Indecent Deception. LYNNE GRAHAM
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little Chrissy, offspring of the infamously vulgar Hamilton clan. Why should he remember half frightening her out of her wits?
She was dismayed by the emotion shuddering through her in great waves, could hardly believe that she could still feel so strongly after all this time. Yet she did. Once he had touched her with raw sexual derision, just once, when she was seventeen and stupidly, recklessly naïve. It had been over in seconds but she had never forgotten the humiliation of his drunken assumption that she was throwing herself at his head as so many other women had.
Nor had she forgotten the resounding force of his savage rejection. Without ever issuing the smallest invitation to him, she had been flung away, thrust bodily out of reach as if she was too utterly revolting to be borne. Reeling with shame and confusion at what he had made her feel, she had then been forced to withstand a verbal beating into the bargain.
‘If you don’t watch out, you’ll turn into a tart like that sister of yours!’ Blaze had intoned viciously. ‘I may have been a few times round the block but I do have some standards!’
Nor had the brutality ended there on that unforgivable insult to Elaine. With an explicit lack of inhibition, Blaze had told her what he thought of her and what would happen if she continued on the promiscuous path he had so ridiculously imagined her to be embarking on. If anything, the moral lecture from his immoral corner had been salt rubbed into the wound.
That he could have thought even for a conceited moment that she wanted him...that she was just another bimbo willing to do absolutely anything to get him. The recollection still made her feel sick. She had not had a teenage crush on Blaze Kenyon. She had never, ever denied that physically he was almost unbelievably attractive. But she had never been able to stand him. As a human being he scored nil all the way down the line. Like a chalk scraping down a blackboard, he set her teeth on edge.
Yet the split-second savagery of his mouth on hers had devastated her. She had felt her own response with disbelief and horror. The shame of that momentary self-betrayal had been agonising. And, linked with his derision, the agony had become anguish. He might as well have stripped her naked and tossed her into a crowded street to be laughed at. Endowed with all the sensitivity he lacked, Chrissy had felt suicidal.
‘So what next?’ Karen grimaced, shrugging into her coat and hauling her suitcase on to the landing. ‘You worry me to death.’
‘If I go to the social services,’ Chrissy whispered tautly, ‘they’ll probably put Rosie in care.’
‘Stuff!’ Karen said. ‘They’ll stick you in a hostel or a B and B.’
‘I don’t have any right to keep her,’ Chrissy reminded her painfully. ‘And if they ask Dennis what he wants, he’s sure to say adoption. He never wanted her in the first place.’
‘What’s it got to do with him?’ Karen snorted.
‘He is her father. He’s got more rights than I’ve got...’
‘She’s a sweet kid, but I don’t know why you want to be lumbered at your age,’ the older girl admitted bluntly. ‘I mean, she really isn’t your responsibility. And let’s face it, kiddo...what can you give her?’
‘Karen!’ Chrissy was shaken and hurt by that forthright assessment.
‘Look, this isn’t easy to say, but adoption would give her a good home and two parents. Be practical, Chrissy.’ Karen sighed ruefully. ‘I can’t cut it here without a job. That’s why I’m going back to Liverpool. How do you expect to make it with a child?’
‘Other people do!’
‘They have to. You don’t. Rosie does have other options,’ Karen stressed. ‘You have to face facts some time. Even if you do get another job, you won’t make enough to cover childcare. You just haven’t got the earning power.’
It was a relief when Karen’s cab arrived. Like it or not, the other woman had faced her with certain inescapable facts. Karen had looked after Rosie for a pittance and the arrangement had only been temporary. Sooner or later, Chrissy would have been faced with finding a replacement, and her salary would not have stretched to the going rate. Not if she had wanted them to eat as well.
But Karen also made her see something that she had refused to see before. Was she being selfish in her desire to keep Rosie? Rosie didn’t have enough clothes or toys or stimulation. All those things cost money they didn’t have. Perhaps worst of all was the acknowledgement that she couldn’t even give her sister security. She didn’t even know where they’d be sleeping in forty-eight hours’ time. What sort of life was that to give Rosie? Didn’t she deserve more?
Chrissy was afraid of approaching the social services. She was not Rosie’s legal guardian. Apart from the registration of her birth, the authorities had had no further notice of her sister’s existence. They had moved three times while Belle was still alive, on each occasion to smaller, cheaper apartments. Her mother, stubbornly set on denying Rosie’s existence, had refused to take up her entitlement to child benefit. The very frequency of their changes of address had put paid to any further enquiries from the powers-that-be.
So far they had fallen through the system...but what would happen if they were forced to seek help? Would she lose Rosie? That fear had prevented Chrissy from attempting to put her relationship with her baby sister on a proper legal footing. Furthermore, as she had told Karen, Dennis would be sure to be asked what he wanted, and Dennis, who had been furious when her mother became pregnant, would be certain to opt for adoption.
Chrissy didn’t believe that she could love a child of her own body more than she loved Rosie. Belle had never come to terms with what Dennis had done to her. It was the pregnancy which had killed Belle. Not so much the strain of carrying a baby at the age of forty-five as the shame of all that had gone before. Dennis’s rejection when he’d realised that her mother was running out of money. His arrest, the publicity. The horrific sense of humiliation with which Belle had endured her pregnancy.
After the birth, Chrissy had hoped that her mother would recover. But she hadn’t. Sinking deeper and deeper into depression, Belle had lost all pride in her appearance and had done the barest minimum necessary in caring for Rosie. She had refused to see a doctor. In desperation, Chrissy had approached the doctor herself, begging him to visit. Unfortunately, Belle had put on a terrific act for his benefit, and after his departure there had been the most terrible row and Belle had threatened to throw Chrissy out if she ever interfered again.
Inevitably her mother had neglected her own health, and chest problems that had troubled her in earlier years had returned. A bout of flu had turned into pneumonia. She had been rushed into hospital but it had been too late.
Belle had had no will to fight for survival. She had simply drifted away. At the time of her death, they had been on the brink of moving again, and after the funeral Chrissy had gone ahead with the move. Only the doctor had enquired about Rosie’s welfare, and Chrissy had lied. She had told him that she would take her sister home to her family and, not knowing the circumstances of Rosie’s birth, he had not questioned that story.
At half-eight the next morning, a loud knock landed on the door. Opening it a crack, Chrissy’s troubled eyes focused incredulously on Blaze Kenyon. Taking advantage of her bemusement, he pressed the door wide and strolled in.
‘Have you had breakfast yet?’
‘Breakfast?’ she echoed foolishly.
‘I didn’t want to miss you. That’s why I came early.’ He hunkered down on his knees to respond to Rosie’s rush in his direction. ‘Friendly little scrap, isn’t she? Have you got a sitter for her?’
‘No.’ In a complete daze, Chrissy stared at him, wincing as her little sister flung herself at him with gay abandon. ‘Friendly’ was an understatement. Rosie was all over him like a rash. Men were almost non-existent in her world. Blaze was an object of curiosity.
‘Carry...carry Wosee,’ she demanded.
‘Hold on a minute,’ Blaze drawled as he dug a mobile