over the hand he had lifted to his mouth, his lips cool and yet moist.
‘Give me a chance, Raff!’ Court complained.
His friend chuckled huskily. ‘The choice will be Bryna’s,’ he said softly, meeting her gaze once again with compelling intensity before taking his leave.
‘It’s a no contest,’ groaned Court resignedly. ‘It always is.’
‘I can assure you Mr Gallagher holds no interest for me,’ Bryna dismissed primly.
When she got back to her office a box containing a single red rose lay on her desk. There was no card with it, but she guessed that it wasn’t from Court; he was the type of man who would sign his name with a flourish to the accompanying card if he found a woman attractive enough to send her flowers.
Half an hour later two more roses arrived, half an hour after that another three, then another three, and another three, until by four-thirty she had the round dozen.
Her secretary/receptionist, Gilly, was agog to know who had sent them. When the man himself arrived at five o’clock neither woman was in any doubt as to who the sender had been. When Raff courteously invited Bryna out to dinner she had breathlessly accepted, her earlier antagonism forgotten; she had never met anyone quite like this man before.
She still hadn’t met anyone like him, and even when he was long gone from her life, she knew she would never meet anyone like him again.
‘KATE tells me the two of you had lunch together today,’ Raff said enquiringly as he sat down opposite her.
Bryna met his gaze guardedly, her heart skipping its usual beat as she looked at him, still affected, even after six months of knowing him intimately, by that compelling power that surrounded him. Tonight, dressed in black evening suit and snowy white shirt, he appeared even more devastating than usual.
‘That’s right, we did,’ she confirmed coolly, wondering where the conversation was leading to.
Raff gave an inclination of his head, his mouth twisted into a rueful smile. ‘She seems slightly annoyed with you.’
She and Kate had parted a little stiffly outside the restaurant, the younger girl seeming to blame Bryna for the fact that her father hadn’t fallen in love with her!
Bryna shrugged. ‘She hoped I would talk to you about her moving in with Brenda next term,’ she told him truthfully.
His eyes became suddenly flinty. ‘And what did you tell her?’
She maintained her calm poise in the face of his obvious displeasure. ‘What do you think I told her?’ she drawled.
Raff relaxed slightly, his long length stretched out comfortably in the armchair. ‘I think you agree with me, that young lady is not the choice of flatmate I want for Kate.’
And what Raff wanted he invariably got, Bryna had found these last months. She was a prime example of that, in the past having been able to freeze off even the most ardent of men, and yet she and Raff had been lovers within days of their meeting. And far from feeling inadequate as she had always imagined she would, she had felt complete for the first time in her life! It had been the same every time they made love.
‘Perhaps not Brenda,’ she agreed. ‘But I think Kate is determined to get a place of her own, and she is over eighteen——’
‘I think I know what’s best for my children, Bryna,’ he bit out cuttingly, standing up abruptly. ‘We should be going now,’ he added curtly. ‘At the moment we’re politely late, any later and we may as well not bother!’
Despite the fact that the dig about their lateness was aimed at her she wanted to say ‘then let’s not bother!’ She wanted to be in his arms tonight, close to him in the only way he allowed any woman to be close to him. She had long ago ceased to be upset by the way he cut her out of showing any interest in his children’s activities; it was far from the first time he had done so. To her it only served to emphasise the transient role she played in his life.
And because of the child she herself carried inside her she didn’t suggest they miss the party, but slipped her arms into the coat he held out for her, the suede soft and supple against her body. ‘I’m sure Court won’t mind our tardiness,’ she shrugged lightly.
She wished he would smile, because it completely transformed his face when he did, alleviating some of the harshness, lending warmth to eyes the colour of slate, the harshness of his mouth softening as deep grooves were etched into the leanness of his cheeks.
Instead he nodded tersely. ‘After all these years Court has come to expect my rudeness,’ he said drily. ‘I wouldn’t want to disappoint him!’
The two men were still the unlikeliest couple to have found such an enduring friendship that Bryna had ever met, Raff being hard where Court was gentle, Raff blunt to the point of rudeness where Court was always kind. Bryna had even wondered, when loving Raff hurt too badly, why it couldn’t have been Court she fell in love with that day. But she hadn’t, and so the two of them had become friends instead.
‘What did the doctor say?’
Her smile faded as she looked up at Raff with startled eyes. ‘Sorry?’ she frowned, her hands shaking slightly as she held her coat around her as they braved the icy-cold early December winds to go out to the waiting Jaguar, the sudden chill not leaving her body even as Raff turned on the ignition and the burst of warm air filled the interior.
‘You told me last night that the doctor was going to tell you the results of your tests today,’ he explained raspingly. ‘You did keep the appointment, didn’t you?’ The lights on the dashboard illuminated his frown.
‘Yes, of course.’ Bryna huddled down into the collar of her coat, the chill seeming to have permeated her bones.
She inwardly bemoaned the fact that the intimacy of their relationship told Raff without words exactly when her body had failed her. She had assured him that it occasionally happened, although he had been aware that it never had in their previous four months together. When it happened again he had been the one to urge her to consult a doctor.
‘I’m anaemic, that’s all,’ she evaded. ‘It can have that effect. The doctor has given me some vitamins,’ she added truthfully.
Raff gave her a probing look. ‘You do look a little pale,’ he conceded.
She looked pale because she was still suffering from the shock of knowing she was pregnant; even the call to her parents telling them she would be home for the weekend hadn’t made the baby she carried seem more real to her. She was sure there would be visible signs of it soon enough, but at the moment, with her body still so slender, and no ill-effects such as morning sickness to cope with, she couldn’t help questioning the accuracy of the doctor’s diagnosis.
Except that she felt different emotionally, filled with a tranquillity and inner peace she had thought never to know. Maternal instinct had previously only been an expression to her, but now she knew exactly what it was, the completely unselfish love for a human being you just knew was inside you despite there being no visible signs
