Anne Mather - Loren's Baby

‘Dead!’ he said incredulously. ‘Loren—dead? My God, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

‘Why be sorry?’ Angela spoke again. ‘She was nothing but a nuisance all the time she was here—’

‘Angel!’

His harsh interjection was ignored as Caryn added bitterly: ‘Why pretend to be sorry, Mr Ross? You never answered any of her letters.’

‘Her letters?’ He shook his head. ‘All right, Miss Stevens, you’ve won. We’ll go into my study. We can talk privately there—’

‘You’re not going to talk to her, are you?’ Angela’s dismayed protest rang in their ears, but Tristan Ross just looked at his daughter before walking past her out of the room.

Caryn hesitated only a moment before following him. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Why then did she feel so little enthusiasm for the task?

They went across the hall and down a passage that descended by means of single steps at intervals to an even lower level, and he thrust open a leather-studded door and stood back to allow her to precede him inside.

The room was only slightly smaller than the living room, with all the books Caryn could have wished for lining the walls. Paperbacks there were in plenty, as well as every issue of the Geographical Magazine for years past. A honey-brown carpet supported a leather-topped desk, a pair of revolving leather chairs, and several armchairs. A smaller desk in one corner held a typewriter and a pair of wire trays, with metal filing cabinets completing the furnishings. Here again, the windows overlooked the estuary, but it was dark and Ross drew the venetian blinds.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ he suggested, indicating one of the armchairs, but Caryn preferred to stand. ‘As you wish.’ He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of one of the leather chairs. ‘But if you’ll excuse me …’

‘Of course.’

He lounged into one of the revolving chairs, behind the desk, and in spite of his informal attire he was still the Tristan Ross she knew from so many current affairs programmes. Calm, polite, faintly sardonic; using his grammar school education to its fullest potential while still maintaining the common touch that encouraged the most unlikely people to confide in him.

‘Right,’ he said, and she thought rather hysterically that all that was missing were the television cameras. ‘Suppose you tell me why you wanted to see me.’

Taking a deep breath, she decided to come straight to the point. ‘You—knew about Loren, didn’t you?’

‘What did I know?’

He was annoyingly oblique, and she clenched her fists. ‘She wrote and told you about—about the baby—’

‘The baby!’ His indolence disappeared. ‘What baby?’

Caryn suddenly found she had to sit down after all, and backed until her knees came up against the soft velvety cushioning of an armchair. She sat down rather weakly on the edge of the seat.

‘I said— what baby?’ he repeated, getting to his feet to rest the palms of his hands on the desk in front of him, leaning slightly towards her. ‘I warn you—if this is another of Loren’s tricks—’

‘I told you. Loren’s dead!’ she reminded him tersely, and his jaw clenched.

‘So you did.’

‘Why didn’t you answer any of her letters?’

‘For God’s sake! I don’t remember seeing any letters from her. And even if I had—’

He broke off abruptly and Caryn guessed what he had been going to say. ‘You wouldn’t have answered them?’

‘Look,’ he sighed, ‘Mrs Forrest—that’s the name of the woman I employed on a temporary basis to take over after—after Loren left—she had orders to deal with—well, that sort of thing.’

‘Fan mail?’ demanded Caryn bitterly, and his eyes held hers coldly.

‘Why not?’ he challenged, and she wondered how she could have thought his eyes were dark. They were light, amber-coloured, the alert eyes of a prey-hunting animal at bay.

‘She told you she was expecting your child and you ignor—’

‘She did what?’ He came round the desk towards her, the muscles of his face working tensely. ‘Say that again!’

Caryn licked her dry lips. ‘She—she was expecting your—’

‘The bitch!’

Caryn came abruptly to her feet. ‘Don’t you dare to speak of my sister like that!’

‘I’ll speak of her how the hell I like!’ he retorted savagely. ‘God Almighty, what a bloody cock-and-bull story that is! And you came here to tell me that—’

‘Not just for that,’ she got out jerkily. ‘Not just for that.’

He made an effort to calm himself, but he began to pace about the room and she was reminded of a predator once more. He moved so lithely, so naturally; with all the grace and none of the nobility of the beast, she thought fiercely.

‘Of course,’ he said coldly. ‘You came to tell me she was dead. Well, perhaps it’s just as well.’ He stopped to stare into her working features. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well. I think if she’d still been alive, I’d have killed her!’

Caryn backed off again. ‘And—and what about your son?’ she got out chokingly. ‘What about him? Do you want to kill him, too?’

SHE saw the colour leave his face as he looked at her. Even his tan took on a jaundiced appearance, and she realised what a tremendous shock this must have been for him.

‘My—son?’ he echoed faintly. ‘You mean—there’s a child?’

‘Y—yes. A boy. He’s—three months old.’

‘Three months!’

Close to her like this, his eyes had a curious magnetic quality, the pupils dilated so that the tawny irises were almost extinguished. His lashes were thick and straight, gold-tipped she saw, like the sun-bleached texture of his hair. Impatience and confusion twisted the firm contours of his mouth, depriving it of its normally sensual curve. She wondered fleetingly if the child would be like him, and then squashed the thought as being unworthy of speculation.

The silence between them was beginning to get to her, and she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, suddenly aware of the pulse jerking at his jawline, the strong column of his throat rising above the opened neck of his shirt. In the warm room, redolent with the salty tang of the estuary, a hangover from opened windows on the sun-filled afternoon, she could still smell the faint heat of his body mingling with less personal scents of soap and after-shave. It made her aware of her own vulnerability, and she realised what a temptation he must have been to an impressionable girl like Loren.

‘Three months,’ he said again at last. Sarcasm curled his lips. ‘Why wait so long?’

‘Before coming here, you mean?’ she asked jerkily.

‘That’s exactly what I do mean.’ His fingers inserted themselves into the minute pockets of his waistcoat. ‘Or was I last on the list?’

‘You—’

Her instinctive response was to hit him once more, but he backed off mockingly, raising one hand to defend himself. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not again. We played that little scene ten minutes ago. Melodrama was never my strong point.’