FOR a few seconds Sarah wondered whether she had heard right, and then for a few more seconds she basked in the bliss of his proposal. Now that he had uttered those words she realised that this was exactly what she had wanted five years ago. His bags had been packed and she had been hanging on, waiting for him to seal their relationship with just this indication of true commitment. Of course back then his response had been to dump her.
‘You’re asking me to marry you,’ she said flatly, and Raoul titled his head to one side.
‘It makes sense.’
‘Why now? Why does it make sense now?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Sarah.’
‘I’m guessing that the only reason you’ve asked me to marry you is because you don’t like the thought of being displaced if someone else comes along.’
‘Oliver’s my son. Naturally I don’t care for the thought of another man coming into your life and taking over my role.’
But would he have asked her to marry him if he hadn’t happened to see her in a short skirt and a small top, making the most of what few assets she possessed, and jumped to all the wrong conclusions? He hadn’t asked her to marry him when she had told him that she wanted the opportunity to meet someone with whom she could have a meaningful relationship, that there was more to life than sex...
Sarah reasoned that that was because, whatever she said, he had believed deep down that his hold over her was unbreakable. Historically, she had been his for the asking, and he knew that. Had he imagined that it was something she had never outgrown? Had he thought that underneath all her doubts and hesitation and brave denials she was really the same girl, eager and willing to do whatever he asked? Until it had been brought home to him, silly and mistaken though he was, that she might actually have meant what she said?
For Sarah, it all seemed to tie up. Raoul enjoyed being in control. When they had lived together on the compound all those years ago he had always been the one to take the lead, the one to whom everyone else instinctively turned when it came to decision making. Had the prospect of her slithering out of his reach and beyond his control prompted him into a marriage proposal?
‘I didn’t think that you ever wanted to get married,’ she pointed out, and he gave an elegant shrug, turning to stare out of the window to where Oliver’s appetite for the garden appeared to be boundless.
‘I never thought about having children either,’ he returned without hesitation, ‘but there are you. The best-laid plans and so on.’
‘Well, I’m sorry that Oliver’s come along and messed up your life,’ she said in a tight voice, and he spun round to look at her.
‘Don’t ever say that again!’ His voice was low and sharp and lethally cold, and Sarah was immediately ashamed of her outburst because it hadn’t been fair. ‘I may not have planned on having children but I now have a child, and there is no way that I would wish it otherwise.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But...look, it would be a disaster for us to get married.’
‘I’m really not seeing the problem here. There’s more than just the two of us involved in this...’
‘So what’s changed from when you first found out about Oliver?’
‘I don’t understand this. Are you playing hard to get because you think that I should have asked you to marry me as soon as I found out about Oliver?’
‘No, of course not! And I’m not playing hard to get. I know that this isn’t some kind of game. You don’t want to marry me, Raoul. You just want to be in a position of making sure that I don’t get involved with anyone else and jeopardise your contact and influence with Oliver, and the only way you can think of doing that is by putting a ring on my finger!’
She spun round on her heels and made for the door, but before she could reach it she felt his fingers on her arm and he whipped her back round to face him.
‘You’re not going to walk out on this conversation!’
‘I don’t want to carry on talking about this. It’s upsetting me.’
Raoul shot her a look of pure disbelief. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this! I ask you to marry me and you’re acting as though I’ve insulted you!’
‘You want me to be grateful, Raoul, and I’m not. When I used to dream of being married it was never about getting a grudging proposal from a man who has an agenda and no way out!’
‘This is ridiculous. You’re blowing everything out of proportion. Oliver needs a family and we’re good together.’ But Raoul couldn’t deny that the idea of her running around with other men had, at least in part, generated his urgent decision. Did that turn him into a control freak? No!
‘In other words, all things taken into account, why not? Is that how it works for you, Raoul?’ She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. His hand was a band of rigid steel on her arm, even though he actually wasn’t grasping her very hard at all.
Silence pooled around them until Sarah could feel herself beginning to perspire with tension. Why was it such a struggle to do what she knew was the right thing? Why was it so hard to keep her defences in place? Hadn’t she learnt anything at all? Didn’t she deserve more than to be someone’s convenient wife, even though she happened to be in love with that someone? What sort of happy future could there be for two people welded together for the wrong reason?
‘Look, I know that the ideal situation is for a child to have both parents at home, but it would be wrong for us to sacrifice our lives for Oliver’s sake.’
‘Why do you have to use such emotive language?’ He released her to rake an impatient hand through his hair. ‘I’m not looking at it as a sacrifice.’
‘Well, how are you looking at it?’
‘Haven’t we got along for the past few weeks?’ He answered her question with a question, which wasn’t exactly an informative response.
‘Yes, of course we have...’ Too well, as far as Sarah was concerned. So well, in fact, that it had been dangerously easy to fall in love with him all over again—for which foolishness she was now paying a steep price. A marriage of convenience would have been much more acceptable were emotions not involved. Then she could have seen it as a business transaction which benefited all parties concerned.
‘And I know you don’t like hearing this particular truth,’ Raoul continued bluntly, ‘but we get along in other ways as well...’
‘Why does it always come down to sex for you?’ Sarah muttered, folding her arms. ‘Is it because you think that’s my weakness?’
‘Isn’t it?’
Suddenly he was suffocatingly close to her. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in his heady, masculine scent. Unable to look him in the face, she let her eyes drift to the only slightly less alarming aspect of his broad chest. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and she could glimpse the fine dark hair that shadowed his torso.
‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ Raoul murmured in a velvety voice that brought her out in goosebumps. ‘In fact, I like it. So we get married, Oliver has a stable home life, and we get to enjoy each other. No more having to torture yourself with pointless Should we? Shouldn’t we? questions...no more wringing of hands...no more big speeches about keeping our hands off one another while you carry on looking at me with those hot little eyes of yours...’
Although he hadn’t laid a finger on her, Sarah felt as though he had—because her body was on fire just listening to the rise and fall of his seductive words.
‘I don’t look at you...that way...’
‘You know you do. And it’s mutual. Every time I leave you I head home for a cold shower.’ He tilted her mutinous head so that she was looking up at him. ‘Let’s make this legal, Sarah...’
The sound of Oliver calling them from downstairs snapped Sarah out of her trance and she took a shaky step back.
‘I can’t drag you kicking and screaming down the aisle,’ Raoul said softly as she turned to head down the stairs. Sarah stilled and half looked over her shoulder. ‘But think about what I’ve said and think about the consequences if you decide to say no.’
‘Is there some sort of threat behind what you’re saying, Raoul?’
‘I have never used threats in my dealings with other people. I’ve never had to. Instead of rushing in and seeing everything insofar as it pertains to you, try looking at the bigger picture and seeing things insofar as they pertain to everyone else.’
‘You’re telling me that I’m selfish?’
‘If the cap fits...’
‘I’m just not as cynical as you, Raoul. That doesn’t make me selfish.’
Raoul was stumped by this piece of incomprehensible feminine logic, and he shook his head in pure frustration. ‘What’s cynical about wanting what’s best for our child? You need to think about my proposition, Sarah. Now, Oliver’s getting restless, but just bear in mind that if I am not impressed by the thought of some guy moving in with you and taking over my role, how would you feel when some woman moves in with me and takes over your role...?’
Leaving her with that ringing in her head was the equivalent of a threat, as far as Sarah was concerned. Furthermore, for the rest of the day he treated her with a level of formality that set her at an uncomfortable distance, and she wondered whether this was his way of showing her, without having to spell it out, what life would be like should they go their separate ways, only meeting up for the sake of their child.
She resented the way he could so effectively narrow everything down in terms that were starkly black and white. Oliver needed both parents at home. They got along. There was still that defiant tug of sexual chemistry there between them. Solution? Get married. Because she had rejected his original offer: Become lovers until boredom sets in. Marriage, for Raoul, would sort out the thorny problem of another man surfacing in her life, and also satisfy his physical needs. It made such perfect sense to him that any objection on her part could only be interpreted as selfishness.
Ridiculous!
* * *
But, whether he had intended it that way or not, his point was driven home over the next few days, during which he came at appointed and prearranged times so that he could take Oliver out. He had asked her advice and laughed when she had told him that any restaurant with starched white linen tablecloths and fussy waiters should be avoided at all costs, but there was a patina of politeness he now
exuded which Sarah found horribly unnerving.
Of course she wondered whether she was imagining it. His marriage proposal was still whirring around in her head. Had that made her hyper-sensitive to nuances in his demeanour?
She had tried twice to raise the topic, to explain her point of view in a way that didn’t end up making her feel as if she was somehow letting the side down, but in both instances his response had been to repeat that she had to think it through very carefully.
‘Wait and see how this arrangement works,’ he had urged her, ‘before you decide to rush headlong into a decision that you might come to bitterly regret.’
In a few well-chosen words he had managed to sum her up as reckless, irresponsible, and incapable of making the right choices.
Again Sarah had tried to get a toe hold into an argument, but he had expertly fielded her off and she had been left stewing in her own annoyance.
And at the bottom of her mind crawled the uncomfortable scenario of Raoul finding someone else. Now that he had taken on board the concept of marrying someone, would it prove persuasive enough for him to actually consider a proper relationship? He had had a congenital aversion to tying himself up with someone else. His background had predicated against it. But then Oliver had come along and a chip in the fortress of his self-containment had been made. Then he had taken the step of asking her to marry him.
Of course for all the wrong reasons as far as she was concerned! But he had jumped an enormous hurdle, even if he did see it only as a logical step forward, all things considered.
What if, having jumped that hurdle, he now allowed himself to finally open up to the reality of actually taking someone else on board? What if he fell in love?
When Sarah thought about that, she found herself quailing in panic. She could give him long, moralising speeches about the importance of not getting married simply for the sake of a child. She could scoff at the idea of entering into a union as intimate as marriage without the right foundations in place, because she was scared that she would not be able to survive the closeness without wanting much, much more. But how thrilled would she be if he took himself off to some other woman and decided to tie the knot?
It could easily happen, couldn’t it? Having a child would have altered everything for him, even if he barely recognised the fact. She wondered whether he had been changed enough to consider the advantages of having a permanent woman in his life—someone who could be a substitute mother. Sarah felt sick at the prospect of having a stepmother in the mix, but on the subject of things making sense it certainly would make sense, down the road, for him to get married.
He would surely find it difficult to continue playing the field, always making sure that Oliver and whatever current woman of the day didn’t overlap. Would he want to live the rest of his life like that? And what about when Oliver got older and became more alert to what was happening around him? Would Raoul want to risk having his private life judged by his own child? No, of course he wouldn’t. If there was one thing she had learnt, it was that Raoul was capable of huge sacrifices when it came to Oliver. He would never countenance his own son seeing him as an irresponsible womaniser.
Sarah found herself frequently drifting off into such thoughts as they settled into their new house and began turning it into a home.
There was absolutely nothing to be done, décor-wise, because everything was of an exquisite standard, but the show home effect was quickly replaced with something altogether more cosy as family pictures were brought out of packing boxes and laid on the mantelpiece in the sitting room. The fridge became a repository for Oliver’s artwork as she attached his drawings with colourful little magnets, and the woven throws her mother had given her when she had first moved to London turned the sofa in the conservatory into a lovely, inviting spot where she and Oliver could watch television. They went on short forays into the nearby village, locating all the essentials.
On the surface, everything was as it should be. It was only her endlessly churning mind that kept her awake at night and made her lose focus when she was in the middle of doing something.
Raoul continued to behave with grindingly perfect, gentlemanly behaviour, and Sarah found herself wondering on more than one occasion what he was getting up to on the evenings when he wasn’t around.
She hadn’t realised how accustomed she had become to seeing him pretty much every day, or at least being given some explanation of where he was and what he was doing on those days when he hadn’t been able to make it. On the single occasion when she had tried fishing for a little information he had raised his eyebrows, tutted, and told her that really it wasn’t any of her business, was it?
Two days before they were due to go to Devon to visit her parents Raoul returned Oliver to the house after their evening at a movie and, instead of leaving, informed her that the time had come to have a chat.
‘I’ll wait for you in the kitchen.’ He had given her two weeks, and two weeks was plenty long enough. He wasn’t used to hanging around waiting for someone else to make their mind up—especially when the matter in question should really have required next to no deliberation—but Raoul had taken a couple of steps back.
Although she was attracted to him, she had refused to become his mistress, and he didn’t think that she had done so because she had been holding out for a bigger prize. The plain and simple truth was that she was no longer his number one adoring fan. He had hurt her deeply five years ago, and that combined with the hardship of being a single mother without much money to throw around had toughened her.
Raoul knew that there was no way he could push her into marrying him. He was forced to acknowledge that in this one area, he had no control. But biding his time had driven him round the bend—especially when he kept remembering how easy and straightforward things had been between them before.
She returned to the kitchen forty-five minutes later. She had changed into a pair of loose, faded jeans that sat well below her waist and a tee shirt that rode up, exposing her flat belly, when she stretched into one of the cupboards to get two mugs for coffee.
‘So...’ she said brightly, once they were both at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee in front of them. This kitchen, unlike the tiny one in the rented house, was big enough to contain a six-seater table. He sat at one end, and Sarah deliberately took the seat at the opposite end. ‘You wanted to talk to me? I know I’ve said this a thousand times, but the house is perfect. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes, and there’s so much to do around here. I’ve already found a morning playgroup we can go to! It’s just so leafy and quiet.’
Raoul watched her and listened in silence, waiting until she had rambled on for a while longer before coming to a halting stop.
‘Two weeks ago I asked you a question.’
Having spent the entire two weeks thinking of nothing else but that question he had posed, Sarah now looked at him blankly—and received an impatient click of his tongue in response.
‘I’m not going to hang around for ever waiting for you to give me an answer, Sarah. I’ve waited so that you have had time to settle into the house. You’ve settled. So tell me—what’s the answer going to be?’
‘I...I don’t know...’
‘Not good enough.’ Raoul contained his mounting anger with difficulty.
‘Can I have a few more days to think about it?’ Sarah licked her lips nervously. ‘Marriage is such a big step,’ she muttered, by way of extra explanation.
‘Likewise having a child.’
‘Yes...but...’
‘Are we going to go down the same monotonous route of self-sacrifice?’
‘No!’ Sarah cried, stung by his bored tone of voice.
‘Then what’s your answer to be?’ He looked at her fraught face and thought that he might have been sentencing her to life in prison—and yet five years ago she would have exploded with joy at such a proposal. ‘If you say no then I walk away, Sarah.’
‘Walk away? What do you mean walk away? Are you saying that you’re going to abandon Oliver if I don’t agree to marry you?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! When are you going to stop seeing me as a monster? I will never abandon my own flesh and blood!’
‘I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t,’ Sarah said, ashamed, because sudden panic had driven her to say the first stupid thing in her head. ‘So what are you saying?’
‘I’ll find someone else,’ Raoul told her bluntly, ‘and we will get in touch with lawyers, who will draw up papers regarding settlement and visiting rights. You will see me only when essential, and only ever when it is to do with Oliver. Naturally I will have no control over who you see, don’t see, or eventually become seriously involved with, and the same would apply to me. Am I spelling things out loud and clear for you?’
The colour had drained from Sarah’s face. Presented with such a succinct action-and-consequence train of events, she felt her wildly scattered thoughts finally crystallise into one shocking truth. She would lose him for ever. He really would meet another woman and the question of love wouldn’t even have to arise. He would regulate his love-life because he would have to, and she would be left on the outside...watching.
She wouldn’t conveniently stop loving him just because he’d removed himself from her.
He might not love her, but he would be a brilliant father—and she would be spared the misery of just not having him around. Who had ever said that you could have it all?
She was sadly aware that she would settle for crumbs. She wanted to ask him what would happen when he got bored with her. Would he begin to conduct a discreet outside life? It was a question to which she didn’t want an answer.
She had thought that any marriage without love would be doomed to failure. She had never imagined herself walking down the aisle knowing that the guy by her side was only there because he had found himself in the unenviable position of having no choice. Duty and responsibility were two wonderful things, but she hadn’t ever seen them as sufficient. Raoul, on the other hand, had moved faster towards the inevitable—and she had to catch up now, because the stark alternative was even more unpalatable and she hated herself for her weakness.
‘I’ll marry you,’ she agreed, daring to steal a look at his face.
Raoul smiled, and realised that he had been panicked at the thought that she might turn him down. He never panicked! Even when he had been confronted with a child he hadn’t known existed, when he had realised that his life was about to be changed irrevocably for ever, he hadn’t panicked. He had assessed the situation and dealt with it. But watching her, eyes half closed, he had been aware of a weird, suffocating feeling—as if he had stepped off the edge of a precipice in the hope that there would be a trampoline waiting underneath to break his fall.
He stood up, thinking it wise to cover the basics and then leave—before she could revert to her previous stance, reconsider his offer and tell him that it was off, after all. She could be bewilderingly inconsistent.
‘I’m thinking soon,’ he said, feeling on a strange high. ‘As soon as it can be arranged, to be perfectly honest. I’ll start working on that straight away. Something small...’ He paused to look at her pinkened cheeks. Her hair was tumbling over her shoulders and he wanted nothing more than to tangle his fingers into it and pull her towards him.
‘Although you are the one who factored marriage into your dreams of the future,’ he murmured drily, ‘so it’s up to you what sort of affair you want. You can have a thousand people and St Paul’s Cathedral if you like...’
Sarah opened her mouth to tell him that anything would do, because it wouldn’t really be a true marriage, would it? Yes, they had known each other once. Yes, they had been lovers, and she had been crazy enough to think that he had loved her as much as she had loved him, even if he had never said so. But he hadn’t intended marrying her then, or even setting eyes on her again once he had left the country. He hadn’t wanted her then and he didn’t want her now, but marriage, for him, was the only way he could be a permanent and daily feature in his son’s life. Because she had rejected the first offer on the table, which had been to be his mistress.
Approaching the whole concept of their union in the way he might a business arrangement, maybe he had thought that living together would be the lesser of two evils. They would have learned to compromise without the necessity of having to take that final, psychologically big step and commit to a bond sealed in the eyes of the law. Or maybe he had just thought that if what they had fizzled out it would just be a whole lot easier to part company if they had merely been living together. And by then he would have had a much stronger foothold in the door—might even have been able to fight for custody if he’d chosen to.
Racked with a hornets’ nest of anxieties, she still knew that it would be stupid to open up a debate on the worth of a marriage that had yet to happen. What would that get her? Certainly not the words she wanted to hear.
‘Something small,’ she said faintly.
‘And traditional,’ Raoul agreed. ‘I expect you would like that, and so would your parents. I remember you saying something about a bracelet that your grandmother had given your mother, which she had kept to be passed on to you when you got married? You laughed and said that it wasn’t exactly the most expensive trousseau in the world, but that it meant a lot to both of you.’
‘Isn’t there anything that you’ve forgotten?’ Sarah asked in a tetchy voice. All her dreams and hopes were being agonisingly brought back home to her on a painful tide of self-pity. She thought that she might actually have been hinting to him at the time when she had said that. ‘Anyway, I think she lost that bracelet.’
‘She lost it?’
‘Gardening. She took it off, to...er...dig, and it must have got all mixed up with soil and leaves...’ Sarah shrugged in a suitably vague and rueful manner. ‘So, no bracelet to pass on,’ she finished mournfully.
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Isn’t it?’ She suddenly frowned. ‘So...we get married and live here...’
‘In this house, yes.’
‘And what will you do with your apartment?’
Raoul shrugged. His apartment no longer seemed to have any appeal. The cool, modern soullessness of the décor, the striking artwork that had been given the nod by him but bought as an investment, the expensive and largely unused gadgets in the kitchen, the imposing plasma screen television in the den—all of it now seemed to belong to a person with whom he could no longer identify.
‘I’ll keep it, I expect. I don’t need to sell it or rent it, after all.’
‘Keep it for what?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘It doesn’t. I was just curious.’
They were going to be married. It wouldn’t be a marriage made in heaven, and Sarah knew that her own suspicious nature would torpedo any hope of it being successful. As soon as Raoul had told her that he would keep the apartment she had foreseen an unpalatable explanation. An empty apartment would be very handy should he ever decide to stray.
She tried her utmost to kill any further development on that train of thought. ‘I suppose you have some sort of sentimental attachment to it?’ she prompted.
Raoul shook his head. ‘Absolutely none. Yes, it was the place I bought when I’d made my first few million, but believe it or not it’s been irritating me lately. I think I’ve become accustomed to a little more chaos.’ He grinned, very relaxed now that he could see a definite way forward and liked what he saw.
Suddenly the reality of Raoul actually living with them made her giddy with apprehension. Would there be parameters to their marriage? It wouldn’t be a normal one, so of course there must be, but was this something she should talk about now? Were there things she should be getting straight before she entered into this binding contract?
‘Er...we should really talk about...you know...’
He paused and looked down at her. She had one small hand resting on his arm.
‘What your expectations are...’ Sarah said stoutly.
Raoul’s brows knitted into a frown. ‘You want a list?’
‘Obviously not in writing. That would be silly. But this isn’t a simple situation...’
‘It’s as simple or as difficult as we choose to make it, Sarah.’
‘I don’t think it’s as easy as that, Raoul. I’m just trying to be sensible and practical. I mean, for starters, I expect you’d like to draw up some kind of pre-nup document?’ That had only just occurred to her on the spur of the moment—as had the notion that laying down guidelines might confer upon her some sort of protection, at least psychologically. The mind was capable of anything, and maybe—just maybe—she could train hers to operate on a less emotional level. At least to outward appearances. Besides, he would be mightily relieved. Although, looking at his veiled expression now, it was hard to tell.
‘Is that what you want?’ Raoul asked tonelessly—which had the instant effect of making Sarah feel truly horrible for having raised the subject in the first place.
In turn that made her angry, because why should he be the only one capable of viewing this marriage with impartial detachment? What was so wrong if she tried as well? He didn’t know what her driving motivation for doing so was because he wasn’t in love with her, but why should that matter? He didn’t have the monopoly on good sense, which was his pithy reason for their marriage in the first place!
‘It might be a good idea,’ she told him, in the gentle voice of someone committed to being absolutely fair. ‘We don’t want to get in a muddle over finances later on down the road. And also...’ She paused fractionally, giving him an opportunity for encouragement which failed to materialize. ‘I think we should both acknowledge that the most we can strive for is a really good, solid friendship...’
Her heart constricted as she said that, but she knew that she needed to bury all signs of her love. On the one hand, if he knew how she really felt about him the equality of their relationship would be severely compromised. On the other—and this would be almost worse—he would pity her. He might even choose to remind her that at no point, ever, had he led her to believe that lust should be confused with something else.
It would be a sympathetic let-down, during which he might even produce a hankie, all the better to mop up her overflowing tears. She would never live down the humiliation. In short, she would become a guilty burden which he would consider himself condemned to bear for the rest of his life. Whereas if she feigned efficiency she could at least avert that potential disaster waiting in the wings.
That thought gave her sufficient impetus to maintain her brisk, cheery façade and battle on through his continuing unreadable silence.
‘If you think that we’re embarking on a sexless marriage...’ Raoul growled, increasingly outraged by everything she said, and critical of her infuriating practicality—
although he really shouldn’t have been, considering it was a character trait he firmly believed in.
Sarah held up one hand to stop him in mid-flow. This would be her trump card—if it could be called such.
‘That’s not what I’m saying...’ Released from at least that particular burden—of just not knowing what to do with this overpowering attraction she felt for him—Sarah felt a whoosh of light-headed relief race through her. ‘We won’t take the one big thing between us away...’
The hand on his arm softened into a caress, moved to rest against his hard chest, and she stepped closer into him, arching up to him, glad that she no longer had to try and fight the sizzling attraction between them.
Raoul caught her hand and held it as he stared down at her upturned face,
‘So tell me,’ he drawled softly, ‘why didn’t you just agree to be my lover? It amounts to the same thing now, doesn’t it?’
‘Except,’ Sarah told him with heartfelt honesty, ‘maybe I just didn’t like the notion of being your mistress until I went past my sell-by date. Maybe that’s something I’ve only just realised.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you...do you want to reconsider your proposal?’
‘Oh, no...’ Raoul told her with a slow, slashing smile, ‘this is exactly what I want...’