would have preferred him to remain seated, she acknowledged, just about managing not to give in to the instinctive desire to step back a little from him. That betraying piece of body language would mean her giving far more away to him than a couple of feet of floor space. So instead she stood her ground, angling her head so that she could look directly at him, her eyes flashing, her mouth indenting with the hostility she made no attempt to conceal.
She could see the way James looked briefly at Charlie, and her hostility increased. How dared he try to use their son as a pawn between them? How dared he be here in her home in the first place? Why had he come here? He could not have known she wouldn’t be here. Unless…
Win stiffened immediately and only just resisted the desire to turn round and look fully at Charlie. What she had interpreted as confusion could just as easily have been guilt.
Had Charlie lied to her about his arrangements for the afternoon? Had he known—arranged with James that he would come round? she wondered in disbelief.
Before James could say anything, Charlie had come to stand beside her.
‘I said he could come here,’ he told her. ‘After all, it’s my home too, and he is my father.’ His chin jutted out as he spoke, and helplessly Win recognised that, for all his bravado, he was very close to tears. She forced back her own shock, habit enabling her to control and dismiss her own emotions.
Later, she would have to point out to him that, his home or not, it was still wrong for him to have done what he had, but she couldn’t humiliate him by doing so in front of James, so she simply said quietly, ‘Yes, it is your home as well, Charlie.’
As she looked away from him, she realised that James was studying her with a frown. Probably wondering what on earth he had ever seen in her, she reflected acidly. She certainly wasn’t in the same class as the Taras of this world. She wondered what had happened to the other woman. James had never remarried, and if there was a woman in his life he hadn’t introduced her to Charlie while their son had been staying with him.
‘I’m sorry,’ James apologised briefly. ‘I had no idea you weren’t aware that I was coming.’
‘I knew you were returning to the area,’ she countered coolly, ‘but no, I did not expect to come home and find you sitting in my living-room.’
She stressed the ‘my’, and was pleased to see the faint darkening of colour touching his cheekbones. So he wasn’t totally impervious to his own guilt in taking advantage of an offer he must have known she would never have countenanced. Good.
‘Well, we won’t delay you,’ she continued smoothly. ‘I’m sure you’ve got things to do.’
She tensed as she saw the look that passed between father and son, and felt the tiny hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
‘Dad’s moving in here with us,’ Charlie informed her, then added rebelliously, ‘I told him it was all right.’
For a moment Win thought she might actually faint. This time Charlie had quite definitely gone too far.
Above the painful buzzing in her head and ears, she heard James saying, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew. In fact…’ He stopped speaking abruptly while Win stared at her son in angry disbelief.
Charlie knew quite well that the last thing she would want was to have James living under their roof, and for him to have implied anything different to his father had to have been a deliberate deception.
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