“You slept with my sister, Mr. Kendall.” Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“You slept with my sister, Mr. Kendall.”

He leaned forward, and the black threat on his face made Leigh draw back sharply.

“Yes, I did, Miss Walker. Two consenting adults. And if you’re going to try and blackmail me, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“I have no intention of blackmailing you, Mr. Kendall.” Just what sort of world did this man move in, where blackmail featured on the menu? “I’ve come here to break some rather...unexpected news. I’ve come to tell you that you’re a father. You have a seven-year-old daughter. Her name is Amy.”

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Look out next month for:

A Nanny for Christmas by Sara Craven (#1999)

A Daughter For Christmas

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

THE decision to contact Nicholas Kendall had been a difficult one, arrived at after months of soul-searching and after every other option had been exhausted.

Or at least as far as Leigh could see.

And then there had been the big question of how precisely to establish contact. Should she telephone him? It was too big an issue to deal with over the phone. Should she just find out where he lived and pay him a surprise visit? No, he might die from shock. She had no idea how old he was or, for that matter, what the state of his heart was. So she was left with the ubiquitous letter.

But, then, how much should she say? Enough to arouse his curiosity but not so much that he dismissed the situation without a second glance. After all, she knew precious little about the man.

Jenny had told her about him in one shocking emotional outburst, but a hospital bed had been no place to ask all those questions that had forced themselves to the surface, shattering in ten charged minutes the calm, contented surface which had comprised her sister’s life. And now there was no Jenny around to tell her anything at all.

She had posted the letter ten days ago. Now, holding his reply in her hand, she felt exactly as she’d imagined she would. Unsure. Had she done the right thing? Had she betrayed her sister’s confidence or would she have understood? She stared down at the sheet of thick paper, at the black handwriting and wished she hadn’t found herself forced into this corner.

‘What’s the matter?’

Leigh looked up from the letter and hurriedly stuffed it into the pocket of her cardigan, then she shook her head and smiled down at the child, staring earnestly up at her.

‘Nothing. Have you brushed your hair, Ames? You can’t go to school looking like that.’ She looked fondly at her niece and tried to eliminate the traces of worry from her face. Children could be unnervingly clever at picking up shades of feeling, and the more Amy was spared the better. She had already been through enough.

‘It’s the house, isn’t it?’ Amy said in a small voice. ‘They’re going to take the house away from us, aren’t they?’

‘What on earth makes you say that?’ Leigh felt her heart sink.

‘I heard you talking to Carol about it on the phone last night.’

They stared at each other and, not for the first time, Leigh felt an overwhelming sensation of helplessness. Helplessness in the face of events over which she had no control. Helplessness at being caught up in a cyclone. Helplessness at being unable to run away because there was Amy, her sister’s daughter, who needed looking after. Oh, God, how on earth was she ever going to explain what was going on?

‘You should have been asleep, Army!’

Amy didn’t say anything. She just stood there in her winter school uniform. Seven years old, with long dark hair and solemn, green eyes.

‘Yes, darling, there are a few problems with the house. I’m working on it.’

‘Will we have to move out?’

‘We’ll see.’ She paused and sighed. ‘We might, yes.’

‘But you won’t leave me, will you?’ she asked in a high whisper, and Leigh knelt on the ground and took the child’s face between her hands. It wasn’t the first time that she had had to do this—to persuade her niece that she wasn’t about to disappear, that she’d be there when evening came and when the following morning rolled around as well. The school psychologist had told Leigh that it was a reaction she could expect and one which could last for years after the deaths of Amy’s parents—a need to be reassured and a tendency to cling like ivy to the support systems that remained in her life.

‘No chance, dwarf,’ Leigh said soberly. ‘You’re stuck with me, like it or not. Now, your hair. Then breakfast, then school. At this rate we’ll never get this show off the road.’ She smoothed back the long hair from Amy’s face and kissed her forehead. ‘And hurry. You know what Mrs Stephens is like when it comes to punctuality! I shall have another lecture on time-keeping and then I shall be late for work.’

She went downstairs and prepared breakfast, acting as normally as she could, and all the while that little letter burnt a hole in her pocket.

Nicholas Kendall had agreed to meet her. In two days’ time. At his club in the City. There had been no questions asked, and she assumed that he was waiting—wait—ing to see what turned up. He must be curious, but there had been no hint of it in his note. No hint of anything at all, in fact. Nothing to tell her what sort of man he was.

She wished she had had the foresight to ask Jenny a few more questions at the time, but the circumstances following the accident had been so overwhelming and the confession so startling that all she had done was listen in amazement.

‘I’m sorry, Leigh,’ her sister had said weakly, her breathing shallow. ‘I know that this is a shock but I don’t want to leave, carrying this secret with me. I can’t do that to you. I need to tell you, need to explain...’

And Leigh hadn’t asked a thing. She had been too aghast at what she had been hearing. Roy had been Amy’s father. Amy’s father and Jenny’s husband. Or so she had always thought

Now she was being told that it had all been an illusion. A third party had been brought in, some man she had never heard of in her life before. It had been a one-night stand, Jenny had said, a moment’s impulse when she had been driven by despair and desperation, a moment’s insanity that she and Roy had put behind them, but all things came home to roost in the end, didn’t they?

Leigh desperately wished that she had asked questions, instead of simply sitting there, mouth agape, as though this sort of thing didn’t happen all the time. All she had been told by her sister during her last, frantic jumbled ramblings had been the man’s name and the fact that he lived in London.

And Leigh had stuffed the insidious information to the back of her mind for well over a year and a half.

At first it had been easy just to bury the name she had scribbled on that piece of paper to the back of a drawer. There had been so much to do, arrangements to be made, and, of course, Amy to look after now both her parents were dead. One minute Leigh had been cruising along, going to art school, planning a future as a graphic artist in some advertising firm—dreaming her dreams—and the next minute she’d been handed the mantle of responsibility.

Almost immediately the financial problems had reared up, like a freakish, multi-headed monster, twisting in every direction and blocking all the exits. The painting and decorating business, which had been Roy’s domain, and the interior design side of it, which had been Jenny’s—both of which Leigh had naïvely thought had been doing well—had been breaking under the weight of the economic recession.

Their accountant had given Leigh precisely one week’s reprieve after the funeral, before calling her and laying all the cards on the table.

Leigh had sat through it all in a daze. She’d had no idea of finance and had stared in bewilderment at the sheets of figures which had been produced for her to see.

‘Can’t we just find someone else to run it?’ she had asked a little wildly. ‘I mean, what’s going to happen to the men in the company? Bob and Nicky and Dan?’

‘What happens to all people who find themselves out of work.’ The accountant had shrugged, not entirely unsympathetic but businesslike. ‘There’s no point, employing someone to try and rescue the business,’ he had told her in a kinder voice.

‘Think about it. It doesn’t make sense, does it? To spend money hiring someone for a business that’s in the process of failing. There have been no new orders for your sister’s side of things since...’ he glanced down at a sheet of paper ‘...the middle of the year. No one wants to spend money on redesigning the insides of their houses!’

‘But it can’t fail! There’s Amy! I can’t help with money! I’m still at college...’

‘You could always put your studies on hold for a while, try and see what you can do. I’ll give you my services free...’

That had been one and a half years ago and she had given it everything she had. She had abandoned her beloved dreams of a career in art and had taken an interminably mundane office job, the only merit of which was that it brought some money in. And it seemed as though, overnight, she had aged into an old woman.

It hadn’t been enough. The creditors, circling at first, had gradually moved in closer and closer. The bank had lost sympathy. By the time Ed, the accountant, advised her to let go, she was utterly defeated.

Heaven knows, she might have been able to carry on with the office job, scraping pennies together and dreaming her pointless dreams in the privacy of her head, but then the bank had foreclosed on their house, and that had been the last straw.

It was only then that the piece of paper, lying at the back of the drawer like some forgotten incantation, had begun to beckon.

She would be opening a can of worms and might well end up making things even worse than they already were, but the time had come for the gamble to be taken.

For the next two days Leigh wavered somewhere between dread and a despairing kind of forced optimism which would break down the minute she questioned it too closely.

In front of Amy she preserved a façade of carefree joviality, but it was a strain and once or twice she had caught her niece looking at her with huge, worried eyes. It hurt tremendously that there was very little she could do to reassure her, apart from promising faithfully never to leave her. That much she could do at least.

There were absolutely no other promises of security she could hope to offer, and she still hadn’t decided what she would tell Amy when the time came for decisions to be made. A lot rested on what this Nicholas Kendall had to say, whether some sort of meeting ground could be reached, but of that she held out very little hope.

What man, presented with the sudden appearance of a seven-year-old daughter he never knew existed, would greet the situation with a chuckle and open arms? The most she could hope for was someone who would at least hear her out.

But, Lord, she knew precious little about him, though considerably more than she had done a year and a half ago. She had done her homework, and it hadn’t been that difficult to discover who he was—a mover and shaker in financial circles, a wealthy, dynamic man, apparently, whose listing in Who’s Who had made her swallow with nerves. This, it seemed, was the man who had fathered her niece.

Oh, Jen, why? But there was no point in crying over spilt milk. Besides, she knew why.

She dressed very, very carefully that Friday morning. Admittedly, there wasn’t much she could do with her face. It steadfastly resisted all attempts to be glamorised and she had faced that fact a long time ago. Her reddishgold hair was too short to look chic, her eyes were too blue and too widely spaced to look feline and sexy and, of course, the freckles everywhere were the final straw. Winter or summer there they were, forever sabotaging her efforts to look her age—giving her the gamin-like appearance of an overgrown elf, or so she thought whenever she looked in the mirror.

She looked in the mirror now and concentrated on the wardrobe she had donned, wondering whether it looked right. She wasn’t quite sure what she was aiming for, considering she had never met the man, but she knew that whatever she wore would have to give her confidence.

Amy sat on the bed and watched Leigh while she fiddled with her long hair, brushing it and plaiting it.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, when her hair had been neatly pulled away from her face and plaited.

‘What makes you think that I’m going anywhere?’

‘You don’t normally take this long getting dressed.’

‘Sometimes I do!’ Leigh protested, glancing at the reflection of the child in the mirror and grinning. ‘OK. I give in. Hardly ever. I just thought that this might make a nice change. What do you think?’

She twirled on the spot, holding one corner of the flowing red and black skirt between her fingers.

‘You look beautiful,’ Amy said honestly, and Leigh could have hugged her. ‘Are you meeting someone?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual.’ She shrugged and smiled vaguely. ‘What are you going to be doing in school today?’ she asked, changing the subject.

‘Maths, science, sports.’ Their eyes met and Leigh smiled.

‘Have you had the results of that test you had last week?’

‘We get them today,’ Amy said glumly.

‘We can treat ourselves to a burger and a milkshake after school if you do OK,’ Leigh said. A rare indulgence, she thought, and Amy deserved it. When times had been good she had had as many burgers and milkshakes as she could have eaten, and now that times were rocky she hadn’t complained once about what she was now missing. She had just adapted, in that curious, malleable way children had, accepting their straitened circumstances without complaint.

‘What if I do badly?’ Amy asked with concern.

‘Well, we’ll treat ourselves anyway. Consolation prize, so to speak.’ By four this afternoon, Leigh thought, I’ll be in much the same boat myself. Whether things go well or not, I’ll be just so damn relieved that a burger and milkshake will be just the thing.

‘Anyway,’ Leigh told her niece, as an afterthought, ‘it doesn’t matter whether you pass or fail that comprehension test, just so long as you put all your efforts into trying.’

‘That’s what Mrs Spencer keeps telling us.’

‘Well, there you go, then. We can’t both be wrong, can we?’ She turned to the little figure on the bed and grinned reassuringly. What she saw, though, wasn’t Amy sitting on the bed with folded legs, but Amy in the future, bombarded by revelations that would redefine the whole contours of her life.

She slipped the long-sleeved woollen turtleneck over her head and only inspected herself again when they were about to leave the house.

She looked, she decided, reasonably all right—neat and combed, at any rate, which for her made a change, and for once colour co-ordinated—black and red skirt, black, clingy turtleneck just showing under the black jumper, black coat because although it was only the end of October the weather was unseasonably cold and flat black shoes. Sober attire, she reflected. Highly appropriate, given the mission in hand.

Her first stop was to drop Amy off at school, then there was an hour and a half during which time she knew that she would simply freefall in a fever of apprehension. She had never been as strong and assertive as her sister. Jenny had always protected her from unsavoury problems, and it had only been in the last sixteen months or so that she had begun to show her own strengths.

Of course, it was the uncertainty which was gnawing away at her. She knew that. That and the knowledge that everything depended on her. The whole of Amy’s future rested on her shoulders because there were no other relatives to fall back on—no conveniently placed grandparents who could help out, no aunts and uncles to tide them over. Leigh had never missed the presence of a family as much as she did now.

It wasn’t even as though she had a boyfriend to lean on, someone to give her strength when she felt her own failing. True, there had been someone. Sensitive, moody, artistic Mick, with his long hair tied back into a ponytail and his enviable contempt for the bourgeoisie, but that hadn’t lasted. It seemed that he was also allergic to responsibility. The thought of helping her to share the strain of bringing up a young child had been just a little too much like hard work for him. ‘I’m a free soul,’ he had told her. ‘Can’t be tied down.’ And that had been that. Leigh couldn’t think about it, without feeling the sour taste of bitterness in her mouth.

It took her ages to find the club, which was about as far from the Underground as it could be, and as she couldn’t afford the luxury of a taxi she had to walk the distance, getting lost several times along the way, despite her A to Z.

She was feeling quite frazzled by the time she stood outside the club, which resembled a large Georgianfronted house more than anything else.

Her legs, which had covered the distance on autopilot, now seemed to be nailed to the pavement outside. She literally couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t take a step forward. She just stood there, a small, motionless figure amidst a throng of pedestrians, with her hair blowing in every direction as she looked nervously at the edifice. The cold October air pinched her cheeks, turning them rosy, and made her eyes smart.

It was only when she felt the chill seeping into her bones, that she took a deep breath and made herself walk forward.

Inside was like stepping into another world. Leigh caught her breath and gazed around her in a disoriented fashion. Everything was so subdued. There was no noise. It was as though the twentieth century was something that was happening outside, something that was abandoned once the doors had closed behind her.

The furnishings were lavish, though faded, with the sort of well-worn elegance she associated with country mansions which had been handed down through the generations.

She looked a little wildly around her, feeling thoroughly out of place in what she was wearing. Her carefully co-ordinated outfit was frankly a joke in a place like this. She raked her fingers through her short hair in a nervous gesture, and then summoned up her courage to start looking for the dining room.

She wasn’t allowed to get very far.

A middle-aged man materialised in front of her and asked, pointedly, whether she was a member.

‘No, but—’

‘This establishment,’ he said, eyeing her up and down and clearly finding her wanting, ‘is not open to the public. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ He looked like the sort who disapproved of women in general, having access to the club, members or not. The fact that she was not obviously reduced her to the status of the undeserving. He placed his hand on her elbow and Leigh sprang back angrily.

‘Wait just a minute!’

‘Now, miss,’ the gimlet-eyed man said, his voice hardening, ‘I hope I’m not going to have any trouble from you.’

And vice versa, Leigh thought acidly, but she forced herself to remain calm.

‘I have an appointment to meet someone here,’ she said coolly, bristling as he threw her a dubious look.

‘And might I ask whom?’

‘A Nicholas Kendall.’

The name was enough to bring about a complete transformation. The man deigned to smile, stiff though the smile was.

‘Of course, Miss...?’

‘Walker.’

‘Miss Walker. Ah. If you would care to follow me, I will show you to Mr Kendall’s table.’ He set off at a leisurely pace, talking all the while. ‘I do apologise if I appeared rude, Miss Walker, but we really cannot be too careful here. In winter, particularly, people have an alarming tendency to try and take refuge in here from the cold. The tourists mistakenly think that it’s some kind of up-market restaurant.’ Complete idiots, his voice implied. ‘Others simply try and use it as a bolthole out of the weather.’ By ‘others’ he evidently meant undesirables.

Leigh didn’t say anything. She looked around her, taking in the large sitting room areas, all with the same dark furnishings and hushed atmosphere, where businessmen—and a very few businesswomen—sat on comfortable chairs, reading newspapers over lunch or else chatting in library tones. It was, she felt, the sort of place where faces might be recognised—politicians, perhaps, or celebrities of one kind or another. No one so much as glanced in her direction as they walked past. A well bred lack of curiosity.

They went up a flight of stairs past what appeared to be a very large library with leather chairs placed seemingly at random and then entered a formal dining area.

She could feel her stomach going into tight, painful knots as destiny drew closer. She blindly followed her guide, staring straight at his back in a useless attempt to ward off the inevitable, and only refocused when they stopped and she became aware of a man, sitting at a table, in front of her.

‘Mr Kendall, this young lady, a Miss Walker, is here to join you for lunch, I believe...?’

What, she thought, would he do if the great and good Mr Kendall shook his head and disclaimed knowledge of any such thing? Would she be hurled out of the place by the scruff of her neck, like someone in a cartoon? Would all these discreet, eminent people rise up in anger at having their private bolthole invaded?

‘That’s right.’ The voice was deep, commanding, and she finally forced her eyes to take in the man on the chair. He was scrutinising her, and making no attempt to disguise the fact. Green eyes, not translucent but the peculiar colour of the unfathomable sea, looked at her unhurriedly. There was no open curiosity but calculated assessment. She had the strangest feeling that she was being committed to memory. It was disconcerting.

‘May I fetch you an aperitif?’

Leigh nodded distractedly and said, clearing her throat, ‘A mineral water. Please. Sparkling.’ She could hear the awkward timbre of her voice and realised how, like her clothes, it betrayed her gaucherie in these surroundings.

‘Same for me again, George.’ Nicholas Kendall continued to look at her as he spoke and, despite the fact that she had never felt so uncomfortable in her life before, Leigh couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from his face.

She had seen one or two pictures of him when she had been doing her research, grainy newspaper photos which had not prepared her for the immediate impact of his looks.

He had a mesmerising face. As someone who had studied art, she could appreciate the harsh definition of its contours. There was nothing soft or compromising about this face; it held a great deal of strength. It would be a wonderful face to try and capture on canvas but a difficult one because, aside from the physical layout of the features, there was a sense of real power and self-assurance there and that was what held her transfixed.

His hair was dark, almost black, as were his lashes, and contrasted disconcertingly with the inscrutable seagreen of his eyes.

‘Do you intend to sit down, Miss Walker?’ he asked unsmilingly, ‘or do you intend to remain clutching the back of the chair and staring at me?’

His words snapped her back to her senses and she sat in a rush of embarrassed confusion. She could feel her heart pounding under her ribcage, and the sheer enormity of trying to sift out what she was going to say left her tongue-tied

It didn’t help that he offered no encouragement whatsoever. He may well have agreed to meet her—a brief interlude between meetings, judging from his impeccably tailored grey suit—but he wasn’t going to make her task easy.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began, ‘to have sprung myself on you like this.’ She laughed nervously and fiddled with the stem of her empty wine glass. He neither smiled nor did his expression relax. He merely folded his arms and waited for her to carry on. Leigh felt as though she finally knew what it must have felt like, trying to plead your case before the Spanish Inquisition. She didn’t dare meet his eyes.

‘I guess you must be a little curious as to why I made contact with you...?’ She left that as an unspoken question, hovering in the air between them.

‘A little...yes,’ he drawled.

Their drinks were brought to them, and Leigh gulped a mouthful of mineral water. Anything to steady her nerves. She wished she had ordered a double whisky on the rocks. She could have bolted it back in one swallow and that would have loosened her up, if nothing else.

There were no menus. George, who looked much more human now that she had proved herself to be no intruder, informed them that there was a choice of roast beef, with all the trimmings, roast lamb, with all the trimmings, or poached salmon.

They both ordered the same thing—the salmon—and as George left them she looked at Nicholas’s hard, immutable face with helpless foreboding.

‘So,’ he said finally, ‘are you going to tell me why you contacted me? I’m intrigued, but not so intrigued that I intend to waste my time, trying to drag it out of you bit by reluctant bit.’ He swallowed some of his whisky and tonic and surveyed her dispassionately over the rim of the glass.

Leigh wondered what her sister could have seen in this man. Sure, he had a certain style, but he was hardly full of warmth and gaiety, was he? Or maybe, she thought, in the right circumstances he was a bundle of laughs. Then, again, her sister had probably not seen him at all. He had simply been the recipient of her own personal, distressing frame of mind at the time.

‘I’m not sure where to start,’ Leigh said honestly. She wished that she had never arranged to meet him. She wished, frantically, that she had never found herself in the situation that she had, torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, assured of disaster whatever course she chose to take. In a way she almost wished that her sister had never burdened her with this terrible confidence, although she could understand why she had done it. She had wanted to go with a clear conscience.

‘Try the beginning’ he told her abruptly.

‘Right In that case, I have to start around eight years ago.’ She lowered her eyes, as though not seeing him might dull the impact of what she had to say. She could feel his attention on her, though, wrapped around her like something tangible and forbidding.

‘Majorca, nearly eight years ago. A large, expensive, secluded hotel on the coast.’

Business had been booming then. Order books had been full. She could remember it clearly. Jenny had been married a year at the most and she should have been in the throes of newly wedded bliss, but she had been depressed.

At the time Leigh had questioned her but she hadn’t persisted. She had only been a teenager then and her sister’s problems had hardly been able to dent the youthful bubble around her. Besides, she’d naively assumed that nothing could really be amiss with Jenny—Jenny, who had always been there for her, always looked out for her, the prop which had never wavered ever since their parents had died, leaving them with only each other to turn to.

‘Majorca.’ Nicholas frowned, and she could see him trying to dredge up memories from years back. ‘I could have been there.’ He shrugged noncommittally. ‘What’s the relevance? If you’re going to try and convince me that I met you there, you’d better try again. I’ve never seen you in my life before, and I never forget a face.’

No, he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who ever forgot a face. Who ever forgot anything, come to that.

Their food was served. It was a reprieve from trying to figure out just how she was going to tell her little tale, and Leigh gazed at it, weak with relief for the temporary distraction.

Nicholas Kendall had a strong effect on her, though she didn’t quite know what it was. She assumed it was because he represented a type she had never encountered in her life before. Certainly, he was as far removed from her sister’s husband as to make you wonder whether they even belonged to the same species.

Roy had been a simple, cheerful man, with the rounded frame of someone who enjoyed his food and drink a bit too much. She had always wondered, in fact, what her sister had ever seen in him. Physically, that was, because Jenny was everything to look at that she, Leigh, had never been. They had been the same height, but there the similarity had ended.

Blonde as opposed to Titian, long, wavy hair as opposed to short and straight, a voluptuous body as opposed to the boyishly slender build which Leigh had long ago discovered did very little to bolster her attractiveness to the opposite sex. In the end she had simply accepted the truth that opposites attract.

Now, though, it was something of a shock to be confronted by the man with whom her sister had had her fated one-night stand.

‘I’m still waiting to hear what you have to say, Miss Walker.’

Leigh looked at him and eventually said in a low voice, ‘You’re quite right, Mr Kendall. We’ve never met before. But you did meet my sister.’ She paused in the face of the difficult task of persuading him of the veracity of the claim. Someone more ordinary might well have remembered the isolated incident with Jenny. This man was not ordinary, however. Would he remember one face, one night, eight years ago amid a sea of doubtless willing women?

The eyes, focused on her, were sharper now, picking up clues and trying to fit the pieces together.

‘Jennifer Stewart,’ Leigh said in a low voice. ‘She looked nothing like me. She was blonde, very extrovert. She was in Majorca for a week, mixing business and pleasure. She had a contract to do the design work for a part of the hotel they were in the process of extending.’

‘I had to get out of England, away from Roy. I felt awful, but I just had to think... I was mad, griefstricken’ she had told Leigh in the hospital, her voice barely audible.

Nicholas Kendall recognised her. Leigh could see it in his eyes. She didn’t know whether it had been the description or whether he remembered Jennifer because she had been there on business, but remember her he did. He stiffened very slightly. His eyes, which had been uninviting to begin with, now regarded her coldly, as though suspicious of whatever motive had brought her to this encounter. He was, she thought, waiting to shoot her down in flames.

‘Quite an eye-stopper’ he said, looking at her and making comparisons.

‘Yes, she was.’ She looked him fully in the face. ‘Unlike me.’

He didn’t deny it. ‘I remember her because she seemed driven at the time. A little too full of it. Too much laughter, too much chatter, too much drink. How is she?’

It was a polite question. Jennifer had meant nothing to him. She was a quick gallop down memory lane. How ironic that a passing memory would now rise up from nowhere to alter everything in his life, whatever his reaction to her news might be.

‘She died in an automobile accident sixteen months ago,’ Leigh said abruptly. She toyed with the food in front of her, eating it half-heartedly and shoving the remainder around her plate the way Amy did with her vegetables.

‘You have my sympathy.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I still don’t understand what all this has to do with me, however.’

‘Mr Kendall,’ Leigh said slowly, putting down her knife and fork and looking ruefully at the half-finished plate of food. It was delicious food but her appetite had deserted her, if it had ever been there in the first place. ‘Are you married?’ Magazine and newspaper articles had made no mention of a wife, but who knew how these people operated? Fast-lane lives with open marriages.

Thickly fringed green eyes narrowed on her. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Are you?’

‘I am not.’

Leigh released her breath. Well, that was one less issue that would have to be navigated. The Lord knew, there were enough obstacles, without that being one of them.

‘Just say what you have to say, Miss Walker. I’m getting very tired of playing these word games with you. I have no idea why you’re here and, frankly I’m beginning to regret my decision to meet you in the first place. You said in the letter that you had something to tell me. Well, tell me.’ He took another glance at his watch. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

‘You slept with my sister, Mr Kendall. One night...’

He leaned forward and the black threat on his face made her draw back sharply. ‘Yes, I did, Miss Walker. Two consenting adults. If you’re going to try and blackmail me in any way whatsoever you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

‘I have no intention of blackmailing you, Mr Kendall.’ She stared at him with loathing. Just what sort of world did this man move in where blackmail was something that featured on the menu? ‘I’ve come here to break some rather...unexpeeted news. I’ve come to tell you that you’re a father. You have a seven-year-old daughter. Her name is Amy.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT!’ The colour had drained from Nicholas Kendall’s face and his body was rigid.

‘I know that this must come as a shock to you—’ Leigh began, and he cut in swiftly, leaning forward, with his elbows on the table.

‘What the hell are you playing at? You breeze in here and have the bare-faced nerve to present me with the most deranged story I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and then you talk to me about shock. I have no idea what’s going on in that head of yours, but you must be certifiable if you think that you can try and hold a virtual stranger to ransom over some fabricated piece of nonsense.’

Leigh couldn’t recall ever having felt so intimidated in her life before. His expression conveyed shock, disbelief and, now that his colour had returned, a terrible calm. She was reminded of the calm before a storm.

‘It’s not fabricated, Mr Kendall.’ She leaned forward and her voice was urgent. ‘Why should I waste my time, fabricating something like this? Do you think that I haven’t got better things to do with my time? I’m not playing at anything. Believe me when I tell you that the very last place I want to be right now is here, breaking this news to you.’

‘But you felt that you had to...’ His mouth twisted cynically and she flinched ‘You must have taken leave of your senses if you think that I’m going to fall for the oldest con trick in the world.’ He sat back, but there was nothing relaxed about his posture. Even though he had drawn away from her she still felt as intimidated as when his body had been thrust forward, menacing her.

‘Con trick...?’ She looked at him in bewilderment

‘And don’t play the innocent with me. I’m not sure what you and your sister have cooked up between you, but you’re crazy to think that I’m idiot enough to believe a word of what you’re saying. You must have thought you’d hit jackpot when I agreed to having remembered your sister. What I don’t understand is why she sent you on her behalf. Did she think that your fresh-faced, onlyjust-out-of-high-school look might have had a bit more sway?’

‘I told you, Mr Kendall, my sister was killed in a car accident almost a year and a half ago. And this isn’t some kind of con trick. You think that I want to be here? What kind of person do you imagine that I am?’

‘Presumably one like your sister, Miss Walker.’

‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’

‘Why don’t you try working it out for yourself?’ he answered in a smooth, soft, menacing voice.

‘Nothing you’re saying makes any sense. I came here—’

‘Having cooked up a plot with your sister—’

‘Having done nothing of the sort!’ Every instinct in Leigh urged her to get up and leave, but however angry and insulted she was she knew that she could obey none of those instincts. She was utterly trapped—condemned, at least, to conclude what she had begun.

‘Get it through your head, Mr Kendall...’ she glared at him with loathing ‘...that egotistical, arrogant head of yours, that I’m not here on some harebrained scheme dreamt up by anyone...’

‘Just a courtesy call to let me know that I’m a father...’ His eyes narrowed to slits, and she half expected him to stand up and inform her that he had had enough of her time-wasting. She knew that if he did that, if he walked out on her now, then her audience with him was gone for ever.

‘No, of course this isn’t a courtesy call!’ She felt a sense of hopeless misery, welling up inside her. Her hands were clenched into tight fists.

‘Which really only leaves us one other possibility—wouldn’t you agree, Miss Walker?’

She looked at him and felt once more at the mercy of an overwhelming personality. This, she reckoned, was the last place in the world she would choose to be. Shark-infested waters would be preferable.

‘I’m not trying to con you, Mr Kendall,’ she said stubbornly, miserably.

‘I dislike stupidity, Miss Walker. I dislike it even more when people try and camouflage it with guile.’ He regarded her coldly and she met his wintry eyes with a sudden rush of hot, giddy anger.

‘This was a mistake,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to come here.’ She stood up, realising that her legs were unsteady.

‘Sit down!’

‘Go to hell!’ She began to walk away. Her whole body was hot and trembling. She needed to get some cool air on her face. In a minute she would combust—at least, that was how she felt She was hardly aware of him behind her until she felt his fingers around her arm, slowing her down.

‘Take your hands off me,’ she snarled through gritted teeth, ‘or I’ll scream my head off loud enough to have all these stuffed people in here running for cover.’

Something flickered in his eyes—she couldn’t tell what—and he removed his hand.

‘I’m not through with you yet, Miss Walker. Your little plan may have backfired and you may well want to beat a tactical retreat now but you can forget it. You started this and you’ll damn well finish it, and I may as well warn you that blackmail is a crime.’

‘Don’t you threaten me!’ She stared at him in wide-eyed horror. Crime? What was he talking about? She hadn’t done anything wrong but she felt like a criminal.

‘Oh, dear, losing your grip on the proceedings?’ He gave a short, acid laugh.

‘You’re mad,’ she said flatly. ‘Completely mad. You can believe what you like about my motives for being here, but if you have no intention of hearing me out I certainly don’t intend to stay here while you have fun, pulling me to shreds.’ She met his eyes, without blinking.

He didn’t answer. He stared back at her in silence and she knew that he was working out whether to give her a chance to say what she had come to say, even if it confirmed every accusation he had levelled against her, or whether to have her thrown out and put the whole thing down to an unpleasant episode with a crackpot.

‘We’ll talk in one of the sitting rooms,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m prepared to listen to what you have to say but, so help me, if this is a ploy to get money out of me I’ll personally see to it that you regret the day you—’

‘Are you accusing me of gold-digging?’ Leigh whispered, trying hard to feel relief and gratitude instead of sheer fury at his assaults.

They were walking through another part of the building, towards what she now saw was yet another sitting area, though not one of those she had passed on the way in. Its only occupant was a man who was well into his seventies and was fast asleep with a newspaper open on his lap. The room was furnished in dark reds, heavy colours that brought to mind images of clarets and ports and the savouring of fine wines. There was a very masculine feel to it which was daunting though not entirely unpleasant.

They sat in chairs furthest away from the sleeping man, facing one another like combatants. Which, she considered bleakly, was what they were.

‘I’m an extremely wealthy man, Miss Walker. It does tend to instil a certain amount of cynicism.’

Leigh didn’t say anything. She was here, she knew, for help. True, she had not come voluntarily, but because she had found herself in a corner from which all other routes seemed barred. But wasn’t she appealing for some kind of financial assistance when all was said and done? It was a humiliating situation in which to find herself, particularly because Nicholas Kendall had no intention of letting her off the hook with pleasantries. He was accommodating her now, but only because he was curious.

‘I suppose so,’ she admitted reluctantly, linking her fingers together on her lap.

‘You suppose so?’

‘Yes. well, I really have no experience of... I’ve never mixed in circles...’ She had no real idea what he’d meant when he’d said that he was extremely wealthy but she was beginning to get an idea. It was there in the deference of George, in his self-assurance, which spoke of someone accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed, and in the cut of his clothes.

It was stamped on him so clearly that he might just as well have been carrying a sign on his forehead. A ready target for gold-diggers, she assumed. More so because of his compelling good looks.

Not many men had such a combination. The thought of anyone cultivating someone else because of the size of their bank balance was something she found so distasteful, however, that she could barely get her mind around it.

Another elderly man, who bore a striking resemblance to George and treated Nicholas in the same deferential manner, took an order for two coffees. As soon as he had left, Nicholas leaned forward and said bluntly, ‘So you’re telling me that I went to Majorca eight years ago, spent one night with your sister and I am the father of a seven-year-old child as a result.’

Leigh nodded.

‘And if all that is true, which I don’t for a minute concede it is, why have you only now come to me with this information? Why didn’t your sister tell me about the pregnancy? She knew my name, she could have tracked me down without a great deal of difficulty. I’m well known in financial circles.’

‘It’s a long story,’ Leigh replied nervously.

‘I’m all ears.’ He sat back, crossed his legs and regarded her with those bottomless green eyes. ‘I’m eager to know why you would suddenly decide that my paternal rights might count for something.’

He might be sitting here, she thought, he might have told her that he was prepared to hear what she had to say, but she could tell from the look on his face that he was less prepared to believe what he might hear.

‘My sister was married at the time you met her,’ Leigh began slowly, and his eyebrows shot up.

‘Really? Well, she certainly kept quiet about that.’

‘She would have been wearing a wedding ring,’ Leigh pointed out, and he shrugged.

‘I don’t automatically look at a woman’s finger when she’s in the process of throwing herself at me.’

‘Oh, I see. You just take what’s on offer.’

‘Before you start questioning my morals, I’d advise you to look a little more closely at your sister’s, Miss Walker.’

He made it sound as though Jenny had been nothing more than a common tramp, and Leigh clamped down on the temptation to launch into a vitriolic defence of her sister’s state of mind at the time.

Jenny had been no tramp, she knew that She had thrown herself into her night of insanity with the abandon of someone trying to forget the present, drowning her sorrow in a single act whose repercussions she could never have foreseen.

‘Jenny had her reasons for her behaviour, Mr Kendall,’ she said coldly. ‘What were yours?’

He didn’t like that His face darkened. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come here to debate my morals, Miss Walker, but if it’s of any interest to you I tried to get in touch with her the following morning, only to find that she had checked out.’

‘And what a blow that must have been to you.’

‘No one speaks to me like that!’

‘I can speak to you any way I please.’ She couldn’t, she knew, but wisdom was trailing very far behind a reckless desire to speak her mind, whatever the consequences. She refused to be cowed by his money and power.

‘I don’t fool around with married women.’

Leigh shrugged, abandoning the impulse to give him a lecture on Men Of His Type. What was the point? He said that he didn’t fool around with married women. What was to be gained by debating the issue? Besides, maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he was loaded with moral virtue, maybe principles were coming out of his ears. If that were the case, then it was unfortunate for him that his looks seemed to tell a different story.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘whatever. Your principles are your business and they have nothing to do with why I’m here.’ He looked as though he wanted to shake her into agreeing with him, and she ignored the look on his face. ‘Jenny was married at the time and...’ she scoured her brain for the right way of saying what she was about to say ’...things weren’t going too well. Or, rather, they were going very well, but—’

‘Perhaps you could get your facts straight...’

‘I would if you’d give me half a chance!’ She glared at him, pausing while George’s clone sidled towards their table and deposited a tray with percolated coffee, cups, saucers, sugar and milk.

‘She had just had some bad news,’ Leigh hissed, leaning forward and sloshing coffee and milk into her cup. Let him pour his own. If he found it so difficult to be civil to her she was damned if she was going to make an effort to show any civility towards him. This whole meeting was turning out to be a full-blown disaster, anyway.

‘Odd way to react to bad news, don’t you think?’ He poured his coffee—no milk—and sat back in the chair and regarded her coldly. ‘Leaving the country for a jaunt in a foreign hotel away from hearth and home and, now you tell me, husband.’

‘You don’t understand...’

‘If she was that blissfully married why didn’t she talk out with her husband whatever problems she was having? You haven’t exactly thought out this story logically, have you, Miss Walker? Or did you think that I’d fall for whatever you said to me, hook, line and sinker, with no questions asked?’

Two bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks, and Leigh swallowed back the renewed temptation to storm out of the club.

‘Look, Mr Kendall,’ she said evenly, ‘I realise that you think yourself the world’s most eligible bachelor. You seem to think that no woman could possibly approach you unless her intentions were devious, which, incidentally, is a very sad state of affairs, but I assure you that I haven’t lain in bed, plotting and planning this meeting. I’m here because I’ve found myself in the position of having no other option.’

‘World’s most eligible bachelor...’ He linked his fingers together and a half-smile crossed his darkly cynical face, though not quite reaching his eyes which remained cool and shrewd. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ His eyes caught hers and held them fractionally too long for Leigh’s comfort.

‘No,’ she said politely, ‘I don’t think so either. Anyway, if I might be allowed to continue?’

‘Carry on.’

‘You have to understand that all of this...everything that I’m telling you now... I knew nothing about all this at the time. I only found out...’ She hated talking about Jenny, about the accident. At the time she had had to be brave for Amy’s sake, but the awful reality of it had been only a heartbeat away. Time made it easier to accept but right now she felt that if she dwelt too hard on her sister’s death she would find herself giving in to the temptation to bawl her eyes out.

She didn’t imagine that the man sitting opposite her would appreciate the outburst of emotion.

‘She and Roy—that was her husband—’

‘Who was also involved in this so-called accident—’

‘That’s right, and there’s nothing “so-called” about it.’

‘What happened?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Was she your only sibling?’

Leigh looked at him with frustration. Why wouldn’t he just let her finish her piece? Having jumped down her throat, why was he now dragging this information out of her? She didn’t like talking about it. In fact, she seldom did. She had wept at the funeral, but her thoughts she preferred to keep to herself. Circumstances had hardened her, forced her to become self-reliant.

‘Yes,’ she answered abruptly.

‘What about other relatives? Aunts, uncles? You haven’t mentioned your parents so I assume that they’re no longer on the scene.’

‘This is irrelevant,’ Leigh told him brusquely. ‘If I’d known you’d ask all these questions I would have come armed with a family tree.’

Nicholas looked at her carefully. ‘Why do you say that coming to me was the last resort? If there were relatives around, I assume—’

‘That I would have rushed to them for help first. Of course.’ Silly of me to assume that he might have been showing some kind of personal interest in her and, indirectly, in Amy. ‘There’s no one else, Mr Kendall. Jenny was all I had.’ Saying it out loud made it sound bleak and lonely. She remembered how it had been when her parents had died. She remembered that lost, exposed feeling, but she had been so much younger then and there had been Jenny to hold her hand and help her through. Now there was no one to shield her from the loneliness, waiting to strike.

‘Our parents passed away when I was twelve within months of one another. As for relatives, I think there’s an uncle somewhere in Australia and my father had a couple of cousins in Canada, but we never kept in touch. Is that sufficient background history, or would you like to know more? Maybe I could throw in my blood group for good measure?’ She was annoyed with him for prising information out of her which she had grown accustomed to keeping to herself.

‘To cut a long story short, there was no one else to turn to. And, anyway...’ She halted, unsure of what to say next.

‘And anyway?’

‘I happen to think that it’s important for Amy to eventually know who her father is,’ Leigh told him defiantly. ‘Even if it’s an intrusion on your lifestyle.’

‘Let’s just suppose that I give you the benefit of the doubt for a minute, that I actually believe what you’re telling me, don’t you find it a bit odd that you only suddenly thought it important nearly a year and a half after the event?’

‘She’s only seven...’

‘You were waiting until?’

She looked at him with deep dislike. Did he believe a word of what she was saying? Was he simply humouring her? Allowing her to have her say until his coffee was finished, whereupon he would coolly look her up and down and tell her to be on her way? She couldn’t even tell whether she was getting through to him at all because, whatever he said, his face remained unreadable.

‘Until she was a bit older.’ Leigh took a mouthful of her coffee, which was now tepid and quite disgusting. ‘Until she was more capable of...understanding...’

‘Thoughtful of you.’

What would it feel like to throw her tepid coffee all over him? she wondered. Would it wipe that expression of cynical self-assurance off his face?

‘Why did you say that you were willing to hear what I’ve got to say, Mr Kendall? You don’t want to hear a word I’ve got to say. You want to dig a hole, chuck me in, cover me with earth and then walk away, wiping your hands.’

‘What did your sister tell you?’

‘You were right,’ Leigh said eventually. ‘She was driven when you met her in Majorca. Not herself. I knew at the time. I vaguely recall that she was miserable, but she didn’t confide in me. I guess she had always been in the role of my protector so she felt that she had to protect me even from her own unhappiness. It turns out that...’ She sighed and ran her fingers through her short hair so that any attempt at neatness was instantly lost.

‘She and Roy had been trying for a family. Before they were married, even. Apparently. I knew nothing about all of this. The week before she had been to the doctor for the results of tests. It turned out that there was a problem. Roy couldn’t father a child. Jenny was devastated. Having children meant everything to her. In hospital she told me that she had even started buying pregnancy magazines in anticipation of the large family she and Roy were going to have.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that she went on holiday with the express purpose of mating with a suitable specimen? ’ His mouth twisted cruelly, and Leigh shot him a helpless look from under her lashes.

‘Are you hearing what I’m saying? She was desperately unhappy when she went on that one-week break. She needed to be away from Roy, needed to think, but the more she thought the more unhappy she became, and for the first time in her life she did something totally out of character for her. She had a one-night stand.

‘As luck would have it, she got pregnant and decided to keep Amy. She said that she and Roy discussed it. They went through a rough patch for a while but he loved her and in the end he accepted the circumstances. He loved Amy as though she were his own.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m sorry that man was you. I’m sorry that you’ve had all this foisted onto you. It must be a nightmare. It’s also a fact of life.’

‘Why do you think that I would believe a word of what you’re telling me?’ He looked at her coolly, assessingly, without a hint of emotion on his face.

‘Because it happens to be the truth.’

‘And now are you going to tell me why you’ve been overwhelmed by the sudden desire to fill me in?’

Temporary insanity, Leigh thought, staring at her coffee-cup, a moment of sheer madness. Frankly, you’re the last person in the world I would want to confront with this dilemma.

‘Because circumstances have changed, Mr Kendall,’ she said awkwardly.

‘In other words, you’re broke. I wondered when we would arrive at the financial angle. Never mind the ethics of letting me know of this mysterious daughter’s existence.’

He nodded imperceptibly in the direction of the door, and George wafted into the room to remove their cups and saucers. The sleeping man in the armchair was beginning to stir. Leigh could feel Nicholas drawing away from her, signalling the end of her allotted time, and she was filled with a sudden panicky desperation. As far as he was concerned, it all boiled down to money in the end after all.

‘You have a daughter, Mr Kendall, like it or not You can pretend to yourself that I’m nothing more than a cheap gold-digger and you can walk out of here and never look back, but that won’t change the fact that you fathered a child. I hope that knowledge bums a hole in your conscience for the rest of your life.’ Damn him if he thought that he would simply walk away and forget every word she’d said. Things were crashing down around her. She had swallowed quite a mouthful of humble pie, coming to this man. She would make sure that he knew it.

‘Don’t moralise to me, Miss Walker.’

‘I’ll damn well do as I please, Mr Kendall.’ She leaned forward and urgency lent her a desperate sort of courage. ‘Roy and Jenny left behind them a cartload of debt. I’ve spent the past few months lying awake every night, worrying about where the money was going to come from. I’ve struggled in a job that barely pays, I’ve struggled to be the emotional support system my niece needs and I feel as though I’ve worn myself to the bone.

‘I’ve come to you, yes, for help because I have nowhere else to go. The bank has foreclosed on the house. I don’t care about me, but there’s Amy to consider. She’s a child. She’s your child!’ She was trembling and every nerve in her body felt stretched to breaking point. She no longer cared what sort of impression she made. If she had to crawl on all fours she would do it, provided it went some way to ensuring some kind of future for Amy.

It occurred to her that there might be someone in the room who had overheard her, and she looked around surreptitiously.

‘No need,’ he told her, with less hostility in his voice than she would have expected. ‘That’s the beauty of this place. No one pays the slightest bit of attention to other people’s conversations. Even if something sensitive was screamed out to all four corners you would still be guaranteed that it would remain within these walls.’ He paused. ‘Not that I give a jot what opinion the rest of the world has of me.’

‘That must give you a great sense of freedom,’ Leigh said, distracted as much by what he had said as by his unruffled response to her slightly raised voice.

He looked at her curiously, as though trying to weigh her up.

‘You’ll understand that I will want a blood test to establish paternity.’

‘So you do agree that it’s possible that I’m telling you the truth. That I’m not some avid little gold-digger who’s shown up on your doorstep eager to see what I can cream off you.’

‘All things are possible.’ He shrugged.

‘You can have a million blood tests. They’ll back me up.’ She smiled for the first time, a secret, amused smile, and he frowned as though she had suddenly retreated to a place from which he was excluded.

‘But...?’ he asked, frowning.

‘But nothing...’ But, she thought, you won’t need one. His physical resemblance to Amy was almost scary. ‘Will you just meet her, Mr Kendall? If you choose to wash your hands of the whole matter after that, then so be it.’

She heard the supplication in her voice with mortification. It was true that she would have told Amy about her natural father in time, and would have supported her in whatever choice she made as to whether to seek him out or not. But to be reduced to presenting this man with this dilemma, forced to beg, made her cringe.

‘I’ll meet...the child,’ he said heavily.

‘When?’

‘The sooner the better, I suppose.’ He rose, and as Leigh joined him she was aware, more forcibly this time, of his height, his muscularity, the way he towered over her and made her feel small, even though she was a respectable enough height.

‘I would appreciate it,’ she said, following him out of the building into the bracing cold outside, ‘if you could—’

‘Not let the child know my relationship to her?’

Leigh nodded and pulled her jacket tightly around her. The wind whipped her skirt around her legs like clambering vines. She would have been more comfortable in her usual out-of-work attire of jeans.

‘I think we should wait and see what develops from here,’ he said, looking down at her.

He wasn’t, she realised, about to assume anything. This potentially life-changing situation with which he had been confronted did not exist, as far as he was concerned, until it was proven.

‘When would you like me to introduce you to her?’ Leigh asked shortly.

‘What about the weekend? Sunday. I’ll meet you for lunch somewhere. Where do children of that age like to eat?’ It sounded as though children were a species foreign to him.

‘Any fast-food chain,’ she told him quickly, before he could change his mind, and he frowned, as though trying to identify the name of a fast-food chain. Any fast-food chain.

‘Conversation might be a little difficult in one of those places. I know a hamburger restaurant in the Covent Garden area. I believe they serve all the usual childfriendly things, milkshakes and ice cream. She does eat...stuff like that, doesn’t she?’

‘Adores it’ Leigh smiled.

‘And who should I introduce myself as? Old friend of the family?’ His mouth twisted. ‘Distant relative?’

‘I’ll tell her that you’re a friend.’ Thank heavens, Leigh thought, that she’s only seven. Much older than that and she would be hard pressed to believe that Nicholas Kendall could be anything but a relative, so perfectly did his face mirror hers.

‘Fine.’ He continued to look at her. ‘And don’t forget what I said,’ he murmured with a warning in his voice, bending slightly so that his breath was on her face, warm and disorienting. ‘I’m no fool. Child or no child, I won’t be taken for a ride.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Mr Kendall.’

‘Nicholas.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nicholas. You might just as well call me by my first name. Mr Kendall might just be a little formal, considering I’m a long-lost family friend.’ He glanced at his watch, quickly reeled off the name of the restaurant he had in mind and the address, and with mixed feelings Leigh watched him depart in long, easy strides.

Step one, at any rate, had been accomplished. The only problem was that she had no idea what step two would entail.

She turned on her heel and on the journey back to the house she tried to work out what the options were because, whether he knew it or not, he would have no difficulty in accepting that Amy was his.

Money, of course, was the issue. She could repay him as much as she could month by month—a bit like taking out a loan with the bank. She didn’t need much to look after Amy. They would have to find a roof over their heads, something small and sensible. It hardly mattered whether it was in a fashionable district or not, just so long as wherever they lived was safe. She might at least be granted the breathing space to look for a better job, something that would make her more financially solvent.

His contribution, if he decided to help, would be a drop in the ocean to him, no doubt about it, but it could be the lifeline she and Amy so desperately needed.

It was only as she was letting herself into the house that a thought suddenly occurred to her. A very unpleasant thought. What if he decided to fight for custody of his daughter? He was wealthy and powerful, a man with quite a few guns in his armoury. What if he took one look at his offspring and decided that he would plunge into fatherhood, having been denied it for seven years?

Leigh removed her jacket and made herself a cup of tea, her body on autopilot as her mind wrestled this unforeseen possibility.

No, she told herself. Look at things in a logical manner. Nicholas Kendall was not married. He had no experience of children and, from what she had seen, he was probably the last man on the face of the earth to want any experience of them.

She had no real idea what he did for a living but, whatever it was, it doubtless ate up his time. People rarely acquired huge sums of money working in part-time jobs. No, he was probably one of those odious men who lived for their work. He probably rented a bachelor penthouse suite somewhere in Belgravia, an exquisite two-bedroom affair with a daily cleaning service. The sort of place where children and pets were banned.

I can’t let myself get embroiled in complications before they arise, she told herself. I can’t think ahead beyond what happens at the next meeting. I can’t let myself.

I just have to think of Amy.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I DON’T want to wear a dress.’ Amy looked at the blue and white polka-dotted dress neatly laid out on the bed and folded her arms.

‘It’s a lovely dress, Ames.’ Leigh was reduced to pleading.

‘I want to wear my jeans and a jumper.’

‘But that’s what you stay around the house in!’

‘We’re only going out for a burger,’ Amy said, with a little too much logic for Leigh’s liking. ‘No one dresses up for a burger.’ There had been a time when she would willingly have donned any item of clothing Leigh put in front of her, but recently she had developed strong preferences, something Leigh had found charming, the sign of a strong and independent mind. Until now. Now she just wanted Amy to look right, like the beautiful little girl that she was.

‘Anyway,’ Amy said stubbornly. ‘I’m much too old for that dress.’

‘It’s a very pretty dress.’ Leigh could sense defeat in the air and she waved the dress around despairingly. ‘OK, a compromise. You can wear the jeans but not that jumper. You can wear the jeans with the orange jumper.’

Amy looked as though she would throw that out as well, but eventually she nodded. ‘And my lace-up boots?’

‘Why not?’

Did all mothers have to go through this? Leigh wondered. Parental responsibility had been thrust on her, and now she wished she had paid closer attention to how Jenny had handled her daughter. She vaguely recalled that the strict approach had not been used, but would she have given in in these circumstances?

She remained where she was, kneeling on the floor, while her niece got into her jeans, a blue denim polo shirt and the orange jumper, and decided that Amy looked very fetching after all. Not quite The Little House on the Prairie style, but cute. Cute and trendy. And Nicholas Kendall would probably have no one to compare her to, anyway. She doubted if he knew anyone under four feet and ten years of age.

‘Hat?’ Amy asked, pulling out a black, fake-fur-lined number from the darkest corners of her wardrobe. Leigh shrugged and nodded and gave up the battle completely.

‘You look sweet,’ she said, rising to her feet then almost falling over again because of the sudden attack of pins and needles in her legs. She stamped her feet to get rid of them.

‘Thanks.’ Amy smiled and made a face which was supposed to resemble sweet but looked more like a grimace. ‘Your friend must be someone special,’ she said. ‘You’re wearing a skirt again.’

‘He’s not my friend,’ Leigh said hastily, glancing in the mirror and deciding that ‘sweet’ was probably the best she could hope for as well in her swinging green and brown skirt and her baggy brown jumper. She had tried to add on a few years by sticking on a string of pearls, her only concession to jewellery, but she still only managed to look like a teenager. ‘He used to know your mum,’ she said, playing with the truth rather than resorting to an out and out lie.

Amy didn’t say anything. She was getting better when it came to any mention of Jenny. For months her eyes had filled up when her mother had been mentioned, but now the present was gradually forming its own layers over memories of the past. Children were resilient, Leigh had been told at the time. In many ways they handled grief far better than adults because they never tried to hide their mourning or to put on a brave face.

‘She never mentioned him to me,’ Amy said, following Leigh out of the bedroom and conversing with her back.

She could be surprisingly grown-up in some of her responses. Leigh supposed that was a function of being an only child.

‘Maybe she did and you forgot,’ Leigh answered, without turning around. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It was very nice of him to ask us out.’ Nice? Ha. If only. Nicholas Kendall couldn’t be nice if he spent ten years studying it at university.

They went to Covent Garden on the Underground, and reached the restaurant with time to spare. It was busy. The background music was loud, and people seemed to be on the move constantly—waiters and waitresses with huge trays, which they held expertly with one hand, people coming and going and generally paying no heed to the idea that Sunday was a day of rest.

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