LITMIR.BIZ

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When my parents turned up unexpectedly to visit five months later, the last thing I was expecting to hear was that Tara was pregnant with my child.

      ‘I think that up until then they had been unwilling to believe it, but one look at my face must have betrayed my guilt.

      ‘Of course, there was no question of us marrying, nor indeed of there being a termination. It was much too late for that.

      ‘My parents offered to adopt the baby, but her parents refused. However, the only way her father would allow her to keep her child was if she promised never to see me again, and if I promised never to attempt to see my child. They said that I’d done enough, caused enough misery to their daughter and to them—’

      ‘They blamed you?’ Taylor interjected, unable to hold back the question or conceal her disbelief.

      ‘I was to blame,’ Bram told her. ‘Jay was…is my son…. I didn’t know then that my agreement would lead Jay to believe that I had refused to acknowledge him, or that his grandparents were going to use the circumstances of his birth to make him feel—’ Bram shook his head ‘—I’m sorry, I must be boring you.’

      ‘No. No, you aren’t,’ Taylor told him honestly. It was something totally outside her previous experience, to have a man be so totally open with her. Her father had always somehow distanced himself from both her and her sister, and the only other man she had really been close to… She closed her eyes, trying hard to resist the memories lurking in the shadows of her mind, waiting to stalk and terrify her as once…

      ‘Sir Anthony told me that you had brought your son up alone, but I hadn’t realised. You must be very close to each other.’

      As she saw the way his expression changed, Taylor knew she had hit a nerve. Unexpectedly, instead of feeling triumph that she had found some vulnerability in a man who, in all other respects, had seemed to her to be totally invulnerable, what she actually felt was an unfamiliar sense of sympathy.

      ‘In some ways, yes,’ Bram agreed. ‘In others…’ He paused and looked across the table. It was unlike him to talk so openly about himself on such a very short acquaintance.

      He had never been someone who felt it necessary to conceal certain aspects of his personality or his life, withholding information to boost his own sense of power or control, but neither was he given to instant intimacy or confidence sharing.

      ‘Jay was six years old when he came to live with me. He had been brought up to believe that I didn’t want him, that I had rejected him. He was very, very insecure. He refused to believe that I did love him, that I wasn’t lying to him when I told him that he had no need to fear that I would abandon him. Subconsciously, I suspect, he blamed me for the unhappiness of his early years—with good reason. As a child he was very possessive about me…about our relationship.’

      Again he stopped speaking. He rarely discussed his real feelings about Jay’s possessiveness towards him.

      Possessive. Taylor shuddered openly as she silently repeated the word.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Bram asked her, as she pushed her food away from her, her face suddenly pale and strained. ‘Don’t you like it? I can—’

      ‘No. No…I’m just not hungry any more,’ Taylor told him huskily. ‘That…that must have been very hard to deal with… your son being…possessive about you.’

      Taylor knew she was walking on dangerous ground, but she seemed drawn compulsively to it, like a child knowingly taking the risk of walking on ice in spite of warnings that it was too thin, thrilling to the sense of danger the action brought, even while terrified by it.

      ‘It hasn’t always been easy,’ Bram allowed, but he was still frowning as he looked at her plate of half-eaten food. Taylor sensed that he was regretting having confided in her, and that he was deliberately trying to focus both his own and her attention in other directions.

      Silently she gave in. After all, she knew well enough what it felt like not to want to talk…to explain…to feel threatened by another person’s curiosity and interest.

      ‘What about you?’ Bram asked her. ‘Your family—’

      ‘I don’t have one,’ Taylor told him quickly. ‘They’re all…my parents were killed in…in an accident when… some years ago….’

      ‘When you were at university,’ Bram hazarded, remembering what Anthony had told him about her leaving university.

      The look of shock and fear on her face was so intense that it made Bram wonder what on earth he had said to cause it.

      ‘How…how did you know about that?’ she demanded hoarsely. ‘About my leaving university. How did you know when…when the accident happened.’

      ‘I didn’t,’ Bram told her, giving her a puzzled look. ‘I just guessed that it could have happened then, because Anthony mentioned that you left before getting your degree.’

      ‘I take it you were an only child. Their deaths must have been very painful for you.’ Her frozen intentness, her wary hostility marked such a dramatic change from her earlier manner when they had been discussing Jay that it caught Bram totally off guard. Why had his mentioning the fact that she had left university early caused such a dramatic reaction? Not surely simply because she felt embarrassed about not completing her degree.

      While Bram tried to puzzle out what was wrong, Taylor had started to reach for her handbag. ‘I…I have to go,’ she told him when he looked at her. ‘I…’

      ‘But you haven’t finished your meal,’ Bram protested.

      ‘I…I’m not very hungry,’ he heard Taylor reply. ‘And besides, it’s…it’s getting dark and…’

      Had she been another woman, a different woman, he might have been tempted to tease her a little about her reaction—an overreaction—but because he could sense how genuinely agitated and upset she was, Bram held his tongue.

      ‘Let me at least get you a taxi,’ he offered quietly. ‘As you say, it is getting dark. My fault, I’m afraid. I was enjoying the self-indulgence of talking about myself so much that I hadn’t realised the time. You’re a very good listener,’ he added warmly.

      ‘I…I really must go.’

      She was avoiding looking directly at him, Bram recognised.

      ‘And…I prefer to use my own taxi firm, if you don’t mind. The drivers are all women…and…’

      It was obvious to Bram that she didn’t like having to disclose even little pieces of personal information. But why? Did she feel that he would mock her, make fun of her for her obvious fear? Did she really think he was that kind of man, so crass and insensitive?

      Of course, he could understand how any woman might feel wary of entrusting herself to an unknown man. You only had to listen to the news, read the papers….

      But Taylor’s fear was more specific than that, he was sure of it. It wasn’t the tentative unknowing fear of a sexually naïve, inexperienced woman, the old-fashioned ‘spinster’ beloved of satirists of another age. No, Taylor’s fear was more specific, more acute than that.

      ‘Well, let me at least get the maître d’ to call the taxi firm for you,’ Bram suggested gently.

      Reluctantly Taylor gave him the number. She knew that he was only trying to be kind…to be helpful; that with Bram, in Bram, she had nothing to fear. But old habits die hard and old fears even harder.

      She had let her guard down much too far when she had been listening to him talking about his life. She had been unprepared for his question about the fact that she had left university with her course unfinished.

      ‘It must have been very hard for you, losing your parents like that,’ he was saying to her now as he walked with her towards the door. ‘I know how badly the deaths of his mother and grandparents affected Jay, although, of course,

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