Love Islands: Forbidden Consequences

CHAPTER FIVE

AS THEY EMERGED from the airport terminal, Ben took her elbow and led her to a waiting car. It was long and low with blacked-out windows and Ben spoke to the driver before sliding in beside her.

‘Until I know what’s happening I’d like to—’

‘You don’t want me there.’

She flicked an anxious look at his face. There was nothing to read in those strong lines and angles but she knew that she’d offended him. She seemed to have a knack at this and on this occasion she really didn’t want to.

‘You’ve been so kind.’

His chiselled jaw tightened. ‘Kind is what a stranger is. I’m a father.’ Sounds good but what does it mean? What did he actually know about being a father? Oh, arranging transport and second opinions he could do. That was the easy stuff. The other things...what if he was no good at them? What if he was a lousy father? His own father had probably meant well, but that hadn’t stopped him failing miserably. Two parents waging their own silent war of attrition and he’d been the silent casualty.

‘I didn’t mean...’ She looked at his shuttered profile and, responding to an instinct she didn’t pause to analyse, laid her small hand on his.

Ben looked from the small hand to her face. The muscles in his brown throat worked as he swallowed but his expression revealed nothing.

‘You’re a good mother.’

She blinked at the abrupt declaration before responding with a guilty flood of self-recrimination. ‘I wasn’t there... I should have been... Emmy needed me and I was with you—’

Ben felt the tortured guilt in the swimming green eyes that met his like a dull knife sliding between his ribs. He pressed a finger to her lips. ‘You are now.’

She took a deep shuddering breath. ‘Sorry.’

‘When I was a kid I had a fall...fractured my skull.’ He lifted a hand to the side of his head. ‘There was internal bleeding and they had to operate to relieve the pressure. When my mother arrived—a week later—she was very concerned about the scars that might spoil my looks. Luckily the hair they’d shaved grew back. You are a good mother.’

A week...there were obviously scars that his hair did not hide. A good mother...who knew? But at least I’m not a monster, Lily thought soberly.

‘So go be a good mum and I’ll be around when you need me.’ Earning his right to call himself a father.

‘It’s not that... Mum will be there on the ward, you see, and you... The explanations on top of everything else... I’m not trying to...exclude you.’

There was a long pause before he nodded. ‘I have some calls to make. I’ll have Martin...’ he nodded towards the driver behind the glass screen ‘...drive around the block until you’re finished.’

‘But I might be a long time,’ she protested.

He shrugged and handed her a mobile phone. ‘Then you’re a long time, but in case you need...anything.’

She looked at the phone.

‘It has my number in it.’

* * *

Lily watched the man’s lips move. Words came out, she could hear them, recognise them, but the words seemed disjointed, nothing he was saying made sense because this wasn’t happening. She put down the full teacup, the contents cold, and turned her head to look through the glass partition where Emmy was sitting up in bed. She was wearing her favourite pyjamas and giggling as her grandmother pretended to search for the toy she clutched in her chubby little hands—it was one of her favourite games.

The emotion swelled in Lily’s chest, the ache so intense that it drew a rasping sigh from her pale lips. This couldn’t be happening. Emmy was too little, too... It was not fair!

Life isn’t fair, said the unsympathetic voice in her head.

‘Are there any questions you would like to ask me?’

Lily slowly turned her head; she felt weirdly frozen inside. ‘Are you sure? Could there be a mistake? Results can get mixed up.’ The magazines were always full of such stories. Hope flared and died in her eyes as the doctor, firm but sympathetic, put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Your daughter is a very poorly little girl.’

Lily bit her lip, drawing blood but not noticing the metallic coppery taste on her tongue. ‘But I’d have noticed.’ Should have noticed. The guilt was there; it never went away. Her job as a mother was to protect...and she hadn’t.

‘This is not your fault.’

‘Then whose fault is it?’ she hissed, anger flaring then fizzling like cold ashes as he responded.

‘Nobody’s fault. The onset is notoriously insidious—the symptoms are often missed at this stage by professionals. Your GP did well to pick them up when he did, which puts us in a good position.’

Lily seized eagerly onto his words. ‘It does?’

‘At this stage ninety-five per cent of children go into remission following a bone-marrow transplant.’

Hope fluttered inside her skull. ‘So bone marrow is a cure?’

‘I don’t want to raise your hopes.’

Too late, she thought, fighting a mixture of frustration and trepidation as he consulted the tablet he held.

A bunch of figures that spelt out her baby’s future.

The man laid the tablet aside and removed his glasses. ‘Though the number of bone-marrow donors have increased over recent years...’

Anticipating the but, Lily rushed into speech. ‘She can have mine, can’t she?’ She laid her arm on the table and began to roll up her sleeve. ‘Take what you like.’

‘It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid,’ the man said gently. ‘I don’t want to be negative, but the fact is that your daughter has an extremely rare blood group.’

Lily closed her eyes and released a low sigh as she finally realised where he was going. ‘And I don’t.’

‘I have already discussed the subject of compatibility with your mother. She was unsure of the situation, Emily’s father...paternal relatives. It is a relatively minor procedure for the donor though there is some discomfort involved.’

Lily surged to her feet feeling the first fluttering of real hope. ‘Her father, he’ll do it.’

The doctor gave a cautious smile and reminded gently, ‘He’ll need to be tested.’

She tilted her head again. ‘He’ll do it?’ She heard the question in her own voice and from his questioning expression so did the doctor. ‘He’ll want to.’

And if he didn’t?

She pushed the question away, she had to, because the other option... Her thoughts came up against the self-protective wall she had erected and bounced back.

Back on the ward, Lily gave an edited version of what the doctor had told her to her mother. They spoke softly because Emmy had fallen asleep, her thumb in her mouth. Looking at her made Lily’s heart ache. That anyone so innocent should suffer...it seemed so wrong.

Elizabeth sat there in silence during Lily’s halting delivery and then, with a hand pressed to her mouth, rushed from the room.

Lily found her a few moments later in the corridor, red-faced, but calm. ‘This is the last thing you need. I’m sorry I didn’t want Emmy to see... How are you, darling?’ She held out her arms.

After a few moments Lily pulled free of the warm maternal embrace. ‘I’m fine.’ Empty was a better description, empty but for the sense of purpose that she focused on with tunnel-like determination.

‘I have to leave, Mum.’

‘But why? To go where?’

‘I’ll explain later, but I’ll be back soon, I promise, and you have to go home for some sleep when I do.’ She kissed her mother’s smooth cheek. ‘You look exhausted.’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’

Lily’s voice thickened. ‘Have I said thank you for being there...for everything...?’

‘What you don’t seem to realise is that what you’d do for Emmy I would do for you. You’re still my little girl.’

There were tears in Lily’s eyes as she walked down the corridor. She dabbed at them impatiently and reminded herself there was hope. Outside it had begun to drizzle. Standing on the wet pavement, she fished out the phone Ben had given her and pressed the dial key. He picked up almost straight away.

‘Ben, it’s Lily, could you—?’

She stopped as a long limo drew up beside her, a window swished down and Ben, phone to his ear, leaned out.

Lily laughed. She hadn’t really believed he was going to drive around the block.

‘Need a lift?’

She nodded and the door swung open.

‘Where to?’ He studied her face and watched a single tear slide down her cheek, then another. He felt as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. ‘Oh, baby!’ He reached for her and she drew back, a hand extended to ward him off.

‘Do not touch me...don’t!’ she quivered out.

He stiffened.

‘It’s not you, it’s me...if you touch me I’ll start crying and I don’t think I’ll be able to stop!’ she wailed.

He touched a teardrop on her cheek with his thumb. ‘You’re already crying.’

With a sob she flung herself at him. Ben looked down at the fiery head pressed to his chest. After a pause his arms went around her and he let her cry herself out while he signalled the driver to carry on driving.

Embarrassed by her outburst and ashamed of her weakness, she finally pulled away. ‘I must look terrible.’

‘You look...’ He stopped, an odd expression spreading across his face before he said abruptly, ‘Fine. So...?’

He was prepared for the worst. He had been from the moment she had slid into the car emanating the sort of tension that did not say good news. And then she had started crying. He had never heard sobs like that before. They seemed to have been dragged from deep inside her. The sense of helplessness he had felt remained, a cold knot in his gut. He had dated beautiful women, women who were well groomed and elegant, and yet as he looked at Lily sitting there, her tear-stained face bare of all make-up, her hair a wild tangle, it struck him that he had never seen any woman look more beautiful.

‘Sorry, I should have told you straight away.’

He took a deep breath. He was... No...prepared was a joke. Some things you couldn’t be prepared for.

‘She’s very ill—ʼ

She sniffed, visibly fighting for control, and Ben smothered a wave of protective concern that made him want to take her in his arms again. He was conscious that in her emotionally vulnerable state even small gestures could be misinterpreted, taken for something they were not.

He might be a bastard but he was at least an honest one. He’d never raised a woman’s expectations in his life.

‘Very ill, it’s a...her blood. The doctor explained, but her best hope is a bone-marrow transplant.’

There was hope.

Listening, Ben knew how a man in a very long very black tunnel felt when a light appeared. He had a dozen questions but he closed his mouth, stifled his impatience and instead prompted gently.

‘That’s good.’

Her face told him there was a but coming.

‘She has a very rare blood type and the chances of a donor being found in time are slim. Her main...only hope, really, is a compatible blood relative. I’m not compatible—’ It still felt like a kind of failure that she wasn’t able to be the one to save her child’s life.

As soon as she mentioned the blood group he recognised the significance.

‘But I am.’

Lily nodded. ‘It seems likely. I don’t really know about these things but I’m assuming if she didn’t get my blood group she got yours? Though they wouldn’t know for sure until they test you, but... I told him that you’d do it.’ She felt his long fingers tighten on her forearm and looked down, not realising until that moment that he was holding her.

She looked up, wondering uneasily if she had taken too much for granted. Obviously she would do anything for her daughter, but Ben didn’t even know her. He wanted to be involved, but she still couldn’t shake the fear that deep down he might even resent her existence.

‘I probably should have asked you first...’

He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘No, you should not have asked me. You’d do anything for Emmy, wouldn’t you?’

‘Of course, I’m her mother.’

‘And I’m her father. So I would do anything for her too.’ Anything... His initial rush of emotions settled into deep relief.

‘The fact that I can do something...’ He spoke with more confidence as he realised he possessed the instincts he had feared were absent in his make-up. ‘Anything...’ He dragged a hand across the surface of his gleaming dark hair and turned to the practicalities. ‘I’ll do it...when...how...?’

‘The doctor said he’ll see you in the morning. It’s a relatively simple procedure. They can do it straight away. There’s some discomfort,’ she warned.

‘Is it so hard for you to believe that I would endure the odd twinge for our daughter?’

She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I suppose,’ she admitted in a flash of shamed honesty, ‘I feel a bit jealous. I wish I could be the one to save her. I know it’s stupid and what matters is that she is saved.’ She closed her eyes and said, ‘But I wasn’t even there for her... I wish I hadn’t gone on that stupid holiday.’

‘Emmy would still be ill.’

Her eyes opened and she nodded. ‘Not rational, I know. I keep thinking about how I felt when I found out I was pregnant.’ He saw an emotion he couldn’t interpret flash in her eyes.

‘You were scared?’

‘I was stupid,’ she retorted, closing her eyes to ease the ache behind them. ‘You know, for weeks I was in denial. I just kept saying, like some sort of total idiot, it can’t happen your first time, but of course it can and it did.’ The words were out before she realised what she had said. Maybe he hadn’t really been listening?

Slowly she opened her eyes and realised straight off that fate had not granted her a reprieve. Ben had heard and his lean face was frozen in a combination of shock and disbelief.

‘First time...?’ he prompted, in a low, dangerous voice while in his head another voice said, No, not possible.

It was simply not possible that the woman he had taken to bed that night had been...no, that was not possible.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her little shrug was fuel to the flame of emotion that was burning him up. The guilt was eating him up from the inside out.

‘My God, it’s true—you were a virgin, weren’t you? I was your first!’ He looked at her as though she were a live grenade someone had dropped in his lap.

‘Only...’ Oh, Lily what is wrong with you? ‘...I’ve been pretty busy since.’

He closed his eyes. Lily couldn’t take her eyes off the nerve that was clenching and unclenching beside his mouth.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he groaned as he pushed one hand deep into his thick pelt of dark hair. He opened his eyes. ‘A virgin?’ He felt a fresh slug of guilt leavened with, if he was honest, a degree of arousal. It was a silly male possessive pleasure to know he’d been her first. ‘You didn’t say a word, and why me?’

‘I thought you’d realise and, in case you haven’t noticed, you are obscenely good-looking.’ She’d hoped to lighten the mood but he didn’t even crack a smile. If he looked like this now, she thought with a delicate little shudder, imagine how he’d look if she told him the full truth. Well, that was never going to happen. ‘There’s no need to make a big thing of it. I don’t regret it. She’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. She was a beautiful baby and now...with what’s going on, all that stuff doesn’t matter now.’

Before he could respond the phone in her pocket began to vibrate—her own, not the one that Ben had given her. The sound of it was audible in the silence that had fallen.

Her hand was shaking as she reached into her bag then glanced at the screen. What she saw made her body stiffen. ‘Sorry, it’s the hospital. I have to check this.’ She turned her face to the window to hide her expression as she replied. ‘Yes, this is Lily Gray.’

She listened to the voice on the other end before giving a deep sigh of relief. ‘That’s marvellous, thank you so much, thank you.’

She turned, smiling, and responded to his arched brow with a shake of her head. ‘Sorry, it’s good news. It was the hospital to say there is a match on the register—a perfect match, they said, for Emmy. They are trying to contact him so it’s possible you won’t need to do anything.’ She frowned. Ben was not listening. He was scrolling through his own phone—perhaps he didn’t understand the significance of what she was saying. ‘Apparently this person is someone who lives here in England. They warned me the odds were incredibly remote that they would find a match. If he agrees—’

Ben slid his phone back into his pocket. ‘They’ve contacted him and he does agree.’

She looked at him, her blank look fading as he held up his phone and said softly, ‘I’ve just been contacted.’

‘You’re on the bone-marrow register?’

‘For a couple of years. A friend’s wife needed a bone-marrow transplant so I got tested.’

‘Did she get it?’

‘Yes.’

His face told her nothing but she knew, she felt a cold clutch in her belly but ignored it. Emily was going to be all right. She’d make it all right.

‘She didn’t survive, did she...?’ The impotent rage and ice-cold fear warring within her fought for an angry release. ‘You can say it, you know.’ Hearing the shrill note of irrational accusation in her voice, Lily took a steadying breath and dug into her reservoir of inner calm and found it empty.

‘I’m not going to fall apart.’ Falling apart was not an option. Emmy needed her; her mother needed her.

Studying her pale face and refusing to acknowledge the sharp stab of tenderness, he wondered if she thought saying it often enough would make it true.

‘She’ll be fine, you know, Lily.’

She nodded but couldn’t meet his eyes. She was grateful that he was saying what she wanted to hear but she couldn’t let herself believe it.

‘So what do you think she’ll make of me?’

It took her a moment to translate the emotion behind his question. Maybe because insecurity and fear were not words she associated with big, take-charge, in-control Ben.

Her tender heart ached ‘She’s two—she loves everyone.’

Ben gave a tight smile; he knew that love had to be earned. ‘If I do it wrong, tell me.’

‘There’s no handbook, just wing it. It’s what I’ve been doing for two years.’ If genes had anything to do with it, Emmy would adore him—just like her mother.

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER A SELF-CONSCIOUS moment Lily disentangled her fingers from Ben’s. She had no recollection of grabbing them.

‘Could you drop me back at the hospital? I’m staying the night. Mum needs some sleep.’

It occurred to Ben that so did she, but, recognising that nothing he said would make her change her mind, he kept his opinion to himself.

‘I’m seeing this Dr...?’ Ben asked, when the limo drew up outside the glass-fronted hospital entrance.

‘Sheridan,’ she supplied. ‘He’s really nice.’

‘I don’t want nice,’ he scorned. ‘I want excellent.’

‘I think he’s both,’ she said, finally releasing herself from the seat belt.

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘The appointment is at nine. Apparently it shouldn’t take long. Shall we meet up on the ward about ten? I’ll introduce you to Emmy. You do know I’m grateful for this...’

He arched a sardonic brow. ‘But...?’

She shook her head. ‘No but, it’s just... I think it might be better if we don’t tell Emmy you’re her dad straight away...’ The words she had been silently rehearsing all the way emerged in a rush.

He looked at her with cynical ice-blue eyes. ‘Better for who?’ he asked bluntly.

Lily didn’t react to the sarcasm. ‘This is a confusing place for Emmy, everything that is happening, away from all her familiar things... Maybe it would be more appropriate later when she’s feeling better...?’

Unable to maintain eye contact any longer with his accusing icy stare, she tipped her head and, reaching for the door handle, mumbled, ‘Thanks,’ as she stepped out of the car.

The anger inside him simmered. He watched her walk up the shallow flight of steps. It was transparently obvious to him she was letting him know that the door was open, probably hoping he’d walk through it.

He nodded to the driver, who restarted the engine just as she paused in front of the big glass revolving doors. From where he sat he could see her square her slender shoulders before she took that first step. A tiny but revealing gesture revealing an inner fragility he’d have preferred not to see. Then she was gone, but the image of her gathering her courage stayed with him.

* * *

Lily was standing the other side of the door when Ben was buzzed in. His arrival had the effect of a mild electric shock on her exhausted body.

He had lost the formal suit and was wearing a black leather jacket that hung open to reveal a contour-clinging top tucked into the belted waistline of black jeans that emphasised the length of his legs and hinted at the muscularity of his powerful thighs.

The overall effect was darkly dangerous and sinfully sexy without lessening his natural air of authority. Without turning her head to look Lily knew that the young nurse who appeared from the office was having her own appraising moment.

‘You’re here.’ She bit her lip, stating the obvious. Their eyes clashed, but, other than the tension visible in the taut lines of his face, she struggled to read anything from his expression.

‘So far so good, apparently. They’re set to take the bone marrow this afternoon.’ He had anticipated it would be more complicated, but all they needed apparently was a sterile environment and a local anaesthetic.

The smile that lit up her face made him uneasy.

‘There is a long way to go,’ he cautioned and saw her smile wobble. He stifled the urge to say something that would bring it back—there was no point being unrealistic.

If he’d had any doubts about the gravity of this situation, his daughter’s doctor had dispelled them. The man had not made promises, but if he had Ben would have treated such reassurances with extreme scepticism.

The doctor in charge of his father’s case had promised that he would be home by the weekend. Jack Warrender had never seen the weekend, dying of undiagnosed meningitis with only his teenage son at his bedside. His wife had been out of the room taking the inevitable important call.

When she had returned the only emotion to cross her features had been discomfort. ‘You’re too old to cry, Ben. Be a man... Have you seen my gloves anywhere?’

Ben had always believed until that day that, even though his mother put her career ahead of everything else, she did care for them. That belief died along with his father.

‘Did he say anything?’ his mother had asked Ben at the funeral, as though the thought had just occurred to her. ‘Your father? Before he died?’

‘No,’ Ben had lied. Not to save her, but because he didn’t want to repeat the dying words his father had whispered...

‘Marriage is a prison sentence, boy. A prison sentence. Don’t do it.’

It remained the only advice his father had ever given him.

Lily closed her eyes briefly and let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Good.’ Sometimes words really weren’t adequate.

It wasn’t until she opened her eyes and followed the direction of his gaze that she realised she was literally wringing her hands.

She tucked them self-consciously behind her back while his attention switched to the young nurse who, with a pretty smile, explained the entire hand-washing and gowning-up routine to him.

‘And if there’s anything you need...’ she touched the identity badge pinned to the lapel of her dress, her smile loosing several hundred watts of brilliance, and her manner became visibly more professional as she turned her head to include Lily ‘... I’ll be in the office until one-thirty.’

Together they walked to Emmy’s room in taut silence, both locked in their own thoughts.

‘This is it.’ She paused outside her daughter’s room and turned to face him, tilting her head back. Crazily, even at a time like this, she felt the strong tug of attraction between them and was ashamed of her response to his raw maleness.

‘Are you ready?’

The question produced a hard look and a long pause.

‘You can change your mind if you want to.’ Lily struggled to keep her voice free from inflection as she went to close the half-open door—this had to be his choice.

Ben leaned across her, his hand covering hers. ‘I’m ready.’

Lily fought the weird compulsion to leave her hand where it was under his. Instead she pulled it free, put her head around the door, and nodded. Elizabeth, who was sitting at the bedside of the sleeping child, got to her feet.

Lily pushed away the mental image of her mum launching a verbal attack on Ben and crossed her fingers—she was doing that a lot lately. There had been little time for her mum to adjust to the knowledge that Ben was her granddaughter’s father.

Lily hadn’t known how to break it gently so she’d just blurted it out. ‘Emmy’s father is a probable match. It’s Ben...Ben Warrender.’

After the initial stunned moments of shock, her mum had been angry and full of questions.

The former had been aimed at Ben, the latter at Lily.

‘The choice was mine, Mum. I decided it would be better if he didn’t know.’

‘You mean you didn’t even tell him you were pregnant?’

She had read the shocked condemnation in her mother’s eyes, a look she’d imagined would be duplicated by strangers who got a whiff of the scandalous story. Lily didn’t care what strangers thought of her, but it had hurt a lot to have her mum look at her with such disappointment.

‘It wasn’t that simple. There were...other factors.’ Such as he’d split from his fiancée rather than give her a family.

‘A man deserves to know he has a child, no matter what he’s done.’

Lily had no idea what terrible things her mum had been imagining Ben had done. She’d chewed her lip in anguish. Having the disapproval shift her way had been, in many ways, easier. The last thing she needed was her mum being antagonistic to Ben.

‘He really didn’t do anything bad... I’m sorry I told you like this, Mum. You’ve had a shock. He has too.’

Elizabeth had shaken her head. ‘I just don’t understand why you did this, Lily. Surely your sister told you that you should—’

‘Lara doesn’t know either. Nobody knew.’

‘You didn’t even tell Lara? But you tell each other everything!’

Lily had shaken her head sadly. ‘When we were children,’ she’d said quietly. ‘We don’t confide the way we once did.’ It saddened her that there was more distance than simple miles between them now. She missed the closeness.

Would they ever be close again?

She’d straightened her shoulders. This was her problem, not Lara’s. ‘The important thing is it looks like he is a match for Emmy and he’s willing to be a donor.’

‘Of course he’s willing to be a donor, he’s her father. If the man dared say no, you just give me five minutes with him.’

The continuing belligerence in her mother’s attitude had dismayed Lily—she had enough eggshells to walk on without having to act a peacemaker between Ben and her mum.

‘He won’t. He’s having further tests this morning and then he’ll be... He wants to meet her.’

Her mum had sat down on a chair with a bump. ‘I suppose he does,’ she’d said faintly. She’d lifted a hand to her head. ‘She looks like him, those eyes... Why on earth didn’t I see it before?’

‘I’m not Lara.’ Her twin was the one that men looked at when she walked into a room. When they were together sometimes Lily felt invisible. It wasn’t about looks, it was about confidence and personality and, yes...sensuality.

Her mother had frowned. ‘What a strange thing to say, Lily. Whatever do you mean?’ Her eyes had widened. ‘Your sister didn’t date him too?’

The mental image of her twin with Ben had been so real and the accompanying stab of shameful jealousy so strong that it had taken her a moment to react. ‘No, of course not, I just meant you weren’t looking for that connection—why would you be? I never dated men who were...like him.’ There were no men like Ben.

What they had shared did not really qualify as a date... A dreamy expression had drifted briefly across her face as an image of the seafront café, the reflection of the lights on the water, had slid into her thoughts. It seemed like a lifetime ago. She’d shifted uncomfortably under the speculation in her mother’s frowning regard.

‘You won’t make this hard...harder than it is,’ she’d corrected, appealing, ‘Will you, Mum?’

There had been a long pause and when her mum had finally shaken her head Lily had let out a long sigh of relief.

* * *

For a split second he really thought that Lily was going to block the door at the last minute, but then as she visibly straightened her slender shoulders she shifted to one side to allow him to enter the room before her.

Before he could do so Lily’s mother emerged. The woman had always had a smile and a cheery word for him in the past, but now she walked past with her head disdainfully high. She blanked him completely until the last moment when she turned her head and tossed him a killer look that he presumed she reserved only for men who got her daughter pregnant.

He was a parent... Would it ever sink in?

Behind him he registered Lily’s voice. The tone sounded urgent and pleading, but he tuned it out. All his focus was on that next step.

He took a deep breath, released it in a measured hiss and walked into the room.

In his life Ben had walked coolly into tough situations. Meetings where a false move or a show of weakness could lose him a fortune. He’d once got himself unexpectedly caught in the middle of a coup and found it exhilarating. Nerves were good. He used them; they gave him a vital edge.

He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets to hide the fact they were shaking. If only those people who said Ben Warrender had nerves of steel could see him now! As he walked into the room his body was bathed in a cold sweat. It was the hardest step he’d ever taken.