Читать книгу It Started With One Night: The Magnate's Mistress / His Bride for One Night / Master of Her Virtue - Miranda Lee - Страница 16

MAX waved Joyce goodbye through the taxi window, feeling pleased that he’d been able to make the woman believe that his intentions towards Tara were, at last, honourable. Not an easy task, given the way he’d treated her daughter this past year.

Joyce had not been backward in coming forward over his misdeeds. He was accused of having taken Tara for granted. Of neglecting her shamefully. But worst of all, of not caring enough to see how a girl like Tara would feel with his not making a definite commitment to her a lot sooner.

She’d poo-poohed Max’s counter-arguments that Tara hadn’t wanted marriage and children up till this point any more than he had.

‘Tara needs security and commitment more than most girls,’ she’d explained. ‘She was more upset at losing her father than her older sister, yet Tara was only three at the time. She cried herself to sleep every night for months after the funeral. Having met you, I think, in a way, you are more than a lover to her. You are a father figure as well.’

Max hadn’t been too pleased with this theory. It had made him feel old. He didn’t entirely agree with it, either. Maybe Joyce didn’t know her daughter as well as she thought she did. The grown-up Tara was a highly independent creature, not some cling-on. Yes, she was sensitive. And yes, she probably needed reassurance at this time in her life. But he didn’t believe she thought of him as a father figure. Hell, she didn’t even think of him as a father figure for their baby! If she had, she wouldn’t have run away like this.

‘Where in heaven’s name are you, Tara?’ he muttered under his breath.

‘You say somethin’, mate?’ the taxi driver asked.

‘Just having a grumble,’ Max replied.

‘Nothin’ to grumble about, mate. The sun’s out. We’re winnin’ the cricket. Life’s good.’

Max thought about that simple philosophy and decided he could embrace it, if only he knew where Tara was.

He and Joyce decided she probably hadn’t gone too far at night. Probably to a friend’s house. The trouble was he’d discovered Tara had dropped all of her friends during the year she’d spent being his lady friend.

That was the term Joyce had tactfully used, although he had a feeling she was dying to use some other derogatory term, like mistress. Tara’s mother hadn’t missed an opportunity to put the knife in and twist it a little. Guilt gnawed away at him, alongside some growing frustration.

If Tara thought she could punish him this way indefinitely, then she was very much mistaken. He had ways and means at his disposal to find his missing girlfriend, especially one as good-looking and noticeable as Tara. In fact, he had one of two choices. He could hire a private investigator to find her, or he could spend a small fortune another way and hopefully come up with a quicker solution.

Max decided on this latter way.

Leaning forward, he gave the taxi driver a different address from the Regency Royale, after which he settled back and started working out what he would say to Tara when they finally came face to face.

Two hours later—they’d hit plenty of traffic on the way back to the city—Max was in his penthouse at the hotel. Snatching up some casual clothes, he headed straight for the shower. Once refreshed and dressed in crisp cream trousers and a blue yachting top, he headed for the lift again. Thankfully, Joyce had fed him as they’d talked, so he didn’t need to order any food from Room Service. It crossed his mind to make himself some coffee, but decided he didn’t want to wait. Having made up his mind what other things he had to do that day, Max wasn’t about to dilly-dally. If he had one virtue—Joyce didn’t seem to think he had too many—it was decisiveness.

This time he called for his own car, and within minutes was driving east of the city. Thankfully, by then, the traffic was lighter. It was just after eleven-thirty, the sun was well up in the summer sky and Max would have rather gone anywhere than where he was going.

His stomach knotted as he approached his parents’ home. He hadn’t been to see them since Christmas, a token visit which he felt he couldn’t avoid. Ever since Stevie’s death, he’d kept his visits to a minimum. They were always a strain, even more so since his father’s stroke. The accusing, angry words he might have once spoken—and which might have cleared the air between father and son—were always held back. He could hardly bear to watch his mother, either. He resented the way she tended to his father. So patiently, with never a cross word.

Maybe Tara was right. Maybe she really did love the man. She’d certainly been prepared to forgive him for lots of things.

Max wondered if he could ever really forgive his father. He doubted it. But he’d have to pretend to, if he was to have any chance of convincing Tara he was man enough to be a good father to their baby.

Max parked his car at the kerb outside his parents’ Point Piper mansion and just sat there for a minute or two, looking at the place. It was certainly a far cry from Tara’s house. Aside from the house, which ran over three levels, there were the perfectly manicured gardens at the front, a huge solar-heated pool out the back and magnificent harbour views from most of the rooms.

It was a home fit for a king. Or a prince.

He’d been brought up here, taking it all for granted. The perfect house. The private schools. Membership of the nearby yacht club.

And then there were the women. The ones who’d targeted him from the moment he’d been old enough to have sex. The ones who’d done anything and everything to get him to fall in love with them.

But he hadn’t loved any of them.

The only woman he’d ever fallen for was Tara.

And she was in danger of slipping away from him, if he wasn’t careful.

With his stomach still in knots, Max climbed out from behind the wheel and went inside. He still had keys. He hadn’t moved out of home till after the episode with Stevie.

His mother was sitting out on the top terrace, reading the newspaper to his father, who was in his wheelchair beside her. Dressed in pale blue trousers and a pretty floral top, she was immaculately groomed as usual. Her streaked blonde hair was cut short in a modern style and she was wearing make-up and pearl earrings.

For as long as Max could remember, she’d looked much younger than her age, but today, in the harsh sunlight, she looked every one of her fifty-nine years. And then some.

Her father’s appearance, however, shocked him more than his mother’s. Before his stroke he’d been a vibrant, handsome man with a fit, powerful body and thick head of dark hair. Now his hair was white, his muscles withered, his skin deeply lined. He looked eighty, yet he was only sixty-two.

For the first time, some sympathy stirred in Max’s soul. Plus a measure of guilt. How come he hadn’t noticed the extent of his father’s deterioration at Christmas? It had only been a couple of months ago.

Maybe he hadn’t noticed because he hadn’t wanted to. It was easier to cling to old resentments rather than see that his father was going downhill at a rate of knots, or that his mother might need some hands-on help. Much easier to hate than to love.

Max realised in that defining moment that he didn’t really hate his parents. He never had. He just didn’t understand them. Tara was right when she’d said people never knew what went on in a marriage.

One thing Max did know, however, as he watched his mother reach out to tenderly touch his father’s arm. She did love the man. And if the way his father looked back was any judge, then that love was returned.

Max’s heart turned over as he hoped that Tara would always look at him like that.

Neither of them had seen him yet, standing there just inside the sliding glass doors which led out onto the terrace. When he slid one back, his mother’s head jerked up and around, her blue eyes widening with surprise, and then pleasure.

‘Max!’ she exclaimed. ‘Ronald, it’s Max.’

‘Max…’ His father’s hands fumbled as they reached to swivel his chair around. His eyes, too, mirrored surprise. But they were tired eyes, Max thought. Dead eyes.

All the life had gone out of him.

‘Max,’ the old man repeated as though he could still not believe his son had come to visit.

‘Hi there, Mum. Dad,’ he said as he came forward and bent to kiss his mother on the cheek. ‘You’re both looking well,’ he added as he pulled up a chair.

His father croaked out a dry laugh. ‘I look terrible and I know it.’

Max smiled a wry smile. The old man wasn’t quite dead yet.

‘You know, Dad, when I was a boy you told me that God helps those who help themselves. You obviously practised what you preached all your life. After all, you worked your way up from a valet-parking attendant to being one of Australia’s most successful hotel owners.’

Max generously refrained from reminding his father that marrying the daughter of an established hotel baron had been a leg-up, especially when Max’s maternal grandfather was already at death’s door. Within weeks of Max’s grandfather dying, Ronald Richmond had sold off the hotels that didn’t live up to his ideals and started up the Royale chain. He hadn’t looked back, till three years ago, when his stroke had forced his premature retirement.

‘I have to say I’m a bit disappointed,’ Max went on, ‘that you seem to have thrown in the towel this time. Frankly, I expected more from you than this.’

Some more fire sparked in the old man’s eyes, which was exactly what Max had intended.

‘What would you know about it, boy? My whole right side is virtually useless.’

‘Something which could be remedied with therapy. You should be thankful that your speech wasn’t affected. Some people can’t talk after a stroke.’

‘My eyes are bad,’ he grumbled. ‘Your mother has to read to me.’

‘But you’re not blind. Look, how about I line up a top physiotherapist to come in every day and work with you? He’ll have you up and out of that wheelchair in no time.’

‘That would be wonderful, Max,’ his mother said. ‘Wouldn’t it, Ronald?’

‘It’s too late,’ his father muttered. ‘I’m done for.’

‘Rubbish!’ Max countered. ‘Never too late. That’s another of your own philosophies, might I remind you? Besides, I need you up and about in time for my wedding.’

‘Your wedding!’ they chorused, their expressions shocked.

‘Yep. I’m getting married.’

After that, Max was regaled with questions. He thought he lied very well, telling them all about Tara and the baby, but nothing about her disappearance. He made it sound like a done deal that he and Tara would walk down the aisle in the near future. He also promised to bring her over to meet them by the end of the weekend. He made some excuse that she was away visiting friends for the next couple of days.

Talk about optimism!

Over lunch he also told his father that he planned to stay in Australia more in future and delegate some of the overseas travelling to his assistant.

‘Good idea,’ his father said, nodding. ‘When a man has a family, he should not be away from home too much. I was away from home too much. Far too much.’

When tears suddenly welled up in his father’s eyes, his mother immediately jumped up. ‘I think it’s time for your afternoon nap, dear,’ she said. ‘He gets tired very easily these days,’ she directed at a shocked Max as she wheeled his father off. ‘I won’t be long. Have another cup of coffee.’

Max did just that, sitting there, sipping some coffee and doing some serious thinking till his mother returned.

She threw Max an odd look as she sat down. ‘I’m so glad you stayed. Usually, you bolt out the door as soon as you can. Your becoming a father yourself has changed you, Max. You’re different today. Softer. And more compassionate. Perhaps the time is right for me to tell you the truth about Stevie.’

Max stiffened. ‘What…what do you mean…the truth?’

His mother heaved a deep sigh, her eyes not quite meeting his. ‘Stevie was not your father’s child.’

Max gaped.

‘I thought you might have guessed,’ she went on when he said nothing. ‘After all, Stevie was very different from you. And from your father. He also had brown eyes. Two blue-eyed parents can’t have a brown-eyed child, you know.’

Max shook his head. ‘I didn’t know that. Did Stevie?’

‘Thankfully, no. At least…he never said he did.’

‘So that’s why Dad didn’t love him.’

‘You’re wrong, Max. Your father did love Stevie. The trouble was every time he looked at him, he was reminded of the fact that I had slept with another man.’

‘But I thought Dad was the unfaithful one!’

His mother stared at him. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Years ago, I overheard you telling a friend that you knew Dad had other women, but you just turned a blind eye.’

His mother looked so sad. ‘I’m so sorry you heard that. You must have thought me very weak. Or very wicked.’

‘I didn’t know what to think. I’ve never known what to think about you two. At least I can now understand why Dad treated Stevie differently from me.’

‘He did try, Max. But it was very hard on him. He never seemed to know what to say to Stevie. Or how to act with him. It was much easier with you, because you were like two peas in a pod. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care about Stevie. When he was diagnosed with cancer, your father was terribly upset. His way of coping with his grief was to work harder. He couldn’t bear to see the boy in pain. He knows now that he should have come home to be with Stevie. He understands what it’s like when the people you love aren’t there for you when you’re ill.’

She didn’t look at him directly. Neither were her words said in an accusing tone. But Max felt guilty all the same. He hadn’t been any better than his father, had he? He’d let both his parents down by not being here to help.

‘Your father feels his stroke was a punishment for his letting Stevie down,’ his mother choked out.

Max could not deny that he had entertained similar thoughts himself over the past three years. Suddenly, however, they seemed terribly mean-spirited, and very immature. But he could not find the right words to say and was sitting there in an awkward silence, when his mother spoke once more.

‘Do you want to know about Stevie’s real father, or not?’

‘Yes,’ Max said sincerely. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘I have to go back to the beginning of my relationship with your father so that you can get the full picture.’

‘OK.’

She smiled a wry smile. ‘I hope you won’t be too shocked at me.’

Max could not imagine that anything more his mother could say today would shock him.

‘I’m no saint myself, Mum,’ he reassured, and so she began her story.

She’d first met his father when he parked her car for her one day at one of her own father’s hotels. She’d fallen in love with him at first sight, and had pursued him shamelessly as only a spoiled and beautiful rich woman could do. She confessed to seducing him with sex and playing to his ambitious nature with her money and her contacts. Not to mention her potential fortune. She was her wealthy father’s only child.

The trouble was she’d never believed he truly loved her when he married her, and was always besieged by doubts. The arrival of their first-born son—Max himself—calmed her for a while. Her husband seemed besotted, if not with her then definitely with his child. She began to feel more secure in her marriage. But after her father died and her husband started travelling overseas more and more often, all her doubts over his love increased. There was a photograph in a newspaper of him with some gorgeous socialite in London. She flew into a jealous rage when her husband finally came home, accusing him of being unfaithful. He claimed he wasn’t but she didn’t believe him.

Their marriage entered one of those dangerous phases. Ronald started staying away even more and she started going out on her own. She met Stevie’s father at an art exhibition. His art exhibition. He was an up-and-coming artist. She’d argued with her husband over the phone earlier in the evening over his delaying his return home yet again and was in a reckless mood. She drank too much and the rest, as they said, was history.

Perversely, Ronald arrived home the next night, and when she discovered she was pregnant a month later she didn’t know whose baby she was having. When the baby was born with blue eyes, she thought Stevie was Max’s full brother. But by six months his eyes had changed to brown and he looked nothing like Max’s father.

When Ronald confronted her with his suspicions, she confessed her indiscretion and her husband went crazy, showing her at last that he did love her. But the marriage had been irreparably damaged. After that, she suspected her husband was no longer faithful to her when he went away. A few times, she found evidence of other women on his clothes. Lipstick and perfume. She turned a blind eye for fear that he might actually divorce her. She tried to make a life for herself with charity work and society functions but she was very unhappy.

She reiterated that when Stevie was diagnosed with cancer, Ronald had been genuinely upset. Unfortunately, his way of handling such an emotional crisis was to go into his cave, so to speak, and work harder than ever.

‘Stevie might have survived his sickness,’ his mother added, ‘if it hadn’t been for his girlfriend dumping him. That was what depressed him far more than his father not being around. Trust me on that. Stevie and I were very close and he told me everything he felt.’

Max nodded. ‘I can imagine. I’ve never known a boy like Stevie. The way he could express his feelings. I wish I could be like that sometimes.’

‘His biological father was like that,’ his mother said. ‘A real talker. And a deep thinker. A sweet, soft, sensitive man whom you couldn’t help liking. He made me feel so special that night. He didn’t know I was married, of course. He was shocked when I told him afterwards. Didn’t want anything more to do with me. As I said, a nice man.’

‘I see. So he never knew about Stevie?’

‘God, no. No, I never saw him again. Sadly, he died a few years later. Cancer. And they say it’s not hereditary…’

Tears glistened in her eyes as she looked straight at Max. ‘Your father finally forgave me. But can you?’

Not ever being at his best with words, Max stood up and came round to bend and kiss his mother on the cheek.

Her hands lifted to cover his, which had come to rest on her shoulders. She patted them, then glanced up at him. ‘Thank you. You’re a good boy, Max. But a terrible liar. Now, why don’t you sit back down and tell me the total truth about this girl of yours? I’d especially like to know how someone as clever as you could have made the mistake of making her pregnant in the first place. Or was that her idea? You are a very rich man, after all.’

Max walked back to settle in his chair before answering.

‘I have to confess that idea did briefly occur to me. But only briefly. You’ll see when you meet Tara that she does not have a greedy, or a manipulative bone in her body.’

‘Tara,’ his mother said. ‘Such a lovely name.’

‘She’s a lovely girl.’

‘And was it her idea for you to come here today?’

‘Not directly. But she would have approved. The fact is, Mum, I don’t know where Tara is. She’s run away.’

‘Run away! Max, whatever did you do?’

‘It’s what I didn’t do which caused the problem. When she told me she was having a baby, I didn’t tell her I loved her. And I didn’t ask her to marry me.’

‘Oh, Max…No wonder she ran away. She must be heartbroken.’

‘Don’t say that, Mum,’ he said with a tightening in his chest. ‘I don’t want to hear that. I’m just hanging in here as it is, waiting for tomorrow.’

‘What’s going to happen tomorrow?’

He told her.