Equal Opportunities. Penny Jordan

justifying his underhand actions with his conviction that Michael would be better off with him.

      ‘Michael’s parents are dead,’ she told him quietly, the pallor of her skin making him feel uncomfortably guilty. He hadn’t expected her to show such distress. He knew she had been close to Jennifer. The report had told him that much; they had, after all, grown up together in the children’s home, but he had gained the impression from the report that she rather tended to keep people at an emotional distance, and he had formed the opinion that she would look upon the responsibility of Michael as an unwanted one. Now he wondered uneasily if he had been too sanguine in his assumptions.

      To cover his own inner disquiet, he said quickly, ‘So he isn’t really your child, then?’

      Not really hers! Kate caught her breath on an unsteady shock of tension, increased by her awareness of just how much she feared and resented the assumption behind the casual words. Michael was hers…When she thought of Michael, she thought of him as being her child, she recognised. She loved him, and not just because of Jen.

      Panic bit into her…the kind of panic she always experienced at the thought of allowing anyone to come too close to her emotionally, but where Michael was concerned it was already too late.

      She heard the man saying calmly, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

      And she focused on him, her body as taut as a bow string as she fought off the feelings threatening her.

      ‘You didn’t,’ she denied shortly, hoping he would drop the subject. To her dismay, he didn’t.

      ‘You must have been very close to the boy’s parents. He doesn’t look like you, though,’ he added, looking first at her and then at Michael.

      Kate drew a sharp breath, aching to simply demand that he leave. He had no right to ask her these questions, to pry into her life. And then she tried to control her reactions and remind herself that he was simply trying to do his job and that it was only natural that he should want to have as much information as possible about Michael.

      Taking a deep breath, she said as calmly as she could, ‘Michael isn’t a blood relative. He’s the child of a very close friend. She and her husband were killed in a motorway accident.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ He wasn’t looking at her now, whether out of compassion or simply by accident, she wasn’t sure. ‘It can’t be easy for you…a single woman suddenly having a baby thrust into your life. Doesn’t he have any family?’

      He was probing too deeply now, but there was nothing she could do to stop him without betraying herself. She could feel the old, familiar tension building up inside her stomach. She wanted to tremble with the force of it, but she had long ago learned to control that reaction.

      ‘Not really,’ she told him shortly. ‘Jen and I are…were both orphans. We grew up together in a children’s home. Alan, Jen’s husband, was an only child, his parents are dead, and I believe there is a distant family connection…a second cousin.’

      ‘Orphans,’ Garrick mused, ignoring the reference to himself. ‘I see.’

      Here was his chance to subtly undermine her self-confidence by pointing out that as an orphan she was hardly qualified to act as a substitute family to such a young child…to ask her if she didn’t think Michael would be better off in the care of someone who could communicate to him through their own experiences, just what it meant to be part of a loving family.

      Whatever else he might or might not be…however cynical his views on marriage had become over the years, he could never doubt the happiness that his parents had had…nor dismiss the love and security they had given him as a child.

      It would be oh, so easy to make some idle comment that would increase the doubts he could see so clearly shadowing her eyes…to reinforce what he was beginning to suspect was her own private fear that she was not an adequate parent for Michael, but to his own consternation he found that he simply could not do it. He was as amazed by the recognition of his weakness as he would have been to discover that the world had suddenly turned upside-down.

      This couldn’t be him, deliberately holding back on beginning his campaign to win Michael away from her, simply because he had looked into her eyes and seen the lonely, proud child she must once have been, fighting desperately to pretend that nothing was wrong…that her world hadn’t been destroyed…that she wasn’t….

      He shook his head, wanting to dispel the unwanted images. What was happening to him? What was wrong with him? He must be going soft in the head.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Kate demanded suspiciously, her tension increasing as she sensed his hesitancy and knew instinctively that it had something to do with her.

      ‘I was just thinking how very hard it must have been for you as a child,’ he said quietly. ‘And how much Michael must mean to you.’

      Later he would ask himself what on earth had come over him, what on earth he had thought he was doing, but in the moment he said the words he saw the fury and panic fight for supremacy in Kate’s eyes, and he reacted instinctively to them, reaching out his hand to touch her in an age-old gesture of comfort.

      Even before he touched her, Kate froze, and immediately Garrick realised what he was doing and cursed himself under his breath. What the hell was happening to him? He must be going soft in the head, feeling sorry for her.

      A nanny…God, he could just imagine what the press would do to him if they ever found out!