‘You’ll have to run, then,’ said Xander. He glanced at Clare. ‘Ready?’ he said.
She nodded. They ran, all three of them, down into the water, and at the last moment they lifted him up and up, then swung him out and let him go in the deeper water. He gave a squeal of glee as he splashed down.
Clare laughed. She could not stop herself. She felt Xander’s eyes on her as well, and suddenly he gave a laugh too, plunging forward to scoop up Joey.
‘Throw me again, Daddy!’
Xander laughed, and tossed him once more into the water with a huge splash.
And now Clare wasn’t laughing. She felt, of all things, her throat constrict and tears start in her eyes.
He was good with Joey—so good! The evidence could not be denied. Full of fun, laughter and, most piercingly painful of all, affection. And she knew, with a deep hollowing of her stomach, full of love. Love for Joey. His son.
And Joey loved him, too. She could see that—could not deny it. And how should it not be? He was a father any child would adore.
Memory came to her out of the years so long ago. A beach holiday with her parents. She’d only been little, how old she could not remember, but she remembered her parents, running down into the sea with her, how happy she had been…
I should have told him—I should have told him I was pregnant. I should have taken the risk and lived with it. He had a right to know, and Joey had a right to a father.
The self-accusation burned in her. Xander might not be capable of love for her—perhaps not for any woman—but he was capable of love for Joey. And she must accept it. Whatever it cost her, however cruel the fate she had been left with. The fate of knowing that all she could have was this bitter mockery—to see Xander with Joey, so warm and loving, and know that she was forever excluded.
And another torment too. One that was twisting in her day after day, night after night. For if the days were bad—when she had to watch Xander and Joey forge their new bond together, a bond that shut her out—the evenings were even worse. Because every evening, when Joey was asleep, she had to endure the ritual torture of dining with Xander.
And that was the worst of all. For the most awful of reasons.
Anguish flashed in her eyes.
Why? Why was it so hard? It should be getting easier, not harder! Day after day of seeing Xander again—surely it should be getting easier to endure? She should be getting more immune to him, day by day—surely she should?
And yet she wasn’t. Her helpless, crippling awareness of him was increasing. It was a torment—a terror. Everything about him drew her eye—made her punishingly aware of him.
During the day she could fight it—she had Joey’s presence to strengthen her. But over dinner…Oh, then, dear God, it was an excruciating torment. For him to be so close to her, a few feet away across the table—and yet further from her than if he had been on the moon.
She had tried to fight it, but it was so hard, so impossible. While she had been able to resort to open hostility it had been a bulwark, a barrier against him. But now—
I don’t want to want him!
As she stared out over the beach, let her eyes run with helpless longing over his lean, muscled torso, feast on the sculpted features of his face, caught her breath as he threw back his sable head and laughed, she felt her stomach clench unbearably and knew the truth that terrified her.
She still wanted Xander Anaketos.
Whatever he had done to her—she still wanted him.
Xander lifted his wine glass and looked across the table at Clare. Turbid emotion, laced with memory, swirled within him, but he ignored it. The past was gone, over. It was the present he had to deal with. And the absolute priority right now was to achieve his goal. He would do so. He had no doubt. He had always achieved his goals in life. He would now, too—whatever it took. Too much was at stake. His son’s future.
His son…
As he had done time after time, whenever those words rang in his head, he felt his heart turn over. Catch and swell with pride and love. How was it possible that he should feel so strongly? Emotion had never figured much in his life. He had had no use for it, no need of it, and he had always kept it at bay, taking whatever steps necessary to do so. Irony flickered briefly, then he brushed it aside, as an irrelevance that he could do without. And yet when he had set eyes on Joey, recognised him as his son, his reaction had been overwhelming. In an instant his son had become the overriding imperative of his life.
Every day he spent with Joey only made him more determined that he would spend his life with him. And how he achieved that did not matter. Only his son’s happiness mattered. And Joey was happy—every grin, every excited cry of glee, told him that. There was no sign, none at all, that Joey sensed any hostility between his parents.
He watched as Clare crumbled a piece of bread in her fingers. He had demanded a cessation of hostilities and she had complied. He granted her that. From the outside they must look like a normal family on holiday.
His mouth twisted. How deceptive appearances could be.
And yet…
Xander’s fingers tightened momentarily around the stem of his wine glass. That moment today, when they had swung Joey into the water, for a few fleeting moments they had acted in unison, as if it were normal, natural to do so. As if the appearance was, even for a brief moment, the reality.
His eyes rested on his son’s mother.
Four years since she had been in his life.
She had changed, indeed. Or had she merely revealed the person she had always been, having concealed it from him when she was his mistress? He had called her harder now than when he had first known her, and with him that was true—and yet with Joey she was as soft as butter. Emotions warred within him. What she had done was unforgivable—to keep his son from him, to deny Joey his father. And yet all the evidence of his eyes, both in London and now here, day after day, was that she was devoted as a mother. Warm and loving. Affectionate and demonstrative.
A good mother.
He had to allow her that, begrudge it though he did. And for his son’s sake, he had to be grateful. Even though the disparity between how she was with Joey and everything else he knew about her was so discordant.
He frowned inwardly. With Joey he saw her being someone he had never seen before. A different woman from the one he’d known four years ago. As his mistress she had always been so cool, so detached, so undemonstrative. As his mistress he had found it highly erotic—knowing that, for all her outward composure, all he had to do was touch her and she would come alive at his touch. Within seconds she would be quivering with passion. It had been a powerful fascination for him, the contrast between her public self and the private one that he could arouse in her.
That alone had been enough to justify why he had kept her so much longer than any other mistress.
For a moment his eyes shadowed, as he remembered again the moment when he had finished with her. When she had got to her feet and walked calmly out of his life. Carrying his child away with her out of spite for being discarded.
No. He set his glass down with a click on the surface of the table. There was no point going there. No purpose in revisiting the past. It was the present he had to deal with—and the future. That was all that was important. Right now, only his son’s happiness was important—and he would take whatever measures necessary to safeguard that happiness.
Whatever measures necessary…
His eyes rested on the woman who had once been his mistress, and he focussed his mind on the task ahead. She had been responsive to him then—oh, so responsive!—and neither the passage of four years, nor the splenetic anger she had unleashed on him, nor her cursed vindictiveness towards him by keeping his son from him, had changed that. He’d had proof, every day they’d been here, with no room for her to shut him out, ignore him, escape him.
Exactly the proof he wanted.
He eased his shoulders and lounged back in his chair as the staff served dinner. Opposite him, Clare sat stiffly. But her eyes had followed his movement, he knew. Surreptitiously, but discernibly. He could see her eyes following him and then flicking away, the way she didn’t want to meet his eyes, the way she pulled herself away from him if he got too close. Her whole body language and behaviour with him betrayed her.
Well, that was good—very good. Just what he wanted.
Excitement flared briefly in him, but he suppressed it. In its place he forced himself to look at her with impassive objectivity.
Four years on her beauty had matured. Even without her making the slightest attempt to improve on nature by way of make-up, hairstyling or clothes, her beauty revealed itself. Beneath the cheap fabric of her T-shirt he could see the soft swell of her breasts, and her chainstore shorts could not disguise the slenderness of her waist and hips, the long smooth curve of her thighs.
He felt the shimmer of sexual arousal ease through him.
A sliver of emotion broke through the barrier he’d imposed.
Can I really go through with this?
For a moment doubt possessed him. Then he freed himself.
He would do what he intended.
For his son’s sake.
Tonight was the worst yet. Clare sat, tension racking through every limb, and picked at the exquisitely presented food in front of her. It felt so wrong not to appreciate it more, but she had no appetite. Maybe too much sun?
But she knew that wasn’t the reason she had no appetite—wasn’t the reason she kept taking repeated unwise sips from her wine, even after she’d fortified herself with the rum punch that she was diligently handed every evening as she emerged from seeing Joey to sleep.