Accidental Mistress

by Williams Cathy

  ‘Do you work?’ he asked at last, curiously. ‘Does it not pay enough for you to have a holiday now and again? When was the last time you had a holiday?’

  ‘I might be stubborn,’ Lisa said tartly, ‘but at least I’m not nosy.’

  ‘Everyone’s nosy,’ Angus said, looking at her with a mixture of curiosity and amusement.

  ‘Oh, are they? What a strange world you must live in, where everyone’s nosy and willing to accept money wherever it comes from and whatever the circumstances.’

  He looked even more vastly amused by that and she felt the colour crawl up into her face, making her hot and addled. For a second she was the fourteen-year-old girl in her party frock again, anxiously waiting at the front door for her first date to arrive, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the packing cases, still only halfunpacked in the small living room, assured by her parents that she looked lovely, but knowing deep down that she just looked plain and unexciting. She was only ever exciting in her mind. In reality, she knew that she was shy and reserved and that any self-confidence she had acquired over the years was really only a thin veneer.

  ‘I hope you’re not laughing at me,’ she said now.

  ‘Laughing at you?’ His dark eyebrows shot up. ‘Someone with such admirable principles?’

  He was laughing at her. He was thinking that she was gauche and ingenuous and naïve and heaven only knew what else besides.

  ‘Well,’ she said, trying to sound composed, ‘in answer to your questions, yes, I have got a job, yes, I suppose I could just afford to go abroad now and again—well, once a year, anyway—but something would suffer, and as a matter of fact I have never been on a holiday.’

  ‘You have never been on a holiday?’ He sounded incredulous and she glared at him defensively.

  ‘That’s right,’ she snapped. ‘Is it so unheard of?’

  ‘Largely speaking, yes,’ he answered bluntly. He was looking at her as though he had come across a strange species of creature, believed extinct, which, against her better judgement, made her stammer out an explanation of sorts.

  ’M-my parents travelled around the country a lot... My father didn’t...didn’t like to be in one place for too long... nor Mum... They—they liked the feeling of being on the move, you see...’

  ‘How thoughtful of them, considering they had a child. Are you an only child? Have you any sisters? Brothers?’

  ‘No. And my parents were wonderful!’ she said hotly. True enough, they had been thoughtless—a conclusion she had arrived at for herself a long time ago—but in a vague, generous way. Was it their fault that she had come along? Out of the blue when her parents were already in their early forties?

  ‘And now your one opportunity lands you up in hospital.’ He shook his head ruefully, swerving off the subject with such expertise that she was almost taken aback.

  ‘I think fate is trying to tell me something,’ she conceded with a little laugh.

  Outside, night had fallen, black, cold, starless. The bright, fluorescent overhead bulb threw his face into startling contrast, accentuating his perfectly chiselled features. She wondered how she looked. The doctor had said that she had a few bruises, which probably meant that her face was every colour of the rainbow, and her hair, which had dried, would look straggly and unkempt.

  For a moment she felt a burning sense of embarrassment. It was a bit like bouncing into your favourite film star on the one day of the year when you hadn’t put on any make-up and were suffering from a bad cold.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had been bothered by her looks—or rather her lack of them. She had stopped looking into mirrors and wistfully longing to see a tall, big-busted blonde looking back at her. She had come through that awkward, insecure adolescence and had emerged a sensible, down-to-earth woman who could handle most situations.

  Now, though, lying here on the hospital bed, Lisa felt plain. Too pale, too fine-featured ever to be labelled earthy or voluptuous, hair too brown, without any interesting highlights, breasts too small.

  ‘Where exactly do you work?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you really interested? You mustn’t feel that you’ve got to be kind or that you’ve got to stay here with me for an appropriate length of time.’

  ‘Stubborn,’ he drawled, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands behind his head, ‘and argumentative.’

  Argumentative? Her? When was the last time she had argued with anyone? Not for years. She had always been quite happy to leave the arguing to the rest of the world.

  ‘I am neither stubborn nor argumentative,’ she defended heatedly, then smiled a little sheepishly because her tone belied the statement. ‘I just wouldn’t like you to feel that you should stay here and chat to me simply because your driver knocked me over.’

  ‘I never do anything unless I want to,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I certainly do not profess interest in people unless I am genuinely interested in them.’

  ‘In that case, I work at a nursery.’

  ‘Lots of screaming children?’ He didn’t look as though the idea of that was in the slightest appealing and she wondered again about his lifestyle. She had never even thought to ask herself whether he was married or not. Somehow, he didn’t give the impression of being a married man. Too hard, perhaps, too single-minded. Certainly, if his expression was anything to go by, he didn’t have much to do with children and he liked it that way.

  ‘Not all children scream,’ Lisa pointed out reasonably. ‘And when they do there’s usually a cause. Anyway, I work at a garden centre—Arden Nurseries, if you must know.’

  She would have to ring Paul and tell him what had happened. He would be as disappointed as she was. He had been thrilled when she had won the holiday. He was always telling her that she worked too hard, but in fact she enjoyed it. She loved plants and flowers. If she hadn’t left school at seventeen to enter the workforce, she would perhaps have stayed on and studied botany at university.

  ‘And where do you work?’ she asked.

  ‘An advertising firm,’ he said. ‘Hamilton Scott.’

  ‘How interesting.’ She smiled politely. ‘And what do you do there?’

  ‘Are you really interested?’ he asked, mimicking her. ‘You needn’t feel that you’ve got to ask.’ He laughed and then said, watching her for her reaction, ‘You look charming when you blush.’

  His vivid blue eyes skimmed over her face and she didn’t quite know what to say in response to his observation. This type of lazy, sophisticated flirting—if that was what it was—was beyond her. But then he worked in advertising, the glamour industry, and she worked in a garden centre, spending half her time with her hands covered in soil and compost, wearing dungarees, and with her shoulder-length hair carelessly tied up.

  ‘I own the company,’ he said casually. ‘My father founded it, ran it down with a handful of spectacularly bad decisions, and since then I have rebuilt it.’ He was still smiling, and underneath the smile she could see the glint of ruthlessness, the mark of a man to be feared and respected and courted.

  ‘How nice,’ she said, for want of anything better to say, and he laughed aloud at that.

  ‘Isn’t it? It doesn’t impress you a great deal, though, does it?’

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘Me.’

  Lisa went bright red and then felt annoyed because there was something deliberately wicked about his teasing, as though she intrigued him, and not because she was sexy, or stimulating, but because she was novel, a type that perhaps he had never encountered before, or at least never to speak to. In short, in his world of twentieth-century glamour and sophistication, she was a dinosaur.

  ‘I am always impressed when people do well,’ she said coolly. ‘My boss, Paul, started the nursery with a loan from the bank and a desire to work hard, and he made a success of it, and that impresses me as well. But mostly I’m impressed with people for what they are and not what they achieve. A person might have a nice car and live in a grand house and
travel in great style, but if he isn’t a good person, caring and thoughtful and honest, then what’s the point of all the rest?’ She meant it, too, although, hearing herself, she realised that she sounded, ever so slightly, as though she was preaching.

  ‘And money means nothing to you?’ He lifted his eyebrows fractionally and again she had the impression of being observed with curiosity and interest rather than the magnetic pull of attraction.

  ‘Only in so far as I have enough to get by.’

  ‘And you don’t yearn for more?’

  ‘No. I presume, though, that you do?’

  ‘Not more money, no,’ he said slowly, as though the question had never been put to him before. ‘I have more than enough of that. What I find stimulating is to scale the heights I have imposed on myself.’ He paused and then asked, changing the subject, which was a bit of a shame, because she had found herself hanging onto his every word, spellbound by his personality even if the feeling wasn’t mutual, ‘How long will you be in here?’

  ‘About two weeks,’ she answered. ‘With any luck, less. I would prefer to convalesce at home.’

  ‘And you have someone there to look after you? A boyfriend perhaps?’ The half-closed blue eyes watched her in a way that made her want to fidget.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said airily, ‘not at the moment.’ Implying that she was sort of resting in between bouts of heavy romance, which was so far from the truth that it was almost laughable.

  Robert, her last boyfriend, had worked in a car firm and had wanted marriage, a terraced house, two point four children and steak every Friday. She had been appalled at the prospect and had broken it off, but since stability was what he had been offering and stability was what she had always desperately wanted she had been puzzled at her immediate response when it had been offered. A break, she had thought then, will do me good. That had been two years ago and the break now seemed to be of a more permanent nature than she had originally intended.

  ‘My friend lives just around the corner, but I can manage on my own anyway.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she said, surprised. ‘I always have.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I expect you have.’ He stood up and began rolling down his sleeves, before slipping on his jacket and thrusting his hands in the pockets. ‘I find that rather sad, though.’

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ Lisa said rather more acidly than she had intended. She shrugged. ‘It’s a fact of life. It’s important to know how to stand on your own two feet.’

  ‘Do you really believe that or is that the consolation prize for a life spent on the road?’

  She flushed and looked away.

  ‘Not that that’s any of my business.’ His voice was gentler as he smiled and said, again, how sorry he was about what had happened. He handed her his card, plain white with his name printed on it, and the name of his company, and his fax number as well as three more work numbers, and an intricate abstract design at the bottom which she thought probably meant something, though what she couldn’t think.

  ‘Call me if you change your mind about the compensation I’m more than willing to give you,’ he said, and stopped her before she could open her mouth and inform him that she wasn’t about to change her mind. ‘Money might well mean nothing to you, but after this you could do with a good holiday somewhere and I would be happy to pay for it.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, propping the card against the glass of water on the table next to her.

  ‘But you have no intention of availing yourself of the offer...’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ Lisa agreed, and he shook his head wryly.

  He walked over to the door and then paused.

  ‘I’m away for the next ten days,’ he said, ‘or else I would come and look in, and please don’t tell me that there’s no need or I’ll wring your neck.’

  ‘I don’t think I could cope with a sore neck and a fractured leg as well,’ she said, smiling. He had only been with her half an hour, if that, but seeing him standing there, with his hand on the doorknob, his body already half turned to leave, she felt a sudden, inexplicable pang which surprised and disoriented her.

  She couldn’t possibly want him to stay, could she? she wondered. Wouldn’t that be altogether pathetic when he had come on what was, essentially, a courtesy visit? She should never have told him all that stuff about her parents. She seldom shared confidences, least of all with a stranger, and now she felt as though he was walking off with a little bit of her tucked away with him, and she didn’t like the feeling.

  ‘Goodbye, Lisa Freeman,’ he said. ‘You’re really rather a remarkable girl.’

  ‘Goodbye, Angus Hamilton,’ she replied, and when she tried to add a witty comment to that, as he had, nothing came out. She just continued smiling as he closed the door behind him, and then she pictured him striding along the hospital corridor, gathering admiring glances from all the nurses and female patients, walking purposefully towards his car, ready to be chauffeured back to his apartment or house or mansion or wherever it was he lived, because she hadn’t the faintest idea.

  The mental scenario so overtook the thought of lying by a non-existent pool in the sunshine that, after a while, she shook herself and wondered whether perhaps she was missing the company of a man in her life rather more than she had consciously thought.

  She had her little flat, a modern, one-bedroom place on a nicely kept estate a few miles from the nursery, so that travelling to and from work wasn’t too hazardous a prospect in her unreliable Mini. She had her friends, most of whom lived locally, and she carefully tended those relationships because in a world with no family friends became your only standby. She especially treasured them because friendships had been so hard to form as she’d roamed with her parents.

  She hadn’t felt the absence of a boyfriend in her life. Why, then, had she been so stupidly invigorated by this man—someone whom she had never met in her life before, a man who lived in an orbit as far removed from hers as Mars was from the planet Earth?

  She hadn’t thought that she was lonely, but—who knew?—perhaps she was.

  Paul, her boss, had been trying for ages to arrange a blind date between her and his cousin, whose credentials seemed to be that he was a nice chap and supported the same football team as Paul did. Maybe, she thought, buzzing the nurse for some more painkillers because her leg, which had been feeling fine, was now throbbing madly, she would give him a go.

  That settled in her mind, she eyed Angus Hamilton’s business card and then shoved it inside the drawer of the beside cabinet, where it was safely out of sight and safely out of mind.

  Then she got down to the overdue business of ringing her closest friends, who sympathised with her bad luck and promised to visit with magazines and flowers and grapes—what else? She also phoned Paul, who soothed and clucked like a mother hen and told her that there was no need to rush back to work until she was ready, but could she tell him where that number for the delivery firm who were supposed to have delivered some shrubs that morning was, because they hadn’t and he intended to give them an earful?

  Then she settled down, closed her eyes and spent the night dreaming of Angus Hamilton.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS two months before her leg was more or less back in working order. She was confined, by Paul, to doing what he called sitting duties, by which he meant tackling all the paperwork.

  ‘All very restful,’ he assured her, then proceeded to produce several box files of papers which were in a rampant state of disorder and left her to it.

  But she was busy, and for that she was grateful. Only occasionally did she think about the missed holiday, wondering what it would have been like and promising herself that she would get there. Some time. Possibly even during the summer, although Paul didn’t like any of his staff, least of all her because he depended on her, to take their holidays during the busiest months of the year.

  Rather too often for comfort, s
he thought about Angus. She must, she thought, have absorbed a lot of detail about him because he still hadn’t conveniently faded into a blurry image. She could still recall quite clearly everything about him, even little nuances which she must have unconsciously observed as he had sat there on the hospital chair talking to her, and stored away at the back of her mind.

  She hadn’t told a soul about him. Not her friends, not Paul. He was a secret, her secret. Instinct told her that to talk about him would give even more substance to his memory.

  He wasn’t about to reappear in her life, was he? What was the point of inviting curiosity about someone who had appeared and vanished as quickly as a dream?

  She was so utterly convinced of this that when, nearly three months after she had last seen him and weeks after she had joyfully relegated her waking stick to the broom cupboard under the stairs of her flat, she found his letter lying on her doormat she was so shocked that she felt her breathing become heavy and her hands begin to perspire.

  She knew who the letter was from even before she ripped open the envelope. The writing was firm, in black ink, and the postmark was London. Apart from Angus Hamilton, she knew no one else in London who would send her a letter.

  The message was short and to the point. He was going on a cruise with a few friends and would she like to accompany them. ‘Of course,’ she read, sitting down on the small sofa in her lounge and tucking her feet underneath her, ‘you will not even think of refusing this invitation. Consider it an act of charity on your part to ease my guilty conscience over the accident.’ As a postscript, he had added, ‘I trust you are now back on both feet.’

  Of course, she had no intention of accepting, never mind his guilty conscience. She kept the letter in her bag and pulled it out whenever there was no one around, and then told herself why she had no intention of accepting his invitation.