Sally Wentworth - A Very Public Affair

Already there was a queue at the cloakroom for coats. Clare stood in line, impatiently tapping her foot, and retrieved hers at last. She turned to hurry away but an old school friend, Tanya Beresford, there with her husband Brian, stopped her and asked her to have lunch the following week. Clare accepted and got away as quickly as she could. But she was too late. Jack was waiting by the entrance, a coldly determined set to his face. When she saw him Clare stopped, then turned to go back inside.

‘Running away again?’ he said scathingly. ‘You seem to make a habit of it.’

‘What I do is no business of yours,’ Clare retorted icily.

‘But that’s where you’re wrong.’ Stepping forward, he took her arm in a vice-like grip. ‘It seems that you’re very much my concern.’ And he led her to where a big, chauffeur-driven car waited by the kerb. The driver opened the door and Jack pushed her inside.

‘Do you always go around being this high-handed?’ Clare demanded angrily, uncomfortably aware that some other guests had followed her out and had seen them get in the car. That little titbit would, she supposed bitterly, be in all the gossip columns tomorrow.

Jack pressed a button on the console beside his seat and a glass panel slid up between them and the driver. It was the first time he’d managed to get her alone and he’d meant to be reasonable, but all he could feel was anger at the way she’d deceived him. ‘I have tried every way possible to talk to you,’ he said shortly. ‘If you persist in refusing then I’m left with no alternative.’

‘But I don’t want to talk to you. And I insist you stop this car and let me out.’

‘You know I’m not going to, so why say it?’

Clare laughed acidly. ‘Yes, I suppose it is too much to hope that you’d ever behave with any consideration for anyone other than your egotistical self.’

Her bitterness took him aback. Jack’s eyes narrowed as he realised he had more to deal with here than he’d thought. After a moment he said, ‘Have you eaten yet? How about going somewhere for supper?’

‘No.’

‘No to which?’

Clare turned on him, her eyes full of antagonism. ‘No to anything and everything you say. I want nothing to do with you.’

Jack was not used to being talked to so rudely. His lips thinned and he said, ‘Isn’t it a bit late for that?’

Clare flushed and turned away, not wanting to be reminded of the night she’d spent with him. She’d been trying not to look at him directly, but it was hard not to remember the powerful body that was under the immaculate evening-suit, a body perfect in its masculinity. Yet again she wondered about his ex-wife, why they’d divorced. But that was nothing to do with her; she had enough to concentrate on in keeping him away from Toby.

Jack was trying to work out how to play it. Her flushed cheeks told him that she was still sensitive about their lovemaking, which surprised him; it had been so long ago. And just for that one night. But maybe she was entitled to be sensitive as it had resulted in her having a child. His voice more gentle, he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Toby?’

Her eyes, a beautiful hazel with green lights, he noticed, flashed fire at him again. ‘Toby is nothing to do with you.’

‘He is according to his birth certificate,’ he replied evenly.

‘You had no right to look that up, to go prying into my life.’

‘And you had no right to keep his existence from me,’ Jack returned shortly.

Clare hesitated, then thought that she would do anything to keep Toby away from him. So she said, ‘Actually—what I put on the certificate wasn’t true. I—I don’t know who his real father is. There were a couple—a few men around at the time. But I had to give some name, so I just picked yours out of thin air. But he definitely isn’t yours,’ she added for good measure.

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