Jake’s eyes boring into her spine.
‘We’re going to make a snowman at the weekend—would you like to help?’ Beth said over her shoulder.
‘My pleasure.’
Anne tugged at the reluctant hand. ‘Come on, young lady, it’s way past your bedtime. Say goodnight.’
She spent as long as she dared tucking Beth up again, but finally she had no choice.
Her heart in her mouth, she made her way downstairs.
Jake was in the sitting-room on the sofa, Beth’s latest drawing in his hands, and as she watched he straightened up and glared at her accusingly, his eyes blazing with anger and recrimination.
His voice was deadly quiet in the stillness.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
ANNE’S legs were trembling, her whole body starting to shake with reaction. This wasn’t the way she had wanted him to find out!
‘I was going to tell you—tonight. That’s why I asked you here, but——’
‘Just tell me something—if we hadn’t been thrown together like this, would you ever have told me?’
She looked away, unable to bear the anger and condemnation in his eyes.
‘It isn’t that simple, Jake——’
‘Of course it is!’ he growled. ‘How much more bloody simple can it get? “You have a daughter”. Four words. Is that really so hard?’
‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Yes, it is that hard! And what would you have done about it anyway? We were friends, Jake, just simply friends. That night was a fluke, a one-off. How could I hold you responsible? You made your feelings pretty clear, anyway. Your last words to me were, “This needn’t make any difference to us, Annie. You’re going to marry Duncan and I’m going to finish sowing my wild oats and see the world——” ‘
‘But I said——’
‘I know what you said. I know exactly what you said. We were who we were, Jake. It would never have worked.’
‘You weren’t even prepared to give it a try! Damn it, Annie, if I’d known she was mine——’
‘What? What would you have done? For God’s sake, Hunter, you were a playboy, a womanising, hell-raising, over-sexed, overgrown adolescent! You weren’t ready for the responsibility of parenthood, and I wasn’t ready to risk my daughter’s happiness—or mine—on a feckless, footloose itinerant!’
He snorted in disgust. ‘Come on, Annie, that’s a gross exaggeration——’
‘No, it isn’t! You were appalling—you had the morals of an alley-cat, Jacob Hunter! Every night there was a different victim——’
‘Rubbish! You’ve forgotten——’
‘Bull! I’ve forgotten nothing, Jake. Not one single, solitary damn second of that last year have I forgotten, and I certainly haven’t forgotten the number of nights you never even made it home——!’
She broke off, appalled that she had revealed so much.
‘Did you lie awake and wait for me, Annie?’ he asked, and beneath the softly voiced sarcasm she thought she detected a certain wistfulness.
‘Of course not,’ she denied hotly. ‘Why should I have lost sleep over you?’
He stared at her in silence for a moment, then looked away, his breath leaving his body in a sharp sigh. ‘You think a lot of me, don’t you?’
She slumped into a chair. ‘I think a hell of a lot of you, Jake. I always have done, but that doesn’t mean I’ve ever let it cloud my judgement. You were a good friend, the best, but you would have made a rotten husband and father seven years ago.’
‘And now?’
‘Now what?’
‘What kind of a husband and father would I make now, Annie? Because you can be sure of one thing—I’m not letting her go. I don’t want carefully measured visitation rights, or joint custody or some other legal arrangement. I want to be her father, in every sense of the word. I want a say in her upbringing and education, and I’m not convinced I want you out at work leaving her with a stranger for the weekend while you’re on call!’
‘Huh! And how the hell am I supposed to provide for her if I don’t go out to work?’
‘I’ll provide for her—for both of you——’
‘Over my dead body! And anyway, Jenny’s a registered childminder, not a stranger——’
‘She is to me. How do I know if I can trust her with my daughter?’
Anne glared at him. ‘She’s not your daughter, she’s my daughter. I carried her, I gave birth to her, I’ve brought her up and cared for her and made all the decisions for her while you were off seeing the world and getting married——’
‘You could have married me.’
‘Oh, yes—we’ve been through all that. You weren’t ready, Jake. Look what happened when you did get married.’
‘There was no child involved.’
‘Would it have made any difference?’
He met her eyes briefly, then looked away. ‘Probably not.’
‘You see? Just one more example of your feckless attitude to life, but Beth’s one toy you’re not going to pick up and drop—damn it, Jake, I nearly died giving birth to her! She’s mine, and I’m not going to let you have her!’
Her emotions strung to fever pitch, she turned away to hide the sudden rush of tears that cascaded down her flushed cheeks.
Jake’s hand, gentle on her shoulder, was nearly her undoing.
‘I don’t want to take her from you, Annie. I want to share her, get to know her. I want to love her, Annie, and I want her to love me, too. Don’t shut me out. I’ve lost so much of her life already—let me share her with you. Please? Marry me now, Annie—make me part of your lives.’
Her breath caught in her throat. His touch was warm, undemanding, but she knew it could change like quicksilver to become sensual and erotic, giving and yet taking, demanding, searching … Dear God, what was she thinking? She was letting herself be swayed by the soft pleading in his voice, but she could never feel like that for Jake again, could never trust him——
‘Marry you? Jake, are you mad? I wouldn’t marry you if you Were the last man on earth!’
He recoiled as if she’d struck him,
