Bittersweet Love - Cathy Williams [61]
She shook her head and made her face go blank. ‘No, I’m not.’
Kane’s lips tightened and he said roughly, ‘There’s a difference between having dinner with someone and agreeing to marry them. I’m thinking of you,’ he said craftily. ‘You’d end up miserable if you tied yourself with someone like Eric. I’ve told you this in the past, but I’m saying it again. You’re a fool to try and make happiness out of whatever you have with that boy.’
‘So you’re thinking about me,’ Natalie mocked. ‘How altruistic.’ At that, he had the grace to blush and she thought, You cad; talk about using every trick in the book. Unfinished business. That was what she was to him. Passion severed in mid-stream. No doubt if she had let it all run its course he would have tired of her soon enough and she would have been discarded to carry on with her own life. She knew him like the back of her hand. And if she hadn’t been so deeply emotionally involved with him maybe she would have enjoyed the physical temptations he was offering without any fuss at all.
‘Don’t marry him,’ he said roughly. ‘At least if you marry me we would have great sex.’
That made her turn away, hurt. It was all he associated with a relationship, wasn’t it?
‘Get out of my flat,’ she said, moving towards the door and pulling it open. Kane shot her a look that implied that he would have loved to shake her until she came round to his way of thinking, but he didn’t say anything.
Outside, the deserted street reminded her how late it was. Well past midnight. She would be a wreck in the morning. She was finding it difficult enough to wake up in time for work without having had only a few hour’s sleep the night before.
His car was parked across the street, under one of the streetlamps, sleek and sharp, a bit like its owner. She wondered what had happened to his date. Had he packed her off in a taxi back to her house? Or maybe she was waiting back at his. The thought made her want to retch and she looked at him with cool resentment.
‘You’re a stupid fool,’ he informed her and she bristled angrily.
‘Then I can’t imagine what you’re doing here,’ she retorted. ‘It’ s not your scene to keep company with stupid fools, is it?’
He looked as if he could hit her for that remark. In the shadows, his face was all angles, hard and uncompromising, and she wondered how on earth she could ever have had the temerity to fall in love with him.
‘Fine. Throw your life away. I’ll leave you to get on with it’ He turned and walked away, his footsteps ringing on the deserted pavement. She watched, unable to tear her eyes away, until he let himself into the car and slammed the door shut behind him. She knew that he wasn’t looking at her. He had washed his hands of her. He pulled out smoothly and the car vanished into the distance, but instead of feeling relief Natalie could only muster up a feeling of loss.
She slept badly and awoke to a feeling of nausea. She had not suffered from severe morning sickness with her pregnancy—more a vague feeling of nausea that lasted .on and off for the entire day—but this morning she felt positively ill.
She was ashen when she finally made it into work and Tony glanced briefly at her as she entered, concerned at her pallor, but he soon forgot about it when the usual round of phone calls and meetings rushed him off his feet.
What a wonderful boss, Natalie thought; she could just get on with her work and her nausea without him hovering around her like a mother hen.
She thought of Kane. Nothing like a mother hen, more like a predatory eagle, but nevertheless if she had shown up for work feeling as she did those shrewd eyes of his would have spotted it instantly and he would not have let the matter rest until he had dragged the truth out of her. Persistence was a trait with which he had been abundantly supplied.
She sat at her desk, automatically sifting through her post, but her mind was fluttering back to the time when she worked with Kane. He had been demanding, forceful, keeping her on her toes every second that she was in the office, but she had loved it. He had fired