wondered.
Would a reluctant father, even if he gave her and more particularly the baby material support, be better than no father at all? Or would she chafe at the fact that she’d never been good enough for her baby’s father? If she did, how would a child react to that? Was she better off being a single mother or not, in other words?
How did you bear the burden of single-motherhood amongst your friends and in your workplace, though? It probably wasn’t so unusual, but she couldn’t think of anyone she knew who was pregnant and without a partner.
It was at this point in her musings that someone tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Yes?’ she said, with extreme surprise. She didn’t recognize the man and couldn’t imagine what a formally dressed middle-aged man in a suit and tie was a: doing on the beach, and b: wanting with her.
‘It is Miss Smith, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Miss Bridget Tully-Smith?’
Bridget opened her mouth to say yes, but then said instead, with a faint narrowing of her eyes, ‘Who wants to know?’
‘Mr Beaumont, Mr Adam Beaumont, would like a word with you, Miss Tully-Smith. I’m Peter Clarke. I work for him, and I just missed you coming out of your building a little while ago. I was trying to park. I was forced to follow you on foot, and—’
‘Please tell Mr Beaumont I have nothing to say to him at the moment,’ Bridget interjected. ‘And please tell him I don’t appreciate being followed.’
She turned away and marched off, with her heart beating heavily.
She’d calmed down somewhat by the time she got home, and assured herself that if Adam Beaumont hadn’t taken the hint before he would surely do so now.
Famous last thoughts…
She answered her doorbell late that afternoon to find him in person on her doorstep.
‘You!’ she gasped, and she tried to slam the door.
But he simply put his hands around her waist and picked her up, to deposit her inside the doorway.
‘I’ll scream!’ she threatened, more out of frustration than fear.
‘Scream away,’ he invited. ‘But I don’t intend to close the door. I don’t intend to deprive you of your liberty or harm you in any way, or stop you using your phone. I do intend to tell you this, though. The more you run away from me, Mrs Smith, the guiltier you look.’
This stopped Bridget dead.
She stared at him wide-eyed and with her mouth open. He was wearing the same suit he’d been photographed in, navy blue pinstripe, with a matching waistcoat, but today it was a pale blue shirt he wore, with a burgundy tie.
That dark hair was the same, though. So were the austere lines of his face and mouth. It was the same pair of broad shoulders beneath the faultless tailoring, the same narrow waist and long legs. The same blue eyes—but today they were accusing and insolent…
‘G-guilty?’ she stammered. ‘I haven’t done anything!’
‘How about failing to give me your full name, Bridget?’
‘Th-that wasn’t—I often don’t use my full name,’ she stammered. ‘People always ask me if—if I’m—’ She stopped and pleated her fingers together.
‘If you’re Graham Tully-Smith’s daughter?’ he finished for her. ‘Graham Tully-Smith, investigativejournalist extraordinaire. But there’s more, isn’t there? You work in the news department of a television station. You’ve even climbed the ladder a bit to read the news. All of which places you perfectly to pass on a juicy titbit you picked up one wet, stormy night in the Numinbah, doesn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bridget,’ he said deliberately, ‘you’re the only person I’ve ever told about my ambition to unseat my brother. Yet now it appears to be common knowledge.’
Bridget breathed confusedly. ‘I didn’t tell a soul,’ she protested. ‘There’s no way I could have used it, anyway. I’m just a very junior gofer. That’s all.’
He raised a cynical eyebrow at her. ‘Is that how you came to be reading the news last night?
Sa'Rese Thompson.
Michael Wallace
Mallory Rush
Peter Corris
Jeff Brown
Ned Boulting
Ruth Lacey
Shirl Anders
Beverley Andi
R.L. Stine