Bittersweet Passion

by Lynne Graham

  She grinned. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  His dark brows quirked. ‘It stopped you breezing past.’

  ‘I don’t breeze anywhere these days.’ She felt like a barge in her floral cotton dress and flat shoes on this warm day.

  He just laughed and anchored a careless arm round her shoulders. ‘I think I’ll take you out to lunch.’

  ‘John’s expecting me back.’

  Gilles stared down at her. ‘John works you through your lunch hour? He has no appreciation for the clock,’ he retorted crisply. ‘And you’re not being very sensible doing that in your condition.’

  ‘Don’t!’ she groaned.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  Her face was full of unconscious appeal. ‘Mention it. Randy makes such a fuss, and John isn’t working me through my lunch hour. He sends me out because he thinks fresh air is good for me.’

  Gilles sighed. ‘I suppose an old bachelor hasn’t a clue how to treat a pregnant woman. I’d say exercise is about the last thing you need right now.’

  He was right. She was hot and harassed and her back was sore. She was at that stage of pregnancy where she felt as if she had been pregnant for years. She let him lead her out to the crowded pavement.

  ‘We never get the chance to talk,’ he remarked when he had finally found a cab. ‘You disappear when I’m around.’

  Perhaps her tact had been a bit heavy, she construed. Randy was in love with him. And Gilles? Gilles had an ability to screen his emotions in a way similar to Dane’s.

  ‘It’s not my business,’ he began, ‘but …’

  She took a deep breath. ‘But nothing. I don’t discuss Dane with anyone, Gilles.’

  He persisted regardless. ‘You’re not leading a practical life-style.’

  ‘I’m happy and healthy,’ Claire answered bitingly. ‘And one-parent families are not exactly rare.’

  He studied her tightly folded hands. ‘I wish I understood, but however—–’ he produced a careless smile ‘—I’ll say no more for the moment. Instead I’ll tell you why I’m in the mood to celebrate.’

  She looked at him enquiringly as they crossed the pavement together. ‘I’ve just bought a ring for Randy,’ he confided spreading open the door of the restaurant.

  ‘Does she know?’

  He shook his head as they were shown to a table.

  ‘Is a respectable proposal accompanying it?’ Claire dared, awake to the possibility that there mightn’t be.

  He laughed. ‘But of course, and it’s probably the only one I’ve ever made,’ he confessed cheerfully.

  She smiled and leant forward to grasp his hand. ‘I’m glad,’ she said.

  So preoccupied were they that they neither of them noticed the tall redhead rising to her feet at a corner table, an expression of stunned disbelief freezing her features. Claire was just accepting the menu when Zelda stalked over to them.

  ‘You poisonous little bitch,’ she hissed, with no thought of lowering her voice. ‘With him, of all people!’

  Claire flinched in startled collision with Zelda’s angrily accusing eyes. But the older girl awaited no reply. She sped back to the table she had been sharing with another woman. Gilles had already risen again.

  Claire shakily drew breath. ‘Do you mind if we go?’ she mumbled, hot with embarrassment.

  ‘She’ll tell him,’ she sighed in the cab he had procured.

  Gilles cursed. ‘It was my fault. I should have known better than to take you out in public. I forgot who I was and who you are by doing so, and I wouldn’t blame Dane for being angry. My apologies, Claire, but I’d prefer to take you back to John’s.’

  It was what she preferred, too. Had Zelda noticed that she was pregnant? She could hardly have failed to do so. Hadn’t she been delighted by her disappearance from Dane’s life? Then she would enjoy telling him what a lucky escape he had had.

  The afternoon hummed past while she worked. At about four she heard John speaking to another man next door in his library, and when he came into her office she was slightly surprised, for when he had a visitor he generally forgot about work. He smiled. ‘Someone to see you, Claire.’

  Dane topped him by half a head, immediately visible to her shocked gaze. After John had gone, he remained poised by the filing cabinet just staring at her where she had frozen upright by her desk. His magnificent blue eyes zeroed in on her pale face only briefly for his attention quickly lodged on the rest of her. He went a whiter shade of pale beneath the dark, burnished gold of his tan.

  ‘You’re pregnant!’ He practically whispered it, as if it was something decent people didn’t say out loud.

  He was riveted to the spot. She wished she could just shut her eyes and disappear, a flaming and anguish-filled embarrassment afflicting her. There was nothing remotely cute or dainty about her now. She had the sex appeal of a blimp in a cotton tent.

  He braced a not very steady, long-fingered hand on the cabinet. ‘Very pregnant,’ he added dazedly.

  He left Randy behind in degrees of shock. He had entered blazing with ice-cold temper, and right in front of her eyes it had drained out of him, along with his usual hard self-assurance. The strident ring of the phone broke the terrible silence.

  ‘Claire?’ It was Randy and she sounded frantic. ‘Gil has done the most dreadful thing. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. He went to see Dane and told him where to find you, and God only knows what else he told him! I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. He’s here. I’ll speak to you later.’

  ‘You won’t be speaking to anyone but me later,’ Dane contradicted, closing the space between them suddenly to remove the receiver from her hand and drop it down on to the cradle. The angles of his hard cheekbones were sharper and there was a whipcord edge to his leanness now. Obviously, his constant partying had to have had some effect even on his tough constitution, she told herself miserably. ‘I guess I never thought I’d end up being in Gilles’ debt for anything.’ He muttered wryly.

  Her now shoulder-length hair obscured her profile. She was not up to a scene and yet the very sight of him was a tormenting pleasure. ‘You shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘If we follow that back and say I shouldn’t have gone to Adam’s funeral, we might be on the right track,’ he delivered with unexpected savagery. ‘Gilles said you needed me.’

  ‘Like hell I need you!’ she spat through a veil of angry, despairing tears.

  A pair of strong arms enclosed her rigid body. ‘Stop it,’ he urged as if he was soothing a cross child. ‘All these months you let me think you were with Max, and Gilles tells me there’s nobody on the scene. No damned wonder!’

  His gaze was pinned to the swell of her stomach which was keeping them apart, his fascination naked. Indeed if he had looked at any other part of her in the past minutes, she had missed it. Her small hands coiled into fists. ‘Dane, please go away!’ she sobbed.

  Instead he pressed her down into her swivel chair and squatted down at her level, tugging her hands down from her face and holding them in a fierce grip. ‘This must have come as a shock,’ he murmured tautly. ‘Hell, I’m still in shock. However, you’ve had months to get used to it. Do you—–’ his hesitation was uncharacteristic ‘—want it? I never realised it could be that easy … no, don’t listen to what I’m saying, I don’t know what I’m saying yet.’

  The fierce resentment in her dissipated. She was tempted to bury her hands in his wind-tousled hair. She wanted so badly to hold him close. But she was locked inside herself by comprehension of how he had to feel. He must be thinking someone had cursed him at Adam’s funeral. She was like a disaster zone in his vicinity! Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong, and this last revelation was clearly one he hadn’t even thought about.

  ‘I’m pleased about it,’ she muttered, ashamed in the face of his response to show more enthusiasm.

  Supple fingers turned up her chin. ‘When it’s cost you Max?’ he derided.

  So that was what he t
hought! Deep colour banished her pallor. His hand dropped away and her lips parted, but Dane was already speaking again. ‘Whatever else you think of me, I care about you. I care about what happens to you.’

  Go on, she encouraged inwardly, make me feel even more like an albatross round your neck. Caring could never be loving. Caring belonged with weighty words like duty and responsibility and obligation. Claire had had sufficient experience of those at Ranbury to know how demanding and ultimately unsatisfactory they could be for the giver.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she forced out the charge. ‘So you can stop feeling guilty. Max—–’ She swallowed hard, the last bolt on her pride shot, but it would be wickedly unjust to leave Dane believing that her pregnancy had deprived her of Max. ‘Max has someone else.’ She studied a button on his shirt. ‘Even before Grandfather died. I didn’t know. He just didn’t get round to telling me.’

  She heard his breath escape audibly. He sprang upright without the forgivably furious exclamation she was waiting for. ‘You’ve got every right to be angry,’ she continued doggedly. ‘I should never have married you before I had a chance to speak to him face to face. And when I think about it calmly … after the way you threw all those clothes and things at me … well, you might have done something for Maisie and Sam if I’d asked you.’

  She dug a hanky from her pocket and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Just think of all the fun I’d have missed.’ Dane had his back turned to her, big broad shoulders taut beneath his shirt. ‘There wasn’t any letter on Dominica, was there?’

  ‘No.’ She stifled a sob. ‘All of this has been my fault.’

  ‘Come on.’ He swung round with sudden purpose. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  It was clear when they entered the library that John already knew Dane’s identity. His beam of approval was only lightened by his disappointment that she would not be returning—an assumption she said nothing about in Dane’s presence.

  ‘What did Gilles tell you?’ she demanded as soon as they were inside the Rolls, which had been waiting out on the street.

  He gave one of his annoyingly careless shrugs. But he still looked unusually tense. ‘Not much. He got in before Zelda just to straighten out any misunderstanding there might have been, and he told me that there was no man around that he knew of.’

  Gilles had stupidly implied that she was in some sort of trouble and Dane had taken the bait. His silence worked on her overstretched nerves and it was a relief when they completed the short drive to the flat. As she fumbled with her key Dane ran a finger along the nameplate on the front door. ‘M Blair. Miranda Blair. When I checked that address you gave Lew, I assumed the M stood for Max,’ he revealed softly. ‘I never did get his surname.’

  He had thought she had been living with Max and he had been content with that. It spoke volumes for his attitude towards her. She cursed Gilles for his high-handed interference between them. Had he known the circumstances of their parting he might have understood that he had done neither of them a good turn.

  ‘Where’s your flatmate? The unfortunate who’s settling on Gilles for a husband?’ he queried sarcastically in the hall.

  ‘I like Gilles. He’s never been anything other than kind to me,’ she protested. ‘And Randy’s out. She rang from a callbox.’

  ‘Which is your room? ‘With his usual aplomb, Dane pushed open doors. ‘Hell, do I need to ask? Who else would have a photo of the Fletchers en famille by the bed? I bet you haven’t heard a word from one of them since you took off into the wide blue yonder.’

  She shut the door. ‘You’d be wrong. Sandra called in one evening because she was down in London.’

  ‘And here you are roughing it, pregnant and deserted. I can imagine that went down beautifully,’ Dane commented coldly, his bright gaze condemning. ‘I gather you let her think I ditched you.’

  ‘We didn’t discuss it.’ She straightened her back tiredly, overtly conscious of his hard scrutiny. She felt so ugly that she wanted to curl up and die, and she wished he’d stop staring as if she had sprouted wings. Doubtless he was still trying to adjust to the idea that he was shortly to become a father.

  ‘I’ll help you pack.’

  She frowned. ‘Pack?’

  It was an unnecessary question. Dane had self-sacrifice written all over him. He was ready to assume responsibility again. Inwardly she squirmed. He had to hate her for this. ‘I’m sorry … I really am sorry.’

  ‘I want the baby, Claire.’

  ‘Once more with conviction,’ she quipped wretchedly.

  ‘If you say you’re sorry once more, I’ll …’ His roughened drawl cut off mid-sentence as he surveyed the defeated aspect of her strained eyes. ‘Max is out of it, Claire. Isn’t it time you faced up to the fact that the only two people concerned now are you and me?’ he enquired drily.

  He still believed she was dumb enough to crave another man when she was carrying his child! However, that was safer than letting him guess the truth when the truth would make him feel uncomfortable.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  Emptied, mortified and as welcome as a snow shower in June! ‘I’m OK, it’s not a sickness, you know!’ she fended waspishly.

  ‘Does nothing for your temper,’ Dane hazarded unprovoked, something gleaming in his measuring appraisal that she couldn’t interpret. ‘I could say a lot of things you wouldn’t believe but instead I’ll be straight. I’ve reached the end of my patience with you, Claire. You’re coming with me and you’re going to remain my wife. If you don’t, I’ll take that baby from you.’

  The blood chilled in her veins. Encountering cool sapphire eyes she trembled. ‘But you don’t want …’

  ‘How would you know?’ His interruption was crushing. ‘So I once said I had no great desire for kids. The situation’s different when my child is only a few weeks off being born.’

  Her curling lashes hid her unhappy eyes. He couldn’t deceive her to that extent. He would prefer to use pressure to convince her that he too wanted the baby. So it was silly of her to be frightened even for a moment by his threat. He was being cruel to be kind. She could have smote him dead for just being what he was. A breathtakingly beautiful male viewing his most unbeautiful and most unwanted and very pregnant wife. Fate was very cruel fishing up Dane now when she was round as a barrel, she reflected bitterly. Women didn’t have unplanned babies in Dane’s world. He had to be thinking about that, grimly wishing he hadn’t let his temper get the better of him, and it was lowering, unbelievably lowering.

  ‘I didn’t want you to find out like this.’

  His scrutiny was cold. ‘You didn’t want me to find out at all.’

  ‘I thought you’d be happier that way.’

  He swore, and in his heart she knew he had to agree with her. He couldn’t want to return to the charade of a marriage which he had already put behind him, over so ignominious a stumbling block as a baby. In some cases, ignorance could be bliss.

  Her hands flickered together and finally linked. ‘I’d never have asked you to marry me if I’d known how … what are you laughing at?’

  He grinned. ‘I’ve missed having you around.’

  Her almost-smile ebbed instantly. ‘You don’t need to say things like that.’

  ‘All right, I didn’t miss you. I now feel trapped. Is that what you want to hear?’ he raked in exasperation. ‘What makes you think that I’d be trapped by any situation that I didn’t like?’

  Very easy to say. His wishes had had no effect on her conception, and with the baby so close to being born, there was very little else he could say. Dane was a positive thinker. He wasn’t the type to groan about what couldn’t be changed. ‘I think it would be better if you left me alone,’ she stated tightly.

  ‘And I wander off and neglect to recall that I have a child somewhere? What the hell gives you the right to make that kind of demand?’

  Startled, she clashed with the warning glitter of his challenging gaze. He tilted his head back and sighed. �
�Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere fast. Why don’t I take you out to dinner?’

  Bewilderment held her fast. ‘I … I don’t think I could face going out tonight.’ She bit her lip. ‘But if you like, you can eat here.’

  ‘You look beat. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  Claire surveyed him wearily. ‘It won’t be any trouble. I’d like to get changed. The lounge,’ she muttered, ‘is at the foot of the hall.’

  After a brief but refreshing wash, she slipped on the caftan Randy had brought her from Tunisia a few months earlier. She felt immeditately more comfortable in its concealing folds. While she was dressing she heard Randy come in, and when she left her room her friend’s throaty laughter carried from the lounge. Tight-mouthed, Claire retreated from the door. Clearly Randy had succumbed to curiosity and joined Dane. By the sound of it, her view of him was already changing.

  ‘Need a hand?’ Randy put her head round the kitchen door a half-hour later, her face still alight with a smile. ‘I didn’t realise how late it was getting and I still have to get changed. Gil’s taking me somewhere special tonight,’ she confided, watching Claire remove a pair of steaks from beneath the grill. ‘I do understand, all of a sudden,’ she threw in abruptly.

  ‘Understand?’

  Randy looked defensive. ‘He has extraordinary charm. I didn’t expect to like him. You should forgive him, Claire. What’s one …’ she faltered, ‘slip to a guy like that?’

  ‘What indeed?’ Claire concealed her annoyance over Randy’s quick conversion.

  ‘He’s gorgeous.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you,’ Randy giggled then. ‘I gave him a drink and told him how quietly you’d been living. He’s very easy to talk to, isn’t he?’

  And with that damning remark Randy skipped off to her room where she could be heard frantically slamming through drawers. Claire seethed. Why hadn’t she broken that twosome up? Dane was incredibly good at getting information out of people.

  He strolled through to the small dining annexe as soon as she called him. It shook her how much pleasure she earned from his simple presence, shook her that she had been childishly jealous of Randy’s response to him. She wished so many impossible things: that this had just been a visit she could enjoy rather than the prelude to an argument. Sometimes Dane needed protecting from himself and this was one of those times.