The Fatherhood Affair

She had hoped he would relax, look reassured.

All that stared back at her was total disbelief.

‘What did you do to me,’ she whispered, ‘that I should respond to you...in such a negative fashion?’

‘Nothing,’ he said mockingly. ‘Maybe I should have. I don’t know. What I can declare with absolute conviction and honesty is that I did nothing to you at all.’

It chilled her.

‘Then what kind of person does that make me?’

‘Essentially you are the finest person I’ve ever known. But you were hurt, Natalie. Dreadfully hurt.’

‘And that’s what I’ve got to recollect?’

He nodded. ‘All the doctors state definitely that you will have total recall.’

‘I don’t know that I want those memories back.’

‘It’s inevitable. It must be accepted.’

‘What will happen to us...when I do remember?’

The alarm and concern she felt must have been written plainly on her face. Damien moved, sitting on the edge of the bed where she was propped against the tilted backrest. He gathered her into his arms, holding her close to him, tenderly, as though he treasured her.

She slid her hands around his neck and lay her head on his shoulder. They were broad and strongly muscled shoulders, made to lean on, to weep on, to rest on. As she nestled her breasts against his rock-solid chest, and breathed in the wonderful, unique scent of him, Natalie felt a comforting sense of homecoming...relief, pleasure, the sweet promise of all that was missed, and the magic of finding it waiting to be taken up again.

His fingers caressed the nape of her neck. His mouth brushed over her hair, and she was glad it was soft and silky from having been washed today. She wanted to feel perfect to him, as perfect as he felt to her. She was tempted to press her lips to the warmth of his throat, but realised this wasn’t the time or the place for such an intimacy.

She felt the tension in his body, the restraint with which he was holding her, and knew he was thinking of how to answer her question about their future together, even as he imparted the comfort that he would never change.

‘You will hate me, Natalie,’ he said gently.

No equivocation. Forthright. Blunt. Honest.

His certainty jolted her. ‘Even worse than I hated my husband?’ She didn’t know how she knew she had hated her husband but she intuitively suspected she had.

‘I think it will be worse,’ he murmured. ‘Far worse.’

‘Why?’

‘You suspect something of me which isn’t true.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s not a memory I want you to recall.’

‘You won’t tell me?’

‘No.’

She lifted her head, deeply perturbed by the deadly barriers he saw coming between them. She wanted to push them away, decry their existence, but one look at the grim bleakness on Damien’s face told her he had spoken the truth, a truth he hated, but one that was inescapable.

Natalie’s mind suddenly latched on to the most recent event in her life. ‘The accident, Damien? Why was I knocked over by a car?’

He did not flinch. ‘You did not look where you were going, Natalie, because you were running away from me.’

She stared at him, thunderstruck. It was proof of what he said, yet it was in direct contradiction of the feelings he evoked in her. She struggled to make sense of it. People ran away in fear and confusion. Or when they were dreadfully hurt.