Anticipating dissension, and ready for it, she was taken aback when he released her with a wry little shrug.
‘If that’s what you really want.’
‘It is.’ She made every effort to infuse certainty into her voice. ‘And I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused between you and Paula.’
His smile was fleeting. ‘No, you’re not. As a matter of fact, you’ve done me a favour.’
‘Oh, sure! You were racking your brains for an excuse to dump her!’ Limbs shaky, Regan bent to pick up his jacket from the floor, holding it out to him, eyes dark green pools. ‘Since when did you need help in that direction?’
He took the jacket from her and put it on without responding to the accusation, expression unrevealing. ‘It was good seeing you again, regardless,’ he said. ‘Take care.’
He was gone before she could draw breath to answer, leaving her standing there like a dummy. She had to force herself into movement, going over to lock the door in his wake. She still had her secret; that was all that mattered. It had to be all that mattered!
CHAPTER TWO
HUGH proved more intrigued than angry about the mix-up.
‘I gather Bentley has something of a proprietary interest in you himself,’ he said on Monday morning when Regan apologised to him. ‘A pretty long-standing one in fact. Paula was spitting cobs when he walked out on her. Not that I can blame him. She didn’t exactly keep the discussion under wraps.’ He paused, eyeing her shrewdly. ‘He is the father, isn’t he?’
There was little point in attempting to deny it, Regan acknowledged. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And thanks for not telling him about Jamie.’
‘I was in a bit of a dilemma, considering you’d already apparently let the cat out of the bag, but I reckoned you’d sort it out for yourself. What I can’t understand,’ he added curiously, ‘is why you kept it from him to start with. You were entitled to maintenance at the very least.’
‘I didn’t want anything from him!’ she said with force. ‘I still don’t. Jamie’s mine!’
‘Does he feel the same way now he knows about him?’ Hugh raised his eyebrows when she failed to respond. ‘You still haven’t told him?’
‘No.’ Regan looked down pointedly at the notebook ready-opened on her knee, wishing, not for the first time, that he would use a dictating machine like most people did these days. ‘You were giving me a letter.’
The hint was ignored, curiosity still unsatisfied. ‘Assuming he followed you home, as he said he was going to do, how the devil did you manage to keep him from finding out?’
‘Jamie was in bed. I convinced him I’d simply been indulging in a little payback.’ She put pencil to paper. ‘All’s well that ends well.’
Payback for what, exactly? was the question obviously hovering on Hugh’s lips, but he refrained from voicing it, for which she was thankful. Suggesting he mind his own business was hardly on the cards when she’d involved him in the situation herself. Hopefully, he would let the subject drop.
He did. For the time being, at any rate. Whether he would be content to let it go completely was something else. The problem with becoming personal friends with one’s boss, Regan reflected a trifle wryly. He’d have already put Rosalyn in the picture for sure.
Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to put Liam out of mind herself over the weekend. Seeing him again, having him near her again, had eroded every bit of armour she had built up over the years. She’d wanted him the same way he’d wanted her Friday night—hadn’t been able to sleep for the hunger he had aroused in her. It had been so long since she’d felt that need; so long since her whole body had come alive that way.
And it had to stop right here! she told herself forcibly, concentrating on the VDU in front of her. Cliché or no cliché, the past was a closed book from now on.
Except that it wasn’t, because Liam wouldn’t allow it to be. He was waiting when she left the office at five, standing by a gunmetal-grey Jaguar parked on double yellow lines.
‘I’m due a ticket,’ he said, nodding in the direction of a purposefully approaching traffic warden. ‘If you get in without argument we can be away before she gets here. We need to talk.’
Regan vacillated momentarily before giving in to the undeniably stronger urge and sliding into the front passenger seat. Liam closed the door and went round to get behind the wheel, firing the ignition with a flick of a lean brown wrist and heading out into the traffic stream with scant regard for the outraged hoots of those forced to give way.
‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ he remarked, looking anything but penitent. ‘That’s a very disappointed lady we’ve left back there.’
‘It’s a very reluctant lady you have in here,’ Regan returned coolly, mustering her reserves. ‘If it hadn’t been for the warden—’
‘I know. You’d have given me my marching orders. Not that I’d have accepted them. You were coming with me whether you liked it or not.’
She gave him a swift glance, taking in the set of his jaw, the glint in his eyes—feeling her stomach muscles start to curl again. ‘Is that a fact?’ was all she could come up with.
‘Sure is.’ His lips stretched in a brief smile. ‘Like I said, we need to talk.’
‘We said all there was to say the other night,’ she retorted.
‘Not nearly! We’ve seven years to fill in for starters.’
Regan kept her tone level with an effort. ‘I’ve no intention of rehashing the past. I’d be grateful if you’d drop me off along here. I’ve a train to catch.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ he asked. ‘You’ve no one waiting for you to get home.’
Her heart jerked. ‘That’s hardly the point.’
‘I think it is. I don’t have anyone waiting for me either, so why don’t we go and find somewhere quiet and peaceful where we can relax over a drink? Soft only, in my case,’ he added as she made to speak. ‘I never touch alcohol when I’m driving.’
‘Very responsible of you,’ she commented with a caustic edge she couldn’t quite eradicate. ‘A model citizen at last!’
It was Liam’s turn to slant a glance, eyes narrowed a little. ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that, but we all learn as we go along. You’ve changed a great deal yourself. In some ways, at any rate.’
‘I’ve changed, period,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ll be thirty in a couple of months. That makes me a mature woman.’
‘Age has damn all to do with it!’ he scoffed. ‘It’s in the mind not the body. If you consider yourself mature, you’ll stop playing the reluctant maiden and join me in that drink.’
Short of leaping from the car, did she have a choice? Regan asked herself. Sarah was used to her being late home after battling through the rush hour, and would have given Jamie his tea as usual. Providing she got there in time to have half an hour or so with him before he went to bed, he would be fine.
Only this had to be it so far as Liam was concerned. One drink, then goodbye.
He took her to a backstreet inn she wouldn’t have known existed, driving into the rear yard with the authority of entitlement.
‘My watering hole for many a long year,’ he said in reply to her unspoken question. ‘The landlord granted me parking rights on the strength of it. They serve pretty good bar meals if you’re feeling hungry.’
‘Just a drink,’ Regan reiterated, already beginning to regret having agreed to even that much. He would have accepted the refusal if