Flora's Defiance

At least Angelo hadn’t guessed that she had been a virgin until he touched her, Flora reflected wretchedly as she struggled back into her crumpled clothing in the confined space. Somehow the thought of Angelo van Zaal, with his stable of glossy, sophisticated supermodel girlfriends, learning that she had been a sad twenty-six-year-old virgin struck her as the final humiliation. He would think she had been desperate for a man to show an interest in her and that wasn’t how she was at all. Flora just didn’t have a very high opinion of men and didn’t think that a man was always necessary to a happy life. After her broken engagement she had stopped dating and had concentrated her energy on rebuilding her life.

As she emerged from the compartment Angelo appeared in the bedroom doorway to direct her back upstairs. She recalled him carrying her to bed and kissing her every step of the way and her pale skin flushed a deep rosy pink. How on earth could she have behaved that way? She was a very private person and she had standards, strict standards. Casual sex was anathema to her and what for him had probably just featured as an excitingly unexpected roll between the sheets with an almost stranger meant a great deal more to her in terms of pride and self-respect.

Angelo watched Flora dig her feet into her shoes and reach for her coat. She was behaving as if she could not get away from him quickly enough, a reaction very far removed from what he usually received from women in the aftermath of intimacy, and her unashamedly dismissive attitude set his even white teeth on edge.

At the same time an unusual sense of dislocation was assailing Angelo, as if his world had suddenly been turned upside down and everything felt wrong and out of place. In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Angelo, always so in control of events and of himself, was in deep shock. He had, after all, just engaged in unprotected sex for the first time in his life. Even the awareness that he did not have a condom had failed to stop him in his tracks. He had gone way beyond the age when he always carried protection, for not since he’d been a teenager had he engaged in an impetuous sexual encounter. Yet he had knowingly accepted the risk he was running and had found Flora so irresistible that he had taken her regardless of all common sense. Those acknowledgements shattered many of the convictions Angelo had long held about his own character. What the hell had come over him?

‘Are you using any form of contraception? ‘ Angelo asked flatly.

Flora’s head flew up, green eyes unguarded and full of dismay as she frowned, following that question back to its logical source only to register that neither of them had considered that possibility at the time. ‘No, I’m not … Are you saying that—?’

‘This—what just transpired between us,’ Angelo extended with a shift of fluid brown hands that was very Mediterranean and non-verbally eloquent, reminding Flora that her sister had once mentioned that he had had a Spanish mother. ‘It was out of character for me.’

‘And for me,’ Flora muttered numbly, tying the belt on her coat and pulling it tighter than was comfortable, desperately needing to keep her hands busy.

‘I didn’t stop to think of consequences. We had sex without protection, which was very foolish of both of us. However, I have regular health checks and you need have no fear of disease. But—‘

Flora was already settling aghast eyes on him and she said shakily before he could continue, ‘Obviously there’s still a risk that you might have got me pregnant.’

‘Let’s try to be optimistic. We only had sex once and for all that we know one of us could even be infertile. We’ll have to hope that the odds are in our favour,’ Angelo breathed with deliberate cool, convinced that since he had never before tempted fate he would surely get away with it. He refused to even consider the alternative because messy situations like unplanned pregnancies had no place in his perfectly organised life.

Flora was stunned by his optimistic outlook, for she was much more prone to worrying that any moral mistake automatically attracted a punishment.

‘As it’s obvious that you don’t want me to stay,’ Angelo remarked silkily, one lean brown hand resting on the door, ‘I’ll leave you here to sort through those boxes.’

Flora had dug her hands into her pockets. ‘Right. Okay,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I’d like to see Mariska again before I leave Amsterdam.’

Cool blue eyes rested on her anxious face. ‘You’re welcome to visit her whenever you like.’ He reached into his pocket to withdraw a pen and write on the back of a business card. ‘This is my home telephone number if you want to make arrangements with Anke.’

Flora studied the card he handed her with fixed attention, reluctant to look at him again. The atmosphere was so raw with unspoken tension that it squeezed at her nerves and her ability to breathe normally.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Angelo drawled.

Immediately, Flora braved her demons to glance up at him. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she told him woodenly.

‘We need to stay in contact for Mariska’s sake,’ Angelo contradicted. ‘I will also seek reassurance that you are not pregnant. When will you know? ‘

Flora reddened at that very personal question. ‘Mind your own business! ‘

A

ngelo dealt her a stony look shot through with reinforced steel. ‘If you conceive my child, it will be very much my business, querida.’

As soon as he was gone, having told her where to leave the key when she was finished, Flora shed her coat again and embarked on the first box. Mariska in mind, she set Julie’s diaries and photographs to one side along with a rather battered teddy that her sister had once kept on her bed. There was not much else to be conserved aside from a few cards exchanged between Willem and Julie and some inexpensive costume jewellery that she thought her niece might one day like to look at. She studied the photo of Willem and Julie on their wedding day, so young, so happy and full of innocent hope, and a flood of tears overwhelmed her. She wept until she was empty, and although her throat was sore afterwards, she felt much better for having vented her emotions. She then made use of the phone number that Angelo had given her and organised a time to visit that afternoon and see Mariska.

In the little bathroom she splashed her swollen eyes with cold water and thought she looked an absolute sight. She still could barely credit that she had had sex with Angelo van Zaal. Were there more of her sexually adventurous father’s genes in her than she had ever realised? She would not let herself use the euphemism ‘making love’, for she was still hard pressed to explain exactly how she had ended up on that bed with Angelo, engaging in the intimacies she had avoided sharing with other men. While she had always experienced a strong buzz of attraction in Angelo’s radius, it had never occurred to her that it might have the power to get so out of hand. Evidently all it had taken was for her emotions to get equally out of kilter for the proverbial weak moment to have made nonsense of her moral outlook on life.

She had dropped her guard while she had sought forgetfulness from the unhappy present. Even worse, she had become intimate with a man she didn’t even like, a man who had always held her at arm’s length and treated her with cool indifference. No matter how she looked at what had happened she felt that she had let herself down badly and could not imagine ever meeting Angelo van Zaal again without suffering severe embarrassment.

Clutching a laden bag of keepsakes, she climbed on board a tram and found a seat. The busy streets whirred past while she tried not to think about how different Angelo had seemed once he brought the barriers crashing down by kissing her. So open, so apparently honest. So, you’re really beautiful, are you? an unimpressed little voice jeered in her head and she went pink and laced her fingers defensively together. It would be much wiser just to put all those inappropriate memories in a mental box and put them firmly away, she decided with a hearty sense of relief at having seen that obvious solution to her mental discomfiture.

How great a risk was there, though, that she might fall pregnant? Flora did the little sums with the menstrual dates that she had refused to share with Angelo and suppressed a troubled sigh of concern, for there was no comfort to be found in those figures. Their accident, if accident it could be called, had occurred squarely in the middle of her most fertile phase. She could only pray that she would not conceive, although even that thought felt strange to a woman already engaged in an application to adopt her baby niece.

But what were her chances of success on that score? Her reddened mouth curved down. She had embarked on her adoption plans with high hopes, secure in the knowledge that she was Mariska’s only surviving relative and ignorant of the fact that Angelo might also cherish a desire to adopt Willem and Julie’s daughter. And Angelo, she reckoned unhappily, was going to be much stiffer competition in the adoption stakes than she had ever dreamt, because he had been engaged in looking out for Mariska ever since she was born and had already established a record of consistent care where the little girl was concerned. Nobody seemed the least bit worried that he was an unmarried single man, which she supposed was only fair considering that she was an unmarried single woman with only her time as a qualified childminder to back her application.

Furthermore it would take months for her adoption application to be properly checked out and considered and, in the meantime, Angelo had custody of her niece. Mariska would naturally become more settled in his home and more attached to him. Flora did not think her chances of winning custody of the tot from Angelo were good and the acknowledgement filled her with deep sadness. Unaware of Angelo’s claim previously, she had naively believed that there would be no barrier to her bringing little Mariska straight back home to Charlbury St Helens with her.

Mariska greeted her aunt with smiles and chuckles and lifted her mood. What remained of the afternoon passed away and Anke suggested that Flora join them for their evening meal and remain until the little girl’s bedtime. Once she realised that she would not be eating with Angelo as well, Flora was grateful for the invitation to extend her stay. They had a light meal in the nursery and Flora had a lot of fun helping to bath her niece and prepare her for bed. At one stage as she towelled Mariska dry and the little girl succumbed to helpless giggles she looked down into her little face and saw her sister’s delicate blonde, blue-eyed prettiness replicated there. For an instant her eyes filled with tears again and as she carefully got her emotions back under control she finally appreciated how terribly tired she was. Once the little girl was tucked up in her cot, Flora put her coat on and headed for the stairs.