Wanting His Child

‘Funny—I knew, of course, that the business came first, second and third with you, but I never had you down as a woman who needed to surround herself with all the trappings of a materialistic lifestyle.’

Verity gave him a dazed, almost semi-blind look. What was he saying—something about her car? About her wealth? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the intense feeling of relief she felt on realising that he hadn’t, after all, meant what she had thought he had meant by that comment about knowing why she had not refuted Honor’s outrageous claim that she was soon to become her stepmother. That he had thought she had allowed his daughter’s fib to stand so that no questions could be asked about the accident, not because secretly she still yearned for…still wanted…

‘My God, but you’ve changed,’ she heard him breathing angrily. ‘That car…this house…those clothes…’

Her clothes…Verity pushed aside her euphoric sense of relief—there would be time for her to luxuriate in that later when she was on her own.

‘I’m wearing jeans,’ she managed to point out in quiet self-defence.

‘Designer jeans,’ Silas told her curtly, nodding in the direction of the logo sewn on them.

Designer jeans? How had Silas known that? The Silas she remembered simply wouldn’t have known or cared where her clothes had come from. The Silas she knew and remembered would, in fact, have been far more interested in what lay beneath her clothes rather than the name of the design house they had originated from.

Quickly, Verity redirected her thoughts, telling him dryly what her own quick eye had already noticed.

‘Your own clothes are hardly basic chain store stuff.’

Was that just a hint of betraying caught-out colour seeping up under his skin? Verity wondered triumphantly.

‘I didn’t choose them,’ he told her stiffly.

Then who had? A woman? For some reason his admission took all her original pleasure at catching him out away from her, Verity acknowledged dismally.

‘I suppose you thought you were being pretty clever and that you’d got away with damn near killing my daughter,’ Silas was demanding to know, back on the attack again. ‘Well, unfortunately for you a…a friend of mine just happened to see you at the scene of the accident and she took a note of your car’s registration number.’

‘Really? How very neighbourly of her,’ Verity gritted. ‘I don’t suppose it occurred to her that she might have been more usefully employed trying to help Honor rather than playing at amateur detective?’

‘Myra was on her way to a very important meeting. She’s on the board of several local charities and, as she said, she could hardly expect busy business people who are already giving their time to feel inclined to make a generous cash donation to a charity when its chairperson can’t even be on time for a meeting…’

Whoever this Myra was, Silas obviously thought an awful lot of her, Verity reflected. He made her sound like a positive angel.

‘You aren’t going to deny that you were responsible for Honor’s accident, I hope?’ Silas continued, returning to the attack.

Verity was beginning to get angry herself now. How dared he speak to her like this? Would he have done so had he not already known her, judged her…had she been a stranger? Somehow she doubted it. He was being unfairly critical of her, unfairly caustic towards her because of who she was, because once she had been foolish enough to love him, and he had been—Quickly she gathered up her dangerously out-of-control thoughts.

Deny that she was responsible? But she hadn’t been responsible. It was…On the point of opening her mouth to vigorously inform him just how wrong he was, Verity abruptly remembered her conversation with Honor and the little girl’s anxiety. Quickly she closed it again.

‘It was an accident,’ was all she could permit herself to say.

‘An accident caused by the fact that you were driving too selfishly and too fast along a suburban road, in a car more properly designed for fast driving on an autobahn, or in your case, probably more truthfully, for showing off amongst your friends.’

Verity gasped.

‘For your information,’ she began, ‘I bought that car…’ On the point of telling him just why she had bought the BMW, she suddenly changed her mind. After all, what explanations did she possibly owe him? None. None at all.

‘I bought that car because I wanted to buy it—because I liked it. No doubt your friend prefers to drive something ecologicall

y sound, modest and economical. She has a Beetle, perhaps, or maybe a carefully looked after Morris Minor which she inherited from some aged aunt…’ she suggested acidly.

‘As a matter of fact—not that it’s any business of yours, Myra drives a Jaguar. It was part of the settlement she received when she divorced her husband…But I’m not here to talk about my friends or my private life. You do realise, don’t you, that I could report you to the police for dangerous driving?’

Immediately Verity froze, unable to control her expression.

‘Yes, you may well look shocked,’ Silas told her grimly.

‘You can’t do that,’ Verity protested, thinking of Honor.

‘Can’t I? I’ve certainly got a damned good mind to, although, given your cavalier attitude towards the truth and the fact that there were no witnesses to the whole event, no doubt you’d manage to find a way of extricating yourself.’