His face was like granite, his voice tight with the effort of control as he lowered his voice. ‘Yes, she’s pregnant, but Hazel doesn’t know about it yet…that’s the way Carolyn wants it. So, for her sake, promise me you’ll keep quiet?’
‘You weren’t courting her, and you didn’t owe her fidelity, but you did go to bed with her—unless you’re going to claim it’s a virgin birth! You heartless, hypocritical, lying, lascivious beast!’
This time when she slammed the door thunderously in his face it stayed shut.
Chapter Seven
AT ELEVEN o’clock the next morning it was an unpleasant surprise to walk into the dining room and find the lying, lascivious beast laughing and chatting with Hazel and Sir Frank as Alice Beatson served him up a large plate of scrambled eggs and salmon cakes.
‘Good morning, Regan,’ carolled Hazel from her position at the head of the long refectory table. ‘Look who’s dropped in for brunch!’
While Sir Frank grunted and waved his marmaladecovered knife in greeting, Joshua had risen to his feet and rounded the table to pull out the chair squarely opposite his own.
Damning his manners, Regan sat down, giving him a stiff nod.
‘Thank you.’ Now she would have to suffer being directly in his sight-line all through the meal. In a straw-coloured casual linen jacket over an open-necked beige shirt and trousers he looked too damnably attractive for her unsettled state of mind.
‘Good morning, Regan,’ he chided her softly, stooping over her shoulder in the process of pushing in her chair, his open jacket brushing the short sleeve of her cherry-red shift dress.
She clenched her teeth on a smile. ‘Good morning,’ she parroted. She accepted Alice’s offer of freshly squeezed orange juice and a dish of sliced fresh fruit in yogurt and looked around the table.
She had been so preoccupied with her effort not to react to Joshua that she had barely registered anyone else in the room, and now she felt a shock of recognition as she stared into a pair of familiar light brown eyes, gazing at her from across the table over the top of a tall stack of buttermilk pancakes.
He smirked at her surprise. ‘Hi.’
‘Hello, Ryan,’ she blurted. ‘Were you at the party last night? I didn’t see you.’
‘Nah—I have exams starting on Monday, I had to swot.’
In the act of reseating himself beside the youth, Joshua snapped up his head. ‘You two know each other?’
‘Sort of,’ hedged Regan, praying that the sly humour that had entered the young man’s eyes didn’t mean he was going to rat on her for the pleasure of seeing an adult squirm. Today he had his hair slicked back into a neat ponytail and was wearing a brown T-shirt that made him look even more like a beanpole.
‘We ran into each other yesterday and had a bit of a chat, didn’t we, Ryan?’ Her eyes silently begged him to play it casual.
‘So, did you see any more of those birds?’ he said loudly.
Sir Frank frowned. ‘There’s no need to shout, lad, we’re not deaf.’
‘Sorry, but I thought Regan was hard of hearing.’ Ryan’s eyes were owlishly innocent behind his wire glasses.
The wretch! Regan gave him a speaking look which he returned with a pious grin as he stuffed another pancake in his mouth.
‘Why on earth should you think that?’ asked Hazel.
Ryan moved his thin shoulders up and down, pointing to his bulging cheeks to explain why he couldn’t answer.
‘He must have misunderstood something I said,’ Regan supplied hurriedly, ‘We were bird-watching, so we were whispering—’
‘Bird-watching?’ Joshua’s eyebrows shot up. He looked sceptically at the young man munching innocently at his side. ‘Since when have you taken up such a tame hobby, Ryan? I thought Cyberspace ruled your life. Although I suppose staring at native flora and fauna could be considered an advance on staring at a computer screen all day. At least it gets you out in the fresh air.’
‘Nothing’s tame to a young, enquiring mind,’ Regan objected at his disparaging sarcasm. If he was going to be a father he needed to buck his ideas up. ‘I think children should always be encouraged to find everything interesting and not be stuck with labels that inhibit them from wanting to learn…’
Ryan gulped down his pancake to protest. ‘I’m not a child.’
‘I was speaking generally. Whether you’re five, fifteen or fifty, you’re still someone’s child,’ she countered, dipping her spoon into her fruit.
‘Yes, but not a child. A child is someone between the ages of birth and puberty,’ he argued.
She recalled his water-dripping-on-stone technique of wearing her down from the previous day.
‘According to the dictionary, a child is also a human offspring—’ she persisted.
‘But not in the first meaning of the word,’ he interrupted stubbornly. ‘I bet if you looked it up you’d find my meaning listed before yours.’
‘Don’t take that bet,’ came Joshua’s dry advice.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ dismissed Regan. ‘OK,’ she told Ryan, finding it amazingly easy to sink to his level, ‘you win—you’re far too boringly pedantic to be a mere child. You have to be at least ninety before you get to drive other people crazy by arguing endlessly over such irritating trivia with such single-minded intensity.’ She smiled at him sweetly. ‘I guess that puts you somewhere in your second childhood.’
Ryan thought about that for a moment, his eyes narrowing behind the round rims of his glasses in a way that struck a faint chord of uncomfortable resonance in Regan’s brain.
‘You kept arguing, too…’
‘That’s because I was right, but I showed my maturity by letting you win in deference to your mental age. When I was a child, I was taught to respect my elders…’
She tilted up her nose at him and he grinned, attacking his pancakes again. ‘You didn’t let me win.’
‘If you say so, dear,’ she said, in the indulgent, forgiving tone that she knew men—both young and old—hated to hear.
Ryan opened his mouth.
‘Give it up, Son. Women are genetically programmed to have the last word. They can never bear to allow a man to feel that he’s won an argument.’
‘But, Dad…you told me never to give up on a fight when I believe I’m in the right!’
Son? Dad?
Regan’s spoon clattered to her plate, splattering fruitjuice and yoghurt over the pale yellow tablecloth.
