by Anne Mather
‘Me?’ It came out like a squeak and she hastily cleared her throat and began again. ‘I mean…I’m fine. Great, been to the gym and feeling pretty fit and…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence under his probing gaze. She was rambling but she knew that if she didn’t go out to Lachlan soon he would come in to her. She didn’t know which would be worse. Maybe she should just come right out and tell Jake now before he set eyes on Lachlan. It wasn’t much of a warning for him, but what else could she do?
She straightened her spine and faced him squarely. ‘Jake… I have something to tell you that…’ She took a much needed breath and continued. ‘…that I should have told you before, but I just felt it was never the right time, and—’
‘Mummee!’A child’s voice rang out from the back of the house, closely followed by the sound of little footsteps running down the hall.
Ashleigh swallowed painfully as her son came rushing into the room, her breath stopping completely when he cannoned into Jake’s long legs encased in dark trousers.
She watched in stricken silence as Jake’s hands steadied Lachlan, his touch gentle but sure as he looked down at the small face staring up at him.
‘J-Jake, this is Lachlan,’ she said in a voice she hardly recognised as coming from her own mouth. ‘Lachlan, this is…Jake.’
Lachlan, with the impulsiveness of youth on his side, got in first. ‘Are you the boy who used to live here a long time ago?’
Jake stared down at the little child in front of him for what seemed like endless minutes until he registered that the boy had spoken to him. ‘Yes…I am,’ he said, hoping his tone wasn’t showing how shell-shocked he felt.
Ashleigh had a child.
The child she’d always wanted.
The child he wouldn’t give her, refused to give her.
He couldn’t look at her. He knew if he did she would see his disappointment, his unjustified disappointment.
So she’d had Howard’s child.
He assumed it was Howard’s, although the child in front of him certainly didn’t look much like Ashleigh’s fiancé, he had to admit. The sick irony of it was that the kid looked more like him. Once the thought was there it tried to take hold but he just as quickly dismissed it, although it surprised him how much it hurt to let it go.
There was no way that kid could have been his. He’d watched Ashleigh take her pills every day; it had been part of their daily ritual. He had made it a part of it. She’d never missed a dose and if she had he would have insisted on using an alternative until things were safe.
It was hard to assess the kid’s exact age. He’d deliberately avoided everything to do with children for most of his adult life and had very little idea of what age went with what stage in a child’s life. On what limited knowledge he had, he thought the boy might have been about three and a half, which meant Ashleigh had dived pretty quickly into Howard Caule’s bed, but then, hadn’t she done the same with him?
The prospect of fathering a child had always terrified him. He had become almost paranoid about it. The thought of spreading his father’s genes to the next generation had been too much for him to bear. How could he ever forgive himself if he turned on his own child the way his father had done to him? Parenting wasn’t an easy task. How soon would it have been before a light tap of reproof became a closed-fist punch? How quickly would his gentle chastising tone have turned into full-blown self-esteem eroding castigation? How many unspeakable hurts would he have inflicted before the child was damaged beyond repair?
Nothing had ever been able to convince him it would be desirable to father a child, and yet one look at Ashleigh’s little son had rocked his conviction as only flesh and blood reality could do. She’d had another man’s child because he had been too much of a coward to confront his past and deal with it appropriately.
A burning pain knifed through him as a sudden flood of self-doubt assailed him. But what if he hadn’t turned out like his father? What if, in spite of all that had been done to him, he could have rewritten the past and become a wonderful father, the sort of father he had longed for all his life? One who would listen to the childish insecurities that had plagued him, especially after his mother had died. Who would have listened and comforted him instead of berating him and punishing for simply being a lost, lonely little boy.
Other people had difficult backgrounds; there was hardly a person alive who didn’t have some axe to grind about their past. Why had he let his take over his life and destroy his one chance at happiness? His father had been violent and cruel and totally unworthy of the role of parent, but in the end the person who had hurt Jake the most had been himself. When Ashleigh had walked out of his life four and a half years ago he had done absolutely nothing to stop her. Instead he had stood before her, stiff and uncommunicative, as she accused him of being unfaithful after she’d mistakenly read one of his e-mails about his recent trip to Paris. He could have told her then and there the real reason for his weekend away but he hadn’t, for it would have meant revealing the filthy shame of his past to her. In the end his pride had not been able to stretch quite that far.
‘I was going to tell you…’Ashleigh said, taking Lachlan’s hand in hers and drawing him close to her.
Jake saw the way the child’s eyes were watching him, the sombre depths quietly assessing him. It unnerved him a bit to have a kid so young look at him so intently, as if he were searching for something he’d been looking for a long time.
‘It’s none of my business,’ he said, wishing his tone had sounded a little more detached.
Ashleigh had been waiting for the bomb to drop and found it hard to grasp the context of his words for a moment. She studied his expression and nervously disguised a swallow as his eyes went to Lachlan before returning to hers.
‘I know it’s probably very sexist of me, but it sure didn’t take you long to replace me, did it?’ he said.
It took her a nanosecond to get his meaning but she didn’t know whether to be relieved or infuriated. Couldn’t he see his own likeness standing before him in miniature form?
‘I don’t think this is a conversation we should be having at this time,’ she said, indicating her son by her side with a pointed look.
‘You’re right,’ Jake agreed.
There was a tense little silence. Ashleigh hunted her brain for something to fill it but nothing she wanted to say was suitable with her young son standing pressed to her side, facing his father for the very first time.
She wanted to blame someone.
She wanted to pin the responsibility for this situation on her mother for having a prior commitment, on her father for having a heart condition that needed regular monitoring, on her sister Mia for having an audition and Ellie for having a social conscience that was too big for her. If any of them had been free she wouldn’t be standing in front of Jake now with his son, with a chasm of misunderstanding and bitterness separating them.
But in the end she knew there was no one to blame but herself. She should have told Jake four and a half years ago, given him the choice whether to be involved in his child’s life or not.
Her mother was right. Even if he had pressed her to have a termination, the final decision would surely have been hers. She had thought she was being strong by walking away but, looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, she had to concede that she’d taken the weakling’s way out. She had run for cover instead of facing life head on.
She turned to Lachlan, schooling her features into a serenity she was far from feeling. ‘Poppet, why don’t you go back out to the garden and we’ll join you in a few minutes?’
Lachlan slipped his hand out of hers and scampered away without a single word of protest. He gave one last look over his shoulder before his footsteps sounded out down the hall as he made his way to the back door leading out to the garden.
This time the silence was excruciating.
Ashleigh felt each and every one of its invisible tentacles reaching out to squeeze something out of her
but her throat had closed over as soon as Jake’s eyes came back to hers.
‘He doesn’t look much like Howard,’ he commented.
‘That’s because he’s not Howard’s son.’
‘You surprise me.’ The cynical smile reappeared. ‘I didn’t think you were the sleep-around type.’
‘I had a very good teacher,’ she returned, marginally satisfied when his smile tightened into something else entirely.
‘How old is he?’ he asked after another tense moment or two.
‘Why do you ask?’
He shrugged one shoulder. ‘Isn’t it the usual question to ask?’
‘As you said earlier, it’s none of your business.’
‘Maybe, but I’d still like to know,’ he said.
‘Why?’
It seemed an age before he answered.
‘Because I need to be absolutely sure he’s not mine.’ He scraped a hand through his hair and added, ‘You would have told me if he was, wouldn’t you?’
It was all Ashleigh could do to hold his penetrating gaze. She felt herself squirming under the weight of its probe, the burden of her secret causing her a pain so intense she could scarcely draw in a breath.
‘You can take a paternity test, if you’d like,’ she said, taking a risk she wasn’t sure would pay off. ‘Then you can be absolutely sure.’
He gave her a long contemplative look before asking, ‘Are you in any doubt of who the child’s father is?’
‘No,’ she answered evenly. ‘No, I know exactly who the father is.’
Jake moved away and went to the window she’d guarded so assiduously earlier. ‘It was the one thing I could never give you, Ashleigh,’ he said with his back still towards her. ‘I told you that from day one.’
‘I know…’
‘I just couldn’t risk it,’ he said. He took a deep breath and added, ‘My father…’
She bit her lip as she heard the slight catch in his voice, knowing how difficult this was for him.
‘My father suffered from a rare but devastating personality disorder,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s known to be genetic.’
‘I understand…’
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the vision of Ashleigh’s child playing underneath the tree he’d spent most of his own childhood sheltering beneath or in.
‘No, you can’t possibly understand,’ he bit out, turning around to face her. ‘Do you think I’ve wanted to have this burden all my life? I wish I could walk away from it, be a normal person for once instead of having to guard myself from having a re-run of my childhood played out in front of me every day.’
‘I’m sorry…’ She lowered her eyes from the fire of his, unable to withstand the pain reflected in his tortured gaze.
‘But I couldn’t risk it,’ he went on. ‘I couldn’t put that intolerable burden on to another person. Not you, or whatever children we might have produced. My father was a madman who could switch at any moment. I’d rather die than have any child of mine suffer what I suffered.’
‘But it might have skipped a generation…’ she offered in vain hope.
‘And then what?’ His eyes burned into hers. ‘I would have to watch it played out in the next or even the one after that but have no control over it whatsoever.’ His expression grew embittered as he continued, ‘How could I do that and live with myself?’
Ashleigh swallowed painfully. The burden of truth was almost more than she could bear but she knew she couldn’t tell him about Lachlan’s true parentage now. It would totally destroy him.
She watched as he sent his hand through his hair, his eyes losing their heat to grow dull and soulless as he turned to stare out of the window, the wall of his back like an impenetrable barrier.
‘You don’t know how much I’ve always envied you, Ashleigh,’ he said after another long moment of silence. ‘You have the sort of background that in fact most people today would envy. You have two parents who quite clearly love each other and have done so for many years exclusively, two sisters who adore you and not a trace of ill feeling to cast a shadow over the last twenty-odd years you’ve spent being a family.’ He turned and looked at her, his expression grim. ‘I’m sorry for what I couldn’t give you, Ashleigh. If it’s any comfort to your ego, I was tempted. Damn tempted. More tempted than I’d ever been previously and certainly more tempted than any time since.’
‘Thank you…’ she somehow managed to say, her eyes moving away from the steady surveillance of his.
She heard him give one of his trademark humourless grunts of laughter.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me how many lovers I’ve had over the years? Isn’t that what most women would have asked by now?’
‘I’m not interested,’ she answered.
‘How many lovers have you had?’ he asked.
‘I told you before, it’s none of your business.’
‘Well…’ He stroked the line of his jaw for a moment, the raspy sound of his fingers on his unshaven skin making Ashleigh’s toes curl involuntarily. ‘One has to assume there have been at least two. Your son’s father for one and then, of course, there’s dear old Howard.’
Ashleigh felt increasingly uncomfortable under his lazy scrutiny. She kept her eyes averted in case he caught even a trace of the hunger she knew was there. She could feel it. It crawled beneath the surface of her skin, looking for a way out. Even her fingertips twitched with the need to feel his flesh under them once more. Behind the shield of her bra she could feel the heavy weight of her breasts secretly aching for the heat and fire of his mouth and tongue, and her legs were beginning to tremble with the effort of keeping her upright when all they wanted was to collapse so her body could cling to the strength and power of his.
‘Tell me, Ashleigh.’ Jake’s voice was a deep velvet caress across her too sensitive skin. ‘Does Howard make you scream the way I used to?’
She stared at him speechlessly, hot colour storming into her cheeks, her hands clenching into fists by her sides.
‘How dare you ask such a thing?’ she spat at him furiously.
His lip curled. ‘You find my question offensive?’
She sent him a heated glare. ‘Everything about you is offensive, Jake. You might think handing over your father’s goods for free gives you automatic licence to offend me at every opportunity, but I won’t allow you to speak to me that way.’
‘It’s a perfectly reasonable question, Ashleigh,’ he said. ‘You and I did, after all, have something pretty special going on there for a couple of years way back then. I was just wondering, as any other man would, if your future husband comes up to scratch in the sack.’
She folded her arms and set her mouth. ‘Unlike you, Jake
Marriott, Howard treats me with a little more respect.’
‘You mean he hasn’t had you up against the kitchen bench with your knickers around your ankles?’ he asked with a sardonic gleam in his dark eyes. ‘Or what about the lounge room floor with all the curtains opened? Has he done you there? Or what about the—’
‘Stop it!’ She flew at him in outrage, her hands flying at his face to stop the stream of words that shamed her cruelly. ‘Stop it!’
Jake caught her flailing arms with consummate ease and pulled her roughly into his embrace, his mouth crashing down on hers smothering her protests, her cries, even her soft gasp of pleasure…
His tongue slid along the surface of hers, enticing it into a sensuous, dangerous, tempting dance that sent the blood instantly roaring through her veins, the rush of it making her head swim with uncontrollable need—a need that had lain hidden and dampened down for far too long.
Ashleigh vaguely registered the sound of movement in the hall, but was too far gone with the sensations of Jake’s commanding kiss to break away from his iron hold.
So what if Lachlan came in and found her kissing Jake as if there was no tomorrow? The truth was that there was no tomorrow for her and Jake, and this kiss would very probably have to last a lifetim
e.
But in the end it wasn’t Lachlan’s voice that had her springing from Jake’s arms in heart-stopping shock.
It was her sister’s.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ASHLEIGH, I just thought I’d let you know—’ Ellie pulled up short when she came across her sister’s stricken look ‘—that Mum couldn’t make it to pick up Lachlan so…so I decided to come and take him off your hands.’ She pointed in the general direction of the front door. ‘I did try and knock but there was…no answer…’
Jake let his arms fall from Ashleigh and greeted Ellie with his customary somewhat detached politeness.
‘Hello, Ellie.’ He brushed her cheek briefly with a kiss. ‘You’re looking…er…very grown up.’
Ashleigh felt like groaning at his understatement. Ellie had the sort of figure that turned heads, male and female, her most attractive feature, however, being that she seemed totally unaware of how gorgeous she looked.
‘Hi, Jake!’ Ellie beamed up at him engagingly. ‘You’re looking pretty good yourself.’ She glanced about the room and added, ‘Wow, this sure is some mansion.’ She turned back to look at him. ‘I didn’t know you had a thing for antiques.’
‘I don’t,’ Jake answered. ‘Ashleigh is helping me sort through everything.’
Ashleigh wanted the floor to open up and leave her to the spiders under the house’s foundations. Surely it would be better than facing the knowing wink of her cheeky younger sister, who was quite obviously speculating on the interesting little tableau she’d just burst in on.
Ashleigh knew for a fact that Jake certainly wasn’t suffering any embarrassment over it. She caught the tail-end of his glinting look, his dark eyes holding an unmistakable promise to finish what he’d started as soon as they were alone, rules or no rules.
‘Ashleigh will do a fine job, I’m sure, won’t you, Ash?’ Ellie grinned. ‘She’ll have all your most valuable assets in her hot little hands in no time.’
Ashleigh threw her a fulminating look but just then Lachlan’s footsteps could be heard coming along the hall.
‘Auntie Ellie!’ Lachlan came bounding in, instantly throwing his arms around Ellie’s middle and squeezing tightly.