He knew she was in love with him, and felt a quiver of warning.
‘You’re so sweet and gentle,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t help wanting you.’ He leant his head to kiss her again, but she drew back sharply, shaking her head.
‘No! You mustn’t,’ she hoarsely said, and he looked at her with a new possessiveness.
‘You want me, too, don’t you, Pippa?’
There was a passionate curve to his mouth that made her afraid—afraid she wouldn’t be able to go on rejecting him for long. She wanted him too much. The beat of desire in her blood warned her that sooner or later, if he kept kissing her, she would give in to him. She couldn’t bear the idea of becoming his secret mistress; it would make her so ashamed.
She gave her notice to Miss Dalton the following Friday. It was accepted with a triumphant smile. Miss Dalton thought she had won. Her hostile tactics had scored a victory. Pippa allowed her to think whatever she chose. She didn’t care. All that mattered now was to get away from Randal before it was too late.
He had left the day before, to spend a week at a business conference in the States. By the time he returned Pippa had left the firm. She had left the area, too—given up her room, moved into central London, got a job in the insurance company for which she now worked, and had found another one-room flat in Islington, where she’d stayed until she had saved enough to buy her own home in Whitstall with the company’s help. She hadn’t kept in touch with anyone at Randal’s firm; she didn’t want him to know where she had gone, so she had had no news of him.
Until now…
Four years had made few changes in him, although his face seemed harder, more sardonic. That brooding look she remembered seemed darker, more stormy. Was his wife still having affairs? Maybe Randal had had some too, now. He couldn’t have been without a woman for four years.
She felt much older, much more in control of herself as she told him, ‘You’re married and I’m getting married next week!’
‘I’m not married any more,’ he said, and her stomach seemed to drop out of her in shock.
CHAPTER THREE
EYES open wide, she stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re not married any more? What do you mean?’
He smiled dryly. ‘Renata left me two years ago, ran off with a golf champion she met in Scotland. She’s always had an obsession with golf. Having landed a champion at the peak of his earning capacity, she wanted to hang on to him for good. She didn’t just want to have an affair; she was determined to marry him. She asked me for a divorce, I gave her one, and she married him the minute it was final.’
She absorbed that, watching him intently. How had he really felt when his wife asked for a divorce? He hadn’t wanted to divorce her, she remembered. That had never been in his mind. Had it been a shock to him when Renata asked him to let her go?
‘I didn’t hear about it,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was mentioned in the newspapers, but I rarely read gossip columns. What about your son?’
‘She left him with me.’
That shocked Pippa. What sort of mother could abandon her child without a backward glance? Of course, Mrs Harding had spent very little time with her son, according to Randal—had she preferred to leave the boy behind, or had Randal made that a condition of agreeing to the divorce?
He added a little contemptuously, ‘Renata told me her new husband didn’t want a child around, cramping his style. They lead a very busy social life off the gold course; children aren’t part of their scene. But then Renata was never a devoted mother, anyway.’
That, too, she remembered. ‘So he lives with you now,’ she thought aloud.
Randal grimaced. ‘That would be difficult to manage unless I hired someone to take care of him. I have to go away so much. No, he’s at boarding school in Buckinghamshire, and he likes it, thank heavens.’
‘Poor little boy, he must have been upset.’ The trauma of divorce always hurt the children most, didn’t it?
Randal shook his head. ‘I don’t think he was that bothered, as far as his mother was concerned. It didn’t mean he saw her less—how could he? She was rarely at home anyway. He had the stability of knowing I’d always be there for him. If he had preferred to be at home I’d have got him a full-time nanny, but he wanted to go to boarding school. One of his friends had been at his place for a year and Johnny thought it sounded great. He has lots of friends around day and night, all the things kids love—computers, sport, a swimming pool—and he’s doing well in class. Oddly enough, his new stepfather has a sort of cachet, too. Sports heroes in the family are assets. The other boys envy him. Renata and her new husband visited the school and Johnny was thrilled. I’m going to visit him, myself, this weekend. I’m allowed to take him out of school at weekends; I try to do that at least once a month.’
‘Well, give him my love.’ She went pink. ‘Not that he’ll remember me, of course.’ She had often thought about Johnny; strange to think that he had never even met her.
‘No, you never saw him, did you? It’s time you did. You must come with me at the weekend.’
She stiffened, eyes hurriedly moving away from him. ‘Well, I would have loved to, he sounds a lovely little boy, but this Saturday is my wedding day, you know.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he drawled. ‘Your wedding day. I’d forgotten that. And you’re going to marry that insurance man? You can’t be serious!’
She resented the ironic note in his voice, the mocking smile curling his lip. Flushed
