couldn’t understand whether it was her familiarity that was making him feel so aware of her—inconveniently, frustratingly, sexually aware of her—or whether he had just managed to make himself forget the attraction she had always had for him.
‘Chelsea,’ he said grimly, sitting on one of the chairs at the table, which felt fragile enough to break under his weight.
‘And … and what’s it like?’ She could feel hot colour in her cheeks, because he just dominated the small space of the kitchen. His presence seemed to wrap itself around her, making her pulses race and her skin feel tight and uncomfortable.
Coffee made, she handed him a mug and sat on the other chair.
‘It’s an apartment.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t spend a great deal of time in it. It works for me. It’s low maintenance.’
‘What does that mean? Low maintenance?’
‘Nothing surplus to requirements. I don’t like clutter.’
‘And … and is there a woman in that apartment?’ She went bright red as she asked the question, but it was one that had only occurred to her after she had left him. Was there a woman in his life? He didn’t give the impression of being a married man, but then would he ever?
‘What’s the relevance of that question?’ He sipped some of the instant coffee and looked at her steadily over the rim of the mug.
‘It’s relevant to this situation,’ she persisted stubbornly. ‘Oliver’s your son, and he’s going to have to get used to the idea of having a father around. I’m the only parent figure he’s ever known.’
‘Which isn’t exactly my fault.’
‘I know it’s not! I’m just making a point.’ She glared at him. ‘It’s going to take time for him to get to know you, and I don’t want him to have to deal with a woman on the scene as well. At least I’d rather not. I suppose if you’re married …’
Having never had to answer to anyone but himself, Raoul refused to be railroaded into an explanation of his private life—although he could see the validity of her question.
‘No. There’s no little lady keeping the home fires burning. As for women … I’ll naturally strive to ensure that a difficult situation isn’t made even more difficult.’
‘So there is someone.’ She tried desperately to take it in her stride, because it really wasn’t very surprising. He was sinfully gorgeous, and now wealthy beyond belief. He would be a magnet for any footloose and single woman—and probably for a good few who weren’t footloose and single.
‘I don’t think we should get wrapped up in matters that don’t really have much to do with this … situation. We just need to discuss what the next step should be.’
‘Come upstairs and see him. I can’t have this conversation with you when you don’t even know the child you’re talking about. This isn’t a business deal that needs to be sorted out.’ She stood up abruptly and Raoul, put on the spot, followed suit.
‘He’s sleeping. I wouldn’t want you to wake him.’ Raoul was more nervous than he could ever remember being—more nervous than when he had chased, and closed, his first major deal. More nervous than when he had been a kid and he had stared up at the forbidding grey walls of the foster home that would eventually become his residence.
‘Okay. I won’t. But you still have to see him, or else he’s just going to be a problem that needs solving in your head.’
‘Since when did you get so bossy?’ Raoul muttered under his breath, and Sarah spun around to find him looming behind her.
Standing on the first stair, she could almost look him in the eye. ‘Since I ended up being responsible for another human being,’ she said. ‘I know it’s not your fault that you weren’t aware of the situation …’ Although it was, because if he had only just given her a contact number she would have been able to get in touch with him. ‘But it was terrifying for me when I discovered that I was pregnant. I kept thinking how nice it would be if you had been around to support me, and then I remembered how you had dumped me because you had plans and they didn’t include me, and that if you had been around my pregnancy would have been your worst nightmare.’
‘My plans didn’t include anyone, Sarah. I did you a favour.’
‘Oh, don’t be so arrogant! If you’d cared enough about me you would have kept in touch.’ She was breathing heavily as all the remembered pain and bitterness and anger surged through her, but staring into the depths of his fabulous dark eyes was doing something else to her—making her whole body tingle as though someone had taken a powerful electrical charge to it.
Raoul clocked her reaction without even consciously registering it. He just knew that the atmosphere had become taut with an undercurrent that had nothing to do with what they had been talking about. It was a type of non-verbal communication that sent his body into crazy overdrive.
‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you any of this.’ She jerked her hand in clumsy dismissal, but he caught her wrist. The heat of physical contact made her draw in her breath sharply, although he wasn’t hurting her—not at all. He was barely circling her wrist with his long fingers. Still … she was appalled to find that she wanted to sink against him.
That acknowledgment of weakness galvanised her into struggling to free herself and he released her abruptly, although when she could have turned around and stalked up the stairs she continued to stare at him wordlessly.
‘I know it must have been a bad time for you …’
‘Well, that’s the understatement of the decade if ever there was one! I felt completely lost and alone.’
‘You had your parents to help you.’
‘That’s not the same! Plus I’d left for my gap year thinking that I was at the start of living my own life. Do you know what it felt like to go back home? Yes, they helped me, and I couldn’t have managed at all without them, but it still felt like a retrograde step. I never, ever considered having an abortion, and I was thrilled to bits when Oliver was born, but I was having to cope with seeing all my dreams fly through the window. No university, no degree, no teaching qualification. You must have been laughing your head off when you saw me cleaning floors in that bank.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘No? Then what was going through your head when you looked down at me? With a damp cloth in one hand and a cleaning bottle in the other, dressed in my overalls?’
‘Okay. I was stunned. But then I started remembering how damned sexy you were, and thinking how damned sexy you still were—never mind the headscarf and the overalls …’
His words hovered in the air between them, a spark of conflagration just waiting to find tinder. To her horror, Sarah realised that she wanted him to repeat what he had just said so she could savour his words and roll them round and round in her head.
How could she have forgotten the way he had treated her? He might justify walking out on her as doing her a favour, but that was just another way of saying that he hadn’t cared for her the way she had cared for him, and he hadn’t
