‘Claire’s made apple pie for you ‘cos it’s your favourite, Daddy,’ Heather told her father with a beam. ‘She made it specially because you were coming home.’
‘Did she? That’s very kind of her.’
Against her will Claire found herself turning to look at him. In a low voice that neither of the girls could hear, he said softly, ‘I think I’m going to like coming home to a wife who makes apple pies especially for me.’
For some extraordinary reason Claire felt herself tremble. To compensate for it she said sharply, ‘Didn’t Heather’s mother.’
‘No … No, Susie wasn’t much of a cook,’ said Jay sardonically. ‘Her talents lay in other directions.’
Yes, and she knew what those were, despite those separate bedrooms. Her face grew hot as she thought about the likely outcome had his ex-wife happened to walk into his bedroom when he was half naked.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jay.
‘Nothing.’ How on earth had he come to have such long thick lashes? She wondered absently, fighting to disentangle her glance from his. They looked so soft, so at odds with the harsh angles of his face.
‘Mummy, may I have some pie?’
Hurriedly Claire turned towards her daughter.
Much to her surprise, Jay joined in the girls’ bedtime preparations. Heather was much more relaxed with him now, she noticed as she briskly handed both girls clean nightdresses.
‘Clean your teeth and then straight into bed.’
‘And then will you come and read to us?’
That was Heather, the dreamer. Claire was reading The Secret Garden to them, reliving her own childhood pleasure in the magic of the book. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the expression on Jay’s face.
‘Not tonight, it’s Daddy’s turn,’ she said firmly, not letting herself respond to Heather’s agonised expression.
That brief awareness between them when she had sensed Jay’s feeling of rejection had gone, but she had been aware of it, just as she was aware of his pain whenever Heather turned from him to her.
He was upstairs for a long time. Claire busied herself in the kitchen, knowing that when he came down they would have to talk, but reluctant to do so.
He came in quietly, but she was still aware of him. She turned to look at him and was struck by the air of exhaustion that clung to him.
‘You look tired.’
‘It’s been a long week. Heather still seems to see me in the guise of some sort of ogre. I can’t believe that Mrs Roberts alone is responsible.’
Claire didn’t either, but she had to choose her words carefully. ‘She’s a very sensitive child; she hardly knows you. You’ve been away such a lot. From what she tells me she hasn’t spent much time with either you or her mother …’
‘No. And if you’re trying to tell me that in those circumstances it’s hardly surprising that she wants to reject me, I know it, but that still doesn’t stop me from … Every time I reach out to her she retreats from me, but with you …’
‘Some little girls do respond better to their own sex, especially at that age,’ she soothed. ‘I know how you feel, though,’ she added in a low voice. ‘I feel equally guilty when I see how enthusiastically Lucy goes to you. It had never even occurred to me that she might miss having a father, even though I was very close to mine.’
She heard Jay sigh.
‘I’m sorry I forced your hand earlier on.’ He leaned back against the wall tiredly, hands pushed into his pockets. The material strained across his thighs and her attention was concentrated like a fly trapped in honey on the strong play of muscles there. Desperately she wrenched it away.
‘I had already decided to accept your proposal,’ she told him huskily. ‘I’ve been trying all week to convince myself that you’re right and that we’d each be contributing equally to the marriage, but …’
‘But you still haven’t managed to do it?’ He made a small explosive sound in the back of his throat as he levered himself off the wall and came towards her.
‘You know what your trouble is, don’t you, Claire? You’re too damned proud! Do you honestly think that money can actually compensate for all the things you can give Heather that I can’t? No! When I walked in here tonight she actually smiled at me. Do you know how long it’s been since she did that? Since I came back to this house and found anything like a welcome, in fact? To walk in here tonight after a week spent arguing over the final details of the contract …’ He made a brief gesture that encompassed without words what he was trying to say. ‘Susie wasn’t much of a homemaker. She never wanted to get married. She was a model when I met her, and she bitterly resented being dragged down here and buried alive in the country, as she called it. If I hadn’t stopped her, she’d have had Heather aborted. Sometimes I wondered if …’
‘No … No, you mustn’t think that!’ Claire’s voice shook with anguish for him. Without even thinking about it she reached out and touched his arm lightly.
It was strange to feel his living flesh beneath the fabric of his shirt and her fingertips lingered briefly before she realised what he was and hurriedly withdrew.