Kay Thorpe - Bride On Demand

‘So he’s yours,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t change anything. If you—’

She stopped right there, voice drying in her throat as fury swept the lean features.

‘I discover I have a six-year-old son and it doesn’t change anything!’ he exclaimed. ‘What the hell do you think I’m made of?’

‘I only meant you don’t have to feel in any way obligated,’ she got out. ‘I want nothing from you. I didn’t even want you to know about him.’

Anger gave way to scepticism, no less withering in impact. ‘So why tell Paula about him in the first place?’

Regan made a small, helpless gesture. ‘It wasn’t intentional, believe me. I was… I needed…’ Her voice trailed away again as she acknowledged the impossibility of explaining just what she had felt at that time. ‘It just happened,’ she finished lamely.

‘Of course. Just pure spur of the moment!’

The irony spurred her flagging spirit, lifting her chin and bringing the light of battle back to her eyes. ‘If I was that keen to have you know about Jamie, why didn’t I let you discover the truth right away when you followed me back here?’

‘Probably because by then you’d begun to realise what you might be letting yourself in for.’

‘I already told you—’

‘I know what you already told me,’ he cut in. ‘It isn’t your decision to make. Not any more.’ He drew a long slow breath, bringing both voice and demeanour under control. ‘Accepting that it happened, what I don’t find easy to understand is how it happened when we were both of us taking precautions.’

‘I lied about that,’ she admitted. ‘I thought it was enough that you did.’

‘Obviously you were wrong.’ He viewed her dispassionately. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’

Regan stuck both her hands in the pockets of her wrap to stop them from shaking, willing herself to look him directly in the eye. ‘For what purpose? So that you could offer to pay for an abortion?’

‘Don’t you dare—’ He broke off, shaking his head as if in repudiation of what he’d been about to say. ‘There’d have been no question of abortion.’

‘You’d have offered to marry me?’

‘Of course.’

It was Regan’s turn to curl a lip. ‘Under duress? No thanks!’

‘It wouldn’t have—’ He broke off again, jaw tense. ‘There’s little point in going over old ground. What we have to decide is where we go from here.’

‘Nowhere!’ she said with force. ‘I’ve managed fine up to now. I’ll carry on doing it without any help from you!’

There was no sign of the relief she still more than half anticipated in the grey eyes—more a firming of purpose. ‘If that child through there is mine, I’m sure as hell not going to stand back and let you get on with it!’

‘The operative word being if,’ she snapped back, stung by his use of it. ‘What actual proof do you have when it comes right down to it? He doesn’t even look like you!’

‘No, he looks like you, but the timing still applies.’

‘Providing I didn’t go off on the rebound, as you suggested I might have.’

A muscle jerked as his teeth came together. ‘Cut it out! You didn’t have it in you. Has it occurred to you that you’ve robbed him as well as yourself these past years?’

That pulled her up as nothing else could have done. Jamie had never been a deprived child in the basic sense, but there was no doubt that both in financial and emotional terms, he had lacked a father’s input.

‘I suppose, if you want to contribute to his upkeep from now on, I can hardly refuse,’ she said stiffly. ‘But that’s as far as it goes.’

‘No way.’ Liam hadn’t raised his voice but there was no doubting that he was adamant. ‘I may have missed the first six years of his life; I can at least have some say in the rest.’ He winged another glance about the room. ‘This is no place to bring up a child in. He needs somewhere to play, for a start.’

‘There’s a park within walking distance.’ Regan couldn’t completely eradicate the defensive note from her voice. ‘We go there every weekend. And he gets plenty of exercise at school.’

‘How about holidays? I don’t imagine you can afford to take more than the statutory time off from your job.’

‘I pay Sarah from the flat downstairs to look after him when I can’t be here. She’s very reliable—and she thinks the world of him.’

‘I’m sure of it. It’s still a long way from an ideal situation.’

Regan studied the taut features, vainly trying to read the mind behind the grey eyes. ‘What exactly are you suggesting?’

‘We obviously need to talk things through.’ Liam made a decisive movement. ‘Only not now. We both need time to consider. I’ll come back in the morning. Say nine-thirty.’

Short of packing their bags tonight and taking off for somewhere he wouldn’t be able to find them, there was nothing Regan could do but accept. ‘I suppose so,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Although Jamie is going to hate missing his swimming lesson.’

‘He can go later.’ There was a momentary pause as he regarded her, eyes shuttered against her. ‘You’d better get some sleep. You look exhausted.’

Hardly surprising, she thought, doubting that sleep would be forthcoming with so much going on in her mind. She watched him walk to the door, torn between conflicting emotions as he turned for a final word.

‘Nine-thirty,’ he repeated. ‘Be here.’

‘Do I have any choice?’ she asked.

‘None,’ he confirmed. ‘From now on, it’s a dual concern.’

Duel might be a more appropriate term, came the thought as the door closed in his wake. She had opened up a regular can of worms with that unthinking retort to Paula Lambert’s harassing.

Or had it really been so unthinking? queried the small inner voice. Wasn’t it just remotely possible that deep down she had wanted Liam to know about Jamie? Possible even tonight, in fact. He wouldn’t have forced his way in if she’d shown any positive rejection.

Regardless, she had made her bed and now must lie on it, because he wasn’t going to back off for certain.

Only neither was he going to take over in any fashion, she vowed. Jamie was her son. She would have the last word regarding his future.

She did sleep in the end, but was awake again at six, with no desire to make any further attempt to doze off. Jamie slept through to his usual seven, emerging in his pyjamas to cast a suspicious glance about the living room as if in anticipation of seeing last night’s visitor lurking somewhere.

‘He went home hours ago,’ Regan assured him. She hesitated before adding to the statement, aware that she was going to have to tell him the truth but not at all certain, even now, just how to put it. ‘He’s coming back this morning to talk to us both,’ she said at length.

Jamie looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

Regan drew a long slow breath and decided that the only way to deal with this was openly and honestly. ‘He’s your daddy,’ she said.

‘I don’t have a daddy,’ came the response. ‘He went away when I was a baby.’

‘That’s what I told you.’ She drew the diminutive figure to a seat on the now made-up sofa, resisting the urge to put her arms about him and tell him to forget the whole thing. ‘It was wrong of me to let you think he’d deserted us. The truth is that he never even knew about you.’

Green eyes regarded her unblinkingly. ‘Why didn’t he know about me?’

‘Because I didn’t tell him you’d been born.’

Jamie digested this in silence for a moment, never taking his eyes from her face. ‘Why didn’t you tell him?’

‘Because I believed he wouldn’t want to know.’