The Fatherhood Affair
Emma Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

A GREAT deal could be done in two months.

The thought brought a feeling of satisfaction to Natalie Hayes as she walked from the foyer of the Regent Hotel and up the grand staircase leading to Kable’s Restaurant. Today she intended to show Damien Chandler precisely how much could be done in two months, and how much could be made to happen.

This luncheon was the ideal occasion to let Damien know she didn’t need him as a watchdog any more. She could take care of herself. Damien’s sense of duty—or was it guilt?—could finally be laid to rest.

She was back to her best weight. The bold orange dress was light-years away from any suggestion of lingering bereavement. It hugged her curves and highlighted both her recently acquired tan and the artful blonde streaks in her radically restyled hair. Damien couldn’t call her a pale ghost of herself today.

Her face had colour. She no longer had hollows in her cheeks. She had played up her light amber eyes with a subtle shading of brown and gold. The shorter, softer, brighter hairstyle suited her face much better than the long and rather lifeless fall of honey-coloured hair she had simply let grow in the past twelve months. Natalie was satisfied she looked quite pretty again, younger, and certainly up-to-date in every fashion sense.

She had felt absolutely confident about walking into this hotel, one of the classiest hotels in Sydney. She looked like a new woman. She felt like a new woman. She was a new woman.

There was a buoyant lilt of anticipation in her step as she reached the landing that led to the highly reputed restaurant. She was going to enjoy the surprise in Damien’s eyes. He would have to realise, must be made to realise, that she no longer required a crutch or a spur or advice or criticism. All these things he had supplied in abundance over the past year. It was time to bring it to a halt. A dead halt.

She saw him seated on the sofa beyond the receptionist’s desk. He was hunched forward, apparently contemplating the drink in his hand. Despite an air of weariness, probably from jet lag, he looked as impressive as he always did. A three-piece grey suit had the expensive sheen of silk in the fabric. Tailored for him in Hong Kong, Natalie surmised.

He glanced up and saw her.

The shock of recognition on his face was not the reaction Natalie had expected. Surprise, yes. She had hoped to surprise him. She had not expected a reaction that arrested all movement, dulled even further the light in his eyes, an outright withdrawal away from her into himself.

It was too extreme for Damien. It mangled the smile that had been hovering inside her. It sent an odd tingle of apprehension down her spine. She stopped walking. She was assailed by the sense of having a comfortable familiarity forcibly taken away from her.

Natalie had never seen Damien Chandler completely thrown by anything. He was always in charge of himself. He was always in charge of everything and everyone within his ambit. It was nigh on impossible to tell what went on inside the man. He revealed that to no one.

In the space of a few seconds, she saw total shock, followed by a twist of anguish, a jaw-clenching look of determination, veiled anger, then a plainly visible relaxation of his features into a smile of forced, lukewarm pleasure as he put his glass down and rose to his feet.

‘Natalie...’ He managed to inject both surprise and delight into his voice, although what he really felt Natalie had no idea. He moved to meet her. ‘What a joy to see you looking so brilliantly alive!’

Damien was a master of such blandishments. Natalie had heard him do it to every woman he had met over the years they had known each other. It sounded right. It was what she had wanted to hear. But something was missing. That something was approval. She couldn’t see it in his eyes.

Not that she needed Damien’s approval. It was simply that...why were his eyes full of questions instead of recognising she had answered all the criticisms he had angrily impressed on her at their last meeting?

Then he took hold of her hands as though it was the most natural thing in the world to do. But it wasn’t. Not with her. She had seen him perform the same welcoming gesture with other women, making a flirtatious intimacy of it and often accompanying it with a light kiss. He had never tried it with her. Never! Not even when she was Brett’s bride and Damien was best man at their wedding.

Her shoulder muscles stiffened as electric prickles ran up her arm. She didn’t understand what was going on. Damien wasn’t supposed to step out of the mould he had established in her mind as Brett’s closest friend and business partner. She did want him to drop the role of self-appointed guardian to Brett’s widow, but...his uncharacteristic behaviour was ruining everything.

It was a relief that he didn’t try to press any closer. If he had, she would have recoiled, unable to prevent the reflex action. As it was, she was acutely aware of the warmth and strength of the fingers enclosing hers, and the caressing graze of his thumbs across her knuckles.

‘I leave you a pale shadow of yourself, and I come back to find you glowing,’ he said in light bemusement, his tone belying the intense probe of his eyes. ‘You benefit from my absence. Is there some special reason behind the change?’

Natalie shrugged. ‘Lots of reasons.’ He was one of them. She forced a smile. ‘Wasn’t it your intention to jolt me into getting on with my life?’

‘The result is stunning.’

‘But you don’t like it.’

‘I prefer to have more time in which to make a judgement.’

He looked at her in a way he had never overtly looked at her before. Raw, jungle hunger. Natalie was stunned by the sudden blaze of uncloaked desire in his eyes. It burnt into her, making her feel naked and exposed. It bore no relation whatsoever to the kind and supportive business friendship they were supposed to be having. It sizzled with unrepressed sexuality.

She felt her heart catch. Her mind jumbled chaotically around the thought that Damien now saw her as different from the unexciting hausfrau she had been. And he was letting her know it. Without hesitation, he was jettisoning all of their past. The years of keeping his distance from her had just winked out.

He meant to have her. No doubt about that. Knowing Damien as she did, Natalie realised she would have her hands full trying to stop him. The charge of animal electricity coming from him had her nerves leaping like fire-crackers.

He released her hands. Natalie’s relief was short-lived. He smoothly moved to link one of her arms around his for escorting her into the restaurant. His eyes didn’t leave hers. ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

She wondered what type of hunger he had on his mind. ‘Yes,’ she said lightly, trying to fight the unsettling effect of his closeness.

Taking her arm was an ordinary enough courtesy. It was absurd to have this skittish feeling of wanting to shy away from him, to put more distance between them. He couldn’t seduce her into taking him as a lover. It would be like involving herself with Brett all over again. She wouldn’t consider it. Not in a million years. Damien had better put it out of his mind or this luncheon would come to a very abrupt end.

He gestured their readiness to the maître d’, who smiled and set off to lead them to their table.

Natalie registered that the smile was a typical female response to Damien. Most women would classify him as outstanding in the tall, dark and handsome category. Add to that the charisma of keen intelligence, a charm of manner based on rock-solid self-assurance, and the attention he drew was perfectly reasonable.

As they passed tables where women were seated, interested looks were cast his way. Damien Chandler commanded a second glance from everyone, men included. He carried the air of being someone. He stood out from the general run. People noticed him, remembered him. Such attributes were both social and business assets. Objectively, Natalie had recognised this long ago.

She would never have believed that the simple act of having her arm linked to his would make anything different, but it did. The looks directed at Damien slid to her, looks of envy and assessment, matching her against him as a couple. It did nothing for Natalie’s self-confidence.

All the same, Damien was not going to sweep her off her feet. She didn’t care how many women fancied him or how fanciable he was. She knew better than to lay her head on his chopping-block. Easy come, easy go. She had seen it too many times to be even faintly interested. That he could be turned on by her new image was virtually an insulting demonstration of how facile his sexual urges were.

Damien would never marry. Of that she felt certain. He had done it once, in his mid-twenties before they had ever met. From all accounts, it had been his wife who had walked out on him. Which carried its own message to Natalie.

She was glad to reach their table and be seated. She concentrated on laying her shoulder-bag beside the leg of her chair, smiling at the hovering waiter, ordering a champagne cocktail, smoothing the table napkin across her lap. The actions gave her time to recover some of the sense of well-being and purpose with which she had started out for this meeting.

She felt Damien’s gaze on her and glanced up to meet it, determined on acting naturally. ‘How was your trip?’ she asked.

‘Successful.’

That was normal. Damien was a powerhouse of energy and inspiration. She smiled. ‘Does this mean you’ll be back and forth to Hong Kong for the foreseeable future?’

‘No.’

His thick black lashes swept down. Combined with deeply set eyelids, they had the effect of making his eyes look dark from a distance. Their silvery-grey colour came as an intriguing surprise. When he looked up his expression was flint-like and purposeful.

‘I’ve sold the company, Natalie. It’s being taken over by a Chinese consortium that wants to spread its interests out of Hong Kong. If it’s allowed to do so.’

She was dumbstruck. Changes were coming thick and fast today. She could hardly put two thoughts together. Concern for him slashed through her mind, prompting the question, ‘Were you in financial trouble, Damien? Did paying me Brett’s share...’

‘No,’ he answered curtly. ‘As I told you before, and as cruel as it may seem, Brett’s death...’ He didn’t go on.

‘...was my financial solution,’ she concluded for him. The solution to several other problems as well, she thought bitterly. But the cost of it was still difficult to bear.

‘I never wish to refer to the matter again,’ Damien said, a hostility in his voice.

‘You’re not selling the company because of me,’ Natalie protested. ‘You can have the money back if you need it. I haven’t touched it.’

‘It has nothing to do with money, Natalie. I simply want to be out.’

‘Why? You’re so good at what you do. Surely...’ Her mind clicked on to another path. Was it because Brett was gone? Damien was superb at selling conversions for computer programs. He was brilliant at working out what was required by the clients, but Brett had been the force behind delivering what was promised. His was the genius that had put it all together and made it work.

‘It’s not the same without Brett,’ Damien said flatly. ‘The company has the personnel and expertise to carry on. It’s still a viable business, Natalie. But I miss Brett’s quick understanding of what’s needed. I’m reminded of him all the time. It was something we shared.’

‘Yes. Yes, I know.’

They’d been as close as, if not closer than brothers. That wasn’t to say they never fought over issues. They did. Like cats and dogs. In the end, they always stood together, no matter what. Their loyalty to each other was so strong that it overrode the loyalty owed to her.

The waiter brought their drinks and handed them menus. Natalie stared blindly at the printed list for several moments, realising for the first time that Damien’s grief had probably been as deep as her own. Worse, in the sense that he had been abseiling on the cliff, a helpless witness as first Ryan, then Brett, trying to save their son, fell to their deaths. At least she had been spared that.

Natalie fought back tears. She had to put her dead child behind her. She had to put the misery behind her. She had let grief swallow up her life long enough. She was not going to let her resolution slip now. She selected the Caesar salad as an entrée, and the Atlantic salmon for her main course, then set the menu aside.

Damien was watching her.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘So what do you plan to do?’

He relaxed. ‘I’m obliged to stay on with the company for six months to ease the change-over. There’s a three-year exclusion clause from taking on any similar type of work.’

‘That’s quite a lot of time to fill in.’

‘I have a project in mind.’

‘What is it?’

He looked intently at her, as though there should be some intimate understanding between them. ‘Don’t you have any idea?’

‘None whatsoever,’ she answered airily.

‘That makes everything a little more difficult.’

He paused a minute, reassessing the situation. She gave him no encouragement. She kept an expression of bland curiosity pasted on her face.

‘What are your plans, Natalie?’ he asked, deciding to approach his purpose from another angle. ‘Did you come to this meeting with a definite idea as to its outcome?’

An appalling thought struck her. Had Damien interpreted her new image as an attempt to attract him? Natalie burned with embarrassment. How could he entertain such an implausible idea? Perhaps, though, that was why he had looked at her in the way he did. The need to rectify any misunderstanding caused her amber eyes to glitter with fiery golden sparks.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Well?’

‘I wanted to tell you certain things.’

He smiled encouragement, confident of holding his influence over her thoughts and actions. ‘Go ahead and tell me,’ he invited, gesturing with open hands.

‘For one thing, I don’t want you guarding me like a watchdog any more.’

His smile turned rueful. ‘It was only for your protection, Natalie. You were...rather lost and defenceless.’

‘Well, I’ve found my defences again.’

‘Fine!’

‘And I never want to hear another word of criticism from you. It’s my life and I’ll live it as I see fit. Not as you see fit.’

That sobered him. His eyes went still and wary.

Her chin lifted in defiant self determination. ‘I don’t want you to ever mention Brett again in my hearing,’ she added strongly. Her flow of thought then faltered under his hard, relentless stare.

‘Is that all?’ he asked tersely.

‘More or less,’ she answered. ‘But I’ll think of more if you press me.’

‘In other words, you want me out of your life.’

‘Yes.’

‘As a business advisor and as a friend?’

‘Yes.’

He left her no alternative if he wanted to mix sex with friendship. Her gratitude for what he had done for her didn’t extend that far. Nevertheless, she did feel a certain hollowness burrowing through her stomach. He had been like a cog around which her life had turned for a long time. A mainstay. Her head swam a little with the enormity of cutting free from him. Did she really want that?

‘Is there another man?’ His harsh tone of voice verged on the critical.

Natalie’s eyes flared. ‘Not yet. But there will be.’

He returned a steely challenge. ‘What do you really want, Natalie?’

Had he somehow read her mind? Sensed the doubt? The fearful uncertainty in severing all ties? Natalie focused hard on the question. If she was going to be her own woman, she had to know the answer. It came to her in a burst of bright clarity.

‘The best thing that ever happened to me was Ryan. I can’t replace him. He was a unique and wonderful child. But I can have another child who can be just as unique and wonderful, Damien. That’s what I intend to have.’

Damien sat back abruptly in his chair. Once again his face reflected shock. He stared at her as though he had never known her, an unseeing blankness in his eyes, all the clever intelligence frozen, or turned inward.

It sent a chill through Natalie’s heart. He had left her. The impulse to draw him back surged through her so wildly, words were spilling off her tongue before she could stop them.

‘Aren’t you glad to be rid of me? Aren’t you glad to have any responsibility to me set aside?’

The taunt succeeded. His eyes refocused on hers. ‘No.’

The stark negative gave her nothing to work on. Damn the man and his self-sufficiency! Why couldn’t he reveal what was going on inside him?

‘What purpose is there in our ever seeing each other again?’ she pressed. ‘Give me one good reason.’

‘Your husband was my friend,’ he said slowly, picking his words with care. ‘However much you think he loved you, I believe he was no friend to you.’

The import of those words was not lost on Natalie. She sat very still, holding her breath. Damien’s loyalty to Brett was cracking. Would he now speak the truth about her husband, reveal the infidelities he had helped to cover up? Did Damien even suspect how much she already knew, or was he still convinced he and Brett had artfully concealed everything?

He leaned forward. As though he had flicked a switch that flung open the windows of his mind, his eyes once more blazed with naked desire.

‘The reason I sold the company was to have the time to prove to you—conclusively and forever—that you married the wrong man, Natalie.’ The low throb of passion in his voice gathered a deep soul-shaking conviction as he added, ‘The man you should have married was me. Not Brett. Me!’

CHAPTER TWO

MARRIAGE? To Damien?

Natalie felt as though she had been pummelled in the solar plexus. Her mind was blown into whirling confusion. She stared incredulously at Damien, struggling to connect what she knew of him to the words he had spoken. He held her gaze, relentlessly reinforcing what he’d said with compelling intensity.

She supposed she should feel flattered a man of his many attractions wanting her. She wondered what influenced his choice. He hadn’t mentioned love. She wasn’t the first woman he’d wanted, and wouldn’t be the last. So why her?

Natalie’s shell-shocked mind finally grasped the motive behind Damien’s statement.

Brett.

She felt sick.

And angry.

She leaned forward, her eyes a golden shower of blistering sparks. ‘Even now, with Brett in the grave, you can’t help competing with him, can you? You can’t let go. You want to take me over to prove to your insatiable ego that you were the better man.’

He grimaced in frustration. ‘That’s nonsense! Why are you avoiding the obvious?’

‘The obvious is that Brett’s still on your mind,’ she retorted. ‘You began and ended your ridiculous claim with Brett. After I’d specifically asked you never to mention him to me again.’

‘So it still hurts that much, does it? Goddammit, Natalie, I’ve waited long enough! Will you recognise me for what I am?’

‘That’s the problem, Damien. I do recognise you for what you are. You told me straight out that you sold the company because it wasn’t any fun without Brett. It was something you shared. So what’s the new project? Me. Something else you can share with him in some tormented, twisted, perverted way.’

‘I’m not sharing you with anyone,’ he declared indignantly. ‘When I saw you today...’

‘You thought the fun could begin.’

From somewhere inside her came a billow of outrage. It activated a burst of adrenalin. She reached down, snatched her shoulder-bag from the floor, opened it, and grabbed her wallet.

‘I thought you had finally put your grief behind you,’ Damien continued.

‘I will not be beholden to you for anything, Damien.’ She found a twenty-dollar note and slapped it on the table. ‘That will pay for our drinks. I don’t want to eat with you. I don’t want to be with you. I will never, in any circumstance, sleep with you. Do you understand what those words mean?’

‘So the brave new front is just a charade,’ he mocked angrily. ‘You can’t face up to a different reality.’

‘What’s different?’ She returned her wallet to her bag and stood up, casting him a look of contempt. ‘If you want to prove you’re a better man than Brett, you can run after all the women he had on the side.’

‘What?’ He looked astounded, incredulous. ‘You knew?’

‘Of course I knew. And your part in it, as well.’

‘I played no part in it...’

‘Don’t lie to me, Damien. You covered up for Brett. He deceived me. You betrayed me.’

Disdaining to glance at Damien again, Natalie set off down the length of the dining-room to the exit of the restaurant.

‘Natalie...’ It was both a protest and an appeal.

She ignored it. She heard Damien coming after her, brushing past hovering waiters, but she neither turned her head nor slowed her pace. She felt utterly deflated and cast down. She should never have trusted the feeling that he meant well by her. It was a sham so he could win out in the end. Against a dead man.

As she stepped into the reception nook outside the restaurant, Damien caught her arm, forcibly halting her. She gave him an intimidating stare of icy rejection.

‘What did you want from me that I didn’t give?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me one thing.’

‘Approval. As in a-p-p-r-o-v-a-l. APPROVAL as in block letters. Approval as in italics. Simply approval. That’s what I wanted from you, Damien. That’s what you never gave me. Not even today.’

‘You’ve always had that, Natalie.’

‘Never.’

He dragged in a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry I was impatient with your grieving for Brett. Terribly sorry.’

‘I was grieving for Ryan, not Brett. Brett had whittled away my love for him. There was none left.’

‘How was I to know that? You never gave any indication. I never realised you were disillusioned with your marriage.’

‘Who parades private pain in public?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘How would you have reacted if I’d come running to tell you about Brett’s affairs? You would have hated me for it, Natalie.’

‘It would have destroyed your friendship,’ she mocked.

She wrenched her arm out of his grasp and headed for the staircase. What he said hurt. It bit painfully into her psyche. The deep-seated sense of rejection, the sense of failure, of being a discard, inadequate.

Damien fell into step beside her. ‘What makes you think I covered up for him?’

‘I know.’

‘Give me one example.’

‘You slipped up at the funeral.’ She paused at the head of the stairs to face him with bleak derisive eyes. ‘The woman who went on the camp with you and Brett that weekend...it was reported that she was your companion, Damien. She wasn’t.’

‘She was,’ he insisted.

‘Don’t think I’m ungrateful for your discretion. If the media had latched on to the fact that adultery was mixed up with the death of my son and my husband, they would have had more of a field day than they did.’

‘Natalie, I swear before God she was with me. I invited her. I took her there. She shared my tent. Brett had Ryan with him.’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t add up, Damien. She wept copiously at the funeral. You didn’t go near her. Not one word or gesture of comfort.’

‘I didn’t leave your side,’ he asserted with passion. ‘She meant nothing to me. She was keen on abseiling. I asked her on the trip to make it a foursome instead of a threesome. I wasn’t to know you were going to be too sick to come. We were already there at the campsite when Brett arrived without you.’

Was he speaking the truth? Had she misread the situation? ‘How did Ryan get so close to the edge of the cliff? Why wasn’t Brett watching him? Ryan was a sensible little boy. He would have obeyed his father.’

‘Natalie, for God’s sake! Accidents can happen so quickly. Don’t torture yourself like this.’

‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she said dully. ‘Nothing can bring my beautiful little boy back.’

She started down the staircase. She had to get away from all this. It wasn’t doing her any good, raking over the miseries of the past. She had to look to the future, break with Damien now, start a new life. That was abundantly clear.

Damien wasn’t a friend. And that hurt, too. In his way, he had acted honourably towards her. Yet she had known he had the same attitude towards challenges as Brett had. They were two of a kind. She simply hadn’t anticipated that he would see her as a challenge.

He was matching steps with her, still not prepared to let her walk away from him. ‘Why didn’t you leave Brett?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t imagine any man would understand. Trapped by a pregnancy...making excuses. Trapped by wanting the best for her baby...making compromises. Hoping things would change. Wanting to believe in renewed promises because the sense of failure was too hard to face.

Brett wasn’t all bad. Mostly, but not all. She had fallen in love with his joy in living, his wit, his charm, his exuberant personality, the athletic body he made master of any physical challenge, the mind that thrived on solving problems few others could. She had thought herself the luckiest woman in the world that Brett Hayes had fallen in love with her.

She had never considered herself anyone special. She was averagely pretty, helped along by a better than average figure that had been very firm and trim when she had met Brett. She had been working then as a bush-walking guide, supplementing an irregular income from the paintings she sold to the tourists who flocked to her hometown. Noosa was a very popular seaside resort on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, and Brett had been one more tourist, indulging his love of the outdoors, and sweeping Natalie into a marriage that had seemed idyllic. At first.

She had come to realise, painfully, that Brett saw women as a challenge, too. All of them. He couldn’t resist testing himself, over and over again. Natalie he had put in a completely separate category. She was his chosen wife. The mother of his child.

Ryan...always Ryan stopping her from taking that final step away from Brett. He was indisputably a loving father, proud of his son. Ryan had adored his Daddy. She simply hadn’t been able to bring herself to deprive them of the relationship that was naturally theirs. In the end, it would have saved Ryan’s life—both their lives—if she had. She shook off the torment of ‘if only’s.

‘Brett felt inadequate,’ Damien declared. ‘He...’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Natalie answered coldly.

Brett was the most gifted, talented individual she had met in her life. A bright golden god among other men. Brett made other people feel inadequate. People like Damien. People like herself.

Damien touched her arm to try to draw her attention back to him. ‘If you knew about his infidelities, why didn’t you divorce him? What stopped you?’ he asked, exasperation creeping into his voice.

They had reached the foyer. It didn’t really matter what she said to Damien. Whether he comprehended it or not was irrelevant. She was not going to see him again. She glanced at him with determined finality and gave him the one reason that had kept her with Brett.

‘He was the father of my child.’

She didn’t pause to gauge his reaction to that bare statement. She had no intention of explaining or embellishing it. She took a direct line towards the doors that led out of the hotel. This meeting with Damien had been a disaster from start to finish. She was ashamed of having been deluded into thinking he actually cared about her as a person.

Of course, she had realised that to Damien she was an extension of Brett, but there had been thoughtful gestures from him which she had believed were for her sake alone. She had thought he cared about her interests, suggesting ways of developing and extending her creative talent. She had no idea he was so...well, almost deranged...in his obsession about Brett.

Tears blurred her eyes. She had looked forward to telling Damien about the commission to illustrate a children’s book. Damien had taught her creative graphic design. She had imagined him being pleased for her. She had actively gone after the job and got it, an achievement she was sure would earn his approval. Finally.

She had tried so hard to get her life moving again in order to please him. She was proud of her efforts over the past two months. She had wanted Damien to be proud of her.

Disappointment wrenched her heart. This was her second bad mistake, letting another man like Brett get close to her. At least Damien wasn’t pressing any more questions on her. She was grateful for his silence as he accompanied her out to the covered driveway that serviced the hotel. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing more to say. Except goodbye. Forever.

‘Taxi?’ the doorman asked.

‘Please,’ Natalie answered.

‘We need to talk this through, Natalie,’ Damien murmured as the doorman moved forward to summon the first cab from the rank in the street below.

‘No point,’ she demurred.

‘You have some serious misconceptions...’

‘Mine have already been sorted out. Yours haven’t.’

‘Look at me!’ he commanded in exasperation.

‘I don’t want to.’

She kept her gaze steadfastly locked on the taxi turning slowly up the duel driveway, taking the lane closest to the hotel entrance. She couldn’t bear to see that blaze of desire in Damien’s eyes again. It reduced her to nothing but another potential conquest.

‘I’ve a lot to say to you,’ he burst out.

‘I’ve heard enough.’

‘You can’t dismiss five years in five minutes and reduce it to nothing, Natalie.’

‘Watch me.’

‘Give me the chance to explain. You owe me that.’

‘I didn’t ask you for anything, Damien. You gave it.’

‘You accepted it.’

‘Call me stupid. I didn’t understand what my role was,’ she said bitterly. ‘I didn’t realise I was supposed to become another bed partner.’

‘You’re the woman I want in my life.’

‘For the present.’

‘Give it a chance.’

‘So you can play and lay while I have your children?’ She turned derisive eyes to his as the taxi halted in front of her. ‘No, thanks, Damien. I’ve been through that once. Perhaps the next woman you feed that line to will be more accommodating. Goodbye and good luck to you.’

The passenger door of the taxi was held open for her by the hotel employee. She stepped forward and swung herself into the back seat.

‘Natalie...’

She ignored the urgency in Damien’s voice, but she couldn’t ignore the strong bulk of his body.

‘I’m coming with you.’ His powerfully muscled thigh pressed against hers.

She hastily scrambled to the other side of the seat. ‘No, you’re not,’ she protested.

‘Otherwise we will never see each other again.’

‘That’s what I want.’

He closed the door. The inside of the car suddenly seemed filled with his presence. It pulsed with an energy that clutched at her heart and caused her senses to sharpen alarmingly.

‘It’s over!’ she cried, feverishly desperate in her need to convince him.

‘It never started,’ he replied, a rough edge of passion in his voice.

‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

He turned to her, his face stripped of any civilised veneer. Raw, jungle hunger leapt from his eyes and impaled her.

‘I won’t accept you judging me by your experience with Brett.’

Her mind swam with the realisation that she had underestimated Damien. She shouldn’t have likened him to Brett. He was as dark in nature as Brett was bright. Dark and deep and intense, and with all his unleashed energy, indefinably dangerous.

For years she had wondered what went on inside him. What restraints he had...and, if all his secret longings were bared, what would a woman experience? The thought had intrigued her. She was getting more than a glimpse of the answer now, and it both fascinated and frightened her. She saw a primitive male hunter, relentless in his determination to track down his quarry, unstoppable.

She shivered. ‘I don’t want you, Damien. I don’t want you.’ She heard the wary, almost excited note in her voice, and didn’t care as long as he got the message.

‘What would happen if I took you in my arms, Natalie?’ His eyes burned down to the agitated rise and fall of her breasts as she took quick breaths to calm her pulse-rate. ‘If I were to kiss and caress you...’

‘Stop it! I won’t listen! Go away!’

But the images evoked did have an insidiously seductive power. Damien might be the hunter, but as a woman she knew if she tossed over the traces, threw everything upon the wind...anything and everything was possible. There had been solitary, vulnerable moments when she had fantasised... Damien wild, irrepressible, adoring her, approving of her, being proud of her. They had been some kind of solace at the time when Brett was entertaining himself with some other woman.

She had sternly repressed such wicked thoughts. That they should focus on her husband’s best friend made them even more reprehensible. They were not fitting for a married woman who considered herself moral and decent. It dragged her down to Brett’s level. Natalie had been ashamed of herself that they had occurred at all.

Now Damien wanted to do what she had forbidden herself to think about. More. Natalie felt there was some key to her mind and heart and body, and if some man was to unlatch the lock... Brett had had the key for a while but he had thrown it away.

Damien probably had the key, too, but it would not last. The experience would be wild and wonderful and dangerous, and in the end, as with Brett, would cost her too much. She had to stop this now, not let Damien tempt her into something she knew would lead to more hurt and disillusionment. Men didn’t seem to understand how it was for a woman: the giving of more than her body.

She felt for the handle of the passenger door on her side. If Damien wouldn’t get out of the taxi...

‘You’ve always avoided touching me, Natalie,’ he said softly, suggestively.

‘You avoided it, too,’ she flung at him.

‘We didn’t dare touch one another for fear of what would follow,’ he taunted her.

‘I feel the same way now.’

‘I don’t.’

There was too much truth in what Damien was suggesting. Natalie felt an urgent need to escape from it. She found the handle, lifted it, and flung the door open. Before Damien could stop her she leapt out of the taxi, plunging away from him.

She heard the shout, ignored it. The screech of tyres gripping the road surface in protest she didn’t ignore. She didn’t see the car in the other lane. She didn’t feel it hit her, and she didn’t feel any pain. Violet, purple and red colours merged momentarily on her retina. She felt an impact. Then nothing, nothing at all.

CHAPTER THREE

NATALIE’S mind was definitely fuzzy. She had the sense of being disembodied. She was in a bed. It wasn’t her own bed. How she knew she wasn’t quite sure, but she knew.

She tried to reason out where she was and why. Nothing surfaced. Her memory seemed to have disintegrated into a jigsaw where the pieces needed to be sorted out. She gave up the effort. The thought came to her she should open her eyes and look.

She did so with some trepidation. It was a hospital bed. Tubes looped to her arm. She shut her eyes again. She’d seen enough to identify where she was. It was an intensive care unit.

Someone was talking nearby.

‘...severe concussion. Brains are a bit scrambled at the present moment. Nothing broken. Nothing that won’t heal properly.’

It was an affable voice, speaking with confident authority, but how dared he speak of her brains as if they were a pastiche of broken eggs!

‘So the prognosis is...?’

A different voice, deeper, warmer, richer, more passionate.

‘Fine. There’ll be some memory loss for a short period. That will return quite naturally.’

‘How long?’

‘Somewhere between a few days and a few months.’

‘But her memories, all her recollections, will return?’

‘Without fail. Everything.’

Natalie forced a wary eye open. Who were these people who appeared to be discussing her quite openly in front of her?

The light wasn’t too bad. She opened the other eye, as well. Two doctors stood at the foot of the bed.

‘Ah, she’s awake again.’

That was the affable voice. It belonged to a short, slightly built man with sandy hair and spectacles.

‘Do you know your name?’ he asked.

‘Of course, I know my name. It’s Natalie.’

‘Natalie what?’

‘It’s not Natalie Watt at all.’

‘Can you tell me your second name, Natalie?’

The persistent questioning made her feel very uncomfortable. She knew she knew the answer but it didn’t come to mind.

‘Natalie Something,’ she responded irritably. They wouldn’t be able to argue with that.

‘That’s good. Very good,’ the affable man soothed.

Natalie dismissed him. She turned her attention to the other man, the one with the passionate voice. He was tall and broad-shouldered and so good-looking Natalie bet all the nurses swooned in his wake. He moved around the bed and sat on a chair beside her. He had riveting eyes, grey, with double rows of thick black lashes.

‘You’ve had a nasty knock on the head. Seven stitches. Everything is going to be fine,’ he assured her.

‘I know that, Doctor,’ she assured him back. She’d heard the other one say there was nothing that wouldn’t heal properly.

‘I’m not a doctor.’

‘Who are you then?’

‘I’m... Damien.’

He looked anxious, uncertain, so she smiled to put him at ease. ‘Hello, Damien.’

He relaxed and took her hand in his. ‘Hello, Natalie.’

He had a beautiful voice. His fingers gently stroked her palm. Her skin tingled. It was a pleasurable sensation, soothing in one way yet oddly intimate, as though he was imparting some of his own energy through his fingers. She could feel little rivulets of warmth travelling up her arm. She wondered if he had healing hands.

‘I like your touch,’ she said.

His face broke into a smile. His lips gave it a rueful twist but his eyes simmered with a warm approval that seemed to zing right into her heart. There was something very special about this man.

‘Are you some kind of therapist?’ she asked.

He looked at her helplessly, seemed to come to some decision. ‘I’m your lover,’ he explained. There was a blaze of determination in his eyes, as though he wanted to sear that claim indelibly on her mind.

Natalie stared at him in consternation. How could she mislay a memory of that magnitude? What was she doing with a lover anyway? Then she recollected she was in an intensive care unit. Only family was allowed there. Had he lied to get in? If so, who had sent him? And why?

She looked sharply at the doctor who still stood at the foot of the bed. Did he accept this man as her lover? He didn’t look suspicious. He seemed to have adopted the role of interested spectator. Natalie decided to get some facts straight.

‘Where is my mother?’ she demanded.

The doctor gestured to the man called Damien. Natalie swung her gaze back to him, her eyes sharply watchful as she waited for answers.

‘Your mother’s in Noosa, Natalie.’

‘Did the ambulance take me to Brisbane?’

‘No. You’re in Sydney.’

‘What for?’

‘Do you remember what happened to you?’

‘I had a fall in the gym. Tried a double somersault over the vault.’ She frowned, not quite sure she had that right. ‘Maybe it was a triple.’

‘You’ve been floating in and out of consciousness for two days, Natalie.’

She’d lost two days of her life. No wonder they were dripping something into her arm! She couldn’t comprehend why they had flown her to Sydney.

‘Can I go home now?’ she asked.

‘If you tried to stand up you’d probably fall over. Try sitting up.’

Natalie tried and gave up without a struggle. It was easier to lie still.

‘You had an accident. Your memory will come back. So will your strength.’ Damien fondled her hand, pressing reassurance. ‘It will simply take a little time.’

She had a very uneasy feeling about those statements. ‘What’s wrong with my memory?’

‘What happened in the gym must have occurred years ago, Natalie. You’re here because you were knocked over by a car.’

Years ago?

Her mind whirled. That couldn’t be right. She stared at him, looking for some waver in his steadfast gaze. There was none. The grey eyes had more than caring concern in them. They poured a message straight into her bewildered mind. I’m here for you. I’ll look after you. I’m the rock for you to lean on.

‘How old am I?’ she asked, feeling that he knew. She should know, too.

‘Twenty-eight,’ he said without hesitation.

He squeezed her hand hard—or did she squeeze his? Twelve years lost! She had been sixteen when she had taken that fall in the gym. What had she done with her life since then? She remembered her ambition to become an artist, as well as a great gymnast. She suspected she hadn’t been much good at either.

‘What kind of work do I do?’ she asked, feeling an urgent need to fill in the gaps.

‘You’re very creative. You do graphic design on a computer. At the present moment, you’ve signed a contract to illustrate a children’s book.’

‘I must be good at it, then,’ she said in surprise.

‘Your work is stunning.’

The admiration in his voice gave her a deep sense of pleasure.

‘Keep telling her everything that will prompt recall,’ the doctor encouraged. ‘The patient is doing fine. I’ll leave you to it.’ He gave Natalie a smile, Damien a man-to-man nod, and made a brisk departure.

The doctor’s confidence was comforting. Natalie did her best to relax. She rolled the name ‘Damien’ around in her mind, trying to find echoes of it to patch together into a meaningful picture.

Nothing.

Yet his hand and eyes said she belonged with him, and the feeling he evoked in her suggested the same thing. She looked at him wonderingly. She was twenty-eight. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. What precisely was their connection?

‘How long have you been my lover?’

His eyes were unflinching, steely, unrelenting. ‘Many years. But in all that time we never made love physically.’

‘Why not?’

‘You were married.’

Another shock! ‘Who was I married to?’

‘A man named Brett. Brett Hayes.’

His eyes were searching hers.

She looked away, disconcerted at not remembering. How could she possibly forget a husband? And a lover! She glanced down at her left hand. No rings. The hospital staff might have taken them off. She stared at her ring finger. The golden tan of her skin was unbroken by a pale band. She couldn’t have worn her wedding-rings.

‘Am I divorced?’

‘No. Widowed.’

She felt a glimmering of memory...something coming back...something important. Her heart filled with a rush of maternal love and pride. She swung her gaze to Damien, feeling a sense of triumph. ‘I have a son. A beautiful boy.’

He nodded gravely. ‘His name was Ryan.’

‘Where is he now?’ she cried eagerly. ‘Why isn’t he here?’

It was Damien’s turn to be discomfited. He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers, transmitting his healing warmth and a deep caring. Then he looked at her with a sad compassion that chilled the warmth. ‘I’m sorry, Natalie. There was another accident a year ago. Ryan was...killed.’

As soon as he said it, she knew it was true. The happiness drained out of her heart, leaving an aching, senseless void. Her beautiful boy was gone. Like the years he had occupied in her life.

Damien must have seen or felt her distress. ‘That’s why you want to have another child,’ he said, the intensity in his voice drawing her attention back to him.

‘Do I?’ she asked listlessly.

‘Yes. More than anything else,’ he asserted. ‘And I want very much to be the father of that child.’

His passion poured into the empty spaces inside her and stirred a consideration of the future. She didn’t understand how he was her lover, yet they still hadn’t made love together. He looked a very virile man. It must be she who was holding back for some reason.

Damien’s fingers grazed longingly over hers, wanting a response from her, not demanding, but she could feel the wanting reaching into her, finding a deep chord of harmony that assured her he was speaking the truth.

She didn’t know why, but the thought of this man being her lover felt...familiar. A sense of rightness, of contentment, swept through Natalie. Yes, she did want another child. And what better man could she choose as the father? Most women would gladly line up to have such a man as their mate.

‘We’re not married,’ she half-queried.

‘I don’t think you wish to marry again.’

‘Why not?’

‘Your first marriage...’ He hesitated. She could see it pained him to talk about it. He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t all you wanted it to be, Natalie.’

So that was the problem. She was wary of commitment. It wasn’t exactly fair on Damien to load him with the damage caused by another man. If he had loved her for years, he had been waiting a long time for her acceptance. She should know...

‘Chandler,’ she said. ‘You’re Damien Chandler.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And I’m Natalie Arnott.’

‘Before you were married you were Natalie Arnott.’

Whatever had happened in her marriage was over, Natalie thought. Damien must be more important to her now. She had remembered his name.

‘Thank you for being a nice and very patient lover, Damien,’ she said warmly. ‘Thank you for...for looking after me.’

His smile irradiated sunshine. ‘I’d do anything for you, Natalie.’

She sighed, deeply moved by his devotion to her. The talking had made her very tired. Her eyelids closed of their own weight. She could feel the light tingling of his strong hands. It forged a bond of trust.

‘I like your touch,’ she reaffirmed.

Of one thing she was certain. Whatever she had been like before the accident, her instincts had been very good at choosing a lover.

CHAPTER FOUR

DAMIEN came to see her every day.

No one else did.

He brought her flowers, chocolates, fruit, magazines, highly expensive and beautifully perfumed toiletries, everything she might desire to make the hours in hospital less burdensome. She was moved out of Intensive Care after the danger of a cerebral haemorrhage subsided. In the more relaxed atmosphere of a ward, Damien’s attention to her excited curiosity and speculative gossip.

That was all very fine, but Natalie wanted her memory back. Once she was out of her drug-haze from the initial trauma of the accident, it weighed very heavily on her mind that she had a twelve-year gap in her life, and she was increasingly frustrated in her efforts to recall it.

Why did there appear to be only Damien in her life? That troubled her more and more. She tackled him about it on her fifth day in hospital.

‘Not one person has come to visit me except you. Do other people know I’m here, Damien? I can’t remember so I don’t know whom to call, but I must have some friends in Sydney.’ She accepted now that she did live in Sydney, New South Wales, and not at Noosa, Queensland.

‘You shut everyone out of your life when Ryan died,’ he explained. ‘This past year...there were friends and acquaintances who did try to draw you back into their social circle. You rejected every invitation. After a while they stopped trying and drifted away.’

She could understand their withdrawal, however regrettable she found it now. ‘You’re saying I isolated myself.’

‘Completely.’

‘Except for you.’

He gave her a dry smile. ‘I persisted.’

She wondered why. She had looked at herself in a mirror. Admittedly the stitched gash on the side of her scalp didn’t help her hairstyle. She did have nice eyes and a good figure, but she was not the type of woman who would automatically create a sensation wherever she went. Damien only had to enter the ward and general conversation faded out as every eye swivelled to follow him.

On the other hand, all she had to do was look into Damien’s eyes to know he wanted her. Very much.

And she wanted him.

Every time she saw him she felt the strong kick of response inside her. It wasn’t so much how handsome he was or how splendid he looked in his tailored suits. There was more to Damien than superficial charisma. It was what happened between them, the tug of feeling, a response that was evidently grounded in a long knowledge of each other.

‘I must have been a trial to you,’ she stated flatly.

He shrugged. ‘You were grieving.’

For her son.

But what about her husband?

Damien wouldn’t talk about him. She supposed that was natural if he wanted her for himself. Why remind her of the man she had married? Nevertheless, it made Natalie feel as though she was trapped in a dark area, unable to move forward with the confidence she should have.

‘You have a faraway look in your eyes,’ Damien observed. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Speculating about the future.’

‘Am I in it?’

Her eyes danced teasingly. Perhaps it was a female instinct to like him being a little bit uncertain of her, but she quickly chided herself for being unkind in the face of his unswerving devotion. ‘How could you not be,’ she said lightly, ‘in some form or other?’

She expected him to smile. It surprised her that he didn’t. ‘You could cut me out of your life like this,’ he said, using his finger to demonstrate the action of a guillotine. ‘You’ve done it to...others.’

She winced. ‘Was I so bad, Damien?’

He took her hand. His eyes were hooded as he fanned his fingers over her knuckles, arousing the sensitivity she always felt at his touch. ‘We all carry some emotional baggage which turns out to be garbage, Natalie,’ he said. ‘At the moment, you’re free of it. When your memory returns, it will colour your reactions and responses.’

‘To you, as well?’

‘Yes, certainly. To me.’ He lifted his gaze and seared her heart with the agonised conflict that raged inside him. ‘I don’t want it to happen, Natalie. But it will.’

‘Will it be a...bad...reaction? To you, I mean.’

He paused fractionally, then gave a firm answer. ‘Yes. It will be a bad reaction.’

‘So what does that mean?’ she asked, perplexed.

She couldn’t imagine why she should turn on this man. There did not seem to be any reasonable explanation. She waited expectantly for Damien to give her an answer. When his reply came, it was nothing she could possibly have anticipated.

‘It means,’ he said slowly, as if he had an infinity of pain, ‘that I have limited time ... maybe ... between one or two days and a couple of months before your memory is fully restored. In that period of time I have to fulfil my life.’

The blaze of purpose, resolution and desire coming from his deeply recessed eyes lent such impact to his words, Natalie was struck by the need for an instant response, an assurance to him, a defence of the fair-minded person she felt herself to be. Through whatever eyes she had seen him before, the man she saw now was a man she wanted in her life.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Damien, but I promise you this. I won’t forget what you’ve done for me, nor the way you’ve stuck by me through everything.’

She had hoped he would relax, look reassured.

All that stared back at her was total disbelief.

‘What did you do to me,’ she whispered, ‘that I should respond to you...in such a negative fashion?’

‘Nothing,’ he said mockingly. ‘Maybe I should have. I don’t know. What I can declare with absolute conviction and honesty is that I did nothing to you at all.’

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