Читать книгу The Australian Affairs Collection - Margaret Way - Страница 65

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SHELLEY’S HEART WAS pounding so hard she imagined Declan could hear it—even from two floors above her. She tiptoed down his hallway in stockinged feet, holding in one hand the metallic pumps she’d worn with her pink dress to the interview with the television producer.

She paused before the elevator, decided against it. Too uncertain. What if she got trapped in it? It would have to be the stairs.

Cautiously she made her way up the flight of marble stairs with its ornate iron balustrades, past the silent floor of doors closed on what she assumed were bedrooms and bathrooms. Sad, unlived-in rooms.

She paused at the next landing to look out of the lead-light window at the view of the garden laid out below. All the structures perfectly matched the plan. The design was classic Enid Wilson—how could she have ever doubted it? But her discovery would remain private—she had to respect Declan’s wishes on that. Much as she wanted—deserved—the recognition.

The top floor had another smaller flight of stairs she assumed led to the turret. The rest of the floor might have been servants’ quarters in the days when a grand house like this would have employed them.

Now dividing walls had been pulled down and it had been modernised into a sophisticated living space furnished in tones of grey and black leather. Declan’s domain. Beyond the living room was a door she could only assume was his office and others led to a small kitchen and a bathroom. Framed black-and-white photos of an attractive young woman with a cap of dark hair, a small, sharp face and a huge smile lined the walls. Lisa.

As she knocked on the door to Declan’s office Shelley realised her hands were trembling. He had been so angry, so dark—as black in his mood as the storm clouds that gathered over Sydney before a violent summer storm.

Yes, she was a little afraid. Afraid of the man she was falling in love with. Afraid of the man she had planned to seduce this evening. No. Not afraid. Not in a million years would Declan hurt her. She was nervous. Nervous of his reaction when he realised she had broken her promise to him and invaded his sacrosanct, private space.

There was no reply to her knock. But she was convinced he was in there. An earlier quick glance through the window to his basement gym had shown it to be empty.

She turned the handle of the door and pushed it open.

Declan sat intently in front of an enormous computer screen, a black headset over his head covered his ears. He wore large black-framed glasses. They were hot—made him appear even more attractive to her. But they also made him look like a stranger.

This was a bad, bad idea.

She turned to leave, to scurry back down those stairs as fast as she could. But her movement must have caught Declan’s eye. He turned. For a long moment their eyes met—his dark and shuttered, hers no doubt wide with terror.

‘Shelley, what the hell?’

He took off his headset and his glasses. But even then he looked dark and forbidding.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on you in your...your bat cave.’

He frowned. ‘My bat cave?’

She looked around her at the banks of computers and high-tech equipment. ‘It does look like a bat cave—a movie–super-hero bat cave, not a real bat cave. If it was a real bat cave it would be dirty and smelly and...’ Her words dwindled to a halt. She turned again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m going.’

Declan leapt up from his chair. ‘Shelley. Don’t go. Don’t apologise. I’m the one who should be apologising for the way I behaved down there. I—’

When he said ‘down there’ her eyes went automatically to the window, which looked over the fountain and the sweep of the back garden. There was a large artist’s easel standing there, poised to catch the light, and a drawing board with a series of charcoal drawings clipped to it.

She took a step further towards the windows and she dropped her shoes with a clatter. Her hand went to her mouth but that didn’t stop her gasp. ‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘Who is this?’ Her heart thumped even harder and her mouth went dry.

‘It’s—’

She stepped closer. ‘It’s me. Paintings of me. Drawings of me. What does this mean?’

In the large canvas on the easel she rode bareback astride a white unicorn. She wore something so skin-tight it was practically nothing, and long green boots with her hair flying behind her like a banner against a background of a forest. The painting was magnificent. Breathtaking. But she felt...violated.

She turned to the drawing board. The sketches were of her too. Declan was talented; she recognised that through her shock. Just a few lines and some shading brought to life the curve of her jaw, the sweep of her hair and an action series where she was lassoing something outside the image.

‘It’s not you, Shelley,’ he said. ‘It’s...it’s Estella.’

‘Estella? Who the heck is Estella? The only Estella I know is the character in Great Expectations. Is that the link? Miss Havisham. This creepy house.’

‘Princess Estella is a character for a computer game.’

‘Princess Estella? So where do I come in?’

‘You’re...you’re my muse. My inspiration for a beautiful, kick-ass warrior princess.’ He closed his eyes, shook his head from side to side in a gesture of deep regret. When he opened his eyes again it was to look deep into her face. ‘I should have told you. Wanted to tell you.’

She looked to the screen where an animated character—who didn’t look as much like her as the painting did—was on her unicorn and fighting an army of some kind of mutant creatures.

She turned on Declan. ‘You were using me. So that’s why you...you made friends with me. Why you...why you let me think we could be more than friends?’

She had to swallow down hard on a sickening sense of betrayal that made her want to double over. Thank heaven she hadn’t slept with him. Having shared the intimacies of love with him would only have intensified his treachery.

He took her arm but she shook him off, unable to bear the touch of this man who was suddenly again a stranger. She had trusted him to be honest and straightforward with her but he’d thrown her back deep into that dark pit of distrust as brutally as the other men who had hurt her.

‘Not true, Shelley,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t let myself near you—though I realise now I wanted you from the get go. Maybe...maybe that’s why I created Princess Estella. As a device to keep you at a distance.’

Bitterness and disappointment made it difficult for her to speak and she had to choke out the words. ‘You mean so you could make even more millions.’

His face contorted in anguish. ‘No. You can’t believe that.’

She didn’t care if her words hurt him. ‘Why not? Was this why you hired me? To...to use my image behind my back? Not for the garden at all.’

Now she began to doubt the veracity of everything he’d told her. He had lied and misrepresented himself the way Steve had told her he was single, the way her father had denied his mistress was anything more than a work colleague. She had thought Declan was different. She had believed in him.

‘Was there really a complaining neighbour? Or did you invent all that to observe me for that...for her?’ She pointed at the painting with a finger that wavered and trembled despite her best efforts to make a dramatic gesture.

‘No,’ Declan exploded. ‘The neighbours’ complaints were only too real. I needed you to do the garden. But unwittingly you unlocked my creativity. Just by being you. Your strength, your beauty, like a modern-day warrior. You inspired me like nothing or no one ever had.’

His blue eyes blazed with sincerity. She wanted to believe him. If she wasn’t feeling so angry and betrayed she might even have felt flattered. But he should have told her all that long before this. Before her blundering into his bat cave had forced the issue. Had he ever intended to tell her? Or to just wave goodbye when the garden was finished?

‘And yet you didn’t say a word to me,’ she said.

‘You have to believe me, Shelley. I wanted to but...but I couldn’t. I hadn’t invented a game since...since...’

He didn’t have to say the words. Since two years ago.

Would it always come back to that—the tragedy he could never put behind him?

Her shoulders sagged as she felt overwhelmed by the inevitability that she was fighting a battle she could never win—even if she were to be mounted on a unicorn and armed with a magic lasso.

He deserved a second chance at love and she yearned to give it to him. But she was ill-equipped to bring down the barriers he’d built around his heart to punish himself for the loss of his wife and baby.

She couldn’t risk losing her heart in a futile battle for his.

She took in a deep breath and forced herself to speak normally—or as normally as could be expected under such circumstances. ‘So if you haven’t been inventing games, what’s all this for? Why do you spend so much time up here all by yourself?’ She spread out her arms to indicate the banks of equipment in the room.

It was obviously an effort for Declan to get his words out too. ‘I haven’t worked on commercial games until Estella. Instead I’ve worked on non-profit educational games to help train surgeons, to help save lives. There’s also work for government defence departments on games that simulate terrorist attacks to help train the military.’

‘Th... That’s very noble of you.’ She hadn’t been expecting that. He was a good person—had proved himself to be kind and generous to her. Why couldn’t he be good to himself?

‘Not noble,’ he said with that wry twist of his mouth. ‘Trying to give back. To make amends.’

‘To assuage the guilt you heaped upon yourself.’ For something that was not his fault.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But also because I have more money than I need and I want to contribute not just with dollars but also with my skills.’

‘So what happens to Princess Estella?’

‘She could be the next commercial big thing for me. Estella has a strong environmental focus, which is timely.’

Shelley shook her head. ‘I don’t get all this, though I like her green message and...and her green boots. But what I do get is I thought we had something special happening between us. I don’t mind arriving second in your life after Lisa—she was your first love and I respect that. But I won’t be second best for you. And I certainly won’t compete with...with her—a cartoon character.’ She couldn’t help her voice from rising.

He looked as grim as she had seen him. ‘I should have told you about Estella.’

‘You’re darn right you should have. I would have posed for you, you know. Not in that...that body stocking. But it could have been fun.’ Her voice diminished to barely a whisper. ‘Something for us to share.’

Those impossible hopes of a life with him had started to feel possible but now they slipped away like the water draining from the cracks in the old fountain.

‘You still could,’ he said, his voice low and urgent. ‘We could develop Estella together.’

She shook her head. Her voice still came out as a half-choked whisper. ‘Too late. Too late for you and me, Declan. I could never trust you again—and trust is vital to me. You were dishonest with me—from the word go, it appears.’

He groaned. ‘Shelley, I—’

She spoke across him. ‘I don’t just mean about Estella. I guess she’s the way you earn a buck—or two or a billion. You probably couldn’t help yourself from...from using me.’

‘You’ve got it so wrong,’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘What’s worse is that you’ve been dishonest with yourself. You’re not ready for me or for any other woman. You’re lying to yourself if you think you are.’ And she couldn’t deal with it.

‘That’s not true,’ he said, his face dark and contorted with anguish. ‘I care for you, Shelley.’ He took a step towards her, went to take her in his arms but she quickly sidestepped him. How could she bear to be close to him when she knew it would be for the last time? She had to guard her heart.

Slowly she shook her head. ‘But not enough. Not enough to truly step out into the sunshine with me. You seem to need the shadows. I can’t exist without the light.’

Her heart ached as though it were being torn in two, broken and bleeding. She took a final look around the grey room where this man she had come to care for so much had locked himself away and didn’t seem to be able to free himself—despite her best efforts.

The warrior princess Estella would probably never give up on the battlefield. But she, Shelley Fairhill, humble gardener and heartbroken woman, conceded defeat.

She’d thought she could slash through the overgrown forest and scale the fortress Declan had erected around his heart but she’d scarcely breached the outer walls. To keep on fighting would be futile and only lead to further devastation.

With willpower she dragged from some deep, inner resource she refused to let tears fall, forced her voice to be firm. ‘I’m going, Declan.’

He took a step towards her but she put up her hand in a wavering halt sign. ‘Don’t follow me. Please.’

She picked up her shoes. Somehow she stumbled down the two flights of stairs, holding on to the railings for support, and did not break down until she got to the privacy of the apartment.

* * *

Declan had a tormented, sleepless night high up in his solitary bedroom in the turret. Looking back at the way he had behaved since Shelley had come into his life, he realised he had made mistake upon mistake.

Especially the Estella thing. No wonder Shelley had found what had seemed like gross deception impossible to forgive.

In the grey light of early morning, he stumbled down the stairs to his studio and stood in front of the painting that had caused so much trouble. He picked up a palette knife intending to slash the canvas to shreds. But he couldn’t do it. Estella had too much of Shelley in her. He could not hurt even her image. Had never wanted to hurt her.

How bitterly he regretted all the hours he’d spent up here creating Estella instead of spending more time with Shelley. His creation had become a barrier between him and the real woman he was falling for. Had the memory of Lisa become a barrier, too, long after he should have let his memories rest?

He hated to admit it, but his mother had been right. If he was to survive, it was time for him to move on. He would never forget Lisa or their baby. But Shelley had to come first now if he wanted a future with her. When she had told him he made her feel second best it was as if he’d been kicked in the gut. How could he have hurt her like that?

He could not lose her from his life.

He paced the floor of the studio, back and forth, back and forth, raking his hair with his fingers, working through possible solutions. Shelley was right. He didn’t know how to get out from under the shadow that was blighting his life.

Professional help. It was an avenue he hadn’t tried. He burrowed in his desk drawer for the card with the name of the counsellor his mother had suggested he see after Lisa’s death. He hated the idea of revealing himself to a stranger. But if he wanted Shelley it would have to be done. And he would have to finally leave this house to find that help.

He had to make amends to Shelley. Tell her what she’d come to mean to him. Seek her out in her apartment. Admit she was right, he couldn’t climb out of the shadows on his own. Ask her to wait for him.

But when he got downstairs it was to the shock of finding her key to the apartment on his kitchen countertop. And a note in her bold handwriting. He picked it up, dreading what it might contain.

Don’t try to find me, Declan, because I don’t want to be found. There are a few boxes of my possessions in the shed that I couldn’t fit into the 4x4. Could you please give access to Lynne when she comes around to collect them for me?

I’ve arranged for Mark Brown to finish the last work on the garden—it’s nearly done. I suggest you hire him for ongoing maintenance. It would be a tragedy to let the garden go again.

I could have loved you, Declan. I hope your heart can heal enough for you to find love again one day.

Shelley

He stared at the words in utter disbelief, then crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it on the floor with a massive roar of pain that echoed through his empty, lonely house. For a long time he stood, focusing on the forlorn piece of paper, white against the dark-stained wood of his floor, that had destroyed his hope of making amends to Shelley.

Finally with a great shudder of agony and grief he picked it up and smoothed it out again. There were echoes of her sweet scent on the paper—he shut his eyes and breathed it in. Then he folded her note and put it into his pocket, next to his heart.

His mother’s words came back to him. Don’t let her go. Trust me, it will be like another little death for you if you do.

Why did his mother have to be so damn right?

But Shelley hadn’t died. This didn’t have to be final. The grief he felt at her loss wasn’t the hopeless kind of grief he had endured before. He had it within his power to find his beautiful warrior and win her back.

No matter what it took.