The Taming of Xander Sterne(4)

                Consequently, the question was a little difficult for Sam to answer, when Xander had left most of the talking that day to his brother. He’d only contributed to the conversation towards the end, when he had barked half a dozen questions at her about her daughter’s schooling, and the amount of time Daisy would actually be spending at his apartment.

                Making it clear to Sam that, while her new employer might be willing to tolerate her own presence in his home for the next two weeks, he wasn’t in the least keen on having her daughter in residence as well.

                An attitude that Sam wasn’t particularly happy about.

                But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

                She hadn’t always been in such dire financial straits; her ex-husband, Malcolm, wasn’t anywhere near as wealthy as the Sterne brothers, but he was nevertheless a successful businessman who owned a mansion in London, plus a villa in the South of France and another in the Caribbean.

                Sam had been twenty to Malcolm’s thirty-five, when the two of them had first met, she a lowly junior assistant and he the owner of the company. She had been instantly smitten with the suave and sophisticated, dark-haired and wealthy businessman, and apparently Malcolm had felt the same about her, so much so that within two months of meeting each other they had been married.

                Sam had been starry-eyed and, to begin with, so much in love with her handsome and successful husband. Her parents had both died years ago, and she had been brought up in a series of foster homes. Her extended family was practically non-existent, with only a couple of distant maiden aunts whom she never saw.

                However, Sam’s pregnancy had changed her marriage irrevocably.

                She and Malcolm had never discussed having children—or rather, not having them in Malcolm’s case. It turned out that Malcolm didn’t want children cluttering up his life as she discovered only when she’d excitedly told him she was two months pregnant.

                At the time Sam had convinced herself that it was just a knee-jerk response to the thought of becoming a father for the first time at the age of thirty-six. Malcolm couldn’t really have meant it when he suggested she terminate the pregnancy.

                She had been wrong.

                Their marriage had changed overnight, with Malcolm moving out of their bedroom, seemingly repulsed by the idea of Sam’s body undergoing a transformation as the pregnancy continued. Even then, however, Sam had naively hoped for the best, sure that her marriage couldn’t really be over after only a year, and that Malcolm would come around to the idea of fatherhood, either before or after the baby was born.

                Again, she had been wrong.

                Malcolm had remained in the spare bedroom, ignored her pregnancy totally, and he hadn’t so much as visited her once in the clinic after Daisy was born. He had even been absent from the house when she came home carrying Daisy proudly in her arms and took her up to the nursery she had spent so many hours lovingly decorating and preparing for her beautiful baby.

                Sam had struggled on for another two years trying to make her marriage work, sure that Malcolm couldn’t continue to ignore his daughter’s existence for ever. How could he not fall in love with his adorable baby daughter?

                Except he hadn’t.

                At the end of that two years of struggle Sam had admitted defeat. Not only did she no longer love Malcolm, she wasn’t sure she even liked him. How could she like a man who refused to acknowledge his own wife and daughter?

                The past three years certainly hadn’t been easy ones. Emotionally or financially.