Kathryn Ross - The Secret Child

Alison went across to the sideboard to pour a glass of wine and then changed her mind. She needed all of her faculties to face Luke Davenport. Instead she found herself checking her appearance in the mirror.

Her red-gold hair was pulled severely back from her face, and she wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt. There was no way she wanted Luke to think she had made any kind of an effort to look good for him, but now she wondered if that was a mistake. Maybe she needed some feminine wiles to keep a step ahead of whatever game it was he was playing. She felt sure Luke wasn’t really interested in the hotel…no matter what Garth said so heatedly to the contrary.

She thought again about the news that Luke was divorced. From what Garth had said, she calculated the marriage had lasted less than eight short months. What had happened? she wondered. Was it a case of once a womaniser, always a womaniser?

The doorbell rang and she felt her heart pumping nervously as she moved across the room to answer it.

Luke was standing in the porch. He was wearing a long, dark raincoat over a suit, but she couldn’t see his face properly because it was in shadow.

‘You’re late,’ she said tersely.

A flash of lightning lit the sky, illuminating his features for just a second; they looked harsh and ruthless somehow. ‘About two years too late, I would say,’ he said quietly. ‘But you know the old saying…better late than never.’

He brushed past her into the house and took off the sodden raincoat to hand it to her.

‘I’m glad you reconsidered.’

‘I haven’t reconsidered anything,’ she said quickly. ‘I just thought…that we should talk.’

‘Yeah, I just bet you did.’ His voice was dry. ‘Or rather the family did. Garth can be quite persuasive, can’t he, when he puts his mind to it…a bit like your old man?’

‘Just leave my family out of this, Luke. This is between you and me.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Luke grated the words sardonically. ‘I know from experience that you can’t just deal with one Trevelyan, you have to take them all on collectively.’

‘I mean it, Luke; your argument is with me, not them. And I know very well you have no more interest in our hotel than in the star-wars project. So I want you to stop filling Garth’s head with rubbish and I want you to stay away from my brothers.’

‘Still the same over-protective mother hen, I see.’ His eyes moved over her as they had this morning in the library, taking in her shapely body as if he was weighing her up in some way. ‘Just how far would you go to keep your siblings happy, I wonder?’

Something about the way he asked that question made her deeply uneasy, but she didn’t back down and she didn’t break her eye contact with him. ‘I’d go as far as it takes, Luke,’ she assured him with a cool confidence she was in reality far from feeling.

Instead of being rattled in any way Luke seemed to find her show of defiance amusing, and that made her more nervous. She turned away from him to hang his coat up behind the door; she had the horrible feeling that she had just said too much.

‘Nice place you have here.’ Luke moved away from her into the lounge, his gaze moving over the chintz furniture and the log fire that blazed in the stone grate.

Alison followed him into the room. Never had she felt so tense, so on edge; her every instinct was telling her that if she didn’t tread very carefully she was going to be in deep, deep trouble. ‘Would you like a drink?’ She forced herself to be polite.

He turned from where he stood by the fire and looked directly at her. ‘No. I’d like to see my son.’

She didn’t answer him. Now that she knew Garth had told him the truth, was there any point continuing to deny that Nathan was his? The question had plagued her all day. She knew Luke well enough to know that he wouldn’t let this drop…if she continued to fight he would insist on blood tests and that would achieve nothing except to confirm what Garth had already told him. Maybe if she just admitted the truth it would take the fire out of the situation and before long he’d get bored and leave.

‘Where is he, Alison?’

Alison felt as if a great lump had stuck in her throat. She couldn’t find her voice.

‘Alison?’

‘He’s asleep upstairs.’ Her voice was a fierce whisper.

As Luke moved towards the staircase Alison was suddenly galvanised into action, running to the base of the staircase ahead of him. ‘I don’t want you to wake him…it took him ages to get to sleep tonight and—’

‘I’m surprised that you know how long it took him to get to sleep,’ Luke interrupted drily. ‘From what I’ve heard he spends most of his time with a child-minder, because you are busy playing at hotels.’ He brushed past her.

‘How dare you?’ Alison was breathless with rage and it was a moment before she realised that he was striding ahead of her, up the stairs. ‘I happen to be busy making a living, not that it’s any of your business.’

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