Indecent Deception

by Lynne Graham

  ‘C-custody? Why would you want custody?’ she broke in shakily, beginning to drown afresh in the horror of the way in which a lie could grow and grow like a monster until it overshadowed her whole existence. Of course, she had nothing to fear. As soon as Elaine came to her senses, which she hoped she was already well on the road to doing, she could confess the lie.

  He sank down with innate grace into the armchair opposite her. ‘You could meet another man, get married, and sooner or later I’d be pushed out of her life. Guy tells me it happens all the time. People start out with good intentions and promises, and then other relationships get in the way. Divorced fathers regularly lose out on contact with their children. I’m not prepared to let that happen to me—’

  ‘Blaze…you’re taking this all too s-seriously… You only found out today… I mean, don’t you think this is all a little premature?’

  ‘I’ve already lost out on two and a half years of her life,’ he reminded her with fierce emphasis. ‘I intend to be there for her from now on. She’s not going to grow up the way I did!’

  She waited, squirming with guilt.

  He sprang upright, studied her fulminatingly. ‘When my father found out about me, he wanted to have contact with me, but my mother wouldn’t allow it. That was her revenge. When she died, he came to see me at school without my grandfather’s permission. I didn’t want to know him! This was the guy I blamed for screwing up my mother’s life…mine too, for that matter,’ he admitted harshly. ‘I knew he was married. I knew he had a baby son. And I hated him for that. I wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He felt really guilty about me and he had persuaded his wife that it was their duty to offer me a home with them in Spain.’

  He threw back a gulp of whisky and vented a rueful laugh. ‘He was…what was that expression you used?…“intellectually challenged”? A handsome playboy, constitutionally incapable of fidelity, but basically an OK guy. His wife sat quietly in the corner and you could see that she was sick to the stomach at the threat of having to house her husband’s bastard! Jaime couldn’t see that, though. He really thought that with Barb out of the picture I could be part of their family. He had touching faith in what he called our “bond of blood”. And I told the poor bastard to go to hell…’

  Chrissy ached for him. Her wide eyes dampened.

  ‘He was persistent, though. He wrote… I trashed the letters without reading them. Eventually they stopped coming. The irony of it is…’ He laughed with wry amusement. ‘The real irony is that if he had approached my grandfather first I would have been parcelled off to Spain on the next flight!’

  ‘You mean…you mean your grandfather wouldn’t have wanted to keep you?’ she pressed in a tone of distress.

  Blaze drained his glass, set it down. ‘I only wanted to illustrate my point. I bitterly regretted never knowing my father. I was too proud to approach him when I was an adult myself. I’m not saying I missed out on anything that special. I don’t think we would have been soul mates, but maybe we could at least have been friends.’ His sensual mouth tautened. ‘It was a hell of a shock when Jaime and his family went down in that plane crash…’

  ‘It must have been,’ she whispered sickly.

  ‘It was too late then to wish I’d spent some time with him,’ he breathed harshly. ‘Too late then to get to know the half-brother and -sister I’d never met. Most times in life, you don’t get second chances… I certainly didn’t. I can’t even begin to describe how I felt when I inherited Jaime’s money…’

  Although it was hard for her to understand fully what he had been through, she felt raw with sympathy, and she bowed her head to hide her feelings.

  ‘He never forgot that I was his first-born son. Even if my half-brother and -sister had survived, I would have inherited more than they did,’ he revealed tautly. ‘He was a multimillionaire and I got the whole lot. I didn’t want it… This was the guy I rejected while he was still alive… It seemed all wrong that I should profit from his death…’

  ‘But if he wanted you to have it…’

  ‘In the end I came to that conclusion too, but even though I endow all his favourite charities I still feel bloody guilty. That’s why I want to be there for Rosie now,’ he said again. ‘I want her to have it all. And she needs security.’

  ‘I agree,’ she forced herself to say. ‘But—’

  ‘No buts,’ he incised softly. ‘I never wanted children of my own. I never wanted to do to any child what my parents did to me. I didn’t want the responsibility. It was a purely self-centred decision. I have always taken great care never to run the smallest risk of getting any woman pregnant…only now I find out that just once I didn’t take care and the whole picture changes out of all recognition!’

  Should she tell him the truth now? Should she tell him that she had lied? What would happen when he stopped concentrating on Rosie? Sixth sense warned her that he would turn with renewed intensity to his desire for revenge on Elaine. And if Chrissy told him that her sister was pregnant and that that was why she had told the lie in the first instance, he would never believe her. He would think it was just another lie, because Elaine would not admit that she was carrying Steve’s baby. Dully, she realised that she was caught between a rock and a hard place. She would be damned if she did speak up and equally damned if she didn’t! Until she could confirm that Elaine had gone back to Steve, her sister’s unborn child could only be protected by her lie and her silence.

  ‘You are so quiet,’ he censured. ‘Anyone might be forgiven for thinking that none of this had anything to do with you.’

  Events had already moved far beyond her control. She was a woman on a cliff-edge waiting for a final push. ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ she admitted shakily, and it was the most truth she had spoken that day.

  ‘Rosie is happy here but you can’t stay on as my housekeeper now…’

  Her stomach lurched sickly. Now she saw where the big, impressive build-up had been leading. He was about to suggest they move out! The selfish toad! He wanted Rosie, but presumably at a discreet distance and in small, bearable doses.

  A line of dark colour demarcated his hard cheekbones. ‘The gutter Press never leave me alone. That’s never bothered me before but I really don’t want you and Rosie to be trailed out into the public eye by the tabloids. I’ve never given a damn about what’s written about me but I don’t want you torn apart—’

  ‘You d-didn’t give a damn about that yesterday!’ she muttered tightly.

  ‘But you have centred my priorities wonderfully since yesterday,’ he drawled with sardonic bite. ‘Yesterday was a century ago.’

  She wished he would get to the point. She was sitting on the edge of her seat, her nails grooving crescents into her clenched palms as she waited. She wanted her every low expectation of Blaze Kenyon confirmed. He wanted them out from under this roof and fast before they could cause him any further embarrassment.

  ‘The truth is…’ he hesitated, his sensual mouth tightening into an unrelentingly grim line ‘…and I never thought I would ever hear myself say this…but needs must when the devil rides—and bloody hell, he’s been busy in my corner of Berkshire!’ he muttered savagely half under his breath. ‘We have to get married, fast.’

  Chapter 8

  Chrissy was welded to her chair. She was transfixed like a graven image, shocked green eyes glued to him. She didn’t believe he had actually said that. He couldn’t have actually said that, could he?

  ‘We would live exactly as we do now…more or less,’ Blaze went on after a reflective pause. ‘You get a home, all the money you can spend, and security, and I get you and Rosie. What you might term a mutually beneficial exchange of needs.’

  Her tongue crept out to moisten her bone-dry lips. She swallowed hard. ‘You’re not sserious?’

  ‘If I weren’t, I’d be a damned fool to suggest it!’ he pointed out scathingly.

  ‘But you can’t have thought this through,’ she protested weakly.

&nb
sp; ‘I know exactly what I want to do,’ he rebutted. ‘I don’t want to figure in Rosie’s life as an occasional father, nor do I want a parade of “uncles” through her life…’

  As Chrissy grasped his meaning, she coloured and lifted her chin. ‘There isn’t going to be any such parade!’

  Blaze dealt her an impatient glance. ‘At least be realistic, Chrissy. You’re unlikely to remain celibate until she’s eighteen!’

  ‘People don’t just leap into marriage these days for a child’s b-benefit,’ she dared.

  ‘I do and you will,’ Blaze delivered. ‘To be blunt, I don’t see what the problem is. Sexually, we’re very compatible. Marriages are built on far less. Rosie deserves the security of two parents and a proper home.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not that simple—’

  ‘It’s exactly that simple. I want Rosie to have everything I didn’t have.’

  And that was his real motivation, Chrissy registered ruefully. He had been born outside marriage and, by the fleeting references he made to the mother he had evidently called Barb, there had been no stability in his childhood. Suddenly, she felt remarkably foolish. Why was she sitting here anxiously arguing with him on the question of a marriage that would never take place? She was turning into a candidate for the funny farm! Within a few days at most, she would be in a position to tell him the truth. In the light of the plans he was already making for her sister’s future in the belief that Rosie was his, the truth might well hit him even harder than the original lie.

  He was reacting so positively to the idea that he was a father. She could never have dreamt that his first and most overriding concern would be for Rosie’s welfare…but it was. Dear heaven, he was actually prepared to marry to provide Rosie with the kind of security he had never had himself! How could she ever have foreseen that? This was the male who barely two weeks ago had said of himself that he would never get married. ‘No reason to, every reason not to.’ But evidently he found Rosie sufficient reason.

  ‘Well?’ Blaze prompted impatiently.

  Dear lord, he wanted an answer. A band of tension throbbed like a ring of steel round her brow. She was exhausted and in turmoil. Tonight she had so nearly ended up in his bed. She turned her troubled gaze wretchedly from him. She wanted him, and in the back of her mind lurked all the fantasies that had probably encouraged many other women in his past to hope…that somehow she would be different from all the others before her, that somehow she would be the one he would decide to stay with, the one he would love.

  Although she shrank from the dreadful scene ahead when she told him the truth, and the inevitable conclusion, which would be their departure, it would be the wisest finale in the circumstances. Otherwise, sooner or later she would end up in his bed, and a transitory affair would do nothing for her self-respect. He was a very male animal and he wanted to have sex with her…that was all. At no stage had he even pretended that she touched him any more deeply. Even if it hadn’t been for the lie, there was no future here for her.

  ‘Have y-you ever been in love?’ she heard herself ask, the impulsive question simply leaping off her tongue.

  ‘No.’ He didn’t even have to consider his answer. ‘Are you planning to give me an answer?’

  She refused to meet his glittering gaze. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Playing hard to get, Chrissy?’ he drawled mockingly.

  He expected a positive answer, no doubt about that. A lack of self-confidence was not one of his failings. He had condescended to offer marriage. He had anticipated an eager acceptance. And why should she weary herself arguing with him about something that was never going to happen? It would take at least a couple of weeks to arrange a marriage. And this farce would be over far sooner.

  He hunkered down athletically in front of her. Lean fingers pushed up her chin almost playfully. ‘You said that if you thought I was all there was in your future you’d kill yourself! But that was because I let you down three years ago…’

  ‘Was it?’ She couldn’t resist fighting him.

  Sapphire eyes tracked over her triangular face intently. ‘I didn’t see you in my future either, but right now I can’t imagine it without you. I guess I’ve got used to having you around. I feel comfortable with you…’ Her small teeth visibly clenched. Comfortable…like an old chair or a slipper. ‘When I’m not feeling sexually frustrated,’ he finished with a certain predatory huskiness.

  ‘I can always tell when you’re thinking about s-sex!’

  ‘I hope so… Recently, it’s been twenty-four hours a day…and I would hate to think this misery was one-sided!’ He tugged one of her hands free and pressed his mouth hungrily to the fleshy mount below her thumb, letting her feel the graze of his teeth, and she trembled, feeling as if her bones were melting beneath her over-sensitive skin. ‘If I hurt you the last time, I’m sorry…I can promise you that it won’t be like that again.’

  Her cheeks reddening, she dragged her hand from his, but it took every ounce of will-power she possessed to execute that feat of self-denial. When he looked at her like that, she felt hypnotised, weak, utterly helpless. ‘Blaze, I—’

  ‘You’re going to marry me,’ he told her. ‘It’s what I want.’

  ‘And do you generally get what you want?’

  He sent her a mocking smile and vaulted upright. ‘Always.’

  ‘I think it’s time I went to b-bed,’ she muttered, rising unsteadily from the chair, but she didn’t want to go; she didn’t want to leave him. She was painfully aware that in a very short space of time Blaze would hate her for the lies she had told him, and this time there would be no offer of a free pardon to bolster her fall.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of calls to make.’

  She didn’t sleep very well, tired though she was. She dreamt that she was getting married to Blaze and in the middle of the ceremony Elaine came in and interrupted the proceedings just like the bad fairy in the story of the Sleeping Beauty. Only instead of delivering a mere curse in punishment, Elaine walked off with the bridegroom and Chrissy was left standing at the altar alone in front of a congregation roaring with laughter. She woke up, tear-stained and trembling. It had been unbelievably real.

  There was a note on the kitchen table when she came downstairs.

  ‘Gone to see Theo’, it said. There was no signature, but she held it for a second or two and her eyes prickled stupidly. Blaze never made the tiniest attempt to explain absences. Unless you caught him on the way out of the door, he simply vanished. That he had taken the time to scrawl even four words of explanation underlined the alteration he now saw in their relationship. But it was all a lie, all a lie, she reminded herself painfully. Of course, it would never occur to him that she hadn’t a clue who Theo was. Writing a note had been enough of a challenge.

  The builders were now at the stage of converting part of the attics into a self-contained flat. For a housekeeper, Chrissy guessed, and that was where she would have been moving with Rosie, had they been staying. A washing machine, a tumble-drier and a state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner were delivered mid-morning. She stood there staring at them incredulously while they were off-loaded into the rear hall. Blaze must actually have gone to the trouble of buying them. When? Yesterday? Today?

  In something of a daze, she went to answer the door when the bell rang. It was Elaine, rather ostentatiously sheathed in a stunning pure white suit that flattered every perfect curve. ‘It’s a wonder you can look me in the face!’ she said witheringly. ‘I made an absolute ass of myself with Blaze yesterday, thanks to you! Where is he? I want to see him.’

  Chrissy tensed in alarm. It seemed she had not been so convincing where her sister was concerned. ‘He’s out.’

  Elaine’s lips tightened. ‘Why did you lie like that? It wasn’t until I went home again that it occurred to me that Blaze was as shocked as I was! He flatly denied being the father of your child…said he had never had anything to do with you! He asked me if I had been drinking!’

  Chrissy t
ook her into the drawing-room. Rosie was painting in the kitchen. She would be all right on her own for a few minutes.

  ‘I can’t believe that I believed you!’ Elaine vented angrily.

  Chrissy was thinking fast. ‘I had no idea you were planning to confront him. You see, he remembers nothing about that night and he certainly knew nothing about Rosie until you chose to tell him!’

  That angle hadn’t occurred to Elaine.

  Chrissy pressed on, ‘I’d never have had the nerve to tell him about Rosie…so really I should be thanking you—’

  ‘Thanking me?’ Elaine slung at her. ‘Thanking me for what?’

  ‘For doing us a very big favour.’ Chrissy smiled widely at her infuriated sister. ‘You see, unlike you, Blaze does believe that Rosie is his child, and not only is he willing to accept that fact, he also wants Rosie… He’s willing to acknowledge her…’

  ‘You’re lying again. Blaze doesn’t even like kids!’ Elaine asserted.

  ‘Well,’ Chrissy murmured with another smile, ‘he certainly likes Rosie. In fact, he’s asked me to marry him—’

  ‘I’d have to be brain-dead to swallow that!’ Elaine sneered. ‘Blaze Kenyon has to be about the last male alive likely to start talking marriage because he finds out some sordid one-night stand resulted in an unwanted baby!’

  ‘Perhaps you’re forgetting his background,’ Chrissy suggested smoothly. ‘He grew up as an illegitimate child without a father. He’s absolutely determined that Rosie won’t!’

  ‘Even if the kid was his, he wouldn’t marry you.’ Elaine swore harshly, her beautiful face fierce with certainty.

  ‘Elaine, why don’t you go home to Steve? Why don’t you put this behind you?’ Chrissy suddenly pleaded.