‘Oh, Raoul, you’re such a charmer.’ But a tendril of relief curled inside her. She squashed it. ‘Now, I’m going to fetch Oliver.’
‘Hey, what about you? Don’t I get the low-down on your life? No man at the moment, but any temptations? Do you cook your spaghetti Bolognese for anyone else aside from Oliver?’
His voice was light and mildly amused, and he wondered why he felt so tense when it came to thinking of her with another man. He, after all, had never been and would never be a candidate when it came to marriage and rings on fingers. He was now a father, and that was shocking enough, but that was the only derailment to his carefully constructed life on the cards as far as he was concerned.
‘Maybe …’
‘Maybe? What does that mean?’ The amusement sounded forced. ‘Am I in competition with someone you’ve got hidden in a cupboard somewhere?’
‘No,’ Sarah admitted grudgingly. ‘I’ve been too busy being a single mum to think of complicating my life with a guy.’ She sensed rather than saw the shadow of satisfaction cross his face, and continued tartly, ‘But, as you’ve pointed out, life is going to get much easier for me now. It’s going to make a huge difference with you around, playing a role in Oliver’s life. I won’t be doing it on my own. Also, it’ll be nice not having to think about money, or rather the lack of it, all the time—and it’ll be fantastic having a bit of time to myself … time to do what I want to do.’
‘Which doesn’t mean that you’ve now got carte blanche to do whatever you like.’ Raoul didn’t care for the direction in which this conversation was now travelling.
‘You make me sound like the sort of girl who can’t wait to pick someone up!’
She was wondering what right he had to lay down any kind of laws when it came to her private life. Raoul Sinclair didn’t want his life encumbered with attachments. True, he had discovered that some encumbrances were beyond his control, but just as he had never contemplated committing to her, so he had never contemplated committing to anyone. It was small comfort. He might think that it was perfectly acceptable to lead a life in which he and his son were the only considerations, but it was totally unfair to assume that she felt the same way. He might want to pick up women and discard them when they were no longer of any use, but she needed more than that. For Raoul, a single life was freedom. For her, a single life would be a prison cell.
‘I’m not going to suddenly start scouring the nightclubs for eligible men,’ she expanded, with a bright, nervous laugh, ‘but I will be able to get out a bit more—which will be nice.’
‘Get out a bit more?’
‘Yes—when you have Oliver.’
‘I don’t think we should start projecting at this point,’ Raoul said deflatingly. ‘Oliver hasn’t even spoken to me as yet. It’s a bit premature to start planning a hectic social life in anticipation of us becoming best friends. Let’s just take one day at a time, shall we?’
‘Of course. I wasn’t planning on going clubbing next week!’
Clubbing? What did she mean by that? Other men? Sleeping around? While he kept Oliver every other weekend?
He pictured her dressed in next to nothing, flaunting herself on a dance floor somewhere. Granted, the women he went out with often dressed in next to nothing, but for some reason the thought of Sarah in a mini-skirt, high heels and a halterneck top set his teeth on edge.
‘Good. Because it won’t be happening.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Think about it, Sarah. Oliver doesn’t even know that I’m his father. Don’t you think that he’ll be just a little bit confused if your friend, who has mysteriously and suddenly appeared on the scene from nowhere, starts engineering outings without you? You’re the constant in his life. As you keep telling me. For me to have any chance of being accepted we have to provide a united front. We have to get to a point where he trusts me enough to leave you behind now and again.’
‘Exactly what are you trying to say, Raoul?’
‘That you have to scrap any crazy notions of us having nothing to do with one another. You’re living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that’s going to work. The whole bedtime story, spaghetti Bolognese thing is going to have to involve both of us. Of course it’ll be a damn sight easier when you get out of this place and move somewhere more convenient. And less cramped. On the subject of which—I have my people working on that.’
There were so many contentious things packed into that single cool statement that Sarah looked at him, staggered.
‘When you say involve both of us …’
Raoul flushed darkly and dealt her a fulminating look from under his lashes.
‘I don’t know the first thing about being a parent,’ he told her roughly. ‘You’ve witnessed my sterling performance out there.’
‘I didn’t know the first thing about being a parent either,’ Sarah pointed out with irrefutable logic. ‘It’s just a case of doing your best.’
The thought of doing things with Raoul and Oliver, a cosy threesome, was enough to bring on the beginnings of a panic attack in her. Already she was finding it difficult to separate the past from the present. She looked at him, and who was she kidding when she told herself that she was no longer attracted to him? Raoul was in a different place, and would be able to take her on board as just a temporary necessity in his life, easily set aside once he had what he wanted: some sort of ongoing relationship with his son. But she was aghast at the prospect of having him there in her life. How on earth was she ever going to get to that controlled, composed place of detachment if she was continually tripping over him in the kitchen as he attempted to bond with his son over fish fingers?
Perhaps he had exaggerated, she thought, soothing her own restless, panicked mind. He was still smarting from Oliver’s less than exuberant reception of him. Right at this very moment this was the only plan he could see ahead of him, and Raoul was big on plans. He would not be taking into account the simple fact that when children were involved plans could never really be made. In a day or two he would probably revise his ideas, because she very much doubted that he wanted to spend quality time with her in the picture.
‘And the whole house issue …’ she continued faintly. ‘You have your people working on it?’
‘Here’s one of the things I’ve discovered about having money: throw enough of it at a problem and the problem goes away. Right now they’re in the process of drawing up lists of suitable properties. I will be giving them until the end of next week. So,’ he drawled when she failed to respond, ‘are we on the same wavelength here, Sarah?’
‘I can’t just move into a house you happen to choose. I know you probably don’t care about your surroundings, but I care about mine …’
‘Don’t you trust me to find somewhere you’d like?’
He’d used to be amused at her dreamy, whimsical ideas. From where he had stood there had been little use for dreams unless you had the wherewithal to turn them into reality, and even then he had never made the mistake of confusing dreams with the attainment of real, concrete goals. What was the point in wishing you could own a small island in the middle of the Pacific if the chances of ever having one were zero? But her dreams of cottages and clambering roses and open fires had made him smile.
‘True, the thatched cottage with the roses and the apple trees might be a little troublesome to find in London …’
Sarah blushed, unsettled by the fact that he had remembered her corny youthful notion of the perfect house. Which she recalled