Читать книгу Mills & Boon Modern Romance Collection: February 2015 - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 18
ОглавлениеDARIUS HAD SEEN a car that he knew wasn’t Miranda’s parked outside the studio, and heard the sound of raised voices as soon as he entered the building. Well...one raised voice—which he now knew to be Tia Bellamy’s—followed by Miranda’s softer, more measured responses to whatever the other woman was saying to her.
He studied the two women now through narrowed lids, easily taking in the pallor of Miranda’s face, her eyes appearing a huge dark green against that paleness, just as Tia Bellamy’s face was flushed with anger, her eyes like chips of blue glass as she glared at Miranda.
‘Ladies?’ he prompted coldly—although he used the term loosely in regard to Tia Bellamy; as far as he could tell there was little that was ladylike about her, no matter how she might try to give the opposite impression.
The ballerina seemed to gather herself together with effort as she shot Miranda one last telling glare before turning to bestow a flirtatious smile on Darius. ‘It was nothing important,’ she dismissed airily. ‘And I have a rehearsal to get to now, so Andy and I will have to finish catching up some other time— What are you doing?’ she said sharply, Darius having reached out and grasped the top of her arm to stop her from leaving.
His hold didn’t slacken in the slightest. ‘Miranda?’ he prompted softly.
Andy drew in a deep breath before giving a weary shake of her head. ‘Let her go.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Very,’ she bit out decisively.
Darius’s fingers tightened briefly on Tia Bellamy’s arm. ‘I seriously advise you never to come here and upset Miranda again,’ he warned grimly.
Those blue eyes flashed resentfully before Tia reluctantly gave an abrupt nod of her head.
Darius released her, not even sparing her another glance as she left the room. Instead he crossed the room to Miranda’s side as the outer door slammed noisily behind Tia Bellamy seconds later. ‘Are you okay?’ he prompted gently as he placed a hand beneath Miranda’s chin and raised her face to his and looked down at her searchingly.
Was she okay?
Tia had just confirmed what Andy had always suspected: that she had deliberately pushed her off the stage four years ago. Which, although a disturbing revelation, had at least reassured Andy that she hadn’t imagined it after all.
The other woman had also just issued another veiled warning: to cause Andy further harm if she didn’t withdraw from performing at the gala next month.
So was she okay?
Not in the least!
The trembling started in Andy’s knees, before travelling through the rest of her body, so that within seconds, it seemed, she was on the brink of collapsing.
‘Come and sit down before you fall down.’ Darius had placed a firm arm about her waist to hold her against his side as he guided her over to one of the benches against the wall, sitting down and pulling Andy down onto his thighs, resting her head against his shoulder, as his arms came around her protectively.
Which was when Andy’s tears began to fall hotly down her cheeks.
Because she now knew for certain that the shattering of her dream four years ago, of becoming a world-famous ballerina, had been a deliberate and malicious act.
Because of all those years of self-doubt Andy had suffered, when she had sometimes questioned her own sanity, for having even the thought that someone could have deliberately pushed her that night.
To make matters worse, Andy could no longer deny, after seeing Darius again at his mother’s house this morning, that she had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love, and with a man she knew had no intentions of ever falling in love with her!
All of which meant that she was now overwhelmed by emotions, made worse by the fact that Darius was the one now holding her so tenderly in his arms.
And it couldn’t continue. Even if she liked, loved, the idea of Darius trying to slay dragons for her, she knew she was stronger than that. Much as she might like to lean on him, she was capable of slaying her own dragons.
She drew in a deep, controlling breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks before sitting up, determined not to make any more of a fool of herself than she already had. ‘Sorry about that. I think I overreacted slightly,’ she attempted to dismiss—and knew she had failed utterly as Darius continued to frown with concern.
‘Like to share?’ he prompted softly.
Andy chewed briefly on her bottom lip, wondering how much Darius had overheard of her conversation with Tia, and how much more she wanted to reveal to him. Not that Darius would let his questions go unanswered.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked instead.
He gave a humourless smile. ‘It was always my intention to come and see you this morning.’
She blinked. ‘Why?’
‘Stop changing the subject, Miranda,’ he bit out impatiently. ‘I didn’t get the impression at the dinner last Saturday evening that you and Tia were exactly friends, so what was she doing here just now? And, more to the point, why did she think she had the right to tell you not to dance at my mother’s gala?’ He frowned.
Andy avoided meeting his probing gaze. ‘It was nothing.’
‘It was most definitely something, to have reduced you to tears; you are the least weepy woman I know!’
Andy drew in a shuddering breath; how was she even supposed to think straight when she was sitting on Darius’s muscled thighs?
When her senses were all reacting to his warmth and the sensuously earthy smell of his body that was uniquely and arousingly Darius, as well as that insidious lemon and spice aroma of his aftershave?
‘Thank you—I think.’ She grimaced. ‘Look, I’ve just taken a class, and I’m feeling hot and sticky, so could we go upstairs before we continue with this conversation? That way I can shower and change before making us both some coffee.’
‘I would rather we stayed exactly where we are,’ Darius rasped.
Andy looked up at him guardedly. ‘You would?’
He nodded. ‘I have this unrelenting fantasy of making love to you in front of all these mirrors,’ he said throatily even as his arms tightened about her.
Andy’s eyes widened. ‘You do?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Darius breathed huskily.
Andy wasn’t sure she was capable of even standing up after that comment, let alone walking up the stairs to her apartment.
Darius had fantasised about making love to her in this room? Since when? An unrelenting fantasy? He had only come into the dance studio itself once before today, when he’d invited her to the charity dinner with him, so did that mean he had been fantasising about making love to her in here since then?
The heat in his gaze as he looked down at her seemed to say that he had!
Andy was suddenly aware of how little she was actually wearing, just a white leotard and tights, all of which clung to every curve of her body.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘That sounds...intriguing.’
‘It does?’
‘Um...yes...’ What was the point of her even trying to deny her response to the suggestion, when Darius must be able to feel the sudden warmth between her thighs as she sat on the muscled hardness of his lap. And he couldn’t miss that her nipples were aroused and pressed against the thin material of her leotard!
His arms tightened about her as he gave a husky laugh. ‘Does that mean you’ve forgiven me for not contacting you since last Sunday?’
‘It means I’m thinking about it,’ she came back pertly.
‘Dependent on...?’
Andy moved back slightly so that she could look at him, her heart melting at just how devastatingly handsome he looked when he smiled in that relaxed way. ‘Dependent upon whether you didn’t call me because you didn’t want to, or you didn’t call me because you wanted to but made yourself not do so.’
The moment of truth, Darius realised, wondering if he was ready for this. Wondering if he would ever be ready for this.
He had spent the past twenty years building up the emotional barriers that had protected him from allowing anyone close to him, apart from his twin, as a shield against other people, and the pain of the distance that had so suddenly sprung into existence between himself and his mother.
A distance that, this past week, while still not completely resolved, was no longer that painful mystery to him.
A distance that he had to discuss with Miranda, before he could even begin to answer any other question. Although, after overhearing part of his conversation with Xander at the hospital the previous week, perhaps some of it wouldn’t come as such a shock to her?
‘Perhaps we should go upstairs to your apartment for coffee, after all.’ He now set her lightly on her feet as he stood up, his expression deliberately non-committal as Miranda looked up at him searchingly.
Andy had no idea what to make of Darius’s behaviour: flirtatious one moment, distant and almost businesslike the next.
Disappointed as she was that he obviously no longer intended making love to her right here and right now, she regretted even more that something she had said meant that Darius was no longer relaxed and smiling.
‘Fine.’ She nodded, leading the way out of the studio, locking the front door to the building before preceding Darius up the stairs to her apartment. Still totally aware of him walking behind her. ‘Feel free to put some music on while I take a shower.’ She indicated the sound system once they were in her apartment, not meeting his gaze again before turning to go up the short staircase to her bedroom and bathroom.
‘Miranda?’
She turned, her expression guarded. ‘Yes?’
‘I— We...’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who has been able to render me verbally incompetent!’ He ran a frustrated hand through the already tousled darkness of his hair.
Some of Andy’s tension left her as she grinned. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment!’
Darius gave a grimace. ‘Oh, it’s so much more than that.’
Yes, it was, Andy realised; Darius wasn’t a man who enjoyed admitting to having any sort of weakness, least of all when it came to a woman; no doubt a legacy of his mother’s reserve towards him. But she had succeeded in rendering him verbally incompetent.
‘Make yourself at home while I take a shower,’ she invited warmly as she ran lightly up the rest of the stairs to collect some clean clothes before disappearing into the bathroom.
Darius scrolled through her music selection, selecting a random album to play. He removed his jacket and tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt before commencing to pace the apartment restlessly.
Half of him wanted to go and join Miranda in the shower—if she would let him—and the more sensible half of him knew they needed to talk about several things before that was even a possibility.
Firstly, he had every intention of discovering the real reason for Tia Bellamy’s visit to Miranda. And secondly, he wanted Miranda to know all of the history, not just part of it, of the reason for the estrangement between himself and his mother, and the subsequent effect that history had, and was still having, on Xander.
What happened after that was anyone’s guess; Darius knew he was too involved, too emotionally involved, to be able to approach the subject of a possible future for himself and Miranda with any of his usual cold logic.
It was—
‘How’s Xander doing now?’
Darius had been so deep in thought that he hadn’t been aware that Miranda had finished in the bathroom and had now rejoined him in the main part of the apartment.
Her hair was no longer confined but soft and silky about her shoulders, her eyes bright and glowing; there was a slight blush of colour in her cheeks, and she was wearing a fitted black T-shirt and jeans.
Darius smiled slightly as he saw that her feet were once again bare. ‘You don’t do shoes much, do you?’
‘Too many years of spending hours in ballet slippers,’ she dismissed. ‘Shall I make coffee?’
‘Not yet.’
‘So, how is your brother?’ she asked to fill the silence.
‘How do you do that?’ He frowned.
She looked slightly bewildered. ‘Do what?’
‘Know what I’m thinking about and strike straight to the heart of it?’
‘I didn’t mean to...’ Andy gave Darius a searching glance, noting the shadows in his eyes, the pallor to cheeks so tightly drawn they might have been etched by a sculptor. ‘This morning, when I asked your mother about Xander, she didn’t seem to think there were going to be any complications with his recovery.’
‘From the ribs or broken leg, no.’ Darius sighed heavily. ‘Unfortunately, as you are already aware, Xander has emotional wounds that may take longer to heal.’ He grimaced. ‘But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves,’ he continued briskly. ‘I still want to know what that Bellamy woman was doing here, and why she’s upset you so much.’
Once again Darius displayed that dogged persistence Andy found so unnerving. A persistence she found she couldn’t withstand. ‘I don’t know if your mother’s told you, but I’ve decided to dance at the gala next month, after all.’
‘She did.’ His eyes glowed his approval. ‘But I thought I would wait for you to tell me before saying anything. I hope this doesn’t sound in the least patronising, because it isn’t meant to—’ he smiled warmly ‘—but I am so proud of you.’
Andy’s breath caught in her throat. ‘You are?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He grinned. ‘To the point that I’ve already told my mother I’ll be joining her and Charles in their box at the theatre that night.’
Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of Darius being part of the audience watching her perform in public for the first time in four years. ‘Tia wants me to withdraw from the performance.’
Darius shook his head. ‘And what the hell gives her the right to ask you to do anything, let alone something as important as this undoubtedly is?’
‘She didn’t ask, Darius, she threatened.’ Andy lowered her lashes, unable to look up at Darius right now.
Darius became very still as an icy calm settled in his chest. ‘Her visit today is only half the story, right?’
Andy drew in a shaky breath as she nodded. ‘If you would like to sit down, I’ll tell you the rest of it.’
Darius wasn’t sure he wanted to sit down—in fact, he knew that he didn’t—but Miranda seemed to need him to. And if that was what she needed right now, he wanted to give it to her.
And so he sat and listened, his hands tightening into fists as Miranda told him what had really happened four years ago. How her injury had allowed Tia, as her understudy, to take over the lead in Swan Lake. And how Tia had repeated the threat, just now, of further violence if Miranda didn’t withdraw from the gala.
Andy couldn’t fail to notice the chilling anger in the rigid pallor of Darius’s face as she told him Tia had admitted to having deliberately caused her accident four years ago. His eyes took on a cold and dangerously amber glitter as she told him of Tia’s renewed threat if she didn’t withdraw from the gala.
She took a step back now as Darius surged angrily to his feet the moment she had finished talking. ‘I’m not going to withdraw, Darius,’ she assured him quickly.
‘I wouldn’t let you even if you tried,’ he bit out harshly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘My God, when I think of how close that woman came to killing you...!’ He drew in a shuddering breath as he obviously sought to control the coldness of his temper. ‘You have to go to the police with this, Miranda.’
‘And tell them what? I have no proof that any of it actually happened, and it will be my word against hers.’
‘Don’t you see, Miranda? The woman has no conscience, no sense of remorse, no barometer of what’s right or wrong.’ He stepped forward to grasp both of her hands tightly in his as he looked down at her intently. ‘If she was capable of doing this to you to further her own ambitions, then there’s no reason to suppose that she hasn’t done something similar to others in the past. Or that she won’t do so again to others in the future. And possibly next time she won’t just ruin someone’s career, she might actually succeed in killing them!’
Andy hadn’t looked at it in quite that light before. And Darius was right: the Tia who had spoken to her today, threatened her, was totally without conscience, and more than capable of doing whatever it took, whatever was needed, to ensure her own ambitions, whatever they might be.
‘We’ll do this together,’ Darius encouraged huskily. ‘And I guarantee that the police will at least listen if I confirm that she threatened you today,’ he added grimly. ‘Enough to speak with Tia Bellamy, at least.’
‘Why would you want to do that for me?’
That moment of truth again, Darius realised.
Except he still hadn’t told Miranda about his own past...or explained the continuing repercussions of that past. And he owed it to Miranda to do that, before he dared even think of broaching any sort of future together for the two of them. There was always the possibility she might not want to have anything more to do with him once she knew exactly what a messed-up family he had!
He would get to that in a moment; for now he was still so stunned by what Miranda had just told him. ‘I still can’t believe anyone could deliberately do what Tia Bellamy did to you four years ago.’ Reaction was starting to set in now, at the realisation of how close he had come to never meeting Miranda at all. Never knowing her. Never kissing her. Never making love to her. Never falling in love with her...
Because Darius had realised after these few days of forcing himself not to call her, to see her, to be with her, that he did love Miranda. More than anything else. More than his twin. More than any of his family. More than life itself.
His hands clenched at his sides. ‘I want to strangle that Bellamy woman with my bare hands for what she did to you!’
‘But you won’t.’ Andy gave a firm shake of her head. ‘I’ve made something else of my life now, Darius. Something I enjoy just as much.’ Andy realised even as she said it that it was the truth; she did enjoy teaching ballet—still had the dream of one day discovering her own future Margot Fonteyn or Darcy Bussell. She had a life. ‘And I’ve decided that there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t dance again, just not professionally. But definitely at galas like your mother’s—if I’m asked.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, my mother will ensure that you are,’ Darius drawled dryly.
She nodded. ‘It’s enough.’
‘Is it?’ Darius looked down at her searchingly, knowing that he wanted more than that, for himself, as well as for Miranda. If she would have him.
It really was time for that moment of truth.
His mouth tightened. ‘It’s your turn to sit now, and listen to what I need to tell you.’
Andy continued to look at Darius as she made her way slowly over to the sofa and sat down. She could see he was under severe strain, by the dark shadows in his eyes, and the lines grooved beside his eyes and the grimness of his mouth as he restlessly paced the room.
‘What is it, Darius?’ she finally asked gently when she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as the things I’ve just told you!’ she added in an attempt to tease him out of his tension.
‘It’s worse.’ He gave a rueful grimace. ‘And it involves the conversation you heard a part of last Sunday at the hospital.’
‘Ah.’ Andy had wondered if he would ever talk to her more fully about that. She had wondered this week if he would ever talk to her again!
Darius nodded grimly. ‘In particular, my bastard of a father.’
Andy was aware of Xander’s distress last Sunday, regarding Lomax Sterne, and she had also realised that Catherine’s marriage to the man hadn’t exactly been a happy one. She just wasn’t sure that Catherine or Xander would thank Darius for discussing that husband, or father, with someone outside their family.
At the same time as she knew that if Darius wanted to talk to her about his father then she would gladly listen.
How could she not?
Darius was a very private man, to the point of obsession. Not cold, as Andy had originally thought him to be—she would never think of him as being cold again, after the way the two of them had made love together so heatedly the previous weekend!—but nevertheless he was a man who kept himself totally self-contained, and he did that by placing a barrier about his emotions.
A barrier that seemed to crumble, and be about to fall, the more time the two of them spent together.
A barrier he now seemed to be willing to drop completely in order to share something from his past with her.
A barrier that she now realised had come into existence because of that past?
How could Andy not listen if it gave her an insight into why Darius was the way that he was?
She settled back on the sofa, waiting patiently as she watched Darius gather his thoughts together before he began speaking.
‘I took your advice last Sunday evening and made Xander tell me everything. I now realise...’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘I should really start at the beginning, not the end.’ He sighed. ‘My mother and father met at some business conference: he was CEO of his own company; she was PA to one of the other men attending the business conference. The attraction was instant, and the two of them had a brief week-long relationship. Two months later my mother had to go to him and tell him that she was pregnant with Xander and me. My father had forgotten to mention that he was already engaged to marry someone else at the time, the only daughter of a close business associate, so he wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the news of Catherine’s pregnancy.’
No, Andy could see that might have been a bit awkward.
‘My mother refused to have the abortion Lomax instantly offered to pay for,’ Darius continued harshly. ‘And Lomax refused to marry her. But he did offer, in exchange for her silence, to pay her off. His intention being, I suppose, to carry on with his engagement and marriage. Except pregnancies, especially twins, have a way of showing themselves.’ He grimaced. ‘The fiancée’s father was also a friend of the man my mother worked for and— Well, I’m sure you can guess the rest. The father found out what sort of man Lomax Sterne was, the daughter broke off the engagement, and my father decided to marry my mother after all.’
Andy hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath until she had to draw air deeply into her lungs before she could manage to speak. ‘Because he had realised he loved her?’
‘Because he wanted to make her life and the lives of her two sons a living hell for having screwed up his own life!’
Andy’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. ‘And did he manage to do that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Darius confirmed grimly. ‘He really was bad news. By the time my mother realised her mistake she was already married to him and too frightened of him and what he might do to Xander and I to even think of daring to leave him. I look a lot like him, you know,’ he added bleakly.
Andy had guessed that Darius must favour his father in looks; after all Catherine was extremely fair, and Xander had his mother’s colouring, so Darius had to have got his dark hair and those mesmerising topaz eyes from someone else.
He sighed. ‘To cut a long and miserable story short, on the night my father died Xander was once again in hospital. He was being kept in overnight, and my mother was staying with him. He had a broken collarbone and concussion, after supposedly falling off his horse.’
Andy’s lips felt numb. ‘Xander didn’t fall off his horse?’
Darius gave a shake of his head. ‘My father had beaten him.’ He drew in a ragged breath. ‘Maybe if he had laid into me a few times he wouldn’t have made my mother’s and Xander’s lives such hell. And I would gladly have taken some of those beatings in Xander’s stead.’
Andy could hear a wealth of guilt behind his words. The same guilt she had heard in his voice the previous Sunday when he had spoken so unguardedly with Xander.
‘Instead, I think,’ Darius continued heavily, ‘because I looked like him, my father thought I was like him too, and that he could mould me into his own image.’
‘He didn’t succeed,’ Andy assured him forcefully.
‘No.’ Darius’s smile was bleak. ‘I may have looked like him, but my nature is much more like my mother’s; she has the same ability to shut people out, to present a cold and unemotional front to the world. Whereas Xander looks like my mother, but...’
‘I’ve only met Xander twice, both briefly, but even that was enough to tell me he isn’t in the least cruel or physically violent.’ Andy frowned; there was no way the easily charming man she had met at the charity dinner was anything like the monster Darius was describing as his father.
‘You’re right, he isn’t.’ Darius looked at her approvingly. ‘The problem is that he thinks he is. Or, perhaps a better way of describing it is that he now fears that he might become like him.’
‘You can convince him that he won’t,’ Andy said with certainty.
‘Once again, I appreciate your confidence in my abilities,’ Darius drawled. ‘And I’m doing my best to do that, I assure you.’
Andy looked up at him searchingly. ‘There’s more, isn’t there...?’ she guessed softly.
He nodded grimly. ‘What I didn’t realise, until Xander made that comment last Sunday evening, was that all these years my mother and Xander have believed that I pushed my father down the stairs the night he died, rather than that he fell down them in a drunken stupor. Which is not to say I hadn’t thought of it—many times, in fact—for the way he treated my mother and Xander,’ he acknowledged bleakly. ‘But something always stopped me from following through on the idea.’
‘Because you are nothing like your father,’ Andy said with certainty. ‘Because you simply aren’t capable of the violence that he so obviously was.’
Darius drew in a sharp breath, even as he looked down at her searchingly, and saw only sincerity in the clear green of her eyes as she gazed back at him unflinchingly. ‘Thank you for that,’ he breathed huskily.
‘It was never in question,’ she assured him firmly. ‘We inherit our genes from our parents, yes, but that isn’t all that we are. A lot of what we are we make of ourselves. Look at me; no one else in my family was ever interested in ballet, or becoming a dancer of any kind. My sister is an accountant, for goodness’ sake!’
‘Your sister who doesn’t approve of me,’ Darius drawled ruefully.
‘She doesn’t know you,’ Andy dismissed. ‘Do Xander and your mother know the truth now?’ she added softly.
‘About my father’s death twenty years ago? Yes, I’ve talked to both of them on the subject this week,’ he confirmed as she nodded.
‘And has it helped to heal the breach between you and your mother?’
He smiled at Miranda’s perception in realising that was the reason for those years of estrangement between them. ‘We’ll get there, eventually. Unfortunately my mother and I are too much alike—we tend to close ourselves in emotionally. My mother has spent the last twenty years deliberately not asking me for the truth, because she was afraid of hearing it, which in turn caused the emotional disconnection between the two of us.’
‘And Xander? Was his accident last weekend really an accident?’
Darius drew his breath in sharply. ‘He says it was.’
‘And do you believe him?’
‘Yes, up to a point I do believe him.’ He nodded. ‘The truth of the matter is that I’ve been worried about Xander for a while now, without knowing why. He’s been playing even harder than he works, recklessly so, and he works ten-hour days.’
‘Like you do.’
‘Yes, like I do.’ He smiled slightly. ‘You know, I thought Xander and I were close, but I had no idea of the torment going on inside his head all these years. This fear that he might one day turn into a monster like our father.’ He gave a pained grimace.
‘He needs someone to believe in him. Not just you and your mother; that’s a given, because you both already love him unconditionally.’ She smiled. ‘Xander needs someone outside your family, a woman maybe, to love and believe in him.’
Darius eyed her curiously. ‘How did you get to be so wise?’
Andy wasn’t wise at all; she was talking from personal experience!
Her sister Kim and brother-in-law Colin had been nothing but supportive of her over the past four years, but it was because of Darius, because of his expressed belief in her, that she had found the courage to dare to dance in public again. She would never be as good a dancer as she had once been, and it was going to take the next few weeks of serious training before the gala for her to achieve even an acceptable level for her to appear on a public stage again. But she would never have found the courage to do even that without Darius’s belief in her.
A small glimmer of hope had begun to burn inside Andy as Darius talked to her of his parents’ marriage, his father’s violence, his traumatic childhood, the reason for the emotional breach between himself and his mother all these years and his brother’s emotional turmoil now.
A glimmer of hope that Darius, a man she knew never shared his emotions with anyone, had to have told her those things, shared those things with her, for a reason...
