Книга - The Greek and the Single Mum

The Greek and the Single Mum
Julia James











About the Author


JULIA JAMES lives in England with her family. Mills & Boon novels were Julia’s first “grown up” books she read as a teenager, alongside Georgette Heyer and Daphne du Maurier, and she’s been reading them ever since. Julia adores the English and Celtic countryside, in all its seasons, and is fascinated by all things historical, from castles to cottages. She also has a special love for the Mediterranean - ‘the most perfect landscape after England!’ — she considers both are ideal settings for romance stories. In between writing Julia enjoys walking, gardening, needlework, baking extremely gooey chocolate cakes — and trying to stay fit!




The Greek and the Single Mum

Julia James







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




PROLOGUE


CLARE took a deep breath and walked forward into the dimly lit cocktail bar. Soft music issued from the white piano in the corner, and she vaguely recognised an old number from the fifties. But she paid it no attention, heading instead for the nearest table, set low and surrounded by deep leather easy chairs designed to soothe the bodies of besuited businessmen, weary from a hard day’s work in the corridors of power.

Her mouth twisted slightly. Those corridors—and the boardrooms and suites that opened off them—might demand long hours, but they also awarded a de luxe lifestyle to those who stalked them. Bespoke suits, handmade shoes, perfect grooming, and the ability to pay exorbitant prices with a flick of a platinum credit card.

As Clare approached the table, around which a cluster of suits eased back in the armchairs, a soft, throaty laugh made her turn her head slightly. A little way away, at another table, a couple sat on a sofa, drinks in hand. It was not the man who had laughed so seductively, but his female companion. For a brief moment Clare allowed herself to look. Even in the soft lighting she could see that the woman was very beautiful, with chic hair, expertly styled, and immaculate make-up. Her dress was a designer number, and clung to her lissom form. As she gave her soft laugh, she crossed her long, sheer-stockinged legs, and one elegantly manicured hand hovered over her companion’s thigh.

A little stab went through Clare. She looked away.

I shouldn’t have taken this job. I knew it was a mistake!

For four long years she had kept away from places like this. The world she lived in now was in a different universe. Stepping back into this lush, expensive environment was not something she had wanted to do.

It brought back too many memories.

And the brief glimpse of that designer-clothed female had intensified them.

Was I ever really like that?

It seemed impossible—and yet with her brain she knew it was true. She too, once, a lifetime ago, had been like that woman. Beautifully clothed, immaculately made up, elegant and chic.

She inhaled sharply. What did it matter that this place brought back the past? Memories she didn’t want and didn’t welcome. She was here simply because it was the best way she had of making the extra money she needed if her determination to take Joey and her friend Vi on holiday that summer was to succeed. Evening work was the only kind that was possible, and waiting cocktail tables in this swish new hotel, recently opened on an arterial road en route to Heathrow in West London, a bus ride away from where she lived with Vi, had to be a lot better than working in a pub, or in her local pizza parlour.

As for the memories its luxury triggered—well, tough. Her chin lifted. She’d have to get over it.

The uncompromising injunction resonated in her head. Get over it. One of the toughest self-help commandments around—and yet it had helped her, she knew, during those four long years. Years when she’d had to completely change her life—not just her lifestyle, but something far more profound. Far more difficult.

No. Don’t go there!

That was another maxim she’d had to rigidly cling to. Don’t go there—where in her dreams, her yearnings, she longed to go. Back into the past. A past that ached like an old, deep, unhealable wound.

Or, worse, don’t go into a present that did not exist—a parallel universe of longing and desire that was conjured up out of her deepest places, where the choice she had made had been quite, quite different.

Well, I didn’t make that choice! I chose a different way. And it was the right way to choose—the only way.

However hard the choice had been, it would have been far worse if she hadn’t made it. She’d paid the price for her decision, and even to think of it was agonising… just agonising.

Her own voice interrupted her painful thoughts.

‘Good evening, gentlemen—what may I get you to drink?’

Painting a bright, attentive smile on her face, she listened and nodded and scribbled as fast as she could, hoping she was getting it down right. She headed back to the bar to relay the order.

‘Doing OK?’ asked Tony, one of the barmen, congenially.

‘I hope so,’ Clare replied cautiously.

He wasn’t to know that it was not just her being new to the job that was making her cautious. That the whole expensive ambience of the place was disturbing her. Threatening her with memories of a life she had once led, and which was gone for ever. At least she’d never been at this place before; she was more familiar with the classic de luxe hotels, like the Savoy in London and the Plaza in New York. This hotel was too new, too impersonal, not at all the kind that—

She spotted a customer beckoning her and hurried across, glad of the distraction. Glad, too, that she was kept on her feet without respite as the evening wore on. Her feet in the unaccustomed high heels were starting to ache, but apart from a couple of confusing moments regarding complicated cocktails she was basically coping, she thought. She was careful always to keep her physical distance from the guests, but by and large she wasn’t getting any hassle.

But then, of course, she acknowledged, with part relief and partly a little pang, the closest she got to a beauty treatment these days was filing a hang nail…

But what did she care? she thought fiercely. Joey didn’t give a hoot if her hair was just tied back in a utilitarian plait, or if her face was bare of make-up. All he wanted was her attention—and her love.

And he got both in infinite amounts.

Even as she thought of Joey her hand automatically went to her apron pocket. Her mobile was on, but there had been no peep from it. Vi still found it tricky to use a mobile, but she’d made a gallant effort to learn, and had faithfully promised to call Clare if Joey surfaced and was distressed at her absence in any way. But, with luck, Joey was a good sleeper now, and once he went off he was usually fine until morning.

She handed round the drinks she’d just collected from the bar, spotted another of her tables starting to disperse, and kept an eye on them to see if she was going to get a tip. The wages, like all in this line of work, were hardly brilliant, and tips were important, like it or not. Every penny counted, and every penny was going into the Holiday Jar that would, she fervently hoped, take her and Joey and Vi to the seaside in the summer.

A shadow formed in her eyes.

If fate had dealt her a different card there’d be no such thing as the Holiday Jar…

But it was no use thinking that way. She had made the right choice, the only choice.

This way, though Joey might only be the fatherless child of yet another impoverished single mother, wearing clothes out of charity shops and eking a living, that was still infinitely better than being the alternative—the unwanted bastard of a Greek tycoon and his discarded, despairing mistress…




CHAPTER ONE


XANDER ANAKETOS stifled his impatience with a civil, if brief smile at the man beside him. Richard Gardner was of the school of businessmen who considered that every deal should be sealed with a drink and an expensive meal. Xander had no time for such niceties. The investment he’d just agreed in principle to make in Gardner’s company would be mutually profitable, and the details would be hammered out by their respective subordinates. Now Xander was eager to be gone. He had plans for the evening which did not include making small talk with Richard Gardner. However, he had no wish to snub the older man, and besides, his ‘other business’ would wait for him.

They always waited for him.

Sonja de Lisle was no exception.

Oh, she might pout for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t last. Soon she would be purring all over him. He pulled his mind away. Best not to let his thoughts go to Sonja when he had dinner to get through first.

And before that a drink in the cocktail lounge while they perused the menu.

As the guest, Xander let Gardner choose where to sit, and took his place accordingly. He glanced round, concealing the disparagement in his eyes. This was not a hotel he would have chosen to patronise, but he could appreciate that it was convenient for the business park where Gardner’s company was sited near Heathrow. But, for himself, he preferred hotels to have more class, more prestige—usually more antiquity. He liked classic, world-famous hotels, like the Ritz, Claridges, the St John.

Memory flickered. He rarely went to the St John now.

Like a stiletto sliding in between his synapses, an image came into his mind. Blonde hair, curving in a smooth swathe over one shoulder, diamond studs set into tender lobes, long dark lashes and cool grey-green eyes.

Eyes that were looking at him without emotion. A face held very still.

A face he had not seen again.

He thrust the image aside. There was no point remembering it.

Abruptly he reached for the menu that had been placed on the low table in front of them and flicked it open, making his selection without great enthusiasm. Snapping it shut, he tossed it down on the table again and looked around impatiently. He could do with a drink. Did this place not run to waitresses?

There was one a table or so away from them with her back to him. He kept his eye on her, ready to beckon. He could see her nodding, sliding her notepad into her pocket.

She turned towards the bar. Xander held up an imperious hand. She caught the gesture and altered direction.

Then she stopped dead.

Clare could feel the blood and all sensation slowly draining out of her body. It emptied from her brain, her limbs, every part of her, draining down through every vein, every nerve.

And in its place only two things.

Disbelief.

And memory.

Memory…

Poisonous. Toxic. Deadly.

And completely overwhelming.

She was dragged in its wake, down, down, down through the sucking vortex of time.

Down into the past…

Xander was late.

Restlessly, Clare paced up and down. She should by now be used to him arriving when he wanted to, but this time it was harder to bear. A lot harder. She could feel nerves pinching in her stomach. Every muscle was tightly clenched.

Am I really going to tell him?

The question stung in her mind for the thousandth time. For two weeks it had been going round and round in her head. And with every circulation she knew that there was only one answer—could only be one answer.

I’ve got to tell him. I can’t not.

And every time she told herself that she would feel the familiar flood of anxiety pooling in her insides—the familiar dread.

If—she corrected herself—when she told him, how would he take it? Automatically, in her head, she felt herself start to pray again. Please, please let him take it the way I so desperately want him to! Please!

But would he? Like a lawyer, she tried to shore up her position as best she could, mentally arranging all her arguments like ducks in a row.

I’ve lasted longer than the others. That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?

Xander Anaketos never kept his mistresses long. She knew that. Had known it since before that fateful night when she had joined their long, long list. But she hadn’t cared. Hadn’t cared that her shelf-life in his bed was likely to be in the order of six months, if that. Hadn’t cared even that she’d got that fact from one of the most reliable sources for such information—her predecessor. Aimee Decord had warned her straight. The woman had been drunk, Clare knew, though it had hardly showed except for the slightest swaying in her elegant walk, the slightest lack of focus in her dark, beautiful eyes.

‘Enjoy him, cherie,’ she’d said to Clare, taking yet another sip of her always full champagne flute. ‘You’ll be gone by Christmas.’ Her smile had almost had a touch of pity in it, as well as malice. And something more—something that had not been jealousy, but something that had chilled Clare even more than jealousy would have. A despairing hunger…

But Aimee Decord had been wrong. Clare had not been gone by Christmas. Indeed, she’d spent the holiday with Xander in Davos, skiing. Just as she’d spent the last two weeks of January in the Caribbean, and Easter in Paris. Followed by a tour of North America, taking in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto—a hectic schedule which had whirled her along in the wake of one business meeting after another. Then it had been back to Europe, a sojourn in Paris again, then Geneva, Milan, another brief, but so very precious holiday in the Caribbean, and back to London.

Six months—nine months. Nearly a year. Very nearly a year.

In fact, Clare knew to the day—the night!—that in three weeks it would be their anniversary. And by then—oh, please, sweet God—by then she would have more to celebrate than that.

She went on pacing restlessly. Nerves still pinching. Still running through the tangled, shadowy fantasies that might or might not prove true.

It wasn’t just that she’d lasted nearly twice as long as other mistresses of Xander Anaketos. Or that he had never installed her in an apartment, as he had the others, preferring that she should accompany him on his constant travels to the continents on which he conducted his complex and never-ending business affairs in the mysterious and arcane realm of international finance. Clare knew nothing about it, and did not enquire, having realised very early on that when Xander did finally clock off from business he wanted no more discussion of it until he was recalled to its demands.

There was another fantasy, most precious of all, that had came true recently, and which she now hugged to herself with a desperate hope.

Their last time together, nearly a fortnight ago, had been different. She’d known it—felt it. At first she’d thought it was only herself, suffused, as she had been, body and heart, with the knowledge that she possessed about what had happened to her so completely and absolutely unexpectedly, and yet so thrillingly.

But the change had not just been in her, she knew—knew. Xander had been different too. Oh, he’d been as passionate as ever, as voracious in his desires and needs, and as dedicated to fulfilling her own physical needs, desires. But there had been something more—more than could be accounted for merely because he had not seen her for ten days and had, the moment he’d stepped through the door, tossed aside his briefcase and swept her into his arms, carrying her off to his bed even while he was removing her clothes and devastating her with his kisses, the kisses of a man deprived for too long of what he most wanted.

The flames had consumed them, as they always did, bathing them like writhing salamanders in the fire of passion. But afterwards… ah, afterwards… Clare shut her eyes, shivering with remembered emotion. He had gone on holding her, tightly, closely, fervently. His hand had slid around her head, spearing through her hair, pressing her into his shoulder, while his other arm had wrapped around her like a clamp. She had heard, against her breast, the tumultuous pounding of his heart, felt her own beating against his.

He had said words to her in Greek and then fallen silent. She’d gone on lying crushed against him, her heart so full, so full. Then his hand had left her waist, and his other hand the back of her head, and he had shifted to cup her head with both his hands, one either side, and she’d half lifted herself from him.

She’d gazed down into his face. The face she knew so intimately, so absolutely. Every line, every plane, every lean contour, every sooty lash, every indentation around his sculpted, mobile mouth. He’d stared into her eyes from the depths of his own dark, midnight eyes, and there had been something in the way he’d looked at her that had made her heart turn slowly over.

He’d said another word in Greek. She hadn’t known what it meant, hadn’t cared, had only gazed down into his eyes, her heart slowly turning over, like a satellite in space, dissociated from the common earth.

It was that look, that long, endless exchange, that she clung to now. It had become a symbol, a beacon that she was now about to test her fate upon.

He cares for me. I know he does. It’s not just the consideration of a lover, the conventional courtesy of a man towards his mistress. It’s more than that.

How much more she did not know, dared not hope. But there was something there—a seed, nothing more as yet, but enough, oh, enough for her to feast on!

But she must not feast—she must be frugal in her hope. And she must not, must not, seek to harvest it before it had time to grow, blossom to fruition.

Automatically she paused in her pacing, lifting her hand to her abdomen, and placing it there. She felt, as always, emotion welling up in her. So much depended on that harvest.

If he cares for me then it will be all right. It will all be all right.

But what if she were wrong? Chill shuddered through her.

Too much depended on his reaction. Her whole life. Her whole future.

And not just hers.

Again, in an instinctive gesture as old as time, she cupped her abdomen.

‘It will be all right,’ she whispered to herself.

Clare went off to the kitchen to make herself a cup of calming herb tea. The kitchen—fearsomely modern—still made her breath catch whenever she went in. So did the whole apartment—but then so did Xander’s apartment in Paris, not just the one here in London, and the one in Manhattan.

She still found it strange that he seemed to have no fixed abode anywhere. Nowhere he called home.

But then, neither did she. Since her father’s death two years ago she had had no home. Both her parents had been only children, and her mother had died when she was thirteen. The tragedy had thrown her and her schoolteacher father very close together, and his death from a long drawn-out cancer, when she was twenty, had been devastating.

And it had made her vulnerable. Susceptible. With the death of her father she had been entirely on her own. She had gone back to college, her studies having been interrupted when her father’s illness had demanded full-time care, but her heart had not been in them. She had gone to London, preferring the anonymity of a huge city, far away from everything familiar and painful. The casual come-and-go of city life had suited her, teeming with people, none of them important to her, or her to them. She had taken temporary jobs, undemanding and unimportant, her emotions completely on hold after all the trauma of her father’s death.

And then, without the slightest expectation, her emotions had sprung to life again. Vividly, terrifyingly alive. Alive in every nerve, every sense, every shimmering awareness.

Because of one man. She could remember in absolute detail the moment she had first seen him.

Clare had been sent by her temping agency to cover for a sick receptionist, and on her very first day, as she was sitting behind a plush, modernist-style desk, a covey of suited men had swung in through the doors. Her eyes had gone to them automatically—and stalled.

The man at the centre of the group had been the most arresting male she had ever seen—she hadn’t been able to take her eyes from him.

He’d been tall, easily six foot, and lithe, and lean. His suit had been fantastically cut, making him look smooth and svelte and… devastating. And that was even before she’d registered the rest of him.

The sable hair, the tanned Mediterranean skin, the jaw-droppingly good-looking features.

And the eyes.

Eyes to drown in.

He had walked right past her with his entourage, unchallenged by the security guard, who had merely said in a respectful tone, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Anaketos.’ But just as he’d swung past her, sitting there staring at him, his head had suddenly moved minutely and brought his gaze to her. Abruptly, instinctively, she had twisted her head away…

They had gone past, and she had breathed out again, not even aware till then that she’d been holding her breath.

She had felt alive for the first time in a long, long time. As if she had woken from a long sleep…

It had been stupid, she knew, to have done thereafter what she had done. She’d been a woman rendered incapable of behaving rationally, but she had done it all the same. She had let Xander Anaketos seduce her.

And he had done it with a swiftness that had cut the ground out from under her feet. Before the week was out she had been flying to Geneva with him. How had he done it? She still did not know. She had done her best not to react to him whenever she had seen him, and even when he had paused by the reception desk to have a word with the security guard she had assiduously paid attention only to her computer screen. Yet on the day she’d been due to finish the posting, she had been summoned by phone to Xander’s executive office on the top floor, where he had coolly invited her to dinner that night.

She had stared blankly.

‘I’m afraid I don’t think—’ she had begun. Then stopped. Her chest had seemed tight. Xander Anaketos had been looking at her. She’d felt her toes start to melt into her shoes.

So she had gone.

And from dinner she had gone to his bed.

Should she have done it? Done something she had never done before—slept with a man on her very first date with him? She had. She had gone to his apartment, his bed, as unhesitatingly as if she’d had no conscious thought. But then she hadn’t had any conscious thought about it. It had been instinct, an urge, an overwhelming, irresistible desire, that had made it impossible, utterly impossible, to say no, to stop the evening, to back away from him.

So she hadn’t. She’d been able to do nothing but stand there, her whole body trembling with an intensity that she had never, ever experienced before, while Xander Anaketos walked across his vast apartment lounge towards her and slid one hand around the nape of her neck, caressing it lightly, oh so lightly, so sensuously, while his other hand slid long, skilled fingers into her hair and drew her mouth to his.

She had drowned. Fathoms deep.

Falling deep, deep into that wondrous, blissful world she still dwelt in now.

Or did she? Again, the strained look haunted her eyes again. Living with Xander was bliss—but it came with a price. She had learnt swiftly to start paying that price. Learnt it the first time she had taken Xander’s hand in a spontaneous gesture of affection in public. He had disengaged and gone on talking to the person he’d been speaking to. She hadn’t done it again. Nor did she ever put her hand on his sleeve, or lean against him, or show any other similar demonstration of affection. She had learnt not to do so, adopting instead the cool composure that he evidently preferred. In private he was passionate—thrillingly so!—taking her in a sensual storm, time after time, leaving her overwhelmed with emotion. Yet even in that white-out of exquisite sensation, and in the exhausted, replete aftermath as she lay limp in his arms, she knew better than to say to him what her heart urged her to say.

That she was, and had been even from their very first time together, hopelessly in love with him.

But she could never tell him. She knew that—and accepted it. He was a man who was essentially a loner, she recognised. He had made his own way in life, she knew, amassing his fortune through skill, daring and formidable financial acumen. Brought up by an elderly uncle, a professor of maths at a provincial Greek university, who had died some years ago, Xander had put his energies into his work. Clare knew that for Xander women were only for recreation and sexual pleasure, fleeting companionship, nothing more. He did not want emotional attachment. Let alone love.

But in the year they had been together he had shown no sign of restlessness with her, no sign of growing bored and weary of her. It was the reverse, if anything—especially that last, most precious time when they’d made love. She had sensed in the depths of her being that something was different between them.

She felt her heart catch again. Fill with hope again. Surely she was more than just the latest in his endless parade of mistresses who, as she had so swiftly learned, never engaged him for more than a handful of months at a time? He found it hard to express his emotions, she knew, preferring passion and sensuality—but that did not mean he did not feel them! Did not mean he felt nothing for her beyond physical attraction!

Again she replayed in her mind the memory of how he had been different last time, how he had held her, gazed into her eyes, spoken those words to her in Greek that he had never said before… And yet again came hope, searing and urgent.

There was the sound of the apartment door opening. She felt her heart leap, then quiver, her eyes going immediately to where he would walk into the reception room.

And then he was there, paused in the entrance, his figure tall and familiar, making her breath catch in her lungs as it always did, every time she saw him again after an absence.

For a second her eyes lit, and for the briefest moment she was sure she saw an answering expression in his eyes.

Then it was gone.

‘Delays at JFK,’ he said. ‘Then the motorway was jammed.’ Xander gave an irritated shake of his head and set his briefcase down on the sideboard.

Clare stood, poised in the centre of the room. He turned to look at her. For a second there was that look in his eyes again, and then it was gone once more.

‘I’ll take a shower, then we can go out and eat,’ he said.

Her eyes flickered. ‘You don’t want to eat here?’

He gave another cursory shake of his head. ‘I’ve reserved the St John.’

‘Oh. That’s lovely,’ Clare answered.

It might be lovely—the restaurant at the St John had become one of her favourites—but it was also unusual. Usually when Xander got back from abroad he preferred to eat in.

After sweeping her off to bed…

She looked at him uncertainly. He was loosening the knot of his tie, but he made no move towards her. Instead, he headed to the bedroom.

‘Fix me a drink, will you, Clare?’ he called.

She headed back to the kitchen and extracted a chilled bottle of beer from the fridge, opening it carefully and filling a glass. She made her way down to the en suite bathroom. He was already in the shower cubicle, and she could see his tall, naked body dimly behind the screen through the steam. He was washing his hair and had his back to her.

She left his drink on the vanity, and went into the bedroom. If they were going to the St John she’d better dress accordingly.

She had learnt very early on that Xander did not care to be kept waiting. He was never uncivil, but she could sense his irritation. The irritation of a rich man who didn’t have to wait for things, or people. Including herself. So now she simply slipped on a dark green sheath, one of her favourites, brushed out her hair and retouched her make-up. Then she stepped back to check her appearance.

The familiar svelte, classically beautiful image looked back at her—hair smooth, make-up restrained, cool and composed.

She was still extremely slim. Nothing showed at all. Yet she could feel a distinct tightness in the dress fabric that was noticeable only by touch, not sight. Instinctively, yet again, she slipped her hand across her abdomen. Protectively. Cherishingly. A soft look came into her eyes.

Oh, let it be all right—please, please let it be all right!

The St John’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant was as busy as ever, but for Xander Anaketos one of the best-positioned tables was always available. It was set back, in a quieter spot, although the hushed tones of the other diners made anyone else’s conversation quite inaudible.

They took their places, and Clare knew that the eyes of the women there had gone to Xander—because women’s eyes always did. And so did hers. After ten days of his absence, just drinking in his face, his features, running her eyes over the high slice of his cheekbones, lingering on the way his sable hair feathered, the way the lines around his mouth indented, was bliss.

She was glad now he had not swept her off to bed. In that sensual ecstasy she might not have been able to control her feelings for him, and in the aftermath she might have been tempted, oh, so tempted, to tell him what had happened. But it would not have been the right time, she knew. His mind, when he was in bed with her, was on sex—it was natural for a man, after all—and afterwards another hunger would take precedence, and he would suddenly want dinner. No. Better, she knew, to let him eat now, relax, chill from the irritations of the flight and let his mood mellow. And then, over brandy, she would tell him. It would be perfect.

The familiar stab of anxiety came again, but she dispelled it. There was no point in doing otherwise. She must think the best, hope the best. And in the meantime she must make it easy for him to relax. So she did what she always did—was poised and composed, chatting lightly, only in answer to him, not plaguing him, giving him time to eat, to let the fine wines slip down his throat, making no demands on him.

He was preoccupied, she could see. That was not unusual in itself. The demands of his work were immense, the convolutions of his myriad deals and negotiations, investments and financial manoeuvrings intricate and labyrinthine. In the early days she had asked him about his work, for the world of international finance was completely strange to her. She’d looked a bit up on the Internet and in newspapers, to try and be less of an ignoramus, but when she’d asked him about things he’d either looked wryly at her or told her that he had enough of it all day and wanted to relax now. So she’d accepted that and changed the subject.

Her eyes flickered to him again, as he focussed on his entrée. Yes, he was definitely preoccupied, his mind somewhere else. Quietly, she got on with her meal. She was hungry. Eating in the mornings now had little appeal, but by the evening she had worked up an appetite. However, she was very cautious about what she drank—her single glass of wine was still half full, and she was only taking tiny sips from it. She hadn’t made a big deal out of it, and Xander hadn’t remarked on it. Usually she drank a glass of white, and then red, and sometimes had a small liqueur afterwards, while he nursed a brandy. Tonight she would make do with coffee only.

Her mind, she found, was running on. She would need to buy a good comprehensive manual, she knew, and start finding out everything that was going to be in store for her now. It was such a complicated, overwhelming process, with her body and her psyche going through such profound changes. Physically, she felt wonderful—except for that distinct reluctance to eat first thing—but that might well change, she knew, over the coming months.

Another wave of unease went through her. Her figure would change totally, obviously, and what would Xander think? She’d always been so slim, so slender. How would he take the swelling of her body? Well, she would cope with it when the time came. It was only in the last trimester that the weight really piled on, and until then, if she kept fit, as she obviously must now, she should not look too bad. Her eyes softened. Xander might actually find her roundedness appealing…

Again, hope pierced her.

The meal continued, with both of them refusing dessert, and Xander ordering coffee and liqueurs.

‘Just coffee for me, please.’ Clare smiled at the waiter.

She felt Xander’s eyes flicker over her a moment. Then it was gone again.

The coffee arrived, with his customary cognac, and the waiter departed again. The restaurant was thinning out now, the hushed voices more subdued. She watched as Xander cradled his glass in his long fingers and swirled it absently, his eyes going to the slow coil of topaz liquid within.

She felt her pulse quicken and took a breath. Now she must tell him. It was the right moment. She must not put it off. Nothing would be gained by doing so. Yet for an instant she desperately did not want to say anything! Wanted to put it off, procrastinate, delay what she must tell him.

She opened her mouth, his name forming on her lips.

‘Clare.’

His voice came before hers. Her name. Clipped, pronounced.

Slowly her mouth closed, and she looked at him. Inside, emotions warred. One was dismay that he had spoken just as she was going to—but the other was sneaking and sly. She didn’t have to tell him just yet…

Her eyes rested on him expectantly, waiting for him to continue. But there was a hesitation about him—something she was not used to seeing.

‘Yes?’ she prompted. Her voice was cool, composed, the way it always was—except in the throes of passion, when she cried out his name in ecstasy. ‘What is it?’

Something shadowed in his eyes, and was gone. He swirled the brandy once more, then lifted it to his mouth and took a slow mouthful, lowering the glass. The air of preoccupation had vanished. There was a set in his shoulders, a tightening in his jaw. She looked at him, wondering what he was going to say to her. Wondering, far more anxiously, whether it would mean that telling him her news now would be delayed beyond this evening.

For a second longer he was silent. Then his eyes went to hers. There was no expression in them.

‘I’ve met someone else. In New York.’

She heard the words. They were flatly spoken, his accent hardly showing. For a strange, dissociated moment she did not understand them.

Then he was talking again.

‘There’s never a pleasant way of doing this, but I wanted you to know how very much I’ve appreciated you over these last months. But it is now…’ Did he hesitate again, just for a fraction of a fraction of a second? She could not tell, was blind and deaf to everything. ‘Over,’ he said, breathing out with a short, decisive breath.

She was sitting there. Just sitting there. Everything around her seemed to have gone into immense slow motion. As if it was not there. Was not there at all.

Her heart rate had slowed. She could feel it, slowing down like a motor running out of motion. Everything stilled inside her, around her, in the whole universe.

Her face did not move. That had stopped as well. Nor did her eyes. They were still looking at him. Just looking at him.

His eyes had a veiled look to them, and she could see his lips press together, as if in irritation. And as she went on just looking at him, because everything in the entire universe had just stopped, the line of irritation strengthened.

Then, abruptly, it was gone. He was moving, sliding his hand into his jacket pocket and gliding out a long, slim case. He placed it in front of her with a precise movement.

‘As I said—’ his voice still had that strange clipped quality to it ‘—I’ve appreciated you very much, and this is a token of that appreciation.’

Slowly, very slowly, as if there were lead weights on them, she pulled her eyes down to the slim jeweller’s case in front of her, beside her coffee cup. Slowly she lifted her hands and opened the case. A long line of white fire glinted at her.

Diamonds, she thought. These are diamonds. A diamond necklace. For me.

He was talking again. His words came and went. She could hear snatches, as if through a thick, impenetrable fog.

‘Naturally I don’t want you to have any immediate concerns about accommodation. So I’ve taken an apartment for you, which is yours for the next month. That should give you ample time to make alternative arrangements—’

The words were coming and going, coming and going…

In strange, dissociated slow motion, she felt herself stand up.

‘Clare?’ His words had broken off. Her name came sharply.

‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ she said. Her eyes drifted to his. He seemed very far away. As far away as a distant star.

She felt for her handbag and walked away from the table. It was the strangest feeling—feeling nothing. That was what was so strange about it. Walking through a fog of nothingness.

She found the Ladies’ and went inside. There was no one else there. For a moment she just looked at herself in the mirror above the row of gleaming basins.

She was still there. That was odd. She’d thought she had gone. That everything had gone.

But she was still there.

She blinked a moment. Her fingers closed around her clutch bag. For one moment longer she just looked at herself in the mirror. There was the faintest scent of lilies in the air, from the massive bouquet that adorned one of the vanity units to the side.

A sudden, hideous spurt of nausea leapt in her throat.

She turned on her heel.

The door swung open in her hand, and she was in the carpeted corridor outside. To her left was the way back to the restaurant. To her right the corridor led to a side entrance to the hotel that opened into a quiet street off the main West End thoroughfare the St John was situated on.

Her feet walked to the street door. It swung open at her touch.

Outside, on the pavement, the night air should have felt chill. But she did not feel it. She did not feel anything.

She started to walk.




CHAPTER TWO


CLARE had not seen him again from that moment to this—standing now, staring at him, as he sat in the deep leather chair, one hand raised imperiously to summon her.

It was Xander.

Xander after four years, there again, now visible and in the flesh.

It was as if everything inside her had drained out, leaving her completely, absolutely hollow.

She saw the expression change as in slow-motion across his face. Saw him recognise her.

‘Clare?’

She heard him say her name, heard the disbelief in it, even though he was some way from her. Saw him start to his feet, jerk upright.

He started to stride towards her.

She turned and ran.

Blindly she pushed her way across the room, getting to the service door by the bar and thrusting through it. The staff cloakroom was just near, and she dived inside, and then deeper, into the female staff toilet, slamming the door shut and sliding the bolt with fumbling fingers. She yanked down the lid of the toilet and collapsed.

She was shaking. Shaking all over. Shock juddered through her like blows, one after another. How, how could Xander have walked in here? Hotels like this, impersonal and anonymous, did not appeal to him. She knew that—that was why she’d taken the risk of getting a job here. If she’d had the slightest idea he’d ever come here she would never have chanced it!

But he had. He had walked in and seen her, and crashed the past right into the present in a single catastrophic moment.

I’ve got to get out of here!

The need to run overwhelmed her. She had to get out, get home, get away…

Forcibly, she stopped herself shuddering and made herself stand up, walk out into the cloakroom. Her bag and coat were hanging on a peg. The bag held her ordinary clothes, but she didn’t waste time changing, only yanking off her high-heeled shoes and slipping her feet into her worn loafers. She could walk faster in them.

Memory sliced through her.

That night, walking out of the St John, walking along the pavements, walking without thought, without direction, without anything in her mind except that terrifying absolute blankness. She did not know how long she had walked. People had bumped her from time to time, or woven past her, and still she had gone on, stopping only at crossings, like a robot, then plunging across when the coast was clear. She had walked and walked.

Eventually, God knew how long later, she’d realised she could not go on, that she was slowing down—as if the last of the battery energy inside her was finally running out. She had looked with blank eyes. She’d been on the far side of Oxford Street, heading towards Marylebone Road, on a street parallel to Baker Street, but much quieter. There had been small hotels there, converted out of the Victorian terraces. There had been one opposite her. It had looked decent enough, anonymous. She’d crossed over the road and gone in.

She had spent the night there, lying in her clothes on the bed, staring blindly up at the ceiling. Very slowly, her mind had started to work. It had been like anaesthesia wearing off.

The agony had been unbearable. Tearing like claws through her flesh. The agony of disbelief, of shock.

Of shame. Shame that she could have been such an incredible fool.

To have been so stupid…

I thought he had started to feel something for me! I thought I meant something to him—had come to be more to him than a mistress… someone who mattered to him. Someone who…

Her hand had slid across her abdomen, and the agony had come again, even more piercing.

What am I going to do?

The words had fallen like stones into her head.

They had gone on falling, heavier and heavier, crushing her, hard and unbearable.

It had taken so long to accept the answer that she had known, with so heavy and broken a heart, was the only one possible.

I did the right thing. I did the only thing.

The words came to her now, as she yanked on her coat.

Nothing else was possible. Nothing





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