touch.
She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that she didn’t want whatever it was that he thought they had started to continue, but somehow the words just wouldn’t come and she had to watch in tongue-tied silence as he headed for the door.
The plaintive mewing of the kitten broke the heavy silence of the kitchen. Claire went automatically to pick her up, stroking the soft baby fur and marvelling at the little creature’s capacity to trust and survive as she started to purr noisily.
She was still semi-dazed by disbelief at everything that had happened—not just the intimate physical sensuality she had shared with Brad and her unexpected response to him but, even more unbelievably, the fact that she had actually told him about her past, revealed to him the secret shame and shock she had felt and the way it had affected her whole life and her feelings about herself and her sexuality.
Not even to John had she confided her fear that she somehow had been responsible, had invited in some way that young man’s assault on her, but somehow it had almost been as though Brad had known what she was thinking, what she was feeling … had known just how to encourage her to reveal that hidden fear to him.
And as for what had happened afterwards … Could it have been the result of the release of all the emotions she had repressed by locking away her fears about what had happened and her dread that she had somehow been responsible for it?
It was a well-known fact that emotional trauma could have an extremely odd effect on human behaviour.
But what about the fact that the night before last she had been dreaming about Brad in the most erotic way?
The kitten gave a sharp howl of protest, making Claire realise that the eye-dropper was empty of milk.
Apologising to her, Claire refilled it, smiling at the way the little creature clung to the dropper with her front paws as she sucked on the teat.
Sally had already told her that she intended to wait until she was at least thirty before she and Chris started their family. She was twenty-five now, which meant that she was going to have a long wait before she became a grandmother, Claire acknowledged.
A grandmother … A rueful, slightly sad smile touched her mouth as she admitted to herself how much she would secretly have liked to have children, a family of which Sally would always have remained her eldest and most specially loved daughter.
It was not too late, of course. Women of her age and even older were having babies every day, many of them without the support of a husband or partner, but, having been brought up solely by her great-aunt, Claire had very ambivalent feelings about having a child on her own. Of course, if she were ever to find herself in a situation where for some reason she’d conceived accidentally, then there would be no question but that she would have her child and love him or her.
She bent her head protectively over the kitten as she realised the direction her thoughts were taking and just why the thought of an accidental pregnancy should have crossed her mind.
It wasn’t going to happen, of course. She must make sure that it did not happen, she told herself sternly.
Outside it had started to rain, the wind gusting fiercely against the window.
The weather forecast had warned that they were in for a stormy evening with heavy rain and gale-force winds. As she returned Felicity to the new basket that Brad had bought for her and glanced out of the window at the lowering sky, Claire was thankful that she didn’t have to go out.
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