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Was that supposed to reassure her? Rachel stared at him, the rumblings of anger beginning to bubble up inside her. ‘So now I’m supposed to forgive—forget,’ she said. ‘And sit back and wait for the next time you’re under pressure like that and feel the need to relieve it with some other accommodating fool who happens to be available?’
‘No.’ Unlike her, Daniel did not harden his tone. ‘Because it won’t happen again.’
The sceptical look she sent him was her opinion of that.
‘It won’t happen again,’ he repeated patiently, ‘because it didn’t work the first time.’ He studied her hurt and angry face to see if she understood what he was getting at, then allowed himself a small wry smile when he realised she certainly did not. ‘You and your undying innocence,’ he murmured drily.
‘I stopped being an innocent, Daniel,’ she derided, ‘at the age of seventeen, when you took innocence from me!’
‘You gave it, Rachel,’ he corrected. ‘You gave it freely.’
She flushed—couldn’t help it because he was so damned right! And she hadn’t just given, she’d virtually thrown herself at him.
‘And, believe it or not,’ he went on, ‘I took when I’d had no intention of taking. No—’ he reached out to grip her hands again ‘—don’t take that the way I made it sound,’ he begged. ‘I wanted you, Rachel. My God,’ he sighed, ‘I always want you! But you were seventeen years old, for God’s sake! And I was a reasonably experienced man of twenty-four! I knew that, in all decency, I should turn and walk away from you before things became too serious! But I couldn’t,’ he admitted. ‘So I was determined to keep the relationship light—but I couldn’t even manage that.’ His jaw clenched momentarily. ‘In the end, I found myself so obsessed by you that my work began to suffer. And yours did too,’ he reminded her. ‘You were heading for straight As in your exams before I came along. But instead of submerging yourself in study, as you should have been doing, you were out with me. And your parents began to get at me…’
Her eyes widened in surprise at that piece of news. She hadn’t been aware that her parents had done anything but smile warily at him when Daniel used to collect her from home.
‘They disapproved,’ he continued. ‘And rightly so. I was putting at risk all those years of schooling you’d already put in. And, because of you, I had put in abeyance all the big plans I had mapped out for my own career.’
‘This?’ she asked, meaning the office they were sitting in which made its own statement of his successful achievements.
He nodded. ‘Or something like this.’
‘So you fulfilled your dreams in the end, despite me,’ she remarked a trifle bitterly.
‘But at the expense of yours,’ he added.
‘Mine? How do you know what my dreams were if you never bothered to ask?’ she queried.
‘Art,’ he stated. ‘University first, then a career in art. Advertising, maybe, or design. It was all you thought about then.’
‘Was it?’ Her tone mocked his confidence. ‘Which just goes to show how little you really know about me.’
His eyes flashed up to hers, dark and intense. ‘Then what did you want?’ he asked, and he swallowed tensely, as if he didn’t really want to hear the answer.
Rachel derided him with a look. You, she wanted to say. All I ever wanted from life was you. ‘Let’s just say I probably got what I deserved,’ she mocked instead, and knew the words hurt him.
‘I was about to get out of your
life eight years ago when you told me you were pregnant,’ he went on grimly, and Rachel closed her eyes, accepting that it was his turn to hurt her. ‘I’d spent that fortnight down here in London, if you remember,’ he said. ‘But what you didn’t know was that I’d been attending a series of interviews for a job which would have taken me out of the country and as far away from you as I could get.’
She’d suspected it, Rachel thought wretchedly. Ever since Lydia had opened her eyes to what she and Daniel really were to each other, she had suspected her pregnancy had trapped him. Daniel had not wanted to marry her; he simply hadn’t been given the choice.
‘No—’ again he grabbed her hands and squeezed them tightly ‘—you’re mistaking my reasons. I didn’t want to leave you!’ he stated fiercely. ‘But I was prepared to get out of your life for your sake! You were too young and had too much going for you for me to tie you down! The job offer was like a crossroads I had reached, and I accepted it because I believed it was the best thing to do for both of us! But it wasn’t an easy decision and I was feeling bloody wretched by the time I got back from London with my cool goodbyes all rehearsed in my mind.’
He stopped, his eyes darkening on a remembered pain. ‘Then there you were,’ he murmured thickly, ‘standing right in front of me, looking up at me with all that—all that…’ He pushed a hand to his eyes, covering them for a moment with fingers which shook. ‘And I stood there, dying inside because I was going to have to let it all go. The next thing I knew—’ he swallowed ‘—we were making love when we should not have been, making things worse, because how the hell do you tell the woman you’ve just drowned yourself in that you’re going to leave her?’ he choked, too lost in his own pained memories to notice how still and pale Rachel had become. ‘Then, while I was struggling to say the damned words, you laid your head on my knee and said calmly, “I’m pregnant, Daniel. What shall we do?"’ He laughed softly, shaking his dark head. ‘It was like being handed a reprieve with the hangman’s noose already tied around my neck! I felt freed—alive—so alive that all I could do was sit there——’ he spread his trembling hand out expressively ‘—and let the sheer bloody joy of it wash over me! I didn’t have to let you go, because you needed me. You— needed—me!’ he repeated hoarsely. ‘I could dismiss your dreams of a career. I could dismiss your youth. And I could do what I’d really wanted to do and gather you in, keep you close so no one else would know what a wonderful, beautiful treasure I’d got!’
He sucked in a deep breath of air, then let it out again slowly. ‘So, we got married,’ he went on less emotionally. ‘And came down here to live in that poky little flat in Camden Town. We had hardly any money, barely a possession we could call our own, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so happy in my entire life! Then the twins arrived, and I had a stroke of luck which gave me the chance to try something I’d always wanted to do. You know how I used to dabble in stocks and shares then?’ She nodded. ‘Well, after we married, I hung on to those I thought might bring in a good return one day, and one particular block did,’ he said. ‘It was my first real killing on the market, and I had a choice; buy you a nice little house with the money, or feed it straight back into the market. I fed it,’ he confessed, as if it were a mortal sin.
Which perhaps it had been at the time, Rachel allowed, if only because he hadn’t bothered to discuss what he wanted to do with her first. But then—she gave a mental shrug—perhaps Daniel would not be the man he was today if he had needed constantly to refer to others before he made a decision to take a risk.
‘Then I spent the next few months feeling as guilty as hell when the flat became impossible to live in with two small babies and all the paraphernalia that comes with them. Then the stock began to pay big dividends, shifting up the market ladder at such a rate that I made my second killing in as many months! And after that—’ he shrugged ‘—I never had to look back. We bought the house. I set up my own company, diversifying into helping out small ailing companies by gaining majority stock, then feeding more money into them to make them more efficient. And Masterson Holdings grew steadily, until it became what you see today. But not without its sacrifices,’ he added grimly. ‘The bigger the company got, the more time I had to spend working in it. And the sheer nature of my business meant I had to move in certain social circles if I was to keep an ear to what was going on in the business world. But the more I saw of that world, the more determined I became that none of its ugly taint was going to rub off on you! You were the rose-garden in the middle of the vile jungle I fought in,’ he likened huskily. ‘You were the only constant thing in my life. I would come home to you and see the sweet seventeen-year-old I first fell in love with, and I knew I would fight the very devil himself to keep you that way!’
He took another deep breath, his eyes hooded a little because he was revealing to her so much of the inner man he usually kept hidden away—the one she had been curious to know but had never looked closely enough to find for herself.
‘I think someone up there must have known it,’ he said ruefully then. ‘Because the next thing I know you’re pregnant with Michael, and not having an easy time of it. And one of my newest acquisitions becomes involved in a nasty little fraud scandal which takes months of legal battling to sort out. I’m away more than I’m at home where I should be, making things easier for you. You can be bloody stubborn sometimes, Rachel,’ he inserted gruffly. ‘We had more money than we could ever spend even if we tried, and you wouldn’t let me hire anyone to help you.’
Her chin came up. ‘If you can run this place singlehanded, Daniel, then surely I can take care of one small house and three even smaller children!’
