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After all, Gwen knew exactly what that felt like. She might have no siblings but growing up she hadn’t been the only child in the house. Her father was a man who expected to be the centre of attention at all times. Gwen had learnt not to compete with him for her mother’s attention, but it hadn’t stopped him resenting her existence.
She didn’t know how old she had been, or even how she had found out that her serial-adulterer father had had his first affair when her mother had been pregnant with her. In his eyes that, at least, was an excuse for his behaviour. After that it seemed things had gone downhill, although to the outside world they had continued to present the image of a happy, perfect family—and it had all started with the birth of the baby he’d never wanted anyway.
And now Gwen’s decision not to tell Rio he was a father, which had seemed so right at the time, was being severely tested. She had made it assuming that their lives would never intersect again. Because what were the odds? They lived in totally different worlds. She remembered the day she had seen a missed call on her phone and recognised his number. It had been a very weak moment and if she’d picked up she might, just might, have told him. Though imagining his face if he had seen her the way she was that day, attached to a drip in a hospital ward unable to keep any fluids down, made her very glad she hadn’t. She hadn’t felt lucky at the time but now she knew that some women suffered that sort of debilitating nausea all through their pregnancy. For her it had only lasted five months, which had been more than long enough.
‘Miss... Miss...’
Gwen shook her head and turned to the little boy standing there. He’d washed his face a little too enthusiastically and his hair was wet, as was the front of his uniform shirt. She felt a tug of affection and smiled. She had fallen into teaching through a mixture of accidents and necessity, but she loved it.
‘What have you got there?’ she asked, looking at his cupped chubby hands.
‘A bee, a big, big bee! It was stuck on the window.’ He lifted his hands to his ear. ‘It’s still buzzing but he won’t sting me. He’s a nice bee.’
Gwen sincerely hoped thisnicebee lived up to expectations and hastily opened the window, letting in a waft of warm scented summer air and the murmur of young voices as pupils began to file out of the hall and through the wide stone arch at the far end of the quadrangle. She picked up her damp pupil and she smiled encouragingly until he opened his hand, giving his captive freedom.
‘Ah, there she is now.’
Gwen’s smile became fixed as she froze, only the child in her arms preventing her from humiliating herself by ducking down out of sight. The headmaster didn’t appear to notice her deer-in-headlights pose, framed in the window as he looked at the man standing beside him.
‘Mrs Meredith, I was just telling Mr Bardales...’
‘Rio, please—’
The headmaster tipped his head in pleased acknowledgement. ‘Howinterestedhis mother was when I was telling her of your enthusiasm for outdoor teaching.’
‘I share her enthusiasm,’ Rio lied without a flicker and bared his white teeth in a smile that did not touch his eyes as they drifted down her body, or what he could see of it.
Self-preservation kept her expression blank as the shock, guilt and fear that paralysed her were virtually obliterated beneath a shameful hot thrum of sexual awareness that made her legs tremble. Her nerve endings were screaming out in recognition as she turned away from the window and, after taking a deep soothing breath, opened the adjacent door and stepped outside.
The headmaster beamed, blissfully oblivious of any undercurrents seething around him. ‘Excellent...well, we have the expert here to explain.’ He gave an impatient little shake of his head. ‘Come along, Mrs Meredith.’ He paused and lifted a hand. ‘Ah, here is your class now.’
She huffed out a sigh of relief, saved by the bell—or at least by the scuffle of twenty pairs of small feet as the reception class, with Ruth bringing up the rear, came filing out of the hall into the archway.
All she had to do now was to walk past Rio and she was home free. She clenched her jaw and with determined optimism told herself that this could still turn out all right.
‘There you go.’ She put down the child still in her arms, took his hand and led him towards the arch, where, the moment he saw his classmates, he took off, ignoring the headmaster’s bellow of ‘No running!’ as he pounded across the gravel to join his friends, the tiny stones scattering in his enthusiasm.
It was an enthusiasm to get away that Gwen shared.
Careful not to make eye contact with Rio, her heart pumping frantically beneath her pale blue cotton blouse as she struggled to channel calm indifference, she nodded towards the head and made to join her class.
‘No, Mrs Meredith.’
She stopped and sighed, her eyes following her class as she thought wistfully,So near and yet so far,before squaring her shoulders and turning back, an expression of polite enquiry painted on her face.
‘Come and explain to our guest about your initiative. I admit I had my doubts initially but I have been won over,’ he said graciously. ‘We have even included it in our new prospectus and the parents are most enthusiastic...but now I’ll allow our expert to explain,’ he added to Rio as Gwen joined them, struggling to hide her reluctance. ‘I will leave you in her very capable hands.’
‘My class—’ Gwen protested, clutching at straws.
‘If you could bring our guest to my office at two-thirty, the governors are joining us there for coffee.’
‘I shall look forward to that,’ Rio, who up to this point had been fully intending to find himself regretfully having to leave long before any convivial chat over coffee, assured with plausible sincerity.
Gwen pulled in a breath and, thinking it was now or never, forced herself to meet his stare head-on. She had chosen to forget about the skin-tingling effect of his proximity, because, until you were actually feeling it, the aura of raw masculinity he exuded was hard to quantify.
She struggled to think past it and waited.
His expression was one of unstudied cool, a calmness contradicted by his hands, which were clenched into fists at his side. ‘So,MrsMeredith, this is a surprise.’
