Terms Of Possession. Elizabeth Power

waiting for was the result of the test she had had done last week. When the phone rang again, the instant she put it down, she almost leapt out of her chair.

      Her fingers were still trembling five minutes later as they picked out Lisa’s home number, her heart thudding, her thoughts chaotically numb. She had been praying she would be pregnant. She didn’t think she could take an assault on her senses by Cameron Hunter a second time without disastrous consequences to her emotions, though he had managed to remain entirely detached and uncommitted. And now…

      ‘Lisa?’ She took a deep breath and gave her friend the news.

      ‘Wow! What a stud I’m married to! He certainly didn’t waste any time with you, did he?’ Lisa responded—rather indelicately, Nadine thought, in the circumstances, though her friend sounded delighted enough. ‘So you’ll have the baby…I must admit that’s the only worry I would have had about carrying if I had been able to conceive—the fear of blowing up like a balloon and staying like it for ever afterwards.’ Lisa laughed, reminding Nadine of her friend’s constant battle to keep a check on her rather curvy figure. ‘I’ll get everything arranged. Nursery, nanny, toys, soundproof room. Only joking!’ she added quickly. ‘I might even decide to stay home and play full-time mother.’

      Lisa was twenty-seven, three years older than herself, and had worked as a legal executive in the same law practice, which was how she, Nadine, had come to hear about the secretarial vacancy in the first place. At the time she had welcomed the move away from the man who was occupying too much of her thoughts and who was scarcely aware of her existence, fearing that her own violent crush on him was in danger of prejudicing her work.

      It was Lisa who had brought him back into her life after meeting him at a party; Lisa who had been just as hopelessly ensnared by the terrifying strength of his attraction. After that he’d sometimes come into the office, or call at Lisa’s while Nadine was there. He’d been aloof, yet somehow more indulgent towards her then than when she had been working with him, little knowing how his lethal sexuality was affecting her as he watched her blossoming into full womanhood.

      Sometimes, when he had smiled at her, it had been as if the earth was tipping off its axis. Indeed, the responses rocketing through her had been so profound she had deluded herself that he had to be feeling something too. But it was Lisa he had married so suddenly and unexpectedly four years ago; Lisa who had stayed on with the firm as an unwitting yet constant reminder of all Nadine had lost, with her bubbling happiness and her ceaseless fervour for him. She had only left on her doctor’s advice—rather futile, as it had turned out—that less pressure of work might bring her the child she wanted.

      ‘Am I the first to know? Oh, great!’ Having forced herself back to the present, Nadine could almost feel her friend’s joy. ‘Then let me tell Cameron. It’ll be as though I’m having this baby myself!’

      Wistfully Nadine smiled. She could understand how Lisa felt. But her own emotions seemed numbed-strangely shell-shocked—as though she hadn’t yet begun again to feel.

      ‘You were certainly worth every cent, Nadine, so now you can go out and blow it! Plus you’ve had the added bonus of knowing what it’s like to sleep with Cameron Hunter!’

      ‘Lisa!’ Nadine felt hot colour invading her cheeks. She didn’t want to think about that. Nor could she tell her friend about her mother’s operation, and the expensive after-care on which the money was being spent.

      ‘Oh, come on, don’t be coy about it. I know you must have been simply dying to! If you aren’t admitting to it, then you’re the only one of my friends who hasn’t. But it does have its disadvantages, I can assure you now. As far as any other man’s concerned, you’ll be spoilt for life!’

      Embarrassed, Nadine laughed awkwardly. Didn’t she already know that? ‘Be seeing you, Lisa,’ she said quickly, winding up the conversation and putting down the phone, wondering suddenly if Lisa had been drinking.

      * * *

      She was watching the end of a gripping thriller when the telephone rang that evening, the lateness of the hour making her heart lurch apprehensively as she crossed the small sitting room and switched off the television set to answer it. Supposing it was the hospital?

      ‘Nadine?’ The last thing she had expected to hear was Cameron Hunter’s deep voice. ‘Nadine, you sound worried. Are you all right?’

      ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine.’ Hastily she pulled herself together. If she wanted to keep her troubles from anyone, it was him.

      ‘I believe congratulations are in order. Lisa told me. Any problems? Or are you feeling all right?’

      Funny that he should be the one to ask that, she thought, because Lisa hadn’t.

      ‘No, none,’ she assured him, even if her knees did feel like jelly! And not only, she realised shamefully, from the dread of bad news about her mother.

      ‘You sound breathless. I hope I didn’t get you out of bed.’ There was more than courteous concern behind that remark.

      ‘No, you didn’t.’ Pique turned her cheeks to flame. She might be just a convenient womb for his child but he did, after all, have exclusive knowledge of her sleeping habits, and therefore shouldn’t have had the audacity to suggest anything else!

      ‘Good.’ Was that double-edged too? She wasn’t sure. ‘I merely wanted you to know that I intend to see that you get all the necessary care and assistance you need over the next eight months or so. I’ll have your medical fees taken care of.’ As he—albeit unwittingly—had made it possible for her to take care of her mother’s? ‘Any problems, ring me…or Lisa.’

      ‘Thanks.’ She wasn’t sure whether she had imagined that slight hesitancy in his voice. He sounded so coldly practical, though, as though he were simply dealing with one of his clients. But then that was all this was to him, wasn’t it? she thought poignantly. A business transaction. Even so, an unexpected wave of loneliness washed over her after he had rung off, so crushing that she found herself giving in to a sudden bout of tears, which she tried to justify as only the result of her condition coupled with the worries about her mother.

      

      Days tumbled into a week, then two, during which Nadine arranged for her mother’s convalescence in a private nursing home nearer London, where she could receive the necessary care as well as the cardiac rehabilitation she needed at the nearby hospital—although Nadine was concerned to hear that her recovery was being impeded by a slight cold.

      ‘You’re looking downcast today,’ Larry remarked one morning, coming into Nadine’s office and catching her sitting at her desk in one of her anxious reveries. ‘What do I have to do to whip up a smile on that lovely face?’ And, with mischief in his eyes, ‘Ever been beaten with a will?’

      Nadine ducked to avoid the rolled white parchment he was brandishing, his jocular play on words producing the desired effect.

      ‘You’ll never endear yourself to our senior partner,’ she chided laughingly. Beneath a wild mat of curly brown hair an ear-ring, she noticed, had made itself evident since the previous day.

      ‘Thank goodness for that!’ Larry laid a hand on his heart. ‘He’s not my type. But while we’re on the subject of being clobbered, you’ll be interested to know Hunter won that case for us—hot on the heels of his success with the Laser-Brompton affair. He must be every opponent’s nightmare. You should go and watch him handling a case some time, if you haven’t done so yet.’

      A rush of nausea engulfed her, piercingly acute, and as she staggered to her feet to try and make it to the Ladies’ she heard Larry’s voice coming anxiously, distantly, behind her. ‘Gosh! You look ghastly! Are you all right?’

      She was, eventually, and refused his advice to go home as well as his invitation to lunch.

      ‘Perhaps you had better go easy on the rations with an upset turn,’ he accepted, his obvious concern making her feel guilty in having led him to believe that that was all it was.