The Fatherhood Affair

As soon as he said it, she knew it was true. The happiness drained out of her heart, leaving an aching, senseless void. Her beautiful boy was gone. Like the years he had occupied in her life.

Damien must have seen or felt her distress. ‘That’s why you want to have another child,’ he said, the intensity in his voice drawing her attention back to him.

‘Do I?’ she asked listlessly.

‘Yes. More than anything else,’ he asserted. ‘And I want very much to be the father of that child.’

His passion poured into the empty spaces inside her and stirred a consideration of the future. She didn’t understand how he was her lover, yet they still hadn’t made love together. He looked a very virile man. It must be she who was holding back for some reason.

Damien’s fingers grazed longingly over hers, wanting a response from her, not demanding, but she could feel the wanting reaching into her, finding a deep chord of harmony that assured her he was speaking the truth.

She didn’t know why, but the thought of this man being her lover felt...familiar. A sense of rightness, of contentment, swept through Natalie. Yes, she did want another child. And what better man could she choose as the father? Most women would gladly line up to have such a man as their mate.

‘We’re not married,’ she half-queried.

‘I don’t think you wish to marry again.’

‘Why not?’

‘Your first marriage...’ He hesitated. She could see it pained him to talk about it. He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t all you wanted it to be, Natalie.’

So that was the problem. She was wary of commitment. It wasn’t exactly fair on Damien to load him with the damage caused by another man. If he had loved her for years, he had been waiting a long time for her acceptance. She should know...

‘Chandler,’ she said. ‘You’re Damien Chandler.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And I’m Natalie Arnott.’

‘Before you were married you were Natalie Arnott.’

Whatever had happened in her marriage was over, Natalie thought. Damien must be more important to her now. She had remembered his name.

‘Thank you for being a nice and very patient lover, Damien,’ she said warmly. ‘Thank you for...for looking after me.’

His smile irradiated sunshine. ‘I’d do anything for you, Natalie.’

She sighed, deeply moved by his devotion to her. The talking had made her very tired. Her eyelids closed of their own weight. She could feel the light tingling of his strong hands. It forged a bond of trust.

‘I like your touch,’ she reaffirmed.

Of one thing she was certain. Whatever she had been like before the accident, her instincts had been very good at choosing a lover.

CHAPTER FOUR

DAMIEN came to see her every day.

No one else did.

He brought her flowers, chocolates, fruit, magazines, highly expensive and beautifully perfumed toiletries, everything she might desire to make the hours in hospital less burdensome. She was moved out of Intensive Care after the danger of a cerebral haemorrhage subsided. In the more relaxed atmosphere of a ward, Damien’s attention to her excited curiosity and speculative gossip.

That was all very fine, but Natalie wanted her memory back. Once she was out of her drug-haze from the initial trauma of the accident, it weighed very heavily on her mind that she had a twelve-year gap in her life, and she was increasingly frustrated in her efforts to recall it.

Why did there appear to be only Damien in her life? That troubled her more and more. She tackled him about it on her fifth day in hospital.

‘Not one person has come to visit me except you. Do other people know I’m here, Damien? I can’t remember so I don’t know whom to call, but I must have some friends in Sydney.’ She accepted now that she did live in Sydney, New South Wales, and not at Noosa, Queensland.

‘You shut everyone out of your life when Ryan died,’ he explained. ‘This past year...there were friends and acquaintances who did try to draw you back into their social circle. You rejected every invitation. After a while they stopped trying and drifted away.’