Rags To Riches: At Home With The Boss: The Secret Sinclair / The Nanny's Secret / A Home for the M.D.

Oblivious of the atmosphere, Oliver attacked the picnic with enthusiasm, and awkward silences were papered over with his chatter as he relived every experience of every ride and tried his best to elicit promises of a return visit.

So she wanted to get back to the land of the living? Why shouldn’t she? She was still young, and already she was changing as the worry eased off her shoulders. When he had bumped into her again she had been cleaning floors, and the stress of her situation had shown plainly on her face. Now the contours were returning to her body, and her features had lost the gaunt look that had originally caught him off guard. Why wouldn’t she want to have some kind of fun? Go to clubs? Lead the life most young people her age were leading and which she had had to sidestep because of the responsibility of having to look after a child?

In every single detail it was a situation that should have suited him perfectly. He had left her once with the best of all possible intentions, and he had never deviated from his resolution to steer clear of the murky waters of matrimony. He was not one of those people who had ever thought that despite coming from no family background to speak of, despite a childhood rife with disillusionment and disappointment, he could somehow turn the tide and become a fully paid up member of the happy-ever-after crew. He had always sworn that the one thing he had taken from his experiences would be his freedom, and although he now had one other person to consider, he certainly wasn’t going to go the whole hog and do anything that he would regret. If you only lived life for yourself, no one else had the power to disappoint. It was a credo in which he fully believed.

Okay, so he was still attracted to her. Yes, he hadn’t had so many cold showers late at night in his life before. And, sure, she was attracted to him—whether she wanted to believe it of herself or not. But that surely wasn’t enough to justify the rising tide of outrage at the thought of her getting out there.

Above all else he was practical, and taking this sizzling sexual attraction one step further would just add further complications to an already complicated situation. In fact he should be urging her to get out there and live a little. He should be heartily agreeing that the very thing they need to do now was plot a clear line forward and get on with it.

Within the next few days he anticipated that Oliver would be told by them, jointly, that he was his father. At that point the domestic bubble which they had built around themselves for a very essential purpose would no longer be required. She was one hundred percent right on that score. Gradually Oliver would come to accept the mundane business of joint custody. It wasn’t ideal, but what in life ever really was?

Except he was finding it hard to accept any of those things.

There was a distinct chill in the air as the picnic was cleared away, and on the drive back Oliver, exhausted, fell into a soft sleep. To curtail any opportunity for Sarah to embark on another lengthy exposé of what she intended to do with her free time, Raoul switched on the radio, and the drive was completed in utter silence save for the background noise of middle-of-the-road music.

Twenty minutes from home, Sarah began chatting nervously. Anything to break the silence that was stretching like a piece of tautly pulled elastic between them.

The day which had commenced so wonderfully had ended on a sour note, and the blame for that rested firmly on her shoulders. But the realisation that she had been sliding inexorably back to a very dangerous place—one which she had stupidly occupied five years ago—had made her see the urgency of making sure that her barriers were up and functioning. She would never have believed it possible that time with Raoul could lower her defences to such an extent, but then he had always had a way of stealing into her heart and soul and just somehow taking over.

There were some things that she wanted to do to the house as soon as contracts had been exchanged. She wanted to do something lovely and fairly colourful to the walls. So she heard herself chattering inanely about paints and wallpaper while Oliver continued to doze in the back and Raoul continued to stare fixedly at the road ahead, only answering when it would have been ridiculously rude not to.

‘Okay,’ Sarah said finally, bored by the sound of her own voice droning on about a subject in which he clearly had next to no interest. ‘I’m sorry if you think I wrecked the day out.’

‘Have I said anything of the sort?’

‘You don’t have to. It’s enough for you to sit there in silence and leave me to do all the talking.’

‘You were talking about paint colours and wallpapers. I can’t even pretend to manufacture an interest in that. I’ve already told you that I’ll get someone in to do it all. Paint. Wallpaper. Furniture. Hell, I’ll even commission someone to buy the art to hang on the walls!’

‘Then it wouldn’t be a home, would it? I mean, Raoul, have you ever really looked around your apartment?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You have the best of everything that money can buy and it still doesn’t feel like a home. It’s like something you’d see in a magazine! The kitchen looks as though it’s never been used, and the sofas look as though they’ve never been sat on. The rugs look as though nothing’s ever been spilled on them. And all that abstract art! I bet you didn’t choose a single painting yourself!’

Anger returned her to territory with which she was familiar. The hard, chiselled profile he offered her was expressionless, which made her even angrier. How could she not get to him when he got to her so easily? It wasn’t fair!

‘I don’t like abstract art,’ she told him nastily. ‘In fact I hate it. I like boring, old-fashioned paintings. I like seeing stuff that I can recognise. I like flowers and scenery. I don’t enjoying looking at angry lines splashed on a canvas. I can’t think of anything worse than some stranger buying art for me because it’s going to appreciate. And, furthermore, I don’t like leather sofas either. They’re cold in winter and hot and sticky in summer. I like warm colours, and soft, squashy chairs you can sink into with a book.’

‘I’m getting the picture.’ Raoul’s mouth was compressed. ‘You don’t want help when it comes to interior design and you hate my apartment.’

Not given to being unkind, Sarah felt a wave of shame and embarrassment wash over her. She would never normally have dreamt of criticising anyone on their choice of décor for their home. Everyone’s taste was different, after all. But the strain of having Raoul around, of enjoying his company and getting a tantalising glimpse of what life could have been had he only wanted and loved her, was finally coming home to roost. For all his moods and failings, and despite his arrogance, his perverse stubbornness and his infuriating ability to be blinkered when it suited him, he was still one hell of a guy—and this time round she was seeing so many more sides to him, having so many more opportunities to tumble straight back into love.

‘And we still have to talk,’ she said eventually, but contented herself with staring through the window.

If she had hoped to spark a response from him then she had been sorely mistaken, she thought sourly. Because he just didn’t care one way or another what opinions she had about him, his apartment, or any other area of his life.

‘Yes. We do.’

In an unprecedented move Raoul had done a complete U-turn. Thinking about her with some other man—pointlessly projecting, in other words—had been a real turnoff, and even more annoying had been the fact that he just hadn’t been able to get his thoughts in order. Cool logic had for once been at odds with an irritating, restless unease which he had found difficult to deal with.

But her little bout of anger and her petulant criticisms had clarified things in his head, strangely enough.

Sarah wasn’t like all the other women he knew, and it went beyond the fact that she had had his child.

It had always been easy for him to slot the other women who had come and gone like ships passing in the night into neat, tidy boxes. They’d filled a very clearly defined role and there were no blurry areas to deal with.

Yes, Sarah had re-entered his life, with a hand grenade in the form of a child, but only now was he accepting that her role in his life was riddled with blurry areas. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because she represented a stage in his life before he had made it big and could do whatever he liked. Or maybe it was just because she was so damned open, honest and vibrant that she demanded him to engage far more than he was naturally inclined to. She didn’t tiptoe around him, and she didn’t make any attempts to edit her personality to please him. The women he had dated in the past had all swooned at their first sight of his apartment, with its rampant displays of wealth. He got the impression that the woman sulking in the seat next to him could have written a book on everything she hated about where he lived, and not only that would gladly have given it to him as a present.

The whole situation between them, in fact, demanded a level of engagement that went way beyond the sort of interaction he was accustomed to having with other women. Picnics? Home cooked meals? Board games? Way beyond.

He pulled up outside her house, where for once there was a parking space available. Oliver was rousing slowly from sleep, rubbing his eyes and curling into Sarah’s arms. Taking the key from her, Raoul unlocked the front door and hesitatingly kissed his son’s dark, curly mop of hair. In return he received a sleepy smile.

‘He’s exhausted,’ Sarah muttered. ‘All that excitement and then the picnic … he’s not accustomed to eating so late. I’ll just give him a quick bath and then I think he’ll be ready for bed.’

She drew in a deep, steadying breath and firmly trod on the temptation to regret the fact that she had lashed out at him, ruined the atmosphere between them, injected a note of jarring disharmony that made her miserable.

‘Why don’t you pour yourself something to drink?’ she continued, with more command in her voice that she felt. ‘And when I come down, like I said, we’ll discuss … arrangements.’

She was dishevelled. They had both shared the rides with Oliver, but she had done a few of the really big ones on her own. Someone had had to stay with Oliver, and Raoul had generously offered to babysit, seeing it as a handy excuse to get out of what, frankly, had looked like a terrifying experience. He might have felt sorely deprived as a boy at missing out on all those big rides, but as an adult he could think of nothing worse.

Her hair was tousled and her cheeks were pink, and he noticed the top two buttons of her checked shirt had come undone—although she hadn’t yet noticed that.

‘Good idea,’ he murmured blandly, with a shuttered expression that left her feverishly trying to analyse what he was thinking.

Raoul noted the hectic colour that had seeped into her cheeks, and the way her arms tightened nervously around a very drowsy Oliver. Arrangements certainly needed to be made, he thought. Though possibly not quite along the lines she anticipated.

She wanted to deal with the formalities, and there was no doubt that certain things had to be discussed, but he was running with a different agenda.

At long last he had lost that unsettling, disconcerting feeling that had climbed into the pit of his stomach and refused to budge. He liked having an explanation for everything and he had his explanation now. Sarah was still in his head because she was unfinished business. There were loose ends to their relationship, and he looked forward to tying all those loose ends up and moving on.

He smiled at her slowly, in a way that sent a tingle of maddening sensation running from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head.

‘I’ll pour you a drink too,’ he said, his dark eyes arrowing onto her wary face, taking in the fine bone structure, the wide eyes, the full, eminently kissable mouth. ‘And then we can … as you say … begin to talk about moving forward …’

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_5cdce8cc-2d34-590e-89ad-a47f03517c06)

SARAH took longer than she had planned. Oliver, for a start, had discovered a new lease of life and demanded his set of toy cars. And Raoul. In that order.

Determined to have a bit of space from wretched Raoul, in which she could clear her head and plan what she was going to say, Sarah had immediately squashed that request and then been forced to compensate for Raoul’s absence by feigning absorption in a game of cars which had involved pushing them around the bed in circles, pretending to stop off at key points to refuel.

Forty minutes later she had finally managed to settle him, after which she’d taken herself off for a bath.

She didn’t hurry. She felt that she needed all the time she could get to arrange her thoughts.

First things first. She would chat, in a civilised and adult fashion, about the impending necessity to talk to Oliver. She foresaw no problem there.

Secondly she would announce her decision to finally break the news to her parents that Raoul was back on the scene. She would reassure him that there would be no need to meet them.