Annie exhaled deeply. Of course. She was just being silly. Over-protective. She couldn’t prevent breaking into a broad smile, however, when she heard the thump of tiny feet and saw the nut-brown head appear from behind Katrina.
Serious-faced, already a real little boy in his blue and red chequered shirt and dungarees, he stopped dead when he saw Brant standing there beside his mother.
‘So you’re Sean,’ he breathed, dropping down to the child’s level.
Annie’s eyes darted from the man to the toddler. Was she imagining it? Or was that likeness between them as strong as the agony of her denial?
Catching the crack in Brant’s voice though as he said something else to the little boy, she could only guess at the tumult of emotion he was doing his best to conceal before the toddler, suddenly shy, clutched at Katrina’s denim-clad leg and disappeared behind it.
The blonde woman laughed.
‘It’s all right, Sean,’ Annie reassured him gently, so that the little boy, deciding it was safe, popped out again, fixing Brant with curious, though steady hazel eyes.
‘Kat! Fish!’ the child exclaimed proudly. ‘Kat! Fish!’
‘Catfish?’ The man’s smile was indulgent, softening the severity of his features. From her vantage point Annie noticed how wide his shoulders were beneath the soft grey polo shirt, how the fabric of his chinos pulled tautly across his thighs.
‘Kat-fish,’ the two-year-old announced, rather impatiently this time, and in spite of the chaos inside her, Annie couldn’t keep from smiling when she realised what he meant.
‘Katrina’s embroidered an octopus on his new bib.’ It was bright yellow on its pale blue background, with disjointed eyes and tentacles. Her friend was always doing things like that. She managed to laugh. ‘It’s gross, Kat!’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Katrina grinned. ‘It’s a friendly little octopus.’ She pretended to be one, sending Sean shrieking down the passageway. ‘It’s only big fish that gobble you up and then spit you out again. Isn’t that right, Seanie?’
It was child’s play, but Annie felt the keen glance Brant sliced her as he got to his feet. Mortified, she caught her breath. They both knew what Katrina meant.
They were silent as Brant drove them back to the flat. Sean had fallen asleep in the back of the car in the little seat Brant had produced from the boot.
‘Sorry about Katrina. She can be a bit direct sometimes.’ She felt she needed to say something because he was just sitting there steering the powerful saloon. Hard lines carved what she had always thought was a rather cruel mouth.
‘What did you tell her about us?’ He was pulling up at a zebra crossing to let a middle-aged woman step on. She beamed at him and he responded with a distracted nod of his head. ‘Everything down to the last graphic detail?’
‘Of course not!’ she snapped, heated colour stealing into her cheeks. ‘She guessed. I think everyone did.’
‘That I bedded a freshly betrayed bride. And then dumped her just as Maddox did.’
No, not as Warren did, she thought as he put the car into motion again. Because Brant Cadman had made her no promises. Offered her nothing but one crazy, glorious night. She’d known the dangerous game she was playing when she had let him take her up to his room; known what she was doing, even though she had had just a little too much to drink that night, too much for her at any rate. It had been he who had suggested calling a halt to their caresses. He who had tried to tell her he didn’t believe in fooling around with women on the rebound, when she had so foolishly begged him not to go.
Her cheeks burned now with the shame of it and way down inside she felt the fierce pang of unwelcome desire undermined by the cutting pain of rejection.
‘Katrina’s my friend,’ she told him, ridiculously emotional. ‘She was only looking out for my interests.’ Suddenly she needed some spur, a point of antagonism to stab at the whole agonising trauma of the day. ‘I suppose in a minute you’ll be telling me you objected to her calling my boy “Seanie”!’ she tossed at him, with an emphasis on the ‘my boy’ that hit its mark if that tightening muscle in his jaw was anything to go by.
She heard him catch his breath and, after a moment, felt him glance her way.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re both wound up. This has been an ordeal for both of us. Let’s not quarrel to add to it. It will all be sorted out a lot more painlessly if we remain civil.’
She nodded, saying nothing. But at least that seemed to ease some of the tension between them.
Outside her flat, she was first out of the car, reaching into the back to try and free Sean from the unfamiliar seat.
‘Here, let me,’ Brant advised.
Leaning across the seat, he had released him in a second. Head lolling to one side, Sean was still sleeping soundly.
‘May I?’ Brant whispered.
Annie swallowed, nodded. Well he had to some time, didn’t he?
As he picked up the sleeping child, his features were marked with raw emotion and Annie felt the almost painful constriction of her throat.
What was he thinking, looking for, as those dark, searching eyes roamed over the infant? Some resemblance to the woman he’d loved? Had he already wondered, just as she had, if that distinctive little nose could be his? That the sun-streaked, tawny hair could be a feature of his wife’s and not hers—hers and Warren’s—as he could easily have supposed?
Fear rose in her again, the feeling that she was in danger of losing the only thing that really mattered to her—her baby—and immediately they were inside the flat she retrieved him from Brant.
When he was tucked up in bed for his afternoon nap she fed Bouncer, who was mewing around her ankles in the kitchen, and went back to join Brant in the sitting room.
He was looking at her paintings, particularly the miniature of a mistle thrush she was still working on. There were landscapes too. A sunset over a shadowy headland and a steam train, its plume of blue smoke like a heralding flag above the cutting of a distant hill.
‘These are good. They’re very good,’ he complimented.
At any other time she would have derived great pleasure from his saying so. Now, though, in view of everything, all she felt was a mild satisfaction that her labours were appreciated.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘We’re going to have to arrange for you to see Jack.’ He had straightened again, dominating the small room with his sheer presence. ‘Maybe tomorrow I can—’
‘No!’ Her panicked response put a query in his eyes. Hers were darkened almost to black. ‘I can’t—yet.’ She could feel herself trembling. Even her voice shook. ‘I’m not ready,’ she uttered, trying to make him understand.
She hankered after knowing what her birth child—if he was her child—was like. She also knew any meeting with him would be all too traumatic at present.
Suddenly she looked very pale and weary, a small, vulnerable figure in her clinging top and cropped trousers, shoulders slumping with emotional fatigue.
A couple of strides brought him over to her and somehow, she didn’t quite know how, she was standing in the circle of his arms with her cheek against the hard, warm wall of his chest.
In the silence of the room, she could hear the heavy rhythm of his heart, then from the kitchen the swift, dull clack of the cat-flap.
She raised her head, lifting her face to his, the need in those green-gold eyes meeting an answering need in Annie.
His lips were gentle on hers, a light, tentative touch