Loren's Baby

Tristan Ross just hooked his thumbs into the back waist-band of his trousers under his jacket and heaved a heavy sigh. ‘Is that all?’ he enquired flatly, but Angela burst out:

‘Are you going to let her get away with that?’ in shocked tones.

In truth, Caryn was as confused as the other girl. The blow administered, she was disarmed, and they all knew it.

With a sense of futility, she would have brushed past him and made for the door, but his hand closed round her arm, preventing her from leaving.

‘Not so fast,’ he said, and she noticed inconsequently how the red weals her fingers had left in no way detracted from the disturbing attraction of his dark features. Such unusually dark features with that light hair. The hair he had obviously bestowed on his daughter. His daughter! For heaven’s sake, why hadn’t Loren mentioned that he had a grown-up daughter? Did he have a wife, too? Was that why …

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded, and she held up her head.

‘I—I’ll write to you,’ she said, saying the first thing that came into her head, and he stared at her frustratedly.

‘Why? What have we to say to one another? If Loren has something to say why the hell didn’t she come and say it herself?’

Caryn’s jaw quivered. ‘Loren is dead, Mr Ross. Didn’t you know?’

At last she had succeeded in pricking his self-confidence. His hand fell from her arm as if it burned him, and feeling the blood beginning to circulate through that numbed muscle once more, Caryn felt a trembling sense of awareness. She was too close to him, she thought faintly. She could almost share his shock of cold disbelief, feel the wave of revulsion that swept over him.

‘Dead!’ he said incredulously. ‘Loren—dead? My God, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

‘Why be sorry?’ Angela spoke again. ‘She was nothing but a nuisance all the time she was here—’

‘Angel!’

His harsh interjection was ignored as Caryn added bitterly: ‘Why pretend to be sorry, Mr Ross? You never answered any of her letters.’

‘Her letters?’ He shook his head. ‘All right, Miss Stevens, you’ve won. We’ll go into my study. We can talk privately there—’

‘You’re not going to talk to her, are you?’ Angela’s dismayed protest rang in their ears, but Tristan Ross just looked at his daughter before walking past her out of the room.

Caryn hesitated only a moment before following him. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Why then did she feel so little enthusiasm for the task?

They went across the hall and down a passage that descended by means of single steps at intervals to an even lower level, and he thrust open a leather-studded door and stood back to allow her to precede him inside.

The room was only slightly smaller than the living room, with all the books Caryn could have wished for lining the walls. Paperbacks there were in plenty, as well as every issue of the Geographical Magazine for years past. A honey-brown carpet supported a leather-topped desk, a pair of revolving leather chairs, and several armchairs. A smaller desk in one corner held a typewriter and a pair of wire trays, with metal filing cabinets completing the furnishings. Here again, the windows overlooked the estuary, but it was dark and Ross drew the venetian blinds.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ he suggested, indicating one of the armchairs, but Caryn preferred to stand. ‘As you wish.’ He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of one of the leather chairs. ‘But if you’ll excuse me …’

‘Of course.’

He lounged into one of the revolving chairs, behind the desk, and in spite of his informal attire he was still the Tristan Ross she knew from so many current affairs programmes. Calm, polite, faintly sardonic; using his grammar school education to its fullest potential while still maintaining the common touch that encouraged the most unlikely people to confide in him.

‘Right,’ he said, and she thought rather hysterically that all that was missing were the television cameras. ‘Suppose you tell me why you wanted to see me.’

Taking a deep breath, she decided to come straight to the point. ‘You—knew about Loren, didn’t you?’

‘What did I know?’

He was annoyingly oblique, and she clenched her fists. ‘She wrote and told you about—about the baby—’

‘The baby!’ His indolence disappeared. ‘What baby?’

Caryn suddenly found she had to sit down after all, and backed until her knees came up against the soft velvety cushioning of an armchair. She sat down rather weakly on the edge of the seat.

‘I said—what baby?’ he repeated, getting to his feet to rest the palms of his hands on the desk in front of him, leaning slightly towards her. ‘I warn you—if this is another of Loren’s tricks—’

‘I told you. Loren’s dead!’ she reminded him tersely, and his jaw clenched.

‘So you did.’

‘Why didn’t you answer any of her letters?’

‘For God’s sake! I don’t remember seeing any letters from her. And even if I had—’

He broke off abruptly and Caryn guessed what he had been going to say. ‘You wouldn’t have answered them?’

‘Look,’ he sighed, ‘Mrs Forrest—that’s the name of the woman I employed on a temporary basis to take over after—after Loren left—she had orders to deal with—well, that sort of thing.’

‘Fan mail?’ demanded Caryn bitterly, and his eyes held hers coldly.

‘Why not?’ he challenged, and she wondered how she could have thought his eyes were dark. They were light, amber-coloured, the alert eyes of a prey-hunting animal at bay.

‘She told you she was expecting your child and you ignor—’

‘She did what?’ He came round the desk towards her, the muscles of his face working tensely. ‘Say that again!’

Caryn licked her dry lips. ‘She—she was expecting your—’

‘The bitch!’

Caryn came abruptly to her feet. ‘Don’t you dare to speak of my sister like that!’

‘I’ll speak of her how the hell I like!’ he retorted savagely. ‘God Almighty, what a bloody cock-and-bull story that is! And you came here to tell me that—’

‘Not just for that,’ she got out jerkily. ‘Not just for that.’

He made an effort to calm himself, but he began to pace about the room and she was reminded of a predator once more. He moved so lithely, so naturally; with all the grace and none of the nobility of the beast, she thought fiercely.

‘Of course,’ he said coldly. ‘You came to tell me she was dead. Well, perhaps it’s just as well.’ He stopped to stare into her working features. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well. I think if she’d still been alive, I’d have killed her!’

Caryn backed off again. ‘And—and what about your son?’ she got out chokingly. ‘What about him? Do you want to kill him, too?’

CHAPTER TWO (#u5efb46c8-4029-5693-a85a-285e6c7bd4c4)

SHE saw the colour leave his face as he looked at her. Even his tan took on a jaundiced appearance, and she realised what a tremendous shock this must have been for him.

‘My—son?’ he echoed faintly. ‘You mean—there’s a child?’