, Brant’s voice was firm, decisive.
‘No, it’s all right! I can get the tube from here,’ she said shakily, needing to get away from him, to hold him at bay. ‘I left his car seat in my car. I can drive out and get him myself.’ She was gabbling, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘You haven’t got one. It won’t be safe.’
‘You’re darn right it won’t. You aren’t in any fit state to go rushing about on tubes—and certainly not to drive anywhere,’ Brant told her grimly, his self-possession emphasising Annie’s own lack of composure. ‘Jack’s car seat’s in the boot.’ He took her arm, steering her out of the way of someone hurrying by. ‘We’ll go together,’ he reiterated. ‘And that’s final.’
‘Well, you’re certainly full of surprises,’ Katrina called, watching her friend coming down the garden path with Brant. A strawberry-blonde, with a thicket of short, wild curls, she had obviously seen the big car pull up and, unable to contain herself, had hurried out to greet them. Now her big blue eyes turned with reluctant appreciation towards Brant. ‘You found her, then.’ There was a surprising flush beneath the profusion of freckles Annie knew her friend hated.
‘Yes, thank you, Katrina. Your assistance proved very fruitful.’
‘My pleasure…sir,’ she returned with calculated emphasis, while her gaze drifting back to Annie warned, I hope you know what you’re doing, girl!
Quickly, Annie murmured, ‘Katrina, has Sean been OK?’
Her friend’s expression changed to curiosity. ‘Of course. He’s always OK. Why?’
Annie exhaled deeply. Of course. She was just being silly. Over-protective. She couldn’t prevent breaking into a broad smile, however, when she heard the thump of tiny feet and saw the nut-brown head appear from behind Katrina.
Serious-faced, already a real little boy in his blue and red chequered shirt and dungarees, he stopped dead when he saw Brant standing there beside his mother.
‘So you’re Sean,’ he breathed, dropping down to the child’s level.
Annie’s eyes darted from the man to the toddler. Was she imagining it? Or was that likeness between them as strong as the agony of her denial?
Catching the crack in Brant’s voice though as he said something else to the little boy, she could only guess at the tumult of emotion he was doing his best to conceal before the toddler, suddenly shy, clutched at Katrina’s denim-clad leg and disappeared behind it.
The blonde woman laughed.
‘It’s all right, Sean,’ Annie reassured him gently, so that the little boy, deciding it was safe, popped out again, fixing Brant with curious, though steady hazel eyes.
‘Kat! Fish!’ the child exclaimed proudly. ‘Kat! Fish!’
‘Catfish?’ The man’s smile was indulgent, softening the severity of his features. From her vantage point Annie noticed how wide his shoulders were beneath the soft grey polo shirt, how the fabric of his chinos pulled tautly across his thighs.
‘Kat-fish,’ the two-year-old announced, rather impatiently this time, and in spite of the chaos inside her, Annie couldn’t keep from smiling when she realised what he meant.
‘Katrina’s embroidered an octopus on his new bib.’ It was bright yellow on its pale blue background, with disjointed eyes and tentacles. Her friend was always doing things like that. She managed to laugh. ‘It’s gross, Kat!’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Katrina grinned. ‘It’s a friendly little octopus.’ She pretended to be one, sending Sean shrieking down the passageway. ‘It’s only big fish that gobble you up and then spit you out again. Isn’t that right, Seanie?’
It was child’s play, but Annie felt the keen glance Brant sliced her as he got to his feet. Mortified, she caught her breath. They both knew what Katrina meant.
They were silent as Brant drove them back to the flat. Sean had fallen asleep in the back of the car in the little seat Brant had produced from the boot.
‘Sorry about Katrina. She can be a bit direct sometimes.’ She felt she needed to say something because he was just sitting there steering the powerful saloon. Hard lines carved what she had always thought was a rather cruel mouth.
‘What did you tell her about us?’ He was pulling up at a zebra crossing to let a middle-aged woman step on. She beamed at him and he responded with a distracted nod of his head. ‘Everything down to the last graphic detail?’
‘Of course not!’ she snapped, heated colour stealing into her cheeks. ‘She guessed. I think everyone did.’
‘That I bedded a freshly betrayed bride. And then dumped her just as Maddox did.’
No, not as Warren did, she thought as he put the car into motion again. Because Brant Cadman had made her no promises. Offered her nothing but one crazy, glorious night. She’d known the dangerous game she was playing when she had let him take her up to his room; known what she was doing, even though she had had just a little too much to drink that night, too much for her at any rate. It had been he who had suggested calling a halt to their caresses. He who had tried to tell her he didn’t believe in fooling around with women on the rebound, when she had so foolishly begged him not to go.
Her cheeks burned now with the shame of it and way down inside she felt the fierce pang of unwelcome desire undermined by the cutting pain of rejection.
‘Katrina’s my friend,’ she told him, ridiculously emotional. ‘She was only looking out for my interests.’ Suddenly she needed some spur, a point of antagonism to stab at the whole agonising trauma of the day. ‘I suppose in a minute you’ll be telling me you objected to her calling my boy “Seanie”!’ she tossed at him, with an emphasis on the ‘my boy’ that hit its mark if that tightening muscle in his jaw was anything to go by.
She heard him catch his breath and, after a moment, felt him glance her way.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re both wound up. This has been an ordeal for both of us. Let’s not quarrel to add to it. It will all be sorted out a lot more painlessly if we remain civil.’
She nodded, saying nothing. But at least that seemed to ease some of the tension between them.
Outside her flat, she was first out of the car, reaching into the back to try and free Sean from the unfamiliar seat.
‘Here, let me,’ Brant advised.
Leaning across the seat, he had released him in a second. Head lolling to one side, Sean was still sleeping soundly.
‘May I?’ Brant whispered.
Annie swallowed, nodded. Well he had to some time, didn’t he?
As he picked up the sleeping child, his features were marked with raw emotion and Annie felt the almost painful constriction of her throat.
What was he thinking, looking for, as those dark, searching eyes roamed over the infant? Some resemblance to the woman he’d loved? Had he already wondered, just as she had, if that distinctive little nose could be his? That the sun-streaked, tawny hair could be a feature of his wife’s and not hers—hers and Warren’s—as he could easily have supposed?
Fear rose in her again, the feeling that she was in danger of losing the only thing that really mattered to her—her baby—and immediately they were inside the flat she retrieved him from Brant.
When he was tucked up in bed for his afternoon nap she fed Bouncer, who was mewing around her ankles in the kitchen, and went back to join Brant in the sitting room.
He was looking at her paintings, particularly the miniature of a mistle thrush she was still working on. There were landscapes too. A sunset over a shadowy headland and a steam train, its plume of blue smoke like a heralding flag above the cutting of a distant hill.
‘These are good. They’re very good,’ he complimented.
At any other time she would have derived great pleasure from his saying so. Now, though, in view of everything, all she felt was a mild satisfaction that her labours were appreciated.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘We’re going to have to arrange for you to see Jack.’ He had straightened again, dominating the small room with his sheer presence. ‘Maybe tomorrow I can—’
‘No!’ Her panicked response put a query in his eyes. Hers were darkened almost to black. ‘I can’t—yet.’ She could feel herself trembling. Even her voice shook. ‘I’m not ready,’ she uttered, trying to make him understand.
She hankered after knowing what her birth child—if he was her child—was like. She also knew any meeting with him would be all too traumatic at present.
Suddenly she looked very pale and weary, a small, vulnerable figure in her clinging top and cropped trousers, shoulders slumping with emotional fatigue.
A couple of strides brought him over to her and somehow, she didn’t quite know how, she was standing in the circle of his arms with her cheek against the hard, warm wall of his chest.
In the silence of the room, she could hear the heavy rhythm of his heart, then from the kitchen the swift, dull clack of the cat-flap.
She raised her head, lifting her face to his, the need in those green-gold eyes meeting an answering need in Annie.
His lips were gentle on hers, a light, tentative touch meant only to console, an offer of solace from one troubled human being to another.
Annie groaned from deep in her throat, and, unable to stop herself, let her arms slide up around his neck.
His breathing quickened in response, and he caught her to him, his arms tightening around her yielding softness, drawing her hard against him.
His kiss had deepened into something more sensual and demanding, and Annie returned it with a fervour she hadn’t known she was still capable of, needing his strength, to be engulfed by the powerful aura of his sexuality and his hard-edged masculinity that was suddenly as familiar to her as her own name.
She wasn’t sure at what point she felt him withdraw. She only knew he had and she uttered a small protest when he unclasped her hands from behind his head and dragged them down, leaving her silently pleading, cast adrift, humiliated.
‘No, Annie. This will just complicate things,’ he stressed, but the raw intensity in his voice and his laboured breathing assured her that he was just as affected as she was. ‘I think it would be best if I left you for the time being. We’re both frayed by what has happened. Today hasn’t been easy—for either of us, but I think particularly for you. You need time to adjust to things. We both do. May I?’ He was indicating Sean’s bedroom door.
How could she stop him? she wondered achingly.
When she nodded he pushed the door quietly open, and just stood there in the doorway, gazing across at the sleeping infant.
After a few moments he moved back out again, and gently closed the door.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he told her, his voice thick with restrained emotion. ‘In the meantime I think you should telephone your parents. They’re really going to have to know.’
When he had gone, Annie sank down into a chair.
How could she? she thought, ashamed of the way she had behaved with him. How could she have been so stupid? Hadn’t she learned by now that caresses and tender kisses meant very little to a man? That they could demonstrate one thing and mean entirely another? Hadn’t she grasped that yet? Not only with him, but before with Warren, with every man she’d given more than a passing glance to?
It was her behaviour with Brant that she least wanted to remember. But her actions today had only served to bring it all back.
She had been ensnared from the moment she had first laid eyes on Brant Cadman, a reluctant victim of his dark, enslaving sexuality. She had denied it, of course, betrothed as she was to another man. But the fact that he had noticed her, too, had been doubly disturbing.
She had been working in the art and design department of Cadman Sport for just a few weeks when she had met Warren Maddox. A young, thrusting executive in the sales and marketing side of the company that came under the massive umbrella of Cadman Leisure, Warren had swept Annie off her feet. With her parents embarking on their dream to emigrate to New Zealand, change and excitement seemed to encompass them all when, within a month of their departure, Warren had asked her to marry him and they had become engaged.
He was never madly passionate, but he was kind and caring—or so she had thought. He was also clever, perhaps a little calculating where his clients were concerned, and he was humorous. Sometimes a bit too flippant, Annie had felt occasionally, but that had merely seemed to add to making him fun to be with.
It was at a seminar they had both attended in Birmingham that she had seen Brant for the first time.
‘I’ve got to get to talk to him,’ Warren told her after the talks were over, and skittered across the room, pulling Annie in tow, determined as he was to get himself noticed by Brant Cadman.
Clean-cut, impeccably dressed in a tailored dark suit and tie, his hard-headed brilliance and formidable authority was a mixture that would have arrested attention even without the smoky sexuality that transcended all these other attributes. He looked fierce, Annie recalled. Fierce and terrifyingly attractive and he scared her half to death. And she’d never been so drawn to any man in her life!
She couldn’t even remember what had been said. Only the way Brant looked at her while he was talking to them both, indulging them, she decided, because Warren’s eagerness to ingratiate himself with the big boss was embarrassingly obvious. But she felt the man’s gaze on her afterwards wherever she was in the room, discreet yet unmistakably appraising. She wasn’t even sure she liked him, but she was shockingly aroused by his interest nevertheless. That shamed and disturbed her, because she had thought herself head over heels in love with Warren. Brant, too, was obviously involved with someone else—it was afterwards, outside the hotel, that she saw his chic, tall companion climbing into his car. Someone—she couldn’t remember who now—told her the woman’s name. Naomi Fox. It suited her, Annie thought, telling herself she had imagined those glances from him. Telling herself that her reaction to them was only from the mere excitement of being noticed by a man way out of her league, that she was engaged to be married, eager to settle down and be happy.
Yet alone in bed that night, trying to concentrate on her fiancé and her forthcoming wedding, it was Brant’s dark features that kept rising before her eyes and which troubled her dreams so that she awoke agitated and feverish and disliking him even more.
It wore off, of course. The reality of a looming wedding with all its attendant concerns kept her occupied and focused on her main aim in life—that of becoming Mrs Warren Maddox. But two weeks before the due date he told her that he couldn’t go through with it; that he had met someone else and that he was sorry, but he was calling it off.
Annie was devastated. Hurt and shell-shocked, with everyone at Cadman’s aware that they had split up, it was trial enough seeing Warren in the office when he wasn’t off finding potential clients. But having to attend that party two weeks later to celebrate the opening of a new hotel and sports complex was the most humiliating of all.
Her boss insisted she go and she didn’t want to let him down. Besides, she thought, even if she was feeble enough to ring in sick, everyone would guess the reason why. Everyone, that was, who made up not only the art and design department, but Sales and Marketing too. Which meant that Warren would be going and, as partners were invited, most certainly his new girlfriend, and there was no way, she decided, that she would give either of them the satisfaction of seeing her buckle, let them—let anyone—guess at the agonies she was suffering from his cruel betrayal. What she didn’t anticipate, however, was that Brant Cadman would be attending too, that he’d be staying at the hotel that night.
Glass in hand, a daringly low-cut black dress emphasising her slim figure, she was chatting rather over-brightly to Katrina and her boss, trying to look cheerful, pretending that the sight of her ex-fiancé and his new blonde bombshell, wrapped up in each other not six feet away, didn’t matter to her at all, when she saw him standing, tall and erect, at the bar.
He had been talking to various people until then, employees and clients alike, desperate to make his acquaintance. But now he was alone, and he was looking straight at her.
Annie’s heart seemed to stop and then start again, beating slightly faster than before. She lifted her chin in a somewhat challenging gesture, not sure how to respond to his blatant interest.
He smiled then, a lazy, sensuous, cognizant smile that would have shattered any woman’s immunity.
She smiled back.
‘Wow!’ she heard Katrina exclaim.
Emboldened by a couple of glasses of wine, Annie excused herself from her little group and, with what she considered afterwards could only have been subconscious intent, moved over to the bar. At the time it felt as though those beautiful eyes alone were drawing her to him.
‘Hello,’ was all he said, but his deep voice oozed a lethal charm that didn’t altogether fool her. Behind the smooth urbanity was an even more lethal brain.
She responded, flashed him a brilliant smile.
‘What happened to your…friend?’ He didn’t look in Warren’s direction, but he had to be aware of the situation. Instead his glance touched on the ringless finger curled around her wine glass.
