From Waif To His Wife

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHE stared at him transfixed with her lips parted and her eyes stunned. ‘Marry you-oh, no!’ she croaked. ‘I could never-’

‘Maisie,’ he said impatiently then seemed to take hold, ‘OK, let’s take this point by point. Your job, for starters.’

‘I’ve already accepted I’ll have to leave it!’

‘But have you considered the fact that you may never get another if you’re splashed across the press in such a lurid manner? You might even find it hard to teach privately.’

She nearly bit her tongue as the implications hit her.

‘Have you any idea what it’s like to be besieged by the media?’ he continued relentlessly. ‘What it’s like to have your whole life picked over? How do you think the retirees you play for on a Sunday would react? How do you think,’ he paused, ‘your parents would have reacted?’

Her eyes dilated then she blinked vigorously. ‘They would have supported me, but it might never have happened to me if I hadn’t been so sad and lonely.’ She broke off and bit her lip.

Rafe shrugged then said more gently, ‘But they’re not here to support you.’

She rubbed her face agitatedly. ‘All the same there must be some other way-I just can’t think straight.’

He watched her. ‘There are, apparently, photos taken with a long lens through the shutters of the dining room at The Tongan of us eating together. Of you-glowing and…’ He closed his eyes briefly.

‘Don’t go on,’ Maisie whispered as she covered her burning cheeks with her palms.

‘There are also a couple that appear to show you clearly wearing a wedding band and there’s a claim that you were overheard telling the whale guide you wouldn’t swim with the whales because you were pregnant.’

Her mind leapt back to that wonderful day with the whales, now overshadowed by the fact that someone, unbeknownst to her, had been following her every move.

‘This is terrible,’ she said hoarsely. ‘But I could just disappear for a while, couldn’t I? Yes.’ She sat up straight.

‘No.’ He said it quite gently.

‘But why not?’ she protested.

‘Because mud sticks, Maisie. Because,’ he moved his shoulders restlessly, ‘I got you into this when I should have known better.’ He paused and looked irritable. ‘I suppose at the back of my mind I thought we were far enough from home to be safe, and I didn’t know what else to do with you. But I’m certainly not about to abandon you to the wolves.’

‘But surely-I mean, it might be a nine days’ wonder or…people may simply not be interested?’

His grey eyes were supremely cynical. ‘If you had any idea of the lengths I have to go to-normally-to protect my privacy, especially in regard to whom I might marry…’ He gestured with both hands. ‘But there’s something else.’

She looked at him with dread in her eyes.

‘There’s Tim Dixon. When this news filters through to him, I wouldn’t put it past him to muddy the waters considerably by claiming the baby as his.’

Maisie went white. ‘But-but,’ she stammered, ‘he could do that even if we were married.’

‘No.’ He shook his head and his grey eyes were suddenly as cold as steel. ‘Tim would know better than to tangle with me over my wife. An alone-in-the-world, besieged Maisie Wallis he might even feel he has a score to settle with could be another matter.’

Maisie shivered suddenly and felt like fainting.

‘Drink some coffee,’ he murmured.

She did, but the only inspiration it supplied her led her into an unforeseen trap. ‘But we don’t want to marry each other.’

He rubbed his jaw and stared out over the harbour for a long moment then looked back into her eyes. ‘Is that a hundred per cent true, Maisie? For you?’

Her colour came back although it fluctuated delicately.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked with her heart in her mouth.

He simply looked at her.

She got up suddenly and leant her elbows on the veranda railing with her back to him.

He waited, with his hands shoved into his pockets.

She turned at last. ‘I don’t know why but you make me feel safe.’ She swallowed. ‘You’re the only person in the world who seems to have my best interests at heart. You,’ she paused and smiled fleetingly, ‘seem to know and understand when I’m starving and when I could fall asleep on the spot. It-it has affected me.’

She pushed some escaping curls behind her ears. ‘But that’s no reason to fall in love. In fact I have the best reasons in the world to-stay well away from that kind of thing. And I mean that.’

They stared at each other.

‘You think you can turn these things off like a tap?’ he queried then.

‘I know I have to. I know I have to rely on myself now and I will,’ she said with quiet decision and patted her stomach. ‘Plus, I can’t believe any man could want me like this, let alone a man who could have anyone he chose. I really can’t.’ Her eyes were suddenly dark with conviction.

‘What makes you think I could have anyone I chose?’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Your wealth, the fact that you can be rather nice when you’re not in dictator mode-you told me yourself women are always throwing themselves in your path.’

He smiled drily. ‘I’ve successfully avoided marrying any of them to date.’

She frowned suddenly. ‘Why? I mean you say that-I don’t know, but with some…hidden meaning.’

‘Perhaps I haven’t been able to sort the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps no wheat has actually presented itself yet.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her frown grew deeper.

‘I mean no one has come up with a good reason not to marry me yet.’ He looked at her ironically. ‘You’re the first, Maisie. The ledger always seems to have been weighted in the wrong direction, you might say. Until now.’

She digested this incredulously. ‘Are you saying-what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying the fact that you don’t want to marry me has,’ he looked out over the harbour again with his eyes narrowed against the sunlight, ‘a curious appeal.’

‘But surely all the other women-surely amongst them some of them must have been, well, nice and…’ She stopped in confusion.

Rafe Sanderson grimaced over the word nice then he found himself thinking of Alicia Hindmarsh. ‘Yes, very nice,’ he said soberly, ‘but still with that one ambition.’

‘I’m-nonplussed,’ she confessed.

A glint of humour lit his eyes. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he advised. ‘We all have our strange little quirks, no doubt. Nor does it alter the fact that you really have no choice, Maisie. Unless you relish the thought of being portrayed as a girl who slept her way around the South Pacific?’

She flinched visibly. ‘But they could still do that even if we married,’ she pointed out.

He shook his head decisively. ‘No. Don’t you see? As a married couple, all the newsworthiness goes out of the story.’

Maisie covered her face with her hands then came back to sit down, and forced herself to think straight. ‘But what kind of a marriage?’

He sat back. ‘A marriage in name only until the baby comes. The advantages of that should be obvious. I have the means to keep you safe and secure throughout what is a vulnerable time for any girl, but for you much more so now. Then,’ he paused and studied her, ‘well, time will tell. We may find it suits us but, if not, a little further down the track we can discreetly dissolve it.’

‘Suits us?’ she echoed.

For a moment he looked amused. ‘As you once remarked, it’s about time I settled down since you clearly believe I have one foot in the grave.’

‘I didn’t say that! I didn’t mean it either!’

‘No, but you did say I wasn’t getting any younger. Look.’ He sat forward. ‘We, each for our own reasons, do not appear to view love and all the trimmings through rose-coloured glasses. That doesn’t mean to say we couldn’t make a marriage work. But of course, only time will tell.’

Bewilderment, shock and confusion chased through her eyes. Then she experienced the strangest sensation, a little flutter within, and her lips parted, her eyes widened and she put her hands on her stomach as she felt it again.

‘What?’ he asked with a frown.

‘It moved,’ she breathed. ‘It-moved. The baby.’

‘First time?’ he queried.

She nodded.

‘Do you know what it is?’

‘A girl.’ Her eyes softened. ‘I’ve just had a scan. I’m going to call her Susannah, after my mother. I’ve already started to call her Susie, for short. I-sometimes talk to her, just nonsense. Does she think she’ll have red hair?’ Her green eyes twinkled and were incredibly tender for a moment, then she sobered abruptly.

‘Perhaps Susie agrees with me,’ he said wryly. Then his face changed. ‘And perhaps, Maisie, that’s what you should think of foremost-your baby.’

An extraordinary clarity of vision suddenly came to Maisie. If she didn’t marry Rafe Sanderson, what future could she offer a child? A lurid past, her reputation in tatters, always looking over her shoulder, finding it hard to get a job unless she moved elsewhere and tried to start a new life…

‘I…’ She took several breaths. ‘You could be right. I don’t seem to have much option. But it is not something I would do under any other circumstances.’

He said nothing.

‘I know that sounds ungracious-’

‘It sounds typically Maisie Wallis,’ he drawled. ‘But perhaps this will ease your conscience or your sensibilities. I feel some responsibility for you, I am after all distantly related to your baby, and I wouldn’t have allowed you to do anything else.’

‘You…you,’ she spluttered but couldn’t go on.

He stood up. ‘Believe me, Maisie. But look, let’s make the best of things. Surely this must lift quite a weight off your shoulders?’

Only to be replaced by another weight? she wondered. The weight of loving you when I know it can’t be returned?

She licked her lips. ‘Yes,’ she said only, though.