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Tansy travelled home on the train in a daze. She couldn’t possibly have agreed to sleep with him, could she? That would have been indecent, she assured herself, and yet the closer she got to home, the more apprehensive she became about the decision she had made. She would lie to Calvin when he asked, she decided. She would say Jude had said she wasn’t suitable. It was perfectly understandable that she wasn’t willing to go to bed with Jude Alexandris just to secure her baby sister’s future…wasn’t it? It wasn’t as though he were unattractive, however, wasn’t as though she were hanging on to her inexperience for any particular reason. It would be more truthful and accurate to say that confronted with the unexpected—the sex—she had panicked and fled.
In the event, what to tell Calvin Hetherington no longer mattered when he jerked open the front door at her approach and glowered at her. ‘You told Alexandris no? You turned him down?’ he roared at her in disbelief.
Tansy paled. ‘Don’t shout…you’ll upset Posy.’
‘Susie’s taken her out to the park.’
‘How did you find out I said no?’ Tansy asked flatly.
‘I rang him to ask how it went…and you blew it, for some crazy reason, you blew it!’ Calvin snapped at her furiously. ‘He was willing to proceed, you weren’t. What happened? What are you playing at?’ her stepfather demanded in a rage.
Recognising that Jude had protected his own privacy, Tansy shrugged. ‘We just didn’t gel.’
‘Well, too bad for you!’ her enraged stepfather launched back at her. ‘You can go upstairs right now and pack and get out.’
‘Get out?’ Tansy echoed in shock.
‘Why would I let you stay on here after you’ve wrecked the best opportunity we were ever going to get of saving this situation?’ he slammed back at her, full of rancour.
‘Because I look after your daughter and the house,’ Tansy reminded him gently.
Calvin studied her with hard, resentful eyes. ‘Susie will take care of both from now on. Go on, pack… I want you out before the end of the day!’
Tansy went upstairs on wooden legs and collapsed down on the edge of the bed. That was the moment that it dawned on her that she had no rights whatsoever in the situation she was in. She had no right to stay on in the house, which had originally been bought by her own father, because it now belonged wholly to Calvin and she wasn’t a tenant. She had no right to interfere in Calvin’s care arrangements for his daughter either because she was only a half-sister.
Susie would be free and unsupervised to do as she liked with the little girl. She could lose her temper and shout at Posy and slap her when she cried. Tansy shuddered at that memory. She could leave Posy unchanged in her cot whenever she liked and for as long as she liked, walk away while the child was in the bath, careless of her safety, and feed her inappropriate food because there wasn’t going to be anyone around to object.
Tansy’s chest went hollow at the thought of the baby she loved being subjected to such treatment round the clock. Susie didn’t mean to be cruel, she was just too immature to be looking after a baby that wasn’t her own, but she was also too much in love with Tansy’s stepfather and too keen to move in with him to admit that unwelcome truth. It would be Posy who suffered for Tansy’s refusal to consider having a ‘normal’ marriage with Jude Alexandris.
Her bedroom door was thrust open and two suitcases were set down firmly in front of her. ‘It’s best you go,’ Calvin told her curtly. ‘I could never forgive you for this.’
As he slammed the door behind him again, Tansy pulled out her phone and agonised while she looked for Jude’s number in her contacts. She couldn’t find it until she read ‘future husband’ in the list, and almost spontaneously combusted in rage because there was ordinary confidence and then there was the kind of glaring discordant confidence that made a woman want to run over a man with a steamroller to painfully squash the attitude and bravado out of him. And that was Jude’s variety.
She called the number. ‘Hello? Would that be future husband I’m addressing?’
‘I don’t know. Am I?’ Jude enquired, not one whit surprised, it seemed, by her callback.
‘That would have to be a yes,’ Tansy bit out between clenched teeth. ‘If you still want me to marry you, I’ll agree.’
‘We still have more to discuss,’ Jude retorted crisply.
Tansy breathed in sustaining air fast and hard and wondered what it was about him that filled her with such irritation and rage. It wasn’t reasonable. She might find his marital terms offensive and unpalatable, but he had presented them calmly and politely. It was not his fault that Calvin had tied her up in knots over Posy’s future. It was not his fault that she loved her half-sister as much as if she had given birth to her, which was hardly surprising when she had been looking after the child since the day of her birth. Like any new mother, Tansy had done the sleepless nights, the anxiety attacks and fears that she was doing something wrong, and then the moments of pure gold when she looked down at Posy and her heart just threatened to burst with sheer love.
‘When do you want to see me again?’
‘This afternoon at my office. I don’t have time to waste,’ Jude told her with audible impatience. ‘I’ll text you the address. Come as soon as you can—I’ll fit you in.’
Not very gracious, Tansy mused, her face burning as she kicked off the shoes and tore off the dress. The deal was done now, so it didn’t matter what she wore, did it? She pulled on a stretchy, comfy skirt and teamed it with flat ankle boots and a floral top before putting on her coat and heading downstairs to see her stepfather again.
‘I’ve agreed to marry him… OK?’ she proclaimed as she stood in the living room doorway. ‘So you’ll need to make legal arrangements for Posy coming to live with me… I should tell Jude Alexandris about her now.’
Calvin vaulted upright, taken aback by her change of heart but visibly energised by the news. ‘No! You can’t risk it. Why would he want a baby in the picture and all the noise and inconvenience that go with her?’ he demanded. ‘Use your brain, Tansy. Don’t be a fool! The kid could make him back out. You can’t afford to tell him about Posy until that wedding ring is safely on your finger.’
Tansy swallowed hard at that advice because honesty came more naturally to her than lying by omission, but if that was what it would take to safely and legally remove her sister from her father’s mediocre care, she would do it. That penthouse apartment was huge and could probably absorb a couple of hidden babies without causing anyone any annoyance, she thought ruefully. There was no reason why Posy’s existence should impact that much on Jude, she told herself firmly, squashing that memory of him saying that they would scarcely be apart the first few months of their marriage and reminding herself that she was marrying him for Posy’s sake, which meant that Posy’s interests had to come first and ahead of everything else. Even ahead of honesty and fair-mindedness? a little voice nagged in the back of her brain, but she silenced it because she couldn’t afford to make a mistake when it came to Posy’s future well-being.
Alexandris Industries occupied a landmark skyscraper in the City of London. By the time Tansy made it to the top floor, she was wishing she owned more formal clothes because her casual, youthful outfit seemed out of place. Her wardrobe, however, was depressingly slender because she hadn’t had the money to add anything to it since her mother’s demise and had never had cause to own dressier outfits.
The receptionist signalled Tansy with a discreet lift of her hand while she sat in the waiting area. Tansy stood up. ‘Mr Alexandris will see you now…he has squeezed you in. Are you one of his godchildren?’ the young woman asked, curiosity brimming in her keen gaze.
