Bittersweet Love - Cathy Williams [53]
‘I’m going to see you again, Natalie. You can’t run away from me, so don’t even bother to try. And I mean what I say—you’re mine, reserved for me and no one else.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do!’
‘I want you.’
Natalie looked at him furiously. ‘I have to go,’ she repeated, and he released her. With a swift movement, she let herself out of the car, hurrying up towards the building, resisting the temptation to look around and see whether he was still sitting there in his car, looking at her.
Her head was hurting by the time she made it back to her office. Should she be flattered at his determination, she wondered, or insulted? He assumed, despite everything she had said to him, that he would sooner or later achieve his objective in seducing her, but was it really so surprising? She doubted he had ever failed with a woman. He had that fatally potent combination of good looks, intelligence and charm which most women would find impossible to resist.
Tony grinned at her absent-mindedly when she swept into the office and asked her how lunch went.
Fine,’ Natalie replied vaguely.
‘Managed to cut any deals for me?’ he joked, and Natalie thought, If only you knew. The subject hadn’t even arisen.
She seemed to spend the next week looking over her shoulder, wondering whether he was going to spring any surprise visits on her, and quite prepared to hide under her bed if he did.
But there was no sign of him. Maybe, she thought, he had found himself another woman. The thought was so sickening that she shoved it to the back of her mind, then immediately told herself off for being a fool. She should be hoping that he did find someone else, because that would at least deflect him away from her and give her the peace of mind she wanted to crave.
It didn’t help that just when she needed the calm company of Eric he was becoming elusive. Appointments seemed to be springing up all over the place for him until she teased light-heartedly, ‘You’re avoiding me, aren’t you?’
‘No, of course not!’ Eric exclaimed, but was there the tiniest element of sheepishness behind his denial?
Later, when they met for a meal in one of the wine bars in the West End, he confessed, red-faced, that he had been dating another woman.
Natalie laughed, delighted. ‘Who?’
‘Another totally unsuitable woman,’ he admitted, sipping from his glass of wine and shaking his head wistfully.
Natalie nodded sympathetically. Didn’t she know first hand what he was going through? Except she was desperately trying to avoid her totally unsuitable man. Presumably Eric still had some control over his life and his emotions and had not lost both the way she stupidly had.
She was so engrossed with her problems, that frantic desire to never clap eyes on Kane Marshall ever again mixed with a shameful yearning for everything he could give her, her job, that she assumed that nothing further could complicate her life. There was a limit to how cruel fate could be, wasn’t there?
At first, she pretended to herself that it just couldn’t be, that those bouts of nausea which seemed to be getting more frequent were simply the outcome of an upset stomach. Or stress. Probably the two, she decided.
On the fourth day she convinced herself that it had been a total waste of money purchasing a home pregnancy kit. On the sixth day, she decided that she might as well get value for her wasted money by at least using the damn thing. Complete waste of time, she told herself, as she sat in the lounge and waited for the kit to back her up.
The positive result was such a shock that Natalie stared at it for fifteen minutes in horrified silence, overcome by the urge to faint.
It couldn’t be true. She tried to think clearly, but it was difficult. She wanted to collapse. She closed her eyes and opened them again very slowly, thinking that perhaps she had imagined the whole thing. But she had not
In the end she phoned her sister, but instead of explaining the situation she chatted about everything else, her voice bright and