the sleazy tramp of his imaginings melting away in the fiery fury of hearing her professional integrity called into question.
Infuriatingly, he shrugged, wide shoulders moving just slightly beneath that smooth, expensive suiting. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Who’s to tell? However——’ he dropped his napkin on the table, making it clear the unpleasant interview was at an end ‘—I am not prepared to take the chance.’
Her brain was reeling. She felt as if she’d just gone ten rounds with a prize fighter. Punch drunk. But she had to pull herself together before he paid the bill and left her staring into a plate of salad and an impoverished future.
Trying to pretend that her face wasn’t scarlet with temper, she pushed out her pointy chin and, unaware of the threatening, deep green glitter of her narrowed eyes, told him, ‘Before you shoot your mouth off one more time, you can at least give me the chance to explain.’ And, ignoring the shutters of boredom that came down over his fascinating eyes, she spelled out the events which had led to her being tipped out of that car, ending with, ‘And Rickie and Robin are my nephews. Petra, my sister, is away on a walking holiday in Greece with friends. Dad and I had to practically twist her arm to make her go. She’s been working flat-out to get her Open University degree and she needed the break before taking up her job with a literary agency based in Bromley. And, before you start accusing me of lying, no, we don’t know who the father is.’ Realising that her normally cool, restrained voice had risen to fishwife levels, she took a deep breath and allowed her eyes to leave his, staring instead at the bread roll she’d put on her side plate and hadn’t touched.
She began to rip it to shreds.
‘Four years ago, when Petra was eighteen,’ she explained more calmly, ‘she worked as a receptionist in a small hotel near Orpington. Just temporarily, until she took her place at university. Dad’s always insisted that we both cram in as much education as possible—he was a teacher.’
For the first time, a tiny smile played round the edges of her mouth, and then she, in turn, shrugged. ‘She was looking forward to it, to getting her degree and making a career—with books—in publishing or with an agency. Then she met someone. He swept her off her feet, as the saying goes.’ She gave him another shrug, a look that said she didn’t believe in that sort of thing herself, and ploughed straight on. ‘I was studying hard for my finals at that time, at university myself, so I didn’t know what was going on. But Dad knew something was up. Petra stopped going home, and when she did put in an appearance she acted strangely. Then the truth came out. She was pregnant. The creep had talked about marriage, talked about undying love—and she had believed him.’ Unconsciously, her voice hardened. ‘When he learned she was pregnant, instead of naming the day he told her he was already married with three children. She never saw him again.’
‘And she didn’t say who he was?’ Cade asked, his dry tone telling her he had difficulty believing any of this.
And Zoe came back firmly, ‘No. After she broke the news she refused to talk about him. She probably could have traced him and demanded some kind of financial support but she obviously wanted to forget him, put it all behind her. And Dad and I supported her in that.’
‘I would imagine the advent of twins made forgetting him a touch difficult.’ An unforgivable trace of humour quirked his long mouth, drawing her startled attention to all that latent sensuality.
She would have liked to hit him but controlled herself and said primly, ‘None of us has ever looked on the boys as belonging to anyone but our family. We all love them devotedly. Dad helps Petra look after them during the week while I go down to the cottage at weekends to do my bit and give Dad a breathing space. Nobody resents them; we love them to pieces.’
‘You haven’t once mentioned your mother in all of this.’ The new, lighter tone of query in his voice, the careful way he was watching her, gave her hope that he was beginning to believe her at last.
So the relief of that gentled her tone as she told him softly, ‘Mum died fourteen years ago. Dad brought us up.’
He had devoted his life to his daughters because with the death of his wife there had been nothing else to live for. And although she could understand such depth of devotion she couldn’t condone it. If he had been able to find a new love and marry again—without feeling he was betraying everything he and Mum had been to each other—then he needn’t have sacrificed his career in the way he had, and she needn’t have had to witness those rare unguarded moments when his deep loneliness had shown in his eyes.
‘So your father is left with the unenviable task of bringing up a second family—virtually single-handed if I read you right—as a result of his daughter’s thoughtless lack of control.’
Pompous, pious, ignorant bastard!
Zoe ground her teeth, biting back the verbal brickbats she was itching to throw at him, remembering his threats, his ability—if he so chose—to put her prospects within her company at very grave risk.
It wasn’t like that. Petra had been deceived in the vilest way possible. Her heart had been broken because she’d loved the man and had believed he loved her, too. Her life could have been ruined but she’d been too strongwilled to let that happen and she, Zoe, and Dad, had been right behind her decision to carry on with her pregnancy.
They’d put their heads together and worked everything out. Petra would get her degree through the Open University and Dad would take early retirement when the babies needed more time-consuming attention, leaving their mother free to push on with her studies.
And Zoe was able to give practical help, too. Visiting every weekend to give a hand, giving all the financial support she could afford because although the state helped it was a pittance and didn’t go anywhere. And how dared he imply that all responsibility had been offloaded on to Dad? And the tiny boys didn’t represent an ‘unenviable task’—they were a joy!
Stormy green eyes clashed with his. She could see the cold condemnation in his eyes and knew she had to allow herself the luxury of putting him in his place. After all, his reasons for wanting her taken off the Wright and Grantham account were no longer valid, he could hardly demand her removal for being less than boot-licking, could he?
‘Have you always been so moralistic and judgemental, Mr Cade?’ she enquired in the coollest, most dismissive tone she could find. ‘Was it something that happened, or were you born like it?’ She reached for her handbag, determined that she would be the one to end what had turned out to be a very distasteful, unsettling interview. ‘Did you never do something you later regretted when you were an inexperienced eighteen?’
But James Cade would have been born with all the experience in the world buried deep in his frigid soul, she scorned as she gathered herself to go. She couldn’t imagine him ever being vulnerable, open to hurt and betrayal. Yet the look in his eyes told her she had inadvertently touched a raw nerve, revived something, a memory perhaps, that he could hardly bear to look at.
Interesting.
Too interesting to share, obviously. His face went blank again, his voice almost soft as he commanded, ‘Sit down. I haven’t finished with you yet.’
So she did, with a flurry of internal exasperation. She was going to have to watch her tongue. The more time she spent with him, the more she found herself spoiling for a fight. He was, she decided, infinitely dangerous to her equanimity—never mind her sanity!
‘I’m sorry.’ She arranged her features primly, a slightly off-balance semblance of her normal serene and unflustered expression. ‘I thought everything
