with Oliver, and Raoul had generously offered to babysit, seeing it as a handy excuse to get out of what, frankly, had looked like a terrifying experience. He might have felt sorely deprived as a boy at missing out on all those big rides, but as an adult he could think of nothing worse.
Her hair was tousled and her cheeks were pink, and he noticed the top two buttons of her checked shirt had come undone—although she hadn’t yet noticed that.
‘Good idea,’ he murmured blandly, with a shuttered expression that left her feverishly trying to analyse what he was thinking.
Raoul noted the hectic colour that had seeped into her cheeks, and the way her arms tightened nervously around a very drowsy Oliver. Arrangements certainly needed to be made, he thought. Though possibly not quite along the lines she anticipated.
She wanted to deal with the formalities, and there was no doubt that certain things had to be discussed, but he was running with a different agenda.
At long last he had lost that unsettling, disconcerting feeling that had climbed into the pit of his stomach and refused to budge. He liked having an explanation for everything and he had his explanation now. Sarah was still in his head because she was unfinished business. There were loose ends to their relationship, and he looked forward to tying all those loose ends up and moving on.
He smiled at her slowly, in a way that sent a tingle of maddening sensation running from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head.
‘I’ll pour you a drink too,’ he said, his dark eyes arrowing onto her wary face, taking in the fine bone structure, the wide eyes, the full, eminently kissable mouth. ‘And then we can … as you say … begin to talk about moving forward …’
SARAH took longer than she had planned. Oliver, for a start, had discovered a new lease of life and demanded his set of toy cars. And Raoul. In that order.
Determined to have a bit of space from wretched Raoul, in which she could clear her head and plan what she was going to say, Sarah had immediately squashed that request and then been forced to compensate for Raoul’s absence by feigning absorption in a game of cars which had involved pushing them around the bed in circles, pretending to stop off at key points to refuel.
Forty minutes later she had finally managed to settle him, after which she’d taken herself off for a bath.
She didn’t hurry. She felt that she needed all the time she could get to arrange her thoughts.
First things first. She would chat, in a civilised and adult fashion, about the impending necessity to talk to Oliver. She foresaw no problem there.
Secondly she would announce her decision to finally break the news to her parents that Raoul was back on the scene. She would reassure him that there would be no need to meet them.
Thirdly, they were no longer in a relationship—although they were friends for Oliver’s sake. Just two people with a common link, who had managed to sort out visiting rights without the interference of lawyers because they were both so mature.
She would be at pains to emphasise how useful it had been doing stuff together, for the sake of his relationship with his son.
Downstairs, Raoul had removed himself to the sitting room, and Sarah saw, on entering, that he had poured himself a glass of wine. Ever since he had been on the scene her fridge had been stocked with fine-quality wines, and her cheap wine glasses had been replaced with proper ones—expensive, very modern glasses that she would never have dreamt of buying herself for fear of breakages.
He patted the space next to him, which wasn’t ideal as far as Sarah was concerned but, given that her only other option was to scuttle to the furthest chair, which would completely ruin the mature approach she was intent on taking, she sat next to him and reached for her drink.
‘I think we can say that was a day well spent,’ Raoul began, angling his body so that he was directly facing her and crossing his legs, his hand on his thigh loosely holding his glass. ‘Despite your rant about the state of my apartment.’
‘Sorry about that.’ She concentrated hard on sipping her wine.
He shrugged and continued to look at her, his brilliant dark eyes giving very little away. ‘Why should you be?’
‘I suppose it was a bit rude,’ Sarah conceded reluctantly. ‘I don’t suppose there are very many people who are critical of you …’
‘I had no idea you were being critical of me. I assumed you were being critical of the décor in my apartment.’
‘That’s what I meant to say.’
‘Because you have to agree that I’ve taken every piece of advice you’ve given and done everything within my power to build connections with Oliver.’
‘You’ve been brilliant,’ Sarah admitted. ‘Have you … have you enjoyed it? I mean, this whole thing must have turned your world on its head …’
She hadn’t actually meant to say that, but it was something they hadn’t previously discussed—not in any depth at all. He had accepted the situation and worked with it, but she couldn’t help but remember how adamant he had been all those years ago that the last thing he wanted was marriage and children.
‘You had your whole life mapped out,’ she continued, staring off into the distance. ‘You were only a few years older than the rest of us, but you always seemed to know just what you wanted to do and where you wanted to be.’
‘Am I sensing some criticism behind that statement?’ Raoul harked back to her annoying little summary of the sort of thing she looked for in a man. ‘Fun-loving’ somehow didn’t quite go hand-in-hand with the picture she was painting of him.
‘Not really …’
He decided not to pursue this line of conversation, which would get neither of them anywhere fast. ‘Good.’ He closed the topic with a slashing smile. ‘And, to get back to your original question, having Oliver has been an eye-opener. I’ve never had to tailor my life to accommodate anyone …’
And had he enjoyed it? He hadn’t asked himself that question, but thinking about it now—yes, he had. He had enjoyed the curious unpredictability, the small rewards as he began making headway, the first accepting smile that had made his efforts all seem worthwhile …
‘If it had been any other kid,’ he conceded roughly, ‘it would have been a mindless chore, but with Oliver …’ He shrugged and let his silence fill in the missing words. ‘And, yes, my life had been disrupted. Disrupted in a major way. But there are times when things don’t go quite according to plan.’
‘Really? I thought that only happened to other people.’ Sarah smiled tightly as she remembered all the plans he had made five years ago—none of which had included her. ‘What other times have there been in your life when things didn’t go according to your plan? In your adult life, I mean? Things don’t go according to plan when you let other people into your life, and you’ve never let anyone into your life.’
Okay, so now she was veering madly away from her timetable, but the simmering, helpless resentment she felt
