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‘I came to talk to you about Jessica.’
Now she did turn round, her eyes confused and wary. Her heart had started to beat very fast as panic took hold of her.
He knew. He must know. He had guessed…or worked out…but how could he know? She hadn’t even known herself when he had left her that she was pregnant, and even if he had guessed…what did it matter now so many, many years later? Jessica was hers…hers and hers alone, the panic inside her insisted, and if this man thought that he could simply walk into their lives and…
‘Yes, Jessica. Your daughter—my daughter!’
It was almost worse than if she had been totally unprepared for it.
She felt a numbing wave of sickness reel over her, a nausea which began in her stomach and spread to every part of her body so that she was literally unable to stop herself from trembling and shivering.
‘Lacey.’
He was coming towards her and she reacted instinctively, backing away from him, her voice tight with pain and fear as she half screamed. ‘No, no! Not that! Please!’ She was moaning now, not screaming, her voice broken and defeated, her face pale and haunted as she felt her pain turn in on itself and burn into her, and then she saw the shock in his face and realised abruptly what she was doing. She was a woman now, not a child. She was beyond, surely, behaving with such hysteria and lack of control. After all, what possible harm could he do to her relationship with Jessica now? Jessica wasn’t a child who could be snatched away from her. She was an adult young woman.
Behind her, Lewis was speaking, his voice urgent, desperate almost, as he demanded, ‘Tell me, Lacey. Is she my child? I have to know.’
CHAPTER FOUR
LACEY took one deep breath and then another. What was the point in lies and evasion? All her adult life she had prided herself on her honesty.
‘Biologically, yes, she’s your child,’ she admitted fiercely. ‘But in every other respect, no, she’s my child and mine alone. You never even knew that she’d been conceived…never cared.’ She stopped, furious with herself for allowing her emotions to break through her self-control so easily.
‘I don’t want to take her away from you, Lacey,’ she heard Lewis telling her quietly, confirming what she had already known: that she had betrayed to him her great fear, her terror almost, that somehow he would seek to come between her and Jessica. ‘That isn’t why I’m here. God knows, I wish I didn’t have to say this, but I wish she weren’t mine.’
He wished she weren’t his. Lacey stared at him in disbelief, frozen in the grip of an anger, a rage almost, so strong that it took her several seconds to ask herself why, when he had just freed her from the terror of believing that he wanted to make some kind of claim on Jessica as her father, she should feel this anger at his rejection of her, his verbally expressed wish that she wasn’t his child.
‘If you’re worried that either she or I may make some kind of claim on you…’ she began stiffly.
He interrupted her, saying, ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ and causing her to glare bitterly at him and challenge him acidly.
‘What is it, then? Is it your wife…your children? Don’t you want them to know? Are you so ashamed of us…of the fact that we were once married, and that I, your unwanted first wife, conceived your child? If you hadn’t wanted me to have that child you should have been more careful. Only, as I recall it, you seemed as enthusiastic about the prospect of having children as I was myself. In fact—’
‘I don’t have a wife or any children.’
The words were so low, so filled with unmistakable pain, that she fell silent.
‘Look, could we please discuss this sitting down? I…’ He moved awkwardly, and she frowned, realising that he was limping slightly.
‘You’ve hurt your leg. A…’ Her response was instinctive, wholly feminine and nurturing, her brief movement towards him halted when he too moved, but back from her as though fending her off.
‘It’s nothing.’ He was brusque, terse almost, rejecting her…again, she recognised, embarrassment flushing her skin.
‘The sitting-room’s through there,’ she told him curtly, indicating a door off the
hall. ‘Please go in. I’ll go and put the kettle on.’
She didn’t particularly want a drink, but she needed time to assimilate what was happening. Her brain might have registered the fact that his presence here in her home had nothing to do with her as a woman, nothing to do with their past relationship as husband and wife, their past intimacy as lovers, but her body was rebelliously refusing to accept that same truth. Her body was…
Her body was reacting to his physical presence in very much the same way as it had done to her dreams of him, she admitted bitterly as she hurried into the kitchen and closed the door behind her.
Lacey’s head was still aching, but the sick terror which had pounded through her when she had thought he’d come to try and make some sort of claim on Jessica had gone.
Strange how easily she had believed him when he’d said that that wasn’t what he wanted, when she had so little reason to believe in anything he might say.
The kettle boiled, she made the tea, and put the tea things on a tray. When she walked into the sitting-room with it, Lewis was standing in front of the window, absently massaging his left thigh. When he heard her come in he stopped, walking towards her, taking the tray from her, asking her where she wanted him to put the tray down, and then, when she’d told him, complimenting her on the room’s décor.
‘You always did have a gift for turning a room into somewhere warm and welcoming.’
