Forgotten Passion

‘Don’t you mean your responsibilities, Rorke?’ Lisa flung at him. ‘Yes, that’s right’ she told him bitterly. ‘Robbie is your child—your child, Rorke, and nothing you can say or do can alter that, no matter how much you may want it to.’

‘Still sticking to the same old story? Come on, Lisa, we both know I’m not Robbie’s father, don’t we?’

‘Mummy, Mummy, I’m home!’

Lisa bit back the angry words she had been about to utter and turned to welcome Robbie with a hug and a kiss.

She had a neighbour with whom she shared the chore of taking Robbie and his friend Jonathan to and from school, and Robbie was full of the day’s happenings, pausing briefly to glance uncertainly at Rorke before continuing with his saga.

Lisa listened, but all the time her heart was thudding as though she had been running. Robbie was Rorke’s son; dear God, she had thought she was over the agony of hearing him deny it, but it was still as fresh as ever; the anguish of Rorke’s rejection of them both still just as intense. She could remember every detail of those days leading up to her flight from the Caribbean.

CHAPTER FOUR

AT the time it had all seemed to happen so quickly—as quickly and without warning as the storms that swept the Cari

bbean, but with hindsight and maturity Lisa had come to accept that the love she had thought so shining and perfect had been flawed almost from the very start. For one thing there had been Rorke’s resentment of her; she had been too blind to see it at the time, but when she looked back…

Even now it made her throat ache to remember how happy she had been when they returned to the island. Leigh had been there to greet them, and she had blurted out their news, seeing her joy reflected in his eyes. Had it been Leigh who had suggested the engagement party? She seemed to remember that Rorke had demurred, but it had never crossed her mind, then, that he might be having second thoughts. It had taken Helen to point that out to her; to feed the poison of doubt to her drop by drop.

She hadn’t even been unduly concerned that Rorke couldn’t remember their lovemaking. She had quizzed Mike discreetly about concussion and its after-effects, and had been satisfied enough, then, with his description of its effects not to worry too much about Rorke’s loss of memory. It would come back to him, she felt sure, and then they would laugh together about it. Had his memory of what happened between them ever resurfaced? Lisa wondered bitterly, watching him as Robbie trotted over to him, completely unawed and quite obviously a little bit excited about the advent of this strange male into his young life. If it had would Rorke deliberately repress it; refuse to admit how he had wronged her, and more important than her, wronged Robbie? Rorke’s family had owned St Martins for many generations; it was Robbie’s birthright that Rorke had deprived him of when he deprived him of his name, but it wasn’t Robbie’s loss of possessions that upset Lisa, it was the fact that he would never know the love of his father. Of course the little boy had been curious and she had striven to answer his questions as honestly as she could. He knew he had a daddy who lived a long way away, and mercifully beyond that he had not questioned her. Lisa was no fool, though. The day would come when he would want to know more, and now here was Rorke, bringing that day closer by insisting that they return with him to the island.

Could she go back? Had she strength to return to the place where she had known such delirious happiness, and such bitter pain?

‘Come back, Lisa, you were miles away,’ Rorke’s voice goaded. ‘Where, I wonder? In the arms of your lover?’

Lisa’s mouth compressed in a tight line,

‘I’ve only had one lover, Rorke,’ she told him levelly.

‘You mean you expect me to believe there’s been no one else since Peters?’ he mocked, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘Why? After all, you were willing enough to go to bed with me, before I found out the truth.’

‘The truth?’ Lisa stormed, the cold condemnation in his eyes and voice suddenly unleashing a torrent of rage—against Rorke himself, against his wilful blindness, against Helen who had destroyed their marriage almost before it got started, but most of all against Rorke, for his lack of faith, of trust, and surely love, because if he had truly loved her he would have believed her.

‘Mummy!’ Robbie wailed, sensing the antagonism springing up between the two adults. ‘Mummy!’

‘Don’t cry, Robbie, everything’s all right.’

‘He loves you now, Lisa,’ Rorke said softly, as she bent to pick Robbie up, ‘but will he still love you when he learns the truth about his daddy?’

‘I know about my daddy,’ Robbie piped up shrilly, fixing his eyes on Rorke. ‘He lives a long way away, over the sea. That’s why we never see him. Jamie has a new daddy,’ he announced gravely to Lisa. ‘Will I ever have a new daddy?’

Out of the corner of her eye Lisa saw Rorke’s mouth tighten.

‘It’s time for Robbie’s lunch,’ she told him. ‘We can’t talk now, Rorke. I’ve got some work to do this afternoon.’

‘Then I’ll come back this evening, and when I do, I expect to get an answer from you, Lisa. Don’t forget, will you, that if Robbie were my child, I’d be able to take him back with me, with or without your permission, and if that’s what it takes to get you to see Dad, then that’s exactly what I’ll do. He needs you, Lisa.’

* * *

Long after Rorke was gone and Robbie was back at school, Lisa still heard those words. Leigh needed her. Could she refuse to go to him? Did she really want to? When Rorke had refused to accept that she was expecting his child she had run away, unable to stay, and, she acknowledged, in some ways she had been running ever since. Perhaps now the time had come to stop. She pushed away her work, unable to concentrate. Tonight Rorke would be back, wanting her answer.

She sighed, and got up, not seeing the neat living room, but instead the high-ceilinged gracious rooms of Rorke’s home on St Martins.

It was there that their engagement had been announced. Rorke had been withdrawn even then. She had overheard him complaining to his father that he hadn’t wanted all this fuss, just a quiet, simple wedding. Lisa hadn’t heard Leigh’s response; she hadn’t wanted to eavesdrop, but her heart had been warmed by Rorke’s admission, coming after several days when he had done nothing more than give her his customary brotherly kiss at breakfast and again at night, making no attempt to be alone with her.

She had intended to go to him and tell him that she too wanted them to be married quietly, but before she was able to do so he had been called away to one of their hotels.

It had been while he was away that she discovered she was pregnant. She had been feeling nauseous in the morning for several days, but had thought nothing of it until one afternoon when she had gone up to the hospital to help out by chatting to the patients and generally making herself useful. It had been unusually hot, but that alone did not account for the sudden faintness that overcame her; it had taken Mike to point out the truth to her, gently and with considerable concern. He had wanted her to be completely sure, and Lisa had agreed to go with him to his bungalow where he had a small surgery and where there would be less chance of anyone else guessing.