Читать книгу Temporary Parents - SARA WOOD - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

THE trilling of the phone ripped into Laura’s unconsciousness. Her hand fumbled about, knocking over the bedside lamp, two paperbacks, a china hedgehog and a mug with its dregs of hot chocolate before connecting with the receiver.

“Lo?’ she mumbled, drowsily trying to right everything and getting a chocolatey hand for her pains.

‘Laura?’

She sat bolt-upright in bed, suddenly startled and alert. ‘Yes, Max?’ she squeaked.

It was an unmistakable, honey-on-steel version of her name. L-a-u-r-a. Shivers went down her back. Her hand pressed against her chest, as if that would stop the acrobatics of her heart. Max. The years rolled back...

‘I’m coming to see you.’

She blinked. It was pitch-dark in her small bedsit. She pushed back the flopping mass of unruly black hair which could have been obscuring her view—but it was still dark. When she checked the luminous dial of her clock, her huge, summer-sky-coloured eyes rounded in complete amazement.

‘At four in the morning? Oh, for heaven’s sake!’

She slammed the phone down and hauled the duvet over her head. She had to get up in an hour! Angrily she listened to the muted, persistent ringing, wishing that she’d yanked the whole thing from its socket.

And then as she lay there, hating Max, wishing he’d give up, she finally put two and two together. There could be only one reason Max wanted to see her: the secret she and her older sister Fay had kept to themselves for the past five years.

Laura sat up again in horror. Perhaps he knew the truth now. What would he do? Tell Daniel, Fay’s husband? Then what?

She shuddered, suddenly icy cold. Flinging back the duvet, she launched herself in panic at the phone. Both of them landed on the floor, and her African Grey parrot woke up and started screeching in alarm.

‘Shut up, Fred...! Oh, this wretched thing...!’ she wailed in frustration, trying to untangle the cord from her ankle.

She could hear Max shouting somewhere in the depths of the receiver and felt vindictively sorry that the crash hadn’t burst his eardrums.

‘Yes? What?’ she demanded, cross and out of breath.

‘What the hell’s going on? Who’s there with you?’ Max yelled, sounding agitated. Fred screamed on relentlessly.

‘It’s all right, darling!’ she crooned, anxious for her beloved, neurotic pet’s state of mind. ‘Coo-coo-coo—’

‘What?’

‘I was speaking to my parrot!’ she snapped, feeling hysterical.

Fred’s screeching was drilling through her head. She fumbled for the light switch on the fallen lamp and switched it on.

‘A parrot.’

Stung by Max’s slicing tone, she clenched her teeth and tried to ignore the implication that he was dealing with a fool. Max could sneer for England.

‘Hang on!’ she cried, wincing as Fred’s screeches scythed through her. ‘I’ve got to calm him down. He’s emotionally disturbed.’

‘For pity’s sake—!’

Cutting him off in mid-curse, she scrambled unsteadily to her feet, thinking that now she was emotionally disturbed too. Dammit, why had Max crawled out of the woodwork?

Gently she removed the cover on Fred’s night cage, murmuring to him a few soothing words. How nice, she thought wistfully, if someone could do that for her.

The mollified Fred tucked his denuded head under his wing and she stroked him fondly. She’d rescued him from an animal shelter where she worked on weekends, smitten by the ugly, bald, mangy looking bird...and wanting something to love.

Her heart contracted. With her dark, Celtic brows zapped together in a fierce scowl, she stared miserably at the phone, unwilling to make contact with Max. She’d got over him. But not the consequences of their affair.

Max had got her pregnant five years ago, when she had been eighteen and he had been twenty-four. Then he’d moved back to a fiancée he’d had stashed away in Surrey. Then, in a matter of weeks, on to Laura’s sister. Then, who knows? One, two, three. Bunny-hopping through women with a staggering nonchalance.

To Laura’s fury, her eyes filled with tears. She’d thought she’d put all that pain behind her. And now Max was dragging unwanted memories back to the forefront of her mind.

Her small, dainty hands fluttered in a bewildered gesture at her stupidity. She knew how and why she’d got pregnant, why she’d taken that mad and fatal risk. They had held back for a long time and he had been leaving for France... And she’d loved him so utterly that when he’d started touching her she hadn’t ever wanted him to stop and had driven him beyond the point of return.

That one occasion had been enough for her to conceive.

Carefully she replaced Fred’s cover. Like it or not, she had to see Max. She must know his intentions.

Trembling, and afraid of facing the past, she resumed her position on the floor, needing something good and solid beneath her shaking body. She took a deep breath, and spoke before she could chicken out.

‘I’m listening now.’

‘Good. I’ll be arriving at one o’clock lunchtime. Be there. It’s important.’

‘Be where?’ she asked guardedly, hating his curtness and the way her voice quaked.

‘The baker’s shop. Where you work—’

‘How do you know this?’ she cried in alarm.

‘I’ve been talking to Daniel.’

Laura’s right hand wobbled so much that she had to support it with her left. ‘Oh.’

Dimly she heard him trying to get her attention. She couldn’t speak. Her whole body felt completely paralysed. He could already have told Daniel! Fay’s marriage and the future of Fay’s two children could be in real danger with Max around. He could ruin Fay’s life. Laura closed her eyes. As he’d mined hers.

When she’d learnt of Max’s affair with her own sister, she’d been in the fifth month of her pregnancy. The news had shocked her so deeply that she hadn’t been able to eat. Some time—she didn’t know when—her baby had stopped moving.

She felt the scream building up inside her, fighting for release. Her baby. Dead.

Of course she’d willed it to live. Refused to believe that Max’s child—her only link with him—had been lost.

She’d waited, day after day, sure that her baby would wake, punch her with its little fists, kick her with its tiny feet...

She blanched. Her stomach cramped. All those hope-ridden days of carrying her dead baby. Then the high fever, the hours of lonely agony until her aunt had found her, crying with pain in the bathroom.

In her head she could still hear the sound of her racking sobs when she’d known for sure that Max had brought about the death of his own child—even though he hadn’t even known of its existence.

For days she’d lain in her hospital bed, weak and numb, with a nurse in constant attendance. And then...a sympathetic doctor had appeared. He’d told her that the infection had meant the removal of her womb and she could never have children. But it would never show, he’d said cheerfully, as if that would somehow console her.

She hunched up in misery. Max’s philandering had taken away from her the one thing she’d longed for, ever since she could remember.

A happy marriage. Children. A whole row of them in ascending sizes. Oh, God! It was tearing her heart to shreds...

‘Laura!’

But she was weeping too much now to speak—and was too proud to let him know that. Loathing the very sound of him, she dropped the receiver onto its cradle. And then disconnected the phone completely before flinging herself back into bed.

In the shop below her bedsit, there had been an epidemic of babies that morning. One set of blonde twins in matching red rompers and cosy hats to combat the October weather. A huge bruiser with the sweetest marmalade curls. And the endearing Rufus with his lopsided, windy smile.

Laura gripped the order book tightly. One deep breath. Another. Slow, steady. Rufus was now safely outside in his buggy on fashionable Sloane Street, softening up unwary strangers with every waft of his incredible lashes.

‘Wait till you have one of your own!’ his mother had said happily. ‘Stretchmarks, sleepless nights, nappies...!’

Sounded wonderful.

But what had Laura done after that innocently tactless remark? Produced a thin smile and hustled for a decision on the Christening cake design. Refused to look at the child again despite the urge to reach out and stroke his peachy cheek...

‘That’s the second baby you’ve cut dead!’ scolded Luke, emerging from the office.

With a face like stone, she dived under the counter and replaced the order book, hoping against hope that would be the last bundle of joy she saw that day.

Laura made much of checking the ribbons and flat-packed cake boxes. She thought of little Rufus with his mass of black hair, saucer eyes and tiny, screwed-up, dear little face that could have melted steel girders, let alone Laura’s susceptible heart.

As she pretended to root about under the counter, she caught herself responding belatedly to him, the gentle curves of her mouth lifting wistfully.

Rot in bell, Max! she thought, and the sweet-sad smile was sharply erased out. This situation would never alter, so she might as well get used to it.

‘Will you come out of there?’

Reluctantly she emerged and straightened, realising as she did so that Luke was warming to his theme.

‘Look, Laura, in the two weeks you’ve been here you’ve not exactly been Mary Poppins as far as kiddies are concerned.’ He looked at her curiously and she immediately turned her back and began fiddling with the cakes on the shelf behind. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked in exasperation.

Remain calm. Pretend his imagination has run away with him.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she managed, with a fair stab at surprise.

Now take the cake from the shelf. Read the lettering. ‘Happy 30th Birthday, Jasper’. Admire your skill in creating a BMW convertible with only Victoria sponge, icing and your talent to play with. Place it in its box for collection and mind the wing mirrors...

‘You ignored that baby! I don’t know what he ever did to you!’

Luke, the owner of Sinful Cakes and Indecent Puddings, was clearly not going to let the matter rest. Blindly she feigned an interest in the shelf again.

‘Don’t you realise it’s part of your job to coo and sigh and make those noises women make whenever they see babies?’

‘Yes. Shall I restack the shelves with sugar mice?’ she asked, her strained voice squeaky enough to belong to a terrified mouse itself.

‘No!’ Luke grabbed her small, rigid shoulders and determinedly turned her around.

She avoided his eyes, too wound up for a confrontation. Two hours, eight minutes to go before Max turned up. The clock had been counting down in her head all morning, with an unbearable tension increasing every second, just as if she were sitting in a command centre and waiting for a missile launch.

Already her mouth was dry, her hands shaking. Something was happening to her lips. They were beginning to tremble—

‘Laura...’ came Luke’s softly spoken concern.

‘Oh, please!’ she whimpered.

Gentleness was unfair! She could have borne anything but that! She made a half-hearted attempt to twist from beneath his hands but he was too much of a vast and friendly bear to be evaded by a five-foot-two slip of a female on teetering heels.

‘Don’t,’ she pleaded, hopelessly scared of losing control.

He set her free. But she couldn’t move. A sense of hopelessness held her in place just as he’d left her, head drooping, body taut.

The door was being bolted. The bell disabled. There was the sound of the ‘Open/Closed’ notice being turned around. Luke’s footsteps coming closer. His hand supporting her elbow.

‘Coffee and a chat, I think.’

He had such a warm brown, tender voice, as if he knew something of the trauma she contained so silently. He would make a willing listener, and she liked him enormously.

They cooked together in the bakery, shared the deliveries to swanky parties in Knightsbridge where the shop outlet was based and worked behind the counter as a happy and friendly team.

But she didn’t want to tell anyone. If she did, she might break up. That was the last thing she wanted, with Max on his way. She knew Luke would want some kind of explanation, though.

He shut the door which led into the office. There was the delicious smell of baking from the ovens beyond. He moved her bakery sneakers aside and pushed her into an armchair with the obvious intention of settling her down for a confidential heart-to-heart.

‘I know something’s wrong. You’re terrific with customers. You care. People respond to you. But kids are another matter. You clam up. So...what do you have against them?’

‘Nothing.’ She adored them. That was the trouble.

Her face crumpled and the first sob rushed up from her chest. Then Luke was kneeling beside her, holding her, patting her back, murmuring soothingly into her thick bob of black hair.

‘Oh, curses!’ She’d wanted to look wonderful when Max turned up. A kind of ‘look what you turned down’ defiance. To appear independent, successful, content and strong. Instead, she’d be bag-eyed and ready to cry at his first scathing remark. He’d be bound to condemn her and Fay for being push-overs. She’d be pathetic—too feeble to stand up to him.

‘Hush, hush,’ Luke said, consolingly.

It was a long time later before the unstoppable flood of tears dried up. Luke made her a strong, sweet coffee and then she plucked up courage and gave him a shortened version of her story.

‘I—I can’t have children, Luke—’ There was a considerable pause while she drank long and deep, forcing the coffee past the mass of whatever was trying to block her throat. ‘I adore them,’ she said in a small, unhappy voice. ‘It’s as simple as that. And my ex-boyfriend’s coming here lunchtime with some dreadful news about my sister.’

She found that she’d been squeezing Luke’s hand tightly, and eased her grip, leaving a red mark and the impression of her short nails in his palm.

So much passion in her! Who would ever guess? Laura Tremaine, dull and plain! Pint-sized, snub-nosed, with a skewed, enormous mouth. Overlooked because of her bubbly, beautiful and sexy sister but with a cauldron of emotion simmering beneath an apparently docile surface.

‘I think there’s much more to that story, but I won’t pry,’ Luke said shrewdly. ‘Go upstairs. Gather yourself together. When Max comes, I’ll send him up. I’ll be glued to the intercom in case you need me. Go on!’ he urged, when she hesitated.

‘You’re very kind.’

‘Selfish,’ he corrected. ‘You’re a damn good cook, Laura. I don’t want to lose you. We’ll come to some arrangement about the baby side of things—’

‘No. It won’t be a problem.’ She stood up, feeling a little better for her outburst. ‘I’m OK now. Honestly. And...thanks again. You’ve been very understanding.’

Luke opened the door to the shop and then paused. ‘Not surprising. I knew the signs. My wife can’t have kids either, you see.’

Laura went quite cold. Slowly her gaze swivelled to meet his and she recognised his sense of loss with immediate empathy. Only people who were denied children could ever know that desperate, almost frantic feeling of need. It was so fierce and uncontrollable that it could ruin the whole of your life and every relationship that ever came your way.

Max had changed her life totally. She was different—who she was, what she did, her friends, everything. Boyfriends had complained she didn’t give of herself. True. How could she, when she’d nothing to give ultimately?

She felt that her status as a woman had become flawed and inferior, like faulty goods. A hopeless sensation of inadequacy had grown inside her, swelling up and occupying every thought and action as if she had a phantom pregnancy. She knew she’d never get over it, however deep she tried to bury it. The sadness would stay with her for the rest of her life.

Thanks, Max.

And here was Luke, telling her his most personal secret. She held out her arms in silent sympathy, and Luke walked into them. There was nothing sexual about the gesture for either of them. Just two unhappy people linked by a poignant tragedy.

‘Glad I told you,’ she said, Luke’s soft jacket muffling her words.

‘Yup.’ He hugged her harder.

At some stage, someone began to bang on the street door. Although Luke’s bulk obscured her vision of the impatient customer, Laura realised they must be in full view.

‘Bang goes your reputation,’ she said, stepping back and producing a wry smile.

It wasn’t funny, but Luke laughed, releasing some of the emotional tension between them.

‘Sounds like Jasper’s come for his BMW! Upstairs now,’ he urged. ‘Put the slap on. Don’t let Max get under your skin. Stick it out. Some time...you might like to meet my wife. You’ll like her.’

He gave a sentimental, dreamy smile and Laura wondered if she would ever find a man who loved her unconditionally.

‘Thanks.’

Laura touched his chest in an affectionate gesture, and ran up the narrow stairs to her bedsit, wishing her legs weren’t shaking so much. She was dreading this meeting.

Her arrival was greeted noisily by Fred. Her face softened and she went over to the free-standing perch by the window.

‘Hi, Fred, darling!’ she murmured, affectionately tickling his stubbly head. He nuzzled up and made ecstatic clicks with his beak. ‘Got to dash,’ she told him reluctantly, and glanced at her watch.

Laura groaned. A thousand butterflies took off in her stomach and began a pitched battle. It was nearly her lunch hour already! Max would be here at one. He was brutally punctual. Where had the time gone?

She whirled and inspected herself in the dressing-table mirror. She looked awful. Rumpled and crumpled with red-rimmed eyes and a blotchy face—and her hair flicking out in all directions and looking as if she’d spent the morning having it whipped up by the dough mixer.

As for her dress... It wasn’t flattering at all. Wondering exactly what was suitable for meeting an ex-lover with a confession to make, she quickly slipped the simple grey jersey down to the floor and stepped out of it, mentally running through the limited choice in her wardrobe.

Something smart. Severe. That would help to keep her nerves together. She was a firm believer that clothes could alter moods.

The shoes were fine. High, as she always liked them, giving her a feeling of authority and efficiency. And altitude. And they bolstered her confidence when dealing with the well-off, well-bred clientele.

Since Max was just on six feet and towered over her, she’d need both confidence and height or he’d be constantly looking down his nose at her. She’d keep them on.

Help! A quarter to one! She felt weak with apprehension. Better hurry. Get the face sorted. The more barriers, the better.

She sped into the bathroom as fast as her smart shoes would allow, feeling chilly in just her chainstore bra, briefs, suspender belt and stockings. Frantically she turned on the cold tap and gasped aloud with shock as she splashed water over her swollen face—and accidentally flung some at her chest, too.

Somewhere in the background, Fred squawked. Probably worried she was being attacked, she thought, absently applying soap to her face. He’d be brilliant if Max became aggressive. That squawk could break the sound barrier.

It must be ten to one now, she hazarded, though she couldn’t see because her eyes were tightly scrunched up against the smarting soap. Still bent double over the basin, with her stockinged legs apart and her three-inch heels dug firmly into the cheap lino, she reached out and flapped a hand in the air, searching for the towel.

It was put into her hand.

Everything froze except her brain. Max! She knew it!

Shivers went down her spine. The sinews in her legs became taut. She felt the clenching of the muscles in her buttocks. The stiffening of her naked back.

And then came the stomach-churning thought that Max was probably noticing the tell-tale changes of panic in her body with huge amusement. The women he knew would have given a little wiggle and invited his touch, while she was going pink with embarrassment and ruining any chance she’d had of presenting herself as a city-wise sophisticate.

‘Don’t get cold, now,’ he admonished with a chuckle.

Cold! She was consumed by hell fire in embarrassment!

It seemed safer to stay where she was than to straighten and offer him a full-frontal view. Her hand curled into a claw, snatching the towel away and flinging it over her near nudity.

Max’s well-remembered, elegant fingers straightened out the folds with a lingering precision which made her want to scream. He was recreating those days when he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her and had devoted himself to cherishing her. Or so he’d pretended. Max was a master at giving women what they wanted. He found it the quickest route to their beds, so she’d been told.

His distressed parents had explained his tactics. He fitted his behaviour to whichever woman he wanted. For her, he’d been protective, thoughtful, dedicated. He had, apparently, found it perfectly possible to be in the same room as Fay and not be dazzled because he’d found, so he’d said, Laura’s button nose and higgledy-piggledy mouth absolutely adorable.

Liar.

Laura was struggling for words and sounded almost incoherent when a few managed to crawl out. ‘What the hell—?’

‘I did knock,’ came Max’s classy drawl, smooth with phoney innocence.

‘But didn’t wait!’ she accused, beside herself with anger at the invasion of her privacy.

‘I never do,’ he agreed cheerfully.

No. Not for anyone or anything. What Max wanted, he wanted now—or he walked away and found the next most pleasing substitute.

‘Well, you can this time. Go back and sit down and wait—or keep walking out of my flat door and don’t come back!’ she cried, rubbing her face hard in temper with a riskily released corner of the towel.

‘You’ve got five minutes,’ he drawled. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘Go and feed the parrot,’ she suggested maliciously, knowing Fred would bite off Max’s finger if he tried.

‘No, thanks.’ There was a lazy amusement in his voice. ‘It looks diseased.’

Laura pummelled her wet breasts with the towel as if she were kneading bread, furious on her pet’s behalf. Somewhere in the background she was aware of the sound of Max’s retreating steps.

‘By the way,’ he called back as an afterthought. ‘There’s a ladder exploring your left thigh.’

Laura clapped a hand to the back of her leg. He was right. Red-faced and breathing hard, she clutched the towel securely around her and turned in a violent movement to find that he’d vanished.

She loathed him. He made her want to lash out, to slap that arrogant, smoothie face. To knock him off-balance with a step-by-step explanation of what he’d done to her, with all the gory details.

It beggared belief that he was here to make a shameful admission—and yet was strolling around casually, quite unperturbed by the fact that he ought to be ashamed of his actions.

One day, Max Pendennis...one day! she promised vehemently. Then she felt exasperated with herself. In the back of her mind, she’d wanted to appear cool and collected, the epitome of a woman who couldn’t care less what he did. Yet already he’d got her stamping mad. Her eyes sparked angrily and she tried to haul down her temper from the stratosphere.

All she had to do was listen to him with a superior smile hovering on her face, make sure that he wasn’t going to ruin Fay’s marriage by telling Daniel what had happened, and then show him the door.

She decided not to tell him about her pregnancy. She had no intention of playing the sad victim. Her preference was to appear remote, dignified and unassailable...

And yet, she thought, her sense of humour briefly reasserting itself, she’d opened up the proceedings with a classic girlie-magazine pose, presenting her flimsily clad backside, suspenders and stocking-tops to him!

‘Three minutes, and counting.’

Laura sent a hot-poker glare at the only bit of him she could see, a pair of long, male legs in soft silver-grey suiting crossed at the ankles, and two glassily polished black shoes.

He was sitting in her favourite easy chair, facing the bed and wardrobe, like someone waiting for the next show to begin.

She stalked into the room just as he was reaching down from the chair to pick up the discarded grey jersey dress. Without a word she took it from him, suddenly conscious of the homely untidiness around her.

There were piles of half-read paperbacks near his feet and a stack of various friends’ letters stuffed into the chair beside him. Evidence of her studying lay scattered on every available surface—papers, files, pens, notepads. Max hated mess.

Avoiding contact with his eyes, she stepped over his outstretched legs, toed the daily paper under the small table to join the parrot’s tinkly bell and headed for the wardrobe.

All too late, she realised that she’d been clutching the towel around her so tightly that her figure must have been perfectly outlined for him. She eased her neurotic grip, giving him a few more folds to deal with.

Max inhaled audibly behind her as if exasperated.

‘If you want me to hurry up,’ she said haughtily over her shoulder, ‘then face the other way. I’m not dressing while you look on.’

‘It would save time if you stayed as you are.’ The words slid over her like smooth icing from a spoon. ‘It makes no difference to me what you’re wearing—’

‘Well, it does to me!’ she snapped, and regretted losing control. Again. Giving herself a mental kick for her stupidity, she waited haughtily for him to make a move.

The sigh of irritation was repeated, and then there was a scraping sound as the chair was pushed back. When she checked in the mirror, she saw that he was gazing out of the window and standing a disease-free distance from Fred, who was pacing up and down his perch and measuring his chances of a crafty nip.

Satisfied, she opened the wardrobe door, Max’s reflected image filling her head.

Tall. Hair still a gleaming raven-black like hers. But the thick waves had been tamed and cut to ruthless perfection, as if his barber had painstakingly worked with a ruler, measuring the requisite distance from that razoredged white collar.

Max had wider shoulders than she remembered, poured into a sharply tailored suit which had clearly been built on his hard, sinewy body, inch by perfect inch. His spare frame was not heavy with grossly inflexible muscle, but powerfully shaped nevertheless, like that of an athlete in his prime.

He looked breathtakingly handsome. But then he’d always been that—mooned over by her schoolfriends on the rare occasions he’d come home from his prep and then public schools. Son of the wealthy General William Pendennis. Bright future in the City. Every girl’s dream—hers included.

Except...he wasn’t her Max any more, and hadn’t been for a long time. He belonged in a different sphere. A world of privilege and class, peopled by well-bred, elite movers-and-shakers. A world at large which embraced big business, financial deals and where international flights were far more commonplace than number nine buses.

Perhaps aware that she hadn’t moved for a few moments, he began drumming his fingers on the high windowsill and tapping his foot Max hated being cooped up as much as he hated being kept waiting, she reflected, pushing hangers about aimlessly. He was the most restless and active man she’d ever known.

‘Will you step on it?’ he complained impatiently. ‘I’ve got a flight to catch—and you have one hell of a lot to organise.’

‘I have?’ That didn’t sound as if he was planning a confession about his relationship with Fay—and the consequences. Puzzled, Laura heaved the towel around her top half, grabbed her best suit from the wardrobe and slid the short, straight skirt up over her slender hips. Instantly she felt prim and efficient. ‘You’d better talk while I dress, then,’ she advised edgily.

His persistent drumming and tapping was driving her mad. She felt a dangerous shakiness creeping into her voice, and tried to calm down. Steeling herself, she flung down the gauntlet.

‘Tell me about you and Fay,’ she ordered.

‘Me and...?’

Jerking her head around, alerted by his astonishment, she found that he was facing her, meeting her startled gaze with a hard, uncomprehending stare. She recoiled, shaken. Partly, if she was honest, by the unexpected head-on impact of his stunning good looks.

‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ she demanded, refusing to let him intimidate her. He was the one in the wrong! Was he now going to deny the whole affair? ‘Losing courage to speak? Don’t make me despise you more than I already do, Max,’ she muttered.

His dark eyes narrowed but she realised he hadn’t heard a word. For the first time he was scrutinising her still puffy eyes fringed with wet black lashes, her tousled hair and unevenly pink and white skin, fresh from its brutal assault at the basin.

She stared back at the pure lines of his sculpted jaw and tried not to feel crushed by his assessment, and horribly unattractive.

‘What the devil’s been happening to you?’

The softly spoken concern wriggled briefly beneath her defences. Then she remembered. He didn’t really care a jot. This was how he got women sewing on his buttons.

‘Nothing. A busy morning,’ she replied crossly, struck by the ruthless perfection of his grooming and the messiness of hers. Already he’d lowered her self-esteem.

Desperate not to let it sink further, she straightened the slipping towel around her tiny body, turned back to the mirror and grabbed a brush. As she forced it through her tangled mop, she longed for her hair to miraculously turn into a smooth, sophisticated style for once.

She could see Max watching critically, his arms folded over his lean, taut torso and the plumb-line-straight navy tie accurately bisecting the advertisement-white shirt.

‘I can understand,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that the guy downstairs mussed your hair up in that clinch...but who made you cry in the first place?’

Her lip quivered and she pulled it into a grimace. He’d laugh if she said a baby! So she said nothing, not even issuing a denial about the clinch. Her brushing became more frantic, but she only ended up with shiny, fly-away hair which flew away in a multitude of directions.

Her face looked small and defenceless, her short upper lip bowing to form an ‘oh’ of dismay. Two enormous, wet-fringed eyes stared back at her. She looked as if she’d been stabbed in the heart.

Max didn’t let up. ‘You and the beefy guy had a row...’ He paused in the middle of his surmising, a faint frown on his beautifully tanned forehead. ‘About me? Because I was coming here and you’d told him we’d been lovers?’ he guessed.

‘Don’t exaggerate your own importance!’ she said, shooting a scornful glance at his reflection.

But she quailed at his piercing, bone-melting assessment and longed to be in full war paint for protection. She picked up a tube of all-in-one foundation and powder and began to spread it with shaking, ice-cold fingers.

‘You were kissing and—’

‘No! That’s a lie!’

Disastrously forgetting her intention to stay composed, Laura whirled around indignantly, her eyes glowing fiercely in anger, hair flying about her briefly animated face in jet black tendrils. The wild gipsy look, he’d once said admiringly, before he’d crushed her soft, poppy-coloured mouth beneath his.

For a moment there was a flash of intense light in Max’s eyes. She felt it searing a path straight for her soul. But she was dead inside and it didn’t reach anywhere important. He didn’t even know he was projecting sexual desire, she thought peevishly. It was as natural to him as breathing.

‘Too vehement a response, Laura,’ he declared quietly. ‘I saw you quite clearly. And why shouldn’t you hug and kiss him? Unless...’ His mouth became a tight snarl. ‘Unless he’s married, of course?’

She couldn’t help widening her eyes at his deduction. ‘He owns the business,’ she said evasively, for something to say.

‘And he employs you,’ Max persisted, in a savage undertone, contempt rippling through his harsh features. ‘He gives you a flat—’

‘It’s a bedsit!’ she declared. ‘Of the non-swinging-cat variety! And I pay for it. And I get up at five to start the ovens—’

‘It’s very convenient,’ he agreed disparagingly.

She fell silent. He was going to think the worst of her, but she wasn’t going to keep protesting her innocence. What was the point? In half an hour or so Max would be out of her life again. She hoped.

His lashes dropped, and she realised he was watching the way the first curves of her pinkly shining breasts rose and fell above the failing towel. They went pinker still and her skin prickled as if he’d switched on an electric current in her body.

She turned her back on him and rummaged in a drawer for her shirt, drawing it on and securing the first two buttons before replying.

‘I don’t owe you any explanation of my behaviour,’ she said flatly.

‘No. You don’t So long as you don’t ask for any explanation of mine.’

They were getting closer to the confession. He felt ashamed of two-timing her. Good!

Triumphantly she finished doing up the last button—only to find it wasn’t the last button at all. She had one left over. Annoyed, she started again. Doggedly she worked her way down, her fingers fumbling because he’d moved to one side and was watching every move she made. Her breathing thickened—or the air did; she wasn’t sure.

‘Are you ready to listen now?’ Max asked.

‘Perfectly.’

She made sure she spoke in a clipped tone. From now on she’d be detached. He wasn’t used to women showing no interest in him and it pleased her that, despite looking and sounding devastatingly handsome and sexy, he’d roused no deep, lingering desires.

A little more confidently, she tucked the shirt in and arranged her small body primly in a threadbare wing chair. Legs neatly crossed at the ankles. Back erect. Distantly involved expression on her face.

‘Fire away,’ she said, with all the appearance of a woman about to hear something boring. But she felt she might snap at any moment.

Max began wandering about and fingering everything he came across. ‘I hope you realise I should be in Paris.’

Absently he stroked the gleaming top of the cluttered mahogany sewing table which had once belonged to her grandmother. He seemed absorbed by the feel of the highly polished wood, his whole face responding to the satiny sensuousness beneath his fingertips. It was a very hedonistic action and had Laura’s gaze glued to every lingering caress.

She heaved her mind back to his remark. ‘Of course I didn’t. Paris, you say?’ she asked, intending to sound rudely uninterested, but her remark came out with croaky edges. She cleared her throat as surreptitiously as possible.

Max gave her a look of lazy curiosity and she hardened her eyes in case he got the wrong idea. ‘I’ve had to cancel two meetings.’

He moved lithely on to the mantelpiece, nonchalant and loose-limbed. Casually he began to examine a china herring-gull her mother had sent her. Laura wriggled, uncomfortable with the way he delicately traced the smooth curves of the beautiful bird.

‘Must be important news, then,’ she encouraged him.

‘You can say that again. One of these days, your sister will go too far!’

‘I thought she already had,’ Laura retaliated, wishing he wouldn’t prowl so. It made her feel restless. And it set off his long, sinewy legs and lean thighs too well.

He was already on the other side of the room, his hands thrust in his pockets, shoulders hunched as he brooded at her. Such an electric force field surrounded him that, by moving around, he was filling her tiny bedsit with his energy. If he carried on much longer she’d begin to feel suffocated by it.

‘Daniel rang me,’ Max said sternly.

‘I thought you and your brother hadn’t spoken since the day he married my sister,’ she remarked, lacing her voice with asperity.

Family feuds were so stupid in her view, and Max was small-minded where Fay was concerned. He owed her sister more courtesy than a flat rejection of her existence.

But then, Fay had said he was carrying a torch for her. Max wouldn’t have liked being superseded by his less prepossessing brother.

Max grunted. ‘I’ve been funding Daniel for the last few years.’

‘Oh. That’s very brotherly of you.’ She waited while Max did his best to wear out her cheap carpet.

‘I did it for the kids.’

She stiffened. Was he going to say more? ‘So you should—’

‘But,’ he went on, snapping out the word and glaring at her for interrupting, ‘it seems I was funding something else.’ He came to a halt in front of her, his face unnervingly grim.

‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she asked, prompted by his air of utter disgust.

Her sister had done some stupid things in her time. She and Daniel acted like flower-children, wandering around the country with travellers in battered old vans and defying authority.

‘Daniel and Fay have been arrested,’ Max said starkly.

Her heart sank. ‘Trespass? Again?’ she ventured, remembering she’d had to bail Fay out last time for refusing to leave some farmer’s land.

‘You don’t understand.’ Max’s mouth tightened as if he didn’t want to continue. His shoulders lifted and stayed high while she stared at him anxiously, then he said, punching out the words with barely contained anger, ‘They’re in jail in Marrakesh.’

Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open in sheer astonishment as his rage became clear. She knew how much he hated Daniel’s way of life. He was furious with his brother for blotting the family name. It was all right to get village girls pregnant and dump them, that was what the squirearchy did for kicks, but jail was unthinkable.

‘For... what?’ she asked breathlessly, her whole attention on his narrowed, glittering eyes.

‘Possession of drugs.’

‘Oh, God!’

She slumped heavily into the chair, staring into space, appalled.

‘There’s no time for histrionics—’ he began testily.

‘What histrionics? Did you see histrionics?’ she seethed through tightly clenched teeth. ‘I was thinking about the children. What’s happened to them? And what can we do about getting Fay and Daniel out—?’

‘Nothing,’ he said brutally.

‘Nothing? But—’

He silenced her with a scowl and a wipe-out gesture of his expressive hands. ‘The kids are the first priority.’

‘Of course, but—’

‘Listen, will you?’ he snapped tetchily.

‘You’ve had time to get used to this!’ she protested.

‘I’m just trying to get my head around what’s happened. OK. So who’s looking after Perran and Kerenza now?’

‘A traveller friend who’s now got tired of playing mothers and fathers.’

Her mind reeled. ‘In Marrakesh?’

‘No. Port Gaverne.’

Laura’s mouth fell open again. ‘But that’s in Cornwall!’ He gave her a slow, mocking hand-clap, making her feel stupid. ‘I don’t understand...are you telling me...Fay’s in Marrakesh and she left her children in Cornwall? How could she go away when Kerenza’s only a few months old?’

‘She’s not noted for her devotion to domesticity,’ Max said in a grim and disapproving voice.

Laura secretly agreed. She loved Fay, but her sister’s behaviour was beyond her. They’d always been chalk and cheese. If she had a four-year-old and a baby she’d have to be torn away from them. But then, if something came easy you didn’t value it—and Fay had always bemoaned the ease with which she fell pregnant and how the kids hampered her freedom. Laura lowered her eyes to hide the pain. She’d love her freedom to be hampered.

‘Well, thanks for telling me,’ she said woodenly.

‘Someone had to.’

‘Presumably the children are at your parents’ house right now?’

Max gave her an odd look. ‘My mother and father don’t live in the manor any more. They’ve moved to Scotland. The kids are staying in the cottage my father gave Daniel.’ He began quartering the floor again, clearly impatient to impart all the details and then go. ‘Not that he’s ever used it much. It’s been rented out most of the time, so goodness knows what kind of state it’s in.’

She remembered it. A tiny white stone building set into the side of a cliff. A narrow road ran down from it to the narrow inlet which formed Port Gaverne Bay, the less populated community next to the more bustling Port Isaac, where she’d been brought up, the child of a fisherman.

Fay loathed the cottage. She said it wasn’t big enough for a rat—and couldn’t the old man have done better than that. The Pendennis family had lived in Pendennis Manor then, further up Port Gaverne Valley. Fay had been hoping for something similar.

‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ Laura said, not sure at all.

She studied a slender leg, thoughtfully. This was a different kind of news from the sort she’d been expecting. Her face grew dreamy. Images came to her: sunny blue skies, glittering waves, dark cliffs. The smell of the sea was so real that she could almost taste the salt on her lips. For a moment she felt the spring of sea pinks beneath her feet, and then there was nothing other than the thin, worn lino.

She smiled faintly, wistfully. ‘Perran is probably having a great time on the beach every day—’

‘He’ll be there on his own by tomorrow morning,’ Max informed her sourly. ‘The friend is off to some music festival.’ He seemed as edgy as she was about the situation.

‘Well, that’s out! She can’t leave the children!’ Laura protested, bristling with indignation.

He shrugged. ‘The woman wasn’t paid to babysit. Why should she stay?’

‘Because they’re in need!’ she spluttered, amazed at people’s lack of responsibility.

‘She’s adamant about going. I don’t blame her. Fay promised they’d only be gone two days on a trip to London, and it’s now two weeks. She deliberately lied. Your sister isn’t too familiar with the truth, is she?’

Laura wished she could defend Fay. Her sister was wonderful fun to be with, but not very grounded in the real world. ‘I’m sure there’s a good reason—’

‘There is. Fay’s not cut out to be a mother and the children hinder her activities,’ Max said drily.

She winced. ‘What’s to be done?’ she asked, concentrating on the practical.

Max paused and lifted a black eyebrow. He seemed to be fixated on her softly parted mouth. She closed it and swallowed, bringing his gaze to her throat. Warmth stole over her skin and she knew she was flushing like a stupid schoolgirl. Angry with herself, she set her teeth and fixed her gaze somewhere in the mid-distance.

‘Isn’t that obvious?’ he observed smoothly. ‘If someone doesn’t get down there to take over, the kids’ll be dumped on the beach and abandoned.’

Laura wasn’t slow. She could see where this was leading. It was written all over his face. So she pre-empted him. ‘And you’re going down to look after them,’ she said, giving him what she imagined to be an admiring look. ‘Very good of you—’

‘It’s not good at all. You’re going.’

She looked at him steadily. No way. It was a suggestion so far into the stratosphere that she didn’t even fear it would come true.

She’d vowed never to return. Nor would she get involved with her sister’s children. She’d never even seen them. Kerenza was a baby. The other...

Perran was Max’s child.