Sarah stared at him incredulously. Slowly the nuts and bolts cranked into gear and she gave a shaky, sheepish laugh. ‘Okay. I know what you’re getting at. You think that I went somewhere exciting the last time you took Oliver out. You think that I got dressed up and decided to … I don’t know … paint the town red …’
Raoul flushed darkly and kept his eyes pinned to her face.
‘Do you really think that I’m the type of person who keeps her head down, bringing up a child, and then hits the clubs the very second she gets a couple of hours out of the house?’
‘It’s not that impossible to believe. Don’t forget you were the one who made a big song and dance about wanting to be free to find your knight in shining armour! If such a person exists!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ She walked towards him, angry, frustrated, and helplessly aware that the only contender for the vacancy of knight in shining armour was standing right in front of her—the very last man on whom the honour should ever be conferred because he wasn’t interested in the position. ‘Look, I didn’t go anywhere last Saturday. Well, nowhere exciting at any rate. I met my friend and we went out for a pizza. Are you satisfied?’
‘What friend was this?’
‘A girlfriend from Devon. She moved to London a few months ago, and we try to get together as often as we can. It’s not always possible with a young child, and so I took advantage of having a night off to have dinner with her.’ ‘Why didn’t you tell me at the time?’ ‘Because it was none of your business, Raoul!’ ‘Did it give you a kick to make me jealous?’ It was the first time he had ever expressed an emotion like that. Many times he had told her that he just wasn’t a jealous person. His admission now brought a rush of heady colour to her cheeks, and she could feel her heart accelerate, beating against her ribcage like a sledgehammer. Suddenly conscious of his proximity, she widened her eyes and heard her breaths come fast and shallow. She feverishly tried to work out what this meant. Did he feel more for her than he had been willing to verbalise? Or was she just caving in once again? Clutching at straws because she loved him?
‘You’re telling me that you were jealous?’ Having said more than he had intended to, Raoul refused to be drawn into a touchy feely conversation about a passing weakness. He looked at her with stubborn pride. ‘I’m telling you that I wasn’t impressed by the way you were dressed.’ He heard himself expressing an opinion that would have been more appropriate had it come from someone three times his age. ‘You’re a mother …’
‘And so short skirts are out? I’m not getting all wrapped up in this silly business of you thinking that you can tell me what to wear or where to go or what to think!’ Her temporary euphoric bubble was rapidly deflating. ‘And I’m not about to start clubbing. I have too much on my plate at the moment,’ she admitted with honesty, ‘to even begin thinking about meeting a guy.’
‘And I’m not prepared for that time to come,’ Raoul said with grim determination. ‘I don’t want to be constrained to two evenings a week, and I don’t want you telling me that this is about you. It’s not. It’s about Oliver, and you can’t tell me that it’s not better for a child to have both parents here.’
Sarah looked at him with dazed incomprehension. ‘So …?’
‘So you want nothing short of full time commitment? Well, you’ve got it. For Oliver’s sake, I’m willing to marry you …’
FOR a few seconds Sarah wondered whether she had heard right, and then for a few more seconds she basked in the bliss of his proposal. Now that he had uttered those words she realised that this was exactly what she had wanted five years ago. His bags had been packed and she had been hanging on, waiting for him to seal their relationship with just this indication of true commitment. Of course back then his response had been to dump her.
‘You’re asking me to marry you,’ she said flatly, and Raoul titled his head to one side.
‘It makes sense.’
‘Why now? Why does it make sense now?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Sarah.’
‘I’m guessing that the only reason you’ve asked me to marry you is because you don’t like the thought of being displaced if someone else comes along.’
‘Oliver’s my son. Naturally I don’t care for the thought of another man coming into your life and taking over my role.’
But would he have asked her to marry him if he hadn’t happened to see her in a short skirt and a small top, making the most of what few assets she possessed, and jumped to all the wrong conclusions? He hadn’t asked her to marry him when she had told him that she wanted the opportunity to meet someone with whom she could have a meaningful relationship, that there was more to life than sex …
Sarah reasoned that that was because, whatever she said, he had believed deep down that his hold over her was unbreakable. Historically, she had been his for the asking, and he knew that. Had he imagined that it was something she had never outgrown? Had he thought that underneath all her doubts and hesitation and brave denials she was really the same girl, eager and willing to do whatever he asked? Until it had been brought home to him, silly and mistaken though he was, that she might actually have meant what she said?
For Sarah, it all seemed to tie up. Raoul enjoyed being in control. When they had lived together on the compound all those years ago he had always been the one to take the lead, the one to whom everyone else instinctively turned when it came to decision making. Had the prospect of her slithering out of his reach and beyond his control prompted him into a marriage proposal?
‘I didn’t think that you ever wanted to get married,’ she pointed out, and he gave an elegant shrug, turning to stare out of the window to where Oliver’s appetite for the garden appeared to be boundless.
‘I never thought about having children either,’ he returned without hesitation, ‘but there are you. The best-laid plans and so on.’
‘Well, I’m sorry that Oliver’s come along and messed up your life,’ she said in a tight voice, and he spun round to look at her.
‘Don’t ever say that again!’ His voice was low and sharp and lethally cold, and Sarah was immediately ashamed of her outburst because it hadn’t been fair. ‘I may not have planned on having children but I now have a child, and there is no way that I would wish it otherwise.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But … look, it would be a disaster for us to get married.’
‘I’m really not seeing the problem here. There’s more than just the two of us involved in this …’
‘So what’s changed from when you first found out about Oliver?’
‘I don’t understand this. Are you playing hard to get because you think that I should have asked you to marry me as soon as I found out about Oliver?’
‘No, of course not! And I’m not playing hard to get. I know that this isn’t some kind of game. You don’t want to marry me, Raoul. You just want to be in a position of making sure that I don’t
