The Millionaire's Love-Child

A mobile phone started ringing on another table, a shrill rendition of Greensleeves, intruding on her thoughts.

‘What about Naomi’s? Her parents?’ she asked, irritated by the sound. ‘Do they know?’

Brant turned a grim face from the neighbouring table as the ringing was answered. ‘Naomi was an orphan.’

‘Oh.’ She hadn’t expected that, imagined that anyone just a little older than herself, as Naomi must have been, might be without the parental love she had always taken for granted. But at least that was one less complication to worry about.

‘There’s just my mother and me,’ Brant told her, unwittingly answering the question she had silently posed a few moments before.

‘How is she taking it?’

‘She’s naturally upset. Concerned. You can’t expect anything else. Ever since Jack was born, she’s looked on him as her own flesh and blood. Her own grandchild. She’s helped with his upbringing, looked after him when it’s been difficult for me to be there. She’s begged me not to let him go.’

‘And you?’ Annie asked, the fear and conflict in her eyes all too apparent. If he was prepared to give up the child he had raised, it would mean him having to sue for custody of Sean, because she wouldn’t give him up without a fight.

‘As I said yesterday, I only want what’s best for both boys. Our own emotions and needs shouldn’t even come into it.’

And what did he think was best? To wrench each child from the only home, the only family, it had known for two years so that it could grow up with its biological parent, regardless of how much it hurt—the child as well as its family; regardless of the emotional and psychological cost?

‘I’ve got to pick up Sean.’

She leaped up, not caring how it looked. She only knew she had to get to her baby.

She was out in the street, gasping the polluted air. She had to get him back from Katrina’s now! She needed to cuddle him. Hold him close. Know that he was safe from anything that threatened.

She almost jumped at the strong, warm hand on her shoulder.

‘We’ll pick him up together.’ Through the roar of traffic, the blaring of car horns, Brant’s voice was firm, decisive.

‘No, it’s all right! I can get the tube from here,’ she said shakily, needing to get away from him, to hold him at bay. ‘I left his car seat in my car. I can drive out and get him myself.’ She was gabbling, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘You haven’t got one. It won’t be safe.’

‘You’re darn right it won’t. You aren’t in any fit state to go rushing about on tubes—and certainly not to drive anywhere,’ Brant told her grimly, his self-possession emphasising Annie’s own lack of composure. ‘Jack’s car seat’s in the boot.’ He took her arm, steering her out of the way of someone hurrying by. ‘We’ll go together,’ he reiterated. ‘And that’s final.’

‘Well, you’re certainly full of surprises,’ Katrina called, watching her friend coming down the garden path with Brant. A strawberry-blonde, with a thicket of short, wild curls, she had obviously seen the big car pull up and, unable to contain herself, had hurried out to greet them. Now her big blue eyes turned with reluctant appreciation towards Brant. ‘You found her, then.’ There was a surprising flush beneath the profusion of freckles Annie knew her friend hated.

‘Yes, thank you, Katrina. Your assistance proved very fruitful.’

‘My pleasure…sir,’ she returned with calculated emphasis, while her gaze drifting back to Annie warned, I hope you know what you’re doing, girl!

Quickly, Annie murmured, ‘Katrina, has Sean been OK?’

Her friend’s expression changed to curiosity. ‘Of course. He’s always OK. Why?’

Annie exhaled deeply. Of course. She was just being silly. Over-protective. She couldn’t prevent breaking into a broad smile, however, when she heard the thump of tiny feet and saw the nut-brown head appear from behind Katrina.

Serious-faced, already a real little boy in his blue and red chequered shirt and dungarees, he stopped dead when he saw Brant standing there beside his mother.

‘So you’re Sean,’ he breathed, dropping down to the child’s level.

Annie’s eyes darted from the man to the toddler. Was she imagining it? Or was that likeness between them as strong as the agony of her denial?

Catching the crack in Brant’s voice though as he said something else to the little boy, she could only guess at the tumult of emotion he was doing his best to conceal before the toddler, suddenly shy, clutched at Katrina’s denim-clad leg and disappeared behind it.

The blonde woman laughed.

‘It’s all right, Sean,’ Annie reassured him gently, so that the little boy, deciding it was safe, popped out again, fixing Brant with curious, though steady hazel eyes.

‘Kat! Fish!’ the child exclaimed proudly. ‘Kat! Fish!’

‘Catfish?’ The man’s smile was indulgent, softening the severity of his features. From her vantage point Annie noticed how wide his shoulders were beneath the soft grey polo shirt, how the fabric of his chinos pulled tautly across his thighs.

‘Kat-fish,’ the two-year-old announced, rather impatiently this time, and in spite of the chaos inside her, Annie couldn’t keep from smiling when she realised what he meant.

‘Katrina’s embroidered an octopus on his new bib.’ It was bright yellow on its pale blue background, with disjointed eyes and tentacles. Her friend was always doing things like that. She managed to laugh. ‘It’s gross, Kat!’

‘No, it isn’t.’ Katrina grinned. ‘It’s a friendly little octopus.’ She pretended to be one, sending Sean shrieking down the passageway. ‘It’s only big fish that gobble you up and then spit you out again. Isn’t that right, Seanie?’

It was child’s play, but Annie felt the keen glance Brant sliced her as he got to his feet. Mortified, she caught her breath. They both knew what Katrina meant.

They were silent as Brant drove them back to the flat. Sean had fallen asleep in the back of the car in the little seat Brant had produced from the boot.

‘Sorry about Katrina. She can be a bit direct sometimes.’ She felt she needed to say something because he was just sitting there steering the powerful saloon. Hard lines carved what she had always thought was a rather cruel mouth.

‘What did you tell her about us?’ He was pulling up at a zebra crossing to let a middle-aged woman step on. She beamed at him and he responded with a distracted nod of his head. ‘Everything down to the last graphic detail?’

‘Of course not!’ she snapped, heated colour stealing into her cheeks. ‘She guessed. I think everyone did.’

‘That I bedded a freshly betrayed bride. And then dumped her just as Maddox did.’

No, not as Warren did, she thought as he put the car into motion again. Because Brant Cadman had made her no promises. Offered her nothing but one crazy, glorious night. She’d known the dangerous game she was playing when she had let him take her up to his room; known what she was doing, even though she had had just a little too much to drink that night, too much for her at any rate. It had been he who had suggested calling a halt to their caresses. He who had tried to tell her he didn’t believe in fooling around with women on the rebound, when she had so foolishly begged him not to go.

Her cheeks burned now with the shame of it and way down inside she felt the fierce pang of unwelcome desire undermined by the cutting pain of rejection.

‘Katrina’s my friend,’ she told him, ridiculously emotional. ‘She was only looking out for my interests.’ Suddenly she needed some spur, a point of antagonism to stab at the whole agonising trauma of the day. ‘I suppose in a minute you’ll be telling me you objected to her calling my boy “Seanie”!’ she tossed at him, with an emphasis on the ‘my boy’ that hit its mark if that tightening muscle in his jaw was anything to go by.

She heard him catch his breath and, after a moment, felt him glance her way.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re both wound up. This has been an ordeal for both of us. Let’s not quarrel to add to it. It will all be sorted out a lot more painlessly if we remain civil.’

She nodded, saying nothing. But at least that seemed to ease some of the tension between them.

Outside her flat, she was first out of the car, reaching into the back to try and free Sean from the unfamiliar seat.

‘Here, let me,’ Brant advised.

Leaning across the seat, he had released him in a second. Head lolling to one side, Sean was still sleeping soundly.

‘May I?’ Brant whispered.