Millionaire's Woman
‘Big lunch.’ Kate stood with arms folded. ‘But you didn’t come here to discuss my eating habits, so show me whatever you want to show me—’
‘And get out,’ he finished for her.
‘I hope I wouldn’t be as rude as that.’ She looked up at him, wishing she felt as indifferent to him as she was trying to make out. He obviously hadn’t had time for a haircut lately and, in a battered trench coat over a crew neck sweater and cords, Jack looked so much like the young man she’d once fallen in love with it was hard to main tain her distance. But something in his demeanour was deeply disquieting.
‘I had dinner with Dad before I came here. He asked me to show you these.’ He handed her an envelope. ‘Look inside.’
Kate looked at him questioningly, but Jack’s expression gave nothing away. She withdrew two photographs from the envelope and sat down with a bump, feeling the colour drain from her face. Both studies were of the same girl, the first at Joanna’s age, the second as a radiant, smiling bride in her twenties.
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Jack tossed his raincoat on a chair and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Kate, are you all right?’
‘No, I’m not all right,’ she snapped, her eyes glued to the photographs. The girl in them had dark, curling hair, but otherwise the likeness to Joanna was unmistakeable. ‘Who is this?’ Though there was only one woman it could be.
‘My mother. My father met her when the first photograph was taken. They were in school together.’ Jack breathed in deeply. ‘He thought he was seeing things when he met Joanna in the park this morning.’
Kate nodded slowly, her eyes on the photographs shaking in her unsteady hand. ‘So that’s why he looked so ill.’
‘He idolised my mother. We both did.’ Jack’s deep,authoritative voice grew husky. ‘You know she died when I was fifteen. It took me years to get over losing her. But Dad never has. Coming face to face with Joanna today was a hell of a shock to him.’ He sat on the end of the chaise and put an ungentle finger under Kate’s chin to tilt her face up to his. ‘When were you going to tell me that we had a daughter?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘IWASN’T going to—ever.’ Kate pushed his hand away and looked up at him with hostility. ‘Because in the eyes of the world she’s not our daughter,she’s my niece, Jack. All the time she was growing up I had to stand back and look on from the sidelines while my child called someone else Mummy.’
His fists clenched. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’ he demanded, glaring at her.
She glared back in hot resentment. ‘I didn’t realise I was for a while! There was a lot going on in my life at the time: the move to London, getting to grips with the new job,living alone in digs.’ She wrenched her eyes away. ‘And pining for you, Jack.’
Kate had put her sickness and weariness down to the changes in her life at first, but eventually she bought a test kit that confirmed her fears. At the time the Suttons had been packing up, ready for the move to London. Kate went home that weekend, officially to give them a helping hand, in reality desperate to contact Jack and tell him about the baby. But Elizabeth met her at the bus station with the shattering news that Jack Logan had married Dawn Taylor the previous weekend, and Kate’s life fell apart.
‘Dear God!’ Jack seized her hand again. ‘If I’d known in time I would have paid Dawn off and married you right away, Kate.’
She snatched her hand away. ‘Not the ideal way to start a marriage, Jack.’
‘Better than letting you go it alone!’
She gave a mirthless little laugh. ‘Ah, but I didn’t go it alone. Far from it. Liz guessed my little secret right away and seized her chance to acquire the child she couldn’t have herself because, she informed me, she’d had to look after me instead of having a child of her own. This was payback time.’
Jack sat back, his face haggard. ‘No wonder she slammed the door in my face when I came looking for you. She was afraid to let me see the baby.’
Elizabeth’s plans were cut and dried before Kate returned to London that terrible weekend. The Suttons would bring Kate’s baby up as their own on condition that she obeyed their rules.
Jack looked sick. ‘Don’t tell me they sent you off to some kind of home!’
Kate shook her head. ‘Nothing so dramatic. Elizabeth merely insisted I live with them in the new house in London. She wanted to make sure I took vitamins and received regular medical attention so that “her” baby would be a perfect, healthy specimen. She had no qualms about the father. She went off you big time when you married someone else, of course, but from a breeding point of view the Logan genes were perfectly acceptable.’
‘I’m so glad my pedigree came up to scratch,’ said Jack savagely. ‘Did you manage to keep working?’
‘Yes, thank God.’
Kate had always been slender. And, because morning sickness and misery over her situation killed her appetite, her shape altered so little her condition went unnoticed at work. She was passionately grateful for it. Her job was the only thing that kept her sane. She worked well into her sixth month, and by buying clothes a size or two larger than usual managed to disguise her not very considerable weight gain and keep her secret.
‘I managed to carry on keeping my secret,’ Kate told Jack, ‘because at that stage I developed a kidney infection and had to take time off. I also suffered from depression, and sank into such depths of hormonal despair Liz and Robert decided to move to another part of London where no one knew us.’
Jack frowned. ‘Surely neighbours must have noticed you were pregnant?’
‘I never met Elizabeth’s neighbours. Or wanted to. Besides, I was ill for quite a while, and even when I got better I never went out except to the antenatal clinic and for a daily walk in some park Liz drove me to, as far from home as possible. I felt like the skeleton in the closet!’ Kate smiled grimly. ‘It was around then that the sleepwalking started. Eventually Liz was so afraid I’d fall and harm the baby that Robert put a bed in the dining room on the ground floor, and I slept there until Jo was born.’