by Lynne Graham
Thinking fast, she forced herself to meet that glittering stare of expectancy. ‘I don’t have to justify myself. I d-didn’t know Elaine would tell you…I never planned for you to know. If you had stayed away from my sister,’ she dared valiantly, ‘you never would have known…’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’
‘I don’t care how you feel.’ Recalling how she had felt that night, she really didn’t. ‘But I wasn’t g-going to let you wreck Elaine’s life. Now, will you let me go?’
‘Your attitude doesn’t make sense. If I am Rosie’s father…which is highly unlikely…but, if I am, you’re behaving as though it’s irrelevant!’ he condemned.
He had one hand braced against the door-lintel, and she ducked under it to escape. He spun so fast that she got precisely three feet before he dragged her back with one powerful hand. This time he was careful not to hurt her, but Chrissy didn’t appreciate being physically controlled. ‘Let go of me!’
‘Like hell I will!’ He pulled her out of the kitchen, down the hall, and thrust her into the drawing-room. ‘If it takes me the rest of the day, you are going to tell me the truth!
What cool Chrissy had contrived to maintain was dissipating fast. He kicked the door shut and leant back against it. ‘So where did this miraculous conception take place?’ he prompted in sardonic invitation.
She felt hot all over, wishing in desperation that she could have told any lie less intimate than one which alleged that she had wantonly fallen into his arms for a brief sexual encounter one night when he had been too drunk even to remember the event the next day! She studied the floor. ‘Your b-bedroom at the Manor…’
The silence fairly sizzled.
‘The night I crashed my car?’
‘Yes…you were drunk—’
‘I was not drunk!’ Blaze countered in raw interruption. ‘I was suffering from concussion and a particularly nasty bout of flu…’
‘You had a whisky bottle with you in the woods.’ Glancing up, she saw the flash of some no doubt dim recollection literally freeze his dark, taut features.
‘I thought I just had a cold. I took a couple of drinks in the hope of feeling better, and then I think I threw the bottle away…’
‘Yes,’ she confirmed.
‘So you saw me there. What happened next?’
‘I tried to persuade you that you needed medical attention,’ she continued tautly. ‘Then I suggested I drive you back up to the Manor…’
‘I was in a car. I remember that,’ he conceded roughly.
‘We had to go in through the courtyard…’
‘Nothing that you have so far said confirms your story. I do accept that you saw that bedroom, though.’ A flash of white teeth briefly showed in the grimmest of smiles. ‘No wonder you got in such a state when I noticed the startling similarity between that bedroom and the one you created upstairs. How did we get as far as the bedroom?’
Her hands were shaking. She twisted them together. Dear heaven, how could she continue with this? It was an interrogation and one which would pull no punches, she sensed in consternation. ‘I took you up there…’
‘And why did you do that? Or is that a surpassingly stupid question?’
Her fair skin crimsoned. ‘You were ill…you needed to lie down—’
‘I could have lain down in any of the rooms downstairs,’ he cut in ruthlessly, ‘so why go to the trouble of taking me upstairs?’
Was he actually trying to insinuate that she had somehow set him up? How dared he do that? Abruptly and in some astonishment she registered that she was actually reacting as though he had made love to her that night!
‘It w-wasn’t something I thought about, for goodness’ sake! I was worried about y-you…you were in a state of collapse!’ she protested.
‘And then what?’
The horrible silence hummed and plucked at her nerves. She bit at her lower lip and averted her gaze from his. ‘I was ringing the d-doctor and you pulled me a-away from the phone and…and you k-kissed me.’
‘Really?’ He sounded offensively sceptical.
And because that was the truth, she flung up her head furiously. ‘Yes, I was p-pretty shocked too when it happened!’
His jawline squared. ‘Continue.’
She took a deep breath and fought not to be squeamish. ‘And then w-we…we did it,’ she muttered in a near whisper.
‘We did it,’ he repeated with caustic bite. ‘Your talent for invention becomes more extraordinary by the minute! You admit that I was in a state of collapse…’
Tension was tightening in a band of steel round her throbbing temples. ‘Yes, but—’
‘I barely knew you. You were just a kid!’ he blistered back.
‘I was n-nearly eighteen!’ she stammered, suddenly covering her hot face with her hands and swinging away from him. In heaven’s name, what had she let herself in for? Tears of emotional stress suddenly lashed her strained eyes.
‘By my rating, you were still a child. Even in the state I was in, I don’t believe I would have touched you!’ he asserted fiercely.
She wasn’t playing her part with sufficient conviction, she acknowledged, and if she didn’t make a greater effort he was likely to drag the truth out of her. She forced her teeming mind to focus on that night. ‘You w-were very upset about your grandfather…you called Elaine a t-tart… I didn’t know why you were so angry…’
‘Are you saying that I raped you?’ he demanded.
‘No!’ Aghast, she swiftly denied the charge, and half turned from him, wiping the dampness from her cheeks with an unsteady hand.
‘Then you’re saying that I made love to you to get even with your father and your sister.’
The suggestion just hung there and she seized on it like a lifeline because it gave him the motive he seemed to need to accept any part of her story. ‘I didn’t know about the poker game…or any of it then…’
‘And you’re telling me that you just fell into my arms without a murmur?’ he derided. ‘You thought I was drunk. You admit I was angry, that I abused your sister to your face—’
‘I w-wasn’t thinking about what I was doing!’ Her sudden interruption carried credibility. She hadn’t had the discipline to think about anything when she was in his arms that night. ‘It just happened!’
‘But I don’t remember it. And you would think that I would recall such a sudden and overwhelming attack of lust, wouldn’t you?’ he murmured silkily. ‘I have only the sketchiest memory of that night. Parts of it are a complete blank, and you’re playing on that.’
‘I can’t s-stop you thinking that,’ she mumbled, her slight shoulders drooping with the strain of the prolonged tension.
‘So then you can fill in the blanks. How did we…to borrow that schoolgirlish phrase…“do it”?’
Chrissy blenched and shot him a helpless look of dismay.
‘I want details,’ he informed her unashamedly.
‘You have no right to try and h-humiliate me!’ she gasped.
‘I think I have every right when you consider the seriousness of a paternity charge.’ Brilliantly blue eyes scorched hers in scalding challenge. ‘DNA tests can’t be done overnight, I’m afraid.’
Chrissy turned even paler. He was talking about bringing the law and the medical profession into it. She calmed her fears by reminding herself that within days she would no longer be required to maintain the lie. Then, she guessed, she and Rosie would certainly be out on the street again. Dear lord, she wondered if she would have begun this had she known how far it would lead.
‘Naturally, it would be more sensible if we settled this here and now,’ Blaze pointed out insidiously. ‘After all, you can’t hope to fool a DNA test, and if this is just some very stupid attempt to keep me away from Elaine I’m willing to forgive and forget if you tell me the truth now. I won’t fire you. This hasn’t yet gone any further than the three of us.’
The expectant silence drummed fingers of dread on her nerve-strings. He was o
ffering her a clean escape, the promise of a complete pardon. And she wanted to take it. That one outrageous lie had escalated into a giant black cloud, weighing her down. It had turned into something much bigger and much more serious than she could ever have dreamt. But then she remembered Elaine’s baby and she grimly accepted the need to sustain the lie a little longer.
She trawled her imagination for the kind of details that might at least deflect him from the most intimate questions. Walking jerkily over to the window, she breathed in deep. ‘We…we m-made love on the…on the floor. It d-didn’t last very long.’ Her cheeks were so hot that she felt sunburnt. ‘You didn’t take your clothes off. Then…then you told me to g-get out and I went home. Is there anything else you want to know?’ she mumbled.
The silence stretched and hummed. Then she heard him breathe in deeply.
‘I don’t think I want to know any of this,’ he admitted tightly.
He would strangle her when he found out that she had been lying! But he sounded quieter, and that relieved her. She really didn’t think she could stand the interrogation much longer without making a slip.
‘And when did you find out you were pregnant?’
She flinched. ‘I was already in London.’
‘You were with your mother—why didn’t she insist that you contact me?’
‘I w-wouldn’t tell her who the father was.’
‘But what about the social services?’ he shot at her without warning. ‘I understand that they now insist on knowing the father’s name and serving him with a maintenance order for support of the child.’
In alarm, she said, ‘But I never made a claim. I n-never asked for help!’
Blaze looked balked of his prey. He was pacing the floor like a tiger marking out his imprisonment in a cage, his agile brain seeking to pin down the weaknesses in her story. A sliver of shameful satisfaction darted through Chrissy. At least while he was here he wasn’t with Elaine. And part of her was beginning to believe that a few days of hell were his just deserts for the unforgivable way he had sought to use her. She loathed and despised him, she told herself, her small hands closing into fists. He had set her up and used her without conscience, and he would have got off scot-free if she hadn’t learnt that Elaine was planning to have an abortion.
‘How have you lived, then?’ he demanded abruptly.
‘I sold off Mum’s jewellery bit by bit…’
He swore viciously, restive as a predatory cat on hot bricks. He was pale beneath his bronzed skin, and lines of strain grooved between his mouth and nose.
It was time to let him off the hook, figuratively speaking, Chrissy decided. Maybe then he would calm down. ‘You were never intended to know about th-this. It’s just something that happened and it’s all behind me now,’ she stressed. ‘I’d just as soon you forgot it again…’
He stopped dead, angling a blazing look of incredulity at her. ‘Forget it again? How the hell could I forget it? You’re telling me that I took advantage of one of the most naïve teenagers I had ever met in some sordid grappling session that by your account doesn’t even deserve the dignity of being deemed a one-night stand…and you ask me to forget it?’ he roared at her. ‘Tell me just how I am supposed to forget that you are accusing me of being Rosie’s father.’
‘I didn’t accuse you of being anything,’ she reminded him fearfully.
‘And your unbelievably martyred silence in circumstances that would have taxed the temperament of a saint… I’m supposed to be grateful for that?’ Blaze lashed back at her contemptuously. ‘You let me give you a job! You never by the smallest word or gesture even hinted that Rosie might be mine! Give me a break! This is not some soap opera—this is real life. Why did you tell me that Rosie’s father was in prison?’
Her breath caught in her throat. She swallowed hard, thought fast. ‘I was afraid you’d suspect the truth. I w-wanted to put you off the track—’
‘But I was never on the bloody track to begin with! You must have realised that I didn’t remember that night?’
Chrissy was shaking like a leaf in a high wind, no longer able to withstand his attacks. ‘I…I was only certain of th-that later—’
Blaze cut ruthlessly in on her yet again. ‘You told me that you thought you were in love with Rosie’s father! How the hell could you have thought you were in love with me? I’d only spoken to you half a dozen times in my life before that night, and you used to look at me then as if I were something the cat brought in!’ he informed her rawly.
She burst into floods of tears and ran out of the room. Had she withstood that continuous barrage one second longer, she would have broken down and confessed the truth. She leant back against her bedroom door, her heartbeat threatening to burst from her chest as she strained to hear any sound of pursuit. When the silence continued, she slumped.
Chapter 7
With a bitten-back gasp of effort, Chrissy heaved the second case into the Land Rover. She was literally shaking with nerves. It was so quiet that she could hear the footsteps of the security man patrolling the well-lit yard behind the house. Blaze took no risks with the extremely valuable horses he trained.
She hurried back into the house. They had to leave now. There was no other choice. All she was really doing was protecting herself from any further unpleasantness. Herself and Rosie, she reminded herself. When she had pulled herself together, she had come downstairs and gone to collect Rosie. She had started to make dinner, miserably acknowledging that the practicalities of life continued even in the midst of crisis. Only then a virtual bombshell had exploded beneath her naïve feet.
Looking out of the kitchen window, she had seen an executive type crossing the yard to greet Blaze. And she had recognised him with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. After all, she had met him once…very briefly. His name was Guy and he was Blaze’s lawyer. As the two men had come through the rear hall that led into the kitchen, she had heard Guy say mockingly, ‘So tell me, what’s so damned private you refuse to discuss it on the phone?’
She had dived into the walk-in larder sooner than see Blaze, but Rosie must have tried to intercept him. ‘Not now, Rosie!’ he had grated with a ferocity he had never before angled at her little sister.
Rosie had promptly burst into floods of uncomprehending tears, and over the racket Blaze had raked, ‘I don’t want dinner, Chrissy!’ making a nonsense of her attempt to conceal herself in the larder.
He had been closeted with Guy in the drawing-room for over two hours. Then she had heard the Ferrari starting up. As soon as she’d heard that, she had sped upstairs to pack, determined to be gone before Blaze returned. The speed with which he had resorted to his lawyer had shattered her, and his rejection of Rosie had brought home to her another aspect of the situation which she should have foreseen. There was absolutely no way that they could remain under this roof another night.
For all she knew, it was a criminal act to make the sort of claim she had made. He could probably take her to court for defamation of character or some such thing. The sight of Guy with his executive case had petrified Chrissy!
It was unfortunate that she had had to put Rosie to bed while she waited and prayed for Blaze to go out. Dear God, was he likely to pursue her for disappearing with the remainder of the housekeeping money? It was the only money she had. It would get them on a train to somewhere, anywhere. They would have to spend the night in the car, and before she got on the train she would phone to say where she had left it in case Blaze thought she had stolen that as well.
Pulling back the blankets, Chrissy lifted Rosie. She had put her to bed in all her clothes. Her heartbeat thumping in her eardrums, she started down the stairs again. She was halfway to the Land Rover when someone stepped out of the shadows of the vast overgrown shrubbery to the far side of the house.
Her breath escaped in a sudden hiss of fright. Blaze strolled forward into the path of light spilling from the hall. Very tall, very dark and very, very angry. The anger was like a physical
force, focused on her with terrifying intensity. For the longest moment of her life, Blaze stared at her standing there, awkwardly cradling Rosie, who was growing heavier by the minute. Chrissy turned red and then white.
‘Give me the car keys!’ he bit out harshly.
‘They’re on the d-dashboard,’ she stammered.
Silently, he retrieved them and strode round to unlock the boot. ‘If there are cases in here, I’ll have her made a ward of court!’
Their cases were revealed like a statement of guilty intent. Under the onslaught of a seething sapphire glance, Chrissy studied the ground instead. She heard the crash as the cases were dumped back into the hall. A second later, Rosie was virtually snatched from her arms.
Shaking off her nervous paralysis, Chrissy followed him up the stairs.
Blaze laid her sister gently back down on her bed. ‘Take her clothes off and tuck her in,’ he instructed in an icy undertone.
With clumsy, uncertain hands, Chrissy stripped Rosie down to her underwear and pulled the covers back over her. Throughout, she was unbearably conscious of Blaze’s simmering presence. A ward of court? What on earth was he talking about? Damn him, he must have parked the Ferrari behind the stable block. That was why she hadn’t heard the car. Seeing the front door wide and the Discovery sitting with two doors hinged open, he had backed off to see what was going to happen next.
‘Bolting runs in the Hamilton genes, I gather,’ Blaze drawled with contempt.
Her cheeks flamed at the reference to her mother’s moonlit flit from her father.
Lean brown fingers enclosed her narrow wrist as he trailed her downstairs. ‘If you take the car out at all, you leave Rosie behind from now on,’ he told her. ‘You don’t take her off this estate. One wrong move, sweetheart, and I go to court for custody. Do you understand? Or do you want that in writing?’
Custody? Taut as a bowstring, Chrissy hovered in the centre of the rug in the drawing-room. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lips. ‘I—’
‘Where the hell did you think you were taking her? Back to some backstreet slum where I couldn’t find you? Your next miscalculation will be your last,’ he asserted, making a shiver of fear run down her spine.