Читать книгу Mistress for a Night - Diana Hamilton - Страница 7

JASON HARCOURT’S right hand hovered over the telephone for a second, then dropped down to his side. He pushed both hands into the side pockets of his dark, well-worn cords and hunched his wide shoulders.

The room was crowding in on him. The over-ornate French antiques, the baroque-framed paintings, the fussy carpets suffocating him. He paced to the long, elaborately draped French windows, dark brows drawn down over flint-grey eyes as he stared moodily out over Lytham Court’s winter-bleak gardens.

How he hated this place!

Seven years since he’d set foot over the doorstep—except for the hour he’d spent here after Harold’s second wife Vivienne’s funeral—and he was only here now because he had no real option. Lytham held bad memories, more than a few.

Following Vivienne’s death, four years ago, he had made peace, of a sort, with Harold, the man who had legally adopted him almost thirty years ago on his marriage to Jason’s widowed mother. For a three-year-old child, whose real father had been killed in a climbing accident before he was born, it had been easy enough to accept the substitute.

Only after his mother had died of leukaemia, when he was seventeen, had he begun to see his adoptive father with new eyes.

But that was in the past, and the tentative peace had progressed relatively smoothly because he had stipulated that their occasional meetings took place at the older man’s London club. Neutral ground. He was glad, now, that he’d gone with the flow, somewhat sceptically giving Harold the benefit of the doubt when he had insisted he’d changed. He owed his adoptive father that much.

But the scepticism had hardened to downright disbelief when at their last meeting, two months ago, Harold had told him, ‘Georgia’s been back in England for six months now; we’ve been meeting fairly regularly.’

Jason had watched the way the mere mention of her name had made Harold’s tired, faded eyes brighten in the older man’s face, a face that had shrunk in on its own bones. Harold had gone downhill, slowly but very surely, since Vivienne had died, and his obvious physical frailty had been the only thing that had stopped Jason from getting up from the lunch table and walking out of the muted dark brown atmosphere of the club and into the relative sanity of London’s teeming streets.

‘So you keep in touch with Georgia.’ He practically spat the words out, the old bitterness surfacing as it always did whenever he was unguarded enough to think about her.

‘Since Vivvie died, yes. She, God rest and bless her, was the stumbling block there. Wouldn’t have her daughter’s name mentioned.’ Harold pushed his barely touched meal aside. Jason speared a forkful of game pie with smooth savagery, debated whether he wanted it, decided not, and laid down his cutlery.

‘I know you said you were going to break the long silence and phone New York to tell her of Vivienne’s death,’ he said carefully. He had offered to put his personal distaste aside and break the news of the fatal car accident, to spare Harold, but the old man had insisted he was the one to do it. As it turned out no one need have bothered; she hadn’t cared enough to attend her own mother’s funeral.

‘Well, yes.’ Old eyes fell uneasily. ‘There were things that had to be said, and I said them,’ he stated enigmatically. ‘And I like to think we got close again after the air was cleared. It doesn’t do to hold on to old grudges. In any case, she’s well settled back in England now. She heads up one of the design teams at the branch of her advertising agency in Birmingham—you’ll remember she went out with the girl Sue’s family when the father opened a branch in New York?’

Jason glanced fiercely at his watch. He’d had enough of this. Of course he remembered!

‘I thought we might all get together at Lytham one weekend soon,’ Harold said. ‘Mend fences. You and little Georgia are the only family I have left.’

‘Spare me the sentimentality.’ Jason flung his napkin down. ‘It’s not impressing me.’ He stood up.

‘It was worth a try.’ The faded eyes held a sudden gleam of humour. ‘But you will come? I’ll fix a weekend with Georgia. Be like old times.’

Old times he could do without. ‘In your dreams!’ he said, and walked out.

He hadn’t seen Harold since. He’d meant to, of course he had, but work had got in the way. He regretted that now that Harold was dead, he thought, his eyes still fixed on the dreary garden scene.

It was raining now, icy needles that clattered against the window pane, and the short winter day was ending. The housekeeper, Mrs Moody, had told him that a hard frost was forecast for tonight.

It meant driving conditions would be tricky in the morning. Georgia would probably decide not to risk the icy roads. She hadn’t bothered to grab a flight and get over for her mother’s funeral, so why should she put herself out to attend Harold’s?

Unless she wasn’t totally sure of the way her stepfather had left his money and was anxious to find out, he thought cynically.

His hard mouth pulled down, he strode over to the phone and lifted the receiver.

Georgia was hunting in the back of the kitchen cupboard for the spare jar of coffee granules she knew she had somewhere when the phone in the apartment’s living room rang.

‘I’ll get it.’ Ben levered his tall, whip-thin body from the kitchen doorway, where he’d been lounging, watching her, the slow smile he gave her as sexy as his husky voice.

Returning to her search, she briefly wondered why she always blew each and every one of his suggestions of a date clean out of the water. Yet she knew why, really. It had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her.

They’d both occupied apartments on the same floor of the converted Edwardian mini-mansion in one of Birmingham’s leafier suburbs for the past eight months. Returning from New York after more than six years, she’d known no one in the city, and had been grateful for the friendship Ben had offered.

He often dropped by for a chat in the evenings; sometimes, as now, to borrow something, at other times bringing a bottle of wine to share, or a recently acquired CD he thought she might like to listen to. He asked her out to dinner on an average of once a week, and apparently did not get disheartened when she consistently turned him down.

She didn’t want sex rearing its ugly head and spoiling the easy friendship they had.

As she emerged from the cupboard, clutching the jar, the phone was still ringing. It had an irritable sound. She headed out of the kitchen. Ben probably couldn’t find it; it would be lurking under something or other.

Which was why, as of this afternoon, she was on three weeks’ leave. To finally get her apartment sorted. For eight months she’d worked her socks off, and it was time now to make a liveable home.

Ben found the phone under the pile of folded curtains she was going to hang on poles to hide the ugly chipboard doors put in by whoever had converted the building for multiple occupancy.

She heard his sexy voice turn frosty as he said to the caller, ‘Yes, she is. Wait one moment.’ He held out the receiver, his voice an accusation. ‘It’s some man. Didn’t give his name.’

As if, Georgia thought wearily, no one of the male sex, apart from himself, of course, had any right to be speaking to her. Wishing again that the man/woman thing didn’t make a habit of rearing up to threaten perfectly good and stable friendships, she ignored Ben’s scowl and gave her name to her caller.

If it was one of her team back at the agency she didn’t want to know. Her recent and highly successful presentation to the directors of a giant ice-cream manufacturing company—with not one of the men in suits finding a single fault with the storyboards or videos—had earned her the right to take part of her leave entitlement.

It wasn’t one of her team. It was Jason.

Seven years, seven crowded eventful years, years of determined change and the quiet internal struggle to forget had passed since she’d seen him or heard from him. Yet his low, gravelly voice still had the power to shut her down: heartbeats, breathing, brain function, everything inside her held in frozen suspension.

So why was he calling now?

‘Are you still there?’

The sudden change of tone, the stinging harshness, brought her back into the land of the living. Her breath came fast now, her heart racing, her voice all jagged edges as she confirmed, ‘Of course I am. What was it you wanted?’

Hardly gracious, but there was nothing gracious or civilised about the bitterness that tainted the very blood in her veins at the sound of his voice.

He told her coldly, with no softening of his tone. ‘Harold died three days ago. Suddenly, from a brain haemorrhage. The funeral’s at eleven tomorrow morning. I think you should be here at Lytham, and be prepared to stay on for at least twenty-four hours.’

Georgia’s skin went cold. Underneath her soft denim jeans and chunky sweater her body felt clammy. Harold? Dead? She had difficulty taking it in.

‘I suppose you’re having trouble deciding whether you can spare the time,’ Jason said into her extended silence. ‘Harold would have told me if you’d married, so I take it you have some other arrangement with the guy who answered your phone. Bring him with you if you can’t do without him for a night.’

‘I wouldn’t inflict you and your attitude on anyone I cared about,’ Georgia came back, horrified by how much his snide assumption that she couldn’t bear to be without a man in her bed for one single night hurt.

‘Stop being childish.’ He sounded bored. ‘I’m not asking you to be here for the pleasure of your company, but because you owe your stepfather respect—and rather more than that.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ What the hell was he implying?

‘There’s a lot to be sorted out.’ He ignored her interruption. ‘As I’m sure you already know, his entire estate goes to you. That means there are decisions you have to make, responsibilities you need to shoulder. I want to be sure you take them seriously—like what happens to the staff here, for instance.’

If the news of Harold’s sudden death had come as a shock, the information that—for some weird reason—he had willed his entire estate to her was an even greater one. It numbed her brain for several long seconds, making her oblivious to the rest of what he was saying.

And then her mind began to buzz. Legacy or no legacy, there was no question of her staying away from his funeral. But it had been dark and raining heavily since four this afternoon, and the forecast had promised a hard frost overnight. She had no intention of risking her life—or her new sports car—on icy roads by travelling up early the following morning.

‘I’ll be with you in a couple of hours,’ she said coldly, and ended the conversation.

If he thought she couldn’t wait to get her hands on her legacy, then so be it. His opinion of her had been rock-bottom for the past seven years, so it couldn’t possibly get any lower.

Whatever, it didn’t matter now. How could it? She had altered beyond recognition, inside and out. She was nothing like the gullible child of seven years ago. She had worked hard to make sure that nothing could hurt her now, certainly not Jason’s continuing contempt.

Yet suddenly rare tears glittered in her eyes, turning the amber to shimmering gold. Unexpected, unheralded tears for her younger self, long forgotten, for lost dreams, a lost child.

She blinked them away and straightened her spine. She never thought about the past.

‘Bad news?’ Ben put an arm round her shoulders.

‘My stepfather died,’ she answered tightly. ‘I’m driving down to Gloucestershire tonight, before the roads turn into a skating rink.’

‘I’m sorry.’ His arm tightened around her, pulling her close. ‘And who was the guy on the phone?’

‘Does it matter?’ she said irritably. He was acting as if he had rights in her life. Then she relented, sighing, ‘Jason, my stepbrother. I hardly know him.’

And wasn’t that the truth! The man that other, forgotten self had believed she loved with all her heart and soul had never really existed. Out of loneliness and lovelessness she’d created a fantasy lover, a perfect being, and had suffered for that juvenile folly. Yet for a few seconds the sound of his voice had affected her savagely, as if the dumpy teenager who had loved him for so long and so frenziedly had suddenly come alive again, and was fighting for recognition within her adult body.

Which was nonsense.

‘Would you like me to drive you?’ Ben asked solicitously. ‘If you’re in a state—it wouldn’t be a problem.’

She compressed her lips, not wanting to throw his kindness in his face, and said very politely, ‘No, thank you. And, truly, I’m not in a state.’

Ben thought no woman was capable of driving, that the entire female sex should be kept off the roads by law. He’d been horrified when she’d splurged on the racy sports car she’d hankered after for years, but she was in no mood to see the funny side right now. She thrust the jar of coffee at him. ‘You came for this, remember?’

‘Yes, well—mind how you go. Don’t drive like a maniac.’

‘Stop trying to mother me.’ She gritted her teeth.

‘You know, or should do by now, that I don’t want to be a mother to you.’ His arm tightened around her shoulder again, and this time he wasn’t offering comfort. ‘Why don’t you give me the chance to show you just what I do want to be? You never know, you might surprise yourself and like it!’

Georgia stiffened. Hadn’t she told him, at least a dozen times, that she had no intention of starting a sexual relationship with him, or any other man? Ever.

Sex ruined relationships. It had made Jason treat her like a mistress for one night only and then despise her. It had made her mother resent her from practically the moment of her conception, because the man she’d been engaged to had taken to his heels when he’d learned there was a baby on the way. Vivienne had always regarded her as an unwanted encumbrance, a blight on her life.

And sex had been the only thing on Harold’s mind that last fateful day at Lytham, which had ruined everything for her at the time. Yes—she had long decided she could live without sex.

She pulled briskly away from Ben. If he hadn’t got the message by now he never would. She refused to waste any more breath on the subject.

‘I have to pack. Close the door behind you.’

Georgia drove fast, but safely, with flair and confidence, perfectly attuned to the powerful engine beneath the long, sleek bonnet of the low-slung sports coupé.

It was like a part of herself, and when she was behind the wheel inner tension was released, the distinctive growl of the engine, as the black, aerodynamic, bullet-shaped car ate up the miles, speaking to her of freedom, taking her away from herself. Driving was the only release she allowed herself. And speed was addictive.

Headlights cut through the night, raking the wet black tarmac. She kept her foot down, stayed in the fast lane and only reluctantly eased off the accelerator slightly as she left the M5 at Brockworth and headed for deep country. And Lytham Court. And Jason.

Jason. Was he spitting tacks because he hadn’t been remembered in Harold’s will, full of resentment because she, the despised one, had?

And what was he expecting of her? Her mouth curled with slight, cynical amusement as she allowed herself to think about it.

A soppy sort he could push around? Someone he could lay down the law to concerning that legacy and then walk away from, arrogantly satisfied that she would do as she was told?

And physically? If he gave that aspect a glancing thought would he expect to encounter an older version of that besotted eighteen-year-old? The billowy curves—the plague of her young life—already solidified into premature middle-age spread? Mousy hair still cropped boyishly short because she didn’t know what else to do with it? Dog-like devotion swimming in her eyes, ill-fitting chainstore clothes?

Boy, was he in for a surprise!

The muted yet full-throated growl of an unfamiliar engine broke the deep silence of Lytham’s isolation. Jason gathered the sheaf of papers together and pushed them back into the wall safe, locked it and pocketed the key, then walked to the open study door.

A couple of hours, she’d said. A glance at his watch confirmed she’d made it in ten minutes under. He waited. Made a conscious effort to relax coiled shoulder muscles. Waited and wondered.

Wondered if he’d manage to discuss tomorrow’s funeral arrangements, and how she could best handle the huge fortune that would come into her possession after probate, without displaying the bitter contempt he felt for her.

Wondered if she would still have the nerve to look at him with big, limpid eyes. Wondered yet again how he could ever have been fooled by such a seemingly malleable sweet innocence.

Waited and wondered if she’d walk right in—this house was hers, or as good as, after all. Or would she ring the bell, as timid and self-effacing as ever, on the surface at least, yet self-seeking underneath, doing what suited her and hang the consequences?

She walked right in. She stood in the open doorway and stared at him.

He stared right back through narrowed grey eyes, unable to release the almost arrogance of her glittering golden gaze, unable to believe what he was actually seeing.