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‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you any of this.’ She jerked her hand in clumsy dismissal, but he caught her wrist. The heat of physical contact made her draw in her breath sharply, although he wasn’t hurting her—not at all. He was barely circling her wrist with his long fingers. Still … she was appalled to find that she wanted to sink against him.
That acknowledgment of weakness galvanised her into struggling to free herself and he released her abruptly, although when she could have turned around and stalked up the stairs she continued to stare at him wordlessly.
‘I know it must have been a bad time for you …’
‘Well, that’s the understatement of the decade if ever there was one! I felt completely lost and alone.’
‘You had your parents to help you.’
‘That’s not the same! Plus I’d left for my gap year thinking that I was at the start of living my own life. Do you know what it felt like to go back home? Yes, they helped me, and I couldn’t have managed at all without them, but it still felt like a retrograde step. I never, ever considered having an abortion, and I was thrilled to bits when Oliver was born, but I was having to cope with seeing all my dreams fly through the window. No university, no degree, no teaching qualification. You must have been laughing your head off when you saw me cleaning floors in that bank.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘No? Then what was going through your head when you looked down at me? With a damp cloth in one hand and a cleaning bottle in the other, dressed in my overalls?’
‘Okay. I was stunned. But then I started remembering how damned sexy you were, and thinking how damned sexy you still were—never mind the headscarf and the overalls …’
His words hovered in the air between them, a spark of conflagration just waiting to find tinder. To her horror, Sarah realised that she wanted him to repeat what he had just said so she could savour his words and roll them round and round in her head.
How could she have forgotten the way he had treated her? He might justify walking out on her as doing her a favour, but that was just another way of saying that he hadn’t cared for her the way she had cared for him, and he hadn’t been about to let a meaningless holiday romance spoil his big plans.
‘I’ve come to realise that sex is very overrated,’ Sarah said scornfully, and then flushed as a slow smile curved his beautiful mouth.
‘Really?’
‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ But she heard the telltale tremor in her voice and wanted to scream in frustration. ‘It certainly has nothing to do with what’s … what’s happening now. If you follow me, I’ll show you to Oliver’s room.’
Raoul let the conversation drop. He was as astounded as she had been by his own genuine admission to her, and he was busily trying to work out how a woman he hadn’t seen in years—a woman who, in the great scheme of things, had not really been in his life for very long—could still exercise such a powerful physical hold over him. It was as though the years between them had collapsed and disappeared.
But of course they hadn’t, he reminded himself forcefully. Proof of that was currently asleep in a bedroom, just metres away from where they had been standing.
Upstairs, if anything, seemed more cramped than downstairs, with two small bedrooms huddled around a tiny bathroom which he glimpsed on his way to the box room on the landing.
She pushed open the door to the only room he had seen so far that bore the hallmark of recent decoration. A night-light revealed wallpaper with some sort of kiddy theme and basic furniture. A small bed, thin patterned curtains, a circular rug tucked half under the bed, a white chest of drawers, snap-together furniture, cheap but functional.
Raoul unfroze himself from where he was standing like a sentinel by the doorway and took a couple of steps towards the bed.
Oliver had kicked off the duvet and was curled around a stuffed toy.
Raoul could make out black curly hair, soft chubby arms. Even in the dim light he could see that his colouring was a shade darker than his mother’s—a pale olive tone that was all his.
In the grip of a powerful curiosity, he took a step closer to the bed and peered at the small sleeping figure. When it shifted, Raoul instantly took a step back.
‘We should go—just in case we wake him,’ Sarah whispered, tiptoeing out of the bedroom.
Raoul followed her. The palms of his hands felt clammy.
She had been right. He had a son. There had been no mistaking those small, familiar signs of a likeness that was purely inherited. He wondered how he could ever have sat in his office and concluded that he would deal with the problem with the cold detachment of a mathematician completing a tricky equation. He had a child. A living, breathing son.
The cramped condition of the house in which he was living now seemed grossly offensive. He would have to do something about that. He would have to do something about pretty much everything. Life as he knew it was about to change. One minute he had been riding the crest of a wave, stupidly imagining that he had the world in the palm of his hand, and the next minute the wave had crashed and the world he had thought netted was spinning out of control.
It was a ground-breaking notion for someone whose only driving goal throughout his life had been to remedy the lack of control he had had as a child by conquering the world. A tiny human being, barely three feet tall, had put paid to that.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Sarah said nervously, as soon as they were out of earshot.
‘I need a drink—and something stronger than a cup of coffee.’
The remnants of a bottle of wine were produced and poured into a glass. Sarah looked at him, trying to gauge his mood and trying to forget that moment of mad longing that had torn through her only a short while before on the staircase.
‘You were right,’ he said heavily, having drunk most of the glass in one go. ‘I see the resemblance.’
‘I knew you would. It’ll be even more noticeable when you see him in the light. He’s got your dark eyes as well. In fact, there’s not much of me at all in him! That was the first thing Mum said when he was born … Would you like to see some of the drawings he’s made? He goes to a playgroup two mornings a week … I get help with that …’
‘Help? What kind of help?’ Raoul dragged his attention away from the swirling wine in his glass and looked at her.
‘From the government, of course,’ Sarah said, surprised. How on earth could she afford childcare otherwise, when she worked as a cleaner? On the mornings when Oliver was at nursery, she helped out at the school at which she was due to start work, but that was unpaid.
Raoul controlled his temper with difficulty. ‘From the government?’ he repeated with deadly cool, and Sarah nodded uneasily. ‘Do you know what my aim in life was? My only aim in life? To escape the clutches of government aid and own my future. Now you sit here and tell me that you’re reliant on government aid to get you through life.’
‘You make it sound like a crime, Raoul.’
‘For me, it’s obscene!’
The force of his personality hit her like a freight train travelling at full speed, but she squared her shoulders and glared at him defiantly. If she allowed him to take control just this once then she would be dancing to his tune as and when he wanted her to. Hadn’t she done enough of that years ago? And look where it had got her!
‘And I can understand that,’ Sarah told him evenly. ‘I really can. But your past has nothing to do with my present circumstances. I couldn’t afford to put Oliver into a private nursery,’ she informed him bluntly. ‘You’d be shocked at how little I earn. Mum and Dad supplement me, but every day’s a struggle. It’s all very well for you to sit there and preach to me about pride and ambition, but pride and ambition aren’t very high up in the pecking order when you barely have enough money to put food on the table. So if I can get help with the nursery, then I’ll take it.’ She wished that she had had some wine as well, because she was in dire need of fortification. ‘You were never such a crashing snob before, Raoul,’ she continued bitterly. ‘I can see that you’ve changed in more ways than one.’
‘Snob? I think you’ll find that that’s the last thing I am!’ He was outraged that she could hurl that accusation at him in view of his past.
‘You’ve moved away from your struggling days of when we first met! I’ll bet you can’t even remember what it was like, darning those shorts of yours when they got ripped because you couldn’t afford to chuck them out!’
‘You darned them.’ He looked at her darkly. He could remember her doing it as if it had been yesterday, swatting mosquitoes and moths away while outside a dull rumble of thunder had heralded heavy rain. She had looked like a girl in a painting, with her hair tumbling around her face as she frowned in concentration.
Sarah bit back the temptation to tell him what an idiot she had been, doing stuff like that, worshipping the ground he walked on, eager to do whatever he wanted.
‘And I haven’t forgotten my past,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s always there at the back of my mind, like a stuck record.’
Her heart softened, but she held her ground with grim determination.
‘I may not have planned for this, but I want you to know that things are going to change now. This place is barely fit for habitation!’ He caught the warning look in her eyes and offered her a crooked smile. ‘Okay. Bit of an exaggeration. But you get where I’m going. Whether you think I’ve become a monstrous snob or not, I can afford to take you away from here—and that’s got to be my number one priority.’
‘Your number one priority is getting to know Oliver.’
‘I would prefer to get to know him in surroundings that won’t challenge me every time I walk through the front door.’
Sarah sighed. It would certainly make life easier not having to worry so much about money. ‘Okay. I take back some of the things I said. You haven’t completely changed. You still think that you can get your own way all the time.’
‘I know. It more than compensates for your indecision. Now, you could put up a brief struggle to hold on to your independence, maybe give me a little lecture on things being just perfect here, with your quaint, outdated kitchen furniture and the walls in need of plasterwork, but we both know that you can see my point of view. I can afford to take you out of this, and I consider it my duty to do so.’
The word duty lodged in her head like a burr, and she looked down at her anxiously clasped fingers. There was nothing like honesty to really hurt.
‘What do you suggest?’ she asked. ‘Do I have any input here? Or are you going to just walk all over me because you have lots of money and I have none?’
‘I’m going to walk all over you because I have lots of money and you have none.’
‘Not funny,’ Sarah muttered, remembering his talent for defusing a situation with his sense of humour. Given the conditions years ago, when they had been cooped up on the compound, tempers had occasionally run high and this talent of his had been invaluable. Was he using it now just to get his own way? And did that matter anyway? The prospect of no longer having a daily struggle on her hands was like being offered manna from heaven.
‘I intend to take my responsibilities very seriously, Sarah. I think you should know that. It would be very time-consuming to travel out here every time I wanted to see Oliver. Somewhere closer to where I live would be a solution.’
Now that they were discussing things in a more businesslike manner Sarah could actually focus on what was being said—as opposed to fighting to maintain her equilibrium, which showed threatening signs of wanting to fall apart.
‘I feel as though I’m suddenly on a rollercoaster ride,’ she confessed.
‘Spare a thought for me. Whatever rollercoaster ride you’re on, mine is bigger, faster, and I’m a hell of a lot less prepared for it than you are.’
And yet he was rising to the occasion. It didn’t matter that the only reason they were now even having this conversation was because she had become a responsibility he couldn’t shirk. He had taken it all in his stride in his usual authoritative way. That there was no emotion involved was something she would have to deal with. It wasn’t his problem, and she wasn’t going to let that get in the way of the relationship he had to build with his son.
‘So we move to another place … There are still all sorts of other things that need sorting out. I’ll have to try and explain to Oliver that he has a … a father. He’s only young, though. I should warn you that it might not be that easy.’
‘He’s four,’ Raoul pointed out with impeccable logic. ‘He hasn’t had time to build up any kind of picture for or against me.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Let’s not anticipate problems, Sarah.’
Now that he had surmounted the sudden bout of intense nervousness that had gripped him in the bedroom, Raoul was confident he would be able to get Oliver onside. Having had a life of grinding poverty, replete with secondhand clothes and secondhand books and secondhand toys, and frankly secondhand affection, he was beginning to look forward to giving his son everything that he himself had lacked in his childhood.
‘We take things one at a time. First the house. Secondly, I suggest you try and explain my role to Oliver. Has he … has he ever asked about his father?’
‘In passing,’ Sarah admitted. ‘When he’s been to a birthday party and seen the other kids with their dads. Once when I was reading him a story.’
Raoul’s lips thinned but he didn’t say anything. ‘You will obviously have to tell your parents that you are moving, and why. Will you tell them I’m on the scene? What my position is?’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t go there just yet,’ Sarah said vaguely.
‘I won’t hide in the shadows.’
‘I’m not sure they’re going to be overjoyed that you’re on the scene, actually.’ She flushed guiltily as she remembered their distress when she had told them how she had fallen hard for a guy who had then chucked her. The hormones rushing through her body had made her all the more vulnerable and emotional, and she had spared nothing in her mournful, self-pitying account.
Honestly, she didn’t think that Raoul was going to be flavour of the month if she produced him out of nowhere. But she knew that she would have to sooner or later. Her mum always phoned at least three times a week, and always had a chat with Oliver. Sarah wouldn’t want her to find out via her grandchild that the heartbreaker and callous reprobate was now around.
‘I’m getting the picture,’ Raoul said slowly.
Sarah thought it better to move on quickly from that topic of conversation. ‘I’m sure they’ll be very happy.’ She crossed her fingers behind her back. ‘They’re very conventional. They’ll be delighted that Oliver will now have a father figure in his life.’
He stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow. No—scrap that. I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon so that I can be introduced to my son.’
The formality of that statement brought a rush of colour to Sarah’s face, because it underlined his lack of enthusiasm for the place in which he now found himself.
‘Should I buy him something special to wear?’ she said tartly. ‘I wouldn’t want his appearance to offend you.’
‘That’s not helpful.’
‘Nor is your approach to Oliver!’ Tears stung the back of her eyes. ‘How can you be so … so … unemotional? This wasn’t how I ever thought my life would turn out. I always thought that I would fall in love and get married, and when a baby came along it would be a cause for celebration and joy. I never imagined that I would have a child with a man who wasn’t even pleased to be a father!’
Raoul flushed darkly. What did she expect of him? He was here, wasn’t he? Prepared to take on a task which had been sprung on him. Not only that, but she would be the recipient of a new house to replace her dismal rented accommodation, and also in the enviable position of never having to worry about money in her life again. Were hysterical accusations in order? Absolutely not!
He was very tempted to give her a checklist of all the things she should be thankful for. He settled for saying, in a cool voice, ‘I’ve found that life has a funny way of not playing fair in the great scheme of things.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’ Sarah cried in frustration. ‘Honestly, Raoul, sometimes I could … hit you!’
Her eyes were blazing and her hair was a tumbling riot of gold—and he felt a charge race through his system like an uncontrolled dose of adrenaline.
‘I’m flattered that I still get you so worked up,’ he murmured with husky amusement.
He couldn’t help himself as he reached out and tangled his fingers in that hair. The contact was electric. He felt her response slam into him like a physical force and he revelled in the dark sexual hunger snaking through his body. That was something no amount of hard-headed logic or cool, calm reason could control.
Her lips had parted and her eyes were unfocused and half closed. Kissing her would halt all those crazy accusations in mid-flow. And he was hungry for her—hungry to remind himself of what her lips felt like.
‘Don’t you dare, Raoul …’
He pulled her towards him and noted, with a blaze of satisfaction, the unspoken invitation in her darkened eyes.
That first heady taste of him was intoxicating. Sarah moaned and pressed her hands against his chest. He had always been able to make her forget everything with a single touch, and her mind duly went blank. She forgot everything as her body curved sensuously against his, every bit of her melting at the feel of his swollen masculinity pushing against her, straining against the zipper of his trousers. Her breasts ached and she moved them against him, almost fainting at the pleasurable sensation of the abrasive motion on her sensitised nipples.
Raoul was the first to pull away.
‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
It took a few seconds for the daze in Sarah’s head to clear, and then she snapped back to the horrified realisation that after everything she had been through, and hot on the heels of her really, really wanting to hit him, she had just caved in—like an addict who couldn’t control herself. He had kissed her and all the hurt, anger and disappointment had disappeared. She had become a mindless puppet and five years had vanished in the blink of an eye.
‘Neither of us should have …’
‘Maybe it was inevitable.’
‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. This thing between us …’
‘There’s nothing between us!’ Sarah cried, stepping back and hugging herself in an automatic gesture of self-defence.
‘Are you trying to convince me or yourself?’
‘Okay, maybe we just … just gave in to something for the sake of old times.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And now we’ve got that out of the way we can move on and … and …’
‘Pretend it never happened?’
‘Exactly! Pretend it never happened!’ She took a few more steps back, but she thought that even if she took a million steps back and fled the country the after-effects of that devastating kiss would still be with her. ‘This isn’t about us. This is about Oliver and your part in his life, so … so …’
