will be important for Nicky to have him in his life.’
Her eyes never left Christine’s and then she took a breath, as if having said enough, and got to her feet.
‘Now, where does young Mr K plan on going today? I’ll make sure Nicky has the right clothes.’
She headed into the playroom, leaving Christine feeling outmanoeuvred on all fronts. With deep misgiving she went downstairs, fetching a jacket for herself.
A whole day in Anatole’s company—with only Nicky to shelter behind.
Tension netted her, and she felt her heart-rate increasing. She knew what was causing it to do so. Knew it and feared it.
‘THIS,’ ANNOUNCED NICKY with a happy sigh, ‘is the best day ever!’ He sat back in his chair, a generous smear of chocolate ice cream around his mouth.
Christine laughed—she couldn’t help it. Just as she hadn’t been able to help herself laughing when she’d realised just where Anatole was taking them.
‘A holiday camp?’ she’d exclaimed disbelievingly as they’d arrived in Anatole’s car.
He’d somehow procured a child’s booster seat, and Nicky had stared wide-eyed with dawning excitement as they parked.
‘Day tickets,’ Anatole had replied. He’d looked at Nicky. ‘Do you think you’ll like it?’
The answer had been evident for over six hours now. From the incredible indoor swimming paradise—towels and swimwear for all three of them having been conveniently purchased from the pool shop—with its myriad slides and fountains and any number of other delights for children, to the outdoor fairground, finishing off the day with a show based on popular TV characters.
Now they were tucking into a high tea of fish and chips and, for Nicky, copious ice cream. Christine leant forward to mop his face. Her mood was strange. It had been impossible not to realise that she was enjoying herself today. Enjoying, overwhelmingly, Nicky’s excitement at everything. And Anatole’s evident pleasure in Nicky’s delight.
His focus had been on her little boy, and yet Christine had caught herself, time and time again, exchanging glances with Anatole over Nicky’s expressions of joy at the thrills of the day. Brief glances, smiles, shared amusement—as the day had gone on they had become more frequent, less brief.
The tension that had netted her before they’d set off had evaporated in a way she could not have believed possible, and yet so it was. It was as if, she suddenly realised with a start, the old ease in his company, which had once been the way she was with him until the debacle that had ended their relationship, was awakening as if after a long freezing.
It was disturbing to think of it that way. Dangerous!
As dangerous as it had been when, emerging with Nicky from the changing rooms at the poolside, her eyes had gone immediately to Anatole’s honed, leanly muscled form, stripped down to swim shorts. Memory had seared in her and she’d had to drag her eyes away. But not before Anatole had seen her eyes go to him—and she knew that his had gone to her.
Although she’d deliberately chosen, from the range available in the on-site shop, a very sporty swimsuit, not designed in the slightest to allure, consciousness of her body being displayed to him had burned in her as she’d felt his gaze wash over her.
Then, thankfully, Nicky, his armbands inflated, had begun jumping up and down with eagerness to be in the water and the moment had passed.
That consciousness, however, resurfaced now as, tea finished and back in the car for their return journey, she realised that Nicky had fallen asleep, overcome with exhaustion after the day’s delights. In the confined intimacy of the car, music playing softly, Anatole’s presence so close to her was disturbing her senses.
She felt his eyes glance at her as he drove. Then he spoke. ‘What I said last night—has today shown you how good it would be, making a family for Nicky?’
His tone was conversational, as if he’d asked her about the weather and not about the insanity of marrying him.
She was silent for a moment. Though it seemed to her that her heavy heartbeat must be audible to him, as it was to her. She tried to choose her words carefully. One of them had to be sane here—and it had to be her.
‘Anatole, think about it rationally. You’re running on impulse, I suppose. You’ve only just discovered about Nicky, and Vasilis is barely in his grave. For you—for either of us!—to make any kind of drastic alteration to our lives at such a time would be disastrous.’ She looked at him. ‘Everything I’ve read about bereavement urges not to take any major decisions for at least a year.’
Would that sufficiently deter him? She could only hope so. Pray so. Yet in the dimming light of the car she could see a mutinous look on his face. He was closing down—closing out what she’d said.
‘It’s the right thing to do,’ he said.
There was insistence in his voice, and he could hear it himself. How could she not see the obvious sense of what he was proposing? The rightness of it. Yes, he was being impulsive—but that didn’t mean he was being irrational. In fact the very opposite! It was so clearly, unarguably right for him to make a family for this fatherless boy by marrying his mother—the very woman who’d once wanted a child by him...the woman he’d desired from the first moment he’d set eyes on her.
And I desire her still! And she desires me too. There is no doubt of that—no doubt at all!
Yet still she was denying it. As her blunt answer proved.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘It isn’t.’
Her head dipped, and she stared at her hands, lying in her lap. What more could she say without ripping apart the fragile edifice of her life—plunging herself back into the desperate torment she had once known with Anatole? The torment that had raked her between temptation and desolation?
She felt him glance at her. Felt the pause before he answered, with a tightness in his voice that she could not be deaf to.
‘I’m not used to you disagreeing with me,’ she heard him say. There was another pause. ‘You’ve changed, Tia—Christine.’
Her head lifted, and she threw him a look. ‘Of course I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘What did you expect?’
She took a breath that was half a sigh, remembering, for all her defiant words, how she’d used to love watching him drive, seeing how his hands curved so strongly over the wheel. How she’d drink in his profile, the keen concentration of his gaze. How she’d always loved gazing at him, all the time, marvelling over and over again at how wonderful, how blissful it was that he wanted her at all, how he had taken her by the hand and led her into the fantasy land where she’d dwelt with him...
He caught her eye now, and there was a glint in it that was achingly familiar.
‘You used to gaze at me like that all the time, Tia. I could feel it, know it—sense it.’
His voice had softened, and
