Читать книгу A Daughter's Dilemma - Miranda Lee - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

CAROLYN glanced at her watch as she drove into Wollongong. Nearly ten-forty. Her appointment with Vaughan wasn’t till eleven, with the interior decorator following at eleven-thirty. Much as she wasn’t looking forward to meeting Vaughan again, she didn’t want to be late.

She hadn’t actually spoken to the man himself when she’d rung his office earlier in the week, his secretary making both appointments for her for this Saturday morning. So he had no idea of her true identity. The secretary had started calling her Miss Thornton straight away and Carolyn hadn’t corrected her mistake. At the time, she wasn’t sure why she’d kept her real name a secret, but she suspected one never gave an enemy any advantage in advance.

For he was an enemy, she accepted, a bitter taste coming into her mouth. An enemy to her mother’s future happiness. Carolyn knew that, when Julian presented his new bride with a designer-built and fully furnished home, Isabel was sure to want to meet and thank the people responsible.

Carolyn grimaced as she tried to picture how her mother would react to meeting Vaughan again, to having the man she’d loved so obsessively come back into her life. She wouldn’t be able to cope. Of that Carolyn was sure.

I can’t let them meet again, she vowed fiercely. I won’t!

The street that housed Vaughan’s office appeared on the right with Carolyn negotiating the turn across the on-coming traffic with great care. The last thing she wanted was to prang Julian’s beautiful blue BMW. Actually, she’d have driven her old bomb of a Datsun if she’d thought it would make the trip. As it was, she sighed with relief once she slid the car safely into a parking spot and turned off the engine.

Her watch showed ten forty-four by the time she alighted and locked the car then set out to find number sixteen. But as she walked swiftly along, the imminence of her encounter with Vaughan began sending a thousand nervous flutterings into her stomach, and her earlier steely resolve threatened to desert her.

Carolyn ground to a halt and scooped in several steadying breaths. Truly, she just had to get a grip on herself or risk making a hash of this meeting. A cool head was required. Vaughan was a successful and professional man now, who wasn’t going to like being put on the spot, or having old skeletons dragged out of the closet. He certainly wasn’t going to appreciate being told he had to avoid meeting a client’s wife, even if it meant lying to that client. For that was the only way Carolyn could think of to tackle the situation, by virtually throwing herself on his mercy. If the devil had any, that was!

At least she had a few weapons to fall back on to persuade Vaughan into compliance. No doubt Julian hadn’t paid him the full balance of his fat architectural fee for designing the house as yet. The Vaughan Slater she knew and despised would not do anything to make waves and lose out on that, Carolyn thought with bitter cynicism.

Money meant a great deal to him. Hadn’t she subsequently found out, when she’d checked the bankbooks after her mother’s breakdown, that he had not paid one cent in board for the last few months he’d stayed in their home? One didn’t have to have too much of an imagination to work out what happened. Once he’d secured his landlady’s love through pretending a return of affection with some very convincing words and lovemaking, he’d simply not paid any more.

Thinking about this little snippet of damning evidence made Carolyn even more determined not to take any nonsense from this man. He’d do what she asked or reap the rewards of his folly. Julian loved Isabel to distraction. He was also a very wealthy and influential businessman around Sydney and the south coast, being the owner and managing director of a large construction company that built shopping centres. Carolyn didn’t think he’d take too kindly to finding out the unabridged and disgusting truth of the way his womanising architect had once treated his wife.

Carolyn’s blue eyes darkened with fury and her teeth clenched down hard in her jaw.

Amazing, she thought. She’d had no idea she possessed such a capacity for hatred and revenge. People always described her as being mild-tempered. She certainly didn’t feel mild-tempered whenever she thought of a certain individual.

Steeling herself again, she walked more confidently along the pavement, looking for the dreaded address.

It wasn’t far, a modern three-storeyed steel and glass building with huge bluish windows facing the ocean, the kind of glass that one could look out of but couldn’t see into from outside.

Carolyn took one last steadying breath and pushed through the revolving glass doors into a grey marbled air-conditioned lobby. There was no reception desk, only a huge noticeboard on the wall which told her her quarry resided on the top floor. So did the interior decorator—Madeline Powers. Suites Three and Four respectively. A flight of stairs and two lifts serviced these upper floors.

Carolyn chose the stairs. She still had a few minutes to kill.

Would he recognise her straight away? she wondered as she made her way slowly up the carpeted staircase.

It was possible, her basic features not having changed much over the years. She still wore her straight hair in a single plait most of the time, though nowadays she wound it round the top of her head in a coronet. She also never wore make-up during the day, her natural peaches and cream complexion and thickly lashed blue eyes holding up quite well au naturel.

He wouldn’t have changed much, she fancied. Men didn’t from their mid-twenties to early thirties. Unless, of course, they put on weight or went bald, which she doubted he had from Julian’s description.

Carolyn still had a rather vivid mental picture of Vaughan at twenty-four, despite the intervening years. A strong angular face with straight brown brows and deeply set brown eyes; thick, wavy chestnut hair that always seemed to need a cut; a sensual-looking mouth that rarely smiled; and a body that had brought her girlfriends running from miles around, especially when he mowed the lawn with his shirt off.

Carolyn cringed as she recalled some of the comments her classmates had made about his various physical attributes. Maybe she’d been a bit of a prude back then, for she certainly hadn’t shared her friends’ preoccupation with sex. Admittedly, she’d been a young fourteen at the time, but even now she wasn’t impressed by the type of man who flaunted his sexual equipment in overtight clothes, any more than she liked girls who went round half-naked!

Maybe I’m still a prude, came the agitated thought. Twenty-four-year-old virgins aren’t exactly thick on the ground these days.

Carolyn became uncomfortably aware that her forehead had broken out in a fine layer of sweat. Extracting a tissue from her bag, she dabbed herself dry, conceding that perhaps she was dressed a little too warmly for a hot February day, Julian’s warning over her dress having induced her to wear a grey suit that the girls at work labelled the most effective in her ‘anti Maurice Jenkins’ armoury.

Carolyn smiled ruefully at the accuracy of this description, since the suit was rather shapeless with a blazer-style jacket and a pleated skirt. It certainly hadn’t caught the eye of the aforementioned Dr Jenkins, an obstetrician at the private hospital where Carolyn worked, who had steadily seduced every attractive nurse in the place and was currently directing his attention towards the administration staff.

Maurice Jenkins might be a handsome and successful man, but no male was welcome in her life on a ‘just sex’ basis; never had been and never would be. Which perhaps was why she hadn’t had a steady boyfriend as yet. All men seemed to want from a girl these days was sex. Carolyn resented being...

Good grief, where was her mind taking her? This was hardly the moment to start analysing and defending her attitude to men and sex. She was here on a mission concerning her mother’s future, not her own.

Carolyn finally reached the top of the stairs where an arrow indicated that Suites Three and Four were along the corridor to the right. Gathering herself, she made sure all the buttons on her jacket were done up before making a right-hand turn on the motley brown carpet.

No sooner had she begun walking down the corridor than a door opened a little way along and a tall, broad-shouldered man strode out, swiftly followed by a flashy-looking brunette dressed in a purple trouser-suit.

‘But Vaughan, darling,’ she was saying, the name bringing Carolyn up with a jerk. Her startled gaze snapped back to the man, who had spun round to be half-turned away from her.

This was the present-day Vaughan Slater? she gaped. This conservative male person with short back and sides and dressed in a crisp pale blue shirt and casual cream tailored trousers? Admittedly, the back of the shirt collar was turned up as though he’d dressed in a hurry, but on the whole he presented a smart, well-groomed image—a far cry from the bronzed, shirtless, bejeaned figure all her girlfriends had drooled over.

Quite without warning, he twisted to glance over his shoulder at her, eyes narrowing, straight dark brows bunching into a frown.

Carolyn steadfastly ignored the way her heart started pounding. Nerves, she realised, and steeled herself for the fray. At least his almost sullen expression was still the same, she grumbled to herself. Pity he’d cut his hair, though. She would have liked to have more to remind her of the Vaughan of old. But there wasn’t much evidence of those once wild chestnut waves in the dark, damp-looking, semispiked hair that covered the top of his head.

When he kept on staring at her, a breathless anticipation seized Carolyn. Any second now the penny was sure to drop.

But it didn’t! Oh, yes, there was a split second when something hovered behind his eyes, but he lost it, and, shrugging, returned his attention to the brunette.

‘Anthea,’ he said in a deep male voice, ‘I can’t talk to you now. I have a client due at eleven...’

The brunette tossed a glance of her own down the corridor to where Carolyn had frozen on the spot.

‘Look, I’ll ring you later and let you know,’ he went on impatiently.

‘And turn me down, no doubt,’ the brunette huffed. ‘Truly, Vaughan, what have you got against parties? Oh, please do say you’ll come this time, darling. I’m only putting it on for you. I want to show you off to my friends.’

Carolyn actually saw him shudder. ‘Good God, I’m not one of your prized poodles, you know. As for the crowd you mix with being your friends—huh! They’re more your husband’s friends than yours, dear heart,’ he finished with a snort. ‘Especially the women.’

The woman laughed and made the tellingly intimate gesture of straightening his collar. ‘True,’ she murmured, and traced a fingernail along his jawline. ‘That’s just the point. I want all those bitches to see what I’ve finally snared for myself. They’ll be as jealous as sin.’

Carolyn’s whole insides contracted with distaste. He hadn’t changed. Not one iota. She’d had a fleeting worry the other night that she might have misjudged the situation with her mother. But no...he was going along in his usual despicable fashion. At least now he wasn’t seducing lonely, vulnerable single women. He’d moved on to tacky, wealthy married ones. Though if what Julian suspected was right, this Anthea was not the only string to his sexual bow. There was the interior decorator as well. My, but he was a busy boy!

Her lips curled with contempt as she walked right up to them.

‘Mr Slater?’ she said archly.

His companion looked irritated at being interrupted. Vaughan turned and stared hard at her again, as though still trying to place her. Once more his memory failed him, shown by a flicker of frustration in his expressive brown eyes.

You’ll know who I am soon enough, she thought tartly. Then you’ll wish you didn’t, you immoral bastard!

‘Yes?’ he said, a faint frown remaining on his undeniably handsome face.

Carolyn was rather startled at finding herself admitting to this. When she was fourteen, she’d never thought him all that handsome. Attractive, yes. But only in a sexily brooding fashion. Either his facial features had matured favourably in the intervening years, or she’d changed her ideas on what was handsome and what was not. She certainly couldn’t find any fault in the way his face was assembled, from his wide clear forehead to his strong straight nose to his classically chiselled jawline. His eyes, she conceded, had always held some appeal, but she was perturbed to find her own locking with those rich brown depths for an uncomfortable period of time.

‘I’m Julian Thornton’s stepdaughter,’ she said somewhat stiffly at last. ‘I believe you’re expecting me?’

He glanced at his watch which showed right on eleven. As he raised his eyes, Carolyn was subjected to a fleeting but decidedly dismissive sexual scrutiny.

‘I’ll be with you in a few minutes, Miss Thornton,’ he said coolly. ‘If you’ll just go into my office, my secretary will show you a seat.’

Piqued at being made to wait—or was it because he’d found her not worth a second glance?—Carolyn swept on into Suite Three, her face burning. What on earth was wrong with her? Fancy even caring what he thought of her looks! So he was drop-dead handsome. So what? Handsome is as handsome does, she believed. And she knew exactly what Mr Casanova Slater did with the women in his life!

The middle-aged lady behind the reception desk looked up with a ready smile. ‘Miss Thornton?’

Carolyn’s returning smile felt decidedly false within her flushed cheeks. ‘Mr Slater said for you to show me into his office. He’ll be joining me shortly. He’s just saying goodbye to his—er...’ She bit her bottom lip, aware she’d been about to make an uncharacteristically catty remark. ‘I didn’t quite catch the lady’s name,’ she finished lamely.

‘Mrs Maxwell,’ the secretary supplied, and stood up. ‘She’s one of Mr Slater’s best clients.’

Oh, how typical, Carolyn thought, and almost laughed. Well he certainly hadn’t lost his touch when it came to seducing the right women, the ones who were to his financial advantage.

‘Are you sure Mr Slater said you were to wait for him in his office, Miss Thornton?’ the secretary enquired on a puzzled note.

Carolyn blinked her confusion. ‘Yes... I... I’m certain that’s what he said.’

The woman shrugged resignedly. ‘Very well, but I must warn you not to touch anything. Oh, and—er—don’t mind the mess. Mr Slater was working most of the night on a new project, and when he does that he’s inclined to be...um...untidy. He went home a short while back to shower and change and was about to clear everything away in readiness for your visit when Mrs Maxwell arrived unexpectedly. He hasn’t had time since.’

I can imagine, came the caustic thought. ‘I don’t mind a little mess,’ Carolyn lied.

Even so, when she was shown into the room, she was shocked into a wide-eyed silence. Papers and sketches and plans covered every available surface, which included several desks and cabinets, not to mention every chair and sections of the floor. One of the corners contained a pile of screwed-up paper. Several empty coffee-mugs seemed to be being used as paperweights at strategic points. The litter from a couple of visits to McDonald’s was sitting on an old plastic chair beside the main desk.

The secretary picked this latter up with a disapproving ‘tch-tch’. ‘Truly, it’s a wonder that man doesn’t have a weight problem,’ she muttered. ‘The rubbish he stuffs into himself. You’ll have to sit here,’ she added with an apologetic grimace, and indicated the now empty plastic chair. ‘I don’t dare touch any of the rest of it. It might cost me my job if I disturb any of Mr Slater’s papers.’

Carolyn, who was the neatest, most organised person both at work and at home, could only sink down into the seat and stare at the shambles in bewilderment. The whole place was made to look worse by the clarity and peace of the panoramic view provided by the wall of glass beyond it. Carolyn stared out at the crystalline blue waters of the Pacific Ocean and the perfection of clean white sands, then back at the littered room, shaking her head in amazement.

‘But how can he work in this mess?’ she asked.

‘Very well indeed,’ the man himself ground out, making Carolyn flinch as he came in with aggressive strides. ‘Why on earth did you bring her in here, Nora? You know I——’

‘It’s my fault,’ Carolyn broke in hurriedly, bringing a look of relief to the secretary’s instantly stricken face. ‘You told me to wait for you in your office and I naturally assumed...’

Her voice died when she noticed he was frowning at her again. After several excruciating seconds, he tore his eyes away and threw his secretary a withering look. ‘Never bring anyone in here unless I’m present, Nora,’ he snapped. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

The secretary practically quivered in her sensible brogues. ‘Yes, Mr Slater,’ she said, and fled.

‘She’s fairly new,’ he muttered once she’d closed the door. ‘Doesn’t know the ropes yet.’

Maybe you should give her one to hang herself with, Carolyn thought crossly, infuriated at the way he’d spoken to the poor woman.

He strode round behind his desk and began shuffling the papers on it into a still untidy bundle. All of a sudden he sighed and looked up, shocking Carolyn when an amazingly engaging smile spread across his previously scowling face.

‘I guess I was a bit rough on the old dear,’ he said with a rueful chuckle. ‘Do you think she’ll quit on me?’

Not if you smile at her like that every once in a while, came her treacherous and shattering thought.

Carolyn’s stomach fluttered then tightened, the implications of which did not escape her. ‘I have no idea,’ she said stiffly, wanting to look away but unable to.

I’m physically attracted to him, she was thinking with appalled horror.

He nodded, his smile turning wry. ‘It’s just that on one occasion I had a whole month’s work ruined by having something spilt on them. Then a previous secretary of mine let a slick smooth-talking salesman type come in to supposedly wait for me, and while he was in here he photographed a whole heap of my house plans and sold them to some very unscrupulous builders.’

‘How very upsetting for you,’ Carolyn said with a betraying lack of sympathy.

His quite beautiful brown eyes narrowed perceptibly. ‘Tell me, Miss Thornton, I get the feeling we’ve met before. Am I right?’

Carolyn swallowed the enormous lump that was filling her throat.

‘Yes,’ she said simply, merely because she was incapable of elaboration at that point in time.

‘I thought so.’ A brief look of satisfaction passed over his face before it turned into a frown. ‘Yet the name Thornton means nothing to me. Your father is the first Thornton I’ve ever met.’

‘Stepfather,’ she corrected in a strangled tone. ‘My name isn’t Thornton.’

‘Aah, yes... My mistake. But... wasn’t Miss Thornton the name you gave Nora?’

Puzzled brown eyes narrowed some more and a small shiver ran through her. He walked round the desk and cleared a spot on the edge, perching there barely an arm’s length from her. He put an elbow on one knee and leant forward, chin resting in his hand. It brought his face much closer to hers. Suddenly, her eyes were on his mouth and she began thinking how sensually full his bottom lip was.

‘Care to explain the reason for the deception?’ he probed softly.

Her eyes must have revealed something of her inner turmoil, or perhaps it was the way she physically shrank back into the chair to remove herself from his suffocating nearness, for he stiffened and straightened, his expression worried now. ‘I’m not going to like your reason, am I?’ he announced with dry intuition.

‘No,’ she rasped.

‘Out with it, then,’ he said brusquely, sliding off the desk and returning to stand behind his desk, hands on hips. ‘I like to take bad medicine in quick doses.’

‘Very well.’ She had herself under control again now, disgust at her sexual response to this man finding inner steel with a vengeance. How could you? her conscience kept screaming at her. How could you?

‘My name’s McKensie,’ she said with an icily controlled fury. ‘Carolyn McKensie... If you don’t remember me, I’m sure you must remember my mother. Her name’s Isabel McKensie, though it changed last Thursday to Isabel Thornton.’