One Night: Red-Hot Secrets. Penny Jordan

look at me like that.’

      ‘And how am I looking at you?’

      ‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ Louise said shakily. ‘You were looking at me as though …’

      ‘As though I want to take you to bed? Isn’t that exactly what we’ve agreed that we want people to think?’

      Was it? She couldn’t remember them ever discussing the reality of having him look at her the way he was doing now, but somehow her brain was refusing to work, and any idea of cool logical thought was impossible to formulate in the fierce aching heat within her body and her frantic attempts to smother those flames. What was happening to her? It was ten years since she had last lain in a man’s arms—ten years since the one and only time she had experienced the intensity of physical desire allied to what she had naively then thought of as love.

      ‘We’re married. Surely that’s enough to convince them that we want to be together? After all we aren’t going to … That is we won’t be …’

      For all that little tremor earlier, Louise was showing him what really mattered to her—and the truth was that she didn’t want him, Caesar recognised. Logic told him that he should be pleased, because the last thing he wanted was the complication that would come from allowing a sexual relationship to develop between them. So why, instead of being pleased, did he feel a sense of chagrin? Male vanity? He hadn’t thought himself so shallow. The focus of their marriage was going to be their son. They both knew that. But her reaction now reminded him of an issue they had not discussed.

      ‘Our marriage might be sexless, but I am sure you will that agree that that is something that only you and I should know.’

      ‘Yes,’ Louise was forced to agree, and a small shiver chilled through her. Why should she feel so cold and so … so … alone just because Caesar had stated the obvious? After all, she didn’t want to have sex with him, did she? Of course she didn’t.

      ‘And whilst we are on this subject, when it comes to sexual relationships outside our marriage … for the present, whilst Oliver’s emotional security must be our priority, it is my opinion that celibacy must be the order of the day for both of us. Since neither of us is currently involved in a relationship—or has been for some time—’

      Louise stopped him. ‘You’ve been checking up on me? Digging into my private life?’

      ‘Naturally I wanted to know what kind of men you might have been introducing into my son’s life as potential future stepfathers,’ Caesar answered her.

      ‘You really think that I would take risks with Oliver’s emotional security? The only reason I have agreed to marry you is because you are Oliver’s father and he needs you. No matter what my personal opinion of you, I believe that you will put him first and be a proper father to him. Not like … not like what I experienced with my own father.’

      Abruptly Louise turned away from him. She was saying too much, giving away too much, revealing her own vulnerability.

      It was a relief to see Oliver coming towards her, accompanied by Caesar’s cousin’s sons. The boys were getting on very well together. Just to see her son’s confidence growing and to know he was happy meant that whatever sacrifices she personally had to make would be worthwhile, she assured herself as she listened to Oliver’s enthusiasm for a trip that was being planned to a newly opened water park on another part of the island.

      One of the happiest and best moments of the day for her was when Anna Maria’s husband toasted them as a newly married couple and Oliver, standing next to Caesar, demanded, pink-faced with delight, ‘I really have a proper dad now, don’t I?’

      Caesar immediately got up from his chair to go and hug his son tightly as he told him emphatically, ‘You have a father, Oliver, and I have a son. Nothing can ever take that relationship away from us.’

      Those words, and the emotions that so plainly went with them, touched a place in her heart that had long hurt her on Oliver’s behalf—a place that was now beginning to be salved. It was still a huge risk, a huge act of faith for her to put her trust in Caesar’s promise to love their son, but what other choice did she really have when Ollie so plainly wanted Caesar as his father?

      Under cover of the others’ smiles, she had turned to Caesar and warned him quietly, ‘If you ever, ever let Ollie down I shall never forgive you.’

      In response Caesar had told her, equally quietly but fiercely, ‘If I were ever to let him down I would never forgive myself.’