The Millionaire's Love-Child

He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, she remembered, shocked even now to recognise the depth of excitement his interest had produced in her. But that was when she had been guileless, unaware of how easily a man could pledge his feelings, and how easily a woman could be snared by her own sexuality. That was when she had still been young enough to take her happiness as read, before Warren had jilted her, before she had reacted to his defection to his lovely model in the most humiliating way.

‘I suppose practice makes perfect,’ she said tartly, and wondered, with a sudden quickening of her pulse, if despite his marriage and all the time that had passed since, he could still be remotely attracted to her.

Then she decided it was just another ploy on his part to take her mind off the main issue when, still thinking about a whole host of things she would have been wise not to remember, she heard him say, ‘Here we are.’

CHAPTER TWO

IF SHE lived to be a hundred and fifty, Annie thought, she wouldn’t have believed it possible to find herself a victim of such a bizarre and cruel coincidence.

Because it was true. At least, that was what they were telling her. There had to be more conclusive tests, of course.

But how could her baby have been switched at birth with someone else’s? she agonised, forcing one foot in front of the other over the last flight of stairs down from the office where they had imparted the dreaded news. And not just someone, but someone she knew. Him!

He had intended to summon the lift, but she had insisted on taking the stairs. After the pain of being told officially that Sean probably wasn’t hers, she had needed to walk, to think, to try to recover some measure of stability.

Now, as Brant swung open the glass door to allow her into the brilliant June sunshine, she noticed the grim set of his jaw and remembered the anger he had unleashed on the two hospital officials to whom they had spoken. ‘If further tests prove conclusive, you will, of course, be instructing solicitors to sort out the custody issue,’ the middle-aged woman had said to Annie, as though she had been able to take it in—take anything in—right then.

‘Lawyers won’t be necessary.’ She had barely heard Brant’s succinct response, her brain still reeling from the cruel reality of it all. ‘We’re going to work it out for ourselves.’

Were they? At that moment, Annie could only let him conduct the interview, take control, even if she felt he was doing so against her paralysed will.

‘There’ll have to be an inquiry into how a thing like this could have happened,’ the woman’s male colleague tagged on, looking worried behind rimless steel glasses, which was when Brant’s temper had seemed to snap.

‘You’re darn right there will! And if you don’t instigate it after we’ve left this office, then I will!’ he had threatened. ‘It might be just a hiccup in the smooth running of your damned hospital, but it’s turned other people’s lives upside down—and someone’s going to have to answer for that!’

Which was an understatement, Annie thought as the door swung closed behind Brant now. Her world hadn’t just been turned upside down. Yesterday, and then last night when she hadn’t been able to sleep, she had felt as though it were hanging by a thread. Now that thread had snapped and it had come crashing down around her, choking, blinding her to all but its emotional chaos.

‘Come on,’ she heard Brant say gently, and felt a strong hand at her elbow. ‘I’ll take you for a drink.’

The café to which he took her was a small bistro within walking distance of the hospital. It wasn’t yet lunchtime, but the place was still humming with lively chatter.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Annie murmured, after the waiter had served them their drinks at the only small table left for two. She lifted the tall, slim glass to her lips, feeling the bitter-sweet tang of the iced grapefruit juice she had ordered zinging on her tongue, piercing through her numbness. ‘I thought this sort of thing only happened to other people.’

‘We are other people—to everybody else,’ he remarked, his tone phlegmatic, the anger she had witnessed in him back at the hospital banked down now like carefully controlled fire.

Over the rim of her glass, Annie watched him pick up his cup of strong black coffee, her eyes reluctantly drawn to the sinewy strength of his hand. He was a stranger to her and yet she had known the caress of those strong hands, known the excitement of his crushing weight…

Rather unsteadily she returned her glass to its little slate coaster, though not before catching the disconcerting awareness in those all-seeing eyes.

‘Why did you take off the way you did that Saturday morning after that party?’ he was suddenly asking. ‘Without saying a word to anyone?’

She looked at him quickly. Why did he have to mention that?

‘Apart from ringing your boss at home and handing in your notice, no one seemed to know what happened to you—where you went.’

Toying with her glass, Annie felt her heart change rhythm. Had he asked? A slow, insidious heat stole through her veins.

She shrugged, the royal-blue top striking against the shining vitality of her hair.

‘I went to France,’ she told him, meeting his eyes levelly now. ‘Fruit-picking. I needed a change. A break.’ She had needed the time too. Time to recover her pride, and recover from the shame she had left back here in England. ‘When the harvest was over, I spent time backpacking round the south of France.’

‘Sounds idyllic.’

‘Oh, it was!’ It was easy to bluff, to pretend, now that her wounds had healed.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to go away?’

Because she hadn’t planned it. She had simply run. ‘There didn’t seem to be much point.’

‘Not much…’ A spark of something like annoyance lit his eyes. ‘After what we shared?’

She wished he hadn’t reminded her, but since he had, she lifted her small chin in an almost defiant gesture and asked, ‘What did we share, Brant?’

A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘You even need to ask?’

What was he saying? Why was he even making such an issue of it?

Struggling for equanimity, she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster, ‘I was on the rebound. And you…’ You were in love with Naomi, her brain screamed at him, because you certainly married her soon enough afterwards! Pride hurting, she cringed as she heard herself asking the question burning through her from her bitter calculations. ‘Was she already pregnant when you made love to me?’

He didn’t answer for a moment. How could he? she thought woundedly, watching him pick up his spoon and toy absently with the dark liquid in his cup, though he had taken it without sugar.

‘Our boys were born on the same day.’ He sent a casual glance upwards towards two patrons who were passing their table, his eyes returning to the spoon he let drop into its saucer. ‘How do you answer that one, Annie?’

His tone might have been casual, but the intensity of his gaze impaled her, causing hot colour to flood into her cheeks.

He had been careful, of course. Unerring in his unshakeable responsibility towards her—to himself. Now it was Annie who was lost for words.

She hadn’t known, when Warren had asked her to start taking the contraceptive pill, that a simple dose of antibiotics for a chest infection could render it ineffective. But it had.

Matter-of-factly, Brant stated, ‘You conceived in a relationship that was falling apart.’ And when she didn’t answer, her lashes drooping, concealing the misery of recalling that time, he asked, ‘Did the two of you ever get back together?’

‘Hardly.’

‘But he was aware you had his child?’

‘Warren had his model. What happened to me after that wouldn’t have concerned him.’

‘So you didn’t tell him.’

Why should I have? she thought bitterly, but didn’t say it.

Quickly she lifted her glass again, took another swift draught of her juice. Already the ice was melting and it tasted less sharp, much more watery on her tongue.

‘So there’s no reason then for Maddox to be involved in this affair?’

Annie shook her head, replacing her glass. Across the table the eyes that studied her were like enigmatic pools.

‘The man must have needed his head read,’ he said softly.

Was that a compliment? Annie wondered, blushing as she considered the wild, abandoned way she had given herself to this virtual stranger sitting opposite her; wondered too just how wanton he must have considered her. But that one night of folly with him wasn’t in character with the real Annie Talbot at all. Her parents had always stressed the maxim of one man—one woman—one passion. They had adhered to it themselves and, until Warren’s unfaithfulness, she had thought she could easily follow in their footsteps.

She visualised them miles away in their little colonial-style house, her father quietly impatient, immobilised by a hip operation, her mother fussing over him, over-protective as usual, unaware of the shocking truth that was about to change their lives—all of their lives, she thought, the uncertainty darkening her eyes, puckering her forehead.

‘What are you thinking?’ Brant was setting his empty cup back on the table, eyes keen, senses sharp as a razor.

What she had been thinking during the long hours when she had been tossing and turning last night. ‘I’m wondering what Mum and Dad are going to say.’

‘When they find out that their grandchild’s mine and not Warren Maddox’s?’

For a moment his statement seemed to rock her off her axis.

‘Yours and Naomi’s,’ she enlarged at length.

‘Yes,’ he said, the way his breath seemed to shudder through his lungs leaving her in no doubt of how much he must have loved his wife.

Briefly, her mind wandered back to the woman she had glimpsed once from a distance getting into Brant’s car. Short, chic auburn hair and dark glasses. And that amazing height—only an inch or two shorter than Brant—which Annie, even in the four-inch heels to which he had referred earlier could never aspire to. Naomi Fox, as she had been then. Beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent—if office gossip was anything to go by—she had obviously swept Brant off his feet, then had died from a postpartum haemorrhage almost immediately after being delivered of their baby son.

Annie didn’t want to think about that, or what Brant must have endured because of it. But she couldn’t stop herself, in spite of everything, from considering his plight. Not only losing the woman he loved, but now learning that the child they had produced in their short marriage wasn’t theirs. She wondered how he could even begin to deal with that.

And the child he was raising, this unknown child—if the hospital was to be believed—was hers, the child she had given birth to. The sudden crushing need to see him, know him, almost stole the breath out of her lungs.

‘It isn’t very easy for my mother, either.’

His mother? His surprising statement dragged her back to the present. She hadn’t even considered that he might have parents. A mother. She’d imagined men like Brant merely happened. But naturally there would be other people involved, not just the two of them. Their babies. Her own parents. There would be other confused and anxious relations. Perhaps aunts and uncles. Did Brant have any brothers or sisters? Did Naomi? Suddenly, despite having shared his bed, shamefully she realised just how little she knew about him.

A mobile phone started ringing on another table, a shrill rendition of Greensleeves, intruding on her thoughts.

‘What about Naomi’s? Her parents?’ she asked, irritated by the sound. ‘Do they know?’

Brant turned a grim face from the neighbouring table as the ringing was answered. ‘Naomi was an orphan.’

‘Oh.’ She hadn’t expected that, imagined that anyone just a little older than herself, as Naomi must have been, might be without the parental love she had always taken for granted. But at least that was one less complication to worry about.

‘There’s just my mother and me,’ Brant told her, unwittingly answering the question she had silently posed a few moments before.

‘How is she taking it?’

‘She’s naturally upset. Concerned. You can’t expect anything else. Ever since Jack was born, she’s looked on him as her own flesh and blood. Her own grandchild. She’s helped with his upbringing, looked after him when it’s been difficult for me to be there. She’s begged me not to let him go.’

‘And you?’ Annie asked, the fear and conflict in her eyes all too apparent. If he was prepared to give up the child he had raised, it would mean him having to sue for custody of Sean, because she wouldn’t give him up without a fight.

‘As I said yesterday, I only want what’s best for both boys. Our own emotions and needs shouldn’t even come into it.’

And what did he think was best? To wrench each child from the only home, the only family, it had known for two years so that it could grow up with its biological parent, regardless of how much it hurt—the child as well as its family; regardless of the emotional and psychological cost?

‘I’ve got to pick up Sean.’

She leaped up, not caring how it looked. She only knew she had to get to her baby.

She was out in the street, gasping the polluted air. She had to get him back from Katrina’s now! She needed to cuddle him. Hold him close. Know that he was safe from anything that threatened.

She almost jumped at the strong, warm hand on her shoulder.

‘We’ll pick him up together.’ Through the roar of traffic, the blaring of car horns, Brant’s voice was firm, decisive.

‘No, it’s all right! I can get the tube from here,’ she said shakily, needing to get away from him, to hold him at bay. ‘I left his car seat in my car. I can drive out and get him myself.’ She was gabbling, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘You haven’t got one. It won’t be safe.’

‘You’re darn right it won’t. You aren’t in any fit state to go rushing about on tubes—and certainly not to drive anywhere,’ Brant told her grimly, his self-possession emphasising Annie’s own lack of composure. ‘Jack’s car seat’s in the boot.’ He took her arm, steering her out of the way of someone hurrying by. ‘We’ll go together,’ he reiterated. ‘And that’s final.’

‘Well, you’re certainly full of surprises,’ Katrina called, watching her friend coming down the garden path with Brant. A strawberry-blonde, with a thicket of short, wild curls, she had obviously seen the big car pull up and, unable to contain herself, had hurried out to greet them. Now her big blue eyes turned with reluctant appreciation towards Brant. ‘You found her, then.’ There was a surprising flush beneath the profusion of freckles Annie knew her friend hated.

‘Yes, thank you, Katrina. Your assistance proved very fruitful.’

‘My pleasure…sir,’ she returned with calculated emphasis, while her gaze drifting back to Annie warned, I hope you know what you’re doing, girl!

Quickly, Annie murmured, ‘Katrina, has Sean been OK?’

Her friend’s expression changed to curiosity. ‘Of course. He’s always OK. Why?’

Annie exhaled deeply. Of course. She was just being silly. Over-protective. She couldn’t prevent breaking into a broad smile, however, when she heard the thump of tiny feet and saw the nut-brown head appear from behind Katrina.

Serious-faced, already a real little boy in his blue and red chequered shirt and dungarees, he stopped dead when he saw Brant standing there beside his mother.

‘So you’re Sean,’ he breathed, dropping down to the child’s level.

Annie’s eyes darted from the man to the toddler. Was she imagining it? Or was that likeness between them as strong as the agony of her denial?

Catching the crack in Brant’s voice though as he said something else to the little boy, she could only guess at the tumult of emotion he was doing his best to conceal before the toddler, suddenly shy, clutched at Katrina’s denim-clad leg and disappeared behind it.

The blonde woman laughed.

‘It’s all right, Sean,’ Annie reassured him gently, so that the little boy, deciding it was safe, popped out again, fixing Brant with curious, though steady hazel eyes.

‘Kat! Fish!’ the child exclaimed proudly. ‘Kat! Fish!’

‘Catfish?’ The man’s smile was indulgent, softening the severity of his features. From her vantage point Annie noticed how wide his shoulders were beneath the soft grey polo shirt, how the fabric of his chinos pulled tautly across his thighs.

‘Kat-fish,’ the two-year-old announced, rather impatiently this time, and in spite of the chaos inside her, Annie couldn’t keep from smiling when she realised what he meant.

‘Katrina’s embroidered an octopus on his new bib.’ It was bright yellow on its pale blue background, with disjointed eyes and tentacles. Her friend was always doing things like that. She managed to laugh. ‘It’s gross, Kat!’

‘No, it isn’t.’ Katrina grinned. ‘It’s a friendly little octopus.’ She pretended to be one, sending Sean shrieking down the passageway. ‘It’s only big fish that gobble you up and then spit you out again. Isn’t that right, Seanie?’

It was child’s play, but Annie felt the keen glance Brant sliced her as he got to his feet. Mortified, she caught her breath. They both knew what Katrina meant.

They were silent as Brant drove them back to the flat. Sean had fallen asleep in the back of the car in the little seat Brant had produced from the boot.

‘Sorry about Katrina. She can be a bit direct sometimes.’ She felt she needed to say something because he was just sitting there steering the powerful saloon. Hard lines carved what she had always thought was a rather cruel mouth.

‘What did you tell her about us?’ He was pulling up at a zebra crossing to let a middle-aged woman step on. She beamed at him and he responded with a distracted nod of his head. ‘Everything down to the last graphic detail?’

‘Of course not!’ she snapped, heated colour stealing into her cheeks. ‘She guessed. I think everyone did.’

‘That I bedded a freshly betrayed bride. And then dumped her just as Maddox did.’

No, not as Warren did, she thought as he put the car into motion again. Because Brant Cadman had made her no promises. Offered her nothing but one crazy, glorious night. She’d known the dangerous game she was playing when she had let him take her up to his room; known what she was doing, even though she had had just a little too much to drink that night, too much for her at any rate. It had been he who had suggested calling a halt to their caresses. He who had tried to tell her he didn’t believe in fooling around with women on the rebound, when she had so foolishly begged him not to go.

Her cheeks burned now with the shame of it and way down inside she felt the fierce pang of unwelcome desire undermined by the cutting pain of rejection.

‘Katrina’s my friend,’ she told him, ridiculously emotional. ‘She was only looking out for my interests.’ Suddenly she needed some spur, a point of antagonism to stab at the whole agonising trauma of the day. ‘I suppose in a minute you’ll be telling me you objected to her calling my boy “Seanie”!’ she tossed at him, with an emphasis on the ‘my boy’ that hit its mark if that tightening muscle in his jaw was anything to go by.

She heard him catch his breath and, after a moment, felt him glance her way.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re both wound up. This has been an ordeal for both of us. Let’s not quarrel to add to it. It will all be sorted out a lot more painlessly if we remain civil.’

She nodded, saying nothing. But at least that seemed to ease some of the tension between them.

Outside her flat, she was first out of the car, reaching into the back to try and free Sean from the unfamiliar seat.

‘Here, let me,’ Brant advised.

Leaning across the seat, he had released him in a second. Head lolling to one side, Sean was still sleeping soundly.

‘May I?’ Brant whispered.

Annie swallowed, nodded. Well he had to some time, didn’t he?

As he picked up the sleeping child, his features were marked with raw emotion and Annie felt the almost painful constriction of her throat.

What was he thinking, looking for, as those dark, searching eyes roamed over the infant? Some resemblance to the woman he’d loved? Had he already wondered, just as she had, if that distinctive little nose could be his? That the sun-streaked, tawny hair could be a feature of his wife’s and not hers—hers and Warren’s—as he could easily have supposed?

Fear rose in her again, the feeling that she was in danger of losing the only thing that really mattered to her—her baby—and immediately they were inside the flat she retrieved him from Brant.

When he was tucked up in bed for his afternoon nap she fed Bouncer, who was mewing around her ankles in the kitchen, and went back to join Brant in the sitting room.

He was looking at her paintings, particularly the miniature of a mistle thrush she was still working on. There were landscapes too. A sunset over a shadowy headland and a steam train, its plume of blue smoke like a heralding flag above the cutting of a distant hill.

‘These are good. They’re very good,’ he complimented.

At any other time she would have derived great pleasure from his saying so. Now, though, in view of everything, all she felt was a mild satisfaction that her labours were appreciated.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘We’re going to have to arrange for you to see Jack.’ He had straightened again, dominating the small room with his sheer presence. ‘Maybe tomorrow I can—’

‘No!’ Her panicked response put a query in his eyes. Hers were darkened almost to black. ‘I can’t—yet.’ She could feel herself trembling. Even her voice shook. ‘I’m not ready,’ she uttered, trying to make him understand.

She hankered after knowing what her birth child—if he was her child—was like. She also knew any meeting with him would be all too traumatic at present.

Suddenly she looked very pale and weary, a small, vulnerable figure in her clinging top and cropped trousers, shoulders slumping with emotional fatigue.

A couple of strides brought him over to her and somehow, she didn’t quite know how, she was standing in the circle of his arms with her cheek against the hard, warm wall of his chest.

In the silence of the room, she could hear the heavy rhythm of his heart, then from the kitchen the swift, dull clack of the cat-flap.

She raised her head, lifting her face to his, the need in those green-gold eyes meeting an answering need in Annie.

His lips were gentle on hers, a light, tentative touch meant only to console, an offer of solace from one troubled human being to another.

Annie groaned from deep in her throat, and, unable to stop herself, let her arms slide up around his neck.

His breathing quickened in response, and he caught her to him, his arms tightening around her yielding softness, drawing her hard against him.

His kiss had deepened into something more sensual and demanding, and Annie returned it with a fervour she hadn’t known she was still capable of, needing his strength, to be engulfed by the powerful aura of his sexuality and his hard-edged masculinity that was suddenly as familiar to her as her own name.

She wasn’t sure at what point she felt him withdraw. She only knew he had and she uttered a small protest when he unclasped her hands from behind his head and dragged them down, leaving her silently pleading, cast adrift, humiliated.

‘No, Annie. This will just complicate things,’ he stressed, but the raw intensity in his voice and his laboured breathing assured her that he was just as affected as she was. ‘I think it would be best if I left you for the time being. We’re both frayed by what has happened. Today hasn’t been easy—for either of us, but I think particularly for you. You need time to adjust to things. We both do. May I?’ He was indicating Sean’s bedroom door.

How could she stop him? she wondered achingly.