Читать книгу Special Deliveries: Her Nine-Month Secret - Кэтти Уильямс, Charlene Sands, Cathy Williams - Страница 11

HOW COULD SHE sail into his office, make an announcement that was going to blow his world apart and then sail right out, having forbidden him from following her? Or at the very least from locking her in his office and compelling her to repeat herself until his brain began truly absorbing what she had said.

Even as she disappeared through his office door, Luiz knew that it would be a mistake to try and drag her back. Despite her sunny nature, she could be stubborn, and he recognised that closed expression on her face and the thin, determined line of her mouth. It was the same look she had worn when, months previously, an itinerant worker had come to the sanctuary to reclaim the dog he had been caught beating. She had told him to get lost and he had taken one look at that obstinate face and had done as he had been ordered. Luiz had been impressed. He was rather less impressed now, when the stubborn determination was directed at him.

He was going to be a father. He could pretend that she might be lying, but not even he, sceptic that he was, could kid himself on that score. It was a messy situation, but in the quiet of his office, with all calls on hold and all meetings cancelled—much to his secretary’s surprise—Luiz recognised that it was not a situation that was going to go away despite what Holly had defiantly said. The mere fact that she had sought him out was indication enough that she now acknowledged that he was an indispensable part of her life. Talk about him having choices, about him being able to walk away, was empty talk. She surely must know that that would never be an option.

Whether she would ever admit it or not, she had landed on her feet in the money stakes.

He called her just before he was ready to leave the office. It was a little after five, hours before his normal departure time, but he hadn’t been able to focus on anything. She had asked him to mull things over. As far as he was concerned he had devoted the necessary time to the task at hand.

‘We need to meet.’

Holly heard the peremptory command in his voice and shivered. ‘Okay.’

‘Where are you staying?’

She gave him the name and address of the hotel. No one could accuse it of being five-star. It might struggle to make two, in fact.

Just out of the shower, she looked at the shabby wallpaper, the uninspiring prints on the wall and the snap-together furniture.

‘That part of London is a dump. Couldn’t you have found anywhere a little more upmarket?’

‘This wasn’t meant to be a weekend break,’ Holly retorted. ‘I had to come to London, so I chose somewhere affordable.’

‘I will send my driver for you…’

‘If you tell me where you want to meet,’ Holly interjected, just in case he thought that she would be impressed by a driver, ‘I can take public transport.’

Luiz ignored that. ‘He will be with you in half an hour.’

‘Luiz…’

‘Don’t be proud, Holly. I have a driver and it will save you the hassle of taking the tube or a bus. We’ll talk when we meet.’

Autocratic and controlling, Holly thought as she disconnected. And yet, hadn’t he always been? When they had been going out together, he had always known what to do in any crisis. He had always made decisions with an assurance that made you believe that there could not be any other possible outcome than the one he dictated. She had thrilled at his intuitive mastery, which was what she now suddenly decided to label arrogance.

Having put on weight, and having now found out that she was pregnant, Holly had abandoned all attempts to squeeze into her normal jeans and had invested in a couple of loose dresses. The one she now put on was slightly less frumpy than the one in which she had travelled and, despite her blistering scorn for Luiz and the lies he had told her, she still found herself surreptitiously eyeing her reflection in the mirror.

She didn’t think she looked pregnant. Not really. Perhaps a bit in profile; she looked at herself sideways on and placed her hand flat on her stomach. She looked… fat.

The shock of discovering herself to be pregnant had very quickly been replaced with joy, despite the obvious pitfalls ahead. Never had she wanted something as much as she wanted this baby. It might be Luiz’s nightmare, but not for her.

With this in mind, she anxiously climbed into the back seat of the top-of-the-range car which arrived to collect her precisely when Luiz had told her it would. It was only once she was inside the car that she realised she had forgotten to ask him where, exactly, they would be meeting.

Anticipating a restaurant, she was taken aback when the driver pulled away from the main drag to manoeuvre the leafy streets of Chelsea. She was even more taken aback when they finally stopped in front of an impressive four-storeyed red-brick building fronted by elaborately moulded wrought-iron gates. Two art deco stone lions, each slightly under a metre high, sat on either side of the black front door.

She had seen his office. Now she was going to see his house. She felt a nervous flutter and staunchly reminded herself that they were no longer lovers. They were now two people unhappily bound by circumstance.

The driver discreetly melted away the minute Luiz was in the hallway. For a few seconds, Holly could only stare. He was in a pair of faded black jeans that emphasised the length and muscular strength of his legs, and a dark-grey polo shirt. He was barefoot because the warm wooden floors were liberally broken with silk rugs which she imagined were sensuously soft to walk on.

It was an effort to tear her eyes away from him so that she could inspect her surroundings. Having braced herself for whatever further signs of this life he had been living away from her, she was still shocked at the visible extent of his wealth.

Bold paintings adorned the pale walls. Behind him, spanning a floor and a half, light filtered through an awe-inspiring stained-glass window. In various directions she could see further evidence of the wealthy background he had kept such a closely guarded secret from her. More paintings on the walls, a plant the size of a small tree strategically placed in the corner of a room, the merest glimpse of a sunken sitting area in what appeared to be a massive drawing room.

Holly was reluctantly forced to concede, just for a few seconds, that here was a man who might be über-cautious when it came to trust, especially in view of his past experience at the hands of a gold-digger.

‘If you’re going to give me a lecture on what a lowlife I am for hiding all this from you, then let’s get it out of the way so that we can move on to more important issues.’

‘It’s a very impressive house.’

‘Take off the coat.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I want to see evidence of your pregnancy.’

‘You mean you actually don’t believe that I’m telling you the truth?’

‘I do.’ He strolled towards her to ease her out of the coat and then, still standing in front of her, he gently rested his hand on her stomach.

The gesture came from nowhere and was so shocking that Holly gasped and stared up at him with huge, rounded eyes.

‘Well?’ Luiz moved back to thrust his hands into his pockets. Touching her like that, he could feel the firmness of her belly, the swell of it as his flesh and blood grew inside her. It was a sensation like no other. ‘Don’t tell me I don’t have a right to do that.’

‘We no longer have… that sort of relationship, Luiz.’ One feathery touched that had barely lasted two seconds and she could feel her body revving into life, as if it had just been idling for the past few weeks, waiting for a foot to depress the accelerator so that it could get going, charge back to life! She stepped away from him but her heart was beating at a rate and she knew that she was bright red.

Luiz was finding it next to impossible to look at her without imagining her with her clothes off. He had felt her stomach. He would have liked to see it, smooth and full, just as he would have liked to see her breasts, more succulent, the nipples bigger and darker, readying themselves for a suckling baby.

‘You said we… we needed to talk, Luiz, and we do—’

‘I’ll get you something to drink. Have you eaten?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘I’ll order something in.’

‘There’s no need…’

‘If we’re going to have an argument every single time I suggest something, then we won’t get very far,’ Luiz said coolly. ‘I lied to you—put it behind you and move on. Circumstances have now changed. There’s no room for petty resentments.’

Holly bit back the torrent of self-defence that rose quickly to the surface. Arguing would be counter-productive. He was right and she knew that, but she still hated the cool detachment in his voice when he had addressed her. She was humiliatingly aware that he had moved on. For all the stern lectures she had given herself, she hadn’t. It was easy for him to stand there and treat the whole matter like a business problem that required a solution—but then, little had she known it, he was a businessman who presumed that for every problem there was a solution. He was ideally placed to be dispassionate because he had no messy emotional ties to clutter the picture.

‘Fine.’ Holly managed the monosyllable but her voice sounded high and angry. He was heading towards the sitting room she had partially glimpsed through the half-opened door and she followed him, impervious to the grand displays of wealth.

The actual sitting area was an oasis of colour, sunken in the middle of an exquisite parquet surround, which was a suitable backdrop for beautifully maintained plants on one side and an imposing Chesterfield sofa on the other. Deep burgundy drapes pooled on the floor by the tall windows and picked up the rich colours of the sofas and the rug in the middle.

Luiz went immediately to one of the sofas and sprawled back. She had interrupted him in the middle of a drink. There was a bottle of red wine on the table in front of him, along with a crystal jug of iced water and a glass, presumably meant for her.

‘Before you tell me that my life is going to remain exactly the same,’ he drawled, his dark eyes fixed like lasers on her face, ‘I should warn you that you’ll be wasting your breath. Nothing in my life is going to be the same.’

‘Nothing in my life is going to be the same, either!’

‘And so we have to find a way of us both dealing with this situation.’ Luiz leant forward to refill his glass. He had spent all afternoon thinking about this and the remorseless conclusion he had reached was that he would have to marry her. What choice did he have? He came from a traditional family. It might be perfectly acceptable for her to think that they could have some sort of informal arrangement whereby he popped in to visit his own child when and if he got the chance, maybe video-called if he couldn’t be physically present. It wasn’t going to work.

‘I know it’s going to be difficult,’ Holly told him, ‘But it’s not that unusual a situation. You can come up whenever you want… have quality time. I won’t interfere and I promise to be very accommodating. If, on the other hand, you’d rather not get involved to that extent, then that’s fine as well. I understand that you’ve embarked on a whole new life with someone else and, although I do think it would be important for you to discuss this situation with your… er… girlfriend, there’s no way I would expect anything from you.’

Luiz tilted his head to one side, for all the world as though he was paying keen attention and actually listening to what she was suggesting.

‘No.’

‘No? No? What do you mean no?’ Holly looked at him in sudden confusion. She had exhausted all the options she could think of, so what exactly was he turning down? All of them? Didn’t he know that there was nothing else on the table?

‘I find that none of those options appeal.’ He sighed, finding it fairly incredulous that she seemed to have bypassed the ‘gold mine’ option staring her in the face.

‘I’m not following you.’

‘Let me put it this way: as far as I am concerned, the only choice I have is to marry you. My child will be born legitimate; there’s no other alternative. Naturally, you will have to agree to a pre-nup, but rest assured that as far as money goes you will be well taken care of. In fact, you could say that you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams.’

Holly was staring at him as though he had just grown wings and was now informing her that he would be flying to the moon. She wasn’t sure that she had quite heard correctly. Marriage? Then, following on from that, a pre-nup?

Bright patches of angry colour stained her cheeks but she was determined to keep it together.

‘That’s impossible, Luiz.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘But I do,’ she ventured tightly. ‘I could never forgive you for lying to me, Luiz, for assuming that I was an opportunist. Even when you got to know me, you still didn’t feel that you could tell me the truth—and the fact that you can calmly sit there and talk about a pre-nup! Well, that just says it all, it really does.’

‘Whether you like it or not,’ Luiz’s voice was low and firm, the voice of someone who has no intention of yielding, ‘I am part of this equation, Holly. I didn’t ask for this but I’m prepared to do the responsible thing.’

‘I don’t want you to feel responsible! I could never marry someone because they felt that it was their duty to marry me for the sake of a child!’ Distraught, she jumped to her feet and paced the sitting area, glaring down at the ornate Persian rug, unaware that Luiz was in front of her until she crashed into him and was forced to leap back.

She was hardly aware of his hands still steadying her. The deep, dark depths of his eyes held her captive and she knew that she was breathing quickly, practically hyperventilating. Like a moth helplessly drawn to a destructive flame, her mouth parted. She was aware of his touch altering, become more caressing. Of their own accord, her legs seemed to propel her inch by inch closer to him until they were separated by a hair’s breadth.

‘I don’t just feel a sense of duty towards you,’ Luiz murmured unsteadily.

Holly moaned. The soft sound shocked her, for it seemed to come from someone else, someone incapable of seeing reason.

Luiz’s dormant libido was raging and all-consuming. That first feel of her lips against his was like manna from heaven and he lost himself in the kiss. At the same time he shakily pushed his hands underneath the dress. It was like touching her for the first time even though her body, satin-smooth beneath his exploring hands, was gloriously familiar.

Her breasts were heavy, spilling out of the bra which he deftly unclasped. He stifled a groan of pure pleasure as the abrasive pads of his thumbs found her nipples, and he began rubbing them ceaselessly, wanting nothing more than to get his mouth on them so that he could taste them.

‘I want to see you.’ His voice was rough and uneven.

‘We shouldn’t…’ Holly could no longer think straight. The thought of seeing that flare of desire in his eyes as he looked at her threatened to turn her legs to jelly, but she wanted him so badly. She knew she shouldn’t, but how could she begin to fight the waves of pleasure radiating through her body? She allowed herself to be gently propelled back towards the huge, deep-red velvet sofa and her knees buckled as she hit the edge of it. In a trance, she sank back and her breath caught in her throat as he unbuttoned the top half of her dress. With a whimper of reluctant, inevitable submission, her eyelids fluttered shut on the sight of him staring down at her exposed breasts, taking in the ripe curves of her newly pregnant body.

She had never been able to resist him and she still couldn’t, Luiz thought with a savage surge of satisfaction. Despite all her protests, one touch and she melted. His arousal was pushing hard against the zip of his trousers but he took time to appreciate the stunning, glorious beauty of her incredible curves.

He didn’t stop to question the mystery of his erratic libido. He just knew that he wanted her. She was carrying his baby! Suddenly, there was an eroticism to that notion that left him reeling. He had never thought about having children before and yet, with the evidence of his virility in front of him, he was unashamedly proud of his achievement.

He felt her wriggle and writhe under him as he ran his hand over her stomach and marvelled at the sensuous feel of its roundness. He was strangely blown away to think that the miracle of life was happening under his hand. He was utterly lost in the anticipation of taking her, having inhabited a sex-free zone ever since he had walked out of her house, when he heard the sound of his doorbell.

Holly had sank so fast and so deep into the whirlpool of exquisite sensation that it took her sluggish brain a few seconds to realise that someone was at the door. Reality pushed through and she struggled onto her elbows. She was horrified at how easily she had succumbed to Luiz’s advances. What had she been thinking?

This was a man whose only concern lay with money; who had lied to her and then compounded his lack of faith in her by proposing marriage preceded by a pre-nup, which was the ultimate declaration that he still felt his wealth had to be protected! This was someone who would never have sought her out, would have been happy never to lay eyes on her again had she not turned up on his doorstep. A man who had grudgingly seen no other option for dealing with a situation he didn’t want but to marry her out of a misplaced sense of responsibility. On all fronts, a man from whom she should be keeping a healthy distance unless strictly necessary. And, yet, she had flung herself in his arms at the slightest of provocations!

As far as Holly was concerned, Luiz thought that he could always get exactly what he wanted and he wanted to marry her because, really and truly, he wanted the child she was carrying. She had turned down his marriage proposal. Had he then decided that there was more than one way of getting what he wanted, and having her back in his bed might succeed where words had failed? Once she had been his for the asking. Did he think that nothing had changed?

How genuine could his so-called sudden attraction be when he hadn’t made the slightest effort to get in touch for all those weeks, when in fact he had already found himself…

Shame and dismay left her speechless as she suddenly remembered that he had a girlfriend, the beautiful, glamorous Cecelia. So swept away had she been, that only now as the doorbell rang once more with renewed insistence, did she recall the leggy brunette with the impeccable connections.

Watching her, Luiz could easily see what was going through Holly’s head and he cursed fluidly under his breath.

‘Ignore that,’ he commanded, running with the theory that if he gave her no chance to withdraw completely from him then he could woo her back to the place which he was now desperate for her to occupy.

‘I can’t believe you. You…’ She wriggled, yanking up her dress and manoeuvring herself out from underneath him.

‘Let’s not play the blame game here, Holly. You haven’t ended up naked and under me because there was a gun to your head.’

‘And do you think I respect myself for… for…?’

‘Just come right out and say it—for wanting to make love to me. Where’s the shame in that?’ The doorbell rang again and Luiz furiously levered himself up while Holly frantically tried to get herself in order.

She was running her fingers through her hair when she heard the clicking of heels on the wooden floor, and when she looked to the doorway it was to see the most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her life. A living, breathing fashion doll was staring down at her.

Cecelia Follone. In real life, she was a million times more drop-dead gorgeous than the grainy pictures on the Internet had suggested. Long, dark hair flowed in artful disarray down her slender back. Olive-skinned and green-eyed, she had a body that was made for very, very small items of clothing, and she clearly knew that, for the vibrant red jersey-dress barely skimmed the top of her thighs. She carried her expensive coat over one shoulder.

For a few seconds, both were speechless for different reasons, but Cecelia was the first to break the silence with a barrage of high-pitched, accusatory Portuguese. Holly didn’t have to be a mind-reader to understand exactly what was being said. Mortified, she hurried up to the doorway, her face burning and her eyes very pointedly not resting on Luiz who seemed remarkably unfazed by the arrival of his girlfriend. He held up one imperious hand which brought the torrent of rapid Portuguese to an abrupt halt.

‘It seems I have forgotten that I had a date… understandable, given the circumstances.’

Holly took a deep breath and held out her hand to Cecelia who looked at it disparagingly. ‘I… I’m very pleased to meet you.’ She dropped her hand to her side and cleared her throat. ‘I’m… eh… Holly.’

This elicited another round of hysterical Portuguese which Luiz listened to before saying coldly, ‘Please speak English, Cecelia.’

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’

‘Actually, I was just on my way out.’

‘I don’t think so…’ Luiz’s voice was calm and final but Holly ignored him.

‘I came here to… to…’

‘Circumstances have changed, Cecelia.’ Luiz turned to the brunette who in heels was easily six feet, which made Holly feel like a pygmy in comparison. ‘I will call you tomorrow to explain but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.’

‘I am not going anywhere until I know what is going on!’ Cecelia’s high-pitched, accented English was laced with venom.

‘Nothing’s going on!’ Holly defended quickly. ‘I just came to have a quick chat with, er, Luiz, and I was just about to leave.’

‘Chat about what?’

Luiz had been lounging against the doorway, and with a laborious sigh he swivelled Cecelia to face him and spoke to her in Portuguese. He kept his voice low and flat which made much more of an impact than if he had shown any sign of emotion.

From the sidelines, Holly watched as Cecelia’s eyes widened and her mouth compressed. She wanted to be anywhere but here, in this house, and she was sickeningly ashamed of herself and of her lack of self-control. Trying to make herself as invisible as she could, staring down at the floor, she kept perfectly still for the next ten minutes as Luiz and Cecelia conducted a conversation she couldn’t understand but was astute enough to surmise.

She breathed a sigh of relief when Cecelia was finally escorted out of the house and she took advantage of that brief window of time alone to gather all her possessions so that she was ready and waiting to leave when Luiz re-entered the room.

‘What did you say to her?’ Holly asked bluntly.

‘Where are you going? Our conversation isn’t finished by a long way. I told Cecelia that our relationship was over.’

‘Because of me?’

‘I didn’t go into details but, considering you were standing in a state of dishevelment right in front of her, then I’m guessing she might have deduced the reasons for herself.’

‘How could you? How could you seduce me when you’re involved with someone else? It makes me feel ill to think about it.’ She felt even more ill as she wondered when he had last made love to Cecelia. Yesterday? The day before? Every day for the last few weeks they had been dating? He was a very virile man with a powerful libido. She couldn’t bear the thought of him touching the other woman and then touching her, and she was shocked at the force of her own jealousy which had no part to play in the sort of relationship they now had.

Luiz hesitated. Getting rid of Cecelia, callous though he knew he must appear, had not been any great hardship. She had occupied the strange void left in Holly’s absence and he was disturbed at himself for allowing that to happen. He wondered how he couldn’t have seen that, however great her credentials, she still didn’t quite fit the bill. He pulled back from the question he knew Holly was asking him—had Cecelia been his lover?—as his sex life wasn’t under discussion here. It was an irrelevance. The fact that he hadn’t had one with Cecelia was an even greater irrelevance as far as he was concerned.

‘My relationship with Cecelia is no longer an issue. Reaching a conclusion on how to deal with what has happened is. So…’ He nodded in the direction of the lounge. Holly hesitated, adamant that she had put her cards on the table and was not going to reshuffle the deck and start again. More than anything, she needed to make him understand that that little blip when she had fallen straight back into his arms was not going to happen again. She reluctantly removed the coat and followed him into the sitting room.

‘You didn’t have to break up with your girlfriend,’ were her opening words as she sat down, facing him. ‘I told you I didn’t want to ruin anything you had with her and I meant it.’

‘In that case, you are clearly a lot more liberated than I am.’ He folded his arms behind his head. ‘Somehow going out with one woman whilst another is having my baby doesn’t work for me.’ He dropped his arms to his knees and leaned forward. ‘Don’t try and fight me on this, Holly. Marriage is the only solution. I will not be a part-time father and it would be immoral to deprive any child of the benefit of having two parents.’

‘And it wouldn’t be right for us to get married just for the sake of a child. Luiz, you never, ever wanted any sort of commitment with me. You never trusted me. How on earth can you expect me to ignore all of that and to get married just because of an accident?’

‘Tripping over a loose paving stone is an accident; the ramifications disappear quickly. Having a child is in a completely different league and the ramifications never disappear. Whatever the circumstances of this pregnancy, we both have to take ownership of the situation and bury our differences.’

Talking to him, Holly thought helplessly, was like talking to a brick wall. Yet there was no way that she was going to cave in. As far as she was concerned, they could both be loving parents without having to pay the ultimate price. She wanted to tell him that, had it not been for the life growing inside her, he would have already been making plans to marry Cecelia. He would have had his perfect partner. Now, he would be stuck with her, and how long before the poisonous thread of resentment began seeping into him?

‘That doesn’t mean that we have to get married.’ Holly looked at him with stubborn defiance. ‘We can be loving, responsible parents without being tied to one another. It’s better that we’re both happy individuals apart than miserable and bitter together.’

Luiz didn’t see how she could possibly mean that when less than three months ago she had been keen to take their relationship to another level. Yet, that stubborn, closed expression…

For the first time he fully appreciated the depth of the damage his well-intentioned fabrications had done. Throw in a girlfriend acquired for all the wrong reasons and, no matter that the girlfriend had been dispatched and marriage proposed, she was still in no mood to budge.

‘You make it sound as though marriage to me would be torture,’ Luiz said through gritted teeth, frustrated at being unable to get around her. ‘And yet, don’t try and pretend that there isn’t chemistry between us!’

‘I wondered how long it would take for you to bring that up!’ Holly retorted with bitterness. Sex was all it had ever been for him. While she had been busy building castles in the sky and fantasising about marriage and babies, he had been happy to use her as a plaything, a doting plaything willing to do anything he wanted.

‘Yes, I find you attractive. I suppose lots of women do. It’s not enough.’ She lowered her eyes. There was a treacherous voice in her head asking her what was enough, really? Were there ever any guarantees that any marriage would work out…? Didn’t some marriages fail even when the right boxes had all been ticked and the profit-and-loss columns neatly balanced…?

She ignored that voice and continued quietly and insistently, ‘We both deserve happiness. You shouldn’t have broken up with your girlfriend. One day, I’ll find my soul mate and it will be healthier for our child to be the products of two happy parents even if they’re not happy together.’

Luiz was affronted by what she had just said on pretty much every level. Whatever he had said or done in the past, most other women would have leapt at the offer he had extended because it really didn’t get much better than that. The fact that they still couldn’t keep their hands off one another was an added and pleasurable bonus. So why was she digging her heels in and treating him as though he had offered her a pact with the devil? And who was this soul mate she had in mind? Not too long ago, he had been her soul mate! Why couldn’t she stop being so damned proud and wake up to the fact that he was right?

‘Ending my relationship with Cecelia was not a source of regret for me,’ Luiz conceded heavily. ‘I would have broken up with her whether or not you were in the picture.’

‘You would?’ Holly could have kicked herself for the spark of interested curiosity she could hear in her voice. Did that make any difference? No. ‘But she’s perfect for you. I thought you were on the lookout for the right woman with the right background…’

‘We’re covering old ground here. You won’t marry me—that poses a number of obvious problems. Firstly, do you honestly expect me to commute to Yorkshire?’

‘You did for ages.’ She was afflicted with a sharp pang of memory at the pleasure those weekend visits had always elicited.

‘Weekends.’ Luiz brushed aside her interruption dismissively. ‘I would want more than just weekend visits. It is a long way to travel for a couple of hours during the week. Furthermore, what about schooling when the time comes? How far is it to the nearest school? Do you suggest an erratic education because you live in the middle of nowhere where it’s liable to snow for a large proportion of winter?’

‘You’re projecting into the future,’ Holly said uncertainly.

‘I’m attempting to reach a fair and equitable arrangement. Sacrifices have to be made. If you’re not willing to marry me, then you’re going to have to climb down from your moral platform and start meeting me halfway.’

‘I can’t live in a city.’

‘And I refuse to commute to Yorkshire. It’s impractical.’ If she wanted to play hardball, Luiz thought, then he would play hardball, too.

‘Why do you have to be unreasonable?’ But was he? How many men would have risen to the occasion with equal unstinting generosity? He hadn’t asked for his life to be derailed by circumstances beyond his control and yet he was willing to assume his responsibilities whatever the cost to the future he had had neatly laid out in front of him. In return, all she could think about was her own past hurt and emotional wounds that were still raw and bleeding. She sighed and slumped. ‘I can’t move to a city—what about my animals?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘This can all be worked out.’ He refused to yield to her drooping, forlorn body language. ‘I’ll be out of the country for the next week. You can use the time to think about it. You seem to think that nothing will change—everything will.’