Blameless Desire by Jenny Cartwright

Author:Jenny Cartwright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1994-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

AND then Lucas did something very surprising, and utterly disarming. He reached forward and brushed her hair back from her eyes very tenderly and very gently. He drew the side of his thumb across her temple and then let his hand drop. She hugged herself tight, kneeling in front of him, quivering at the unexpected sensitivity of his touch.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Christie,’ he said softly. ‘I know how hard these past years must have been for you. I wouldn’t have interfered, but Sarah was premature. I can’t help being concerned that she might still be a little delicate. That’s why I wanted to air the house for you back in May. And it’s why I wanted to make sure you were all right this evening.’

Christie looked at him with an expression of pained shock in her eyes. He had actually spelled out the fact that he knew when his daughter had been due! Quite unconsciously she began to wring her hands in response to the dismay which thickened, like a grey fog, inside her.

So how could he go on believing that she was Lakey’s child, when he knew perfectly well that she hadn’t seen Lakey since before the summer holiday had begun? Oh, she’d always been conscious that he must have known when the baby was due, because her aunt had been so thrilled and had broadcast the news so widely, but she’d managed to half convince herself there had been some misunderstanding and that he’d got things wrong. And yet now he was admitting that he knew perfectly well that Sarah had been due exactly nine months after the night of the party.

When Sarah had just been a nameless child, an inconvenient, runny-nosed product of his imagination, far away in London, it might have been understandable. But he saw Sarah every day now. He chatted with her and went out of his way to see her because he liked her. Now that she was real to him, didn’t he have the courage to own that she was his? It wasn’t as if Christie had ever tried to make any demands on him—he surely couldn’t think that she wanted anything from him. The only thing she wanted was to be able to tell her child that she had a father—just like everybody else.

Christie’s anger began to solidify, until it was a hard, cold thing, lodged firmly beneath her heart. ‘Delicate?’ she challenged bitterly. ‘She’s as strong as an ox.’

Lucas grimaced. ‘Feel angry with him,’ he continued soothingly. ‘He’s been a bastard. He must know. It must be obvious to him. He should have stood by you when she arrived early and was ill.’

Christie almost exploded with fury. ‘Obvious? She was ten days early, Lucas, not ten weeks. And she wasn’t really ill at all—just slow to feed. They took her to the special-care unit for twenty-four hours because I’d had a hard time and I was exhausted. She’s a perfectly healthy child and I’m a perfectly good mother.

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