Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 16

CHAPTER EIGHT

LOLA woke next morning with swollen, gritty eyes and a dull ache where her heart used to be.

Now what? she asked herself as she picked up her wristwatch to discover that it was almost ten o’clock.

She showered and dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen where she made herself some real coffee in a vain attempt to cheer herself up. She poured herself a steaming mugful and sat at the table, gazing out at a forlorn-looking garden, the rain, which was pelting down, plastering daffodils to the sodden grass.

It was at times like this that she wished she had a normal job. With normal hours. So that for eight hours a day at least she could immerse herself in some mind-numbing tasks which might enable her to forget the conniving Geraint Howell-Williams.

But it was a futile hope. She now had six empty days looming ahead of her before she was due to fly again. Six days which stretched before her like a prison sentence. Except that while a prisoner would be dreaming of freedom she was doing her utmost not to dream of Geraint.

Which appalled her.

How could she give a second thought to a man who had so heartlessly seduced her? Who had taken her virginity without a qualm, motivated by an emotion as base as revenge?

He was a man she must now learn to hate, to ruthlessly erase from her heart and her mind—certainly not a man to dream of longingly.

Lola shuddered as she remembered her shock at discovering a tiny bruise on one aching breast in the shower this morning. Had that dark flowering been produced by the sweet way he had suckled her?

What if she really was pregnant? It was extremely unlikely, true, but stranger things had happened.

And why didn’t the thought of a baby produce stark horror—instead of a kind of wistful yearning?

The sharp ring of the doorbell had Lola pushing her coffee-mug away and then frantically running over to the mirror to check her appearance.

Ghastly!

Her red eyes made her look as though she was about to audition for the leading role in Dracula and her usually healthy, glowing skin was as white as paper. Well, that was just too bad! She hoped that Geraint recognised that he was the person responsible for making her look like a ghoul—perhaps it might make him feel an uncomfortable pang of guilt!

She pulled the front door open, her belligerent expression dying immediately when she saw that it was not Geraint who stood there but Triss Alexander, and, what was more, that the leggy ex-model was carrying her sleeping baby, cradled tightly against her shoulder.

‘Hi,’ Triss said tentatively, her enormous eyes sweeping over Lola’s pinched expression. ‘How are you?’

There was no point in lying when her face must have given her away. ‘Awful!’ said Lola, then wound a strand of hair around her finger. ‘I’m sorry I asked about your partner yesterday,’ she said quietly. ‘It must have seemed pointed and prying.’

Triss shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter—honestly. It’s a perfectly natural question to ask—I just happen to be very touchy about the subject, that’s all.’

‘Would you like some coffee?’ asked Lola.

‘Oh, I’d love some! But if I’m intruding. . .’ Triss peered questioningly over Lola’s shoulders.

‘No, you’re not intruding. Come in. What shall we do with Simon?’

‘How about if we take some cushions into the kitchen?’ suggested Triss. ‘Then we can make him a makeshift bed up and he won’t disturb us while we’re drinking our coffee.’

Lola grabbed an armful of cushions from the sitting room and then the three of them trooped into the kitchen, where Triss handed Simon over to Lola while she crouched down to create a little nest for him.

Lola stroked Simon’s dark, downy head with a gentle finger and thought of Geraint, and had to will herself not to cry as she handed him back to his mother, who snuggled him down and covered him with a blanket.

‘He’s so good,’ Lola cooed. ‘He hasn’t stirred once.’

Triss laughed. ‘That’s because he kept me awake most of the right—he’s teething. Believe me, he’s not quite the angel he sometimes appears!’

Lola poured her some coffee and the two women sat down at the breakfast bar.

‘Geraint not here?’ enquired Triss as she took a sip.

Lola’s cup never reached her mouth; it was banged down on the saucer and then her mouth started to wobble and to her absolute horror she began to cry.

Triss was on her feet immediately. She put a comforting arm around Lola’s shaking shoulders and squeezed her. ‘Please don’t cry, Lola,’ she begged. ‘Tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help. It’s Geraint, isn’t it?’

‘Y-yes!’ sobbed Lola as she scrubbed at her eyes with a crumpled-up piece of kitchen roll.

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

Lola shook her head distractedly, forcing herself to take deep breaths in an attempt to regain her composure. How could she tell anyone what had really happened? How could she reveal that she had been bedded by Geraint solely because he had been angry about the treatment meted out to his sister? Whilst she had been harbouring the sad little delusion that he actually cared for her!

‘I c-can’t tell you,’ she stumblingly explained. ‘It’s just too. . . too. . .’ ‘Humiliating’ was the word she was groping for, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it.

‘Shh,’ soothed Triss, as gently as if she had been talking to Simon, and she began to stroke Lola’s arm in a rhythmical way which was oddly comforting. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, in her low, husky voice. ‘You don’t need to explain anything to me. But if you need an objective ear, or a shoulder to cry on, then I’m always here to listen.’

Her beautiful mouth turned down at the corners and her huge eyes glittered furiously. ‘Believe me when I tell you that I am very experienced in dealing with men—especially wayward ones! I’ve had tons of practice with Simon’s father, for example,’ she finished on a grim note.

‘Wh-who is Simon’s father?’ queried Lola tentatively. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’

Triss’s mouth tensed as she shrugged her slim shoulders in a nonchalant gesture which didn’t quite come off. ‘Can you keep it to yourself?’

Lola nodded. ‘Cross my heart.’

‘It’s Cormack Casey,’ said Triss. ‘He’s the father.’

‘Cormack Casey?’ queried Lola incredulously. ‘The Irish scriptwriter?’

‘Yes. Mr Hollywood himself,’ said Triss bitterly. She gripped Lola’s forearm so hard that Lola had to force herself not to wince. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you, Lola? Please? Apart from Geraint, of course—it’s obvious you would tell him—but I don’t want anyone else to know.’

‘Of course I won’t tell anyone,’ Lola said. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell that smug Welsh swine anything she thought! ‘It was very good of you to come by,’ she said politely, and then a thought occurred to her. ‘Was it just to see me?’

Triss shot her an understanding look, as though she was quite used to having her motives questioned—one of the banes of being beautiful was that other women always assumed that you were after their men. ‘Well, I certainly didn’t come to see Geraint, if that’s what you’re wondering!’ She sighed. ‘I was under the impression that he was rather keen on you—’

‘Oh, no!’ Lola told her quickly. ‘He’s just a consummate actor, that’s all.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Triss, quietly.

‘I’m positive. Whatever there was between us is over now.’

‘Oh.’ Triss sipped at her coffee thoughtfully. ‘So what do you do next—apart from cry yourself stupid, I mean?’

Lola heard the admonishment in the model’s voice and managed a watery smile. ‘You mean I’m behaving like a wimp?’

Triss shrugged. ‘Well, yes—if you want my honest opinion. Why go to pieces? If he comes back—’

‘He won’t come back!’

Triss ignored that. ‘If he comes back and sees you looking all blotchy and down-hearted it will feed his arrogant masculine ego no end, and not do your reputation any good in the meantime! Let him look at you and wonder how on earth he could have been mad enough to let you got’

‘How?’

‘Well, you could start by changing out of that grotty old skirt and jumper. Make yourself look good—’

‘But he won’t come back—I know he won’t!’

‘And then you’ll feel good,’ continued Triss, as if Lola hadn’t spoken. ‘And that’s the most important thing: how you feel—not him! And then you won’t want him to come back!’

Lola smiled as insurrection stirred in her heart. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she agreed softly.

‘That’s better!’ Triss finished off the last of her coffee and then gave Lola a pleading look. ‘Now—has that helped at all?’

Lola nodded, slightly amazed at how her mood had suddenly lifted so dramatically. ‘Yes! It has!’

‘Good.’ Triss glanced down quickly at Simon, who had begun to stir one chubby arm and now appeared to be trying to scratch his nose with it. ‘Because I think you can help me, Lola!’

The following day, things looked decidedly rosier for Lola after she had given Simon his lunch and he was happily sitting on her living-room floor banging a wooden spoon hard against a saucepan.

Outside the sun was shining and the mad March wind had gone away, to be replaced by a gentle breeze. Perfect weather for a walk, Lola thought as she screwed up her nose in the way which had had Simon giggling hysterically all morning.

She bundled him into his woolly hat, his coat and his mittens, put him in his pram and then wheeled him outside, her eyes narrowing slightly against the watery paleness of the early spring sunshine.

She walked him round and round the grounds of Marchwood House, listening to the sound of birdsong and doing her utmost not to let her thoughts dwell on Geraint, but without very much success.

She also found herself thinking about Catrin, and Peter, and remembering the day when the news of her inheritance had arrived, like a bolt from the blue.

Lola had thought at first that there must have been some kind of clerical error. Virtual strangers did not leave you mansions worth a million pounds, did they? And she had said as much to the solicitor’s clerk.

But apparently they did. And apparently they were also well within their rights not to give a reason for their astonishing generosity. Even to the beneficiary.

The young solicitor had shrugged apologetically when Lola had demanded to know just why Peter Featherstone had made his staggering bequest. ‘Mr Featherstone wished his reasons for bestowing the gift to remain confidential—and that is one of the conditions of the bequest, Miss Hennessy.’

He had given her his bland, solicitor’s smile, but the rather insulting glint in his eyes had left Lola in no doubt as to why he believed she had been left the house!

He had obviously jumped to the very same conclusion as Geraint, thought Lola bitterly as she bumped the pram across the sunlit lawn and down towards the fountain, where a finely carved wooden seat was placed so that the sitter could listen to the gentle, comforting sounds of the nearby water.

Simon gurgled happily and Lola sat down on the seat, absently rocking the pram, the sun warm on her face, her eyes closed as she drifted in and out of coherent thought, her fatigue presumably brought on by her waking up through the night on the hour, every hour, thinking of that devious Welshman!

Oh, and the torrent of conflicting emotions which seemed to have been raging through her ever since Geraint had first walked into her life—that might also have had something to do with her tiredness, she thought wryly.

She heard no footfall on the still damp grass, had no indication whatsoever that she had a visitor until a shadow blotted the sun from her face and she opened her eyes to find Geraint towering over her, an uncompromising expression darkening his already shadowed features.

Lola’s heart fluttered more than her eyelashes and she could have kicked herself for her instinctive reaction, immediately fixing an unwelcoming expression onto her face.

‘What do you want?’ she asked him ungraciously.

‘To talk to you,’ he answered grimly.

‘I think we’ve said just about everything there is to say.’

‘I think not,’ came the unyielding reply.

‘You’re trespassing,’ she pointed out. ‘I could call the police and have you thrown off my land.’

‘I doubt it,’ he answered, with an obdurate smile. ‘I could have you in my arms and in bed before you had dialled the first digit! Couldn’t I, Lola?’

‘How dare you?’ she questioned furiously, even though her heart was beating like a drum with excitement.

He smiled again, a wicked, foxy smile which made Lola want to scream aloud—be looked so damned gorgeous! ‘Is that a challenge?’ he asked softly.

‘No, it jolly well isn’t!’

His grey eyes swivelled in the direction of the pram. ‘Why have you got Triss’s baby?’

‘She’s got man trouble,’ said Lola, scowling at him indignantly as though he were responsible. ‘She wanted to be child-free while she tried to sort something out. She’s coming back for him later on.’

‘Good.’ He sat down on the seat beside her and stretched out his long legs. ‘Did you miss me?’

‘Like a hole in the head!’

‘No, seriously.’

Lola turned to survey him with incredulous eyes. ‘Good heavens—I actually think you mean that!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why should I miss you, Geraint?’

He gave a small nod, like a man who was satisfied with the answer, and then smiled. ‘We’ll return to that later, Lola—but in the meantime I have several things I need to say to you.’

In spite of feeling that what she ought to do was to insist that he leave her property immediately, Lola was intrigued.

‘Is Simon warm enough, do you think?’ he enquired solicitously as he peered down into the pram.

Lola nodded. ‘He’s well wrapped up—and the fresh air will do him good.’

‘You like babies, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Lola agreed, if a little defensively. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing at all.’ And his grey eyes searched her face.

Well, she was not going to enlighten him! Let him squirm! Let him suffer! Let him think she was pregnant! That might make him reconsider next time he bedded a woman as some kind of attempt at retribution!

‘Say what it is you have to say, Geraint,’ she told him bluntly.

‘I know why Peter left you the house—’

‘So you told me,’ she interrupted cuttingly, her voice absolutely dripping with sarcasm. ‘Wasn’t it to do with my loose morals? Oh, no! I forgot! We disproved that theory with your surprise discovery of my virginity!’

‘That’s enough!’ he ground out.

‘But why are you looking so uncomfortable, Geraint?’ Lola turned her big blue eyes on him in a mock-trusting look. ‘After all, I’m only telling the truth!’

He studied her for a moment with a mixture of exasperation and amusement, then suddenly his dark and snarling mood seemed to evaporate. ‘Are you going to let me tell you my story?’ he queried silkily.

The trouble was that she was dying to hear it—and, what was more, Geraint knew it, too! ‘I can’t very well stop you, can I?’ she snapped.

He hesitated, as if searching for the most diplomatic way of saying it, and that brief temporising was enough to make Lola sit up. Literally. She stared at him, sensing that something momentous was about to happen.

‘Please tell me.’

‘Peter Featherstone was your father,’ he told her gently.

Her denial was instant and furious—what an absolutely absurd thing to say! Her father had died when she was eleven—he was lying!

‘No! He was not my father!’ She was on him in seconds, pummelling her fists hard against his chest, raining blows on him which would have winded a lesser man, but he did not move out of her line of fire, not once; he just let her get her anger out of her system.

‘You’re lying, Geraint Howell-Williams!’ she gasped. ‘You’re lying to me!’

And then, quite suddenly, all the fight went out of her. She stopped hitting him and slumped back against the bench, like a puppet whose strings had just been cut off.

He spoke calmly, with the solicitude of a doctor breaking bad news. ‘I’m not lying, Lola,’ he said, very quietly. ‘But you know that in your heart. Don’t you?’

She buried her face in her hands and rocked backwards and forwards. She did not make a single sound, but when she looked up her cheeks were pale and tear-stained, and pain darkened Geraint’s grey eyes as he registered her shock.

‘Don’t you?’ he repeated.

She nodded. ‘There’s no reason for you to lie, Geraint. I believe you.’ Strangely enough, she would have believed him anyway—simply on account of the truthful intensity which burned in his eyes—but there was no need for him to know that.

Not yet, anyway.

‘How—did you find out?’ she asked eventually.

‘I went to see your mother.’

‘You’ve seen my mother?’ she asked him in disbelief. ‘Where? When?’

‘Yesterday. I went to Cornwall.’

‘But how on earth did you know where she lived?’

‘You told me. When we were in Rome. Remember?’

Yes, come to mention it she did recollect mentioning the name of the small village in passing. Fancy him remembering that! Lola lifted her head slowly. ‘But why did my mother tell you?’ she whispered. ‘And why now?’

He looked at her steadily. ‘I think that the burden of the secret she’s been carrying for all these years finally became too onerous for her to bear any longer—’

‘But why tell you, Geraint?’ she asked him again. ‘A man who is a total stranger to her?’

He gave her a soft smile. ‘Maybe your mother has more perceptiveness than you give her credit for,’ he answered obscurely. ‘But perhaps you should ask her for yourself, Lola.’

Lola screwed her face up. ‘What? You mean go down to Cornwall? To see her?’

He smiled. ‘See her, certainly. But there isn’t any need to go down to Cornwall. Why don’t you try next door?’

‘Next door?’

‘Uh-huh. I brought your mother back with me. She’s at Dominic’s. And she’s waiting for you, Lola.’