For The Sake Of His Child

her by overcoming her when she was at her most vulnerable.

Gina could feel his breath coming harshly, sense his heart beating strongly. His arms were relaxing their hold; he was drawing away. Now she was eager to see his face and find in it some reflection of her own joy.

But when she saw it her heart sank. It was full of caution and dismay, like that of a man who was asking himself how he could have been so stupid. A chill ran through her.

‘Perhaps that wasn’t a good idea,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I wouldn’t like you to think-I wanted to make you feel better, but I guess I chose the wrong way.’

Gina tried to collect her scattered thoughts. Through the singing in her blood she was vaguely aware that Carson was uttering words that denied what had just happened between them. But he couldn’t be. It was too beautiful and poignant to be denied.

He was disengaging himself. ‘Please don’t worry, Gina. I know you’re very vulnerable in this house, and I won’t be forcing myself on you.’

‘Carson, I don’t-’

‘After all, I understand how things are between you and Dan-I just don’t want you to be worried.’

‘I’m not,’ she said in a colourless voice. ‘You were just trying to make me feel better.’

‘Yes,’ he said quickly. ‘That was it. I went a little too far. Don’t hold it against me, for Joey’s sake.’

‘Of course not.’ To her own surprise her voice came out sounding normal. ‘I-I think I’d better go to bed now.’

‘Yes,’ he said hastily. ‘Me too.’

How anxious he was to get away from her! she thought sadly. How stupid the dreams of a moment ago seemed now! She bid him a hasty goodnight and fled to her room.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AT BREAKFAST next morning Carson said, without looking at her, ‘I’ll be home early tonight to let you go out.’

‘Go out? I’m not going anywhere,’ Gina said, puzzled.

‘Aren’t you meeting Dan to buy the engagement ring?’

‘Enga-?’ She rose from the table, full of wrath. ‘What has Dan been saying to you?’

‘Last night he said-well, he implied-’ The glint in her eyes was thrilling, if a little unnerving, and her hair glowed redder than ever. ‘He implied he’d asked you to marry him and-’

‘Yes, he asked me, but I didn’t answer because I couldn’t get his attention away from the race. You mean he just took it for granted, and he told you-?’ She took a long breath. ‘If Dan was here this minute I’d-well, it’s lucky for him that he isn’t.’

‘You’re not going to marry him?’

‘Not in a million years,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’d have told you-how could you think? Oh-h- h I could-’

A lock of fiery hair fell over her brow. She pushed it back. Carson watched her with delight. The sun had come out again.

As he went to the front door Joey joined him, anxiously signing. Are you and Gina cross?

‘No,’ Carson told him. ‘In fact, things couldn’t be better.’

When her temper had calmed, Gina called Dan.

‘I blame myself,’ she said. ‘I should have told you last night that I couldn’t marry you, but there was so much going on.’

‘But we had it all settled.’

‘Dan, we didn’t settle anything. We barely mentioned marriage between races. That’s no way to decide something so important.’

‘Gina, we’ve known for ages that we were going to get married. We haven’t made a fuss about it, but it’s been taken for granted.’

‘Maybe that’s why we shouldn’t. We’ve been good friends. Let’s keep it that way.’

He argued for a while, but she knew there was no going back. When Dan hung up he sounded bewildered rather than heartbroken. He would find someone else, she thought, someone who would appreciate the qualities he had and not worry about the ones he hadn’t. Once, that girl might have been herself, but now it was as though she’d been overtaken by a kind of divine discontent.

Carson seemed to be there with her, touching her face with gentle fingers, regarding her mouth with pleasure, kissing it so tenderly and lovingly that her heart almost stopped from the beauty of it. And then drawing back. Why? Because he thought she was engaged to Dan? Yes, she thought excitedly, because of that.

Only that? Was she fooling herself with what she longed to believe?

Dan had said, ‘You’d never even think of him in that way.’ But the thought had been lurking there since the first day, when Carson had sat in Bob’s Cafe and made the surroundings look drab against his vivid life. He’d disturbed her, but she’d thought that was because of the car incident. The truth was that he disturbed her because he disturbed her. There was no other reason.

She became aware that Joey was trying to get her attention, puzzled, because it was the first time she’d ever been oblivious to his needs.

Why are you smiling like that?

She hadn’t known she was smiling. ‘Because I’m happy.’

Why?

‘It would take too long to tell you. Let’s go out for a drive.’

In the peanut?

‘If you like.’

Carson had placed a smart, expensive car at her disposal, but Joey’s preferred method of transport was the peanut, and the other car stood, ignored and unloved, in the garage.

They went to a nearby aquadrome, and spent the day boating.

Arriving home in the evening, Gina found a message on the answering machine to say that Carson would be late after all. On the whole he kept his promise to be early, but sometimes a delay couldn’t be helped.

Joey was worn out from his day, and almost fell asleep over his tea, so Gina didn’t anticipate trouble at bedtime.

She was wrong.

Joey wanted to stay up to see his father. There followed an argument conducted with furiously flashing fingers, in which Gina tried to convince Joey that ‘bedtime’ meant ‘bedtime’. He could fight his corner as stubbornly as any other child, and after a while he gave up on fingers and settled for shaking his head. Whereupon Gina also gave up on fingers, tossed him over her shoulder and marched upstairs.

She came down half an hour later, worn out but smiling. She poured herself a glass of wine and settled down for an evening with the television. But none of the programmes appealed to her, and she began to rummage among Carson’s collection of videos.

Some were shop-bought, many were business programmes taped from television. At last Gina came to one which had no label or anything to indicate what it might be. Intrigued, she put it on.

She found herself looking at a churchyard on a bright summer’s day. The church was a beautiful old ivy-clad building made of grey stone, with a tower and a steeple. And there, coming through the porch, was a bride and groom.

The bride was dazzlingly lovely in a flowing white dress and veil. Everything about her was perfect-her face, her figure, her hair, the gaze she turned on the young man beside her. And his eyes never left her. For him she was the only woman on earth.

Then Gina realised she was looking at Carson.

This was the wedding of the young Carson Page and Brenda, the girl who’d gone on to become Angelica Duvaine. Barely conscious of her own actions, Gina sat up and leaned forward, alert to every nuance as the young