‘Let go of me!’
‘No.’ He moved her away from the door and whirled her round. He could see that she was very, very angry indeed. ‘You could have killed me, you know,’ he observed slowly.
‘I wasn’t aiming at you!’ she snapped. ‘But I wish to God I had!’
‘What, and leave your child without a father?’
‘You’re not fit to be a father!’
He saw how distressingly white her face was and his whole manner altered. No matter what his feelings on the subject, the fact remained that she was pregnant. With his baby. And this kind of scene could surely not be doing her any good.
‘Come and sit down and have some tea.’
‘I don’t want any tea! I want to go home!’
‘To London? I think not. You’re in no fit state to be flying back today. Not in your condition.’
It was that time-honoured phrase which did it. Which finally broke down the barriers she had tried to erect around her heart. In your condition. Someone should have been saying that to her with tender loving care. Preferably a husband who adored her, worshipped the ground she walked on, wanted to rub the small of her back and wait on her. Not a man who had had sex with her as some primitive kind of revenge and got so carried away with himself that he hadn’t stopped to think about the consequences.
Though neither had she.
And instead she was about to replicate exactly what she had spent her whole life vowing not to do. Becoming a single mother, with all the emotional and financial hardship which went with that role.
She thought back to her own childhood. Her mother doing two and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet, so that Catherine should never feel different from the other children. Of course, she had felt different—some of the other children had made sure of that—but she had always been fed and clothed and loved and warm enough.
She had prayed that her mother would meet someone, but when eventually she had he had regarded Catherine as an encumbrance. Someone who was in the way and would always be in the way of his new wife and himself. He hadn’t been outwardly horrible to her, but she had seen the hostility in his eyes sometimes, and it had frightened her.
Her mother must have seen it, too—for one day she had greeted Catherine at the school gates, a little pale and a little trembling, and told her that she was no longer going to marry Johnny. Catherine had laughed with delight and hugged her mother, and they had gone out and eaten tea and scones in a small café. His name had never been mentioned again.
How often had she hoped to repay her mother for her hard work and sacrifice by providing lavishly for her as she became older? Hadn’t she dreamed of being one of the most snapped-up journalists in the land? Of maybe one day even writing a novel—a novel which would be a bestseller, naturally. She would buy her mother’s cottage for her, make her old age secure.
Instead of which she must now go and destroy her mother’s hopes and dreams for her. And her own, too.
She wanted to go away and just howl in some dark and private corner, but she saw that Finn was effectively barring the door.
‘Are you going to let me leave?’
‘What do you think?’
She fixed him with an icy look. ‘I could scream the place down—that would get “Security” up here in a flash—if they thought you were raping me!’
He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. Now was not the time to make a cheap and clever remark. ‘Sit down, Catherine.’
‘No, I w-won’t.’
‘Sit down, will you, woman? Or do I have to pick you up and carry you?’
It was like a brand-new sapling trying to withstand the full force of a hurricane. Catherine gave a weary sigh. She could see that he meant business, and besides, sitting down was what she wanted to do more than anything else in the world. Though lying down would have been better. Much better.
She sat down in the chair and closed her eyes. ‘Go away,’ she mumbled. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Your logic is failing you,’ he said drily. ‘This is my office, remember.’ He flicked on the intercom again. ‘Sandra, will you have us sent in some tea? Good, strong tea. Oh, and something to eat?’
‘Cake, Finn? Your favourite chocolate?’ purred Sandra.
‘Something more substantial than cake,’ he replied, with a swift, assessing look at Catherine’s fined-down cheekbones. ‘A big, thick sandwich with a bit of protein in the middle.’
‘Did you not have your lunch, Finn?’ giggled Sandra.