‘I speak a little, and if I’m living there I’d soon learn a lot more. And I’ve always loved the idea of living in Paris; it’s such a beautiful, exciting city.’
Gravely, Randal said, ‘But you’d be a foreigner, far away from home—it wouldn’t be an easy life and you would have to speak French all the time. It can be difficult to be accepted into the local community. I’d think very carefully about going to work there.’
The waiter returned with their first course: a whole ogen melon, with a lid carved out like petals, golden and ripe, chilled from the fridge, filled with a medley of soft fruit—cherries, peach, strawberries steeped in liqueur. Was it Kirsch? she wondered, rolling it round her mouth.
‘I wasn’t expecting it to be this good,’ Randal said, tasting it too.
‘Neither was I,’ she admitted.
‘But you said you knew this place pretty well, had been here a few times.’
‘That’s true, but the food wasn’t this good when I ate here before. Maybe they have a new chef.’ She ate a cherry. ‘These must be imported; you won’t be able to get fresh cherries here for a couple of months. Tom and I picked cherries in Kent last June when we were staying at a farm. Of course, Kent cherries are pink and cream, not dark red, like these.’
Randal’s face tightened, a frown drawing his brows together. ‘You know, what I can’t understand is why on earth you let yourself come so close to marrying him. Surely your common sense warned you it would be the biggest mistake of your life if you went ahead with it?’
Defiantly, she retorted, ‘We could have been very happy! What do you know?’
‘You weren’t in love with him, and I suspect he wasn’t really in love with you, either! I didn’t get the impression he was sick with passion.’
She looked daggers at him. ‘You don’t know Tom; he’s a good man.’
‘Good, but boring. Oh, come on, Pippa, you know he would never set the world on fire. How could you have been happy with him? Unless all you were looking for was a nice, quiet, comfortable life with a man who wouldn’t ask for too much from you.’
She finished her melon and sat back, glowering. ‘Will you please stop talking about it?’
‘Maybe that really is what you want? A man who won’t expect too much?’
Her skin was burning; she resented his comments. ‘Look, thanks to you, my marriage is off so there’s no point in discussing it any further, is there?’
‘I’m just trying to work out your motivation,’ he calmly told her, and she clenched her hands into fists on her lap, wanting to punch him.
‘Mind your own business, will you? If I need a psychiatrist, I’ll go and see one. I don’t want you doing amateur work on my head.’
‘You need to do some thinking! You’re one of the most mixed-up women I’ve ever met! You have no idea about what goes on inside you, do you?’
She was about to snap back at him when the waiter appeared to take their plates away, so she closed her mouth and looked down while the man refilled their glasses. Pippa was startled to see she had drunk most of the white wine she had had in her glass. She had drunk it without realising what she was doing. It was strange; she had rarely before drunk much wine.
Maybe it was another way of running, fleeing from Randal Harding. She needed to muffle her senses, dull her nerve-ends. Escape.
She didn’t want to think about what she needed to escape from.
As the waiter went away again Randal’s supple, powerful hand stretched across the table to move the low vase of flowers between them so that he could see her more clearly.
‘I’d like you to come with me to see my son—will you?’
Surprised, she looked up, green eyes wide, hesitated. ‘I’m sure he would rather be alone with you. He must miss you, even if he does like the school.’
‘I want him to know you, and I want you to know him.’
She stared at him, biting her inner lip. ‘Oh. But…why…?’
‘Johnny rarely if ever sees his mother. I think he needs women in his life; I don’t want him to grow up in an all-male world. It isn’t healthy.’
She couldn’t argue with that. She believed children needed two parents—she knew she had needed, longed for that. ‘But surely you have a sister? Or another female relative?’
She knew so little about him; his marriage had been a towering wall between them, and she had seen nothing beyond that.
Impatiently, he said, ‘Why don’t you want to meet my boy?’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t it’s just that I…’ Her voice trailed off. How could she tell him she was afraid to meet his son in case she grew fond of him? The child had already lost his mother; it would be cruel to let him get used to her, herself, only for her to vanish too one day.
‘What?’ he demanded relentlessly, those grey eyes boring into her like lasers. He wasn’t giving up, and she didn’t have the energy for another fight, so with a sigh she gave in.
‘Oh, very well.’ It was easier to agree now and make some excuse when the time came than to go on arguing.
He gave her that warm, charming, triumphant smile. She regarded him dryly, understanding the triumph. He loved to win. That much she did know about him.
‘Good girl,’ he approved. ‘I’m sure you’ll like him.’
‘You’ve never told me much about him. What’s he like?’
‘Me,’ he said, with self-satisfaction. ‘He’s very like me.’
Sarcastically she murmured, ‘Oh, well, I’m sure he’s gorgeous, then.’
Randal looked at her through his lashes with an intimate, mocking amusement, making her heart knock at her ribcage; she expected him to make some tart come-back, but at that moment their main course arrived and they began to eat.
They spoke very little; she wondered if he was
