by Penny Jordan
As she got out of the car Chris turned to him. “Thank you for telling me,” she said softly. It couldn’t have been easy for him—she could see in his face that it hadn’t. “I think your wife is a very lucky lady,” she added encouragingly, “and I think you should tell her—everything.”
“Perhaps I will. I want to, but finding the courage is another matter.”
Walking slowly back to the house, Chris tried to formulate some sort of plan to put to Slater. Should she simply confront him with her newfound knowledge and demand that he release Sophie into her care? After all there was no blood relationship between them. Or should she approach the matter more subtly; should she say that she knew that Sarah would not want the child once they were married?
And Sophie herself? What would she want? That she loved Slater Chris didn’t for a moment doubt, but would that love be able to survive Sarah’s hostility? Would she ever be able to regain her voice if she stayed with Slater? Wouldn’t she have a far better chance of recovery in a completely new environment? She would have to take legal and medical advice Chris reflected—and she could be facing a hard and expensive battle, but she felt sure that she could give Sophie more than Slater and Sarah. What would happen when Sarah had a family? Sophie would be totally excluded, Sarah would make sure of that.
Wrestling with her thoughts she was half-way up the drive before she saw Slater’s car. It was parked at an angle, tyre marks scored through the gravel as though he had stopped in a hurry. Her heart started to thud in panic. By now he must have discovered that she was missing. Why hadn’t she thought about that? Because she had been too concerned with John’s revelations and Sophie’s future, that was why. He was back early. Had he returned especially to check up on her? Well she was a grown woman she reminded herself nervously, and if she wanted to go out for a walk then she was completely free to do so. Her ankle was virtually fully recovered; it barely ached at all. Slater was being ridiculous in refusing to let her go out.
As she rounded the corner of the house, hoping to walk in undiscovered via the drawing room french windows, she came to an abrupt halt, her pulses racing anxiously as she took in the small tableau on the lawn. Slater was crouching down on his heels, rocking Sophie’s small frame in his arms. Mrs Lancaster stood worriedly by, and as she watched them, their voices reached her, Slater’s terse as he demanded brusquely, “When did you discover that she’d gone?”
“Just before lunch.” Mrs Lancaster sounded extremely upset. “She’d just gone, no note… nothing.”
“But all her clothes are still here…”
Did they think she’d left permanently? Chris was horrified to discover what her innocently intended deception had led to. She took a step forward, kicking a small pebble as she did so.
The sound it made as it skittered across the crazy paved path seemed preternaturally loud in the tense silence that followed Slater’s awareness of her presence. Across the half dozen or so yards that separated them their eyes met, Slater’s topaz and darkly bitter, Chris’s green and uncomfortably guilty. She waited for Slater to say something; to voice his smouldering rage, but it wasn’t he who broke the thick silence, it was Sophie. Lifting her head she saw Chris, her eyes widening first in disbelief and then in tremulous joy. Racing towards her, she called her name, a thick, choked sound, but quite distinctly her name, Chris thought dazedly, going down on her knees and holding out her arms to catch her.
“Sophie…Sophie…” Tears stung her eyes, as she held Sophie slightly away from her. “Surely you didn’t think I’d really go just like that?” Watching the small delicate face, she remembered all that John had told her, and remorse flooded through her. Had Sophie thought that she had left her too?
“Sophie!”
Slater was standing beside them, one lean hand resting on Sophie’s cheeks as he turned her face up towards his own.
“She said my name,” Chris said chokily.
“Yes, I heard her.” The quiet calm in Slater’s voice warned Chris not to make too much of what had happened. “And a rusty little squeak it was too… It sounded more like a mouse with a sore throat than my Sophie.”
To Chris’s great joy Sophie giggled. “It wasn’t a mouse, Daddy…it was me.” Across her head their eyes met, and for once Chris wasn’t ashamed of Slater seeing the emotion glittering there. His own eyes had darkened and looked over-bright.
“Take her inside,” he told Chris quietly, “I’ll go and ring the hospital. And Chris…” His mouth was grim as she turned towards him. “Don’t think this means that you and I won’t be having that talk.”
CHAPTER TEN
OF course, it was hours before the excitement abated. Sophie, much to Chris’s cowardly relief, insisted on sleeping with her and thus ensured that Slater would not be able to talk to her alone.
Once she realised what Sophie had thought, Chris was at great pains to assure the little girl that there had been no question of her leaving without telling her.
“I don’t want you to leave here at all. I want you to stay for always,” Sophie protested.
They were alone in Chris’s room. Downstairs Slater was no doubt making appointments for Sophie to see her specialists, Chris reflected, torn between giving the little girl the assurance she so badly needed and telling her the truth.
“I want you to be with me for always,” Sophie continued passionately.
This at least Chris knew she was able to respond to honestly. “And I want to be with you, sweetheart,” she told her.
“Daddy said you must have gone back to America,” Sophie confided guilelessly. “He said you had your career to think of.”
Chris’s mouth tightened. She could just imagine how Slater had said that. “There’ll always be an important place for you in my life, Sophie.”
“Promise me you’ll stay with me for always?”
At a loss to know how to respond, Chris was saved the necessity of doing so when Slater rapped briefly on the door and walked in.
“Bed for you, young lady,” he told Sophie, “You’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow. We’re going to see Dr Hartwell.”
Sophie pulled a face.
“He wants to hear this new voice of yours for himself. He didn’t believe me when I said you sounded like a rusty mouse,” Slater teased.
Watching them like this it seemed impossible to believe that Sophie wasn’t his child. He seemed to love her so much. To punish herself for her momentary weakness Chris interrupted coolly, “Have you told Sarah the good news?”
“Not yet.” Slater’s voice was blandly easy.
“I thought she’d be the first one you’d want to share it with.”
“I’ll give her a ring later on…”
He seemed so casual, but then perhaps like her he realised that Sarah would not be particularly overjoyed by the news.
“Daddy, tell Chris we want her to stay with us for always,” Sophie interrupted. “I want you to.”
“Oh, Chris is too big a girl to pay any attention to what I say,” Slater responded. “She always goes her own way. I learned that a long time ago.”
Chris felt colour tinge her skin. Slater was obviously referring to the time she had told him that her career was more important to her than him; but then she had believed that he loved Natalie, and she had spoken those words to save her pride, knowing that she could not remain in Little Martin to watch as an onlooker his marriage to her cousin. Neither had she wanted him to guess why she was running away, so she had used the convenient excuse of her “career”.
How angry he had been the first time she told him that Ray had said she would make a good model! Then she had barely paid any attention to Ray’s comment, simply shrugging it aside. Modelling, or indeed any career, had been the last thing on her mind; she had been dreaming of marriage to Slater, bearing his children…
“Modelling? More like posing for girlie magazines,” Slater had said scathingly, adding, “Don’t you know how many silly little girls fall into that trap every
year? And once they’re in it, no matter how hard they fight they can’t get out.”
Now she could see why he had doubted Ray’s sincerity, but then she had been puzzled by his dislike of the other man.
And Slater had been wrong about him, of course. Without Ray’s help and encouragement she would never have made it to the top.
“Are you happy now, Chris, now that you’ve achieved your ambition?”
Happy? Unhappiness darkened her eyes momentarily. Of course she wasn’t happy in the way that he meant; her career had been a way of filling time, of silencing her thoughts, of keeping at bay the knowledge that she still loved him.
“Of course.” How smoothly the lies slipped off her tongue. “I have a healthy bank balance, my independence; some very good friends…”
“But no lover to share your bed at night,” Slater taunted.
Sophie, Chris suddenly noticed, had dropped off to sleep in his arms, obviously worn out by the day. Her mind seemed to have gone blank, refusing to provide her with a means of turning aside Slater’s question.
“Only because I don’t choose to have one,” she managed at last.
“Why not, I wonder? It certainly isn’t because of any lack of physical desire.”
Her face stung with hot colour. “Perhaps I simply prefer my independence to being held in thrall to some male.”
“But you can’t deny that it is possible that you could be ‘held in thrall’, as you put it?”
The thrust was soft, but intensely painful.
Chris summoned all the skill she had learned in her years of modelling, all her ability to assume an expression at will.
“Possible,” she drawled smiling at him mockingly, “but not probable.”
She held her breath waiting for him to react—to retaliate, and expelled it in relief as she heard Mrs Lancaster calling him.
“I’ll take Sophie.” She held out her arms for the sleeping child. As he passed her over, their hands touched. Tiny electric frissons of awareness shimmered over her skin. The moment he had gone Chris hurried to the door and locked it, thankful for the old-fashioned locks these doors still possessed.
Just as soon as she could she was going to leave Little Martin and take Sophie with her. Slater would see the wisdom of such a course; he must see it. Sarah would certainly agree with her, Chris thought grimly.
It was comforting to wake up and feel Sophie’s small body curled into hers, although Chris felt rather embarrassed when she had to pad across the floor to unlock her door at Mrs Lancaster’s knock.
“Slater said to let you both sleep in this morning,” she announced carrying in a tray of tea. “He’s just gone down to the factory, but he’ll be back soon. He’s taking Sophie into Martin at eleven, to the hospital there.”
While he was gone she would ring her agent, Chris decided, she would know the best legal firm for her to employ. Anxiously she bit her lip, would Sophie turn against her for taking her away from Slater? She hoped not.
The little girl was irrepressibly chatty over breakfast, and when Chris helped Mrs Lancaster to clear away the older woman laughed, “I never thought the day would come when I didn’t want to hear Sophie talking, but right now…”
“Umm, she seems to have got her voice back with a vengeance,” Chris agreed. She put down the plates she was carrying. “I’m so sorry I gave you all such a scare yesterday. I don’t know why Sophie should think I’d left. I’d simply gone out to lunch with…with someone.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Actually it was Slater who decided that you’d gone for good. Fit to commit murder, he looked when he came back and found out you’d gone.” Her glance was speculative. “If Sophie hadn’t been in the kitchen with me when he came in saying that you’d upped and left, I doubt it would ever have entered her mind. Of course she was disappointed when we got back from the shops and you weren’t here…”
“I should have left a note,” Chris apologised.
“Well in view of what’s happened, it’s all worked out for the best,” Mrs Lancaster said comfortably.
Chris made a point of staying out of the way when Slater returned to collect Sophie. She very much wanted to go with them, but Slater hadn’t asked her to, and besides she wasn’t sure if she was up to the ordeal of his company.
Her attempts to get through to her agent were frustrated by the lines being busy. She would just have to wait until tomorrow Chris reflected when she heard the sound of Slater’s car returning later in the afternoon.
She went downstairs to meet them. Sophie was glowing with excitement. “Dr Hartwell said I was a miracle,” she told Chris proudly, “and he said I didn’t sound like a rusty mouse at all.”
“He also said you had to rest,” Slater reminded her wryly.
“I’ll take her upstairs,” Chris offered. Looking at him she had suddenly been struck by the lines of pain and tiredness round his eyes. He had always seemed so strong and invulnerable that she had never noticed them before. She wanted to go up to him and draw his head down on to her breast; to comfort him. To combat this momentary weakness she took hold of Sophie’s hand and tugged her inside.
Upstairs in her room Sophie was still arguing that she wasn’t tired, but within ten minutes of Chris starting to read to her she was fast asleep.
It was a shock to find Slater standing just inside the door, watching them. How long had he been there? Her heart thumping unevenly, Chris got up.
“You really care about her, don’t you?” he said quietly. “How does it feel, Chris, to know what you’ve given up?”
Reaction rioted inside her. Forcing it down she said lightly. “I’m only twenty-six, Slater. There’s still plenty of time for me to have a child, if I want one.”
“First you’ve got to find a man.” He said the words almost insultingly, and remembering what she had read of artificial insemination and the new scheme in operation in the States whereby a woman could elect to impregnate herself with the seed of some of the best brains in the world, she shrugged, “Not necessarily, you…”
Almost at once his face darkened, his eyes smouldering dark gold. “I what?” he snarled, totally misunderstanding her comment. “I might have already have given you a child! If I have you won’t get to keep it. No child of mine is going to be brought up by…”
“By what?” Chris shouted at him, nearly as furious as he was himself. “By someone whose cousin is a nymphomaniac? What’s wrong, Slater? Are you worried that I might have inherited the same tendencies as Natalie; that I might corrupt my own child?”
She was barely able to understand her own pain, knowing only that it had sprung from the bitter anger in Slater’s eyes when he thought she might be referring to the fact that she could have conceived his child. Did he really dislike her so much? Belatedly she remembered Sophie. A quick glance at the little girl confirmed that she was still asleep. Brushing past Slater, she went on unsteady legs to her own room. Once there she sank down on to the bed, longing to give way to tears, but too wound up to do so.
When the door opened and Slater walked in she could hardly believe her eyes.
“Running away again, Chris,” he taunted. His voice sounded odd, thick and husky, as though he was barely able to frame the words. “Well this time there’s nowhere to run to. Just answer me one thing honestly, have you ever regretted what you did? Have you ever wished for just one second that you hadn’t put your precious career first? Why the hell did you come back, Chris?”
“You know why… I’m Sophie’s guardian.”
“And that brought you back; a tenuous link with a child you’d never even seen? That’s not the Chris I know. She never let emotional ties of any type mean anything to her.”
“That’s not true!”
“Isn’t it? Then how the hell do you explain the fact that you were able to walk out on me, without so much as a single word of regret?”
“All these years and you still resent that?” She could hardly believe it. She had never thought of him as being
so egocentrical. He hadn’t loved her; he had been planning to marry someone and yet after all this time he could display this almost excessive bitterness because she had left. “I’m surprised you can still remember.”
“Oh I remember all right…just as I remember every hour of the nightmare my life’s been since. Have you any idea what it was like married to Natalie wondering what the hell she was going to do next? When Sophie was six weeks old Natalie tried to smother her.” He watched her go white. “Oh yes. She never loved Sophie; never wanted her. I had to watch her like a hawk, and then later there were men… Never one man for any length of time, until…”
“Until she met John,” Chris supplied for him. “I met him for lunch yesterday. He told me all about it. I’m not Natalie, Slater,” she added quietly when she saw the thoughts reflected in his eyes. “I thought when we were trapped in the cottage that Sophie spoke and I wanted to talk to him about it. He told me a lot more than I’d bargained on hearing.” She desperately wanted to ask him why he had ever married Natalie, but she didn’t have the right. “You might as well know,” she continued, “that I want Sophie to come and live with me.”
The furious sound he made as he swore, silenced her. “You bitch,” he exclaimed bitterly. “You think you can take it all, don’t you? Well you’re not having Sophie.”
“She isn’t your child,” Chris pointed out, “and Sarah doesn’t want her.”
“Sarah? What the hell’s she got to do with all this?”
“Oh, come on, Slater.” She was getting angry herself now. “Sarah told me you and she are getting married. She seemed to think that was why Natalie took her life—she said you’d asked her for a divorce. She doesn’t like Sophie, you must know that. You’ll have other children but Sophie is related to me by blood. I can give her so much, and I love her.”
“And you think I don’t is that it? For six years she’s been my child, and now suddenly I’m supposed to give her up? Well if you want Sophie, you’re damned well going to have to pay for her,” he snarled suddenly, slamming the door closed behind him.