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‘There is something strange about this?’ Rafael queried, gently ironic.
‘If you think that I intend to expose my children to your immorality, you are very much mistaken!’ Sarah told him hotly, flags of pink highlighting her cheekbones. ‘I insist that you stay out of our lives!’
Rafael inclined his dark head. ‘Or is it that you wish to insist that I stay out of other beds?’ he prompted, silky soft, his eyes gleaming rapiers on her flushed features.
Sarah blinked, completely thrown by the enquiry. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Indeed you might,’ he riposted. ‘But I am prepared to dispense with the apology. This conversation…it has immense entertainment value.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Sarah snapped frustratedly. ‘I’m not going to apologise for stating my views.’
‘Your views are most unnatural for a woman who has been separated from her husband for five years by her own choice.’
For several tense seconds, Sarah ruminated fiercely over that incomprehensible response. ‘Unnatural?’ she repeated sharply. ‘I intend to protect the twins from your influence.’
‘But who is to protect them from yours and that of your parents?’ Rafael asked with devastating derision. ‘I would not in conscience permit one of you to raise a hamster in captivity.’
‘How dare you say that to me?’ Sarah was outraged by the insult.
Before she could stalk past him, he shot out a long-fingered hand and enclosed her slim forearm in a grip of iron. ‘How…dare…I?’ he demanded in a raw, incredulous undertone, an outrage a hundredfold greater than her own blazing in the extraordinary depths of his tiger’s eyes. ‘Had I less self-control, I would show you how I feel. You have denied me my children. I have lost four irreplaceable years of their lives. I am their father and I am a stranger to them. They could walk past me in the street and I wouldn’t know them. I don’t even know their names! For what you have selfishly stolen from me and from them, I could quite happily kill you!’
In a movement of grim repudiation, he released her numbed arm and she reeled back from him, white and shaken, her knees trembling supports. ‘I never dreamt that you didn’t know about Gilly and Ben!’ she protested weakly.
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘I’m telling you the truth!’
He vented a harsh laugh, swinging lithely away from her. ‘Do you think I do not know what brought you here?’ he sliced back at her chillingly. ‘You are afraid of what I can do.’
Sarah fixed her distraught gaze on his darkly handsome features in a mixture of fear and defiance. ‘You can’t do anything!’
His mouth curved into a hard, glittering smile. ‘Sarah, in some matters you are still so naive. You cannot have legal custody of the children. That can only be achieved by agreement between husband and wife or a judicial decision,’ he pointed out. ‘There has been no such agreement, no such decision. And should you oppose my claim, the lies and deception employed to keep me in ignorance of my children’s very existence will scarcely help your case. In court, nothing will be concealed…’
A giant mailed fist was suddenly pounding a tattoo behind her temples. ‘We…we don’t have to go to court.’ She had to force the words of appeasement past her bloodless lips. ‘We…we could talk.’
‘Talk? I have heard you talk.’ Rafael dealt her a blistering look of condemnation. ‘In the future if you desire to talk to anyone you may talk with my lawyer here in London. He may have more patience than I.’
He had mastered his anger and that frightened her more. In anger, Rafael could still be reached. ‘I don’t want to talk to your lawyer,’ she muttered tightly.
Rafael swept a jacket off the couch and sent a flaring glance of impatience down at the thin gold watch on his wrist. ‘This is sad. For you, not for me. Now, if you don’t mind…?’
‘All right, I’m going!’ Sarah took the decided hint with moritified alacrity, hurrying out to the hall to let herself out of the apartment.
When Sarah was deeply upset, it was not unusual for her to take refuge in the mundane practicalities of everyday life. She wouldn’t let herself think about Rafael’s threats while she negotiated the traffic and recalled that she had not yet done the weekly shopping. So she hurtled busily into a crowded supermarket, raced up and down the aisles and ended up staring sightlessly into a freezer compartment before her defences gave way and the full horror of Rafael’s confident threats about lawyers and courts and judicial decisions washed over her like a tidal wave.
She squeezed her eyes shut in a futile attempt to stem the tears flooding her eyes. She had not said what she’d intended to say. She had not said what she should have said. But on one count she had told him the whole truth. She could not face a future studded with flying visits from Rafael. Not when the mere sight of him with another woman still turned her into a seething cauldron of bitterness and defeat. Rafael was a cruel reminder of everything she did not want to remember. She should never have gone near him. Instead of pouring oil on troubled water, she had lit another torch.
He had already made several lightning-fast deductions. She did not have legal custody of the twins. Until Rafael had mentioned the fact, she had not even thought of the matter. Gilly and Ben had always been hers, solely hers. From the moment of their birth, they had been the centre…no, the entirety of her life. She had nothing else, had never wanted anything else, had never feared that anyone, least of all Rafael, might seek to take her children from her.
But what chance would she have in a court? In a court where ‘nothing would be concealed’? Her blood ran cold. She had terrifying visions of Rafael dredging up the facts of her own unhappy childhood and the subsequent effect on her development and building on those facts to insinuate that she couldn’t possibly be a good mother.
Nor would it stop there. Rafael didn’t know everything. But he could find out, couldn’t he? Wouldn’t any good lawyer go digging to establish exactly where she had been and what she had been doing for every month of the past five years? Rafael had a whole barrage of weapons he had yet to discover. Beads of perspiration formed on her short upper lip. An emotion that was nothing short of sheer terror spread to the depth of an abyss inside her.
‘Are you feeling all right, dear?’
Blankly she looked at the little old lady staring at her. From somewhere she dredged the self-possession to nod and force stiff legs onward in a semblance of normality. Dear God, she had nearly told all to Rafael in her urge to wipe the slate clean and establish her own innocence of duplicity. But had she confessed all, what a weapon she would have been giving him! He didn’t think she was fit to bring up the twins as it was.
All the way back home, she made frantic, crazy plans to pack up lock, stock and barrel and disappear with the children into thin air. When fantasy ran out of fuel on the balance of her bank account, she came back down to earth. She had to talk Rafael out of taking her to court
. That was the only alternative to flight, and since she had never managed to talk Rafael out of anything with the smallest degree of success she could not feel too hopeful of the outcome. Why should he listen to her now? It was a question she asked herself over and over again for the remainder of the day and the sleepless night that followed.
She slept in the next morning. Awakening she glanced at the clock and groaned. The twins had missed Sunday school and she couldn’t possibly get dressed in time to take them to church. The day continued as it had begun. Lunch was a burnt offering and afterwards she decided to take Gilly and Ben to the park across the road from the flat.
They had only been there about ten minutes when the twins began fighting over a bucket in the sandpit. As Ben triumphed, Gilly lost her balance and fell. With a screech of temper, she sprang up again and threw her whole weight at her brother. Ben grabbed a handful of black, curling hair and yanked. A scream that would have wakened the dead erupted from Gilly.
Sarah waded in. ‘Stop it!’
‘I don’t want your dirty ol’ bucket!’ Gilly shouted ferociously and raced off towards the swings.
Ben swiftly took off in the same direction. The bucket was forgotten. Now that his sister didn’t want it any more, it had lost its appeal. Grimly conscious of the pitying and superior glances of two other mothers nearby, Sarah retreated to a bench. Even at a distance it was obvious that her children were enjoying a heated dispute over the one vacant swing. She heaved a guilty sigh of relief when another child abandoned a swing and Ben took possession. Today the twins had been particularly argumentative and perhaps she was partly responsible, she reflected wryly. Nervous tension was making her feel like a novice tightrope walker and children were highly sensitive to atmosphere.
Glancing away from the twins, she caught sight of the tall, black-haired male standing beneath the trees some thirty yards from the swings. Tautening in alarm, she scrambled upright, made a jerky movement forward and then stilled again.
