The Secret Sinclair (8 page)

The games, books and stuffed toys garnered the same negative response, and silence greeted Raoul’s polite but increasingly frustrated questions about playschool, sport and favourite television programmes.

At the end of an agonising forty-minute question and no answer session, Oliver finally asked Sarah if he could carry on with his blocks. In various piles lay the items that Raoul had bought, untouched.

‘Well,
that
was a roaring success,’ was the first thing Raoul muttered venomously under his breath, once he and Sarah were in the kitchen, leaving Oliver in the sitting room.

‘It’s going to take time.’

Raoul glared at her. ‘What have you told him about me?’ ‘Nothing. Just that you were an old friend.’ ‘Hence the friendly way with in I was greeted?’ His own son had rejected him. Over the years, in his inexorable upward march, Raoul had trained himself to overcome every single setback, because every setback could be seen as a learning curve. He needed to speak French to close a deal? He learnt it. He needed intimate knowledge of the gaming market to take over a failing computer company? He acquired sufficient knowledge to get him by, and employed two formidable gaming geeks to do the rest. He had built an empire on the firm belief that he was capable of doing anything. There were no obstacles he was incapable of surmounting.

Yet half an hour in the company of a four-year-old had
rendered him impotent. Oliver had been uninterested in every toy pulled out of the bag and indifferent to
him
. There was no past experience upon which Raoul could call to get him through his son’s lack of enthusiasm.

‘Most kids would have gone crazy over that toy car,’ he imparted in an accusatory tone. ‘At least that’s what the salesperson told me. It’s been their biggest seller for the past four years. That damned car can do anything except carry passengers on the M25. So tell me what the problem was?’ He glared at her as she serenely fetched two glasses from the cupboard and poured them some wine. ‘The boy barely glanced in my direction.’

‘I don’t think it was such a good idea to bring so many toys for him.’

‘And how do you work that one out? I would have been over the moon if I had ever, as a kid, been given
one
new toy! So how could several new, expensive, top of the range toys fail to do the trick?’

With a jolt of sympathy that ran contrary to every defence mechanism she had in place, Sarah realised that he really didn’t have a clue. He had drawn from his own childhood experiences and arrived at a solution for winning his son’s affections—except he hadn’t realised that there was more to gaining love and trust than an armful of gifts.

‘Do you know,’ Raoul continued, swallowing the contents of his glass in one gulp, ‘that every toy I ever played with as a child had come from someone else and had to be shared? A remote controlled car like the one languishing in your sitting room would have caused a full-scale riot.’

‘That’s just awful,’ Sarah murmured.

‘Now you’re about to practise some amateur psychology on me. Don’t. You should have told me that he liked building things. I would have come armed with blocks.’

‘You’re missing the point. You need to engage him. Like I said, he’s used to only having me around. He’s going to view any other adult on the scene with suspicion. What happened on birthdays? Christmas?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘With you? Didn’t you get birthday presents? What about Father Christmas?’

Raoul looked at her with a crooked smile that went past every barrier and settled somewhere in the depths of her heart.

‘I don’t see what this has to do with anything, but if you really want to know Father Christmas was tricky. Frankly, I don’t think I ever believed in the fat guy with the beard. My earliest memory is of my mother telling me when I was three years old that there was no such person. Thinking about it now, I suspect she didn’t want to waste valuable money on feeding that particular myth when the money could have been so much better spent on a bottle of gin. Anyway, even at the foster home there wasn’t much room to hold on to stories like that. Father Christmas barely rated a mention.’ He laughed without rancour. ‘So—you’re going to give me a lesson on engagement. If Oliver has no time for anything I bought for him, then how do we proceed?’

‘Are you asking for my help?’

‘I’m asking for your opinion. If I remember correctly, you have never been short of those …’

‘Why don’t you go out there and build something with him?’ she suggested. ‘No. I’ll get him to bring his bricks in here, and the two of you can build something on the kitchen table while I prepare supper.’

‘Forget about cooking. I’ll take you both out. Name the restaurant and I’ll ensure the chef is only too happy to whip up something for Oliver.’

‘No,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘This is what normal life is all
about with a child, Raoul. Spaghetti Bolognese, familiar old toys, cartoons on television, reading books at night before sleep …’ Except, she thought, suddenly flustered by the picture she had been busy painting, that was the
ideal
domestic situation—one in which two people were happily married and in love. It certainly wasn’t
their
situation. As she had told him—
and she had meant every word of it
—they had no relationship outside the artificial one imposed by circumstance.

‘Okay. I’ll bring Oliver in and you can start chopping some onions. They’re in the salad drawer in the fridge. Chop them really small.’

‘You want me to
cook
?’

‘Well, to help at any rate. And don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten how to cook. You used to cook on the compound.’

‘Different place, different country.’

‘So … you just eat out all the time?’ Sarah asked, distracted.

‘It’s more time-efficient.’

‘And what about with your girlfriends? Don’t you want to stay in sometimes? Do normal stuff?’

The questions were out before she had the wit to keep her curiosity to herself, and now that she had voiced them, she realised that it had been on her mind, poised just beneath the surface, ever since she had laid eyes on him again. In fact, thinking about it, it was something she had asked herself over and over again through the years. Had he found someone else? Had another woman been able to capture his interest sufficiently for him to make the commitment that he had denied her? He hadn’t loved
her
, but had he fallen in love with someone else? Someone prettier or cleverer or more accomplished?

‘Not that it’s any of my business,’ she added, and laughed airily.

‘It is now. Haven’t you said that yourself? No women in Oliver’s presence … Rest assured that the only woman in my life at the moment is
you
…’

‘That’s not what I was asking and you know it, Raoul!’

‘No. You’re just curious to know what I’ve been getting up to these past few years. There’s nothing wrong with curiosity. Curiosity’s healthy.’

‘I don’t
care
what you’ve been getting up to!’ It was a lie. She cared. Who were these women he had dated? What had he felt for them? Anything? Had he preferred them to
her
? She was mortified just thinking about that particular question.

‘I haven’t been getting up to anything of interest,’ Raoul replied drily. ‘Yes, there have been women. But I’ve deterred them from doing anything that involved pots, pans, an apron, candlelight and home-cooked food.’

‘Oh, Raoul, you’re such a charmer.’ But a tendril of relief curled inside her. She squashed it. ‘Now, I’m going to fetch Oliver.’

‘Hey, what about you? Don’t I get the low-down on
your
life? No man at the moment, but any temptations? Do you cook your spaghetti Bolognese for anyone else aside from Oliver?’

His voice was light and mildly amused, and he wondered why he felt so tense when it came to thinking of her with another man. He, after all, had never been and would never be a candidate when it came to marriage and rings on fingers. He was now a father, and that was shocking enough, but that was the only derailment to his carefully constructed life on the cards as far as he was concerned.

‘Maybe …’

‘Maybe? What does
that
mean?’ The amusement sounded forced. ‘Am I in competition with someone you’ve got hidden in a cupboard somewhere?’

‘No,’ Sarah admitted grudgingly. ‘I’ve been too busy being a single mum to think of complicating my life with a guy.’ She sensed rather than saw the shadow of satisfaction cross his face, and continued tartly, ‘But, as you’ve pointed out, life is going to get much easier for me now. It’s going to make a huge difference with you around, playing a role in Oliver’s life. I won’t be doing it on my own. Also, it’ll be nice not having to think about money, or rather the lack of it, all the time—and it’ll be fantastic having a bit of time to myself … time to do what I want to do.’

‘Which
doesn’t
mean that you’ve now got carte blanche to do whatever you like.’ Raoul didn’t care for the direction in which this conversation was now travelling.

‘You make me sound like the sort of girl who can’t wait to pick someone up!’

She was wondering what right he had to lay down any kind of laws when it came to her private life. Raoul Sinclair didn’t want his life encumbered with attachments. True, he had discovered that some encumbrances were beyond his control, but just as he had never contemplated committing to her, so he had never contemplated committing to anyone. It was small comfort.
He
might think that it was perfectly acceptable to lead a life in which he and his son were the only considerations, but it was totally unfair to assume that
she
felt the same way.
He
might want to pick up women and discard them when they were no longer of any use, but
she
needed more than that. For Raoul, a single life was freedom. For her, a single life would be a prison cell.

‘I’m not going to suddenly start scouring the nightclubs for eligible men,’ she expanded, with a bright, nervous laugh, ‘but I
will
be able to get out a bit more—which will be nice.’

‘Get out a bit more?’

‘Yes—when you have Oliver.’

‘I don’t think we should start projecting at this point,’ Raoul said deflatingly. ‘Oliver hasn’t even spoken to me as yet. It’s a bit premature to start planning a hectic social life in anticipation of us becoming best friends. Let’s just take one day at a time, shall we?’

‘Of course. I wasn’t planning on going clubbing next week!’

Clubbing?
What did she mean by that? Other men? Sleeping around? While he kept Oliver every other weekend?

He pictured her dressed in next to nothing, flaunting herself on a dance floor somewhere. Granted, the women he went out with often dressed in next to nothing, but for some reason the thought of
Sarah
in a mini-skirt, high heels and a halterneck top set his teeth on edge.

‘Good. Because it won’t be happening.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Think about it, Sarah. Oliver doesn’t even know that I’m his father. Don’t you think that he’ll be just a little bit confused if
your friend
, who has mysteriously and suddenly appeared on the scene from nowhere, starts engineering outings without you? You’re the constant in his life. As you keep telling me. For me to have any chance of being accepted we have to provide a united front. We have to get to a point where he trusts me enough to leave you behind now and again.’

‘Exactly what are you trying to say, Raoul?’

‘That you have to scrap any crazy notions of us having nothing to do with one another. You’re living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that’s going to work. The whole bedtime story, spaghetti Bolognese thing is going to have to involve both of us. Of course it’ll be a damn sight easier when you get out of this place and move somewhere more
convenient. And less cramped. On the subject of which—I have my people working on that.’

There were so many contentious things packed into that single cool statement that Sarah looked at him, staggered.

‘When you say
involve both of us
…’

Raoul flushed darkly and dealt her a fulminating look from under his lashes.

‘I don’t know the first thing about being a parent,’ he told her roughly. ‘You’ve witnessed my sterling performance out there.’

‘I didn’t know the first thing about being a parent either,’ Sarah pointed out with irrefutable logic. ‘It’s just a case of doing your best.’

The thought of doing things with Raoul and Oliver, a cosy threesome, was enough to bring on the beginnings of a panic attack in her. Already she was finding it difficult to separate the past from the present. She looked at him, and who was she kidding when she told herself that she was no longer attracted to him? Raoul was in a different place, and would be able to take her on board as just a temporary necessity in his life, easily set aside once he had what he wanted: some sort of ongoing relationship with his son. But she was aghast at the prospect of having him there in
her
life. How on earth was she ever going to get to that controlled, composed place of detachment if she was continually tripping over him in the kitchen as he attempted to bond with his son over fish fingers?

Perhaps he had exaggerated, she thought, soothing her own restless, panicked mind. He was still smarting from Oliver’s less than exuberant reception of him. Right at this very moment this was the only plan he could see ahead of him, and Raoul was big on plans. He would not be taking into account the simple fact that when children were involved plans could never really be made. In a day or two
he would probably revise his ideas, because she very much doubted that he wanted to spend quality time with
her
in the picture.

‘And the whole house issue …’ she continued faintly. ‘You have your
people
working on it?’

‘Here’s one of the things I’ve discovered about having money: throw enough of it at a problem and the problem goes away. Right now they’re in the process of drawing up lists of suitable properties. I will be giving them until the end of next week. So,’ he drawled when she failed to respond, ‘are we on the same wavelength here, Sarah?’