Woman To Wed?

All the children were special in their own way but she had a particularly soft spot for Paul.

It was a lovely, warm, sunny spring day and, knowing how much they enjoyed the treat, she had taken Paul and one other child for a walk in the local park.

Everything had been all right until Janey, a Down’s syndrome girl, had seen the ice-cream van parked by one of the exits from the park.

Both of them, of course, had wanted an ice cream, especially Janey, whose wide, loving smile touched Claire’s heart every time she saw her, as did her loving hugs and cuddles.

Several other children and adults had already clustered around the van, waiting to be served, and Claire had had no inkling of what was to come as she’d joined them, although, as she had told herself bitterly later, she should have done. She was not, after all, completely unfamiliar with the cruelty with which people could sometimes treat those whom they perceived as different from themselves.

It had been a young woman who’d started it, quickly pulling her own child out of the way when pretty, brown-eyed Janey had tried to reach out and touch the girl’s blonde ringlets.

‘Keep away; don’t you dare touch her,’ she had screamed, her daughter now frightened and screaming too. Janey had also started to cry, but it had been the look of resigned knowingness in Paul’s eyes that had hurt Claire most of all—that and the awareness that she could not protect him from that knowledge.

As the other woman had led her screaming child away she’d turned round and shouted to Claire.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Kids like that should be with their own sort, not allowed to mix with normal kids.’

It had been Paul—bright, clever and pitifully physically limited Paul—who had asked her on the way back, ‘What did she mean, Claire—our own sort...?’

She had wanted to cry then. But not in front of them. To have done so would have demeaned everything that they struggled so hard to achieve, everything that they were, but she would cry later in the privacy of the staff loo.

Now, as she walked Janey and Paul back through the park to their respective homes, Janey ‘helping’ to push Paul’s chair, she hesitated when Paul asked if they could stop for a while to watch several children playing football.

Janey was starting to get tired and they still had several minutes before Paul’s mother would be home from her part-time job, so they headed for a nearby bench.

A man was seated on it, watching the young foot-ballers. A parent? Claire wondered. An odd feeling, unfamiliar and, because of that, all the more disconcerting, threw her very much off balance as she glanced at him. It wasn’t, surely, those warmly tanned, hard-muscled male forearms revealed by the immaculate white T-shirt that were having such an extraordinary effect on her, was it?

Hastily she assured herself that it couldn’t possibly be. Other women might be susceptible to that kind of arrant male sexuality, but she most certainly wasn’t. Quite the opposite. Open male sexuality was something she invariably found distasteful, alarming...sometimes even threatening.

It certainly didn’t normally have the effect of making her glance want to linger and examine...to explore...

A sudden flush of embarrassed, self-conscious heat flooded her body. What on earth had come over her? No wonder the man was frowning as he looked from the children to her and then back again to the children, watching them, studying them...his frown deepening as he started to stand up and walk away from them.

At her side Paul made a small, distressed sound, focusing Claire’s thoughts and emotions on his feelings rather than her own, and a huge fierce wave of protective anger swamped her as she recognised the reason for Paul’s pain.

Without giving herself time to think, she told Janey quietly but firmly to wait with Paul and then ran after the man, catching hold of his arm so that he stopped and turned round to look at her.

‘How dare you do that?’ she exploded. ‘How dare you walk away from us like that...? Hurt them like that? They are human beings, you know, just like us. No, better than us, because they accept and love us. Have you any idea how much it hurts them when people do what you’ve just done? Have you no compassion...no understanding...?’

To Claire’s horror she could feel her eyes starting to flood with tears, her anger starting to die away as quickly as it had arisen. What on earth had got into her? She had never in her whole life behaved so aggressively to anyone as she was to this man. It was simply not in her nature—or so she had always thought.

Thoroughly shaken by her own behaviour, and ashamed of her outburst, she turned to go but, to her shock, instead of letting her walk away the man reached out and took hold of her, imprisoning her shoulders with his strong grip.

Later, reflecting on the incident, her face burning with chagrined dismay and guilt, she wouldn’t be able to understand or explain her own lack of reaction at being thus confined, or her own lack of fear, because she certainly didn’t feel any.

Shock, yes. Outrage, yes. But fear? No.

‘let go of me,’ she demanded, struggling to break free.

But he refused to comply, giving her a gentle little shake and telling her in a soft, slow American accent, ‘Will you quit yelling at me for a breath, woman, and listen to me...?’

Listen to him.

‘No, I will not,’ Claire stormed back at him, her rage flooding back. ‘Let me go!’

‘Not until you’ve let me have my say, you little firebrand. You’ve had yours and now it’s my turn...’

‘Let me go,’ Claire insisted, glowering up at him.

He had the most amazingly warm grey eyes, thickly fringed with dark, curly lashes. Her breath caught in a small gasp, the look in his eyes somehow mesmerising her, so that when he cursed softly under his breath and lowered his head—his mouth—towards her own she simply stood there, her own lips softly parted... waiting... knowing...

Just before his lips touched hers, she thought she heard him mutter, ‘Seems to me like there’s only one way to silence a feisty lady like you,’ but, since her attention was focused far more on what he was doing rather than what he was saying, she couldn’t be too sure.

It was a long time since she had been kissed by a man as if she was a woman, Claire acknowledged—a very, very long time. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever being kissed quite so...quite so...

Her heart started to hammer frantically against her ribs as the firm, warm pressure of a kiss meant to impose silence on her somehow or other became the slow and deliberate exploration of her mouth by lips that seemed to sense, to know...to understand... She felt herself starting to respond, her own lips suddenly pliant and soft.

With a small, outraged cry Claire wrenched herself away, her face burning not just with indignation and shock but with something far more intimate and far more worrying.

‘Look, I’m sorry...I never meant... I didn’t intend...’ he started to apologise.

‘You had no right,’ Claire stormed, but he wouldn’t let her finish, shaking his head and agreeing firmly.

‘No, I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I overstepped the mark... It should never have happened... It’s just that you made me so damned mad, ripping up at me like that...

‘I didn’t walk away from you because of the kids,’ he told her quietly. ‘Or at least not in the way that you meant. That bench over there is pretty small—not much room for me and the three of you, and so I did what I thought was the gentlemanly thing and decided to move on to give you your own space. It’s the kinda thing we do where I come from,’ he told her pointedly.

Claire could feel her flush deepening. She had never . felt more mortified or embarrassed in her life, and not just because she had totally misjudged his actions.

She turned to walk back to the children, who were still waiting patiently and anxiously by the bench, and as she did so she realised that the man had fallen into step beside her. As they reached Paul’s wheelchair he crouched down beside him and, giving him a warm smile, told him conversationally, ‘I spent a few months in one of those a good while back.’

Whilst Claire watched, Paul’s small, thin face glowed with happy colour as he slowly showed his new friend all the things his chair could do.

Janey didn’t miss out on the unexpected attention either, disengaging her hand from Claire’s and going up to Paul’s chair, flirting coyly.

It was only later, when Claire had delivered both children to their respective homes and she had time to herself to review the entire incident, that a horrid thought struck her.

That man, the American, he couldn’t possibly be Tim’s new boss and her prospective lodger, could he? No, of course he couldn’t, she reassured herself. Tim’s boss wouldn’t be sitting on his own in a small park watching children, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans... He wouldn’t, would he?

If it had been him—if it had been—she had probably solved the problem of trying to wriggle out of her agreement to offer him a temporary home. Irene would probably kill her, she decided faintly. No, not probably—Irene would kill her!

‘You look very...er...formal. Where on earth are you going?’ Hannah asked curiously, surveying the heavy calf-length black skirt that Claire was wearing, and its equally businesslike and repressive-looking tailored black jacket.

‘Dinner at Irene and Tim’s to meet my prospective lodger,’ Claire told her.

‘Help! Poor man!’ Hannah exclaimed, gulping back laughter. ‘One look at you in that outfit and he’ll think he’s moving in with a Victorian matron. Where on earth did you get that suit...?’

‘I bought it for John’s funeral,’ Claire told her quietly, adding quickly when she saw the guilty chagrin in her friend’s eyes, ‘Oh, it’s all right... I was in such a state at the time I just bought the first black suit I could find.’