The Fatherhood Affair

‘Is that all?’ he asked tersely.

‘More or less,’ she answered. ‘But I’ll think of more if you press me.’

‘In other words, you want me out of your life.’

‘Yes.’

‘As a business advisor and as a friend?’

‘Yes.’

He left her no alternative if he wanted to mix sex with friendship. Her gratitude for what he had done for her didn’t extend that far. Nevertheless, she did feel a certain hollowness burrowing through her stomach. He had been like a cog around which her life had turned for a long time. A mainstay. Her head swam a little with the enormity of cutting free from him. Did she really want that?

‘Is there another man?’ His harsh tone of voice verged on the critical.

Natalie’s eyes flared. ‘Not yet. But there will be.’

He returned a steely challenge. ‘What do you really want, Natalie?’

Had he somehow read her mind? Sensed the doubt? The fearful uncertainty in severing all ties? Natalie focused hard on the question. If she was going to be her own woman, she had to know the answer. It came to her in a burst of bright clarity.

‘The best thing that ever happened to me was Ryan. I can’t replace him. He was a unique and wonderful child. But I can have another child who can be just as unique and wonderful, Damien. That’s what I intend to have.’

Damien sat back abruptly in his chair. Once again his face reflected shock. He stared at her as though he had never known her, an unseeing blankness in his eyes, all the clever intelligence frozen, or turned inward.

It sent a chill through Natalie’s heart. He had left her. The impulse to draw him back surged through her so wildly, words were spilling off her tongue before she could stop them.

‘Aren’t you glad to be rid of me? Aren’t you glad to have any responsibility to me set aside?’

The taunt succeeded. His eyes refocused on hers. ‘No.’

The stark negative gave her nothing to work on. Damn the man and his self-sufficiency! Why couldn’t he reveal what was going on inside him?

‘What purpose is there in our ever seeing each other again?’ she pressed. ‘Give me one good reason.’

‘Your husband was my friend,’ he said slowly, picking his words with care. ‘However much you think he loved you, I believe he was no friend to you.’

The import of those words was not lost on Natalie. She sat very still, holding her breath. Damien’s loyalty to Brett was cracking. Would he now speak the truth about her husband, reveal the infidelities he had helped to cover up? Did Damien even suspect how much she already knew, or was he still convinced he and Brett had artfully concealed everything?

He leaned forward. As though he had flicked a switch that flung open the windows of his mind, his eyes once more blazed with naked desire.

‘The reason I sold the company was to have the time to prove to you—conclusively and forever—that you married the wrong man, Natalie.’ The low throb of passion in his voice gathered a deep soul-shaking conviction as he added, ‘The man you should have married was me. Not Brett. Me!’

CHAPTER TWO

MARRIAGE? To Damien?

Natalie felt as though she had been pummelled in the solar plexus. Her mind was blown into whirling confusion. She stared incredulously at Damien, struggling to connect what she knew of him to the words he had spoken. He held her gaze, relentlessly reinforcing what he’d said with compelling intensity.

She supposed she should feel flattered a man of his many attractions wanting her. She wondered what influenced his choice. He hadn’t mentioned love. She wasn’t the first woman he’d wanted, and wouldn’t be the last. So why her?

Natalie’s shell-shocked mind finally grasped the motive behind Damien’s statement.

Brett.

She felt sick.

And angry.

She leaned forward, her eyes a golden shower of blistering sparks. ‘Even now, with Brett in the grave, you can’t help competing with him, can you? You can’t let go. You want to take me over to prove to your insatiable ego that you were the better man.’

He grimaced in frustration. ‘That’s nonsense! Why are you avoiding the obvious?’

‘The obvious is that Brett’s still on your mind,’ she retorted. ‘You began and ended your ridiculous claim with Brett. After I’d specifically asked you never to mention him to me again.’

‘So it still hurts that much, does it? Goddammit, Natalie, I’ve waited long enough! Will you recognise me for what I am?’

‘That’s the problem, Damien. I do recognise you for what you are. You told me straight out that you sold the company because it wasn’t any fun without Brett. It was something you shared. So what’s the new project? Me. Something else you can share with him in some tormented, twisted, perverted way.’

‘I’m not sharing you with anyone,’ he declared indignantly. ‘When I saw you today...’

‘You thought the fun could begin.’

From somewhere inside her came a billow of outrage. It activated a burst of adrenalin. She reached down, snatched her shoulder-bag from the floor, opened it, and grabbed her wallet.

‘I thought you had finally put your grief behind you,’ Damien continued.

‘I will not be beholden to you for anything, Damien.’ She found a twenty-dollar note and slapped it on the table. ‘That will pay for our drinks. I don’t want to eat with you. I don’t want to be with you. I will never, in any circumstance, sleep with you. Do you understand what those words mean?’

‘So the brave new front is just a charade,’ he mocked angrily. ‘You can’t face up to a different reality.’

‘What’s different?’ She returned her wallet to her bag and stood up, casting him a look of contempt. ‘If you want to prove you’re a better man than Brett, you can run after all the women he had on the side.’

‘What?’ He looked astounded, incredulous. ‘You knew?’

‘Of course I knew. And your part in it, as well.’

‘I played no part in it...’

‘Don’t lie to me, Damien. You covered up for Brett. He deceived me. You betrayed me.’

Disdaining to glance at Damien again, Natalie set off down the length of the dining-room to the exit of the restaurant.

‘Natalie...’ It was both a protest and an appeal.

She ignored it. She heard Damien coming after her, brushing past hovering waiters, but she neither turned her head nor slowed her pace. She felt utterly deflated and cast down. She should never have trusted the feeling that he meant well by her. It was a sham so he could win out in the end. Against a dead man.

As she stepped into the reception nook outside the restaurant, Damien caught her arm, forcibly halting her. She gave him an intimidating stare of icy rejection.