Kitabı oxu: «Rags To Riches: At Home With The Boss»

CATHY WILLIAMS can remember reading Mills & Boon Modern Romance books as a teenager, and now that she is writing them she remains an avid fan. For her, there is nothing like creating romantic stories and engaging plots, and each and every book is a new adventure. Cathy lives in London, and her three daughters – Charlotte, Olivia and Emma – have always been, and continue to be, the greatest inspirations in her life.

PROLOGUE

RAOUL shifted as quietly as he could on the bed, propped himself up on one elbow and stared down at the woman sleeping contentedly next to him. Through the open window the sultry African night air could barely work itself up into a breeze, and even with the fan lethargically whirring on the chest of drawers it was still and humid. The net draped haphazardly over them was very optimistic protection against the mosquitoes, and as one landed on his arm he slapped it away and sat up.

Sarah stirred, opened her eyes sleepily and smiled at him.

God, he was beautiful. She had never, ever imagined that any man could be as beautiful as Raoul Sinclair. From the very first moment she had laid eyes on him three months ago she had been rendered speechless—and the effect still hadn’t worn off.

Amongst all the other people taking their gap years, he stood head and shoulders above the rest. He was literally taller than all of them, but it was much more than that. It was his exotic beauty that held her spellbound: the burnished gold of his skin, the vibrancy of his black, glossy hair—long now; almost to his shoulders—the latent power of his lean, muscular body. Although he was only a matter of a few years older than the rest of them, he was a man amongst boys.

She reached up and skimmed her hand along his back.

‘Mosquitoes.’ Raoul grinned, dark eyes sweeping over her smooth honey-gold shoulders down to her breasts. He felt himself stirring and hardening, even though they had made love less than a few hours ago. ‘This net is useless. But, seeing that we’re now both up and wide awake …’

With a little sigh of pleasure Sarah reached out and linked her hands around his neck, drawing him to her and wriggling restlessly as his mouth found hers.

A virgin when she had met him, she knew he had liberated her. Every touch had released new and wonderful sensations.

Her body was slick with heat and perspiration as he gently pulled down the thin sheet which was all they could endure out here.

She had the most wonderful breasts he had ever seen, and with a sudden pang of regret for things to come Raoul realised that he was going to miss her body. No—much more than that. He was going to miss her.

It was a situation he had not foreseen when he had decided to take three months off to work in Mozambique. At the time, it had seemed a fitting interlude between the conclusion of university—two hard-won degrees in Economics and Maths—and the start of what he intended to be the rest of his life. Before he threw himself into conquering the world and putting his own personal demons to rest he would immerse himself in the selflessness of helping other people—people as unfortunate as he himself had been, although in a completely different way.

Meeting a woman and falling into bed with her hadn’t been on his radar. His libido, like everything else in his life, was just something else he had learnt to control ruthlessly. He had intended to spend three months controlling it.

Sarah Scott, with her tangled blonde hair and her fresh-faced innocence, was certainly not the sort of woman he fancied himself drawn to. He generally went for tougher, more experienced types—women with obvious attractions, who were as willing as he was to have a brief, passionate fling. Women who were ships passing in the night, never dropping anchor and more importantly, never expecting him to.

One look at Sarah and he had recognised a girl who would be into anchors being dropped, but it hadn’t been enough to keep him away. For two weeks, as they’d been thrown together in circumstances so far removed from reality that it was almost like living in a bubble, he had watched her broodingly out of the corner of his eye, had been aware of her watching him. By the end of week three the inevitable had become reality.

They made love now—quietly and slowly. The house they shared with six other occupants had walls as thin as tracing paper, and wooden floors that seemed to transmit sound with ruthless efficiency.

‘Okay,’ Raoul whispered, ‘how close do you think I can get before you have to stifle a groan?’

‘Don’t,’ Sarah whispered back with a giggle. ‘You know how hard it is …’

‘Yes, and it’s what I like about you. One touch and I can feel your body melt.’ He touched her accordingly, a feathery touch between her generous breasts, trailing a continuous line to circle her prominent nipples until she was squirming and breathing quickly, face flushed, her hand curling into his over long hair.

As he delicately licked the stiffened, swollen tip of her nipple he automatically placed a gentle hand over her mouth, and half smiled as she tried very hard not to groan into the palm of his hand.

Only a handful of times had they taken the beaten up Land Rover and escaped to one of the beaches, where they had found privacy and made love without restraint. Between work and down-time on the compound, however, they were confined to a type of lovemaking that was as refined and guarded as a specialised dance.

Sarah half opened her eyes, simply because she could never resist watching Raoul—the dark bronze of his body against the paler gold of hers, the play of sinew and muscle as he reared up over her, powerful and strong and untamed.

Although it was after midnight, the moon was bright and full. Its silvery light streamed through the window, casting shadows on the walls and picking up the hard angles of his face as he licked a path along her stomach, down to where her legs were parted for his eventual caress.

Quite honestly, at times like this Sarah thought that she had died and gone to heaven, and it never failed to amaze her that her feelings for this man could be so overwhelming after only a matter of three months … less! She felt as though, without even realising it, she had been saving herself for him to come along and take possession of her heart.

As their lovemaking gathered urgency the uneasy tangle of thoughts that had been playing in her head for the past few days were lost as he thrust into her and then picked up a long, steady rhythm that became faster and harder, until she felt herself spiralling towards orgasm, holding on so that their bodies became one and they climaxed. The only sounds were their fast-drawn breaths, even though she wanted to cry out loud from the pleasure of fulfilment.

As she tumbled back down to earth the moonlight illuminated his suitcases, packed and standing to attention by the single old-fashioned wardrobe.

And then back came the disquieting thoughts.

Raoul sank against her, spent, and for a few seconds neither of them spoke. He draped his arm over her body. The sheet had managed to work itself into a heap at the foot of the bed, and he idly wondered just how long it would take for the mosquitoes to figure out that there was a new and much bigger entrance available to get inside.

‘Can … can we talk?’

Raoul stiffened. Past experience had taught him that anyone who wanted to talk invariably wanted to say things he didn’t want to hear.

‘Okay, I can tell from the way you’re not jumping with joy that you don’t want to talk, but I think we should. I mean … your cases are all packed, Raoul. You’re leaving in two days’ time. And I … I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.’

Raoul swung off her to lie back. He stared at the ceiling in silence for a few seconds. Of course he had known that this was where they would end up, but he had conveniently chosen to ignore that because she had bewitched him. Every time he had considered giving her one of his little speeches about expecting nothing from him he had looked into her bright green eyes and the speech had melted away.

He reluctantly turned to face her and stroked the vanilla blonde hair off her face, neatly tucking loose strands behind her ears.

‘I know we need to talk,’ he admitted heavily.

‘But you still don’t want to …’

‘I’m not sure where it’s going to get us.’

Hearing that was like having ice cold water thrown in her face, but Sarah ploughed on bravely—because she just couldn’t see that what they had could possibly come to nothing the minute he departed. They had done a thousand things together. More than some people packed into a lifetime. She refused to concede that it could all melt away into nothingness.

‘I never intended to come out here and start any kind of relationship,’ he confessed, his eloquence for once gone, because he was just not accustomed to having emotional conversations with anyone. He never had. He just didn’t think that he had it in him. But there she was, staring at him in the darkness with those big, questioning eyes … waiting.

‘Nor did I. I mean, I just wanted to get some experience and live a little—do something a bit different before starting university. You know that. How many times did I tell you that—?’ She’d very nearly said falling in love, but an innate sense of self-preservation held her back. Not once had he ever told her what he felt for her. She had only deduced from the way he looked at her and touched her, and laughed at the things she said, and when she teased him. ‘That meeting someone wasn’t part of my agenda either. The unexpected happens.’

Did it? Not to him. Never to him. He had endured a childhood that had been riddled with the unexpected—all of it bad. Top of his list of things to avoid was The Unexpected, but she was right. What had blossomed between them had taken him by surprise. He drew her against him and searched for the right words to explain just why the future staring them in the face would be one they each faced on their own.

‘I shouldn’t have given in, Sarah.’

‘Shouldn’t have given in to what?’

‘You know what. To you.’

‘Please don’t say that,’ she whispered with heartfelt dismay. ‘Are you saying that what we did was all a big mistake? We’ve had so much fun! You don’t have to be serious all the time.’

Raoul took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, one by one, until the radiant smile reappeared on her face. She smiled easily.

‘It’s been fun,’ he agreed, with the heavy feeling of someone about to deliver a fatal blow to an unsuspecting victim. ‘But this isn’t reality, Sarah. This is time out. You pretty much said it yourself. Reality is what’s in front of us. In your case three years at university. In my case …’ The world and nothing less. ‘A job. I really hoped that we wouldn’t have to have this conversation. I hoped that you would see what’s pretty clear to me. This has been great, but it’s … a holiday affair.’

‘A holiday affair?’ Sarah repeated in a small voice.

Raoul sighed and ran his fingers through his too-long hair. He would get rid of it the second he made it back to civilisation.

‘Don’t make me out to be an ogre, Sarah. I’m not saying that it hasn’t been … incredible. It has. In fact, it’s been the most incredible three months of my life.’ He hesitated. His past had never been something he chose to discuss with anyone, least of all a woman, but the urge to go further with her was overpowering. ‘You’ve made me feel like no one else ever has … but then I suppose you know that …’

‘How can I when you’ve never told me?’ But it was something for her to hang onto.

‘I … I’m not good with this kind of emotional drama. I’ve had a lot of emotional drama in my life …’

‘What do you mean?’ She knew only the barest of facts about his past, even though he pretty much knew everything about hers. She had waxed lyrical about her childhood—her very happy and very ordinary childhood—as an only child of two parents who had always thought that they would never have kids until her mother became pregnant at the merry age of forty-one.

He had skirted round the subject aside from telling her that he’d had no parents, preferring to concentrate on the future which, as time went on, suited her very well—even though any mention of her in that future hadn’t actually been voiced. She liked the thought of him forging his way with her at his side. Somewhere.

‘I grew up in a foster home, Sarah. I was one of those kids you read about in the newspapers who get taken in by Social Services because their parents can’t take care of them.’

Sarah sat up, lost for words. Then her natural warmth took over and she felt the prickle of tears, which brought a reluctant smile to his lips.

‘Neither of your parents could look after you?’

‘Just the one parent on the scene. My mother.’ It was not in his nature to confide, and he picked carefully at his words, choosing to denude them of all potency. It was a trick he had learnt a long time ago, so his voice, when he spoke, was flat and detached. ‘Unfortunately she had a problem with substances, which ended up killing her when I was five. My father … Who knows? Could have been anyone.’

‘You poor soul!’

‘I prefer to think of my background as character-building, and as foster homes went mine wasn’t too bad. Where I’m going with this …’ For a second he had to remind himself where he was going with it. ‘I’m not looking for a relationship. Not now—probably not ever. I never meant to string you along, Sarah, but … you got under my skin … And all this didn’t exactly go the distance in bringing me back to my senses.’

‘All what?’

‘Here. The middle of nowhere. Thrown together in the heat …’

‘So nothing would have happened between us if we hadn’t been out here?’ She could hear her voice rising and had to control it, because she didn’t want to wake anyone—although there was only one other English speaking person on the compound.

‘That’s a purely hypothetical question.’

‘You could try answering it!’

‘I don’t know.’ He could feel the hurt seeping out of her, but what could he do about it? How could he make it better without issuing promises he knew he wouldn’t keep?

Frustration and anger at himself rushed through him in a tidal wave. Hell, he should have known just by looking at her that Sarah wasn’t one of those women who were out to have a good time, no strings attached! Where had his prized self-control been when he had needed it most? Absent without leave! He had seen her and all trace of common sense had deserted him.

And when he had discovered that she was a virgin? Had that stopped him in his tracks? The opposite. He had felt unaccountably thrilled to be her first, had wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Instead of backing away he had rushed headlong into the sort of crazy quasi-romantic situation that he had always scorned. There hadn’t been chocolates and jewellery—not that he could have afforded either—but there had been long, lazy conversations, a great deal of laughter … Hell, he had even cooked her a meal on one occasion, when the rest of the crew had disappeared for the weekend to camp on the beach, leaving the two of them in charge.

‘You don’t know? Is that because I’m not really your type?’

He hesitated just long enough for her to bitterly assume the obvious.

‘I’m not, am I?’ She slung her legs over the bed, kicking away at the mosquito net and finally shoving it aside so that she could crawl under it.

‘Where are you going!’

‘I don’t want to be having this conversation.’ In the darkness she hunted around for her clothes, located them, and began putting them on. An old tee shirt, a pair of denim shorts, her flipflops. ‘I’m going outside. I need to get some air.’

Raoul debated the wisdom of following her for a few seconds, then leapt out of the bed, struggling with his jeans, not bothering with a shirt at all, as he watched her flying out of the room like a bat out of hell.

The bedroom was small, equipped with the most basic of furniture, and cluttered with all the bits and pieces of two occupants. He came close to tripping over one of his shoes and cursed softly under his breath. He shouldn’t be following her. He had said all there was to say on the subject of any continuing romance. To prolong the conversation would be to invite a debate that would be stillborn, so what was the point? But watching her disappear through the bedroom door had galvanised him into instant, inexplicable action.

The house was a square concrete block, its front door accessed by sufficient steps to ensure that it was protected against flooding during the cyclone season.

He caught up with her just as she had reached the bottom of the steps.

‘So, what are your types!’ Sarah swung round to glare at him, hands on her hips.

‘Types? What are you talking about?’

‘These women you go for?’

‘That’s irrelevant.’

‘Not to me it isn’t!’ Sarah stared up at him. She was shaking like a leaf, and she didn’t know why she was getting hung up on that one detail. He was right. It was irrelevant. What did it matter if he went for tall brunettes and she was a short blonde? What mattered was that he was dumping her. Throwing her out like used goods. Tossing her aside as though she was just something insignificant that no longer mattered. When he was everything to her.

She literally shied away from the thought of waking up in three days’ time in an empty bed, knowing that she would never lay eyes on him again. How on earth was she going to survive?

‘You need to calm down.’ He shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair, sweeping it back from his face. God, it was like an oven out here. He could feel the sweat beginning to gather on his body.

‘I’m perfectly calm!’ Sarah informed him in a shrill voice. ‘I just want to know if you’ve had fun using me for the past three months!’

She swung round, began heading towards the central clearing, where the circular reed huts with their distinctive pointed roofs were used as classrooms for the twenty local children who attended every day. Raoul didn’t teach. He and two of the other guys did brutally manual labour—building work in one of the communities further along, planting and harvesting of crops. He gave loads of advice on crop rotation and weather patterns. He seemed to know absolutely everything.

‘Were you just making the best of a bad job out here? Sleeping with me because there was no one else around to your taste?’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ He reached out and stopped her in her tracks, pulling her back to him and forcing her to look up.

‘I know I’m not the most glamorous person in the world. I know you’re probably accustomed to landing really gorgeous girls.’ She bit her lip and looked away, feeling miserable and thoroughly sorry for herself. ‘I knew it was odd that you even looked at me in the first place, but I suppose I was the only other English person here so you made do.’

‘Don’t do this, Sarah,’ Raoul said harshly. He could feel her trembling against him, and he had to fight the impulse to terminate the conversation by kissing that lush, full mouth. ‘If you want to know what kind of women I’ve always gone for, I’ll tell you. I’ve always gone for women who wanted nothing from me. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s the truth. Yes, they’ve been good looking, but not in the way that you are …’

‘What way is that?’ Sarah asked scornfully, but she was keen to grasp any positive comment in these suddenly turbulent waters. She realised with a sinking heart that she would be willing to beg for him. It went against every grain of pride in her, but, yes, she would plead for him at least to keep in touch.

‘Young, innocent, full of laughter …’ He loosened his fingers on her arm and gently stroked her. ‘That’s why I should have run a mile the minute you looked at me with those big green eyes,’ he murmured with genuine regret. ‘But I couldn’t. You summed up everything I wasn’t looking for, and I still couldn’t resist you.’

‘You don’t have to!’ Before he could knock her last-ditch plea down in flames she turned away brusquely and walked towards the clearing, adopting a position on one of the fallen tree trunks which had been left as a bench of sorts.

Her heart was beating like a jackhammer and she could barely catch her breath. She didn’t look at him as he sat down on the upturned trunk next to her.

The night was alive with the sounds of insects and frogs, but it was cooler out here than it had been in the stifling heat of the bedroom.

Eventually she turned to him. ‘I’m not asking you to settle down and marry me,’ she said quietly—although, really, who was she kidding? That was exactly what she wanted. ‘But you don’t have to walk away and never look back. I mean, we can keep in touch.’ She threw him a watery, desperate smile. ‘That’s what mobile phones and e-mails and all these social networking sites are all about, you know.’

‘How many times have we argued about the merits of throwing your personal life into a public arena for the world to feed on?’

‘You’re such a dinosaur, Raoul.’ But she smiled. They’d argued about so many things! Light-hearted arguments, with lots of laughter. When Raoul took a stand it was impossible to deflect him, and she had enjoyed teasing him about his implacability. She had never known anything like it.

‘And you’d be happy to do that?’ Raoul thought that if she were the kind of girl who could be happy with that kind of distant, intermittent contact then they wouldn’t be sitting here right now, having this conversation, because then she would also be the kind of girl who would have indulged in a three-month fling and been happy to walk away, without agonising about a future that wasn’t destined to be.

For a fleeting moment he wondered what it would be like to take her with him, but the thought was one he discarded even before it had had time to take root. He was a product of his background, and that was something he was honest enough to acknowledge.

Deprived of stability, he had learnt from a very young age that he had to look out for himself. He couldn’t even really remember when he had made his mind up that the world would never decide his fate. He would control it, and the way he would do that would be through his brains. Foster care had honed his single-minded ambition and provided him with one very important lesson in life: rely on no one.

Whilst the other kids had been larking around, or pining for parents that failed to show up at appointed times, he had buried his head in books and mastered all the tricks of studying in the midst of chaos. Blessed with phenomenal intelligence, he had sailed through every exam, and as soon as he’d been released from the restrictions of a foster home had worked furiously to put himself through college and then later university.

Starting with nothing, he had to do more than just be clever. A degree counted for nothing when you were competing with someone who had family connections. So he had got two degrees—two high-powered degrees—which he intended to use ruthlessly to get where he wanted to go.

Where, in his great scheme of things, would Sarah fit in? He was no carer and never would be. He just didn’t have it in him. And Sarah was the sort of soft, gentle person who would always need someone to take care of her.

Heck, she couldn’t even bring herself to answer his question! When she spoke of keeping in touch, what she really meant was having an ongoing relationship. How responsible would he be if he told her what she wanted to hear?

Abruptly Raoul stood up, putting some vital immediate distance between them—because sitting next to her was doing crazy things to his thoughts and to his body.

‘Well?’ he asked, more harshly than he had intended, and he sensed her flinch as she bowed her head. He had to use every scrap of will-power at his disposal not to go across and put his arms around her. He clenched his hands into fists, wanting to hit something very hard. ‘You haven’t answered my question. Could you keep in touch with me with the occasional e-mail? When you should be moving on? Putting me behind you and chalking the whole thing up to experience?’

‘How can you be so callous?’ Sarah whispered. She had practically begged and it hadn’t been enough. He didn’t love her and he never would. Why should she waste her time lamenting the situation? He was right. E-mails and text messages would just prolong the hurt. She needed to cut him out of her life and leave no remaining bits to fester and multiply.

‘I’m not being callous, Sarah. I’m sparing you the pain of building false hopes. You’re young, with stars in your eyes …’

‘You’re not exactly over the hill, Raoul!’

‘In terms of experience I’m a thousand years older than you, and I’m not the man you’re looking for. I would be no good for you …’

‘That’s usually the coward’s way out of a sticky situation,’ she muttered, having read it somewhere and thought that it made sense.

‘In this case it’s the truth. You need someone who’s going to take care of you, and that person is never going to be me.’ He watched her carefully and wondered if he would ever again be in the business of justifying himself to another human being. Walk alone, that was what he had taught himself, and you don’t end up entangled in situations such as this. ‘I don’t want the things that you do,’ he continued softly.

Sarah would have liked to deny that she wanted any of those things he accused her of wanting, but she did. She wanted the whole fairytale romance and he knew it. It felt as if he knew her better than anyone ever had.

Her shoulders slumped as she struggled to look for the silver lining in the cloud. There always was one.

‘I’m not equipped for playing happy families, Sarah …’

She eventually raised her eyes to his and looked at him coldly. ‘You’re right. I want all that stuff, and it is better for you to let me down so that I can have a fighting chance of meeting someone who isn’t scared of commitment.’ Her legs felt like jelly when she stood up. ‘It would be awful to think that I might waste my time loving you when you haven’t got it in you for the fairytale stuff!’

Raoul gritted his teeth, but there was nothing to say in response to that.

‘And by the way,’ she flung over her shoulder, ‘I’ll leave your clothes outside the bedroom door, because I’ll be sleeping on my own tonight! You want your precious freedom so badly? Well, congratulations—you’ve got it!’

She kept her head held high as she covered the ten thousand miles back to the house. At least it felt like ten thousand miles.

Memories of their intense relationship flashed through her head like a slow, painful slideshow. Thinking about him could still give her goosebumps, and she hugged herself as she jogged up the flight of stone steps to the front door.

In the bedroom, she gathered up some of his clothes and buried her face in them, breathing in his musky, aggressively male scent, then duly stuck them outside—along with his cases.

Then she locked the bedroom door, and in the empty quiet of the bedroom contemplated a life without Raoul in it and tried to stop the bottom of her world from dropping out.

CHAPTER ONE

CAUGHT in the middle of crouching on the ground, trying to get rid of a particularly stubborn stain on the immaculate cream carpet that ran the length, breadth and width of the directors’ floor of the very exclusive family bank in which she had now been working for the past three weeks, Sarah froze at the sound of voices emerging from one of the offices. Low, unhurried voices—one belonging to a man, the other to a woman.

It was the first time she had been made aware of any sign of life here. She came at a little after nine at night, did her cleaning and left. She liked it that way. She had no wish to bump into anyone—not that there would have been the slightest possibility of her being addressed. She was a cleaner, and as such was rendered instantly invisible. Even the doorman who had been allowing her entry ever since she had started working at the bank barely glanced up when she appeared in front of him.

She could barely remember a time when she had been able to garner a few admiring glances. The combined weight of responsibility and lack of money had rubbed the youthful glow from her face. Now when she looked in the mirror all she saw was a woman in her mid-twenties with shadows under her eyes and the pinched appearance of someone with too many worries.

Sarah wondered what she should do. Was there some special etiquette involved if a cleaner come into contact with one of the directors of this place? She hunkered down. In her blue checked overalls and with her hair scraped back under a matching scarf, she figured she might easily have passed for a heap of old clothes dumped on the ground, were it not for the elaborate trolley of cleaning materials by her side.

As the hushed voices got closer—just round the corner—Sarah put her all into the wretched stain on the carpet. But with a sinking heart she was aware that the voices had fallen silent, and the footsteps seemed to have stopped just in front of her.

In fact, sliding her eyes across, she could make out some hand-made Italian shoes just below charcoal-grey trousers, sharply creased, a pair of very high cream stilettos, and stockings with a slight sheen, very sheer.

‘I don’t know if you’ve done the conference room as yet, but if you have then you’ve made a very poor job of it. There are ring marks on the table, and two champagne glasses are still there on the bookshelf!’

The woman’s voice was icy cold and imperious. Reluctantly Sarah raised her eyes, travelling the length of a very tall, very thin, very blonde woman in her thirties. From behind her she could hear the man pressing for the lift.

‘I haven’t got to the conference room yet,’ Sarah mumbled. She prayed that the woman wouldn’t see fit to lodge a complaint. She needed this job. The hours suited her, and it was well paid for what it was. Included in the package was the cost of a taxi to and from her house to the bank. How many cleaning jobs would ever have included that?

‘Well, I’m relieved to hear it!’

‘For God’s sake, Louisa, let the woman do her job. It’s nearly ten, and I can do without spending the rest of the evening here!’

Sarah heard that voice—the voice that had haunted her for the past five years—and her mind went a complete blank. Then it was immediately kick-started, papering over the similarities of tone. Because there was no way that Raoul Sinclair could be the man behind her. Raoul Sinclair was just a horrible, youthful mistake that was now in the past.

And yet …

Obeying some kind of primitive instinct to match a face to that remarkable voice, Sarah turned around—and in that instant she was skewered to the spot by the same bitter chocolate eyes that had taken up residence in her head five years ago and stubbornly refused to budge. She half stood, swayed.

The last thing she heard before she fainted was the woman saying, in a shrill, ringing voice, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, that’s the last thing we need!’

She came to slowly. As her eyelids fluttered open she knew, in a fuddled way, that she really didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to stay in her peaceful faint.

She had been carried into an office and was now on a long, low sofa which she recognised as the one in Mr Verrier’s office. She tried to struggle upright and Raoul came into her line of vision, taller than she remembered, but just as breathtakingly beautiful. She had never seen him in anything dressier than a pair of jeans and an old tee shirt, and she was slowly trying to match up the Raoul she had known with this man kneeling over her, who looked every inch the billionaire he had once laughingly informed her he would be.

‘Here—drink this.’

‘I don’t want to drink anything. What are you doing here? Am I seeing things? You can’t be here.’

‘Funny, but I was thinking the very same thing.’ Raoul had only now recovered his equilibrium. The second his eyes had locked onto hers he had been plunged into instant flashback, and carrying her into the office had reawakened a tide of feeling which he had assumed to have been completely exorcised. He remembered the smell of her and the feel of her as though it had been yesterday. How was that possible? When so much had happened in the intervening years?

Sarah was fighting to steady herself. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It was just so weird that she had to bite back the desire to burst into hysterical, incredulous laughter.

‘What are you doing here, Sarah? Hell … you’ve changed …’

‘I know.’ She was suddenly conscious of the sight she must make, scrawny and hollow-cheeked and wearing her overalls. ‘I have, haven’t I?’ She nervously fingered the checked overall and knew that she was shaking. ‘Things haven’t worked out … quite as I’d planned.’ She made a feeble attempt to stand up, and collapsed back down onto the sofa.

In truth, Raoul was horrified at what he saw. Where was the bright-eyed, laughing girl he had known?

‘I have to go … I have to finish the cleaning, Raoul. I …’

‘You’re not finishing anything. Not just at the moment. When was the last time you ate anything? You look as though you could be blown away by a gust of wind. And cleaning? Now you’re doing cleaning jobs to earn money?’

He vaulted to his feet and began pacing the floor. He could scarcely credit that she was lying on the sofa in this office. Accustomed to eliminating any unwelcome emotions and reactions as being surplus to his finely tuned and highly controlled way of life, he found that he couldn’t control the bombardment of questions racing through his brain. Nor could he rein in the flood of unwanted memories that continued to besiege him from every angle.

Sarah was possibly the very last woman with whom he had had a perfectly natural relationship. She represented a vision of himself as a free man, with one foot on the ladder but no steps actually yet taken. Was that why the impact of seeing her again now was so powerful?

‘I never meant to end up like this,’ Sarah whispered, as the full impact of their unexpected meeting began to take shape.

‘But you have. How? What happened to you? Did you decide that you preferred cleaning floors to teaching?’

‘Of course I didn’t!’ Sarah burst out sharply. She dragged herself into an upright position on the sofa and was confronted with the unflattering sight of her sturdy work shoes and thick, black woollen tights.

‘Did you ever make it to university?’ Raoul demanded. As she had struggled to sit up his eyes had moved of their own volition to the swing of her breasts under the hideous checked overall.

‘I … I left the compound two weeks after you left.’

Her strained green eyes made her look so young and vulnerable that sudden guilt penetrated the armour of his formidable self control.

In five years Raoul had fulfilled every promise he had made to himself as a boy. Equipped with his impressive qualifications, he had landed his first job on the trading floor at the Stock Exchange, where his genius for making money had very quickly catapulted him upwards. Where colleagues had conferred, he’d operated solely on his own, and in the jungle arena of the money-making markets it hadn’t been long before he’d emerged as having a killer streak that could make grown men quake in their shoes.

Raoul barely noticed. Money, for him, equated with freedom. He would be reliant on no one. Within three years he had accumulated sufficient wealth to begin the process of acquisition, and every acquisition had been bigger and more impressive than the one before. Guilt had played no part in his meteoric upward climb, and he had had no use for it.

Now, however, he felt it sink its teeth in, and he shoved his fingers through his hair.

Sarah followed the gesture which was so typically him. ‘You’ve had your hair cut,’ she said, flushing at the inanity of her observation, and Raoul offered her a crooked half-smile.

‘I discovered that shoulder-length hair didn’t go with the image. Now, of course, I could grow it down to my waist and no one would dare say a word, but my days of long hair are well and truly over.’

Just as she was, she thought. She belonged to those days that were well and truly over—except they weren’t, were they? She knew that there were things that needed to be said, but it was a conversation she’d never expected to have, and now that it was staring her in the face she just wanted to delay its onset for as long as possible.

‘You must be pleased.’ Sarah stared down at her feet and sensed him walk towards her until his shadow joined her feet. When he sat down next to her, her whole body stiffened in alarm—because even through the nightmare of her situation, and the pain and misery of how their relationship had ended, her body was still stirring into life and reacting to his proximity. ‘You were always so determined …’ she continued.

‘In this life it’s the only way to go forward. You were telling me what happened to your university career …’

‘Was I?’ She glanced across at him and licked her lips nervously. For two years she had done nothing but think of him. Over time the memories had faded, and she had learnt the knack of pushing them away whenever they threatened to surface, but there had been moments when she had flirted with the notion of meeting him again, had created conversations in her head in which she was strong and confident and in control of the situation. Nothing like this.

‘I … I never made it to university. Like I said, things didn’t quite work out.’

‘Because of me.’ Raoul loathed this drag on his emotions. Nor could he sit so close to her. Frustrated at the way his self-control had slipped out of his grasp, he pulled a chair over and positioned it directly in front of the sofa. ‘You weren’t due to leave that compound for another three months. In fact, I remember you saying that you thought you would stay there for much longer.’

‘Not all of us make plans that end up going our way,’ she told him, with creeping resentment in her voice.

‘And you blame me for the fact that you’ve ended up where you have? I was honest with you. I believe your parting shot was that you were grateful that you would have the opportunity to find Mr Right … If you’re going to try and pin the blame for how your life turned out on me, then it won’t work. We had a clean break, and that’s always the best way. If the Mr Right you found turned out to be the sort of guy who sits around while his woman goes out cleaning to earn money, then that’s a pity—but not my fault.’

‘This is crazy. I … I’m not blaming you for anything. And there’s no Mr Right. Gosh, Raoul … I can’t believe this. It feels like some kind of … of … nightmare … I don’t mean that. I just mean … you’re so different …’

Raoul chose to ignore her choice of words. She was in a state of shock. So was he. ‘Okay, so maybe you didn’t find the man of your dreams … but there must have been someone …’ he mused slowly. ‘Why else would you have abandoned a career you were so passionate about? Hell, you used to say that you were born to teach.’

Sarah raised moss-green eyes to his and he felt himself tense at the raw memory of how she’d used to look up at him, teasing and adoring at the same time. He had revelled in it. Now he doubted that any woman would have the temerity to tease him. Wealth and power had elevated him to a different place—a place where women batted their eyelashes, and flattered … but teased? No. Nor would he welcome it. In five years he had not once felt the slightest temptation to dip his toes into the murky waters of commitment.

‘Did you get involved with some kind of loser?’ he grated. She had been soft and vulnerable and brokenhearted. Had someone come along and taken advantage of her state of mind?

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You must have been distraught to have returned from Africa ahead of schedule. I realise that you probably blame me for that, but if you had stuck it out you would forgotten me within a few weeks.’

‘Is that how it worked for you, Raoul?’

Pinned to the spot by such a direct question, Raoul refused to answer. ‘Did you get strung along by someone who promised you the earth and then did a runner when he got tired of you? Is that what happened? A degree would have been your passport, Sarah. How many times did we have conversations about this? What did he say to you to convince you that it was a good idea to dump your aspirations?’

He didn’t know whether to stand or to sit. He felt peculiarly uncomfortable in his own skin, and those wide green eyes weren’t helping matters.

‘And why cleaning? Why not an office job somewhere?’

He looked down at his watch and realised that it was nearing midnight, but he was reluctant to end the conversation even though he queried where it was going. She was just another part of his history, a jigsaw puzzle piece that had already been slotted in place, so why prolong the catch-up game? Especially when those huge, veiled, accusing green eyes were reminding him of a past for which he had no use?

If he politely ushered her to the door he was certain that she would leave and not look back. Which was clearly a good thing.

‘You can’t trust people,’ he advised her roughly. ‘Now perhaps you’ll see my point of view when I told you that the only person you can rely on is yourself.’

‘I’ve probably lost my job here,’ Sarah intoned distractedly.

She had seen him look at his watch and she knew what that meant. Her time was coming to an end. He had moved onwards and upwards to that place where time was money. Reminiscing, for Raoul, would have very limited interest value. He was all about the future, not the past. But she had to plough on and get where she needed to get, horrible though the prospect was.

‘I couldn’t countenance you working here anyway,’ Raoul concurred smoothly.

‘What does this place have to do with you?’

‘As of six this evening—everything. I own it.’

Sarah’s mouth dropped open. ‘You own this?’

‘All part of my portfolio.’

It seemed to Sarah now that there was no meeting point left between them. He had truly moved into a different stratosphere. He literally owned the company whose floors she had been scrubbing less than two hours ago. In his smart business suit, with the silk tie and the gleaming hand-made shoes, he was the absolute antithesis of her, with her company uniform and her well-worn flats.

Defiantly she pulled off the headscarf—if only to diminish the image of complete servility.

Hair the colour of vanilla, soft and fine and unruly, tumbled out. He had cut his hair. She had grown hers. It tumbled nearly to her waist, and for a few seconds Raoul was dazzled at the sight of it.

She was twisting the unsightly headscarf between her fingers, and that brought him back down to earth. She had been saying something about the job—this glorious cleaning job—which she would have to abandon. Unless, of course, she carried on cleaning way past her finishing time.

He’d opened his mouth to continue their conversation, even though he had been annoyingly thrown off course by that gesture of hers, when she said, in such a low voice that he had to strain forward to hear her, ‘I tried to get in touch, you know …’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Sarah cleared her throat. ‘I tried to get in touch, but I … I couldn’t …’

Raoul stiffened. Having money had been a tremendous learning curve. It had a magnetism all of its own. People he had once known and heartily wished to forget had made contact, having glimpsed some picture of him in the financial pages of a newspaper. It would have been amusing had it not been so pathetic.

He tried to decipher what Sarah was saying now. Had she been one of those people as well? Had she turned to the financial news and spotted him, thought that she might get in touch as she was down on her luck?

‘What do you mean, you couldn’t?’ His voice was several shades cooler.

‘I had no idea how to locate you.’ Her heart was beating so hard that she felt positively sick. ‘I mean, you disappeared without a trace. I tried checking with the girl who kept all the registration forms for when we were out there, and she gave me an address, but you’d left …’

‘When did all this frantic checking take place?’

‘When I got back to England. I know you dumped me, Raoul, but … but I had to talk to you …’

So despite all her bravado when they had parted company she had still tried to track him down. It was a measure of her lack of sophistication that she had done that, and an even greater measure of it that she would now openly confess to doing so.

‘I came to London and rented a room in a house out east. You would never have found me.’

‘I even went on the internet, but you weren’t to be found. And of course I remembered you saying that you would never join any social networking sites …’

‘Quite a search. What was that in aid of? A general chat?’

‘Not exactly.’

Sarah was thinking now that if she had carried on searching just a little bit longer—another year or so—then she would have found him listed somewhere on the computer, because he would have made his fortune by then. But she had quickly given up. She had never imagined that he would have risen so far, so fast, and yet when she thought about it there had always been that stubborn, closed, ruthless streak to him. And he had been fearless. Fearless when it came to the physical stuff and fearless when it came to plans for his future.

‘I wish I had managed to get through to you. You never kept in touch with your last foster home, did you? I tried to trace you through them, but you had already dropped off their radar.’

Raoul stilled, because he had forgotten just how much she knew about him—including his miserable childhood and adolescence.

‘So you didn’t get in touch,’ he said, with a chill in his voice. ‘We could carry on discussing all the various ways you tried and failed to find me, or we could just move on. Why did you want to get in touch?’

‘You mean that I should have had more pride than to try?’

‘A lot of women would have,’ Raoul commented drily. She turned her head and the overhead light caught her hair, turning it into streaks of gold and pale toffee. ‘But I suppose you were very young. Just nineteen.’

‘And too stupid to do the sensible thing?’

‘Just … very young.’ He dragged his eyes away from the dancing highlights of her hair and frowned, sensing an edginess to her voice although her face was very calm and composed.

‘You can’t blame me if I couldn’t find you …’

Raoul was confused. What was she talking about?

‘It’s getting late, Sarah. I’ve worked through the night, hammering out this deal with lawyers. I haven’t got the time or the energy to try and decipher what you’re saying. Why would I blame you for not being able to find me?’

‘I’ll get to the point. I didn’t want to get in touch with you, Raoul. What kind of a complete loser do you imagine I am? Do you think that I would have come crawling to you for a second chance?’

‘You might have if you’d been through the mill with some other guy!’

‘There was no other guy! And why on earth would I come running to you when you had already told me that you wanted nothing more to do with me?’

‘Then why did you try and get in touch?’ He felt disproportionately pleased that there had been no other guy, but he immediately put that down to the fact that, whether they had parted on good terms or not, he wouldn’t have wanted her to be used and tossed aside by someone she had met on the rebound.

‘Because I found out that I was pregnant!’

The silence that greeted this pooled around her until Sarah began to feel dizzy.

Raoul was having trouble believing what he had just heard. In fact he was tempted to dismiss it as a trick of the imagination, or else some crazy joke—maybe an attention-seeking device to prolong their conversation.

But one look at her face told him that this was no joke.

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, and you have to be nuts if you think I’m going to fall for it. When it comes to money, I’ve heard it all.’ Like a caged beast, he shot up and began prowling through the room, hands shoved into his pockets. ‘So we’ve met again by chance. You’re down on your luck, for whatever reason, and you see that I’ve made my fortune. Just come right out and ask for a helping hand! Do you think I’d turn you away? If you need cash, I can write a cheque for you right now.’

‘Stop it, Raoul. I’m not a gold-digger! Just listen to me! I tried to get in touch with you because I found out that I was having your baby. I knew you’d be shocked and, believe me, I did think it over for a while, but in the end I thought that it was only fair that you knew. How could you think that I’d make something like that up to try and get money out of you? Have you ever known me to be materialistic? How could you be so insulting?’

‘I couldn’t have got you pregnant. It’s not possible! I was always careful.’

‘Not always,’ Sarah muttered.

‘Okay, so maybe you got yourself pregnant by someone else …’

‘There was no one else! When I left the compound I had no idea that I was pregnant. I left because … because I just couldn’t stay there any longer. I got back to England and I still intended to start university. I wanted to put you behind me. I didn’t find out until I was nearly five months along. My periods were erratic, and then they disappeared, but I was so … I barely noticed …’

She had been so miserable that World War III could have broken out and she probably wouldn’t have noticed the mushroom cloud outside her bedroom window. Memories of him had filled every second of every minute of her every waking hour, until she had prayed for amnesia—anything that would help her forget. Her parents had been worried sick. At any rate, her mother had been the first to suspect something when she’d begun to look a little rounder, despite the fact that her eating habits had taken a nosedive.

‘I’m not hearing this.’

‘You don’t want to hear this! My mum and dad were very supportive. They never once lectured, and they were there for me from the very minute that Oliver was born.’

Somehow the mention of a name made Raoul blanch. It was much harder to dismiss what she had said as the rantings of an ex-lover who wanted money from him and was prepared to try anything to get it. The mention of a name seemed to turn the fiction she was spinning into something approaching reality, and yet still his mind refused to concede that the story being told had anything to do with him.

He’d never been one to shy away from the truth, however brutal, but the nuts and bolts of his sharp brain now seemed to be malfunctioning.

Sarah wished he would say something. Did he really believe that she was making up the whole thing? How suspicious of other people had he become over the years? The young man she had fallen in love with had been fiercely independent—but to this extent? How valuable was his wealth if he now found himself unable to trust anyone around him?

‘I … I lived in Devon with them after Oliver was born,’ she continued into the deafening silence. ‘It wasn’t ideal, but I really needed the support. Then about a year ago I decided to move to London. Oliver was older—nearly at school age. I thought I could put him into a nursery part-time. There were no real jobs to be had in our village in Devon, and I didn’t want to put Mum and Dad in a position of being permanent babysitters. Dad retired a couple of years ago, and they had always planned to travel. I thought that I would be able to get something here—maybe start thinking about getting back into education …’

‘Getting back into education? Of course. It’s never too late.’ He preferred to dwell on this practical aspect to their conversation, but there was a growing dread inside him. There had been more than one occasion when he had not taken precautions. Somehow it had been a different world out there—a world that hadn’t revolved around the usual rules and regulations.

‘But it was all harder than I thought it was going to be.’ Sarah miserably babbled on to cover her unease. He thought she had lied to try and get money out of him. There was not even a scrap of affection left for her if he could think that. ‘I found a house to rent. It’s just a block away from a friend I used to go to school with. Emily. She babysits Oliver when I do jobs like these …’

‘You mean you’ve done nothing but mop floors and clean toilets since you moved here?’

‘I’ve earned a living!’ Sarah flared back angrily. ‘Office jobs are in demand, and it’s tough when you haven’t got qualifications or any sort of work experience. I’ve also done some waitressing and bar work, and in a month’s time I’m due to start work as a teaching assistant at the local school. Aren’t you going to ask me any questions about your son? I have a picture … In my bag downstairs …’

Raoul was slowly beginning to think the unimaginable, but he was determined to demonstrate that he was no pushover—even for her. Even for a woman who still had the ability to creep into his head when he was least expecting it.

‘I grant that you may well have had a child,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s been five years. Anything could have happened during that time. But if you insist on sticking to this story, then I have to tell you that I will want definite proof that the child is mine.’

Every time the word child crossed his lips, the fact of it being his seemed to take on a more definite shape. After his uncertain and unhappy past, he had always been grimly assured of one thing: no children. He had seen first-hand the lives that could be wrecked by careless parenting. He had been the victim of a woman who had had a child only to discover that it was a hindrance she could have well done without. Fatherhood was never going to be for him. Now, the possibility of it being dropped on him from a very great height was like being hit by a freight train at full speed.

‘I think you’ll agree that that’s fair enough, given the circumstances,’ he continued as he looked at her closed, shocked face.

‘You just need to take one look at him … I can tell you his birth date … and you can do the maths …’

‘Nothing less than a full DNA test will do.’

Sarah swallowed hard. She tried to see things from his point of view. An accidental meeting with a woman he’d thought left behind for good, and, hey presto, he discovered that he was a father! He would be reeling from shock. Of course he would want to ensure that the child was his before he committed himself to anything! He was now the leading man in his very own worst nightmare scenario. He would want proof!

But the hurt, pain and anger raged through her even as she endeavoured to be reasonable.

He might not want her around. In fact he might, right now, be sincerely hoping that he would wake up and discover that their encounter had been a bad dream. But didn’t he know her at all? Didn’t he know that she was not the type of girl who would ever lie to try and wrangle money out of him?

Unhappily, she was forced to concede that time had changed them both.

Whilst she had been left with her dreams in tatters around her, a single mother scraping to make ends meet and trying to work out how she could progress her career in the years to come, he had forgotten her and moved on. He had realised his burning ambitions and was now in a place from which he could look down at her like a Greek god, contemplating a mere mortal.

She shuddered to think what would have happened had she managed to locate him all those years ago.

‘Of course,’ she agreed, standing up.

She could feel a headache coming on. In the morning, Oliver would be at playgroup. She would try and catch up on some sleep while the house was empty. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Raoul still hadn’t shown any appetite for finding out what his son was like.

‘I should go.’

In the corner of her eye, the cleaning trolley was a forlorn reminder of how her life had abruptly changed in the space of a few hours and suddenly become much more complicated. She doggedly reminded herself that whatever the situation between them it was good that he knew about Oliver. She sneaked a glance at him from under her lashes and found him staring down at her with an unreadable expression.

‘I’m very sorry about this, Raoul.’ She dithered, awkward and self-conscious in her uniform. ‘I know the last thing you probably want is to have bumped into me and been told that you’ve fathered a child. Believe me, I don’t expect you to do anything. You can walk away from the situation. It’s only going to clutter up your life.’

Raoul gave a bark of derisive laughter.

‘What planet are you living on, Sarah? If … if I am indeed a father, then do you really think I’m going to walk out on my responsibility? I will support you in every way that I can. What possible choice would I have?’

Tacked on at the end, that flat assertion said it all. He would rise to the occasion and do his duty. Having wanted nothing in life but to be free, he would now find himself chained to a situation from which he would never allow himself to retreat. She wondered if he had any idea how that made her feel, and felt painful tears push their way up her throat.

She found a clean white handkerchief pressed into her hand, and she stared down at the floor, blinking rapidly in an attempt to control her emotions. ‘You never owned a hankie when I knew you,’ she said in a wobbly voice, reaching for anything that might be a distraction from what she was feeling.

Raoul gave her a reluctant smile. ‘I have no idea why I own one now. I never use it.’

‘What about when you have a cold and need to blow your nose?’

‘I don’t get colds. I’m as healthy as a horse.’

It was only a few meaningless exchanged words, but Sarah felt a lot better as she stuck the handkerchief in the pocket of her overall, promising to return it when it had been washed.

‘I’ll need to be able to contact you,’ he told her. ‘What’s your mobile number? I’ll write mine down for you, and you can contact me at any time.’

As they exchanged numbers, she couldn’t help but think back to when he had walked out on her with no forwarding address and no number at which he could be contacted. He had wanted to be rid of her completely—a clean cut, with no loose threads that could cause him any headaches later down the road.

‘I’ll be in touch within the week,’ he told her, pocketing his mobile, and then he watched as she nodded silently and walked out of the room. He saw her yank off the overall and dump it in the trolley, along with the headscarf. She left it all just where it was in a small act of rebellion that brought a smile to his lips.

Alone in the office, and alone with his thoughts, Raoul contemplated the bomb that had detonated in his life.

He had a son.

Despite what he had said about wanting evidence, he knew in his gut that the child was his. Sarah had never cared about money, and she had always been the least manipulative woman he had ever known. He believed her when she said that she had tried to contact him, and he was shaken by the thought of her doing her utmost to bring up a child on her own when she had been just a child herself.

The fact was that he had messed up and he would have to pay the price. And it was going to be a very steep price.

CHAPTER TWO

SARAH was at the kitchen sink, finishing the last of the washing up, when the doorbell went.

The house she rented was not in a particularly terrific part of East London, but it was affordable, public transport was reasonably convenient, and the neighbours were nice. You couldn’t have everything.

Before the doorbell could buzz again and risk waking Oliver, who had only just been settled after a marathon run of demands for more and more books to be read to him until finally he drifted off to sleep, Sarah wiped her hands on a dishcloth and half ran to the front door.

At not yet seven-thirty she was in some faded tracksuit bottoms and a baggy tee shirt. It was her usual garb on a weekend because she couldn’t afford to go out. Twice a month she would try and have some friends over, cook them something, but continually counting pennies took a lot of the fun out of entertaining.

She had spent the past two days caught up in trying to find herself some replacement shift work. The cleaning company that had hired her had been appalled to find that she had walked out on a job without a backward glance, and she had been sacked on the spot.

Her heart hadn’t been in the search, however. She’d been too busy thinking about Raoul and tirelessly replaying their unexpected encounter in her head. She’d spent hours trying to analyse what he had said and telling herself that it had all happened for the best. She’d looked at Oliver and all she’d seen was Raoul’s dark hair and bitter chocolate eyes, and the smooth, healthy olive skin that would go a shade darker as he got older. He was a clone of his father.

If Raoul saw him there would be no doubt, but she still hadn’t heard from him, and her disappointment had deepened with every passing hour.

On top of that, she couldn’t make her mind up what she should tell her parents. Should they know that Raoul was Oliver’s father and was back on the scene? Or would they worry? She had confessed that she had had her heart broken, and she wasn’t convinced that they had ever really believed it to have been fully pieced together again. How would they react if they knew that the guy who’d broken her heart was back in her life? She was an only child, and they were super-protective. She imagined them racing up to London wielding rolling pins and threatening retribution.

She pulled open the door, her mind wandering feverishly over old ground, and stepped back in confusion at the sight of Raoul standing in front of her.

‘May I come in, Sarah?’

‘I … I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you said that you were going to phone …’

She was without make-up, and no longer in a uniform designed to keep all hint of femininity at bay, and Raoul’s dark eyes narrowed as he took in the creamy satin smoothness of her skin, the brightness of her green eyes in her heart-shaped face and the curves of her familiar body underneath her tee shirt and track pants.

He recognised the tee shirt, although it was heavily faded now, its rock group logo almost obliterated. Just looking at it took him back in time to lying on the bed in the small room in Africa, with the mosquito net tethered as best they could manage under the mattress, watching and burning for her as she slowly stripped the tee shirt over her head to reveal her full, round breasts.

Raoul had planned on phoning. He had spent the past two days thinking, and had realised that the best way forward would be to view the situation in the same way he would view any problem that needed a solution—with a clear head. First establish firm proof that the child was his, because his gut instinct might well be wrong, and then have an adult conversation with her regarding the way forward.

Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to play the waiting game. He hadn’t been able to concentrate at work. He had tried to vent his frustration at the gym, but even two hours of gruelling exercise had done nothing to diminish his urgent need to do something.

Sarah read everything into his silence and ushered him into the house.

‘I didn’t know if I should be expecting a call from … somebody … about those tests you wanted …’

‘On hold for the moment.’

‘Really?’ Her eyes shone and she smiled. ‘So you do believe me.’

‘For the moment I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

‘You won’t regret it, Raoul. Oliver’s the image of you. I’m sorry he’s asleep. I would wake him …’

Raoul had no experience of children. They weren’t part of his everyday existence, and in the absence of any family he had never been obliged to cut his teeth on nephews or nieces. He was utterly bewildered at the notion of being in the presence of a son he had never laid eyes on. What did a four-year-old boy do, exactly? Were they capable of making conversation at that age?

Suddenly nervous as hell, he cleared his throat and waved aside her offer. ‘Maybe it’s best if we talk about this first …’

‘Then would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee? I think I might have some wine in the fridge. I don’t keep a great deal of alcohol in the house. I can’t afford it, anyway.’

Raoul was looking around him, taking in the surroundings which were a stark reminder of how far he had travelled. Now he lived in a massive two-storeyed penthouse apartment in the best postcode in London, furnished to the very highest standard. Frankly, it was the best that money could buy—although he barely glanced at his surroundings and was seldom in to take advantage of the top-of-the-range designer kitchen and all the other jaw dropping features the high-tech apartment sported.

This tiny terraced house couldn’t have been more different. The carpet, the indeterminate colour of sludge, had obviously never been replaced, and the walls, although painted in a cheerful green colour, showed signs of cracks. Standing in the hall with her, he was aware there was practically no room to move, and as he followed her into the kitchen there was no change. A pine table was shoved against the wall to accommodate random pieces of freestanding furniture—a half-sized dresser, a chest of drawers, some shelves on which bottles with various cooking ingredients stood.

He had managed to climb up and away from these sorts of surroundings, but it still sent a chill through his body that but for a combination of brains, luck and sheer hard work beyond the call of duty he might very well have still been living in a place very much like this.

This was precisely why, he told himself, he had refused to be tied down. Only by being one hundred percent free to focus on his career had he been able to fulfil his ambitions. Women were certainly an enjoyable distraction, but he had never been tempted to jettison any of his plans for one of them.

The more wealth he accumulated, the more jaded he became. He could have the most beautiful women in the world, and in fact he had had a number of head-turning girlfriends on his arm over the years, but they had always been secondary to his career.

Dim memories of living in a dingy room with his mother while she drank herself into a stupor had been his driving force. This house was only a few steps up from dingy. He imagined the landlord to be someone of dubious integrity, happy to take money from desperate tenants, but less happy to make any improvements to the property.

The notion of his son had somehow managed to take root in his head, and Raoul was incensed at the deplorable living conditions.

‘I know,’ Sarah apologised, following the critical path of his eyes. ‘It’s not fantastic, but everything works. And it’s so much better than some of the other places I looked at. I don’t even know where you live …’

Raoul, who had been staring at a dramatic rip in the wallpaper above the dresser, met her eyes and held them.

He couldn’t understand whether it was her familiarity that was making him feel so aware of her—inconveniently, frustratingly, sexually aware of her—or whether he had just managed to make himself forget the attraction she had always had for him.

‘Chelsea,’ he said grimly, sitting on one of the chairs at the table, which felt fragile enough to break under his weight.

‘And … and what’s it like?’ She could feel hot colour in her cheeks, because he just dominated the small space of the kitchen. His presence seemed to wrap itself around her, making her pulses race and her skin feel tight and uncomfortable.

Coffee made, she handed him a mug and sat on the other chair.

‘It’s an apartment.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t spend a great deal of time in it. It works for me. It’s low maintenance.’

‘What does that mean? Low maintenance?’

‘Nothing surplus to requirements. I don’t like clutter.’

‘And … and is there a woman in that apartment?’ She went bright red as she asked the question, but it was one that had only occurred to her after she had left him. Was there a woman in his life? He didn’t give the impression of being a married man, but then would he ever?

‘What’s the relevance of that question?’ He sipped some of the instant coffee and looked at her steadily over the rim of the mug.

‘It’s relevant to this situation,’ she persisted stubbornly. ‘Oliver’s your son, and he’s going to have to get used to the idea of having a father around. I’m the only parent figure he’s ever known.’

‘Which isn’t exactly my fault.’

‘I know it’s not! I’m just making a point.’ She glared at him. ‘It’s going to take time for him to get to know you, and I don’t want him to have to deal with a woman on the scene as well. At least I’d rather not. I suppose if you’re married …’

Having never had to answer to anyone but himself, Raoul refused to be railroaded into an explanation of his private life—although he could see the validity of her question.

‘No. There’s no little lady keeping the home fires burning. As for women … I’ll naturally strive to ensure that a difficult situation isn’t made even more difficult.’

‘So there is someone.’ She tried desperately to take it in her stride, because it really wasn’t very surprising. He was sinfully gorgeous, and now wealthy beyond belief. He would be a magnet for any footloose and single woman—and probably for a good few who weren’t footloose and single.

‘I don’t think we should get wrapped up in matters that don’t really have much to do with this … situation. We just need to discuss what the next step should be.’

‘Come upstairs and see him. I can’t have this conversation with you when you don’t even know the child you’re talking about. This isn’t a business deal that needs to be sorted out.’ She stood up abruptly and Raoul, put on the spot, followed suit.

‘He’s sleeping. I wouldn’t want you to wake him.’ Raoul was more nervous than he could ever remember being—more nervous than when he had chased, and closed, his first major deal. More nervous than when he had been a kid and he had stared up at the forbidding grey walls of the foster home that would eventually become his residence.

‘Okay. I won’t. But you still have to see him, or else he’s just going to be a problem that needs solving in your head.’

‘Since when did you get so bossy?’ Raoul muttered under his breath, and Sarah spun around to find him looming behind her.

Standing on the first stair, she could almost look him in the eye. ‘Since I ended up being responsible for another human being,’ she said. ‘I know it’s not your fault that you weren’t aware of the situation …’ Although it was, because if he had only just given her a contact number she would have been able to get in touch with him. ‘But it was terrifying for me when I discovered that I was pregnant. I kept thinking how nice it would be if you had been around to support me, and then I remembered how you had dumped me because you had plans and they didn’t include me, and that if you had been around my pregnancy would have been your worst nightmare.’

‘My plans didn’t include anyone, Sarah. I did you a favour.’

‘Oh, don’t be so arrogant! If you’d cared enough about me you would have kept in touch.’ She was breathing heavily as all the remembered pain and bitterness and anger surged through her, but staring into the depths of his fabulous dark eyes was doing something else to her—making her whole body tingle as though someone had taken a powerful electrical charge to it.

Raoul clocked her reaction without even consciously registering it. He just knew that the atmosphere had become taut with an undercurrent that had nothing to do with what they had been talking about. It was a type of non-verbal communication that sent his body into crazy overdrive.

‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you any of this.’ She jerked her hand in clumsy dismissal, but he caught her wrist. The heat of physical contact made her draw in her breath sharply, although he wasn’t hurting her—not at all. He was barely circling her wrist with his long fingers. Still … she was appalled to find that she wanted to sink against him.

That acknowledgment of weakness galvanised her into struggling to free herself and he released her abruptly, although when she could have turned around and stalked up the stairs she continued to stare at him wordlessly.

‘I know it must have been a bad time for you …’

‘Well, that’s the understatement of the decade if ever there was one! I felt completely lost and alone.’

‘You had your parents to help you.’

‘That’s not the same! Plus I’d left for my gap year thinking that I was at the start of living my own life. Do you know what it felt like to go back home? Yes, they helped me, and I couldn’t have managed at all without them, but it still felt like a retrograde step. I never, ever considered having an abortion, and I was thrilled to bits when Oliver was born, but I was having to cope with seeing all my dreams fly through the window. No university, no degree, no teaching qualification. You must have been laughing your head off when you saw me cleaning floors in that bank.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘No? Then what was going through your head when you looked down at me? With a damp cloth in one hand and a cleaning bottle in the other, dressed in my overalls?’

‘Okay. I was stunned. But then I started remembering how damned sexy you were, and thinking how damned sexy you still were—never mind the headscarf and the overalls …’

His words hovered in the air between them, a spark of conflagration just waiting to find tinder. To her horror, Sarah realised that she wanted him to repeat what he had just said so she could savour his words and roll them round and round in her head.

How could she have forgotten the way he had treated her? He might justify walking out on her as doing her a favour, but that was just another way of saying that he hadn’t cared for her the way she had cared for him, and he hadn’t been about to let a meaningless holiday romance spoil his big plans.

‘I’ve come to realise that sex is very overrated,’ Sarah said scornfully, and then flushed as a slow smile curved his beautiful mouth.

‘Really?’

‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ But she heard the telltale tremor in her voice and wanted to scream in frustration. ‘It certainly has nothing to do with what’s … what’s happening now. If you follow me, I’ll show you to Oliver’s room.’

Raoul let the conversation drop. He was as astounded as she had been by his own genuine admission to her, and he was busily trying to work out how a woman he hadn’t seen in years—a woman who, in the great scheme of things, had not really been in his life for very long—could still exercise such a powerful physical hold over him. It was as though the years between them had collapsed and disappeared.

But of course they hadn’t, he reminded himself forcefully. Proof of that was currently asleep in a bedroom, just metres away from where they had been standing.

Upstairs, if anything, seemed more cramped than downstairs, with two small bedrooms huddled around a tiny bathroom which he glimpsed on his way to the box room on the landing.

She pushed open the door to the only room he had seen so far that bore the hallmark of recent decoration. A night-light revealed wallpaper with some sort of kiddy theme and basic furniture. A small bed, thin patterned curtains, a circular rug tucked half under the bed, a white chest of drawers, snap-together furniture, cheap but functional.

Raoul unfroze himself from where he was standing like a sentinel by the doorway and took a couple of steps towards the bed.

Oliver had kicked off the duvet and was curled around a stuffed toy.

Raoul could make out black curly hair, soft chubby arms. Even in the dim light he could see that his colouring was a shade darker than his mother’s—a pale olive tone that was all his.

In the grip of a powerful curiosity, he took a step closer to the bed and peered at the small sleeping figure. When it shifted, Raoul instantly took a step back.

‘We should go—just in case we wake him,’ Sarah whispered, tiptoeing out of the bedroom.

Raoul followed her. The palms of his hands felt clammy.

She had been right. He had a son. There had been no mistaking those small, familiar signs of a likeness that was purely inherited. He wondered how he could ever have sat in his office and concluded that he would deal with the problem with the cold detachment of a mathematician completing a tricky equation. He had a child. A living, breathing son.

The cramped condition of the house in which he was living now seemed grossly offensive. He would have to do something about that. He would have to do something about pretty much everything. Life as he knew it was about to change. One minute he had been riding the crest of a wave, stupidly imagining that he had the world in the palm of his hand, and the next minute the wave had crashed and the world he had thought netted was spinning out of control.

It was a ground-breaking notion for someone whose only driving goal throughout his life had been to remedy the lack of control he had had as a child by conquering the world. A tiny human being, barely three feet tall, had put paid to that.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Sarah said nervously, as soon as they were out of earshot.

‘I need a drink—and something stronger than a cup of coffee.’

The remnants of a bottle of wine were produced and poured into a glass. Sarah looked at him, trying to gauge his mood and trying to forget that moment of mad longing that had torn through her only a short while before on the staircase.

‘You were right,’ he said heavily, having drunk most of the glass in one go. ‘I see the resemblance.’

‘I knew you would. It’ll be even more noticeable when you see him in the light. He’s got your dark eyes as well. In fact, there’s not much of me at all in him! That was the first thing Mum said when he was born … Would you like to see some of the drawings he’s made? He goes to a playgroup two mornings a week … I get help with that …’

‘Help? What kind of help?’ Raoul dragged his attention away from the swirling wine in his glass and looked at her.

‘From the government, of course,’ Sarah said, surprised. How on earth could she afford childcare otherwise, when she worked as a cleaner? On the mornings when Oliver was at nursery, she helped out at the school at which she was due to start work, but that was unpaid.

Raoul controlled his temper with difficulty. ‘From the government?’ he repeated with deadly cool, and Sarah nodded uneasily. ‘Do you know what my aim in life was? My only aim in life? To escape the clutches of government aid and own my future. Now you sit here and tell me that you’re reliant on government aid to get you through life.’

‘You make it sound like a crime, Raoul.’

‘For me, it’s obscene!’

The force of his personality hit her like a freight train travelling at full speed, but she squared her shoulders and glared at him defiantly. If she allowed him to take control just this once then she would be dancing to his tune as and when he wanted her to. Hadn’t she done enough of that years ago? And look where it had got her!

‘And I can understand that,’ Sarah told him evenly. ‘I really can. But your past has nothing to do with my present circumstances. I couldn’t afford to put Oliver into a private nursery,’ she informed him bluntly. ‘You’d be shocked at how little I earn. Mum and Dad supplement me, but every day’s a struggle. It’s all very well for you to sit there and preach to me about pride and ambition, but pride and ambition aren’t very high up in the pecking order when you barely have enough money to put food on the table. So if I can get help with the nursery, then I’ll take it.’ She wished that she had had some wine as well, because she was in dire need of fortification. ‘You were never such a crashing snob before, Raoul,’ she continued bitterly. ‘I can see that you’ve changed in more ways than one.’

‘Snob? I think you’ll find that that’s the last thing I am!’ He was outraged that she could hurl that accusation at him in view of his past.

‘You’ve moved away from your struggling days of when we first met! I’ll bet you can’t even remember what it was like, darning those shorts of yours when they got ripped because you couldn’t afford to chuck them out!’

‘You darned them.’ He looked at her darkly. He could remember her doing it as if it had been yesterday, swatting mosquitoes and moths away while outside a dull rumble of thunder had heralded heavy rain. She had looked like a girl in a painting, with her hair tumbling around her face as she frowned in concentration.

Sarah bit back the temptation to tell him what an idiot she had been, doing stuff like that, worshipping the ground he walked on, eager to do whatever he wanted.

‘And I haven’t forgotten my past,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s always there at the back of my mind, like a stuck record.’

Her heart softened, but she held her ground with grim determination.

‘I may not have planned for this, but I want you to know that things are going to change now. This place is barely fit for habitation!’ He caught the warning look in her eyes and offered her a crooked smile. ‘Okay. Bit of an exaggeration. But you get where I’m going. Whether you think I’ve become a monstrous snob or not, I can afford to take you away from here—and that’s got to be my number one priority.’

‘Your number one priority is getting to know Oliver.’

‘I would prefer to get to know him in surroundings that won’t challenge me every time I walk through the front door.’

Sarah sighed. It would certainly make life easier not having to worry so much about money. ‘Okay. I take back some of the things I said. You haven’t completely changed. You still think that you can get your own way all the time.’

‘I know. It more than compensates for your indecision. Now, you could put up a brief struggle to hold on to your independence, maybe give me a little lecture on things being just perfect here, with your quaint, outdated kitchen furniture and the walls in need of plasterwork, but we both know that you can see my point of view. I can afford to take you out of this, and I consider it my duty to do so.’

The word duty lodged in her head like a burr, and she looked down at her anxiously clasped fingers. There was nothing like honesty to really hurt.

‘What do you suggest?’ she asked. ‘Do I have any input here? Or are you going to just walk all over me because you have lots of money and I have none?’

‘I’m going to walk all over you because I have lots of money and you have none.’

‘Not funny,’ Sarah muttered, remembering his talent for defusing a situation with his sense of humour. Given the conditions years ago, when they had been cooped up on the compound, tempers had occasionally run high and this talent of his had been invaluable. Was he using it now just to get his own way? And did that matter anyway? The prospect of no longer having a daily struggle on her hands was like being offered manna from heaven.

‘I intend to take my responsibilities very seriously, Sarah. I think you should know that. It would be very time-consuming to travel out here every time I wanted to see Oliver. Somewhere closer to where I live would be a solution.’

Now that they were discussing things in a more businesslike manner Sarah could actually focus on what was being said—as opposed to fighting to maintain her equilibrium, which showed threatening signs of wanting to fall apart.

‘I feel as though I’m suddenly on a rollercoaster ride,’ she confessed.

‘Spare a thought for me. Whatever rollercoaster ride you’re on, mine is bigger, faster, and I’m a hell of a lot less prepared for it than you are.’

And yet he was rising to the occasion. It didn’t matter that the only reason they were now even having this conversation was because she had become a responsibility he couldn’t shirk. He had taken it all in his stride in his usual authoritative way. That there was no emotion involved was something she would have to deal with. It wasn’t his problem, and she wasn’t going to let that get in the way of the relationship he had to build with his son.

‘So we move to another place … There are still all sorts of other things that need sorting out. I’ll have to try and explain to Oliver that he has a … a father. He’s only young, though. I should warn you that it might not be that easy.’

‘He’s four,’ Raoul pointed out with impeccable logic. ‘He hasn’t had time to build up any kind of picture for or against me.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Let’s not anticipate problems, Sarah.’

Now that he had surmounted the sudden bout of intense nervousness that had gripped him in the bedroom, Raoul was confident he would be able to get Oliver onside. Having had a life of grinding poverty, replete with secondhand clothes and secondhand books and secondhand toys, and frankly secondhand affection, he was beginning to look forward to giving his son everything that he himself had lacked in his childhood.

‘We take things one at a time. First the house. Secondly, I suggest you try and explain my role to Oliver. Has he … has he ever asked about his father?’

‘In passing,’ Sarah admitted. ‘When he’s been to a birthday party and seen the other kids with their dads. Once when I was reading him a story.’

Raoul’s lips thinned but he didn’t say anything. ‘You will obviously have to tell your parents that you are moving, and why. Will you tell them I’m on the scene? What my position is?’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t go there just yet,’ Sarah said vaguely.

‘I won’t hide in the shadows.’

‘I’m not sure they’re going to be overjoyed that you’re on the scene, actually.’ She flushed guiltily as she remembered their distress when she had told them how she had fallen hard for a guy who had then chucked her. The hormones rushing through her body had made her all the more vulnerable and emotional, and she had spared nothing in her mournful, self-pitying account.

Honestly, she didn’t think that Raoul was going to be flavour of the month if she produced him out of nowhere. But she knew that she would have to sooner or later. Her mum always phoned at least three times a week, and always had a chat with Oliver. Sarah wouldn’t want her to find out via her grandchild that the heartbreaker and callous reprobate was now around.