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she responded accordingly by pushing it away.
'Of course.' She managed a polite smile, eager to go now that she had established her excuse.
'Oh, good, because there's our little summer dance at the village hall& '
'You're more than welcome to help decorate& '
'On Friday evening. Barbecue if the weather permits& '
'And it will. If those weathermen are anything to go by, not that they usually are& '
'Friday,' Sara said lamely. 'I'd love to, but Simon '
HIS CONVINIENT MISTRESS
12
CATHY WILLIAMS
HARLEQUIN PRESENTS 2479
'I'm sure my mother would be more than happy to babysit,' James interjected, knowing full well where her protest was
leading. He hadn't planned on staying quite as long as Friday, but the minute he had removed the objection from her mouth he was
filled with an inexplicable urge to prolong his sojourn.
Get to know her, he argued to himself with every semblance of rationality. How else does one win ground unless one is
fully aware of the layout?
And, irritating though the admission was, he still knew practically nothing about her and he wanted to find out more. It was
a first for him. Hidden depths were not something that he particularly looked for, or for that matter had ever found, in any of the
women he had dated. And he liked it that way. That way there was no room for nasty surprises.
'I couldn't possibly& ' There was a hunted look in her eyes which he blithely ignored.
'You would be doing her a great favour. She adores children and would love nothing better than to spend the evening with
Simon.'
'Well, Simon is very shy with '
'You could even bring him up to our house. There's a room occupied solely by the most elaborate train set a child could
ever hope to find& '
'Train set?' Simon's ears had pricked up, and with a sigh of frustrated resignation Sara conceded defeat.
'So& ' he had followed her out of the caf�, out into the glare of the sun '& you came here because of Simon& why did you
wait five years? Surely he would have been suffering from recurrent chest infections from birth?'
'Have you nothing better to do than tag along behind me?'
'Not at this point in time,' he informed her, proving, she thought, that he was every bit as thick-skinned as she had deduced
from their first meeting.
Indeed, at this point in time, the business he had intended to do while his mother spent a pleasant couple of hours with her
cronies had faded into the background. Right now, he could think of nothing better than glancing over to catch sight of that vibrant red
hair that was today caught up in a tortoiseshell clip that barely contained its luxuriant waywardness, that creamy white skin, tinged
pink at her discomfort at having to endure his presence.
'You never bought your ice cream,' he pointed out suddenly. 'I suppose our resident crew called you across before you
could get to put in your order.' Everyone was curious, he reasoned, and so she would not be able to resist letting her natural curiosity
have a wander, even though the determined tilt of her head told him that she would have liked nothing better.
'Who are they?' Sara asked, glancing into the windows of some of the shops they were strolling past, catching the
occasional look in her direction and uncertain whether this was due to her or to curiosity about why the man at her side was with her.
'Supermarket?' he asked, leaving aside her question for the moment.
She wouldn't have immediately guessed. 'With travel brochures in its window?'
'That's Bill MacKenzie next door. Pays for some of the window space and Trevor never could resist a buck.'
The quaintness of the arrangement brought a smile to her lips, a smile that he noticed, just as he noticed the reluctance
behind it, as though it was dragged out of her.
'Look, why don't you go and get your shopping and I'll take Simon for that ice cream? We can meet you in the square in
half an hour.'
'No!'
The vehemence of her response surprised him and he looked at her levelly, his eyebrows raised.
'What's the problem?' he murmured.
'There's no problem. I just don't want to accept your offer. Isn't that enough for you? I have a lot of things to do before I
head back home and Simon& needs to be with me.'
And I won't allow my son to get close to a man who sees me as a little mystery he'd like to have fun trying to solve while
he's killing a few days here.
Every protective bone in her body had reared up into action at the thought of that. Simon had had enough disappointments
in his short life what with having to deal with a father who was not particularly interested in him, who had routinely made
arrangements to take him somewhere only to break them at the very last minute because something more important had come up.
In the space of a few still seconds, the past five years unreeled themselves in her head like a series of cinematic clips which
had been edited and fast-forwarded to encapsulate her ex-partner and the misery he had brought to her life.
The pregnancy, Simon, Phillip's lack of support because, as he had ruefully informed her, he wasn't the marrying kind, still
less the paternal sort. He had seen Simon occasionally but his life had been moving onwards and upwards. There was no time to fit in
a sickly son who was too thin, too small and got ill all the time.
The only thing that had ever mattered to Phillip, if only she had been able to see that from the word go, was his career and
the ambition to get even further with it. And here was James Dalgleish, who seemed to be as ambitious and career-oriented as Phillip,
pretending to take an interest in her son, an interest that was never going to get anywhere, but try telling that to a vulnerable five-year-
old child without a father.
She could easily cope with the likes of James Dalgleish. She was immune to men like him. But ice cream in the village
square with her son? Oh, no, she thought, I don't think so.
'What's the matter?' James's voice seemed to come from a long way away and the sharpness of it snapped her out of her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]