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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