dark gaze dwelling on her face grew sensual and turned her blood into a molten, racing torrent. ‘And do you know that you’re a very uptight little chick? You should learn to relax.’
His sexy mouth was uncomfortably near, and, involuntarily, her own dried. She glowered at him, anger rendering her unable to breathe or speak.
He flicked her cheek. ‘I’ll let you know if I find your letter.’ His bold gaze travelled down her throat to the neck of her shirt, then back. ‘You know, with those eyes your name should be Violet.’ He turned and strolled to the door, and while she stood there, the cool touch of his fingers still burning on her skin, it swung shut behind him. Then the enormity of what he’d said hit her like a train. The incredible words resounded in her ears.
He knew her name.
He’d known it all along. That had been no coincidence.
But how could he know it? How, unless he’d found her letter?
CHAPTER THREE
SOPHY strode along the gallery to the children’s clinic. Connor O’Brien’s door was closed, but she had to steel herself to walk past it and breathe the air he was infecting with his intolerable masculine game-playing. He was probably in there now, gloating over her DNA profile.
Although, what could it possibly mean to him? What could he do with it? Apart from post it on the Internet. Take it to the papers. Contact Elliott…
She shut her eyes and tried to breathe calmly. The man could be a blackmailer. He looked bad, with that mocking dark gaze and that sardonic mouth. Just remembering his refusal to take her seriously made her blood boil all over again. She wished she’d said something clever and cutting enough to douse that insolent amusement in his eyes.
She used her pass key to unlock the clinic, relieved that neither Cindy, their receptionist, nor Bruce, the paediatrician, had arrived yet, praying that against the odds someone wonderful had found the letter and popped it through the mail slot. But no such luck. In her office she plunged into a frenzied search, her desk, her drawers, all around the children’s table and chairs, the armchairs for parents, only confirming what she already knew—she’d lost it after she’d left yesterday.
Millie was her last resort. She’d spent a good hour in there yesterday, helping her friend pack up her files. Fingers crossed, she phoned her, but again her luck was out. Amidst all her files and books, Millie had been in too much of an uproar to find anything, let alone something so ordinary and unobtrusive as an envelope.
She slumped down in her chair. Perhaps she should alert Elliott, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet. He’d seemed so paranoid at the idea of the news getting out. Not that she could blame him altogether. Her existence had come as a complete shock to him. She pitied him for what he must have gone through when he found out. Anyone—anyone would have been upset.
She tried to crush down a nasty feeling at how he might react when he knew the letter was out of her hands. Then, with some relief, she remembered he said he’d be out of town for a week, and brightened a little. At least that gave her a bit of breathing space. He might not have even received his copy yet.
And, honestly, what was the worst that could happen to him if the news got out? Thousands of people had given up their children for adoption, for all sorts of reasons. It was hardly such a shocking scandal anymore. His wife should be capable of understanding something that had happened twenty-three years ago.
And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t an independent adult. She hoped she’d made it absolutely crystal clear that it wouldn’t cost him anything to invite her into his life—their lives. Only a bit of friendship. Not a relationship, exactly. She knew she couldn’t expect that.
But there was no denying her disappointment. Elliott’s utter dismay when she’d made that first contact had been almost tangible. He’d tried to disguise it with his smooth manners, but she’d been able to sense how he truly felt. In the subsequent meetings, in the coffee shop and the bar, he’d seemed more concerned to find out who she might have told rather than how she’d spent her life to date, while she…
Her heart had been so full, so brimming over with joy and hope, she’d wanted to know everything about him. And Matthew.
But she felt sure, when someone got to know him, he was a wonderful person. When he got used to the idea, he would come round to seeing the fantastic side of having a daughter.
Restlessly she got up and started tweaking some brown-edged leaves from her geraniums on the window ledge. She hadn’t felt such confusion for years, not since Henry and Bea had told her they were staying on in England for a bit. Possibly for ever. She lifted her gaze to the Botanical Gardens across the street, wishing she could go across right now, before she saw the first of the children on her morning’s list. Somehow the soothing essence of those cool, leafy pathways always managed to soak into her like balm.
Connor O’Brien was to blame for this turmoil. A wave of puzzlement swept through her. What was wrong with him? Why had he been so mocking, almost distrustful of her?
His behaviour had been so arrogant, so callous and indifferent, as if her anxiety had been a joke. And as for that crack about her never having been kissed…
Of course she had. Countless times. He’d only been teasing, using a typical male ploy to start a flirty conversation, unless he’d been suggesting… A chilling possibility crept in. If, by some quirk of fate, a woman still happened to be a virgin, surely that minor detail wasn’t obvious to people? Could there be something about her that flagged her status to the world?
And if so, what? Could it be her clothes? Her conversation? The way she walked?
She’d never thought it worth worrying about before. It was just—the way things had turned out for her.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t had opportunities. Plenty of men had been keen to relieve her of it. And she had no philosophical objections to sex. In fact, she fully believed that every woman should drink deeply from the cup of life, although the values Henry and Bea had instilled in her had quietly insisted that the drinker should be in love. And there was the little matter of trust. She’d tried a few tentative sips once or twice, but for some reason the trust factor had always intruded and she’d stalled at a certain point.
Leah and Zoe, her flatmates, called her a late bloomer. Sooner or later, they declared, some ruthless hunk would send her completely overboard and she’d plunge right in. And that was where she needed to beware, because someone as dreamy and impulsive as Sophy Woodruff was at risk of a broken heart.
If she wanted to land a man, she needed to do her research, they’d said. Find a solid prospect with financial security and a career trajectory, and plan a campaign.
‘But what if we have nothing in common?’ she’d argued.
The answer was stern and unequivocal. ‘Plan a campaign. Build things in common.’
What Zoe and Leah didn’t understand—well, they did, but they scoffed about it—was that she had dreams. And dreams didn’t go with campaigns. In fact, she preferred to rely on her instincts about people, though she couldn’t always, she had to admit. She had been mistaken more than once, sometimes quite spectacularly. But she’d known definitely at once that those boys she’d turned down just didn’t have the chemistry, and never, ever would.
As
