The Millionaire's Love-Child

Which was an understatement, Annie thought as the door swung closed behind Brant now. Her world hadn’t just been turned upside down. Yesterday, and then last night when she hadn’t been able to sleep, she had felt as though it were hanging by a thread. Now that thread had snapped and it had come crashing down around her, choking, blinding her to all but its emotional chaos.

‘Come on,’ she heard Brant say gently, and felt a strong hand at her elbow. ‘I’ll take you for a drink.’

The café to which he took her was a small bistro within walking distance of the hospital. It wasn’t yet lunchtime, but the place was still humming with lively chatter.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Annie murmured, after the waiter had served them their drinks at the only small table left for two. She lifted the tall, slim glass to her lips, feeling the bitter-sweet tang of the iced grapefruit juice she had ordered zinging on her tongue, piercing through her numbness. ‘I thought this sort of thing only happened to other people.’

‘We are other people—to everybody else,’ he remarked, his tone phlegmatic, the anger she had witnessed in him back at the hospital banked down now like carefully controlled fire.

Over the rim of her glass, Annie watched him pick up his cup of strong black coffee, her eyes reluctantly drawn to the sinewy strength of his hand. He was a stranger to her and yet she had known the caress of those strong hands, known the excitement of his crushing weight…

Rather unsteadily she returned her glass to its little slate coaster, though not before catching the disconcerting awareness in those all-seeing eyes.

‘Why did you take off the way you did that Saturday morning after that party?’ he was suddenly asking. ‘Without saying a word to anyone?’

She looked at him quickly. Why did he have to mention that?

‘Apart from ringing your boss at home and handing in your notice, no one seemed to know what happened to you—where you went.’

Toying with her glass, Annie felt her heart change rhythm. Had he asked? A slow, insidious heat stole through her veins.

She shrugged, the royal-blue top striking against the shining vitality of her hair.

‘I went to France,’ she told him, meeting his eyes levelly now. ‘Fruit-picking. I needed a change. A break.’ She had needed the time too. Time to recover her pride, and recover from the shame she had left back here in England. ‘When the harvest was over, I spent time backpacking round the south of France.’

‘Sounds idyllic.’

‘Oh, it was!’ It was easy to bluff, to pretend, now that her wounds had healed.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to go away?’

Because she hadn’t planned it. She had simply run. ‘There didn’t seem to be much point.’

‘Not much…’ A spark of something like annoyance lit his eyes. ‘After what we shared?’

She wished he hadn’t reminded her, but since he had, she lifted her small chin in an almost defiant gesture and asked, ‘What did we share, Brant?’

A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘You even need to ask?’

What was he saying? Why was he even making such an issue of it?

Struggling for equanimity, she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster, ‘I was on the rebound. And you…’ You were in love with Naomi, her brain screamed at him, because you certainly married her soon enough afterwards! Pride hurting, she cringed as she heard herself asking the question burning through her from her bitter calculations. ‘Was she already pregnant when you made love to me?’

He didn’t answer for a moment. How could he? she thought woundedly, watching him pick up his spoon and toy absently with the dark liquid in his cup, though he had taken it without sugar.

‘Our boys were born on the same day.’ He sent a casual glance upwards towards two patrons who were passing their table, his eyes returning to the spoon he let drop into its saucer. ‘How do you answer that one, Annie?’

His tone might have been casual, but the intensity of his gaze impaled her, causing hot colour to flood into her cheeks.

He had been careful, of course. Unerring in his unshakeable responsibility towards her—to himself. Now it was Annie who was lost for words.

She hadn’t known, when Warren had asked her to start taking the contraceptive pill, that a simple dose of antibiotics for a chest infection could render it ineffective. But it had.

Matter-of-factly, Brant stated, ‘You conceived in a relationship that was falling apart.’ And when she didn’t answer, her lashes drooping, concealing the misery of recalling that time, he asked, ‘Did the two of you ever get back together?’

‘Hardly.’

‘But he was aware you had his child?’

‘Warren had his model. What happened to me after that wouldn’t have concerned him.’

‘So you didn’t tell him.’

Why should I have? she thought bitterly, but didn’t say it.

Quickly she lifted her glass again, took another swift draught of her juice. Already the ice was melting and it tasted less sharp, much more watery on her tongue.

‘So there’s no reason then for Maddox to be involved in this affair?’

Annie shook her head, replacing her glass. Across the table the eyes that studied her were like enigmatic pools.

‘The man must have needed his head read,’ he said softly.

Was that a compliment? Annie wondered, blushing as she considered the wild, abandoned way she had given herself to this virtual stranger sitting opposite her; wondered too just how wanton he must have considered her. But that one night of folly with him wasn’t in character with the real Annie Talbot at all. Her parents had always stressed the maxim of one man—one woman—one passion. They had adhered to it themselves and, until Warren’s unfaithfulness, she had thought she could easily follow in their footsteps.

She visualised them miles away in their little colonial-style house, her father quietly impatient, immobilised by a hip operation, her mother fussing over him, over-protective as usual, unaware of the shocking truth that was about to change their lives—all of their lives, she thought, the uncertainty darkening her eyes, puckering her forehead.

‘What are you thinking?’ Brant was setting his empty cup back on the table, eyes keen, senses sharp as a razor.

What she had been thinking during the long hours when she had been tossing and turning last night. ‘I’m wondering what Mum and Dad are going to say.’

‘When they find out that their grandchild’s mine and not Warren Maddox’s?’

For a moment his statement seemed to rock her off her axis.

‘Yours and Naomi’s,’ she enlarged at length.

‘Yes,’ he said, the way his breath seemed to shudder through his lungs leaving her in no doubt of how much he must have loved his wife.

Briefly, her mind wandered back to the woman she had glimpsed once from a distance getting into Brant’s car. Short, chic auburn hair and dark glasses. And that amazing height—only an inch or two shorter than Brant—which Annie, even in the four-inch heels to which he had referred earlier could never aspire to. Naomi Fox, as she had been then. Beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent—if office gossip was anything to go by—she had obviously swept Brant off his feet, then had died from a postpartum haemorrhage almost immediately after being delivered of their baby son.

Annie didn’t want to think about that, or what Brant must have endured because of it. But she couldn’t stop herself, in spite of everything, from considering his plight. Not only losing the woman he loved, but now learning that the child they had produced in their short marriage wasn’t theirs. She wondered how he could even begin to deal with that.

And the child he was raising, this unknown child—if the hospital was to be believed—was hers, the child she had given birth to. The sudden crushing need to see him, know him, almost stole the breath out of her lungs.

‘It isn’t very easy for my mother, either.’

His mother? His surprising statement dragged her back to the present. She hadn’t even considered that he might have parents. A mother. She’d imagined men like Brant merely happened. But naturally there would be other people involved, not just the two of them. Their babies. Her own parents. There would be other confused and anxious relations. Perhaps aunts and uncles. Did Brant have any brothers or sisters? Did Naomi? Suddenly, despite having shared his bed, shamefully she realised just how little she knew about him.