‘Probably best to just say it, Clare.’ Valerie shook her head and grimaced. ‘Very easy to give advice, however. What about your parents?’
‘My mother,’ Clare said slowly, ‘has always longed for me to marry and have children. So has my father, I guess, although for all the wrong reasons.’
‘Most grandparents fall in love with their grandchildren whatever the scenario,’ Valerie commented. ‘By the way—’ she smiled mischievously at Clare ‘—speaking as your doctor—and you may not like this but I genuinely recommend it—you need to have plenty of rest. I’m all in favour of some exercise but—’ she sobered ‘—the first trimester, Clare, needs some care taken of it.’
‘I…I’m going to put a full-time solicitor on.’
‘Good girl!’ Valerie rose and deposited a package on Clare’s desk. ‘All you need to know about the course of your life for the next seven-odd months— what you should do, what you shouldn’t, some information on antenatal classes in the area, et cetera, et cetera.’
‘Thanks.’ Clare grinned and rose. ‘I’ll make it my weekend project—well, one of them.’
She had intended to work through the weekend although the office closed at noon on Saturday, but as she locked up and stepped out to get herself some lunch, and stepped off the pavement deep in thought, a maroon Range Rover all but ran her over. It swerved wildly and screeched to a halt beside her and it was Lachlan who jumped out.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded, his grey eyes furious, his jaw hard as she tried to collect herself and still the pounding of her heart.
‘I…I wasn’t thinking,’ she stammered.
‘You could have been killed! Not to mention being instrumental in causing a head-on collision.’
‘I’m sorry. I … really am sorry—what are you doing? ’
‘Kidnapping you,’ he said sardonically as he steered her towards the vehicle and gave her no . choice but to get in. ‘What do you think I’m doing?’
Clare had to hitch up her slim straight skirt to negotiate the high step, and while he gave her no help he penned her in so that there was no chance of escape. Then he slammed the door on her and strode round to get in himself.
She said coldly, although she clutched her hands in her lap to stop them from shaking, ‘Considering that I had assumed you’d left the country—I have no idea what you’re doing or planning to do.’
‘Then I’ll tell you.’ He shoved the gear lever forward and drove off, spinning the tyres. ‘I don’t—as you put it with such criminal connotations—leave the country until tomorrow. So I’m taking you up to Rosemont for lunch and if you dare say anything about how you’d planned to work this afternoon, Clare Montrose, I shall be even more annoyed.’
She bit her lip, not only at his words but the plain warning in his eyes.
He also said, ‘I’m all for being industrious and so on but when it’s taken to the heights you do, when it ousts every other damn thing from your mind, then it’s about time someone told you enough was enough. It is also Saturday afternoon—and my last day here for a while.’
Clare swallowed. ‘I wasn’t sure whether…you wanted to see me again.’
He was silent for a moment as he turned onto the Byron Bay Ballina Road. Then he said abruptly, ‘Do you want to see me again, Clare?’
Her voice seemed to stick in her throat. But finally she heard herself say, ‘I’ve been thoroughly miserable since… then. And not sure what went wrong. So I didn’t really know how to—’ she laced her fingers together ‘—approach you.’
She said it all staring straight ahead as he swung into Ross Lane which would take them up from the flat, coastal plain to the gently undulating countryside around Tintenbar and Alstonville.
Then, to her surprise, she heard him laugh softly, and her aquamarine eyes were puzzled and questioning as she turned to him.
‘Approach me?’ he said softly, and put his hand over hers. ‘Clare, all you had to do was click your fingers and I’d have come running.’
She gasped. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t!’
‘Ah, well, perhaps not.’ His eyes were amused. ‘But I’d have come all the same. The thing is, I don’t know how things went so awry the other night either but there’s obviously some worm of discontent niggling between us and I’d like to get to the root of it before I go.’
It shot through her mind that the problem between them would not be susceptible to solving in one afternoon, did he but know it.
She said quietly, ‘Perhaps we were foolish to think we could live in some sort of time capsule, so—’ she hesitated ‘—untouched by anyone or anything else, for ever.’
‘You’ve always seemed perfectly happy with the status quo, Clare.’
‘So have you. And yes, I was. It suited everything about my life so well. But it’s not, well, it’s not what I imagined could ever happen to me. So I’ve had moments of—unease.’
‘Tell me.’
She shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Will it last? Can a relationship so physically orientated and so determinedly detached in every other respect last? Am I a stepping stone while you get over Serena? Those kinds of thoughts.’
They crossed the Pacific Highway and the Range Rover swept down a winding road then up again towards the lovely, camphor laurel country that was home to Rosemont.
‘That’s what was upsetting you the other night?’ he said at last with a slight frown.
Clare took a breath. ‘Actually, I was wondering whether you’d decided you needed a more available and amenable mistress. To take away with you on business trips, for example?’
A smile touched his mouth but it was faintly grim. ‘Would your unease with our relationship make you into that kind of mistress, Clare?’
‘No,’ she said definitely.
‘Then I think we have to acknowledge that for whatever reason—and there are plenty—and despite the odd bit of dissatisfaction, this is what suits us best. Yes,’ he said as she made a sudden movement beside him, ‘I did suddenly think that I would be lonely without you on this trip. I did, I don’t deny, think, Why the hell does she have to work so damned hard anyway?’
‘Go on,’ she said barely audibly.
He looked at her ironically. ‘My next thought was, I’m sure she’d hate me for thinking along those lines—and I wasn’t wrong, was I, Clare?’
A week ago he wouldn’t have been, she mused sadly. Now? Now, of course, everything had changed.
‘Which is why,’ he said at length when she didn’t answer, ‘I don’t think we should tamper with the order of things as they stand between us, Clare.’
‘I…I was going to say—I see,’ she responded as some inner resource came to her rescue. What she really felt like doing was bursting into tears, because the distortions and half truths had established what she’d always feared—that he wouldn’t want to marry her. ‘But I won’t be lawyerly,’ she soldiered on with a false smile. ‘You’re probably right.’
He looked at her narrowly then drove between the white gateposts of Rosemont, only to stop the Range Rover precipitously with a muttered curse as a diminutive American Indian in full war paint danced into its path, chanting and stamping, bending low and waving a bow and a tomahawk.
‘Sean—that’s twice in one day I’ve nearly run someone down!’ Sean’s father said explosively.
Clare put a hand on his arm and started to laugh because Paddy and Flynn had appeared and they both wore long-suffering expressions—and feather headdresses tied over their ears.
CHAPTER THREE
‘CLARE, Clare!’ Sean said excitedly, and jumped into the Range Rover. ‘Guess what I am?’
Lachlan got out and opened the tailgate so Paddy and Flynn could come with them.
‘An Indian?’ Clare hazarded with a straight face.
‘Of course!’ Sean responded scornfully. ‘But what kind?’
‘A Sioux? Cheyenne? Apache? No,’ she said as he shook his head each time. ‘Then I give
up.’
‘I’m a Nez Percé,’ Sean said proudly.
Clare and Lachlan exchanged glances as Lachlan started up the macadamia tree-lined drive.
‘I’ve never heard of them,’ Clare confessed.
‘They were the greatest,’ Sean said enthusiastically. ‘Great hunters, riders and warriors until the government took their territory from them in 1877. Nez Percé means pierced nose.’
‘I’m glad to see you haven’t pierced yours, Sean.’
‘I was thinking about it but Aunty May said if I did I’d most likely die of blood poisoning and she’d be the first to dance on my grave.’
‘Sean,’ Lachlan said, ‘if you’ve been giving Aunty May a hard time—’
‘Who, me? Serena sent me these, by the way, Clare.’ Sean changed the subject adroitly. ‘She may not act like a soppy mother but she sure knows the way to a boy’s heart!’
Once again Clare and Lachlan exchanged rueful glances, not only at the sheer intelligence and eloquence this eight-year-old possessed, but his ingenuity and the way he insisted on calling his mother Serena, and treated her, from the way he spoke of her, like a slightly wayward older sister.
May Hewitt was waiting for them on the veranda.
Rosemont was an old federation homestead built on a small rise which gave it excellent views of the acre upon acre of sloping, silent macadamia and avocado orchards that made up the estate. Built around the same time as the Nez Percé got hunted off their traditional lands, it was a whitewashed, sprawling house beneath a huge silver roof with thick chimneys and wide verandas all round. And it was surrounded by velvety lawns and the rose gardens it took its name from.
May Hewitt was Lachlan’s maiden aunt, his father’s sister, who’d lived all her life at Rosemont, when she wasn’t in-house at the famous girls’ boarding school she’d taught at, then been promoted to headmistress—a position she’d held for years. Retired now, she was still a dedicated educator and possibly the best springboard Sean’s high IQ could have had—although they often lived in a state of armed truce with each other.
Although Lachlan had never referred to it, from the odd thing May had let fall it had soon become obvious to Clare that the reason Serena had been so unexpectedly generous in the matter of access to his son was the simple fact that she found Sean almost impossible to cope with herself.
So, instead of the normal arrangement of a young child living with its mother and spending some holidays with its father, the opposite had happened with young Sean Hewitt, and it seemed to be working to everyone’s satisfaction despite the times May Hewitt might feel like dancing on his grave.
‘Clare, my dear, good to see you!’ May came down the shallow veranda steps and hugged Clare briefly. She was a tall woman with Lachlan’s tawny hair now laced with grey, and a wrinkled but fascinating face, full of character. And, despite always looking elegant and groomed, she obviously had a deep affinity with the land.
What she made of Clare and Lachlan’s relationship, Clare had no idea; she’d never made any comment, but she did always seem to enjoy Clare’s company.
‘Hot, isn’t it?’ she continued. ‘We should all be down at Lennox having a swim. Lunch is ready and waiting—Sean, you can’t have lunch like that, and would you be so good as to put Paddy and Flynn out of their misery?’
Sean looked all set to take heated issue with this, but Lachlan put his hand on his son’s fair head and said, ‘Sean, life is full of coincidences.’
‘It is?’ Sean responded, somewhat distracted.
‘Yes. You see, I’d never heard of the Nez Percé until a couple of weeks ago when I happened to read about them in a book that had its background set in the Big Sky country of Montana. You’re right, they were the best.’
‘Oh, boy!’ Sean said joyously. ‘Can I read it, too?’
‘No, too old for you, mate, but the other thing mentioned in this book was their spiritual affinity with wolves, I’ll tell you about it while we wash up.’
And father and son went off together companionably, with Sean completely restored to good humour and full of affection for his father.
May grimaced and offered Clare a pre-lunch sherry.
‘Er—no, thanks. Could I just have something long, cool and soft?’
‘Why not? Sit down, Clare. I’ve got some barley water here.’
The table was set on the veranda with an embroidered cloth and napkins in silver rings. There was cold tongue, potato salad, a green salad, crusty bread and a vegetable quiche.
Clare accepted a long frosted glass and said humorously to May, ‘Are you being left in sole charge of Sean?’
‘Heaven forbid. No, tomorrow I’m taking him down to spend two weeks with Serena. That should test her to the limit and bring him back to us more full of mischief than ever for the last week that Lachlan’s away.’
Clare smiled wryly. ‘You could come and stay with me for a few days. Being right on the beach might…tire him out.’
Lachlan came out onto the veranda as she spoke.
‘The only problem,’ May mused, ‘is that we’d have to move his computer down—he’s like a bear with a sore head without it. That’s where he found out about these strange American Indians.’
‘I’ve got a laptop he could use—and two spare bedrooms.’
Her words fell into a little pool of silence and she realized that Lachlan was watching her narrowly, and May was watching him.
She also realized, as the silence lengthened, that she’d unthinkingly stepped over an invisible line—the line that was drawn between her affair with Lachlan and the rest of the world but especially his family. And she wondered why she’d been prompted subconsciously to do it. Because she liked Sean despite his penchant for mischief and he was the half-brother of the baby she was carrying?
Then Lachlan said, ‘That’s very kind of you, Clare. I’ll leave it up to you, May.’
‘Well, a little break at the beach wouldn’t go amiss,’ his aunt said slowly as she looked briefly but searchingly from her nephew to Clare.
‘Are we going to the beach?’ Sean piped up as he joined them, somewhat less than thoroughly scrubbed of his warpaint.
‘Clare’s invited you to stay with her for a few days while I’m away.’
‘Oh, boy!’ Sean clapped his hands joyfully. ‘I can fish and surf and watch the hang-gliders, even talk to them—wait until I tell Serena about this!’
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it.’
Clare and Lachlan were strolling amongst the macadamias after lunch. May had declined to join them and Sean had decided to perfect his war dance.
‘Done it?’ Lachlan queried. ‘Why don’t we sit down?’
They’d come out into the sunlight beside a bubbling creek and there were a couple of high, flat stones on the bank.
Clare sank down and waved the straw hat May had insisted on giving her, turning as she did so to look back up the slope behind them cloaked with dark green trees in orderly rows. By Australian standards Rosemont was a big estate and when you were on it you couldn’t help but be aware of the roots of the Hewitt family, their pride in it and their feel for cultivating the land.
Although Lachlan was educated, cultured and an extremely astute businessman, you only had to walk beside him through his macadamias and avocados to know that his love of the land flowed like a quiet river within him.
Whereas, she thought suddenly, she found these plantations rather eerie, quiet places and she’d never grown anything in her life…
‘Clare—done what?’
She turned back to him. ‘Invited them to stay with me,’ she said.
‘Why not? But if you’re regretting it, which I can’t blame you for,’ he said with a grin, ‘why did you?’
She looked at him seriously. ‘It’s not that I’m regretting it. I like Sean, and May.’
‘So?’ He pulled a long stern of grass and chewed it absently. The sunlight was turning the hairs on his arms to a golden chestnut and there wer
e patches of sweat on his blue-and-white checked cotton shirt.
She looked down at her cream silk blouse and beige linen skirt, at her tights and the thankfully low-heeled polished brown shoes she’d worn to work that morning—it felt like an eon ago that she’d got ready for work—and saw some damp patches on her own blouse.
Then she sighed, repositioned the hat on her head, and said quietly, ‘I could see how it took you both by surprise. I felt as if I’d crossed the Great Divide. Then, as soon as Sean mentioned Serena, I realized why.’
‘You think Serena would object?’
‘I don’t know.’ She paused a little frustratedly. ‘I don’t even know if she knows about me but it was almost as if I was disclosing my hand—to May, anyway.’ She stopped just on the verge of saying, Whatever my hand is. ‘She knows about us? May, I mean,’ she said instead.
‘I think she would have a pretty good idea by now,’ he said wryly. ‘But May is not one to pry.’
‘Not unless it directly concerns Sean,’ Clare murmured.
He shrugged. ‘That’s perceptive of you, Clare. May would fly to the moon for Sean despite the ongoing appearance of war they maintain. So would I,’ he said. ‘But she was a godsend when…’ he paused ‘… when life was not all it should have been between Serena and me. But there could be no harm in them spending a few days with you.’
Clare was silent but she thought, As long as he wasn’t around so Sean would be exposed to her in mistress terms, did he mean?
‘Not that it would be very peaceful for you,’ he added after a moment.
‘Well, I’ll leave it up to May,’ she said, and was struck suddenly by the thought that if her morning/ night sickness continued she might not be able to hide it from May. What was happening to her? she pondered. She never used to act without thinking—was it a symptom of pregnancy? And how was she going to hide anything from anyone before long? That included her staff, her clients, not to mention Lachlan himself.
Having His Babies (Harlequin Presents) Page 4
