by Sara Wood
She moistened her lips again before starting. ‘I’m twenty-four. I’ve spent all my working life in an advertising agency where I was on promotions. It was my job to persuade clients in any way I could to take up our ad campaigns—’
‘I bet you were very good at your job,’ he said, a curl of amusement lifting the corner of his craggy mouth.
‘I was!’ She furrowed her brow. ‘What else? I help two evenings a week at the retirement home nearby—’
‘Oh, please!’ he mocked. ‘You’re going too far—’
‘It’s true!’ she said indignantly. ‘I’ll give you the phone number and you can check!’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘Good—’
‘I suppose you’re kind to children and animals?’ he drawled.
‘No, at every opportunity I boil them up in oil—what do you think?’ she cried crossly. ‘I’m just an ordinary sort of person who tries to keep on the straight and narrow and live a decent life—’
‘Not that ordinary. You have a boyfriend?’
‘Is that relevant?’ she asked in surprise.
‘Could be,’ came the enigmatic answer.
She shrugged. OK, so be it. She’d tell him her bust size and weight if it helped her cause.
‘The answer’s no. I’ve just dumped him,’ she said with a grimace. ‘He was an arrogant controller who’d tried to mould me into his version of the perfect woman!’ Her mouth quirked at his raised eyebrow.
‘Did he fail?’ Morgan asked, clearly doing his best to hide his amusement.
‘Dismally. My problem is that I’m highly allergic to thongs!’ she said with a giggle.
As she’d expected, he did a double-take, and for a second or two she thought his eyes showed a flicker of genuine interest. Then the impenetrable shutters came down again.
‘So when your relationship broke up,’ he drawled, ‘you decided to give your father in England a whirl, for want of something better?’
‘No! It wasn’t like that at all!’ she said, bristling. ‘Hearing from my father was the catalyst for change. My boyfriend’s attitude to a reunion with my father was unsympathetic and obstructive. OK, I took my time realising this, but eventually I did—and saw my boyfriend for what he was. A selfish, manipulative, bullying brute!’ She pinned Morgan with a determined stare. ‘I’ve spent the last seven years being walked over. I won’t be pushed around any more—not by anyone,’ she said meaningfully.
‘I think you’ve made that apparent,’ he murmured.
Had she gone too far? She looked at him edgily. ‘So what’s your verdict?’
‘The jury’s out,’ he drawled.
A sudden feeling of hopelessness washed over her. He was playing with her, leading her on. Fatigue and disappointment made her limbs leaden and her brain ragged as she tried to keep up the pressure on him.
‘Look. I’m shattered. I haven’t the energy to joust with you but I am desperate to see my father,’ she said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘If it makes it any easier for you, I totally understand that if he eventually decides that he wants to live his life without me—then that’s his choice to make and I will have to accept his decision.’
Morgan nodded in approval. ‘Good! That’s settled, then,’ he murmured with satisfaction.
She saw tension ease from him and felt her own nerves tighten. It looked as if he was going to send her away with a flea in her ear! Annoyed, she fixed him with her brilliant green eyes and grimly set about persuading him to plead on her behalf.
‘However,’ she said sweetly, ‘I’m sure you’ll agree that it should be his decision, based on personal knowledge of me. It would be wrong if he didn’t even see me face-to-face, so that I could explain that there might have been a mix-up with the mail,’ she added, being generous about her suspicions concerning Morgan’s part in the ‘mix-up’.
‘He still might not believe you,’ he suggested cynically.
‘Oh, yes, he would! He’d look into my eyes and find the truth there!’ she insisted stubbornly, passion pouring from her blazing eyes. ‘You have seen his letter and read his sentiments. He must still care about me deep down! I’m convinced he’ll be overjoyed that I’ve turned up! You may not have read enough of his letter to me to know that he mentioned he’d just moved house—and that he had something special to tell me. I’ve been consumed with curiosity ever since. You can’t deny me the right to see my own father, not when he was initially so anxious that we should be reunited! He must want me, mustn’t he?’
Morgan scowled at his tea. His mouth tightened and then he gave a small exhalation of breath. Jodie waited, tense with anticipation.
‘Perhaps,’ he hedged reluctantly.
Jodie gasped and clasped her hands in delight, drawing his dark, assessing gaze. ‘So I’m close to passing muster?’ she asked with a relieved laugh, her eyes spangled with deep jade lights.
‘You’re persuasive,’ was all he’d say.
It was enough for her. The moment had come! She jumped up eagerly. ‘Let me ask him! Lead me to him! I just can’t wait any longer, Morgan. I’ll burst if you keep me dangling in suspense!’
He shifted uncomfortably. ‘It’s…not that simple—’
‘Why not?’ she cried in exasperation.
He leant back in his chair, studying her expressionlessly. ‘He’s not here.’
Jodie’s jaw dropped in dismay and she gave a little gasp of disappointment.
‘Not…here! But I imagined…hoped… Oh, when’s he coming back?’ she wailed.
‘Not…today,’ he dissembled.
She slumped back into the chair, totally depressed. ‘None of this is working out as I expected,’ she said morosely. ‘This means I’ll have to get back into that wretched car, battle my way along the wrong side of the road and search for the hotel.’ Her head lolled back and she heaved a heavy sigh. ‘It’s not a prospect I relish. I feel shattered. I’ve been living on adrenaline for days. You can’t have any idea what this meeting means to me, Morgan!’
‘Have a piece of cake,’ he suggested gruffly.
‘Keep my strength up?’ Dejectedly she took the plate and picked at the fruit cake in a desultory fashion as her thoughts came tumbling out. ‘It’s my fault, I suppose,’ she mused. ‘I should have waited for a reply to the recorded delivery. But I was mad keen to see him.’ She met his gaze, her eyes clouded with sadness.
‘Why is it so important to you?’ he asked quietly.
‘Because he’s the only family I’ve got now. He and my mother separated when I was a year old. Mom and her boyfriend took me to New York and we lost touch with my father. Mom died when I was six—’
‘Your mother is dead?’ he broke in sharply.
‘Yes,’ she replied, too engrossed in her own problems to pay much attention to his alerted state.
‘God!’ he groaned. ‘Eighteen years ago! If only Sam had known!’
A film of tears washed over her eyes at the implication that her father would have contacted her sooner.
‘Mom wasn’t much of a mother, but she was better than my foster-parents. All this time I thought I had no living relative in the whole world! W-when my f-father wrote—’ She broke off, a lump filling her throat.
‘I don’t need to hear this,’ Morgan rasped.
‘You do!’ she cried passionately, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. ‘I want you to know what this means to me! I discovered that my father was alive! It was the most wonderful present I could ever have been given. He was in England, walking, breathing, sleeping… I couldn’t think straight. I went around the apartment in a daze, bursting into song…’
Unable to stop herself, she flung her arms in the air in an impassioned gesture as she relived those first joyful hours. His eyes flickered with a strange, glittering light and she faltered, bringing her arms down quickly, lest he think she was mad. But he had to know the intensity of her feelings!
‘Morgan,’ she explained fervently, ‘you had to be there to see m
e! I danced, I hugged myself breathless, ate a whole tub of ice cream…! Oh,’ she cried, husky with the memory, ‘I was so happy I felt delirious. I grinned at everyone I met. New York reeled! For days I walked on air—and then every so often I’d burst into tears. I felt so far away from him, you see.’
There was a long silence. Morgan seemed to be finding it difficult to speak. Once again, tension spun a thick blanket between them, crushing the air from her lungs. Jodie clasped her hands anxiously, scanning his face. Her heart turned over. Something was wrong!
Numbed by Morgan’s look of pity, she waited, a prey to her imagination. Her father was dead, she thought immediately, her eyes rounding in horror!
‘Look…you mustn’t get your hopes up. You can’t see him now, or in the foreseeable future.’
She blinked, trying to puzzle this out. ‘Why?’ she asked, her face pale.
The breath caught sharply in her throat. Something akin to anguish had slashed across his well-deep eyes before vanishing again. But it was obvious to Jodie that he was profoundly disturbed about something. She noticed that he’d clenched his jaw hard and balled his hands into fists till the bone shone white through the skin over his knuckles.
Her pulses went into overdrive as fear skittered through her. Her cup clattered to the saucer, freed unwittingly from her jittery fingers. Tea spilled across the blue check tablecloth but neither of them gave the stain more than a cursory glance.
‘My father…? He’s not…not…?’ she whispered desperately, and choked on the terrible lump which blocked her throat.
‘No!’ Morgan cried quickly, interpreting her distress. ‘He’s not dead! I didn’t mean that!’
In a surprising, reassuring gesture, his hand reached out to hers and held it tightly when she let out a small groan of relief.
‘What, then?’ she breathed.
‘He’s unwell—in hospital,’ Morgan replied, sounding strained. ‘He’s been ill for some time—’
Jodie trembled. ‘Was…was he ill when he wrote to me?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘He sounded idyllically happy—’
‘He was—but his health was poor even then. That’s partly why he contacted you. And now…’ His jaw tightened. ‘I have to tell you that he’s taken a severe turn for the worse—’
‘What do you mean?’ She stared, aghast, her eyes wide and horrified. ‘How much…worse is he?’ she croaked. Breaking free, she leapt to her feet in agitation. ‘Tell me the truth. I must know!’ she demanded hysterically.
His mouth became grim. ‘You need to sit down—’
‘Answer me! I want to know!’ she wailed, ignoring his suggestion.
‘Very well. The stark truth. He has pneumonia,’ Morgan said quietly. ‘He’s fighting for his life.’
It was his pained whisper which drained all her body of its strength. The stark gravity of his expression told her—far more than his words—that her father’s condition was perhaps more serious than he was letting on.
Stunned by this unexpected development, she swayed as the room whirled around her and a roaring in her ears drowned out anything else he might have said.
With a feeble moan she grabbed weakly at something, anything, found the chair and collapsed into it, her mind in turmoil.
‘No! No!’ she moaned.
Hot, stinging tears welled from her eyes and poured unchecked down her face. Distraught, shocked beyond belief, she hugged her arms around herself and rocked back and forth, weeping without restraint.
So near and yet so far.
She could have been here months ago! But Chas had told her he couldn’t release her from work to go to England. And then there’d been the failure in the mail service—or, worse, Morgan had blocked her letters! And Chas had persuaded her that her father hadn’t replied because he’d had second thoughts…
She groaned. All this time she could have been comforting her father, getting to know him, fussing over him… And now he might be close to death.
‘Oh, God! My poor father! I—I didn’t expect any…anything l-like this!’ she mumbled raggedly through her sobs.
The soft folds of a handkerchief touched her hand. She snatched it and pressed the linen against her tear-stained face. He could have caused this situation. She scrubbed her eyes hard and looked at him accusingly.
‘I have to ask you this—did…did you hide m-my letters?’ she asked bluntly.
‘No!’ he answered, obviously shocked by the suggestion. ‘I couldn’t have. I only came to live here a few weeks ago!’
She took a huge, shuddering breath. Her letters had gone astray, then. No wonder Morgan had been so hostile. He’d known that her sick father had written to her, knew how vital it was that she should reply. When no answer had come, Morgan and her father must have hated her for being callous and unfeeling.
She groaned with frustration. But she did care! More than she’d known, more than she could have ever believed! To get so close to being reunited—and then to have that longed-for moment cruelly snatched away—was a worse blow than anything she’d ever known.
This had been her chance to love and be loved unconditionally. To know the purest, most lasting love between a parent and a child.
Her poor father. Dangerously ill…she thought numbly. Her leaden arms dropped and came to rest on the table. She bent her head, too shattered to hold it up any more, and her burning wet cheek found comfort in the soft fabric of her jacket sleeve. Her sobs racked her body till her ribs ached and her throat felt raw.
Dimly, somewhere in the background, she registered an odd crackle, as if someone was brushing a hand across a microphone.
‘Excuse me. I have to go!’ Morgan muttered.
His chair scraped hastily back and she heard his brisk footsteps crossing the tiled floor rapidly, as though her tears irritated him and he couldn’t wait to get out of the room.
Miserably she lifted her head a fraction, suddenly wanting the company of someone, anyone.
‘Don’t!’ she sobbed. But his blurred image was already disappearing through the door.
Her lip trembled uncontrollably. He wasn’t giving her the benefit of the doubt. He believed she was a liar and blamed her for upsetting a seriously ill man.
He knew Sam. Cared about him. But she was part of Sam too! She was upset and alone and in a strange country. He knew how she felt about seeing her father!
How could he walk out on her? Maybe he was upset himself. But didn’t he feel anything for her own grief? She banged her fists on the table. Why were so many men so utterly selfish? Why didn’t they feel the hurt of others?
A flood of anger and resentment welled up like bitter bile in her mouth and she began to sob as if her heart would break, crying for her father and for herself, hating the cold-hearted Morgan and his lack of humanity.
Her misery intensified. Now she knew where she stood. Entirely alone.
How he’d got out of the kitchen he didn’t know. He stuffed the portable baby alarm deeper into his pocket, ravaged by the rawest of emotions.
It had been worse than he’d imagined.
He’d grabbed a bottle from the fridge and picked up the automatic bottle-warmer; grimly he took them to the drawing room, where Jack lay in the rocker-seat uttering plaintive squeaks of protest.
‘You pick your moments,’ he said quietly. ‘Hold on. Just need to plug in this…then we’ll undo these straps and you’re safe, here with me…’
How safe? came that insistent voice again. When you’re tussling with your conscience, toying with the idea that this woman should take her rightful place in this family? When you’re close to deliberately handing over your own flesh and blood to a total stranger?
Morgan ground his teeth together, ignoring the maelstrom of his mind, walking up and down with Jack, soothing him with his voice and trying to regain his own equilibrium.
‘Hush, little man. Nearly ready,’ he muttered. He bent his head and put his cheek to Jack’s, desperate for human contact. ‘This is tearing me to pieces,�
� he said bitterly. ‘Sam, you, her…’
His brows met in a deep frown as he reined in his ragged thoughts. He didn’t want to go through anything like the last few minutes ever again. Jodie’s heart-rending sobs had torn through all his defences, getting under his skin more than he could have believed possible.
He should never have asked her in. Damn his sense of morality and fair play! Listening to her had been fatal. She came over as vulnerable, too open and trusting for her own good. Or was she? He’d been fooled before. Badly.
He frowned, feeling keenly his past failure to protect Sam. The repercussions had been disastrous. A shudder of anger and repulsion ran through him. That meant he must do everything in his power to ensure that this woman wouldn’t hurt Sam in any way whatsoever.
Jodie was a mass of contradictions: brightly dressed and assertive, yet emotional and sensitive. Morgan grunted. Fascinating she might be, but that could be a deadly combination for a sick man who needed peace and a hassle-free life.
It was essential that he kept a clear head to deal with the threat she posed. Common sense told him to get rid of her. Yet his own innate sense of decency and compassion kept getting in the way.
And, aching with his own anguish about Sam, he’d found himself on the brink of taking that shaking, slender body in his arms and holding her close to show that he shared and sympathised with her grief.
Only his fear for Jack’s future had stopped him, urging caution instead of a knee-jerk emotional response.
‘All ready now,’ he murmured lovingly to the baby. ‘There. Worth waiting for, wasn’t it? Such big tears…’
His head lifted, his eyes dark with the torment of the past. He’d witnessed hysterical weeping just like Jodie’s not long ago, when Teresa had begged him to remain silent about who had fathered her baby. He’d made a promise to a dying woman out of pity, to give her peace of mind. And to protect Sam.
From then on he’d been floundering in an unfamiliar mire of lies and deceit. His mouth tightened in resolve. He’d never go down that road again.