‘And I didn’t want to annoy you and I persuaded myself that there was no real risk.’ Tabby loosed a sad, shamefaced sigh. ‘I was seventeen and I couldn’t imagine falling pregnant. I thought it couldn’t happen to me and, of course, it did.’
That simple admission lay there like a stone thrown into a deceptively tranquil pond. A pond that was about to start churning up beneath the surface. Pale below his olive skin, Christien stared at her from the other side of the room, magnificent golden eyes shimmering with the ferocity of his tension.
Tabby fixed her discomfited gaze back on her wineglass and then she set it down in an abrupt movement.
‘I found out that I was going to have a baby soon after I went back to England…I had morning sickness like…morning, afternoon and evening too,’ she recalled in a small, flat voice. ‘To cut the wretched long story short, he-’
‘He?’
‘Our son was born three weeks before the inquest into the car crash was held.’ Tabby pleated her trembling hands together to keep them steady. ‘I intended to tell you then-’
‘Bon Dieu…why that late in the day? Why didn’t I hear that I was to be a father months before that?’ Christien shot at her rawly.
‘You changed your mobile phone number. I tried to call the villa in the Dordogne but, by that stage, you had sold it and I had no other address or means of contacting you-’
‘That’s not much of an excuse. You could have made more effort.’
‘I didn’t have your resources to conduct an all-out search and I had other problems!’ Tabby’s temper was sparking in her own defence. ‘In his will, my father left everything he possessed to my stepmother and when she realised I was pregnant she threw me out of the house in literally what I stood up in. I had just started art college and I had to sleep on a friend’s floor until my mother’s sister, Alison, took me in.’
‘I am certain that she could have advised you on the best way to locate me…such as through the name of my airline.’ Majoring in heavy sarcasm as he pointed that out, Christien was not yielding an inch.
‘I think you’re overlooking the fact that you dumped me like a hot potato after that car accident and never spoke to me again-’
‘The crash had nothing to do with it. I saw you with that idiot on the Harley-’
‘But I didn’t know how it was with you, did I? I wasn’t inside your secretive head with you!’ Tabby scanned him with strained eyes that demanded his understanding. ‘I wasn’t aware that you believed I was seeing someone else. All I knew was that you wanted nothing more to do with me after the death of your father and mine. So you had better believe that I wasn’t in any great hurry just then to track you down with the news that I was pregnant…because, believe it or not, I have my pride too!’
Christien was very pale. He raked a not quite steady hand through his luxuriant black hair, his dark eyes brooding and bitter. ‘Why don’t you just get to the point? So, you gave my son up for adoption!’
Tabby registered that she should have guessed that he would assume that she had put their baby up for adoption. After all, he had seen no sign of a child in her life when he’d visited her in London the previous month or when she’d stayed in the cottage over that first weekend. ‘No, I didn’t do that. I couldn’t give him up. He’s upstairs fast asleep…’
Black brows pleating, Christien gazed back at her, what she had just revealed too shattering for him to accept. ‘Comment?’
‘I called him Jake Christien and your name is on his birth certificate. I planned to tell you about him when I attended the accident enquiry.’ Tabby couldn’t keep the bitter hurt out of her voice. ‘But you wouldn’t have anything to do with me-’
‘What are you trying to say?’ Christien was not focusing on what to him was an irrelevance. ‘You are saying that you have our son…that there is a little boy here in this house? I don’t believe you-’
‘The day you visited me in London, he was at nursery school, and I left him in England with Alison when I made my first trip here.’ Tabby rose to her feet as she appreciated that she might as well have been talking to a brick wall for all the listening that Christien seemed able to do.
‘Right now, he is upstairs?’ Christien questioned fiercely.
Tabby halted at the foot of the staircase and whispered, ‘How…how do you feel about that?’
‘That I can’t believe that this is real because, if I start believing it, I might get so angry I lose my head with you.’ Dark golden eyes glittering, Christien stared at her with deadly seriousness. ‘I can’t believe it’s real because you slept with me last week without saying a word-’
A deep dark blush flamed over her face. ‘I didn’t mean to-’
He dealt her a derisive glance. ‘I want to see him-’
‘He’s asleep?
??OK.’ Intimidated by the anger flaring in his expectant gaze, she went upstairs and crossed the landing to push the door of Jake’s room wider open.
Behind her, Christien stilled like a guy turned to stone. A night-light illuminated the bed. Jake seemed to be having a restive night for his little face was flushed, his black curls tousled, the sheet in a tangle round his waist. With strong, determined hands, Christien set Tabby out of his path and entered the room. Her heart leapt into her mouth as she wondered what he planned to do. For long, endless moments, he stared down at Jake and then at the long row of toy cars parked with military exactitude along the skirting board. He released a long, low, shuddering breath and then very slowly began to back out again.
The silence on the landing was so intense that it screamed.
Tabby hurried back downstairs.