Читать книгу A Daughter's Dilemma - Miranda Lee - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

IF SHE’D been expecting him to blush guiltily, or show shock, she would have been bitterly disappointed. As it was, Carolyn did expect a little more reaction than she got.

He merely kept looking at her for a few seconds, that faint frown back on his face. Then he bent to scoop his chair under his knees, sinking into it with a sigh. ‘Awkward,’ he murmured, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ she flung at him in simmering outrage. ‘Just awkward?’

He eyed her closely till she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘What else would you like me to say?’

She dragged in a deep breath and took the plunge. ‘I’m not going to beat around the bush, Vaughan. I know what really happened between you and Mum. Not that Mum told me. She never speaks of that time in her life any more. But I saw you both... together... the night before you left. I came home early from ballet rehearsals because there was a bomb scare in the hall. You were...’

She gulped, then raced on, her voice a few decibels higher. ‘Well, let’s just say neither of you noticed me standing in the doorway of the living room. I left again in a hurry. I also overheard part of the argument you had with Mum the next day after she told you she loved you. No, please don’t say anything. I don’t wish to discuss the past or to apportion blame or pass judgements. But you must appreciate that I don’t want you seeing my mother again, under any circumstances. I want your word that when Julian and my mother come back from their trip in two months’ time you’ll avoid meeting her at all costs, because I——’

‘Oh don’t be so bloody melodramatic!’ he cut in forcibly. ‘This all happened ten years ago, for God’s sake. An eternity! I’m not going to do any such thing as run and hide from Isabel. OK, so I agree our first meeting might be a little embarrassing, but let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.’

Carolyn could only sit and stare at him.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘Is there something here I don’t know?’

It finally dawned on her that he just didn’t feel any guilt at all over her mother. To him, having love affairs was as natural as breathing. Women came and women went. Clearly he never lost a night’s sleep over their demise and he expected them to be the same. Vaughan Slater was on a different moral wavelength from her and nothing would ever change that.

But she had to try to make him see her point of view.

‘My mother loved you,’ she said shakily.

‘No,’ he denied. ‘She didn’t.’

Carolyn’s frustration was acute. ‘How can you say that?’ Good God, she had heard her mother quite clearly, telling the wretched creature, begging him not to leave her. Her broken voice had torn Carolyn so much that she had run away and hidden in her bedroom, not coming out till she’d heard Vaughan leave a couple of hours later.

‘Because it’s true,’ he insisted harshly. ‘And your mother damn well knew it too. She wanted sex, that’s all, then afterwards she tried calling it love to soothe her conscience.’

‘Her conscience!’

‘That’s right. If you think it was me who was doing the seducing, then think again, my girl.’

‘But...but...’ Her confusion was total, her shock shattering. For there was an undeniable ring of truth in this callous man’s hard voice. Besides, why should he lie? What reason could he have?

Her distressed eyes dropped to the floor and she shook her head in anguished bewilderment.

‘Carolyn, look at me...’

His voice was so unexpectedly gentle that she was impelled to look up, only to be lanced by a look of such incredible warmth and apology that she was stunned. His regretful gaze washed over her, totally defusing her anger, making her melt inside.

Panic clutched at her stomach. Dear heaven... she would have to be very very careful with this man.

‘I shouldn’t have said that quite so bluntly,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry. Look, your mother was a lovely woman. Very lovely. But very, very lonely. She needed a man in her life. I was just... there. I never led her on and I never told her I loved her. She came to me, not the other way around. I don’t blame her and neither should you.’

‘I don’t,’ she bit out, shaking inside with indignation. ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not about who started what, but you’re lying about not having told Mum you loved her. You did. I know that for a fact!’

An electric silence descended on the pair of them with her vehement accusation.

‘Then I suggest you check your facts,’ he said at last in a low, tightly controlled voice. ‘If your mother thought I loved her then it was all in her mind, certainly not because of anything I ever said or did. I would quite willingly swear to that on a stack of bibles!’

Her belief in his treachery wavered under this intense denial. Could he be telling the truth about everything? Had her mother’s mind already been affected so much that she’d started imagining he’d said words he hadn’t? Carolyn supposed it was possible, given the obsessive nature of her mother’s feelings for him.

What was the truth? she agonised. He claimed Isabel had been lonely... frustrated...

Carolyn supposed that could have been true. For not in all her growing-up years could she recall her mother going out with a man, or having a man in the house. Isabel had always insisted she’d loved Carolyn’s father far too much to ever look at another man. As an innocent child, she had accepted this as a wonderful, romantic concept. Now she could see that such loyalty to a dead man must have been hard on a normal healthy woman in the prime of her life.

But none of that changed the fact that her mother had believed Vaughan loved her. No one could doubt that if they’d heard her piteous ravings that day. Besides, it was the only reason that made sense of her breakdown. Isabel had been a strong woman, not a dreamer. So why had she believed Vaughan loved her if he’d not actually said so?

Carolyn lifted her pale face to stare at him across the desk. The answers had to lie in this man’s sexual power and prowess, in his ability to bewitch women and make them mad for him without having to say the words women always wanted to hear.

I love you... I love you...

The words seemed to ring aloud inside her head again and again and she wanted to clasp her hands over her ears to stop them. As it was, the blood drained from her face as an appalling thought hit her. What if he bewitches me too? What if...?

‘You look upset, Carolyn,’ he said abruptly, and stood up. ‘I’ll get Nora to make us both a cup of coffee. Then we’ll try to sort this out, come to a compromise that will ease your mind. Perhaps I could telephone your mother when she gets back and——’

‘Don’t you dare!’ she burst out, so savagely that he sat down again, looking stunned.

‘You... you don’t understand,’ she added, her voice trembling. Oh this was dreadful. Simply dreadful. She had to get a hold of herself.

‘Then perhaps you could enlighten me?’ he asked quietly.

‘I... my mother had a nervous breakdown,’ she blurted out. ‘The day after you left. Her doctor put her in a hospital for a while. Even when she was allowed out, she took a long time to get better. In fact she’s still very... fragile.’

Vaughan was looking at her as though she were mad. ‘Isabel had a nervous breakdown? Isabel? Over me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘It’s only too true,’ she insisted wretchedly, thinking that she would never forget the pitiful scene she’d encountered soon after Vaughan had left. She’d found her mother curled up in a little ball in a corner of the kitchen, talking to herself, totally unaware of Carolyn’s presence.

‘He swore he really loved me,’ she’d raved over and over. ‘Why else did he think I started sleeping with him, even though I knew it was wrong? And what did he do in the end? Told me it was only sex, said he was leaving me. All lies... Nothing but lies... Lies, lies, lies! I can’t bear it any more... I can’t!’

And she hadn’t been able to bear it. The rantings had finally dissolved into tears and she hadn’t been able to stop. Uncontrollable hysterical tears. Racking her. Tearing her apart.

In tears herself, Carolyn had rung their local doctor and the nightmare had begun...

Remembering what had really happened brought fresh doubts. Could Vaughan be still lying? Had he, in fact, both seduced Isabel and told her he loved her? She only had his word for it that he hadn’t. Carolyn lifted her eyes to those seemingly sincere brown ones and didn’t know what to believe any more.

‘Perhaps some of it was in her mind,’ she conceded in confusion. ‘The bit about you having said you loved her. But she believed it enough to crack up over your leaving. Ten years ago or not, I don’t intend risking my mother’s mental health by your seeing her again. If you’ve got a shred of decency in you, Vaughan, you’ll keep as far away from her as you can.’

He said nothing for several seconds, his face undeniably disturbed. ‘I can’t say I appreciate the way you put that, but in the circumstances I suppose I’ll have to do as you ask.’

He rubbed his chin again in what was obviously an habitual expression of agitation. ‘Hell... it’s all so damned incredible. I still can’t take it in. Isabel was always such a together lady. I admit I was taken aback when she started saying she loved me that day. But I talked to her about it and she seemed to agree with me in the end that it was only a physical thing that had unfortunately got out of hand. I thought it was a mutual decision that I leave straight away. I would have been leaving in another week or so anyway, since I’d finished my exams the day before. She must have been only pretending she didn’t mind. She was rather unusually quiet...

‘Poor Isabel,’ he sighed, grimacing before looking up again. ‘And poor little Carolyn... I know you didn’t have any family in Sydney. How on earth did you cope?’

‘I managed,’ she said, her susceptibility to this unexpectedly sympathetic Vaughan making her curt. But he’d certainly been very convincing with his version of the story.

‘But where did you go? What did you do?’

‘After Mum came out of hospital a cousin let us live with him for a couple of years on his farm in the country. But he couldn’t let us stay forever. Things were very bad for farmers at the time, what with the recent floods and the economy. When his wife became pregnant with her fourth child, I took Mum back to Sydney to live. She had an invalid pension and I left school and got a job.’

‘But you must have been only about sixteen!’ He seemed appalled. ‘Good God, Carolyn, you were always such a bright kid. You should have finished school and gone to college! Damn it, if only I’d known. Perhaps I could have done something.’

What? she thought bitterly. Paid us back the board money?

‘We managed perfectly well, thank you,’ she retorted, not wanting this man’s pity, or anything else! ‘I have a very good job now. I’ve never regretted not going to college. I’m happy and Mum’s happy. I just want to make sure things stay that way.’

She glared at him, but down deep in her heart Carolyn suspected that already her own happiness was on the line. She’d been attracted to quite a few men since growing up. But never had she experienced the sort of inner upheaval she felt whenever Vaughan looked at her.

‘Have you considered the possibility,’ he said finally, ‘that Julian might mention my name to Isabel?’

Carolyn dragged in a deep steadying breath. ‘He won’t mention you to her till after he’s presented her with the house, since he wants it to be a surprise. I should be able to get him alone before then and make up some plausible story about you without going into too much detail. You leave that up to me.’

‘Very well, though I don’t really agree with you. I think the open and honest approach would be best. Your mother must be well and truly over me by now. After all, she’s just married another man.’

But she doesn’t love him, Carolyn was reminded. If she sees you again, especially as you are today, so handsome, so successful, so damned sexy... all those old futile desires could be revived. It wouldn’t take much to tip the more fragile Isabel over the edge again.

‘Please allow me to be the best judge of that,’ Carolyn said stiffly.

‘Very well,’ he replied just as stiffly. ‘But that particular problem’s two months away. Right now I would like to address a more immediate problem. Julian’s house.’

‘Oh? Is there a problem with it?’

His eyes narrowed as they travelled over her tensely held body. ‘Not unless you give me one. Are you going to?’

He kept watching her almost warily and Carolyn wondered what he was getting at. ‘I have no idea,’ she hedged. ‘I haven’t seen it yet.’

‘I doubt that’ll make a damned bit of difference,’ he muttered, confusing her all the more. ‘Well? When do you want to see it? This afternoon some time?’

A quick glance at her watch showed eleven twenty-eight. ‘I have a half-hour appointment to see Miss Powers at eleven-thirty,’ she stated, hoping a businesslike manner would hide the emotional distress this encounter had evoked. ‘Perhaps the three of us could go and see the house together after that. Do you think that would be possible?’

Vaughan shook his head. ‘Unfortunately Maddie has another client at twelve whom she can’t put off and who’ll take at least an hour. I tell you what. After you’ve finished with her I’ll take you to lunch, then the three of us can meet up at the house around two.’

Carolyn only just managed to control the look of horror that threatened to spread across her face. She didn’t want to do anything as intimate as have lunch with him. Bad enough to have to put up with the occasional conducted tour around the house over the next couple of months.

‘Thank you for the offer,’ she said crisply, ‘but I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.’ She stood up. ‘Perhaps you could drop me off at the house and I can have a look around by myself while you go and have lunch.’

This suggestion brought a sharp glance. Vaughan stood up slowly, his eyes remaining hard as he came round the desk to join her. ‘I couldn’t do that. The place is a bit rough and you might hurt yourself. Look, there’s no point in your avoiding my company, Carolyn. It’s rather silly and schoolgirlish.’

Her blue eyes flashed with automatic pique. If there was anything she wasn’t, it was silly and schoolgirlish. My God, she’d had to assume the mantle of adulthood from a very early age, bypassing the life of a normal teenager, never having the sort of mindless fun adolescent girls indulged in. And all because of this man and his compulsion to bed every woman who came across his path. Her mother... Madeline Powers... Anthea Maxwell... And how many countless others?

Just as well that she had unwittingly taken Justin’s advice and made herself as unattractive as possible, otherwise he might even now be attempting to seduce her! Given this unwanted though undeniable sexual attraction she was feeling for him, who knew what disaster might have come of it?

‘I wasn’t avoiding your company,’ she lied frostily.

His sardonic smile showed he didn’t believe her for a moment. ‘In that case you can come with me and nurse a drink while I eat.’

Before she could stop him he took her elbow and began to usher her from the room. ‘You can tell me all about what you’re doing these days. Oddly enough, I’ve often thought of you over the years,’ came the wry remark. ‘Hard to dismiss the pretty blue-eyed little thing who used to glare at me with such obvious disapproval. Something which hasn’t changed much, has it?’ he added drily when she pulled away from him at the door. ‘You still think I’m some kind of ogre.’

‘Not at all,’ she returned with admirable coolness. ‘I don’t think of you as anything any more. You’re just my stepfather’s architect.’

‘Is that so?’ His gaze turned hard as it locked with hers. ‘And how should I think of you, Carolyn? As my client’s stepdaughter, here to help finish his house to everyone’s satisfaction? Or as a female harbouring an irrational grudge against me and who might be thinking of sabotaging my work out of revenge?’

She gasped with true shock.

‘I think any suspicion on my part is well warranted,’ he went on coldly. ‘After all, you did give a false name to my secretary, then you wangled your way into my office. If I hadn’t come in when I did, you would have been left alone with my plans to do God knows what to them. And just now, you seemed eager to be left alone at the house. I wonder what might have been missing or damaged when I returned?’

Her eyes widened even more. ‘I would never do such a low thing!’ she protested, trying not to colour guiltily over her earlier vengeful thoughts. ‘Never! I have a high regard for achievement and hard work, regardless of what my opinion is of the person behind them.’

‘And what is that, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Well, I...I...’

‘Go on, tell me exactly what you have against me, except a bit of ancient history that was hardly my fault, regardless of the consequences.’ He folded his arms and glared at her. ‘Well? Haven’t you anything to say? Don’t you think I deserve an explanation for this exaggerated hostility?’

Carolyn’s mind was going round and round. All she could think of was that fury became him, making him draw his body up tall and straight and proud, making his eyes darken and flash with a wicked appeal, his jaw jutting strongly forward, highlighting the splendid bones in his face.

Only later did she remember that she could have thrown his relationship with Anthea Maxwell in his face. Mrs Maxwell was, after all, a married woman, unlike Miss Powers who was clearly single. But at the time, she merely blushed furiously, giving him a dangerous glimpse of her vulnerability. ‘I...I don’t know,’ she said shakily, before pulling herself together and lifting an equally proud chin. ‘You seem to bring out the worst in me. You always have done. I just don’t like you, Vaughan. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.’

Her blunt remarks surprised him. They rather surprised her too. But after the surprise came selfsatisfaction.

At least I’m taking this ridiculous attraction by the scruff of the neck and killing its chances of going anywhere stone dead. Nothing puts a man off more than saying you don’t like him.

Not that I really needed to put him off, she thought with a certain irony. He hasn’t shown one ounce of interest in me in a sexual sense. Quite understandable, looking as I do today.

‘Well, I’m sorry about that too,’ he returned brusquely. ‘I always rather liked you. Even as a child you had character. You weren’t a ditherheaded little nincompoop like most of your girlfriends.’

‘Oh? You mean because I didn’t drool over the gorgeous Vaughan Slater?’ she said acidly before she could bite the words back.

His eyes narrowed slightly and Carolyn hoped she hadn’t just made a big mistake. Too much hostility was more revealing than none at all. With a supreme effort she dragged up a covering smile. ‘See?’ she laughed drily. ‘You’re still bringing out the worst in me. I’m not usually such a bitch.’

Those thoughtful eyes travelled over her so intently that her arms broke out in goose-bumps under her jacket sleeves. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were. Frankly, I think that if you could put aside this irrational antagonism of yours you’d probably turn into quite the nicest, most sincere person I’ve ever met.’

Her stomach clenched down hard. First sympathy, and now flattery. Oh, he had all the best weapons where women were concerned, didn’t he? Thank God he didn’t seem to fancy her or she’d be in real danger.

‘You know it will be hard working together, if you’re going to be glaring and sniping at me all the time,’ he went on quite reasonably. ‘Do you think, for the house’s sake, you could put your dislike of me on hold for two months? Or is that too long for you to control your—er—feelings?’

Carolyn swallowed. She certainly hoped not. ‘I think I could just about manage two months.’

He laughed. ‘Good lord, you don’t pull any punches do you? But who knows? Once you get to know me better, you might find I’m not quite the heartless cad you’ve obviously believed I was all these years.’

I doubt that very much, she thought with private irony.

Vaughan’s mouth curved back into a rueful smile as he surveyed her unrelenting face. ‘Come on. Maddie will be wondering where you are.’ And with that he took her elbow again, opened the door, and marched her from the room.

She was jerked to a halt in front of the secretary’s desk.

‘I’m walking Carolyn here along to Maddie’s office, Nora,’ Vaughan pronounced. ‘I’ll be back in five minutes and you’ll be able to go home. The big bad ogre is giving you an early mark for putting up with his rudeness.’

‘Oh, Mr Slater,’ the woman simpered in return. ‘You’re never really rude.’

His chuckle was dry. ‘That’s an opinion not shared by several building contractors I know.’

‘Some of them deserve a blast,’ the secretary defended loyally.

‘We had all sorts of trouble with the plumbers at Julian’s house,’ Vaughan confessed as they made their way along to Suite Four, that insidious male hand still glued to her arm. ‘Most of the time they just didn’t turn up when they said they would. It’s no wonder one can’t get a house built in the time scheduled if the tradesmen don’t even make an appearance some days.’

‘But what excuse do they give?’ Carolyn asked, curious, despite her discomfort. She was still shaking inside from their highly strung encounter, and quite rattled by her unexpected response to her once vowed enemy. If only he wouldn’t keep on touching her...

Vaughan shrugged his broad shoulders in reply. ‘Occasionally the weather. It was either too hot or too cold or too wet, which was crazy since the walls and roof were intact at the time. Mostly they just said they hadn’t finished the previous job, but when I contacted the project in question I found out that hadn’t been finished because they consistently hadn’t turned up there either! It’s a vicious circle of apathy and laziness. No wonder this country’s building industry is in a mess!’

‘You really care about your work, don’t you?’ she remarked.

His sidewards glance was puzzled. ‘You sound surprised. Oh, I see...’ His eyes darkened, flashing with anger. ‘I’m a man without conscience, without... what was it? Without a shred of decency.’ He made a dry, scoffing sound. ‘As a man without morals, I’m not supposed to have any integrity, even regarding my work, am I? Might I remind you, Carolyn,’ he added caustically, ‘that some of the most immoral men in history have been high achievers. Look at Napoleon or Hitler!’

She flinched under his outburst. ‘I would hardly put you in the same category as Hitler.’

His laughter did not sound amused. He reached out to the doorknob of Suite Four and lanced her with a cynical look. ‘Methinks our temporary truce is already fraying at the edges, but I suggest we regroup our defences for Maddie. We don’t want her asking any awkward questions, do we?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Smile, then, Carolyn. We’re about to put your acting ability to the supreme test. Maddie has the most devilish female intuition that sees all, hears all and knows all, if given half a chance. She will not be fooled except by a most convincing performance. How are you at acting?’

‘Very good, actually,’ she returned with a measure of black humour. And gave him an Academy Award-winning smile. If she weren’t a good actress, he’d already know she found him the most disturbingly attractive man she’d ever met.

‘Excellent. And I presume you want to pretend we’ve just met for the first time?’

‘Definitely.’

‘I thought as much,’ he muttered, and with a savage twist of his hand flung the door to Suite Four open and waved her inside.