The Secret Sinclair Read Online Free PDF Page B

already told me that you wanted nothing more to do with me?’
    ‘Then why
did
you try and get in touch?’ He felt disproportionately pleased that there had been no other guy, but he immediately put that down to the fact that, whether they had parted on good terms or not, he wouldn’t have wanted her to be used and tossed aside by someone she had met on the rebound.
    ‘Because I found out that I was pregnant!’
    The silence that greeted this pooled around her until Sarah began to feel dizzy.
    Raoul was having trouble believing what he had just heard. In fact he was tempted to dismiss it as a trick of the imagination, or else some crazy joke—maybe an attention-seeking device to prolong their conversation.
    But one look at her face told him that this was no joke.
    ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, and you have to be nuts if you think I’m going to fall for it. When it comes to money, I’ve heard it all.’ Like a caged beast, he shot up and began prowling through the room, hands shoved into his pockets. ‘So we’ve met again by chance. You’re down on your luck, for whatever reason, and you see that I’ve made my fortune. Just come right out and ask for a helping hand! Do you think I’d turn you away? If you need cash, I can write a cheque for you right now.’
    ‘Stop it, Raoul. I’m not a gold-digger! Just listen to me! I tried to get in touch with you because I found out that I was having your baby. I knew you’d be shocked and, believeme, I did think it over for a while, but in the end I thought that it was only fair that you knew. How could you think that I’d make something like that up to try and get money out of you? Have you ever known me to be materialistic? How could you be so insulting?’
    ‘I couldn’t have got you pregnant. It’s not possible! I was always careful.’
    ‘Not always,’ Sarah muttered.
    ‘Okay, so maybe you got yourself pregnant by someone else …’
    ‘There
was
no one else! When I left the compound I had no idea that I was pregnant. I left because … because I just couldn’t stay there any longer. I got back to England and I still intended to start university. I
wanted
to put you behind me. I didn’t find out until I was nearly five months along. My periods were erratic, and then they disappeared, but I was so … I barely noticed …’
    She had been so miserable that World War III could have broken out and she probably wouldn’t have noticed the mushroom cloud outside her bedroom window. Memories of him had filled every second of every minute of her every waking hour, until she had prayed for amnesia—anything that would help her forget. Her parents had been worried sick. At any rate, her mother had been the first to suspect something when she’d begun to look a little rounder, despite the fact that her eating habits had taken a nosedive.
    ‘I’m not hearing this.’
    ‘You don’t
want
to hear this! My mum and dad were very supportive. They never once lectured, and they were there for me from the very minute that Oliver was born.’
    Somehow the mention of a name made Raoul blanch. It was much harder to dismiss what she had said as the rantings of an ex-lover who wanted money from him andwas prepared to try anything to get it. The mention of a name seemed to turn the fiction she was spinning into something approaching reality, and yet still his mind refused to concede that the story being told had anything to do with him.
    He’d never been one to shy away from the truth, however brutal, but the nuts and bolts of his sharp brain now seemed to be malfunctioning.
    Sarah wished he would say something. Did he really believe that she was making up the whole thing? How suspicious of other people had he become over the years? The young man she had fallen in love with had been fiercely independent—but to this extent? How valuable was his wealth if he now found himself unable to trust anyone around him?
    ‘I … I lived in Devon with them