Читать книгу Accidental Mistress - Кэтти Уильямс, CATHY WILLIAMS, Cathy Williams - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS two months before her leg was more or less back in working order. She was confined, by Paul, to doing what he called sitting duties, by which he meant tackling all the paperwork.

‘All very restful,’ he assured her, then proceeded to produce several box files of papers which were in a rampant state of disorder and left her to it.

But she was busy, and for that she was grateful. Only occasionally did she think about the missed holiday, wondering what it would have been like and promising herself that she would get there. Some time. Possibly even during the summer, although Paul didn’t like any of his staff, least of all her because he depended on her, to take their holidays during the busiest months of the year.

Rather too often for comfort, she thought about Angus. She must, she thought, have absorbed a lot of detail about him because he still hadn’t conveniently faded into a blurry image. She could still recall quite clearly everything about him, even little nuances which she must have unconsciously observed as he had sat there on the hospital chair talking to her, and stored away at the back of her mind.

She hadn’t told a soul about him. Not her friends, not Paul. He was a secret, her secret. Instinct told her that to talk about him would give even more substance to his memory.

He wasn’t about to reappear in her life, was he? What was the point of inviting curiosity about someone who had appeared and vanished as quickly as a dream?

She was so utterly convinced of this that when, nearly three months after she had last seen him and weeks after she had joyfully relegated her waking stick to the broom cupboard under the stairs of her flat, she found his letter lying on her doormat she was so shocked that she felt her breathing become heavy and her hands begin to perspire.

She knew who the letter was from even before she ripped open the envelope. The writing was firm, in black ink, and the postmark was London. Apart from Angus Hamilton, she knew no one else in London who would send her a letter.

The message was short and to the point. He was going on a cruise with a few friends and would she like to accompany them. ‘Of course,’ she read, sitting down on the small sofa in her lounge and tucking her feet underneath her, ‘you will not even think of refusing this invitation. Consider it an act of charity on your part to ease my guilty conscience over the accident.’ As a postscript, he had added, ‘I trust you are now back on both feet.’

Of course, she had no intention of accepting, never mind his guilty conscience. She kept the letter in her bag and pulled it out whenever there was no one around, and then told herself why she had no intention of accepting his invitation.

For a start, it just wasn’t her to rush off and do something like that. Spontaneity was all well and good, but she had spent so many years being swept along on the tide of her parents’ spontaneity, like a leaf constantly caught up in a wind storm, that she had come to realise that thinking things through was a much better alternative. Thinking things through gave coherence to the whole disordered business of living.

When her parents had died, she had been just seventeen and craving for what most girls her age would have hated: somewhere to call a home, somewhere safe where she could gaze out through the window and watch the seasons change and the years pass, without any plans for moving on. She never wanted impulsiveness to dictate her actions. Never, never, never. It was dangerous.

Then, reluctantly, she remembered his face. She remembered the pity she had glimpsed there when she had told him that she was used to standing on her own two feet. Pity at what he saw as a sad little thing.

Her parents had felt a little sorry for her as well. How could they have produced such a quiet, timid version of themselves, when they were so exuberant? They had never understood that spending a year or eighteen months in one place before moving on to a different place with different faces and different landmarks was something that she had found increasingly disorienting.

So she found herself accepting his invitation. It was as easy as that. Something stronger than common sense, some powerful emotional urge, tipped the scales, almost when she hadn’t been looking.

She called the number on the letter, spoke to an efficient-sounding woman who informed her that she was Mr Hamilton’s personal assistant, and threw caution to the winds before she could work out all the pros and cons and ifs and buts.

And here I am now, she thought three weeks later, paying the price for a few moments of recklessness. Feeling nervous and sick and apprehensive and knowing that I’m not going to enjoy a minute of this. It will be an ordeal.

The only saving grace was that there would be lots of people around on the liner so if she found the company of Angus and his friends too uncomfortable she could always lose herself in the crowd. No one would think her odd. Cruise liners were always full of solitary women.

She closed her eyes when the plane took off and for an instant she stopped thinking about what lay ahead of her and thought instead about the dynamics of something as heavy as this being able to travel in the air. She hoped that all the nuts and bolts were firmly screwed together and risked a quick look through the window, openmouthed at the sight of land fast disappearing beneath her, to be replaced by an infinity of sky and clouds.

She hadn’t felt nearly so nervous about Lanzarote. She wondered whether the captain would turn back and let her off at Heathrow if she asked nicely. Failing that, she could hop it back to England when they landed at Barbados and Angus Hamilton, with his far-fetched notions of applying a balm to his guilty conscience, would be none the wiser. He would shrug those powerful shoulders of his and get on with his holiday knowing that he had tried to make amends and she had rudely refused.

He probably would not even miss the money he had spent on her airline ticket.

But since she knew, deep down, that she would obey the instructions kindly laid out for her in the letter from his secretary she didn’t feel much better.

She arrived at Barbados feeling rather ragged and, as the unknown secretary had helpfully advised in the letter which had accompanied the airline ticket, made her way to the transit desk and eventually onto the connecting flight to St Vincent.

This time the scenery through the window was rather more spectacular. She left Barbados looking down at glittering blue sea and strips of white sand and landed in St Vincent to the same staggering view.

The taxi driver was waiting outside the airport for her—just as the secretary had said he would be—when she emerged with her suitcase and her holdall.

She had worn a loose, flowery skirt and a shortsleeved shirt, but nothing had prepared her for the heat that hit her the minute she was in the open. It was the sort of all-enveloping heat which she had never before experienced in England, not even when it got very hot during the best of the summer days.

There was a great deal of activity outside the airport, taxi drivers waiting hopefully by their cars to take tourists to their destinations, but there was nothing frenetic about any of it. No one seemed to be in any kind of rush to get anywhere.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked the driver as he cruised off at one mile per hour.

‘Not far.’ He looked at her in the rear-view mirror, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth. ‘The hotel, it just along the south coast. Very nice place.’

Lisa lapsed into silence to contemplate the scenery, leaning forward slightly in her seat with her hands nervously clutching her bag.

Outside, the marvellous vista unfolded itself. Everything was so lush and green, heavy with the scent of the Tropics. She half wished that it would go on for ever, partly because it was so beautiful and partly because she was beginning to feel sick and nervous all over again.

What on earth was she going to say to him? She wasn’t accustomed to mixing in sophisticated circles. She would be completely at a loss for witty, interesting topics of discussion. After one hour, she would no longer be the novelty which had amused him months ago in a hospital ward. She would revert to being just an ordinary young woman without much of a talent for being in the limelight.

The taxi driver pulled up outside the hotel, which appeared to comprise a collection of stone cottages strewn with well thought out randomness amongst the lush vegetation.

He helped her with her luggage and she was almost sorry to see him depart into the distance, driving away as slowly as he had arrived.

She looked around her helplessly, noticing with a sinking heart the other visitors at the hotel who seemed to waft past her, laughing in their elegant attire. Would they all be on the liner? she wondered. Was this hotel one of the stops between ports? She had no idea. She glanced down at her clothes self-consciously, and when she raised her eyes to the reception desk there he was, standing there, just as she remembered him.

He was wearing a pair of light olive-green trousers and a cream shirt and he was, thankfully, alone.

As he approached her, she noticed how the other females strolling through the foyer darted glances at him, as if they couldn’t help themselves. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you might back out at the last minute.’

He was taller than she remembered. From a supine position on a hospital bed, it had been difficult to get a good idea of his height, but now she could see that he was over six feet tall, and already bronzed from the sun, so that his eyes looked bluer and more striking than she remembered.

‘I take it that your leg has now fully recovered from the experience?’ One of the hotel staff hurried up to gather her luggage and she followed him as he checked her in.

‘Yes, it has,’ she said to his profile, watching as he smiled and then turned to look at her. ‘Thank you very much for...this.’ She spread her arms vaguely to encompass everything around her. ‘It was very kind of you.’

He was watching her as she said this, with a small smile on his mouth, and it was a relief when the porter interrupted them to show her to her room, which wasn’t a room at all, but in fact one of the stone cottages with a thatched roof and a marvellous view overlooking the sea. Blue, blue sea and white, white sand.

‘Was your trip all right?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you very much; it was fine.’

‘There’s no need to be quite so terrifyingly polite,’ he said, amused.

‘I’m sorry. Was I?’

‘You were.’ He folded his arms and looked at her. ‘You haven’t been invited along to be thrown to the sharks.’

‘No, I know that.’ She tried a smile.

‘That’s better.’ He smiled back at her. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourself. That’s why you came, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Her replies sounded stilted and she glanced around her for inspiration.

‘I’m surprised that you came at all, I don’t mind admitting. After what you had told me at the hospital about not accepting charity, I thought that you’d run a mile at the prospect of a holiday at my expense.’

She resisted the temptation to apologize once again, but his remark filled her with dismay. Had he been banking on her not coming? Was that it?

‘I...accepted on impulse,’ she admitted, looking down to where her fingers were twined around the handle of her bag.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Now,’ he continued briskly, ‘I expect you’re feeling rather tired. He leaned against the doorframe and stared down at her. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to emerge for dinner. They will happily bring you some food here if you’d rather just stay in and recover from the trip. Tomorrow morning we’re hoping to set sail.’

‘Yes, of course. Your secretary did list the itinerary. I have it here in my bag somewhere.’ She plunged nervously into the bowels of the tan bag and several bits of paper fluttered to the ground, accompanied by a half-empty packet of travel tissues, several sweets, her traveller’s cheques and her book, of which she had read very little on the plane.

They both bent to recover the dropped items at the same time and their heads bumped. Lisa pulled away in embarrassment, red-faced, cursing the bag, which was much too large really and had somehow managed to attract quite a bit of paraphernalia in a way that her normal tiny one never did.

‘S-sorry,’ she stammered, burning with confusion as he handed her the packet of tissues and the sweets, which she stuffed back into the bag.

‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ he told her gently, kneeling opposite her.

‘I’m not nervous!’ She was kneeling too, her hands resting lightly on her thighs, her face close to his in the twilight which seemed to have descended abruptly in the space of about ten minutes. She remembered reading that about the Tropics. There was no lingering dusk. Night succeeded day swiftly.

‘Of course you are,’ he said, as though surprised that she could deny the obvious. ‘You’re going on a fortnight’s vacation on a yacht with a group of people whom you’ve never seen in your life before. Of course you’re nervous.’

She sprang up as though burnt and looked at him in confusion.

‘Yacht? I thought it was a cruise.’

‘Yacht, cruise, where’s the difference?’ He stood up and frowned. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit peculiar.’

‘Look,’ she said steadily, even though she could feel herself shaking, ‘please could you clarify what exactly this holiday is? Are we or are we not going on a liner?’

‘Liner? What are you talking about?’

‘In your letter, you said that we would be cruising... I was under the impression...’

His face cleared and he laughed. ‘That we were going on a cruise ship? No. I think there’s been a misunderstanding. No cruise ship. As far as I’m concerned, there wouldn’t be much point in getting away from the madding crowd only to surround yourself by the same madding crowd, just with a change of faces. In fact, I can’t really think of anything worse; don’t you agree?’

No, she wanted to shout in frustrated panic, I most certainly do not agree! And I can think, offhand, of one thing that’s infinitely worse. It involves a group of friends, on a yacht, none of whom I know, and me!

‘I—I would never have come...’ she stammered in horror.

‘If you’d known? You coward.’

‘I really don’t think that I can... There’s been a mistake... It’s not your fault... I should have asked, but I didn’t think... I’m sorry, but...’

‘Don’t be foolish.’

‘I am not being foolish!’ Now she was beginning to feel angry as well as horrified.

‘Look at me.’

She did. Reluctantly.

‘Do I look like someone who is thoughtless enough to invite you out here, throw you into the deep end and watch you struggle with a smile on my face?’

Pretty much, she thought to herself.

‘No, no, I’m sure you’re not, but really...I don’t relish the thought of... I shall be an intrusion...’ Her voice was beginning to fail her under the sheer horror of the enormous misunderstanding that had landed her out here, a million miles away from home, like a stranded fish out of water. She tried to remind herself that she was capable of enormous self-control, a legacy of having spent much of her childhood living in her own world, but something about his commanding, powerful presence made it difficult.

‘Nonsense. An intrusion into what?’ He didn’t give her time to answer. ‘Let me have the key. It’s ludicrous to be standing out here having a lengthy discussion when we could be inside.’

She handed him the key and barely glanced around her as they entered.

‘An intrusion into your privacy,’ she explained in a high voice that bordered on the desperate. ‘You will be with your friends...’

‘What do you think of the cottage?’ He turned around from where he had been standing by one of the windows, looking out into the black velvet night, and faced her.

‘Super. Wonderful,’ she said miserably.

‘You’ve never had a holiday in your life before, Lisa.’ His voice was soothing and gentle, the voice of someone dealing with a child, a child whose wits were just a little scrambled, and who needed to be taken by the hand and pointed in the right direction. ‘You told me so yourself. When I booked this holiday, I thought about that. Why don’t you put aside your reservations for a moment and try and see the next two weeks for what they are? An eye-opener.’

‘You invited me along because you felt sorry for me.’ She spoke flatly, acknowledging the suspicion which had been there at the back of her mind from the beginning.

He shrugged and stuck his hands into his pockets.

‘That’s putting it a little strongly.’

‘But basically that’s it, isn’t it?’ She could feel tears of anger and humiliation springing to her eyes and she tightened her mouth.

‘I felt that I owed you something for having deprived you of a holiday abroad. I wouldn’t call that a crime, would you?’

He had a seductive way of talking. Great intelligence and great charm could be a persuasive combination. She sighed and suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired.

‘Not a crime, no. But you must understand that...’

‘You’re apprehensive.’

‘I wish you’d stop finishing my sentences for me,’ she said crossly. ‘I’m quite capable of finishing them myself.’

He smiled, not taking his eyes off her. ‘You’re scared stiff at the thought of mixing with a group of people you’ve never met in your life before.’

‘Wouldn’t you be?’ she flung at him.

‘No.’

‘Well, excuse me while I just fetch out my medal for bravery from my bag!’ she snapped, and he moved towards her, which she found, inexplicably, so alarming that she had to make an effort not to retreat to the furthest corner of the room.

‘That’s much better,’ he drawled, standing in front of her.

‘What’s much better?’

‘A bit of fire instead of passively assuming the worst before you’ve even tested the water. Now, tomorrow,’ he continued, before she could think that out. ‘We normally breakfast in our rooms. Less effort than trying to arrange a time to meet in the restaurant area. We’re going to meet at the yacht at twelve-thirty. Shall we come and collect you or would you rather have a look around here and make your way to the boat yourself?’

‘How many will there be?’ she asked, frowning.

‘Just six of us. One of my clients who also happens to be a close personal friend, his wife and their daughter, and a cousin of sorts.’

‘A cousin of sorts?’

‘We’re related somewhere along the line but so distantly that it would take for ever trying to work the link out.’

‘Oh.’

‘And you still haven’t answered my question.’

‘Question? What question?’

He grinned with amusement and shook his head slightly. ‘My God, woman, will you take me there some time?’

‘Take you where?’

‘To the world you live in. It certainly isn’t Planet Earth.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Lisa said stiffly, her face burning.

‘And that’s not meant to be an insult,’ he told her, still grinning. ‘I do wonder how you ever manage to stand on your own two feet, though.’

Had he, she thought, remembered every word she had told him all those months ago?

‘I’ll meet you at the yacht,’ she said, ignoring the grin which was now getting on her nerves as much as his fatherly, soothing manner had earlier on.

‘Fine.’ He gave her directions, told her how to get there, asked her again whether she wouldn’t be happier if he came to collect her, so that she wondered whether he thought that she would abscond the minute his back was turned for too long, and then gave her a reassuring smile before strolling out of the cottage.

She sat heavily on the bed and contemplated the suitcase on the ground. Why had she come here? What had possessed her? She had wanted to put to rest, once and for all, the gnawing suspicion she had always had that she was dull, unexciting, too willing to settle for the safe path in life. Her parents, her vibrant, roaming parents who’d somehow landed themselves with a daughter who had never shared their wanderlust, would have smiled at her decision. Was that why she had done it? Yes, she thought wearily, of course it was. Except that a few vital things hadn’t been taken into the equation.

Now she was here, the guest of a man whose ability to reduce her to a nervous, self-conscious wreck she had forgotten, a man who felt sorry for her, who saw her, even though he had not said so in so many words, as someone who needed a little excitement, someone whose eyes needed opening. From the fast lane in which he had been travelling, he had seen her standing on the lay-by and had reached out and yanked her towards him.

It was a gesture her parents would have appreciated, but, sitting here, she realised that the fast lane was not for her. Yes, he had been right; she was afraid. It was something which he could never in a million years understand because she sensed that fear of the unknown was not something that ever guided his actions. He was one of those people who saw the unknown as a challenge.

Whereas for her, she thought, running a shower and letting the water race over her skin, the unknown was always equated with anxiousness. The anxiousness of leaving one school for another, of meeting new people, of tentatively forging new bonds only for the whole process to be repeated all over again. And every time it had seemed worse.

How could an accident of fate have thrown her into a situation like this?

The following morning, after she had had her breakfast, which, as he had advised her, had been brought to her in her room, she removed herself in her modest black bikini to the beach, selected a deserted patch and lay in the sun, covered with oil.

She would just have to make the best of things. She had decided that as soon as she had opened her eyes and seen the brilliant blue skies outside.

It was impossible to have too many black thoughts when everything around you was visually so beautiful. The sea was crystal-clear and very calm, the sand was white and dusty and there was a peaceful noiselessness about it all that made you wonder whether the hurried life back in England really existed.

She stretched out on her towel, closed her eyes, and was beginning to drift pleasurably off, safe in the knowledge that she wasn’t due to meet the yacht for another four hours, when she heard Angus say drily, ‘I thought I’d find you here. You’ll have to be careful, though; the sun out here is a killer, especially for someone as fairskinned as you are.’

Lisa sat up as though an electric charge had suddenly shot through her body and met his eyes glinting down at her seemingly from a very great height.

He was half-naked, wearing only his bathing trunks, and a towel was slung over his shoulder.

Reddening, she looked away from the powerfully built, bronzed torso and said in as normal a voice as she could muster, ‘I know. I’ve slapped lots of suncream on.’

‘Very sensible.’

He stretched out the towel and lowered himself onto it, then turned on his side so that he was looking at her.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, keeping her face averted and her eyes closed behind her sunglasses. He was so close to her that she could feel his breath warm on her cheek when he spoke. It was as heady as breathing in a lungful of incense and she hated the sensation.

‘I came to your room and you weren’t there. I assumed that you’d be out here. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ He reached out and removed her sunglasses. ‘There. That’s better. I like to see people when I’m talking to them.’

‘May I have my sunglasses back?’

She looked at him and found that he was grinning at her.

‘Don’t put them on.’

‘Is that an order?’ she asked primly, and he laughed.

‘Would you obey me if it was?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so,’ he commented lazily. ‘Which is why I’ll hang onto them for the moment, if you don’t mind.’

She glared at him and he laughed again, this time a little louder.

‘What a range of expressions you have,’ he said, with the laughter still in his voice. ‘From nervousness to fear, to stubbornness, to anger. How old are you?’

She debated informing him that it was none of his business, reluctantly reminded herself that he was her host and was owed some show of good manners, even if he constantly managed to antagonize her, and said coolly, ‘Twenty-four.’

‘Caroline is nineteen but she seems decades older than you.’

‘I’m sorry, I have no idea who you’re talking about.’ And frankly, her voice implied, I’m not in the least interested, believe it or not.

‘The distant cousin.’

Lisa didn’t say anything, but her heart sank. The picture in her head was beginning to take shape. The powerful client with his pretentious wife and their precocious child, Caroline, with her well-bred sophistication, Angus, and herself.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked politely. ‘Don’t you need to see to your boat? Make sure that all the sails or ropes or whatever are all in the right place?’

‘I do hope that there’s no implied snub in that question?’ he queried with lazy amusement.

‘Nothing could be further from my mind.’

‘What a relief.’ His voice was exaggeratedly serious and she wondered whether the real reason he made her so nervous was that she loathed him. Intensely.

‘Actually,’ he said, sitting up with his legs crossed and staring down at her, ‘I wanted to find you to make sure that you were all right.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Lying flat on the towel with only her bikini for protection against those gleaming, brilliant eyes made her feel so vulnerable that she sat up as well and drew her knees up, clasping her arms around them.

‘You seemed shaken by the prospect of enforced captivity with the man-eating cannibals I’ve invited along as guests on this trip.’

‘Very funny.’

‘No, not terribly,’ he said, very seriously now. ‘I wanted to find you so that I could reassure you that they’re all very nice, perfectly likeable people before you had to confront them.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied awkwardly. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on his face, stupidly aware of his animal sex appeal. ‘I’m sorry I was so garbled last night; it’s just that I was taken aback.’

‘I realised,’ he said drily. ‘And I wish you’d stop apologising.’

‘Sorry,’ she said automatically, and then she smiled shyly, dipping her eyes and gazing out towards the horizon, where the sharp blue line of the sea met the clear blue sky. It was easy to understand why some people believed that to venture beyond that thin blue strip would be to fall off the edge of the earth.

‘Did you tell your boss that you were coming on this holiday?’ he asked idly, and she could tell that he was staring at her even though she wasn’t looking at him. She couldn’t tell, though, what he was thinking. Could anyone do that?

‘Not exactly,’ Lisa admitted. ‘I told him that I needed to have a break, that I was tired. Well,’ she continued defensively, ‘it was more or less the truth.’

‘Rather less than more,’ he said blandly. ‘Did you think that he wouldn’t understand?’

‘Something like that.’ He would have fallen down in shock, she thought with amusement. He knew how much she liked the safe regularity of her job, of her life; she had told him as much when he had first interviewed her years ago for the position.

‘I don’t want to take on someone who’s going to stick around for six months, get bored, and look for more glamorous horizons,’ he had said.

‘Not me,’ Lisa had replied. ‘There will be no urge to hurry away from this job to look for another one. I have my flat, my roots are here and my job will be for as long as you want me.’

Over the years he had come to know her well enough to realise that her most prized possession was her security. She had bought her small flat with the money which had been left to her on her parents’ death, from insurance policies which had secured her future, and there she had been happy to stay, content in her cocoon.

‘Because you’re not given to taking risks?’ Angus prompted now, casually, and she threw him a sharp glance before returning her gaze to the infinitely safer horizon.

‘I guess,’ she said in a guarded voice.

‘Have I invaded personal territory here?’ His tone was still light and casual, but she knew that he was probing. Probing to find out about her. It was probably second nature to him, and in her case his curiosity was most likely genuine, the curiosity of someone whose life was so far removed from her own that it really was as though she came from another planet.

‘Why are you so secretive?’ he asked. He reached out and tilted her face towards his and the brief brush of his fingers on her chin was like the sensation of sudden heat against ice. It was a feeling that was so unexpected that she wiped his touch away with the back of her hand.

‘I’m not.’

‘You should try listening to yourself some time,’ he remarked wryly. ‘You might change your mind.’

He stood up abruptly, shook the sand out of his towel and slung it back over his shoulder. Mission accomplished, she thought, except there was a vaguely unsettling taste in her mouth, the taste of something begun and not quite finished.

‘Sure you know how to get to the yacht?’ he asked, and she nodded.

‘So, I shall see you around twelve-thirty.’

‘Yes,’ she murmured obediently, collecting a handful of sand in the palm of her hand and then watching it trail through her fingers.

‘And you won’t take flight in the interim?’ He raised one eyebrow questioningly and then nodded to himself, as though she had answered his question without having spoken. ‘No, of course you won’t, because, whatever you say, you’re as curious now as you are reluctant, aren’t you, Lisa?’ He stared right down at her and she felt his eyes blazing a way to the core of her. ‘This is a new experience for you. You won’t regret it. Trust me.’

Then he was gone. She watched him walking slowly away, his lithe body unhurried, and she thought, Are you so sure? Because I’m not.