many years too late.
Twenty minutes later she left the group at the boardwalk and her job was done.
Except one of the participants didn’t stay behind and she could feel the heat from Raimondo’s body as he walked beside her to the exit of the cave. His arm swung beside her arm and she tucked her fingers in close to her body so she didn’t accidentally knock his hand.
Out in the bright sunshine Faith stopped on the path and the man beside her stopped too. She lifted her head and met his gaze steadily. ‘So why are you here?’ She’d done nothing wrong.
His eyes were that deep espresso brown of unfiltered coffee, dark and difficult to see to the bottom of the cup or, more to the point, to the bottom of his heart.
‘I have come because I heard you had a child.’ His cadence was old-fashioned, she remembered that, formally stiff, but it was a way of speaking she’d found incredibly sexy when she’d been young and silly, in its translated whimsy of sentence structure.
Then his words settled over her like the damp leaves had settled over the forest floor. Thick and stealing the light. He had heard?
She blinked. Pushed back his heaviness. ‘I wrote you that. At the beginning and at the end of my pregnancy. Five years ago.’
‘No. I did not see this.’ He shook his head emphatically, but his face stilled and suddenly expression fled to leave an inscrutable mask of blank shock. ‘Madonna.’ A quiet explosive hiss.
‘Chloe, not Madonna,’ she offered with just a little tartness in her voice. She frowned at him. Trying to understand. ‘I wrote twice.’
Again he said, ‘No.’
He shook his head but he must have seen the truth in her eyes because his face softened slightly as he looked at her. The silence stretched between them until he said softly, ‘Then it is as I suspected? You had a child that is mine?’
Unfortunate words if he wanted her to continue this conversation. ‘No.’ She watched him blink. Good.
He’d relinquished that role by his disinterest. ‘You fathered a child who is mine.’ She amazed herself with the steadiness and calmness of the answer while her heart bounced in agitation in her chest. ‘Her name is Chloe and she is almost five. Chloe Fetherstone.’ She needed time to think and her feet moved her forward. He reached out and caught her hand, not tight but with an implacable hold she couldn’t shake off without an undignified tug.
She stopped and glanced pointedly at his big fingers on her wrist. ‘Let go. I need a minute.’ She wasn’t the timid junior midwife who’d fallen for him years ago. She was a single mother, a senior midwife, a responsible niece to a woman she admired and who had been the rock this man should have been.
She held his gaze with her eyebrows raised.
His fingers released her.
Faith began to walk again and he fell into step beside her.
He hadn’t known?
Had she addressed the envelope correctly?
She’d addressed it so many times until at last she hadn’t torn up the letter. He’d told her his home town and she had based her identity search assuming he hadn’t lied about that or his true name.
‘Where did you send these letters?’ His mind must be running along the same lines as hers.
‘I looked you up. In the town you’d mentioned. Sent it to your house.’ She recited the address. Funny how she could still remember it. She glanced at him. ‘Two letters eight months apart. Don’t get the wrong idea. I knew where I stood. I wasn’t asking for anything. Just giving you information I felt you should have.’
His face had gone back to inscrutable. ‘Did you not think it strange when no answer returned?’
‘Of course. Though “strange” was not the word I would have chosen. Thoughtless. Uncaring. Bitterly disappointing.’ She shrugged.
It was a long time ago now and she was over it. Over him. ‘You said you would never return. I expected little. I did my part and it was not my fault if you defaulted on yours.’
‘I did not…’ His voice had grown harsher, risen just a little. ‘Default.’ Then the last word more quietly. He looked at her. ‘My apologies. This is…difficult.’
She laughed with little amusement. So was meeting a transient lover from years ago when she’d been young and silly enough to fall pregnant. ‘Take your time.’
Faith looked ahead to the tourist shop they’d almost reached. ‘Give me your helmet and headlamp. I’ll get my things and we can go for a coffee somewhere.’
She surprised herself with the stability in her voice when inside she was panicking and fretting. She wished her heart would settle into a cold calm. What did this mean for the world she had created for Chloe and herself? She hated not being in control—even if it didn’t show.
No. He would not cast her into turmoil again. She had this. She had to have it. She was comfortable in her shoes as the one who had done the right thing and as a single mother who loved her child more than life itself. He was the one who had had the shock and would have to change the way he thought.
By the time she returned from the shop the tracks he’d made with his pacing showed dirt underneath the mounds of blue metal road gravel. Worn away with his exasperation. She almost smiled at that but if he hadn’t known about Chloe at all then she could feel sympathy for his shock. She could still remember that cold horror from the unforgettable day her pregnancy test had shown a positive reading.
Yes, she had sympathy, but no, she wasn’t relaxing. She didn’t have the luxury of softness or at least she didn’t have the headspace for it just yet. Would Isabel think her mad or prudent to let him into their lives? Then again, her aunt was a sensible woman with few prejudices.
‘Which is your car?’ Hers was way across the car park under a tree and they’d have to drive to Lighthouse Bay for coffee. She didn’t want him following her straight to Chloe. They’d go somewhere first. Talk. She wasn’t taking him home. Yet.
He indicated the black Mustang Shelby not far from her vehicle, well splattered with dirt and mud from the road into the caves, and even from a distance it seemed to glower at the assortment of vehicles in the cleared space. Like Raimondo had glowered when he’d first arrived. She wasn’t taking attitude from either of them, gave the car a disdainful look then caught herself.
Silly, she chided. It was just a rental car and she was getting fanciful, but the model was unusual for these parts. Still, to him she raised her brows. Why was she not surprised he’d hire the most expensive and flamboyant one possible?
Years ago, when she’d searched on the web for him, she’d seen the terrifying extent of his family’s influence and power, their pharmaceutical company, backed by a photo of Raimondo and his brother and an elderly, strong-jawed, massive-shouldered man who had to be his late grandfather—long Roman noses making it clear they were all related—and was almost glad she didn’t have to meet that old man, that family, and parade her naïveté.
Though
