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him, for one thing. She’d demanded everyone’s identities be kept secret all round. No doubt she wanted to live the fantasy that Rory was Gordon’s child.

      To be honest, Rory looked nothing like Gordon despite Linda’s lover also having been tall, dark and handsome. Gordon had been more of a pretty boy, with an elegant frame. Linda’s baby was the spitting image of his real father, whose body was all macho muscle and his facial features chiselled in granite. One look at sire and son together and anyone without preconceived ideas might put two and two together—and get big trouble!

      No, Nick could never be told the truth, Dave reaffirmed to himself. There was no reason to feel so guilty about it, either. What Nick didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. If Nick had wanted to be a father for real he could have been one by now. He could have married as well.

      Dave looked over at his handsome and highly intelligent friend, and wondered why he hadn’t. What was it that had set him upon a rolling stone, swinging bachelor lifestyle? Had something happened in his past to turn him off the idea of family and commitment?

      Could be, Dave supposed. There were a lot of emotionally damaged people out there these days.

      Nevertheless, Nick didn’t look at all emotionally damaged as he sat there, sipping a beer, his long legs stretched out before him, ankles crossed. He looked happy with himself, and totally relaxed.

      Dave sought a more simple explanation for his friend’s rather selfish choice of lifestyle. Maybe that unusual upbringing by nuns hadn’t given Nick the example of a normal family life which would make him want it for himself. He’d admitted being spoiled to death. Perhaps he’d grown up never having to satisfy anyone’s needs but his own.

      Still, that was only speculation.

      ‘Nick?’

      Nick took the beer away from his lips and placed it on the table. ‘Yep?’ he replied equably.

      ‘How come you’ve never married and had kids?’

      Was he wrong or did Nick stiffen again, showing another glimpse of that briefly uptight creature Dave had spotted a while ago?

      ‘Why do you ask?’ came Nick’s curt enquiry.

      ‘Just curious. You’re a good-looking guy. And you’re certainly not gay, from what I’ve observed at first hand. Most straight men get married at some time or other.’

      ‘Marriage is not for me,’ he said, again quite curtly. But then he smiled, and the old Nick was back once more. His black eyes gleamed and his mouth was lightly mocking. ‘I could ask the same of you, Dave. Why haven’t you a wife and family?’

      ‘I did have a wife. Once.’

      Nick just stared at him. He looked quite shocked. ‘What happened?’

      Dave shrugged. ‘Nothing drastic. Just divorce. But it turned me off marriage for life. As for kids... The truth is I can’t have any.’

      ‘Oh, God. That’s rotten luck, Dave. You’d have been a great father.’

      ‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion.’

      Actually, Dave was not one of those men who related easily to children. Or babies. He’d made it perfectly clear to Linda from the word go that she wasn’t to expect him to babysit except in cases of extreme emergency. He’d told her quite firmly that if she was silly enough to become a single mother on purpose, then the responsibility was hers and hers alone.

      Linda had scoffed at ever needing her brother’s non-existent babysitting abilities. The dear girl had gone into unmarried motherhood with rose-coloured glasses, only to discover it wasn’t nearly as easy as she’d thought it would be.

      Postnatal depression and an inability to breastfeed had been dismaying starters, gradually followed by the grim acceptance that good parenting was not something that miraculously happened on the birth of one’s baby, however wanted and loved that baby might be. There were some women who, while they loved their offspring to death, just weren’t cut out to be with them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

      This realisation had depressed Linda all the more.

      But, Linda being Linda, she hadn’t wallowed in her own weaknesses for too long. She’d hired her widowed neighbour to be Rory’s minder during the day and had gone back to work. She wasn’t totally happy with the situation, but she was at least sane.

      Linda’s experience confirmed to Dave that the Sawyer siblings were not natural parents, and that being childless was not the end of the world.

      To be perfectly frank,’ he told Nick now, ‘I’m not unhappy with the status quo. I’ve always been married to my job. And children have never been a priority with me, even before I knew I was sterile. My wife was right to divorce me. She now has a new husband and three incredibly noisy boys.’

      ‘So how is the job down at the paper?’ Nick asked.

      ‘Flat out as usual. I came here straight from the office. Worked all night and all morning getting Sunday’s edition ready. I’m just about to go home to bed and I don’t intend resurfacing for the next twenty hours. But first I think I’d better visit the Gents. That beer’s gone straight through me. Mind my mobile, will you? When you’re a journo they never leave you alone for too long. If it rings, answer it and tell whoever it is that I’m in a coma.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      NICK watched his friend make his way tiredly across the floor. Poor Dave. He felt sorry for him. He had nothing in life but that pathetic newspaper he worked on. Still, he could well understand that Dave might not want to marry again after his first marriage had ended in divorce. One bitten, twice shy was something Nick could relate to.

      He frowned darkly for a moment, then shuddered. Don’t start thinking about that, man, he ordered himself.

      His mind swung to the news Dave had given him about his failure to father a child for that unhappy, unfulfilled woman. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

      Initially, the thought that he’d given some unknown woman the baby she so desperately wanted had made him feel good. But then his feelings on the matter had changed. The idea of being a father had begun to both disturb and absorb him.

      Within a week of handing his specimen over, Nick had felt the urge to find out who this woman was, and what she looked like, whether she would make a good mother and whether he’d done the right thing in giving her the wherewithal to have his child.

      His child. Not her husband’s.

      That was why he’d fled Sydney eighteen months before. Because he’d known if he stayed, he might put such a search into reality. Yet he’d known that to do so would be very wrong.

      So he’d taken off around Australia again, seeking distraction from his disturbingly compulsive feelings. But nothing had totally emptied his mind of thoughts of his unknown offspring, and in the end he’d been forced to return and confront what was eating away at him—only to find out that the mystery child which had haunted his head did not exist! Had never, ever existed!

      Again he felt a fierce jab of disappointment.

      Male ego, Nick supposed ruefully. That perverse part of the male psyche which drove one to do stupid things and feel stupid things. He should be grateful that he’d failed to impregnate that woman. He didn’t want to bring a child into this world, even an unknown one. What was the matter with him? He’d given up being a masochist ten years ago, and he didn’t aim to start again now!

      He was scowling down into his beer when the beep of Dave’s mobile phone made him jump. A quick glance across the room showed no sign of Dave’s return, so he picked up the phone and pressed the answer button.

      ‘Dave’s phone,’ he said.

      ‘I must speak to Dave,’ a female voice said impatiently. ‘Is he there? This is Linda. His sister.’

      Nick

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