The Fatherhood Affair. Emma Darcy

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ