MacAllister's Baby (20 page)

She stopped. Her fingers loosened on the bread and it dropped to the floor with a plastic thump.

C
HEF
G
OES
B
ACK TO
S
CHOOL
! screamed the headline. It was under the red banner of one of the nation’s most popular tabloid newspapers.

And it was over a photograph of Angus MacAllister and Elisabeth. And another photograph of Angus and Jennifer and Danny, outside Chanticleer.

Elisabeth was very good with dealing with crises. After all, she had been a teacher for quite a few years now. She put down the butter on the counter, and retrieved the bread from the floor and put it on a nearby shelf. Then she picked up the tabloid and began reading.

TV chef ANGUS MACALLISTER has been donating his time to help TWO SCHOOLCHILDREN learn how to cook for a prestigious competition. And the chef has helped himself to a side dish, too—he’s been GETTING SAUCY with sexy teacher ELISABETH READ.

Enough. Elisabeth paid for the paper and folded it in half so she wouldn’t have to see any more. She walked back to Angus’s house, her mouth a firm line, her hands clenched.

Here was what she got for falling in love. A hard kick in the teeth.

She saw the man with the camera outside Angus’s house, and wondered whether he’d been there when she’d left, when she’d been too enchanted by her silly dream to see him. She held the newspaper in front of her face to hide it from the lens, unlocked Angus’s door and went straight up to his bedroom. When she entered, he raised his head from the pillow and smiled at her.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve made breakfast already.’ He sniffed the air. ‘I don’t smell any burning.’

‘It’s all a joke to you, isn’t it, Angus? Aren’t you funny? Aren’t you clever? Aren’t you
famous
?’

He sat up abruptly at her tone, the sheets pooling around his waist. ‘Elisabeth? What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong is that I trusted you. Against my better judgement, as you know, because you told me you really cared, that this wasn’t all a publicity stunt.’ She laughed without humour. ‘Imagine my surprise down at the newsagent’s. Were you going to tell me or were you hoping I wouldn’t notice?’

‘Notice what?’ He pulled the sheets aside and sat on the side of the bed, and he was so naked, so beautiful, so looking at her with that intentness and false innocence that she felt her anger rising up in her even stronger.

The meetings with his publicist. The phone calls, the luring the kids away from school to some place where the paparazzi could photograph them. Every single thing the two of them had done together.

‘This,’ she snapped, and thrust the newspaper at him. He took it and spread it open on his bare knee.

‘Oh, bugger,’ he said.

‘Didn’t catch your best side?’

‘Christine’s bloody leaks to the press,’ he muttered, and stood up. ‘Listen, I didn’t mean for this to happen—’

‘You didn’t mean for me to see it, you mean. Do you really expect me to believe that you gave up a chance for publicity because of the kids? Or me? I mean, come on, Angus. You thought this whole thing up for publicity. What am I? Sex? Whereas if you’re famous, you have the whole world on your side.’

‘Elisabeth.’ He reached for her. ‘I swear to you, this is a mistake.’

She stepped back from him. ‘The only mistake you’ve made is if you think I’m going to let you touch me any more. Goodbye, Angus.’

She turned on her heel and stormed down the stairs, not listening to his voice behind her calling her name, his footsteps on the carpet. He caught up with her as she was turning the doorknob and put himself between her and the door.

‘Sweetheart, I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t true. I had nothing to do with this.’

She gritted her teeth at the endearment. He thought charm and the sight of his nude body were still going to work.

‘Get out of my way,’ she said.

He crossed his arms on his chest, and she saw his eyes flare with anger. ‘You wouldn’t treat one of your students like this, would you? What about if this were Danny, not me? Would you assume he was guilty without hearing his side of the story?’

Her hand was on the doorknob. She turned it and started to push open the door.

‘I suggest you step away from the door unless you want to get photographed naked,’ she said, and ducked around him and out of the house.

She held her handbag up in front of her face to shield herself from the lens, hurried down the street, and got into the first cab she could hail.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
NGUS
put down the phone and swore.

Well, the media leak wasn’t Christine’s fault; she’d said she’d stopped contact with the press as soon as he’d asked her last week, and he believed her. Besides the fact that she’d always been trustworthy, he was paying her enough so that she should follow his wishes even if she disapproved of them.

Which meant that the tabloid had picked up the story on its own.

And which meant that he’d lost Elisabeth without doing anything wrong.

He went back up to his bedroom to put on some clothes and saw the bed where he’d made love with Elisabeth not an hour ago. The print of her body was still on the sheets and pillow—he could see the indentations of hip, shoulder, cheek.

He tugged the sheets straight and lifted the pillow to shake it back into shape. She’d jumped to conclusions, accused him without any evidence. As he’d said, she wouldn’t treat her students that way. But with Angus, the man she’d laughed with, worked with, made love with, she’d assumed he was guilty.

She cared less about him than she cared about kids she was paid to look after.

He pulled on some clothes, picked up the newspaper he’d dropped on the floor, and went back downstairs. In the kitchen, Angus got out a spoon, opened the freezer, and took out a carton of chocolate ice cream.

Cold, creamy, melting, heavenly. The breakfast of champions, and one of the only one-hundred-per-cent guaranteed methods to make yourself feel better.

It tasted of dust.

As he set the ice cream and the paper down on the table he spotted the pan on the hob. He walked over to it and looked inside.

He stared at the eggs and the water for a long time.

This was the breakfast she’d been about to make him.

He remembered the way Elisabeth had looked when she’d left: her cheeks and lips ash-white, her eyes wide. She’d spat out her words, enunciating each one too clearly. She’d looked furious.

And absolutely terrified.

He’d seen her defences when the condom had split. What if she’d accused him not because she didn’t care, but because she did?

She’d jumped to a conclusion, but that conclusion wasn’t too far-fetched, considering the person he’d tried his best to be for the past fourteen years.

Not long ago, he would have let Christine leak the information to the press. The reason he hadn’t was because falling in love with Elisabeth had changed him. But she didn’t know that he was in love with her. Therefore, she couldn’t know how he had changed.

Therefore, he had to tell her. He had to show her.

He picked up the kitchen extension and called Elisabeth’s mobile number. It went straight to voicemail.

Elisabeth, I love you,
he thought, but he wasn’t going to take the biggest risk he’d ever taken in his life to an answerphone.

‘It’s me,’ he said instead. ‘We need to talk. I don’t know how the paper got hold of the story, but I’m going to find out. Give me a ring back. Please.’

He tried her home number too, but that was answered by the machine. He left a similar message there. He’d give her half an hour to get home and hear his messages and then he’d go to her flat.

Then, he’d knock down her door if he had to, and he’d stand in front of her and say, ‘I love you.’ Those three words, just like that. And somehow he’d find a way to say them so that she wouldn’t doubt his sincerity, so she would be willing to listen, so she would smile at him and kiss him and say, ‘I love you too.’

Somehow.

Meanwhile, he’d figure out how the tabloid had got hold of this story. He called Henry to say he’d be late and to warn him that Magnum might get some reporters, and then he took his carton and spoon to the table and opened up the newspaper. The photograph of him and Elisabeth had been taken during their walk through Kensington Gardens. Elisabeth was smiling; Angus was leaning towards her to steal a kiss. They were holding hands. The paparazzi must have followed them all last weekend without their noticing.

He read down the article, wincing at the poor cooking puns, and then his eyes widened. He put his spoonful of ice cream back into the carton untouched.

Mystery solved. He knew how the newspaper had found out at least some of the story.

He left the ice cream on the table and headed for the door.

As soon as the taxi pulled up in front of her house she saw the two men standing outside, one with a camera. She leaned forward to speak to the driver. ‘Actually, I think I’d like to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum, please.’

She spent the day in the museum, walking along with the crowds looking at the Raphael cartoons, wandering the empty high-ceilinged cast rooms on her own, feeling safely anonymous. The order and the history should have soothed her. But it didn’t.

Once again, she’d fallen in love with a man who’d betrayed her—or, just as bad, who’d let his paid minions do it for him. She might have a degree from Cambridge, but she was the stupidest person she knew.

After the museum closed she got the underground back to her part of town and walked the half a mile or so to Joanna’s flat. If Joanna would let her stay the night and borrow some clothes for school tomorrow, she wouldn’t have to face anybody from the press.

When she rounded the corner of Joanna’s street, though, she saw the door to her basement flat open and Joanna emerge up the stairs with a tall, dark, slender man. Elisabeth stopped walking and watched her friend and the man pause at pavement level and share a long, passionate kiss.

Elisabeth turned around and headed back to her own flat. Joanna had her own love life to deal with; she didn’t need to help Elisabeth out with her disasters.

Cautiously she approached her own building. First, she scanned for Angus’s car and frowned at herself when she was disappointed not to see it. Surely if he were innocent, he’d be trying to find her to explain?

She looked around for the reporters she’d seen that morning. The coast looked clear. But she couldn’t be sure.

She dug a pair of sunglasses out of her bag and put them on, let her hair fall around her face, and ran for it.

‘I feel like a freaking secret agent,’ she muttered as she unlocked her door as fast as she could and slammed it behind her, then sprinted up the stairs to her flat and slammed that door behind her too.

Her bell began ringing as soon as she’d caught her breath. The red light on her answerphone was blinking frantically.

She unplugged it and the phone as well. She examined her doorbell but couldn’t figure out how to disable it. She hung a towel over it instead, turned on some loud music, and went to fill herself a bath.

Sleep eluded her. She was relieved when the clock said six-thirty and she could stop pretending to try to read her book and start getting ready for school. If she got there early, she could prepare all her lessons down to the minute, covering every eventuality. It could be a day without surprises.

There wasn’t anybody outside her flat—even predators had to sleep, she guessed—but she kept her hat on anyway as she walked to school and went in the back entrance by the kitchen. If she was lucky the tabloids had got the message that she didn’t want to talk and wouldn’t bother to come to her school.

She doubted it, though.

She was writing instructions on the board for her first lesson when the door of her classroom opened and Jo came in. She looked pale and worried.

‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since last night.’

‘I turned off my phones,’ Elisabeth said.

‘I know.’ Jo came to her and hugged her. ‘I’ve been worried about you, love.’

Elisabeth swallowed hard. ‘I’m okay.’

Jo pulled back and studied her face. ‘No, you’re not. You’re in a state and I can’t blame you. You look like you haven’t slept a wink and, knowing you, you haven’t eaten a thing for hours and hours.’

Food? That was the furthest thing from her mind. ‘No. But I’m fine.’

‘Bull. Here, have this. And you’d better eat it; I’m going to watch you.’ She produced one of her chocolate bars from a pocket and handed it to Elisabeth. Knowing she didn’t have a choice, Elisabeth sat down, unwrapped it and took a bite.

‘Chocolate isn’t a healthy breakfast,’ Elisabeth said.

‘It’s better than nothing. Listen, I hate to say this, but Howard wants to talk to you about the newspaper thing.’

She should have known that the head teacher would have something to say about the kids being featured in the national press. ‘Of course. I should’ve rung him yesterday, but I was distracted. Thanks, Jo.’ She rose.

‘Hold on, you’re not going anywhere without this.’ Jo picked up the chocolate bar she’d left on the desk. ‘And I’ll walk with you to make sure you eat it.’

Elisabeth bit into the chocolate obediently as they walked the short distance down the hall to the head’s office. ‘So how’s Angus taking the media intrusion?’ Jo asked.

‘Angus thrives on media intrusion,’ Elisabeth said. ‘I’m sure he’s doing fine.’

‘And when are you going to tell me all about your saucy nights together?’

Elisabeth made a face. ‘It is so unappealing to have your private life made the subject of bad writing.’

‘I don’t care how it’s written about, I just want to know one thing: are you in love with him?’

The chocolate turned to a lump in her mouth. She swallowed it with difficulty. Jo’s words had been said in her usual lively, flippant tone but her friend was looking at her seriously.

‘Yes, I am,’ she answered. ‘But—’

Jo interrupted her by flinging her arms around her. ‘Oh, Elisabeth, that’s wonderful. I’m so, so pleased. You deserve happiness and he’s exactly the person to give it to you.’