Flawed by Jo Bannister Read Free Book Online Page B

wouldn't be a neurotic maths teacher who shaved maybe twice a week. Some impulse of honesty stopped him. Actually, she was right. He
was
afraidof Daniel Hood. Because Daniel stood, and had always stood, between him and what he wanted most, and he could never find a way of moving him that wouldn't mean immediate and total defeat. Now the game, or perhaps it was a war, was over he could afford to tell the truth.
    But now it was over he didn't need to. ‘Do you know something, Brodie? I don't care. You want to play house with Daniel, you go right ahead. I hope you'll be very happy together. Tell you what: why don't you tell people it's his baby? Give them a laugh.’
    Brodie clung onto her temper only because there were important decisions to be made here. She was astonished at the turn the conversation had taken. For once, she really didn't think it was her fault. Of course she'd surprised him. But he was a grown man and a detective superintendent: it couldn't be the first time he'd heard something unexpected. She said through her teeth, ‘Are you seriously telling me you don't want to be this baby's father?’
    He seemed incapable of damming the bitterness long enough to see the implications of his words. ‘Now? What's the point? Six months ago I'd have given my right hand to be having a baby with you. But now? You've already made it clear there are too many compromises involved in sharing your life with me. You don't want to live with me, you don't want to be with me, and you don't want me muscling in on the decision-making process. I'll meet whatever legal and financial obligations there are, and if you need anything more from me, call. But in all the circumstances, Brodie, I'm finding it hard to see this baby as mine. There isn't enough of it left over from being yours.’
    Angry as she was, she was also on the brink of tears. The steel in her voice was to stop it cracking. ‘You don't want to give it your name?’
    Deacon stood up abruptly, filling the little office, and reached for the door. ‘Call it what you like, Brodie. Let me know what you decide and I'll send it a birthday card.’ Then, leaving the door quivering on its hinges, he was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Daniel started work on January 1st, which seemed somehow auspicious. A new year, a new beginning. But for a month, every time he looked round Brodie was hovering behind his shoulder. She told him how her filing system worked, then checked that he was doing it right. She wrote out a list of questions to ask when he phoned round the south coast antiques shops, and she had him tick them off when he'd asked them. She let him sit in on a couple of meetings with clients, but when the meetings were over she told him what to do next.
    This was not in itself unreasonable. She was the expert, the one with the experience, the one with the name, and he was the rookie. But for all the sense he got of her preparing to pass over the reins, he might as well have been a dog trotting at her heels – amiable, good company, someone to fetch things, but no more capable of managing Looking For Something? than a Springer spaniel.
    In other circumstances, even the famously equable Daniel would have started to grow testy. Would have reminded her that four months from now, ready or not, like it or not, he'd be running this business so it was probably time she trusted him out in the big wide world. Of course he would make mistakes.But if he started small they would be small mistakes. The longer she kept him tied to her apron strings, the bigger the mistakes would be when she had no choice but to cut him free.
    But the stakes were high. If he questioned her judgement, in a fit of pique she was as likely as not to sack him, and while that would be no disaster from his point of view it would be from hers. It would leave her where she was six weeks ago: trying to ignore the inevitable although its shadow – like hers – loomed larger every day. So Daniel held his tongue and hung onto his