The Fatherhood Affair

by Emma Darcy

Before she could muster any reply, he stepped out of the room and closed the door firmly behind him. As a parting shot it was deadly, sinking home the fact she was destroying the present with a past that could only poison any chance of happiness.

  She lifted shaky hands out of the robe’s pockets and rubbed at her forehead. What Damien said was true. He had been answering her needs in coming here, doing what she asked. She had urged him all the way. But why had she connected Damien so strongly to Merlinmist? More than that. To a honeymoon at Merlinmist.

  All those years ago, had she ended up wishing it were Damien with her, and not Brett? Had she been playing out a secret fantasy in bringing Damien here? Or had she felt he owed her the kind of honeymoon she should have had?

  She shook her head. What had happened wasn’t his fault. Damien was right about that. None of it was his fault. He wasn’t responsible for what another man did. Yet somehow she couldn’t quite banish the feeling that Damien was some dark Macchiavellian figure behind all of Brett’s actions. The dominator. But that might only be the sheer strength of his character and personality. Could he be blamed for simply being the man he was?

  Natalie tottered over to an armchair, shocked at such devastating revelations about herself. She sank into the soft cushions, grateful for their support as she tried to sort through the turbulence in her mind.

  Damien had predicted this violent reaction to him, the surge of hatred that would be blind to all he’d done for her, all he felt for her. It shamed her that he’d been right. He didn’t deserve it. Damien hadn’t forced her into anything. He had simply been there for her. Maybe he had always been there for her...throughout her marriage to Brett. Although she hadn’t recognised it. Lovers, he had said, but not in the physical sense. How much frustration was there in that?

  Her body clenched at the memory of their intimacy, desire so strong it blotted out everything but their driving need for each other, the fulfilment of a wanting that couldn’t wait any longer. And it had been good. More than good. Wonderful. Incredibly perfect. Why couldn’t she hold on to that and put the past in the past? She had to learn how to let go. Why was she afraid to accept what she had shared with Damien at face value?

  Damien claimed he had never done anything to hurt her. She had no real evidence to the contrary. But it sat uneasily on her that he had been Brett’s best friend...his business partner...inextricably linked to her rotten marriage. Her hatred of him...was it the other side of love? Had it been her defence against the feelings Damien stirred within her?

  If only she could remember more. The years following on from her honeymoon were a grey blur. She couldn’t pluck anything out of them except Ryan, the precious child she’d loved and lost.

  Ryan... Her gaze drifted to the window...the unforgiving cliffs on the other side of the valley. She felt the blood drain from her face as understanding drove through her mind. Ryan had fallen over a cliff, fallen to his death...and Brett had died, too, trying to save Ryan...but too late...too late...

  Damien was mixed up in those events somehow. Damien, covering up for Brett, always covering up. She couldn’t trust Damien. She didn’t know what went on inside his head, what his real feelings were. He only told her what he deemed it necessary for her to know within the ambit of their relationship. While he might have spoken the truth, was it all the truth?

  She didn’t know. She simply didn’t know. And she was afraid of what she didn’t know. One thing she was certain of. She couldn’t stay here with Damien now. Merlinmist was too tainted with memories that neither of them would be able to dispel.

  She considered what course of action she should take. She needed time to fill in the gaps in her memory. If her perception of Damien was twisted, as he claimed, she wanted to get to the heart of the matter, and she couldn’t do that until she knew more.

  She didn’t feel up to travelling far, didn’t want to go back to the sterile house she had shared with Brett. She remembered the name of one of the resorts they had passed on the way here. Fairmont. A few days there might provide some answers. She could hire a car or take a train when she was ready to return to Sydney. Since Brett had been Damien’s business partner, she must have some money, although a memory stirred that there had been financial difficulties.

  Having made her decision, Natalie pushed herself into moving. She telephoned the Fairmont Resort. There were rooms available. She booked one for a week. Satisfied she had a place to go to, she showered and dressed. With one last regretful glance around the room that had seemed so warm and welcoming, she picked up her bag and went downstairs. Perhaps one day she and Damien might return and know lasting happiness in the half-tester bed with the yellow drapes. She thought not. The ghosts of yesteryear were not so easily exorcised.

  She left her bag at the reception desk in the foyer and went outside in search of Damien. She had to speak to him first before calling for a taxi. She checked the parking area. His Jaguar was still there. She walked around the grounds, barely noticing the artistry of the landscaping, not pausing to read the plaques on the magnificent specimen trees. Damien was nowhere to be seen.

  She took the zigzag path that led down to the valley far below. She hoped Damien hadn’t gone far. She didn’t have the strength for a strenuous walk. She paused at the first bend, watching the mist swirling up from the valley, obscuring the view. What she needed was Merlin’s magic to dispel the mist in her mind. If only it could be that easy.

  She plodded on with a heavy heart, not anticipating any joy in meeting with Damien, but she couldn’t run away from him. He deserved an explanation from her. An apology, as well. She had to be fair. In her ignorance, she might be doing him an unjustifiable injury in not accepting what he held out to her.

  He was sitting on the garden bench at the third bend. He was not looking at the view. He was hunched over, elbows resting on his thighs, hands linked between his knees. He didn’t hear her approach, too absorbed in his thoughts to be aware of anything outside them. He looked weary beyond measure.

  Natalie’s heart squeezed with painful uncertainty. Had she tried him too far? Was she a fool to hesitate over joining her life to his? Would she lose what she wanted through doubts that had no substance?

  ‘Damien...’

  His head jerked up and snapped around. It was plain he was startled to see her. Not expecting it. Not expecting anything from her. He rose to his feet in a slower movement, gathering his emotional resources to deal with whatever came. She could sense him arming himself and wished it didn’t have to be that way. If only they could go back...retrieve the heady freedom of having no emotional baggage from what had previously happened. But it hadn’t been that way for him, and now it couldn’t be that way for her.

  ‘I’m sorry I acted so...so unkindly,’ she offered, feeling hopelessly inadequate to express herself.

  ‘It was always going to happen, Natalie,’ he stated flatly. ‘I knew it...yet I can’t accept it.’ His eyes searched hers for some latitude. ‘Are you staying or fleeing?’

  No attempt at persuasion. Her choice would tell him all he wanted to know.

  ‘Damien, I’m very attracted to you...’

  He made a sound of deep exasperation. ‘Is this the overture before I get the “Can we be good friends?” speech?’

  She flushed. ‘I can’t afford another mistake like the one I made with Brett.’

  ‘Can’t you trust your instincts, Natalie?’ he burst out, his eyes blazing with the need she had fed so recklessly.

  ‘My instincts led me into marrying Brett,’ she cried, more in protest at what Damien stirred than with any logic in her argument. ‘I need some distance to get everything in proportion.’

  ‘You had everything in proper proportion when you couldn’t remember anything.’ His hands lifted in a gesture of urgent appeal. ‘Stop listening to your mind. Go with what you feel. Come to me.’

  ‘I can’t. Not yet. Please...’ She stepped back, fighting the strong tug on her heart. ‘I’m asking you to wait, Damien.
’

  ‘Wait!’ His face twisted with feeling. He fought to control it but it throbbed through his voice. ‘How long, Natalie? How long am I to wait this time? Until you have another car accident? Another lifetime?’

  ‘Until I believe what you tell me.’

  It silenced him. He arched his head back as though she had hit him with an uppercut to the jaw. Then slowly he turned to look out over the mist. ‘Will-o-the-wisp,’ he muttered. ‘You’ll bracket me with Brett until the day you die.’

  That could be true. Natalie had no answer to it. She’d had a rotten husband, and for all she knew, Damien had been aiding and abetting Brett in his infidelities, perhaps encouraging him to do what he’d done, wanting her to find out, wanting her to turn to him, wanting to win out in the end. Or was that a twisted reaction from the miserable life she had led?

  Who else knew Damien intimately? Who could tell her what he was really like to live with?

  The answer came immediately.

  His wife. His ex-wife. Lyn. It should be easy enough to find a Lyn Chandler who worked on a woman’s magazine.

  ‘Give me a month. I need that to get my bearings, Damien. I promise I’ll give you a definite answer then.’

  He turned to her with a gaze that seared her soul. ‘What if you’ve conceived our child today, Natalie? Will I be told?’

  Her stomach contracted. ‘It won’t happen. I’m sure it won’t.’

  ‘But if it does?’ he insisted.

  ‘You’ll be told,’ she heard herself say. The consequence of throwing caution to the wind was that she could end up with a child whose father she did not wish to marry or live with. ‘You’ll definitely be told,’ she repeated, but her lips trembled.

  She turned and headed up the path, trepidation for the future in every step. It was vitally important that she remember everything, vitally important to question Damien’s ex-wife. She had to know what kind of husband Damien had been, and why the only thing he and his wife had shared in the end was a divorce.

  CHAPTER TEN

  NATALIE spent five days at Fairmont. It was a fine, impersonal place for her to rest, eat well, exercise in the heated indoor pool, and take long leisurely walks. The room service was excellent, the amenities first class. She didn’t seek company and no one pressed company upon her.

  She tried very hard to marshall all the facts she knew and make some consistent order of them. Bits and pieces of her four years of marriage to Brett came back to her, and she tried to take a more objective view of her husband, and why he was the way he was.

  He had taken her home to that house in Narrabeen. It had already been furnished by a ‘first-class’ interior decorator, and Brett was intensely proud of it. No way would he countenance any change.

  He had been generous with money, encouraging her to buy ‘first-class’ clothes and whatever added dignity and status to their lives. She was the woman in his home, his wife, the artist, the mother of his child...all images that reflected well on him.

  It was important to Brett to be perceived as a man who had the best of everything.

  Damien was right about Brett’s not relating to her, or any woman, as a person. She had never connected that aspect of Brett’s character to his background as Damien had. She had viewed their upbringings as something they had in common, both of them only children, cared for by a single parent.

  Yet hadn’t not having known a father influenced her to stay with Brett despite her personal unhappiness? She hadn’t wanted Ryan to be without a father, and Brett had been very good with Ryan. Perhaps as his father was to him.

  If attitudes and values came from family background, then what of Damien’s? Surely, with his happily married parents and an ample number of brothers and sisters, he should be a well-rounded person, confident of holding his own anywhere and in any company. That was the way he came across. Perhaps Brett had seen Damien as the man who had everything, someone to pit himself against to be at the top.

  Precisely how did Brett and Damien relate? They had certainly meshed in their computer world. Perhaps it was difficult to find people who could connect compatibly within that specialised type of field.

  They both enjoyed the same athletic activities. They were both popular at parties, though different in the way they performed at them.

  Damien tended to have conversations. Brett specialised in witty repartee. Damien engaged people’s interest. Brett made them laugh.

  Of course, that was why Damien was so good at making deals. He listened. Brett skated over the surface in talking, but he skated it so brightly, no one seemed to notice any shortcoming in depth. It was Damien with the depth.

  He and Brett complemented each other in many ways. Alike, yet not alike. That was probably the basis for a strong and lasting friendship, but they were not two of a kind. Natalie came to the strong conviction she had been wrong in holding that point of view.

  It could very well be that it was only Brett who had been obsessed in competing with Damien, while Damien felt no sense of contest at all, only companionship.

  And loyalty.

  Not by word or deed had Damien ever indicated he coveted his friend’s wife while Brett was alive. Perhaps that was why she had never been invited to his home. On the other hand, not by word or deed had he ever indicated she had good reason to divorce Brett. Not to Natalie’s recollection.

  She could not make up her mind if this implied his attitude to women was the same as Brett’s or not. Perhaps he’d considered Brett’s wife untouchable, but he had certainly touched other women, and all of them, to her knowledge, only short-term affairs. Like Brett.

  Was it true that none of them had measured up to her in Damien’s mind, or was that an excuse for his brief dalliances?

  Natalie caught a train back to Sydney on Monday morning, and spent the entire two-hour trip wondering how to approach Lyn Chandler. Over the weekend she had looked through the staff lists of several women’s magazines, checking the names of the features editors until she found Lyn Chandler’s place of work. It struck her as odd that the woman had not reverted to her maiden name after the divorce from Damien. The more she thought about it, the odder that circumstance appeared.

  Somehow she had to persuade Damien’s ex-wife to meet her and talk about the marriage that had only lasted three years. It would be a revealing key to Damien’s character. Or to Lyn Chandler’s. Natalie was sure of it.

  She wondered if her graphic design work might interest a features editor. A professional approach might be best. After so many years’ separation from Damien, his ex-wife might be totally uninterested in any personal angle that involved him. Although anything could come out in a face-to-face chat. After all, Natalie had been the wife of Damien’s business partner. Lyn Chandler had to have known Brett before he married Natalie.

  Since Natalie could now relate the house in Narrabeen to her life with Brett, she could walk into it without it worrying her. After unpacking, she hunted through the desk in her office and found a portfolio of her work. She hoped it was impressive enough to give substance to a business meeting.

  She telephoned the magazine’s office just before twelve o’clock, hoping to catch Lyn Chandler at a free moment. She was in luck. She was put through to the features editor with no trouble at all.

  ‘Natalie Hayes!’ a bright voice exclaimed. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be Brett Hayes’ widow by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Natalie affirmed, surprised at the other woman’s instant connection of her name to Brett.

  ‘Damien and I were talking about you only the other night. You’re illustrating children’s books now.’

  ‘Yes.’ Natalie barely got the word out. Damien had given the impression he was out of current contact with his ex-wife.

  ‘Well, good for you!’ Lyn Chandler said warmly. ‘Losing both Brett and your son was a terrible tragedy. Must have been devastating. Brett was so full of life. A wonderful man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Natalie agreed faintly.

  ‘I d
are say you don’t want to talk about that but I wanted to express my sympathy. Now, what can I do for you, Natalie? I may call you Natalie?’

  ‘Of course.’ Natalie was stunned by the open friendliness being offered. ‘I wondered if I might interest you in the kind of work I do. Perhaps run a feature on it as a career choice. If we could set up a meeting...’

  ‘Great! How about four o’clock this afternoon? I’m free then. Does that suit?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Natalie was begining to feel like a gasping fish, stunned by the ease with which everything was being arranged.

  ‘If you’re not busy afterwards, perhaps we could follow up with a few drinks and a bite to eat somewhere. I might be able to give you some good contacts for placing your work.’

  The offer was so incredibly obliging to Natalie’s needs, it raised the question if Lyn Chandler wanted something from her. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity too good to miss. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Not at all. I was very fond of Brett. Great as a party guy. I’m well acquainted with how lonely it can be on your own.’

  ‘Thanks, Lyn. Whatever you suggest is fine by me.’

  ‘OK. I’ll look forward to meeting you at four. Just ask at the front desk and they’ll direct you to my office.’

  ‘Thanks again.’

  Natalie sat in a daze, wondering what was going on. Lyn’s friendly attitude couldn’t be Damien’s doing. He would have no reason to suppose she would get in touch with his ex-wife, no reason to ask any favours for her sake. Lyn had to have reasons of her own for setting up a social get-together.

  Which brought Natalie to the loaded question...had Damien deceived her about his current relationship with his ex-wife? What had been going on there, between the brief affairs he’d had with other women?

  She frowned, wanting to believe what he had told her. Perhaps their recent meeting was one of the rare occasions he had mentioned. Natalie told herself she would find out soon enough, so there was no point in worrying about it.

  Female pride prompted her to dress and groom herself to her best advantage. She was going to meet a woman whom Damien had presumably loved. Not that she was competing, she told herself severely, but she would feel much more confident if she looked good. Professional. The white linen suit was simple and elegant and shaped very nicely to her figure. Natalie was satisfied it was an appropriate choice for the occasion.