A Question of Pride (9 page)

Her gaze wondered frontwards again. 'It was wonderful while it lasted.' She used mockery to hide behind, then dropped it because she was tired of hiding, tired of the lies and prevarication. 'It's all over now,' she said quietly.

'And you needed a bolt-hole where you could hide to lick your wounds?'

'Something like that.'

James looked at her pale profile with tender sympathy. 'He's—he's well respected in the City,' he pushed on carefully. 'He got the Stanwell contract, didn't he? It put his share price up a tidy bit.'

Clea eyed him curiously. 'Got some yourself?' she asked.

'A few, when the price was lower,' he drawled, and waved a slender, dismissive hand. 'But I won't sell.

Latham is still on the way up—not down.'

'Yes.' She didn't need James to tell her that. Max knew where he was going, and the path had no twists in it: a direct ascent, with no one in tow.

'What did he do to you, Clea?'

'I don't work for him any more,' she used as a reply, her tone dull and so retracted that James had to gather himself to probe further.

'He—dispensed with your services?'

'No,' she grated. 'I left of my own accord.' Everything they said held another meaning. Clea shifted irritably on the bench, her face turned almost fully away from him now.

'You were the exception to a very strict rule, so I heard.' James was aware that he was teetering very close to the edge. He could actually feel the tension in her. 'And one that has lasted a hell of a lot longer than his norm.'

She turned bitterly on him. 'Has Joe been gossiping?' She started to get up, but James stayed her with a hand on her arm, forcing her to sit down again, and holding her there.

'Joe is no gossip, and you know it. I'm in the business of having my ear to the ground,' he reminded her gently. 'And it really is very interesting what one eavesdrops on in the process.'

Clea snapped her lips tight shut, and sat in mutinous silence while James waited, holding her arm, though she wasn't pulling away from him. He could feel her trembling, and felt a hot sting of anger rip through him, aimed at the handsome Max Latham.

'Why don't you just give in and tell me about it?' he persisted. 'You know I'm not going to give up until you do.'

'And why don't you just mind your own business?' Clea blazed, but the angry blue eyes she turned on him were full of a terrible pain.

James held his ground. 'Amy is my business,' he stated firmly. 'And what affects you will, in the end, affect her.' He paused, sighing impatiently at her mutinous expression.

'It may help, you know, to tell someone... I'm a good listener, Clea. Offload it on to me,' he urged on.

'You'll feel a lot better for...'

'With no editing?' she sneered. 'All the sordid bits as well as the—'

'Stop it!' James cut in harshly. 'There's no need to get insulting!'

'I'm pregnant!' she cried, then let loose a broken sob. 'I'm pregnant ...'

James muttered something beneath his breath, his eyes revealed a level of shocked anger Clea would never have thought him capable of; then he was masking it and reaching over to grasp both her hands where they ripped at each other on her lap.

'Latham's?'

'Yes,' she hissed, shivering with reaction.

'And he—he won't marry you?'

Her quivering mouth twisted on a smile that made his heart contract. 'He doesn't know,' she told him bleakly.

'But—Clea ...'

She threw back her head, her eyes too big in her pale face, and stared at the frosty blue sky peeping through the branches above them. 'He doesn't love me, for Heaven's sake!'

She slumped forwards, tugging her hands free so that she could cover her face as the floodgates at last opened and she broke down altogether.

James sighed heavily. 'But you love him, I presume.'

'Of course I love him!' she croaked, lifting a hand from her face to wave it towards the house. 'You don't get brought up by someone like Mummy without some of those high morals of hers rubbing off on you!

Of course I damned well love him!' she cried wildly. 'I just—just wish I didn't, that's all.'

'Hell!' muttered James. 'Did we put a great hulking spanner in the works when we let go with our bit of news!' He leaned his elbows on his knees, staring at his feet in grim contemplation, then he glanced up at Clea. She was back in control of herself again, but those huge eyes were filled with aching tears. 'When is it due?'

She glanced at him, then away. 'October.'

James gasped, then looked stunned—then, to her dismay, he began to shake—shake with laughter while Clea looked on in fury.

'It isn't funny!' she snapped.

'It's damned well hilarious,' argued James. 'October the—what?'

'Eleventh—James, will you stop laughing at me?' she demanded when he set off again. 'I can't tell my mother now! She'll—she'll miscarry with the shock!'

That sobered him up. And they both sank into dark reflection on the bench at the bottom of the garden.

'No, she won't.' James spoke at last. 'She's not as frail as you and I like to think her to be. She can take it.'

'I disagree,' protested Amy's daughter. 'It will break her heart!'

'It will if you don't tell her,' James pointed out. 'Amy loves you, and she'll understand. And she has me ...

We'll go and tell her now,' he decided firmly, grabbing Clea's hand and forcing her to get up. 'You and I together will go and tell her, and Amy will cope, because we'll put it in such a way as to give her no choice.'

'Like how, for instance?' Clea muttered derisively. 'Like, "Now you've got to see the funny side of this, Mummy, but—surprise, surprise ...!" '

'Sounds fine to me, put like that,' said a determined James, pulling his reluctant stepdaughter behind him back to the house.

'But James ...!' She tried appealing to him, but it was no use. They entered the kitchen to find Amy already there, looking the picture of maternal contentment.

She turned to smile at them both. 'What have you two found so interesting to talk about out there? I thought you were taking root, you've been gone so long.'

James went to his wife, kissing her soft cheek tenderly before taking her hand and sitting her down at the table. He gestured to Clea to sit down, too, then placed himself opposite them both and reached across the table to take both Amy's hands.

'It seems, darling,' he said gently, 'that, in our eagerness to tell Clea our news, we quite stole her thunder, because she has her own very special piece of news to tell us.'

Amy looked wide-eyed and curiously at James, then turned that same regard on to her uncomfortable daughter.

'But what could that be, Clea?' she puzzled, then let out a gasp of delight. 'Oh—you're not going to marry that nice Mr Latham, are you, darling?'

'Amy, dear.' James patiently reclaimed his wife's attention. 'You misunderstand a little. You see, Clea isn't going to marry Max Latham, but she's going to do the next best thing when he's the man she loves.'

Clea listened, white-faced and sobbing inside. 'She's going to have his baby.'

By thetime James drove Clea back to her flat on Monday evening, she was feeling more at peace with herself.

'I know it's all been said already—several times,' James murmured into the companiable silence surrounding them inside the luxurious Rolls. 'But you are more than welcome to come to live with us.'

'Yes, I know. And I'm terribly grateful for the offer,' she replied sincerely. 'But I won't take you up on it.'

If the truth were to be known, she felt tempted. Her mother and James had spent the weekend veritably cocooning her in a security blanket of love and understanding. But she would not allow them to do more.

It wouldn't be fair—to either them or herself, in the end.

'Because of me?' James queried quietly. 'Would you have given in to your mother's urges for you to stay if your father had been alive to add weight to her arguments?'

'No, not for the reasons you're implying,' she answered gravely. 'There are a lot of reasons why I'm determined to "go it alone", as the saying goes. Not least, the very newness of your marriage, the fact that you are both—no matter how deeply in love—still learning to know each other. I wouldn't, and don't want to, intrude on what you have and deserve ... I can't honestly say whether I would have moved back home if Daddy were still alive, but I think not. I'm used to being my own person now ... living with Mummy again would be—restricting.'

'Stifling, I think you mean,' James corrected wryly, then flashed Clea a knowing grin. 'Oh—I'm not completely blind to Amy's faults, you know. She likes to wrap the ones she loves in cotton wool—she likes to wrap me up like that, but I don't mind, where you would suffocate, I think.'

'I love her dearly,' Clea felt constrained to say, because James was surprisingly correct in his view.

'But all the more so from a distance,' he added drily, and they both laughed, because neither meant any malice towards small, fragile Amy. 'And—Max?' James questioned carefully.

She shrugged. 'I'll tell him about the baby the first opportunity I get.' It had been a decision reached with her mother yesterday. 'Though I feel guilty for thinking it, I have to say that Daddy's gift has eased my mind of some of its worst worries.'

'Now you know I would have helped you there, Clea!' James admonished sharply. He was wealthy, after all; money was not one of James Laverne's problems.

'You and Max both,' she agreed a little bitterly. 'Do you think I'm not aware of that? And if I do find I need any help of that kind, I promise to come and tell you instantly. But it isn't in me to sponge off others'

generosity, James. Call it false pride, if you want.' She shrugged those delicate shoulders again. 'I suppose it must be pride, because I know for sure I can't take a thing from Max, and he has more right to this than either you or my father.'

'Well, you won't have to
beg
from anyone now,' James said mildly, his voice holding a certain satisfaction in its tone. 'By the time the policy matures I'll have worked out some scheme to make the money work for you. You should, with careful investing, be able to live off the income from it. I'll see to that.'

'And my flat will be fine for bringing up a child,' Clea added, as though they were playing a game of

'count your blessings'. 'I was brought up there myself, so I should know.' She fell into sombre meditation for a while, staring out of the window while James drove them smoothly into London. 'It won't be the financial side of my plight that can cause Max any concern,' she added quietly, as though really voicing the thought out loud rather than to her stepfather. 'I should be able to convince him now that he need feel no obligation towards me and the baby.'

'And at the same time prove to him that you weren't out to trap him,' James concluded shrewdly.

She didn't reply, but her heart twisted painfully. James was right, she knew that
that
would be one of the accusations Max would throw at her. But it wouldn't be fair or true. Conceiving their child had been an accident. She just hadn't got the hang of taking those damned pills on a regular basis! She had missed more than one.

Naiveté was no excuse for what she had allowed to happen. But she admitted to a shameful naiveté about taking those precious little pills. Now, on looking back on the last five months, Clea found herself wondering in amazement that it hadn't happened earlier!

Her mind slipped back to that first time, when protection had never entered either mind. They had become too lost in each other to think of anything beyond the sensual banquet they were sharing. It had been later, when heartbeats had steadied, that Max had mentioned protection, and asked if she wanted him to take care of it, or whether she would like to. And she'd thought how much easier it must be to just take one small pill each morning rather than worry about the other options open to them. So she'd said that she would take care of it, and the subject had never arisen again. But Clea now knew herself to be guilty of not going into the rights and wrongs of pill-taking. She had just presumed that if she missed one that she could take two the day after to make up for it. When that ran into taking three on occasion, she didn't think to question the reliability of such inconsistency.

Oh, Max! The quivering ache, that seemed to have become a natural reaction to thinking of him, came to torment her again. Along with it, the ever-loving image of that devastating smile he could switch on when he felt like it, his eyes bright with wicked humour, his dark face a hard and ruthless background to such sensual charm. She could see him as he looked in the morning—a morning when he didn't have to rush off to work, so he would instead stretch himself out on her sofa while she prepared breakfast, his black hair ruffled, face unshaven, eyes sleepy. He would wear only the trousers of his suit, and lie there with his long bare feet sticking over the edge of her sofa, wide chest rising and falling to the rhythm of his breathing while he scrutinised the Sunday papers. Lazy as the sloth, tanned arms rippling as he turned newspaper sheets, short dark hair curling down from his chest to the concaved tautness of his stomach and further, burrowing beneath the waistband of his zipped but unbuttoned trousers.

At those times, he could have been anyone's husband relaxing at home. So utterly unaware of himself that Clea used to have to bite on her lip to stop a wistful sign from escaping in case he might hear it. Max was beautiful in any guise—unkempt or impeccably groomed. He was a man who wore his worth in the power of his personality rather than the clothes he dressed it in.

The flat was quiet and felt faintly unwelcoming. And, even though the central heating was pumping away to keep the temperature at a steady seventy-five degrees, Clea shivered with a chill that came from within.

She was glad James hadn't delayed his departure. He had seen her inside, deposited her suitcase in her bedroom, then left, wanting to get back to Amy. And perhaps he'd sensed that she wanted to be alone, had seen in the clouded look in her eyes that she needed time to compose herself, come to terms with what lay ahead of her.