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They were almost done with the live interview when Eoin said quietly, ‘So, we see that you’re moving on with your life. Poor Ryan’s barely cold in the grave.’
The air went very still around them. Alana fancied she could hear a pin drop. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Everyone knew you couldn’t wait to get rid of him and suck him dry so you could move on, but you’ve got the best of both worlds now, don’t you? You’ve got all of Ryan’s money, and now you’ve got one of the richest men in the world eating out of your—’
‘I beg your pardon, Eoin,’ she cut in quickly, having no doubt he’d not stop at saying something unbelievably crude. ‘My husband has been dead for a year and a half, and it’s no business of yours and never has been what I do with my personal life.’ The vitriol in Eoin’s eyes made Alana quail inside, but something else was starting to rise up, too, something she’d held down for a long, long time—the truth.
Eoin continued with ugly menace in his voice and face. ‘Except that it’s your fault he died, your fault the Irish team never recovered from Ryan’s death. If you hadn’t thrown him out when he was so vulnerable—’
It came up from somewhere deep and reflexive. Alana laughed. She actually laughed. And it felt so good that she kept laughing. She knew it was verging on hysteria, but the truth had risen so far now that she couldn’t help it coming out. She’d had enough of being the scapegoat for Ryan O’Connor.
She stepped forward and pushed a finger into Eoin’s massive chest, emboldened by the fact that he looked distinctly nervous now at her reaction.
‘Let’s get a few things straight here and now, shall we?’ She didn’t wait for an answer; everything was forgotten as she was borne aloft on a wave of something like mad euphoria.
‘My husband was a lying, cheating, womanising, gambling, pathetic excuse of a man. And I’m not the only one who knew it. My only sin was that I helped to perpetuate the myth, that I helped the world to see and believe in Saint Ryan. He made my life a misery. And you were part of that. I know all about you, too, Eoin Donohoe; don’t you think people or even your wife would like to hear about your drunken, whoring binges in—’
‘Shut up, you little bitch.’
His stark language, the threat in his tone and the way his face had twisted, made Alana step back in fright. Someone jumped in and physically restrained Eoin, he looked so angry.
The world came back into focus and Alana was stunned. Had she really just said all that? She looked around at the cameraman wildly. It wasn’t Derek, it was a new guy, young and scared-looking. Derek would have had the sense to stop filming. Her stomach went into free fall.
She said through stiff, cold lips, ‘Please tell me you stopped filming?’
He gulped and went puce, lowering the camera. ‘I—’
Alana raised a shaky hand to her face; her other one was still wrapped around the microphone. ‘Oh God.’
A low, threatening voice sounded near her ear, turning her blood cold. ‘Well done, Cusack. You’ve done it now; you’d better be prepared for the fallout.’
She took down her hand and watched as Eoin sauntered away. He hadn’t even tried to stitch her up. She’d done it all by herself. The minute he’d come out with his first provocative comment she should have wrapped up the interview and that would have been that. It was no worse than some of the barbed comments people had thrown at her since Ryan had died. Yet she’d never felt the need to defend herself till now.
In the temporary studio set up at the other end of the pitch for the after-match analysis, there was a deathly lull as the panel absorbed what had just happened. Luckily they had just cut to a commercial break, but the damage was done. Pascal’s face was like granite.
When she finally let herself into her house later, Alana felt shell shocked, as if she’d been put through a wringer and left flat and limp on the other side. When she’d walked back into the newsroom, she’d been summoned immediately to Rory’s office and had been fired on the spot. The entire slanging match had been aired on national television, in front of the country and in front of the panel of experts discussing the match. And Pascal. Apparently he’d held his tongue on air, but afterwards had voiced his concerns for the image of the tournament, and the image of his bank’s involvement in the face of the rapidly escalating scandal. That was what Rory had told her as he’d all but flung her contract at her.
‘I knew you were liable to be a problem when I hired you!’
‘And yet,’ Alana had pointed out in a desperate bid to try and save herself, ‘I proved myself to be reliable, well informed, and you even told me last week that I was the one you trusted most to do the hard-hitting interviews.’
‘Yes, Alana,’ he’d replied wearily, sitting down behind his desk. ‘But you brought your baggage with you, didn’t you?’
She’d kept it together and had just said quietly, ‘I guess I did.’ Even from the grave her husband was having the last laugh.
As Alana sat on her couch now and thought of everything that had just happened she couldn’t stop the nausea rising. She just made it to the bathroom in time and emptied the contents of her stomach. As she washed her face, she thought of something, and with a fatal air went back out to her bag and extracted the chemist’s bag. She went back into her tiny bathroom.
The day couldn’t get any worse.
And then it just did.
* * *
She tried to ignore the doorbell which was ringing persistently, the door-knocker banging violently. But the thought of her neighbours hearing the commotion finally made her move off her couch and out of the state of shock that had held her immobile for the past few minutes. She opened the door and didn’t wait to see who it was. She knew.
Pascal came in and towered over her, the door shut behind him.
‘What the hell was all that about?’
Alana moved around to her armchair and sat down, because she was afraid she might fall. ‘That was me, finally airing my dirty laundry. In front of the nation, no less.’
Pascal had moved to the centre of the small sitting-room, and glared down at her. ‘And in front of the entire Six Nations public too. I believe the news is hitting the airwaves as we speak. The hotel where the after-match party is being held has had to call for police assistance in dealing with the hordes of paparazzi already camped outside.’
Alana winced.
Pascal grunted something unintelligible and sat down on her couch. She was still a little too numb to react.
‘So? Are you going to tell me what happened?’
Alana shrugged. She looked at him, but didn’t really see him. ‘He pushed me too far. For months people have been making snide comments about how I was so cruel to Ryan—how could I have thrown him out?—and the truth was exactly what I said.’
Pascal drove a hand through his hair. ‘But it’s crazy. The things you said—’
‘Were all true.’ Alana felt life-force coming back into her bones, the shock wearing off. This man and his concern for appearances was the reason she’d just lost her job, and the reality of what that meant was beginning to sink in.
She stood up and crossed her arms. ‘I’m not really in the mood to discuss this actually, would you mind leaving? I think you’ve done enough for one day.’
He stood, too, bristling. He pointed at his chest. ‘Me? I’m not the one that has just ripped the rose-tinted glasses from a nation of mourners. Whatever your husband might have been, Alana, surely there was a more decorous time and place to tell the truth?’
She stepped up to him, shaking. ‘Do you really think I thought it through logically for one second Pascal—and then went ahead thinking it would all be OK?’ She stepped back again, breathing heavily. ‘Of course I didn’t. It just came out. And in all honesty, I probably couldn’t stop myself if it happened again. He provoked me.’
Pascal recalled what Eoin Donohoe had said, and recalled, too, his urge to go and lift Alana bodily out of his way so that he could shield her. He’d been genuinely concerned for her safety as he’d watched her confront the huge man. She’d looked so tiny and fragile, standing up to him. The protective instinct had caught him unawares as the events had unfolded in front of him, but then he’d also had to assess the potential damage as a barrage of calls had immediately jammed the phone lines in the studio.
Pascal couldn’t keep the censure from his voice. ‘He may have provoked you, but you’ve unleashed a storm now.’
He saw how Alana paled dramatically. But his own head was still ringing from the board of his bank wanting to know what on earth was going on, why a storm in a teacup was threatening to reduce the famous rugby-tournament to the level of a sideshow. And what it was already doing to their reputation on Europe’s stock markets.
Alana felt a wave of weariness. ‘It’ll die down soon enough. It’s not as if people are going to be faced with me, anyway; I’ve been sacked.’
Pascal’s head reared back. ‘Sacked?’
She nodded and looked at him, hardening her heart and insides to the way he made her feel, even now. The weariness fled and anger rose, hot and swift. How could he be so cavalier about her life? Her independence was gone, everything she’d built up destroyed. ‘Rory sacked me as soon as I got back. And as it was in part to do with your reaction, you needn’t act so surprised.’
Pascal’s face darkened ominously, features tight. ‘I didn’t know he’d done that.’
‘Well, he did.’ Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.
‘I would have never have advocated that you lose your job over this. To suggest that is ridiculous.’
His words rang with conviction, and he seemed affronted that she thought he would be so petty. She knew she couldn’t blame him for the fact that Ireland was so small that the merest whiff of scandal could run for weeks and weeks and wreck a career overnight. The immediate future lay starkly ahead of her, especially with the brand-new knowledge that she held secret in her belly. The anger drained away and she felt weary again; it was too overwhelming to try and get her head around it. And at the centre of everything stood this man who was turning her upside down and inside out.
She sat down again when a wave of dizziness went through her. Immediately Pascal was at her side, bending down, a hand on her knee. She tried to flinch away, but he wouldn’t release her.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked harshly.
‘Nothing,’ she answered quickly, restraining the urge to place a hand on her belly. Then hysteria rose again. ‘Unless you count the fact that I’m now jobless and about to be homeless, too.’
‘What are you talking about, Alana? You’re not making sense.’
‘Sense! If I had sense I wouldn’t have opened my mouth earlier.’ She was already hoping he’d forget what she’d just said. But of course he didn’t; his logical brain was sifting through everything.
‘What do you mean, homeless?’
She wished he’d move back. He was crowding her, exactly as he’d done that first time they’d met and had been in the car on the way to the restaurant. She cursed her runaway mouth inwardly.
‘What I mean is that, without a job, I’m going to be homeless. I have this month’s mortgage paid, and after that … nothing.’
He stood up again and she looked up.
He was remote, more remote than she’d ever seen him. ‘How is that possible? You must have been left a fortune.’
Alana felt his coolness touch her deep inside. She stood up, too, moving back towards her galley-kitchen as if seeking refuge. This was the first time she’d ever contemplated telling anyone the whole truth. She grimaced inwardly, apart from her recent exposé.
She shook her head. ‘That’s just it. It’s a myth. Ryan gambled everything away with people like Eoin, on stupidly lavish expensive weekends to places like Las Vegas. They’d hire private jets, stay in the best hotels—drink, drugs, girls, gambling. They did it all. When Ryan died, he had debts to the tune of millions, and no one knew. He kept up the pretence all along. If we hadn’t had the house to sell in Dalkey, I’d have had to declare myself bankrupt. Thanks to my own savings, which didn’t amount to much, I was able to buy this house and set up a loan agreement with Ryan’s debtors to pay the rest of the money back. Without my job, the repayments will fall behind immediately. This house is the least of my worries; the minute the repayments stop, they’ll come after me.’
Alana didn’t glean any comfort from Pascal’s shocked look. She knew well that on some level he’d still had her cast in the role of an ex-WAG—the derogatory term for the wives and girlfriends of sports stars. She couldn’t blame him; she’d seen the way he’d look at her sometimes, as if waiting for her to trip herself up, reveal herself to be the silly bimbo that most of those girls were.
‘I’ll talk to Rory.’
Alana shook her head vehemently. ‘No, that’ll make things even worse. The last thing I need now is to be pushed to the forefront of everything again.’
‘But maybe he can keep you behind the scenes for a while.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’ She could just imagine the snide comments, the looks.
‘What about your family? Don’t they know about this?’
A spasm of pain clenched Alana’s insides. She hated admitting this, knowing it would be hard to understand. ‘No; they don’t know. I was as guilty as Ryan for keeping up the pretence.’ She avoided Pascal’s eye. ‘They just … they don’t have the kind of resources I needed. They had their own things going on, and my parents are old, frail. They didn’t need to hear about my problems.’
Pascal’s tone was frigid. ‘It sounds to me like it was a problem worth sharing.’
She looked at him, feeling defensive. ‘It was my decision, OK? My family aren’t that wealthy, my parents certainly aren’t any more. They live comfortably, but they’ve earned that. I couldn’t burden them with the mistake I made.’
‘Is that how you saw your marriage?’
The way Pascal asked the question so softly made Alana feel even more vulnerable. She had to push him back; she knew well it was only a matter of time now before he ran as fast as he could from her car wreck of a life.
‘For a long time, yes I did, which is why I’m determined not to make the same mistake twice.’
He started advancing towards her, and Alana backed away further.
‘Is that what you see happening here—a mistake in the making?’
Alana shook her head, confused. Did he mean them? ‘I don’t … What are you talking about? This isn’t anything like that.’ It’s worlds apart.
He was still advancing into her kitchen, making the space become tiny. Alana was starting to feel desperate. She felt so raw and vulnerable right now that if he so much as touched her … She stopped abruptly as her hand that had been sliding along the counter hit something. Instinctively, she covered it. She knew immediately what it was; she’d left it there in her shock and confusion just minutes before. Pascal’s eyes darted to where her hand had made the betraying, concealing movement. Alana gulped as he looked back to her. She felt guilty. She looked guilty.
‘What’s that, Alana?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, almost hopefully.
‘So why are you trying to hide it?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Show me what it is.’
‘It’s nothing, just rubbish.’ Desperation tinged her voice, and in a rising surge of panic and rejection at the thought of confronting this, too, when so much had just happened, she whipped it off the counter top and whirled around to put it in the bin. But before she could a strong arm wrapped itself around her midriff and pulled her back into a hard body. With effortless strength, Pascal reached round and pulled the object from her hand. She closed her eyes. Their breathing sounded harsh in the small space, and she could imagine him trying to make sense of what he was looking at.
Alana could feel the tension come into Pascal’s body. His arm grew even more rigid around her. She knew it wouldn’t take long for him to make sense of it. These days pregnancy tests were idiot proof and the results immediate—the word ‘pregnant’ wouldn’t have taken a six-year-old long to figure out.
And then abruptly, so abruptly that she stumbled a little, Pascal released her. She turned round to look up but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the pregnancy test. After a long, tense moment he finally looked at her and she fought not to wince under his almost-black look.
‘It’s pretty self-explanatory.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, crystal-clear.’
He turned and walked back into the sitting room, holding the test in his hand. Alana followed warily. He turned then, and she stopped in her tracks at the harsh lines on his face.
‘And were you planning on keeping this little secret to yourself, too, shouldering this as another burden? Another mistake?’
Pain lanced her. ‘I did the test just before you arrived. My period is late … I’ve been feeling a bit sick, so I bought it this morning on my way into work. Of course I would have told you.’ Eventually.
‘Oh, really?’ His voice could have turned milk sour. ‘I find that hard to believe, when you were about to throw it in the bin as nothing more than a piece of rubbish. Perhaps you’ve already decided what you want to do with our baby.’
Our baby.
The simple words of acknowledgement and acceptance rocked through Alana like an atom bomb. She put her hands instinctively on her still-flat belly. ‘Of course I haven’t decided anything, and certainly not what you seem to be implying. And I was going to tell you. It’s just … I’ve barely had time to take it in myself. I think you can agree that today has packed more than its fair punch.’
Hating herself for feeling so weak as another wave of dizziness washed over her, she couldn’t help swaying slightly. Words resounded in her head: jobless, homeless, pregnant. She’d really made a mess of things this time.
With a muttered curse Pascal was by her side and made her sit down on the couch.
‘When was the last time you ate?’
Alana had to struggle to recall. Pascal cursed again colourfully. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t even eaten all day?’
He threw off his coat and went into her kitchen and started opening the fridge and looking on her open shelves. Feeling totally bemused and numb, Alana watched as he took out bread, butter, cheese, tomatoes and made a sandwich. He brought it back over on a plate and handed it to her, watching her until she’d eaten the whole thing, even though it was the size of a doorstep.
When she was done, he took the plate and set it aside, then he stood up and started to pace. He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair. He looked dishevelled all over, and Alana could feel her pulse stirring to life. His shirt was coming out of his trousers, the top button of his shirt undone. He rounded on her then, taking her by surprise. Her eyes had been on his bottom, and she coloured guiltily. How could she be thinking of that at a time like this?
But it seemed as if she was not the only one. Pascal dropped down onto the couch beside her, coming close, and before she could stop him he was undoing the top button of her shirt.
‘That’s better. I can’t concentrate when you’re all buttoned up.’
Alana backed away into the corner of the couch. Pascal’s brows rose. ‘It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?’
She was beginning to feel stifled, threatened—sensory overload. She shimmied out from under him and stood up. Pascal sat back and looked up from under hooded lids. Alana’s insides clenched.
‘So when do you think it happened? I thought we were careful.’
‘We were,’ she said crisply, and then remembered the back of the car that night in Rome. Colour washed through her cheeks again. She looked down and caught his eye. She couldn’t read his expression. But it seemed as if he could read her mind.
‘Yes, there was that time. Or the bath afterwards.’ Pascal had known well he was being careless, but for the first time in his life that concern had assumed secondary place to fulfilling his physical needs. And in the intervening days he hadn’t even thought about it. More fool him. Yet, even more astounding to him right now was the equanimity he felt in the face of this news. In fact, what he was feeling was an inordinate sense of rightness. A sense of something his grandfather had passed onto him, something he’d never realised he possessed before: a sense of family.
Along with it came the memory of what it had been like to be shunned, rejected, and surging up within Pascal now was a zealous desire to give this child, his child, the kind of acknowledgement he’d never had. The revelation stunned him.
Alana started to pace, anything to avoid looking at him, wanting him. She had to sort her head out. She couldn’t let him distract her.
‘Look. This has happened. It was reckless and silly, but we both know where you stand on this kind of thing.’
He stood up and was immediately dangerous, towering over her. ‘Oh, we do?’
Alana felt like stamping her foot childishly. ‘Yes! I can’t imagine you’re happy to be faced with a pregnant—’
‘Mistress?’ he asked equably.
‘I hate that word. I’m not your mistress.’
‘Then what are you? Go on—say it, Alana.’
He was goading her, teasing her, even now. She glared up at him, arms crossed. ‘I’m your latest lover. The one in between your last one and your next one.’
His expression hardened, his eyes flashed. ‘Yes. But now you’re my pregnant lover, so that changes things somewhat.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re seriously happy with this?’
‘Not happy, exactly, no,’ he bit out, feeling defensive. ‘But how do you know that I haven’t always wanted a child someday?’
‘Have you?’ she shot back.
Now Pascal was the one backing away, feeling a little poleaxed again. His recent revelation was too new, too raw to articulate. This whole afternoon was taking on an unreal hue, as if he’d stepped into some mad time-warp. He was in a tiny house in the middle of Dublin with a woman who’d stepped into his life and turned it upside down. She’d just told him she was pregnant, and he was still there. He wasn’t running as fast as his legs could carry him away from her, which was how he’d always envisaged reacting to such a scenario.
He looked at her steadily and tried to ignore the way her hair was escaping the confines of its neat bun, the way he could see the hollow at the bottom of her throat where he’d opened the button. Even now, more than ever, he wanted her. He answered almost distractedly, ‘Yes … of course I did. On some level.’ Someday.
His mind cleared and fixed on Alana. ‘What about you?’
He saw her hand go to her belly again; she’d done that a few times, almost as if to protect the unborn child from something—their unborn child. Something in his chest felt tight.
Alana turned away from Pascal’s gaze for a moment. He was looking too deeply, seeing too much. When she turned around, his expression had lost that intensity; it was more innocuous.
‘Yes. I always wanted children. We … myself and Ryan … tried, but nothing happened. And I was always grateful then that we hadn’t. No child deserved to be born into our sham of a marriage.’
‘And what will this be, Alana?’
She looked up into his eyes, panic trickling through her. He was so powerful, a million times more powerful than Ryan ever had been. He was cold, remote, and she had that prescience again of what it would be like to cross him—she wouldn’t win.
‘This will be just us, having a baby. I’m not going to marry you, Pascal.’ She was shaking her head, moving away. He advanced.
‘I wasn’t aware that I’d asked you,’ he said silkily.
She flushed. ‘Well, isn’t that … how you people operate?’
He threw back his head and laughed, but Alana knew he wasn’t amused. ‘What do you think I am, a masochist? Why would I want to marry a woman who doesn’t want to marry me?’