by Lynne Graham
Caught unprepared by the cutting force of his attack, Tabby was pale as milk. ‘I wasn’t going to—’
‘Zut alors…just as well!’ Christien snarled. ‘Not unless you want to hear how outraged I am at the knowledge that a stupid schoolgirl has been attempting to raise my son!’
‘Don’t you call me stupid.’ Tabby’s temper flared. ‘I might not be a real brainbox like you, but there’s nothing wrong with my brain—’
‘Isn’t there?’ Christien incised at the speed of a rapier. ‘You’ve already told me that, until your aunt offered you a bed, you were sleeping on a floor while you were pregnant. Had you contacted me, you would have been living in luxury. So not contacting me was an act of inexcusable stupidity!’
‘Listening to you right now, not contacting you strikes me as having been a very clever decision. Being a filthy rich, smug four-letter-word doesn’t make you any more acceptable!’ Tabby shot back at him.
‘Except in the parent stakes. Strive to focus on the main issue, chérie. Four years ago, it was your responsibility to protect our unborn child by taking no risks with your own health. Since when was sleeping on floors recommended for pregnant women?’
Compressing her lips, Tabby turned her head away.
‘But in the present, our primary concern must simply be Jake…not how I feel about your lies or how you feel about me. This is about Jake and his rights.’ Christien lifted a forceful brown hand to stress his point. ‘And his most basic right was his father’s care, which you chose to deny him.’
Tabby knotted her trembling hands tightly together. Her palms were damp, her eyes felt scratchy and her throat was so tight it was hurting. No matter how hard she attempted to make herself she could not hold Christien’s outraged dark golden gaze. It was as if he had got her by the throat and stolen every excuse she might have employed before she even got the chance to think any up. Jake and his rights. No, she had to admit that her son’s right to know his father had only occurred to her in more recent times when she had had to face the fact that Jake would soon be reaching an age when he would be asking awkward questions.
‘The way you felt about me, I didn’t think you’d want to know about him.’ Tabby knew she sounded accusing, but she could not help it for she did not think it was fair for him to refuse to acknowledge that his treatment of her had naturally influenced her expectations and her opinion of him.
‘That decision was not yours to make—’
‘OK…I went to the accident enquiry determined to tell you that you were the father of my son but you couldn’t even give me five minutes of your time—’
As Tabby made that reminder the angular lines of Christien’s fabulous bone structure hardened into prominence below his olive skin, but he stood his ground. ‘That is not the point—’
‘Excuse me, that is exactly the point!’ Tabby argued fiercely, recalling the terrible feeling of humiliation she had experienced that day and stiffening in sick remembrance. ‘I was ready, willing and eager to tell you about Jake. I think you need to remember what a louse you were to me that day—’
‘I did and I said nothing—’
‘And nothing was precisely what you deserved and got for treating me like the dirt beneath your feet!’ Tabby hurled furiously. ‘I practically begged you to speak to me in private in spite of the fact that your awful snobby relatives and friends were all lined up with you and shooting me looks of loathing as if I, rather than my father, had been the cause of that ghastly accident!’
Christien was rigid and pale with rage. ‘Ciel! That day I was too busy grieving for my father to concern myself with the behaviour of other people—’
‘You didn’t give a damn! I was eighteen and I was alone in a foreign country and I was grieving too.’ Tabby was shaking, raw with pain and the need to justify her own actions and defend herself. ‘But you talk now and you behaved then as if you had cornered the grief market. You lost a father. Well, at least you were able to look back on your memories of him with respect and affection. I was denied even that because my dad got drunk and destroyed a lot of other lives as well as his own!’
Christien spread two lean hands in a movement of angry rebuttal. ‘I did not even notice how others were behaving. If you think that grief was all that lay behind my distance with you that day—’
‘Don’t you shout at me!’ Tabby interrupted wrathfully.
Hauling in a furious breath, Christien then froze in bewilderment at the strange noise he could hear emanating down from the floor above. Tabby was quicker to recognise and react to her son’s frightened howl and she raced for the stairs in automatic maternal pilot. She found Jake sitting bolt upright in bed, tears running down his pale, scared face.
‘The car…the car ran me over!’ her son sobbed, letting her work out for herself what had caused the nightmare that had wakened him from his sleep.
Tabby tugged his small, trembling body into her arms. ‘It was just a dream, Jake…just a dream. The car didn’t run you over. You’re safe. You’re all right. You got a fright but you weren’t hurt,’ she told him with a note of soothing and determined cheer in her quiet intonation.
But the consequence that she had feared from the minute she ran to her son’s bedside was already happening. Although Jake had stopped crying as soon as she’d put her arms round him, he was now struggling for breath and wheezing. Worse, because he was not yet fully awake and still recovering from the effects of his nightmare, he was all the more distressed by his physical difficulties.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHRISTIEN was paralysed to the spot by shock as he watched Jake fight to get air into his skinny little chest. As Christien had not even a nodding acquaintance with what fear felt like, his fear on his son’s behalf hit him as hard as a bullet from a gun. He watched Tabby grab up what looked like an inhaler and tend to the little boy. His little boy.
‘What’s the matter with him…what can I do?’ Christien demanded, sick to the stomach with the force of his concern.
‘You don’t need to do anything. Jake’s fine.’ Tabby’s squeaky tone was a leaden but obvious attempt to conceal her anxiety sooner than increase the risk of Jake getting more upset. ‘It’s just a little asthma attack and the medication in the bronchodilator will help put it under control.’
Unimpressed and constitutionally incapable of standing around doing nothing and feeling helpless, Christien stepped out onto the landing, dug out his mobile phone and hastily called a doctor.
Even as his son’s breathing difficulties subsided Christien discovered that he could not take his attention from Jake. In appearance the little boy was unmistakably a Laroche. His black curls ran down into a peak at the hairline just as Christien’s did. His eyes were just like his paternal grandmother’s—dark, liquid and very expressive. His olive skin was in direct contrast to Tabby’s fair colouring and the pure lines of his bone structure were already hinting at the strong features that could be seen in the family paintings. However, in apparent defiance of those genes from a tall, well-built family, Jake looked shockingly small and slight to Christien, who had had very little to do with young children. But then illness had probably stunted his son’s growth, Christien reflected sadly.
Tabby’s tension was beginning to drain away when Christien sat down on the other side of Jake’s bed as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Jake stared at the tall, dark male in his city suit with huge surprised eyes.
Tabby was annoyed that Christien was pushing in just when she had got her son calmed down. ‘Jake…this is—’
Christien closed a hand over Jake’s tiny one and breathed shakily, ‘I am your papa…your father, Christien Laroche—’
‘Christien!’ Tabby hissed in a piercing whisper, shaken by the ill-considered immediacy of that startling announcement. ‘If you upset him, it could cause another—’
‘Daddy…?’
Jake was studying Christien with big, wondering eyes.
‘Daddy…Papa. You can call me w
hatever you like.’ Satisfied to have introduced himself and claimed his rightful place in his son’s life, Christien smoothed a thumb over the little fingers curling within his. He smiled. Jake began to smile too.
‘Do you like football?’ Jake piped up hopefully.
‘Never miss a match,’ Christien lied without hesitation.
Feeling excluded for the first time since her son had been born, Tabby watched in a daze as Jake and Christien proceeded to demonstrate that the gap between three years and twenty-nine years was not so great as any mere female disinterested in sport might have supposed. But then Christien was bright enough and smooth enough to sell sand in a desert. A bell sounded and she jerked in surprise, only then appreciating that the cottage now possessed a doorbell.
‘That will probably be the doctor.’ Christien vaulted upright.
‘You called out a doctor?’ Tabby questioned in some annoyance.
‘Don’t go, Daddy,’ Jake protested worriedly.
Tabby hurried downstairs and opened the door to a suave medic in a suit. Jake clasped in one strong arm, Christien hailed the older man from the top of the stairs, and from that point on, as the French dialogue whizzed back and forth too fast for Tabby to follow and Jake was examined, Christien was in charge. Apart from the occasional question relating to the treatment Jake had received in London for his asthma, Tabby was required to play little part in the discussion that took place.
Finally, having shown the doctor out again, Tabby returned to Jake’s bedroom. Christien held a silencing finger to his lips. Her son had fallen asleep in his father’s arms. That Christien had won Jake’s trust so easily shook Tabby. ‘Let me tuck him in.’
‘I don’t think it would be a good idea to risk waking him up again,’ Christien asserted.
Tabby was tempted to snatch Jake from Christien’s arms and she was ashamed of her own streak of childish possessiveness. ‘You can’t be comfortable lying there like that.’
‘Why not? Are you the only one of us allowed to show parental affection?’ Christien queried, smooth as silk, dark golden eyes flaming satiric gold over his son’s downbent head. ‘I have a lot of time to make up with Jake. I won’t miss out on a single opportunity that comes my way. If he is comfortable, I will lie here all night and I really don’t care how uncomfortable I get or how you feel about that.’
Hot colour flooded her cheeks. He had thrown down a gauntlet but it was not one she was willing to pick up as yet. She was moving in uncharted territory. Christien had accepted that Jake was his without a single word of the protest she had expected or even a demand for further proof. That was good, she told herself. That he should be angry was natural, she told herself in addition. On the surface, Christien might seem to be handling her bombshell very well but, in reality, he had to be in shock too and he needed time to adjust. It would be foolish of her to argue with him before he had even had the chance to think through what being Jake’s father would demand from him.
Tabby sat down on the chair by the wall. She wanted to cuddle Jake, reassure herself that he was fine again, but instead Christien had him and she felt constrained. ‘There was really no need for you to contact a doctor,’ she remarked. ‘It was a very mild attack—’
Christien gave her a hard look of challenge, his strong jawline set firm. ‘I can afford the very best medical attention and I intend to avail myself of it for my son’s benefit. I would like him to see a couple of consultants. I want to be sure that he receives the best possible treatment.’
‘Don’t you think that you should discuss that first with me?’ Tabby was fighting her own resentment over his high-handed attitude with all her might, for she did not want to be unreasonable.
‘For three and a half years you have made all the decisions on our son’s behalf and I am not impressed by the value of your judgement.’
Tabby set her teeth together. ‘You’re not being fair.’
‘You kept Jake and I apart by denying me all knowledge of his existence. As a result, my son was forced to go without many advantages that I believe he should have enjoyed from birth,’ Christien enumerated coldly. ‘How can you expect me to think in terms of being fair to you? Were you fair to him?’
‘There is more to life than money. Our son has always had love.’
‘A very selfish love,’ Christien pronounced with lethal derision. ‘Both I and my family would have loved him. You have also deprived him of his cultural heritage—’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Tabby was staring fixedly at him but her throat was convulsing with tears held at bay only by will-power.
Christien dealt her a grim appraisal. ‘He speaks neither the Breton language nor French. He is the only child born to a proud and ancient line in this generation. He will mean a great deal to my family—’
‘Are you so sure of that? Are you sure they’ll be pleased to hear that you have an illegitimate son and that his mother is Gerry Burnside’s daughter?’ Tabby cut in painfully.
‘In France, children born outside marriage have the same rights of inheritance as those born within it. My family are more likely to be shocked that I should have a son who only met me today, a son who speaks not one word of our language and who does not know what it is to be a Laroche,’ Christien completed with icy conviction.
A chill ran down Tabby’s spine and then spread into her tummy to leave her feeling both cold and hollow. Lashes screening her pained and confused gaze from his, she surveyed them both: the man and the little boy with the same distinctive colouring. She watched Christien smooth back Jake’s mop of curls and, noticing that his hand was not quite steady, appreciated that he was not as in control as he would have liked her to believe.
‘He looks so like you,’ she could not help muttering.
‘I know.’ Christien sent her a blistering look of condemnation. ‘How could you do this to us?’
‘Christien—’
‘No, you listen to me,’ he broke in, low and deadly in tone, for he did not need to raise his voice to make her shiver. ‘From the hour he was conceived, he deserved the best we both had to give. His needs transcend your wishes and mine. You should have recognised that before he was even born. But now that I am part of his life, you will not be in a position to forget who and what comes first again.’
That sounded threatening. Tabby wanted to argue with him and demand to know exactly what he meant. However, she did recognise that he had voiced sufficient grains of hard truth to give her pause for thought. But, regardless, he was a man and she reckoned that there was no way he could really understand how fearfully hurt and humiliated she had been on the day of that accident enquiry when he had acted as though she had never meant anything to him. He had made her feel about an inch high and fiercely protective of Jake. She had assumed that Christien would have been even more scornful had she announced that she had given birth to their child. After all, he had demonstrated a complete lack of respect or caring towards her, so why would she have credited that he would react with any greater generosity to his young son? But then he had believed she had started seeing another guy and she had to make allowances for that.
When Tabby woke up, she was lying fully dressed on top of her bed with a bedspread pulled over her. After she’d fallen into a doze, Christien must have carried her through to her own room. It was already after nine in the morning and she scrambled out of bed. Jake’s tumbled bed was empty, his pyjamas lying on the floor. Frowning, she sped down the stairs and discovered that she was alone in the cottage. Panic tugging at her as she recalled how Christien had accused her of being no better than a kidnapper in keeping him and his son apart, she was almost afraid to read the note that she saw lying on the hearth. Christien’s abominable scrawl informed her that he had taken Jake out for a drive in the Ferrari. Slowly, she breathed again. What could be more natural than Jake getting a run in his father’s boy-toy car? Christien doing something so predictable and male made her feel a little more secure.
It was a beaut
iful hot sunny day and she took a green sun-dress from the wardrobe and went for a shower. Christien was so angry with her, so bitter. Would he ever get over that? Would he ever look at events from her point of view and appreciate that she had done what she believed was best? Was Jake to be their only link now? Well, at least Christien seemed keen to form a relationship with Jake, she told herself bracingly. Really that was what was most important. But her eyes ached and burned with unshed tears.
When she heard a car outside, she hurried straight to the door and was surprised to see Manette Bonnard walking up her path with a gaily wrapped parcel clasped in one hand. ‘I wanted to thank you for your kindness and understanding yesterday. I hope you have no objection but I have brought a small gift for your son,’ the older woman said tautly. ‘May I talk to you, mademoiselle?’
In bewilderment, Tabby tensed and then, with a rather uneasy smile of acquiescence, she invited her visitor in.
‘I’m afraid that I concealed my true identity from you yesterday. I was too embarrassed to admit who I was,’ the blonde woman confessed in a troubled rush. ‘My name is not Manette Bonnard. I lied about that. I am Christien’s mother, Matilde Laroche.’
Tabby was betrayed into a startled exclamation.
‘I drove over here to spy on you,’ Matilde admitted tightly, discomfited colour mantling her cheeks. ‘I thought you had no right to be in this house. I thought you had no right to be with my son.’
As Tabby wondered if the older woman was aware that Christien had spent the night with her that weekend that she had first visited her inheritance, never mind passed the night before under the same roof as well, she could no longer look her visitor in the eye. Worst of all, she could not think of a single thing to say to her either.
‘Although I knew nothing about you and had never met you, I told myself four years ago that I hated you because…well, because of who you are—’
As Matilde’s eyes filled with tears Tabby took her trembling hand into a sympathetic hold. ‘I understand…I really do understand—’