The Baby Bond

‘Because he asked me specifically not to—’

‘And blood is thicker than water, I suppose?’

‘That wasn’t why I agreed—’

‘And tell me, Rory,’ she cut across his words sarcastically, ‘if Chad hadn’t died, how long would you have kept news of his whereabouts from me?’

‘It wasn’t my decision to make. It was Chad’s. He wanted to speak to you himself. Face to face. Not by letter.’

‘But he decided to wait until after Christmas?’ she questioned frostily. ‘So why put off the moment of truth? For surely once he had seen me then he would be able to ask for a divorce.’

‘He had to. He wasn’t able to travel until then.’

Angel glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Because?’

This was proving a lot more difficult than Rory had imagined it would, but then he had quite forgotten the impact that his sister-in-law could make with those beacon-bright green eyes of hers. God, a man could lose his soul in eyes like that…And yet it wasn’t fair on her to pussyfoot around like this, was it? To search for polite platitudes where none would ever be appropriate.

‘Because Jo-Anne was expecting Chad’s baby,’ he told her bluntly, ignoring Angel’s shocked intake of breath as he ploughed relentlessly on. ‘And she was naturally precluded from flying in the latter stages of her pregnancy. Chad wanted to come and see you in person, to ask your forgiveness for his behaviour and to request an early divorce. And he wanted me to meet my brand-new nephew,’ he finished heavily.

Fragments of what he was saying began to make sense at last, and the picture that they formed in Angel’s brain had connotations which made her blood run cold.

‘You mean that they all came over?’ she demanded in horror. ‘Jo-Anne and Chad and—’

‘And the baby,’ he concluded, only now his words sounded as though they were steeped in something bitter that he wanted to spit as far away from him as possible.

Still standing, Angel gripped onto the arms of the chair, her fists white-knuckled with fear. ‘Wh-what happened?’ she whispered.

‘They were on their way from the airport to my house,’ he told her. ‘We don’t know exactly what caused the accident. The other driver had been drinking, but he was still within the legal limit. Chad was under the limit, too,’ he added quickly, meeting the question in her eyes. ‘He’d changed, Angel, I knew that much from our telephone conversation. He had become a family man, proud of his new baby—nothing would have induced him to wreck all that. He may have been jet lagged. The baby might have been crying. Who knows? No one will ever know. Not now.’ A muscle began to work convulsively in his cheek, but that was the only outward sign of his grief. ‘Anyway, the car hit the central reservation just beyond Heathrow Airport. Chad and Jo-Anne were killed instantly—’

Angel’s heart was in her mouth. ‘And the baby?’

Rory buried his head in his hands so that his face was hidden, and Angel was suddenly filled with an unpalatable fear.

‘Rory!’ she demanded urgently. ‘What happened to the baby?’

As he slowly lifted his head his features looked so ravaged with pain that Angel feared the very worst. Then he suddenly said in a bleak voice, but a voice nevertheless, which held more than a trace of hope in it, ‘Somehow the baby survived. Miraculously. Without a scratch. He’s fine.’

‘Oh, thank God!’ cried Angel, and sank back down onto her chair, not noticing the tears of relief which slid down her cheeks. ‘Thank God!’

He glanced over at her gratefully, incredibly moved by her generosity of spirit. ‘Thank you for that, Angel,’ he said softly. And in a way her reaction justified his reasons for coming to see her. Made what he had to say next a little bit easier…

‘Where is he now?’ she demanded quickly.

His eyes narrowed. He was unsure of whether she meant her husband or his son, and knew that a huge degree of sensitivity would need to be employed if she was referring to Chad.

‘The baby,’ she enlarged. ‘Where is he? And what’s his name?’

‘He’s here with me now,’ Rory told her steadily. ‘I brought him with me.’

CHAPTER THREE (#uf53cd2bd-42bd-593a-bd5a-9c05fb8ba988)

RORY had anticipated all kinds of reaction to the news that he had brought his infant nephew with him, but the one which he got had not even featured near the bottom of the list.

Angel sprang from her chair like a jack-in-the-box and turned on him, her face white, her eyes spitting green fire and looking so incredibly angry that he seriously thought that she was about to start pummelling those small fists against his chest.

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ she demanded, her breath coming in trembling bursts, ‘that you’ve brought a new baby—and an orphaned baby, to boot—over to a strange country and then just left him out there, in the car?’

‘Angel—’

‘In the middle of winter?’

‘Angel—’

‘Just what kind of a man are you to have charge of a young child, Rory Mandelson?’ she stormed. ‘I’ve a good mind to report you to the authorities!’

Despite everything, Rory smiled—and it was a relief to know that he still could. It was, he realised, the first time he had smiled since the police had arrived on his doorstep with the grim news of his brother’s death.

‘But I didn’t leave him in the car,’ he objected.

‘Then where is he now?’

‘With Mrs Fitzpatrick.’

‘With…Mrs…Fitzpatrick,’ repeated Angel slowly, as though he was speaking to her in a foreign language. But didn’t that make sense? Wouldn’t that explain the hotel owner’s rather agitated preoccupation earlier this morning—rather than the conclusion to which Angel had immediately jumped? That Mrs Fitzpatrick had been bowled over by Rory’s good looks!

Nonetheless, his conduct with the baby sounded like a serious case of neglect to her. ‘So you just arrived here this morning and handed the baby over to her, did you?’ she quizzed, as passionately as if she had been the barrister instead of him. ‘Just like that?’

He nodded his dark head, reluctantly impressed by her tenacity. And by her temper! She was much more fiery than he remembered. And far too young and beautiful to be wearing those horrible black mourning clothes. ‘Pretty much,’ he agreed.

‘And what would you have done if she had refused to babysit for you and told you she hated babies? Or what if she’d looked like an axe-murderer?’

This time he actually laughed, and that simple, un-complicated sound of mirth reassured Rory more than anything else could have done. For it told him that heartache—even the intense, almost unendurable heartache of a sibling’s tragic and premature death—could heal eventually. And that the human spirit was a most resilient thing.

‘Well, I presumed that you wouldn’t have sought employment under an axe-murderer, Angel, though I suppose one can never tell,’ he mused. ‘But if I’d thought that Mrs Fitzpatrick was unsuitable to babysit for half an hour—or was unable to cope with the demands of a new baby, or if I’d had any reservations about her whatsoever—then naturally I would have brought him in here with me.’

‘But you didn’t want to do that?’ she guessed, narrowing her green eyes as she wondered why.

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I thought that it would be too much for you to handle—on top of everything else I had to tell you.’ His face had resumed its sombre expression.

‘That was very thoughtful of you,’ observed Angel, hoping that her expression didn’t show the surprise she felt at his concern for her feelings.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Not really,’ he murmured, and something in the husky quality which tinged his voice made Angel feel suddenly and inexplicably aware of him as a man, and not just as a man who had been related to her by marriage.

She swallowed down her confusion, pushed the troubling thought away. ‘C-can I see him?’ she asked tentatively.