The Unclaimed Baby Read Free Page A

look at the group of small children who filed in with their mothers or, in a couple of cases, with their nannies. He smiled softly at them and several mothers did double takes; even the girls beamed up at him as if he was some sort of god or well known celebrity.
    â€˜If you’ll excuse me,’ Bronte said to him stiffly as she moved from behind the reception desk, ‘I have a class to conduct.’
    â€˜I will see you this evening,’ he said, locking gazes with her. ‘I have a hire car so I can pick you up if you give me your address.’
    Bronte thought of the modest little granny flat she and Ella lived in at the back of her mother’s house. She thought too of all the baby paraphernalia that would require an explanation if he was to insist on coming inside. She was not ready to explain anything to him after what he had done. He’d had his chance to find out about his baby and he’d callously thrown it away. ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I can make it on my own.’
    He gave her a gleaming smile. ‘So you’ve made up your mind to come after all?’
    She gave him a beady look in return. ‘It’s not as if I have much choice in the matter. You’re hanging the threat of charging me an exorbitant rent if I don’t comply with your wishes.’
    He reached out and trailed the point of his finger down the curve of her cheek, the action setting off a riot of sensation beneath her skin. ‘You have no idea what my wishes are, cara ,’ he said softly and, before she could say a word in return, he had turned and left.

CHAPTER TWO
    â€˜O F COURSE I’ll mind Ella for you,’ Tina Bennett said to Bronte later that evening. ‘She’ll be tucked up in bed in any case by then. Are you going out with Rachel’s brother David again? I know he’s not exactly your type but he seems a rather sincere sort of chap.’
    Bronte cuddled her fourteen-month-old daughter on her lap, breathing in her freshly bathed smell. ‘No,’ she said, meeting her mother’s gaze. ‘It’s someone I met while I was in London. He’s in Melbourne for a few weeks and decided to look me up.’
    Tina’s slim eyebrows moved together in a worried frown. ‘Bronte, darling, is it him? Is it Ella’s father?’
    Bronte nodded grimly. ‘I stupidly thought this day would never come. When he broke off our relationship the message I got was he never wanted to see me again. “A clean break,” he said. Now he’s suddenly changed the rules.’
    â€˜You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to, darling,’ Tina said. ‘It’s not as if he knows about Ella. Anyway, after the way he treated you, I don’t think you are under any obligation to tell him.’
    Bronte’s long heavy sigh stirred the soft feathery dark brown hair on the top of her baby daughter’s head.‘Mum, I’ve always worried about the timing of it all. He broke things off before I knew I was pregnant. If I had found out just a week earlier it might have changed everything. Perhaps if he had known he might not have been so…so adamant about never seeing me again.’
    â€˜Darling, what was a week either side going to do?’ her mother asked. ‘He had clearly already made up his mind. He wouldn’t even agree to talk to you on the phone let alone see you face to face. What were you supposed to do? Tell him via a third party?’
    Bronte bit her lip as she looked at her mother. ‘Maybe that’s what I should have done,’ she said. ‘Perhaps then he would have agreed to see me again. We could have at least discussed options.’
    Tina Bennett gave her daughter a streetwise look. ‘And what options might those have been? It’s my guess he would have marched you straight off for a termination. A man with that sort of lifestyle would not want a love-child to support. It