baby’s. It must have fallen out of the little baby seat. Damn. He’d get Sally, his long-suffering PA, to send it—or, better still, Kate. She seemed to have a soft spot for the child and Sally would ask him endless questions.
He went into his office, the pink rabbit in his hand, and dropped it in his desk drawer just as Sally came in.
‘Everything OK?’
She tried hard to keep the curiosity out of her voice, but failed dismally. Dog, on the other hand, greeted him with cheerful and unquestioning enthusiasm, and seemed a much safer bet. He wasn’t going to ask awkward questions about his visitor!
‘Fine,’ he lied. ‘I’m going to take Dog in the park,’ he added hastily as she started to open her mouth again, and picked up the dog lead. ‘Hold my calls.’
‘Still?’ Sally said, but he pretended not to hear her. He went down to the now tidy foyer, Dog bouncing excitedly at his heels, and ignored Kate’s frantic gestures as she dealt with a phone call that was obviously for him.
The park beckoned—the park, and peace and quiet, time to think, because a troubling thought was beginning to take shape in the back of his mind.
It was early April—and Will had been dead a little over a year. If that baby was more than four months old, it could have been his.
And—because they were identical twins—the DNA would match.
‘No charge,’ the minicab driver said. ‘It’s on Mr Cameron.’
‘Oh.’ Claire blinked, puzzled. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure. That’s what Kate said when she called me. Anyway, I’m on a retainer. I’ll just bill them.’
‘But he gave me money.’
George laughed, not unkindly. ‘Of course, if I was a real rogue, I’d take that off you, love, but I’m not, so don’t argue, there’s a good girl. Just say “Thank you very much,” and be grateful. He can afford it.’
She opened her mouth, shut it again, then opened it and said, ‘Thank you very much.’
Eyes twinkling, he carried her miscellaneous possessions into the cottage, wiggled his fingers at the baby and left her to her confusion.
She could feel the cash burning a hole in the side of the blue bag. She’d give it back to Cameron, of course, and repay the cost of the minicab—once she’d earned it, and the money to get her car out of the pound.
Huh! That was the rub, she thought as she fed the grizzly, hungry baby and bathed her ready for bed. How on earth was she going to earn it? She couldn’t afford to pay the phone bill, and without a phone she couldn’t get work, at least not the sort of freelance stuff she did.
The irony of it was that Patrick Cameron was an architect, and there was probably room in his organisation for another draughtsperson, doing some of the donkey-work on the less important contracts. Maybe that was it. Maybe she should ask him for work, so she could support the baby and herself and be independent?
Independent? She snorted. She’d be more dependent on him than ever like that, and it wasn’t what she wanted. Nor did she want him taking any interest in the baby. Not that it seemed likely, because he certainly hadn’t shown any interest in her today!
No. All she wanted—needed—from him was enough money to pay for child care so she could concentrate on her job for a few hours a day and work herself out of this financial hole. Earn enough money, perhaps, to fund a bank loan to convert the barn and turn it into a studio so she could run the painting holidays she’d dreamed of.
She’d got it all worked out. She could live upstairs, with a farmhouse kitchen downstairs big enough to do all the catering, and she’d have a huge studio at one end, and the cottage could be the guest accommodation. Then she’d be able to earn money, indulge her creative streak and look after the baby, all at the same time.
Oh, yes. She’d thought it all through—all except how to pay for it, but Patrick Cameron had plenty of money, and giving his baby a future was little enough to ask of him under the circumstances.
And in less than a week she’d see him again, she was sure of it. He couldn’t afford all the mud-slinging the tabloids would get up to, not in his position, so he’d have to co-operate to a certain extent. He couldn’t continue to deny knowing Amy once he’d seen the photographs, and he’d have to start playing ball.
First off was the DNA check, of course, and then there would be no question about it.
It would be interesting to see how he dealt with that, she thought. In so many ways he’d been a real gentleman, but his stubborn refusal to acknowledge his relationship with Amy gave the lie to that. So which was the real Patrick Cameron? Her curiosity was piqued, and she realised with a shock that she was looking forward to seeing him again.
Not that she was interested in him in any personal way—of course not. He’d been Amy’s lover, and that made him strictly off limits. Besides, that dark hair, unruly even though it was short, and those curious green-grey eyes that should have been soft and yet were strangely piercing—they didn’t appeal to her in the least, except academically, because he was Jess’s father.
And that body—not that she’d seen much of it, of course, except in the photos which she’d been reluctant to study in any detail.
Liar!
Claire ignored her honest streak in favour of self-delusion. Much more comfortable, because acknowledging her interest in a man rich enough to buy her out hundreds of times over, a man whose work she respected and admired, a man who, if she allowed herself to be honest for once, was the most attractive man she’d seen in years—actually, make that two and a half decades—acknowledging her interest in him would only underline just how fruitless that interest would be.
She was nobody. Nothing. Just a frustrated interior designer and graphic artist making a tenuous living freelancing at her drawing board, working for anyone who needed her draughtsmanship and visualising skills, with no future, no hope of career advancement, no pension prospects.
She laughed silently. Pension prospects? She was twenty-six—but suddenly, since she’d become responsible for this little scrap, that seemed to matter.
And without Auntie Meg’s unexpectedly generous bequest, they’d be homeless as well.
‘Oh, Auntie Meg, I wish I knew what to do,’ she sighed, staring out of the window at the dark shape of the barn just fifty or so paces away. She could sell it, of course, but that would mean the end of her dream.
Oh, well. Maybe Patrick Cameron would prove himself to be a guardian angel in disguise. She could only wait and hope.
Patrick looked at the letter from the DNA lab that had performed the last paternity test for him a year ago—a test that had proved unnecessary, because the woman had broken down in the end and confessed she’d just wanted to get some money.
Nevertheless, the test had been done, and, in case it should happen again, the lab had agreed to keep his profile on record, the details of the individual bar-code that identified each and every one of his cells as his and his alone.
He sighed. Until last year, he couldn’t have said that, but now Will was gone.
