Lachlan slipped his hand out of hers and scampered away without a single word of protest. He gave one last look over his shoulder before his footsteps sounded out down the hall as he made his way to the back door leading out to the garden.
This time the silence was excruciating.
Ashleigh felt each and every one of its invisible tentacles reaching out to squeeze something out of her but her throat had closed over as soon as Jake’s eyes came back to hers.
‘He doesn’t look much like Howard,’ he commented.
‘That’s because he’s not Howard’s son.’
‘You surprise me.’ The cynical smile reappeared. ‘I didn’t think you were the sleep-around type.’
‘I had a very good teacher,’ she returned, marginally satisfied when his smile tightened into something else entirely.
‘How old is he?’ he asked after another tense moment or two.
‘Why do you ask?’
He shrugged one shoulder. ‘Isn’t it the usual question to ask?’
‘As you said earlier, it’s none of your business.’
‘Maybe, but I’d still like to know,’ he said.
‘Why?’
It seemed an age before he answered.
‘Because I need to be absolutely sure he’s not mine.’ He scraped a hand through his hair and added, ‘You would have told me if he was, wouldn’t you?’
It was all Ashleigh could do to hold his penetrating gaze. She felt herself squirming under the weight of its probe, the burden of her secret causing her a pain so intense she could scarcely draw in a breath.
‘You can take a paternity test, if you’d like,’ she said, taking a risk she wasn’t sure would pay off. ‘Then you can be absolutely sure.’
He gave her a long contemplative look before asking, ‘Are you in any doubt of who the child’s father is?’
‘No,’ she answered evenly. ‘No, I know exactly who the father is.’
Jake moved away and went to the window she’d guarded so assiduously earlier. ‘It was the one thing I could never give you, Ashleigh,’ he said with his back still towards her. ‘I told you that from day one.’
‘I know…’
‘I just couldn’t risk it,’ he said. He took a deep breath and added, ‘My father…’
She bit her lip as she heard the slight catch in his voice, knowing how difficult this was for him.
‘My father suffered from a rare but devastating personality disorder,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s known to be genetic.’
‘I understand…’
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the vision of Ashleigh’s child playing underneath the tree he’d spent most of his own childhood sheltering beneath or in.
‘No, you can’t possibly understand,’ he bit out, turning around to face her. ‘Do you think I’ve wanted to have this burden all my life? I wish I could walk away from it, be a normal person for once instead of having to guard myself from having a re-run of my childhood played out in front of me every day.’
‘I’m sorry…’ She lowered her eyes from the fire of his, unable to withstand the pain reflected in his tortured gaze.
‘But I couldn’t risk it,’ he went on. ‘I couldn’t put that intolerable burden on to another person. Not you, or whatever children we might have produced. My father was a madman who could switch at any moment. I’d rather die than have any child of mine suffer what I suffered.’
‘But it might have skipped a generation…’ she offered in vain hope.
‘And then what?’ His eyes burned into hers. ‘I would have to watch it played out in the next or even the one after that but have no control over it whatsoever.’ His expression grew embittered as he continued, ‘How could I do that and live with myself?’
Ashleigh swallowed painfully. The burden of truth was almost more than she could bear but she knew she couldn’t tell him about Lachlan’s true parentage now. It would totally destroy him.
She watched as he sent his hand through his hair, his eyes losing their heat to grow dull and soulless as he turned to stare out of the window, the wall of his back like an impenetrable barrier.
‘You don’t know how much I’ve always envied you, Ashleigh,’ he said after another long moment of silence. ‘You have the sort of background that in fact most people today would envy. You have two parents who quite clearly love each other and have done so for many years exclusively, two sisters who adore you and not a trace of ill feeling to cast a shadow over the last twenty-odd years you’ve spent being a family.’ He turned and looked at her, his expression grim. ‘I’m sorry for what I couldn’t give you, Ashleigh. If it’s any comfort to your ego, I was tempted. Damn tempted. More tempted than I’d ever been previously and certainly more tempted than any time since.’