Interrupted Lullaby. Valerie Parv
that what goes around comes around. Zeke believed you had to fight for what you wanted. He hadn’t fought for her, she thought, wondering what else he could have done to make a difference. No, she wasn’t about to start making excuses for him now. With his cynical attitude, they couldn’t have lasted anyway, even without the baby.
She pulled her thoughts sharply back to the present. It wasn’t easy. She had never loved another man the way she had loved Zeke and she was staggered at how much it hurt to see him again, surveying her with hard-eyed intensity as if she were meat in a butcher shop window.
Not meat, candy, she remembered him saying once. He had told her how, as a boy, he had pressed his face against a candy store window, his eyes eating up all the goodies inside. With not a cent to his name, that was all he could do. With you, Tara, I feel as if I’ve finally been given the keys to the store, he had told her the first time they’d made love.
Too bad he had eaten her up then spat her out, she thought, feeling anger flash through her. She subdued it and made her fingers unclench, forcing herself to concentrate on her task. Normally she could assess her audience in a couple of glances, enough to decide exactly what tone to take in her presentation, but tonight her thoughts were in chaos. Although the audience was two-thirds male, Zeke could have been the only man in the room for all the attention she had paid the rest, she realized with a shock.
Zeke would turn up when the meeting was being covered by Australian Life magazine, she thought furiously. The journalist and photographer had already set their equipment up at the back of the room as they had done for a number of the foundation’s fund-raising activities. Accustomed to performing for the camera, she hadn’t let the visitors distract her unduly. The dress-for-success outfit was her only concession to the coverage. Zeke’s presence was another matter.
The visiting journalist was bound to recognize him and would no doubt want to interview him, as well. No matter. Maybe they could find out what his motives were and save Tara the trouble. She only hoped he would behave himself well enough not to spoil the story for her. No matter what he thought, the publicity was intended to help the foundation far more than any individual.
“It’s true the fashion designers benefit from the publicity,” she carried on, amazed that she could sound so unruffled given the turmoil inside her. “But children in need are the real beneficiaries and tonight I’d like to show you how you can join us and help make a difference in their lives.”
She had their attention, she saw with satisfaction as she warmed to her subject. Business people responded to factual information, she knew from previous experience. Appealing to their emotions was the fastest way to scare them off, so she deliberately made the presentation very practical, with lots of case histories like Todd’s so they could visualize their efforts playing a real part in improving the lives of the children the foundation was intended to help.
She couldn’t imagine having the same impact on Zeke, she thought. His own experience had made him cynical about charity. Her breath caught as she remembered the night she’d learned about his background. She had wanted him to accompany her to a fund-raiser for a foster family program. He’d objected but wouldn’t go into details.
She’d pressed. He had always been reluctant to discuss his family and now she wondered if she’d hit on the reason when she’d asked that night, “Zeke, do you have some experience of foster care?”
“Bitter experience,” he’d snapped, his eyes becoming shadowed. “My mother was only seventeen when somebody spiked her drink at a party and she woke up in bed with an older boy whose name she never knew. When she found herself pregnant, her family disowned her. She couldn’t cope alone.”
Tara’s heart had leaped into her throat. “She gave you up for adoption?”
“It would have been better if she had. She left me with a foster family long enough to settle in, then she took me back to live with her.”
“At least she loved you enough to come back.”
“I might have believed it once, but three times is a little hard to swallow.”
“Oh, Zeke.” Her heart went out to the small boy whose trust had been so badly betrayed. No wonder he was reluctant to show affection after learning that it could be snatched away at a moment’s notice. “What about your mother’s family?” she’d asked.
He’d looked away. “Her father was a religious type who didn’t want to know her or me. I only tried to see him once, to tell him his daughter had died in a car accident. It was made clear that I needn’t have bothered.”
“It’s his loss,” she’d said firmly, wrapping her hand around his. His fingers had felt cold. “I’m sure he regrets it now that you’re so successful.”
“Too late. So now you know why I object to supporting something that did me more harm than good. If a parent puts a child up for adoption, at least everybody knows where they stand.”
To Tara, things weren’t always so simple, but she had known it was futile to argue with Zeke when his mind was made up. And who knew, she might have felt the same if her early life had been as disrupted as his. She had also understood why he’d resisted making promises to her. Their life was wonderful as it was, he’d insisted. Why tamper with perfection?
As a result, when she found out she was pregnant she had known she couldn’t force him into a commitment he didn’t want. Nor could she go with him, for the same reason. She had hoped he would stay in Australia of his own accord, but he hadn’t. From his comments tonight, it seemed he hadn’t changed at all.
Awareness of him played through her thoughts like background music as she went on to explain how the foundation had started when a woman on her own had unexpectedly given birth to triplets without the resources to clothe and equip them.
Tara had been a patient at the same hospital, although she avoided mentioning that part, especially with Zeke in the room. She had expected to be in the maternity ward and her heart had been torn in two when she had been moved to a surgical ward instead, with a woman who coughed all night. It was a long way from a baby’s healthy cries, she remembered thinking.
The single mother with the triplets had been the talk of the hospital and as soon as she was discharged, Tara had buried her aching sense of loss while making telephone calls to colleagues and persuading them to donate clothes for the babies. One of her favorite designers had gone further, creating an adorable miniature wardrobe for the triplets. The resulting publicity had led more of Tara’s colleagues to offer money and assistance, and before long the foundation was a reality.
She had never expected to become the charity’s spokesperson. At first she could barely be around children without falling apart, but slowly it dawned on her that there was healing here, too. Seeing so many babies and children being given hope for the future had renewed her own sense of hope. Her pain had slowly eased to a distant ache that only caught her unawares every now and then.
In helping others, she had helped herself to go on. She called on that strength now to keep her voice steady and her body language serene, describing work the foundation had done and the work still to do, and how the audience could play a part.
When they broke for coffee she was immediately surrounded, but even as she answered questions she was aware of Zeke across the room, a coffee cup untouched in his hand, his gaze on her. His look felt like a flame, licking at her body.
Time to take the bull by the horns. Excusing herself, she strode up to him, her own coffee cup held like a shield in front of her. “Hello, Zeke.”
“Nice talk. Very persuasive,” he said evenly.
“Wasted on you.”
“I didn’t come to be recruited,” he denied. “You know my philosophy—charity begins at home.”
“Then why are you here?” she demanded.
In the confined space, his body brushed hers and she felt her pulses leap in instant response. When they were together, his hard body hadn’t always been encased in