Phantom Lover

by Susan Napier

  Three times in a week? Once was understandable. Twice was foolish. Three times smacked of either arrant stupidity or a plea for attention. No wonder Adam was puzzled.

  ‘That isn’t quite the point, Sara,’ Tania interceded, adopting a sternly lecturing tone. ‘You know very well why the headmistress was het up. You were warned of the consequences of you breaking the rules again and yet you still went ahead and did it. You not only let yourself down, you let your father and me down, too. Imagine how shocked and humiliated I felt, as a former head girl of the school, to be rung up and told of your disgraceful conduct—’

  ‘She didn’t ring you, she rang Dad,’ Sara pointed out. ‘She was just so mad she’d forgotten that he had moved over here.’

  ‘She is the cat’s mother, Sara,’ said Tania, using the prim cliché that had always infuriated a youthful Honor when adults had used it as a grammatical reproof. Sure enough, Sara rolled her eyes in the silent equivalent of a disgusted snort.

  ‘Mistake or not, she spoke to me first,’ Tania continued in the same patronising vein. ‘And since your father wasn’t available I exercised my responsibility as your closest adult female relative.’ Nobody remarked on Tania’s overlooking of Joy’s greater claim to a blood-tie as she steamed ahead. ‘In fact it was only due to my influence with Miss Runcie that you weren’t expelled outright. And you haven’t even bothered to thank me for my intervention.’

  Sara shrugged. ‘Thanks, Aunt Tania.’ The emphasis was just subtle enough to pass unnoticed, except to Honor who was beginning to realise that this family was anything but straightforward.

  Sara’s attitude didn’t seem like the sullen defiance of a hardened delinquent. Honor had seen a few of those at the American high school from which she had graduated. Alcohol and hard drugs had featured prominently in their protests which were invariably self-destructive. Sara, in contrast, seemed to have the serenely martyred air of someone enduring a temporary trial for the sake of the greater good of mankind.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Tania,’ Adam said, with a similar lack of enthusiasm. ‘I’m sorry you were bothered with our problems—’

  ‘It wasn’t a bother at all. Who can you rely on to help you if not your family?’ said Tania, giving him a brilliant smile that he deflected with a wry one of his own. ‘I was just surprised that no one seemed to know where you were. When I asked Joy she didn’t seem to know...’

  ‘But you didn’t tell me what you wanted him for,’ Joy began with a frown. ‘If you’d told me it was urgent I would have tried to find him.’

  Tania looked at her. ‘But I did tell you, don’t you remember?’ The old woman hesitated and Tania smiled at her soothingly. ‘Don’t worry, Joy, we understand...your memory isn’t what it was when you were younger. You panicked when I mentioned Sara and probably just got confused. Never mind. No harm done...this time.’

  Except to Joy’s confidence. Honor noticed the fleeting fear that invaded the faded brown eyes and the way the elderly hands tightened on her knife and fork. Couldn’t Tania see that her reassurances were having the opposite effect?

  ‘I’ve got a memory like a sieve, myself,’ Honor said, smiling cheerfully at Joy. ‘Especially for names. This chicken recipe of yours is really delicious by the way, Joy; you must write it down for me because I’m hopeless at remembering lists of ingredients. That’s why I became a reporter—I was always having to write things down to remember them, so I figured why not make a profession of it? It used to drive my sister crazy when I mixed up her phone messages, especially when she’d go out to meet someone for a date and it would turn out to be with someone completely different—usually some nerd she’d been trying to fob off...’

  ‘You have a sister? Older or younger?’ Joy grasped gratefully at the change of topic and too late Honor realised she should have used a different example. For a blessed moment she had forgotten her own problems.

  ‘Er—older; she lives in Manhattan.’

  ‘New York?’ Tania looked interested at the mention of the Big Apple. ‘What does she do?’

  ‘Helen’s a model,’ admitted Honor reluctantly.

  ‘A very beautiful, blonde model.’ Adam modified her bald statement in a way that set her teeth on edge.

  ‘Helen Sheldon...Helen Sheldon is your sister?’ asked Tania sharply. Honor sighed; she might have known that someone as exquisitely dressed as Tania would make the connection.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goodness, I would never have guessed,’ Tania drawled with a malicious chuckle. Honor had heard the comment so often that it was water off a duck’s back. She merely smiled politely and Tania’s eyes glittered with speculation as she positioned her next thrust. ‘Is the dress one of hers? Is that why it looks so...unfamiliar on you?’

  Great. Now everyone knew she was wearing a hand-me-down albeit an exclusive one. Honor decided there was little point in trying to preserve any of her sartorial pride.

  ‘Whenever she visits she gives me her cast-offs.’ She looked down at herself ruefully. ‘Unfortunately she and I aren’t exactly the same size... For one thing she’s five feet eleven and thin as a rake...a natural blonde, too. I’m afraid that I must have got my parents’ genetic left-overs.’ She grinned at Sara. ‘You ever see that Arnold Schwarzenegger-Danny De Vito movie Twins? That’s Helen and me...needless to say I play the De Vito part!’

  Instead of laughing Sara looked slightly green.

  ‘Are you all right, honey?’ asked her grandmother.

  ‘Uh—yeah...excuse me, I just have to go to the—uh—I’ll be back in a moment.’ She rushed out of the room, all flying elbows and knees.

  ‘Probably all that smoking playing havoc with her digestive system,’ commented Tania sarcastically. ‘You really should let me enrol her in a grooming course, Adam. It would give her so much more confidence. Then she wouldn’t have to do stupid things to make herself popular with the other girls.’

  ‘Is that why you think she did it?’ Adam asked mildly.

  Tania shrugged. ‘Isn’t peer pressure the usual reason for these things? Maybe if she could lose some of that pudge and acquire some clothes-sense she’d feel better about herself.’

  ‘It’s only puppy-fat, Tania,’ Joy interceded. ‘Remember, Mary was tall and slim so I’m sure Sara’s body will mature into a very nice figure...’ Her brow wrinkled anxiously. ‘You don’t really think she worries about it, do you, Adam? She’s never said anything to me.’

  ‘No offence, Joy, but Sara probably feels you’re a bit out of touch with modern trends,’ Tania said. ‘It’s been five years since her mother died; maybe she needs to unburden herself to a woman who is around the age Mary would have been... Perhaps I could have a word with her, Adam, coax her to talk...’

  ‘Or perhaps Honor could,’ said Joy flatly.

  Tania’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, yes,’ she said sweetly. ‘I suppose it might help to talk with someone who has the same problems. But don’t you think that Honor would be the wrong person to talk about shedding puppy-fat as one gets older? I mean, no offence, Honor, but you’re not exactly role-model material in that respect.’

  No offence? Distracted from her pondering on the subject of Adam’s newly revealed widowhood, Honor boiled at the hypocrisy of the glib catch-phrase that Tania had used twice in as many minutes. She now went on to hammer her point home. ‘You’re also a living contradiction that likenesses necessarily run in families. Your sister would be a far better role-model for Sara to emulate. Have you met Honor’s family, Adam? Do you know Helen?’

  The hunt for information was back on. Honor turned her head to watch Adam take a sip of the white wine that he had opened with the meal. He had been behaving with strange passivity for such a dominating man, she suddenly realised. And it wasn’t abstraction—his attention had been very much focused on the conversation across the dinner table. It was more likely he had been playing some kind of waiting game...watching, brooding, planning...

  Honor took a nervous gulp from her own glass. She
should never have provoked him earlier. What was he going to say now? Something provocative and clever like, I thought I did...? Yes, he’d probably love to make Honor squirm by saying something like that.

  ‘We’ve met.’

  Honor choked in mid-swallow at his succinct, unrevealing reply. Adam leaned over and gave her a sharp slap between the shoulderblades, taking the glass from her hand and setting it down on the table.

  ‘All right, sweetheart?’ he asked, his tender tone an unnerving contrast to the firmness of the blow.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ Honor coughed, wondering what he was up to now.

  He leaned closer, cupping her chin and turning her head so that he could look deep into her watering eyes. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Y-yes, yes, of course I’m sure. It just went down the wrong way,’ she stammered, feeling vulnerable to the invisible daggers she was sure were thudding into her back. It didn’t take much brain-power to work out that Tania had very possessive feelings about her brother-in-law.

  A big hand tucked an errant curl behind her ear. ‘Maybe you should go easy on the wine; it seems to have a very deleterious effect on your co-ordination,’ he teased softly, in a voice that rasped Honor’s nerves like a sandpaper caress. ‘Remember the last party we attended together? You fell asleep and I had to carry you out to the car...’

  His sensual innuendo was so disconcerting that it took a moment for her to recognise how cleverly he had mixed fact with fiction. He was talking about the night of the Valentine’s Ball. The last party they had both attended? It was the only one! But he made the bare facts sound so intimate...

  ‘That wasn’t the wine, that was the medication I was taking,’ she said, trying not to quiver at the stroke of his thumb along her captured jaw. Maybe if she could get in a little further explanation here, it would take the edge off whatever devil was driving him to play this alarming new game. ‘I was sick that night, but I had to go to the ball because I was one of the organisers—’

  His thumb shifted to press over her mouth, stopping her words. His hypnotic golden-brown eyes moved even closer, blocking out her awareness of anyone else at the table.

  ‘Poor little Cinders. How lucky you had a prince to come to your rescue. Though I must admit, after what your sister told me, I half expected some jealous swain to swoop down on me and snatch you away...’

  There was a faintly ironic undertone to his words that only Honor recognised. She flushed, remembering the lie that Helen had told him to avoid having to identify her sister.

  ‘I...there wasn’t one; Helen only said that because...’ Her whisper staggered to a halt, her lips dragging against the pad of his thumb with every syllable in a way that was infinitely disturbing. She could actually taste him on her tongue.

  ‘I did notice you weren’t wearing a wedding-ring,’ he informed her, staring at her mouth as if he knew how his thumb was making her feel. ‘Is there anyone now who might feel impelled to take serious issue with your being here with me?’

  ‘No, I—’ Too late she realised the trap he had enticed her into. She took hold of his wrist and pulled his hand away from her face as she came back to the realisation of where they were. With a deft flick he twisted his hand in her grasp and firmly interlaced their fingers, grinning with an infuriating smugness as he pressed their joined hands to the snowy white tablecloth.

  ‘Oh, yes, you’re a real prince, Adam,’ she said sarcastically. She wouldn’t fall for that cunning seduction of her reason twice!

  ‘Thank you, Honor.’ He dipped his head and lifted their entwined hands to plant a kiss on her knuckles as he accepted her insulting play on words with gravely mocking sincerity. ‘You flatter me with your kind homage. I’m glad to know that you consider me noble. It makes me feel worthy of a lady of gentle blood.’

  Gentle blood? Her feelings towards him at the moment were anything but gentle! This time, when he lowered their hands he didn’t stop at the table-top and Honor found the back of her hand trapped firmly against an iron-hard thigh.

  She saw the two other women follow the motion with their eyes and was mortified. Did they think her hand was in his lap? Were they wondering what was going on under the table? Was Adam mad? Suddenly Joy looked up and Honor saw a wicked twinkle in her eye just as Tania let out an ear-splitting screech.

  They all jumped, Tania overturning her chair as she backed away from the table.

  ‘What is it?’ Adam was on his feet, serious and instantly alert, his eyes going around the room. Honor’s own heart was beating rather rapidly as she realised that, however relaxed his façade, the threats he had received must never be far from Adam’s mind. She could almost see the adrenalin pumping through his veins.

  ‘A rat!’

  ‘A rat?’ His vigilance turned to relieved annoyance. ‘Is that all? You thought you saw a rat?’

  ‘I didn’t see it, I felt it!’ Tania wailed, looking put out at his lack of concern. ‘Something horrid and furry under the table. It bit me!’ Tania displayed a pretty ankle strapped into a high-heeled sandal, revealing an appreciable amount of leg in the process. There was a neat set of reddening indentations at the back of her ankle. ‘Look it’s made a hole in my stocking. For God’s sake, Adam—’ she hopped inelegantly further away from the danger zone ‘—it might have some horrible disease. Kill it!’

  ‘Kill what?’ Sara bounced back into the room in time to hear Tania’s bloodthirsty demand.

  Horrid and furry? That rang alarm bells. Honor lowered her feet cautiously from their safe perch on the rungs of her chair and ducked her head to take a peek under the tablecloth. Sure enough there sat Monty, tail lashing, looking disgustingly pleased with himself for the havoc he had created. For one cowardly moment Honor wondered whether she could quietly shoo him away and pretend innocence, but Sara’s face had already appeared below the dangling tablecloth to inspect the culprit.

  ‘It’s probably the cat, that’s all—hey, that’s not Curry! It must be a stray. What are you doing under—? Ouch! It took a swipe at me!’ She backed out and scrambled to her feet, sucking a finger. ‘It’s really wild. You must have stood on its tail or something, Aunt Tania...’

  Her aggrieved aunt was still anxiously studying her bloodless wound. ‘Now you know why I don’t approve of animals in the house,’ she snapped. ‘If it’s a stray it’s probably brought fleas and who knows what disgusting diseases with it...’

  ‘Monty, get out from under there,’ Honor whispered urgently, taking a swipe at him with her foot to set him in motion before addressing Tania apologetically. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Blake. It’s my fault; I should have made sure my cat was—uh—secured in the kitchen. But he’s very clean. He just has this habit of begging for left-overs—’

  ‘Your cat?’ If anything Tania was even more incensed. ‘Adam, you mean to say you not only invited your...friend to stay without telling me, you also let her bring a menagerie—’

  ‘One cat is hardly a menagerie,’ Adam cut in, eyeing the furry friend now strolling nonchalantly out from his temporary lair. Unerringly Monty sought out his best chance of an ally, arching his back and purring innocently as Joy bent to pat and scold him fondly. ‘Although on second thoughts I must admit that Monty does seem to cause as much trouble as a cartload of wild animals,’ he added wryly.

  ‘Is Monty the wildcat who gave you that scratch?’ Sara guessed intuitively. The fresh indication of her lively intelligence made her dumbfounded initial reaction to Honor seem all the more inexplicable.

  Adam grinned an acknowledgement at his daughter and he was suddenly the man from her letters again, warm and good-humoured, at ease with his feelings. The man she had instinctively trusted. Honor’s confusion deepened, her instinct warring with her reason. She didn’t really know him at all, she reminded herself.

  ‘Adam, I said—’

  ‘I heard what you said, Tania, and I suppose I assumed that as family I didn’t need permission to make myself at home here. If we’re going to quibble about triviali
ties, I might point out that you didn’t ask if you could use my place this week while you were in town. You merely informed me that that was the most convenient thing for you to do.’

  ‘The situation is hardly the same—’ began Tania, haughty in her frustration.

  ‘Quite. Technically I don’t actually have to ask your permission for anything I choose to do here, since Zach saw fit to leave the house and farm property unconditionally to me.’

  Tania hadn’t inherited her husband’s home! Had it been entailed in some way? Honor held her breath for an explosion. Adam’s words had seemed like an unnecessarily cruel reminder of how much Tania had lost, but instead of exploding she seemed to soften, fluttering her impossibly long lashes at Adam’s sardonic face.

  ‘He knew how hopeless I was at managing things,’ she said, smiling wistfully. ‘He always said that if anything happened to him you’d take care of me. He trusted my future happiness and security to you, and so did I. So do I. It’s just that I sometimes forget how much things have changed. That this is our home, not just mine any more...’

  Honor admired the performance, as performance it undoubtedly was. Adam had just been skilfully reminded of his family obligations and sweetly dipped in guilt for his good fortune at the expense of the beautiful, helpless widow.

  However, she noted that Adam looked remarkably guiltless as he glibly murmured an apology for his thoughtlessness.

  ‘As a matter of courtesy, I would certainly have let you know about Honor’s visit in advance—if I’d known about it myself. But it wasn’t planned. I find that Honor is a very effective jinx where well-laid plans are concerned.’ His eyelids drooped suggestively. ‘The only way to circumvent the jinx is to take her by surprise. I didn’t want her being alone in her house right now so I swept her off her feet and brought her here, where I knew she’d be safe under my protection. You might say I was overcome by my chivalrous instincts.’