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It was not too late, of course. Women of her age and even older were having babies every day, many of them without the support of a husband or partner, but, having been brought up solely by her great-aunt, Claire had very ambivalent feelings about having a child on her own. Of course, if she were ever to find herself in a situation where for some reason she’d conceived accidentally, then there would be no question but that she would have her child and love him or her.
She bent her head protectively over the kitten as she realised the direction her thoughts were taking and just why the thought of an accidental pregnancy should have crossed her mind.
It wasn’t going to happen, of course. She must make sure that it did not happen, she told herself sternly.
Outside it had started to rain, the wind gusting fiercely against the window.
The weather forecast had warned that they were in for a stormy evening with heavy rain and gale-force winds. As she returned Felicity to the new basket that Brad had bought for her and glanced out of the window at the lowering sky, Claire was thankful that she didn’t have to go out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRAD grimaced in disgust as he realised that one of the tyres on his hire car had developed a slow puncture and was now flat. Cursing under his breath, he glanced from the car window to the bleak, empty landscape and the heavy rain. It was barely six o’clock in the evening but the sky was so overcast that it was already almost dark.
There was no one else around, the desolate area that the local council had designated as a new industrial complex as yet little more than a vast sea of mud, broken here and there by sets of footings.
It had been a chance remark during his interview with their potential new customer—an official from the head office of a locally based insurance broker which was thinking of installing air-conditioning in all its offices—that had led to his trip out here to look at the new industrial site.
He hadn’t realised, until the other man had mentioned it, that the existing warehouse was built on a piece of potentially very valuable land. The town had expanded rapidly in the years after the warehouse had first been constructed—adjacent to the original owner’s home—and although Brad had been aware that virtually all the property surrounding the warehouse was residential he hadn’t appreciated the significance of this fact until the other man had brought it to his attention.
He had a client, he had told Brad, a well-known local builder, who he suspected would be very interested in acquiring the land for development if it ever came onto the market. After he had gone, a few brief enquiries by Brad had elicited the information that as prime residential building land the warehouse site was very good indeed, and, moreover, that if they were to move to a new purpose-built unit the savings they could make would more than offset the cost of such a move.
On impulse Brad had decided to drive out and look at the new industrial complex that the local council were building, but what he hadn’t bargained for was the fact that his hire car was going to get a puncture.
It was still raining very heavily but there was no help for it—he was going to have to get out and change that tyre, Brad acknowledged, removing his suit jacket and opening the car door.
Ten minutes later, his hair plastered wetly to his scalp, his back soaked to the skin through the inadequate protection of his shirt, Brad had managed to remove the spare wheel from the trunk—the boot of the car, he amended grimly—and to locate the jack.
The unmade road along which he had driven to inspect the site was rapidly changing to a thick mush of sticky mud beneath the lashing downpour. Removing the rubber-backed lining from the boot floor to use as a kneeling pad, Brad started to jack up the car.
Half an hour later, so wet that he might just as well have been standing naked under a shower, and perspiring heavily from his efforts to release the wheel-nuts, Brad gave in. What he wouldn’t give now for a can of lubricant, he thought, but the nuts, fitted by machine, were simply not going to budge.
He reached into his car for his phone and punched in the number of the car-hire firm.
It was over an hour and a half before he finally saw the headlights of the breakdown vehicle coming towards him through the heavy downpour of the continuing rain.
He had been reluctant to run the car engine for too long in case he ran out of petrol and his wet shirt, still clinging clammily and coldly to his skin, coupled with the sharp drop in temperature which had accompanied the driving rain made him shiver and sneeze as he stepped out of the car to greet the mechanic.
‘Better watch it, mate,’ the mechanic told him cheerfully as he sprayed the stubborn wheel-nuts and waited for the lubricant to take effect. ‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself a nasty chill there.’
It was another half an hour before the wheel was finally changed, the wheel-nuts proving recalcitrantly stubborn but eventually coming free.
Thanking the mechanic, Brad climbed back in the car and restarted the engine.
Claire glanced uncertainly at the kitchen clock. Where was Brad? She had assumed, obviously erroneously, that he was going to be back in time for dinner but it was after nine now and she had long since disposed of the meal she had prepared for him.
When Brad hadn’t returned when she had expected she had been tempted to phone the office, but she had reminded herself fiercely that he was simply her lodger and that was the only relationship between them—the only relationship she wanted there to be between them.
It hadn’t been easy to ignore the mocking laughter of the inner voice that had taunted her, Liar, but somehow she had made herself do so. If she’d wanted or needed any confirmation that what had happened between them this afternoon was something that Brad very definitely did not want to take any further, she had surely had it in the very fact that he had delayed his return for so long.
Don’t run away, he had told her, but perhaps, like her, he too had been caught up in the intensity of the moment, suspending normal, rational judgement and reality.
Hannah had been round earlier to leave her a book that she had promised to lend her on traditional Edwardian rose gardens; she would make herself a hot drink and go and sit down in the sitting room and look at it, Claire promised herself. She had just settled down when she saw the headlights of Brad’s car. Uncertainly she bit her lip, not sure whether to stay where she was or go and greet him.
As his landlady, she ought perhaps at least to check to see if he wanted anything to eat. She was not really sure what the mode of behaviour should be between landlady and lodger—where one drew the line between a presence that was welcoming and one that was intrusive.
It was time to feed Felicity, she reminded herself, and if she didn’t appear Brad might think...might assume...
What? she asked herself grimly. That she was afraid...embarrassed... self-conscious? Well, he would be right on all those counts. She did feel all those things and more—much more, she acknowledged, her body suddenly growing hot as she had an unnervingly vivid memory of the way his mouth had felt on hers—his body, his...
Swallowing hard, she reminded herself that, no matter what she felt, she did have a responsibility as his landlady to make at least an attempt to behave in a businesslike manner towards him.
Irene would certainly have something to say to her if she learned that Claire had left him supperless. As she got up and walked towards the door Claire heard Brad walk into the hall and sneeze—once and then again.
Frowning now, she opened the door, her eyes widening in shock as she saw his coatless, damply dishevelled state.
‘Brad, what on earth...?’
‘It’s nothing,’ he said. “There was a problem with the car and I had to wait for them to get a breakdown truck out to me. I should have let you know, but I had no idea how long they were going to be.’
A problem. Her heart thumped anxiously against her chest wall. ‘Not an accident?’ she protested. ‘You—’
‘No, not an accident,’ he assured her. ‘I had a flat tyre, that’s
all, but unfortunately—’ he paused for another volley of sneezes, visibly shivering as Claire looked on in appalled consternation—‘I tried to change it myself and got soaked,’ he told her ruefully, his teeth suddenly chattering.
‘You’re soaked,’ Claire told him. ‘And frozen. You’d better go upstairs and have a hot shower. I’ll make you a drink and something to eat.’
Had she got any cold or flu remedy in the house? Claire wondered, listening anxiously as she heard Brad pause halfway up the stairs for another fit of obviously feverish sneezing.
He was going to be lucky if all he got away with was a bad chill, she recognised as she hurried into the kitchen to fill the kettle and look through the drawers to try to unearth the old hot-water bottle she always kept handy for cold sufferers. In these centrally heated days it probably wasn’t necessary but somehow it made one feel better, Claire acknowledged. Sally certainly insisted on having it whenever she went down with a cold.
A brief check on the high shelf where she kept her medicines revealed the patent aspirin-based remedy which Sally always swore worked for her. Expelling a small sigh of relief, Claire picked it up. She had no doubt whom Irene would blame if Brad did become ill.
He was used to a much better regulated climate than theirs, she reminded herself as she added some brandy to the mug of coffee that she had made him. He would, perhaps, be better off going straight to bed and keeping warm there rather than coming down for something to eat. She could easily take him a tray of food upstairs.
His bedroom door was ajar when she went up with the coffee but, recalling what had happened the last time she had walked into his room, she paused, knocking and calling out uncertainly.
