The Boss's Virgin

EYES open wide, she stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re not married any more? What do you mean?’

He smiled dryly. ‘Renata left me two years ago, ran off with a golf champion she met in Scotland. She’s always had an obsession with golf. Having landed a champion at the peak of his earning capacity, she wanted to hang on to him for good. She didn’t just want to have an affair; she was determined to marry him. She asked me for a divorce, I gave her one, and she married him the minute it was final.’

She absorbed that, watching him intently. How had he really felt when his wife asked for a divorce? He hadn’t wanted to divorce her, she remembered. That had never been in his mind. Had it been a shock to him when Renata asked him to let her go?

‘I didn’t hear about it,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was mentioned in the newspapers, but I rarely read gossip columns. What about your son?’

‘She left him with me.’

That shocked Pippa. What sort of mother could abandon her child without a backward glance? Of course, Mrs Harding had spent very little time with her son, according to Randal—had she preferred to leave the boy behind, or had Randal made that a condition of agreeing to the divorce?

He added a little contemptuously, ‘Renata told me her new husband didn’t want a child around, cramping his style. They lead a very busy social life off the gold course; children aren’t part of their scene. But then Renata was never a devoted mother, anyway.’

That, too, she remembered. ‘So he lives with you now,’ she thought aloud.

Randal grimaced. ‘That would be difficult to manage unless I hired someone to take care of him. I have to go away so much. No, he’s at boarding school in Buckinghamshire, and he likes it, thank heavens.’

‘Poor little boy, he must have been upset.’ The trauma of divorce always hurt the children most, didn’t it?

Randal shook his head. ‘I don’t think he was that bothered, as far as his mother was concerned. It didn’t mean he saw her less—how could he? She was rarely at home anyway. He had the stability of knowing I’d always be there for him. If he had preferred to be at home I’d have got him a full-time nanny, but he wanted to go to boarding school. One of his friends had been at his place for a year and Johnny thought it sounded great. He has lots of friends around day and night, all the things kids love—computers, sport, a swimming pool—and he’s doing well in class. Oddly enough, his new stepfather has a sort of cachet, too. Sports heroes in the family are assets. The other boys envy him. Renata and her new husband visited the school and Johnny was thrilled. I’m going to visit him, myself, this weekend. I’m allowed to take him out of school at weekends; I try to do that at least once a month.’

‘Well, give him my love.’ She went pink. ‘Not that he’ll remember me, of course.’ She had often thought about Johnny; strange to think that he had never even met her.

‘No, you never saw him, did you? It’s time you did. You must come with me at the weekend.’

She stiffened, eyes hurriedly moving away from him. ‘Well, I would have loved to, he sounds a lovely little boy, but this Saturday is my wedding day, you know.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he drawled. ‘Your wedding day. I’d forgotten that. And you’re going to marry that insurance man? You can’t be serious!’

She resented the ironic note in his voice, the mocking smile curling his lip. Flushed and angry, she bit back, ‘Perfectly serious! You don’t know Tom. Don’t talk about him that way.’

‘I met him, remember? I have a very shrewd idea what he’s like.’

She didn’t like the way he said that; he was coldly dismissive of Tom. ‘He wasn’t himself. The accident upset him.’ She turned towards the door. ‘Look, I really must be going.’

She star

ted to walk away, but at that second somebody knocked at the outer door of the suite, calling, ‘Room Service!’

‘Come in,’ Randal replied, and she heard a key turn then the door opened and a waiter pushed a loaded trolley into the sitting room, gave both of them a polite smile.

‘Where shall I set the table up, sir?’

‘Over by the window,’ Randal told him, and the man wheeled the trolley over there, lifted the flaps which formed a table, began moving food around on the table surface, placed two chairs.

‘Leave it. We’ll help ourselves, thanks,’ Randal said.

‘Would you sign this for me, sir?’ the waiter asked, presenting him with a pen and the bill.

Randal signed, tipped him, and the man departed. Pippa began drifting after him but didn’t get very far. Randal’s long fingers took her arm, held her firmly.

‘No, you don’t. You’re staying. We have a lot to talk about yet.’

‘We don’t have anything to talk about!’

‘I’m not married any more,’ he reminded her, still holding her arm with all the potential force of those long, sinewy fingers, reminding her that if she tried to break free he was capable of resisting any effort she made.

‘That has nothing to do with me!’ she denied, trying not to sound too disturbed by that contact. ‘Please let go of me!’