Silas frowned as he came further into the room.
‘You’ve been trying to move this?’ he demanded shortly. ‘My God, woman, are you crazy? Don’t you realise how easily you could have injured yourself?’ he asked her grittily without waiting for a response. ‘Why on earth didn’t you wait until I—?’
Normally equable and even-tempered, Hazel felt all the confusion, the anguish, the pain of the last few days boil up inside her, until ignited by irritation and misery it exploded.
‘Until what? Until you, Mr Macho Male, could move it for me?’ she demanded aggressively. ‘Well, let me tell you something, I don’t need your help. In fact, I don’t need anything from you at all. I’m perfectly capable of managing by myself.’
Abruptly she realised what she was saying and stopped. Her heart was beating far too fast; she was over-reacting out of all proportion to his comment. She felt torn between bursting into tears and screaming. She hardly recognised herself or her reactions and, although she was unaware of it, some of her confusion and despair showed in her shadowed, stormy eyes.
‘Yes, very capable,’ Silas agreed drily, so drily in fact that her temper subsided and she looked directly at him.
If she hadn’t known better, she might almost have believed that was a touch of wry self-mockery she could hear in his voice.
As though… As though what? As though he was actually acknowledging that her independence, her desire to be self-reliant, rubbed against a streak of male protectiveness within himself which he had not hitherto recognised.
Ridiculous. She must be imagining things, she told herself sternly.
‘Actually what I was going to suggest was that the two of us might have a better chance of shifting it without injury than one of us alone.’
She had the grace to flush a little, but she couldn’t bring herself to offer any kind of verbal apology. She still felt too raw, too vulnerable, too aware of how close she had come yesterday to making an utter fool of herself. She couldn’t bear to think what might have happened if she had actually accused him of being unfaithful to Katie. Would he have been amused, or annoyed? She suspected that it would have been the
latter. He was far too intelligent not to be aware of the opinion of him she had drawn in believing he was romantically involved with Katie, and she doubted that he would have been flattered by it.
‘I’m not sure if this room will be suitable—’ she began to say uncertainly, frowning as she mentally checked the number of power points and the size of the desk, worrying about how he would fit in any electronic equipment he might need to use.
The look he gave her was singularly cynical.
‘In my time, I’ve worked quite successfully in a space less than a quarter the size of this. In fact this is sheer luxury. One of the reasons I’ve sold my London flat and decided to move out into the country somewhere is the lack of space. My rooms at the university are adequate, but barely.
‘Fortunately, I’m not a collector of material possessions, or at least I haven’t been up until now. When I began my career, I worked, lived and slept in a room in my sister’s house which she and her husband generously provided rent free. When I first moved into my flat, although I had thought that I’d enjoy its privacy and solitude, I found that for months I was constantly listening for the sound of feet on the stairs, for the kids’ voices. I missed their company more than I’d ever realised I would.’
Katie frowned at him. Why was he confiding in her like this? What was he trying to tell her? That he was a man who hadn’t put down roots? Well, she knew that already, but she had assumed that that was from choice. Now…
Pushing her hair back off her face, she asked him curiously, ‘If you feel like that, then why—?’
‘Have I never married?’
Her eyes registered her shock. What she had been going to ask him had been why he had not moved closer to his family, but he had not allowed her to complete her question and had obviously totally misunderstood it. She would never have dreamed of asking him something so personal.
‘Initially because I was simply too busy, and too poor, and then latterly… Well, I suppose it’s true that the older you get, the fussier you become. Sexual desire, sexual chemistry, call it what you will, is no longer enough. You want more…much more. You want someone who will be a true partner in all the meanings of the word. Both my sisters are extremely happily married and very much in love with their husbands. I envy them those relationships, and I certainly wouldn’t settle for anything less. They’ve been lucky, and they’ve worked hard at their marriages. But what about you? A young woman on your own with a small child to bring up—there must have been times when you’ve been tempted to marry, if only to provide Katie with a father.’
He had been too open with her for her to be tempted to lie.
‘Yes, there have,’ she agreed honestly. ‘Although in my case… Well, Katie had her grandfather. He was a wonderful man, but very old-fashioned. After what happened with Katie’s father…’ She bit her lip, unable to go on, alarmed by how much she had already told him.
‘Yes?’ Silas prompted gently, watching her.
‘Er—well…’ She paused and thought frantically of something she could offer him to silence his questions, and then abruptly changed her mind. Why not simply tell him the truth? Once he realised how very far removed from his league she was in terms of experience, if he had been tempted to break the promise he had given her yesterday then he would surely change his mind.
‘Although he never said so, I think my father was concerned that…that history might repeat itself.’
When he frowned, obviously not understanding, she gritted her teeth and told him despairingly, ‘He accepted that what happened with Katie was…was an accident, but you see he was very old-fashioned, very…very shocked by what I had done, and I think he felt that…that it might happen again. That I might…’
‘That you might what?’
‘Have another child,’ Hazel told him huskily. ‘That I might make the same mistake I had made with Jimmy, and become pregnant without being married.’
There was a long pause and then Silas said incredulously, ‘But as I understand it you were barely sixteen when Katie was conceived, and her father hardly a year older. You were children, both of you, and it’s a credit to your maturity, to your spirit that you’ve coped so successfully with a situation like that.’