Sandra Marton - Mistresses - Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds

‘Nothing’s tame to a young, enquiring mind,’ Regan objected at his disparaging sarcasm. If he was going to be a father he needed to buck his ideas up. ‘I think children should always be encouraged to find everything interesting and not be stuck with labels that inhibit them from wanting to learn…’

Ryan gulped down his pancake to protest. ‘I’m not a child.’

‘I was speaking generally. Whether you’re five, fifteen or fifty, you’re still someone’s child,’ she countered, dipping her spoon into her fruit.

‘Yes, but not a child. A child is someone between the ages of birth and puberty,’ he argued.

She recalled his water-dripping-on-stone technique of wearing her down from the previous day.

‘According to the dictionary, a child is also a human offspring—’ she persisted.

‘But not in the first meaning of the word,’ he interrupted stubbornly. ‘I bet if you looked it up you’d find my meaning listed before yours.’

‘Don’t take that bet,’ came Joshua’s dry advice.

‘I wasn’t going to,’ dismissed Regan. ‘OK,’ she told Ryan, finding it amazingly easy to sink to his level, ‘you win—you’re far too boringly pedantic to be a mere child. You have to be at least ninety before you get to drive other people crazy by arguing endlessly over such irritating trivia with such single-minded intensity.’ She smiled at him sweetly. ‘I guess that puts you somewhere in your second childhood.’

Ryan thought about that for a moment, his eyes narrowing behind the round rims of his glasses in a way that struck a faint chord of uncomfortable resonance in Regan’s brain.

‘You kept arguing, too…’

‘That’s because I was right, but I showed my maturity by letting you win in deference to your mental age. When I was a child, I was taught to respect my elders…’

She tilted up her nose at him and he grinned, attacking his pancakes again. ‘You didn’t let me win.’

‘If you say so, dear,’ she said, in the indulgent, forgiving tone that she knew men—both young and old—hated to hear.

Ryan opened his mouth.

‘Give it up, Son. Women are genetically programmed to have the last word. They can never bear to allow a man to feel that he’s won an argument.’

‘But, Dad…you told me never to give up on a fight when I believe I’m in the right!’

Son? Dad?

Regan’s spoon clattered to her plate, splattering fruitjuice and yoghurt over the pale yellow tablecloth.

‘He—You—You’re father and son?’ she said stupidly, dabbing at the tablecloth with her napkin in order to disguise her shaking hands.

Her eyes darted from face to face, suddenly seeing the echo of the boy in the man and the foreshadowing of the man in the boy…the similar angle of their cheekbones, the narrow, intelligent temples, the strong line of their noses.

Joshua’s eyes narrowed, exactly as his son’s had a few moments earlier. She must have been blind not to have seen it before!

‘I thought you said that you and Ryan had talked?’

‘Yes, but not about you! ’ He had been the single subject she had been desperate to avoid.

An unholy amusement filtered across his face as enlightenment dawned. ‘Let me guess…you didn’t realise who he was because you never got around to exchanging surnames? Seems to be a habit of yours…’

Regan seethed as he picked up his cup of black coffee and took a leisurely sip.

‘You mean it’s just what happened when you and Regan met the first time?’ chuckled Hazel, who had been following the conversation with lively interest. ‘A case of like father, like son!’

Flustered violet eyes clashed with thunderstruck grey as they shared a moment of mutual consternation. Visions of their torrid sexual encounter danced between them.

‘God, I hope not,’ muttered Joshua fervently, and Regan knew that she was going to blush as Ryan sat up in his chair, his precocious antennae twitching at the silent interaction. She quickly cast around for an innocuous change of subject.

‘So…where’s Chris this morning?’ she asked.

Bad choice. Hazel’s eyes lowered as she thoughtfully stirred a lump of sugar into her tea and Sir Frank stared out of the window and made a gruff remark on the blustery day.

‘Still sleeping off last night,’ said Joshua. ‘Why? Were you hoping to see him?’

‘No—oh, no…I just wondered, that’s all.’ In her haste to disassociate herself from the question she allowed Alice to persuade her to a salmon cake she didn’t really want. ‘If he’s a doctor I suppose he must work very hard…’ She trailed off, seeing that she had only compounded her error as Joshua’s expression hardened.

‘Works hard and plays hard. He’s not sleeping because he’s tired; he’s sleeping because he behaved like a total idiot.’

‘Uncle Chris fell into the canal coming home last night,’ supplied Ryan. At least her diversion had worked on one level. ‘I saw him from my window, splashing and yelling. Dad told him to stop whining for help, that he had two choices: sink or swim. So he swam to the boardwalk and Dad hauled him out.’

‘Goodness!’ Hazel covered her mouth, and Regan couldn’t decide whether she was concealing a gasp of horror or a smile.

‘Serves the young fool right!’ pronounced Sir Frank.

‘But he could have drowned!’ Regan thought she was the only one showing any compassion. ‘Particularly in his state.’

‘You mean drunk,’ said Joshua.

‘Why didn’t you help him straight away?’ Regan chastised, her eyes flashing. ‘Instead of standing there taunting him.’

‘Because I believe in tough love,’ he said laconically. ‘He’d got himself into a jam and there was no reason he shouldn’t at least try to get himself out of it. Besides…I didn’t want to risk ruining my clothes,’ he drawled with a baiting smile. ‘I was wearing some recently acquired items of great sentimental value.’

‘It was OK, really—Uncle Chris used to be a champion swimmer at his school,’ offered Ryan, torn between his natural loyalty and the delightful novelty of seeing his father being sternly lectured on behaviour by a slip of a woman. ‘And Dad did throw him a lifebelt from the dock.’

‘How kind of you,’ Regan bit out at the mocking face across the table, fuming over the veiled reference to his cufflinks. Whatever sentiments he attached to them, she knew they wouldn’t be the tender ones that he was implying!

‘I was aiming for his head,’ he said succinctly, and suddenly she couldn’t help the quiver of a smile escaping her control. She chewed it off her lips, totally bewildered by her reaction. How could he make her feel like laughing when she was so angry with him?

‘I wonder what’s keeping Carolyn? She did know you were coming, didn’t she, Joshua?’ interrupted Hazel, squinting at the exquisite diamond watch whose face was a trifle too dainty for her aging eyes.

‘I don’t think I specified an exact time. I know she was planning on going yachting with the Watsons this afternoon, but I’m afraid some work has come up…’

‘On a Saturday?’

‘Money never sleeps, Hazel,’ Sir Frank trotted out. ‘Wade can’t afford to be out of touch with what the market’s doing. You can use the library again if you need it, Joshua.’

‘Thanks, but I have everything back on-line at the condo again—thanks to Ryan’s genius for electronics. If I get time I might even call in and see how things are going in the sales office.’

Hazel was looking unimpressed. ‘Oh, dear, Carolyn will be disappointed.’

‘Maybe she’ll change her mind about going sailing once she sees how windy it is,’ said Regan. She would have thought that the last thing anyone suffering from the nausea of early pregnancy would enjoy would be a ride on a rocking boat. How far along was she? Three months? Four? Obviously not long enough for her body to have stabilised to the added flow of hormones raging through her increased volume of blood.