The door closed quietly behind him and Elizabeth was left feeling wrung out. In fact, she had to sit down, because her legs were threatening to collapse. In none of her wildest daydreams could she have envisaged this scenario but it was all to the good. She closed her eyes and breathed evenly for the first time since she had set foot in the house.
It was a cruel shame that Andreas was to be a fixture on the scene, but that fly in the ointment faded into insignificance next to the impossible slice of good fortune that she was, at long last, going to get to know the father she’d never known about before.
CHAPTER TWO
ELIZABETH had grown up knowing precious little about her father. In fact, practically zero, and she had worked out from an early age that questions on the subject were a no-go area. The ‘do not trespass’ sign would go up faster than the speed of light. As she had got older, when the other kids at school pressed her for details, asked her whether her parents were divorced, she had shrugged and changed the subject. Divorced parents would have been easy to deal with. Most of her friends had come from divorced backgrounds. Some had had so many marriages and remarriages within the family, and had collected so many half-siblings and step-siblings on the way, that you would have needed a degree in advanced calculus to work it all out.
The only thing she knew for certain about him was that she must have inherited his colouring because her mother had been very blond. Her auburn hair must have come from somewhere.
Then Phyllis had died and every question Elizabeth had mentally asked herself over the years had been answered, thanks to a cardboard box which she had discovered in the attic of her mother’s house under the piles of stuff, largely rubbish, which she had had to wade through. There had been letters, some faded pictures and, significantly, a name.
With the help of the Internet, it had taken her under half an hour to learn that her father was alive and kicking and living in Somerset, a widower whose wife had died many years previously.
Putting two and two together, Elizabeth had worked out that Phyllis, at the age of thirty-two, had become the most ordinary of statistics—namely someone who had dated a man and discovered she was pregnant with his child. Had she become the butt of her friends’ jokes? Had she had to endure the whispers and sniggers of people who might have been happy to see the blond bombshell brought back down to earth with a bump? People who had gossiped about the woman from the wrong side of the tracks reaching above her station? At any rate, her father had been exorcised from both their lives for ever.
Which didn’t mean that Elizabeth still hadn’t been curious. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t want to slot together some of the jigsaw pieces for herself. Armed with concrete information, she had thought long and hard, taken a few deep breaths and made the momentous decision to meet the man she had never known.
She hadn’t been entirely sure how exactly she would handle this all-important meeting, but just getting away from west London had seemed a good idea. The time spent caring for her ill parent, whilst working flat out in a frantic effort to keep a rein on the household finances, had drained her of all energy. When Phyllis had eventually passed away, Elizabeth had been a walking zombie. The thought of leaving London and the bedsit into which she had been obliged to move had dangled in front of her like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The one thing she had known for sure was that she wouldn’t barge into her father’s house and announce herself as his daughter. Being in the situation in which she now found herself, that had become even more of a certainty for Elizabeth. Her father was a sick man. The shock of discovering who she was could have untold, dire consequences.
The little batch of incriminating letters lay like an unexploded bomb beneath her underwear in the ornate chest-of-drawers in her bedroom.
* * *
The past few weeks had been an exercise in getting to know her father. Despite their wildly different temperaments, they had bonded on a level that was proving to be deeply rewarding. His irascible personality was soothed by her much more even-tempered one, and years of caring for her mother had inured her to the cantankerous demands of the invalid who doesn’t want to be the invalid, the only difference being that James was recovering well, whilst her mother had become progressively worse.
It also helped that she was avid in her curiosity about his life, which thrilled him no end, and super-human in her ability to overlook all his faults, so great was her desire to get to know him. Which, likewise, thrilled him to bits.
When to tell him who she really was? No time seemed like a good time. How would he react? Would the shock kill him? She had tried to talk to his consultant about what could happen should something unexpected happen to James, but the conversation had been so convoluted, and the poor man had looked so bemused that she had given up in the end.
If the shock didn’t kill him, then would he still want her around? Would he still like her? She was tormented by the notion that he might feel as though she had somehow deceived him, and when she tried to think of how she could explain her decision to him her brain became scrambled and she felt sick.
So Elizabeth dealt with the whole sorry situation by largely pretending that it didn’t exist. One day, she vaguely decided, the time would be right, and when that day came she would recognise it and find the courage to do what she was resolutely putting off doing.
With her unease firmly boxed and shoved away for the moment, she walked across to her bedroom window and stared down at a vista of lawns and fields that was breathtaking. For someone who had grown up in the cluttered confines of a neighbourhood where the houses were packed together like sardines in a can, this was a slice of sheer paradise.
Unfortunately, it was a paradise marred by more than just a guilty secret. In fact, she sometimes thought that the guilty secret was nothing compared to Andreas, who was capable of having the most appalling effect on her even when he was in London hundreds of miles away.
She was expected to report to him by email on a daily basis, which was fine, but in addition to the emails there were the phone calls, during which he would cross examine her like a chief inquisitor on the hunt for blood. He asked her questions that were loaded with hidden traps, into which she could inadvertently fall without warning, and made passing remarks that she interpreted as thinly veiled insults. He never forgot to let her know, directly or indirectly, that he was still suspicious of her motives, even if he had trusted her sufficiently to return to his hectic schedule in London.
Elizabeth frowned and walked towards her bathroom. James would be having his siesta, and this was her down time, during which she would have a long, lazy bath and maybe stroll in the garden, read her book or even catch up with some emails; one of the first things presented to her had been a laptop computer.
‘It’s the fastest method of communication,’ Andreas had informed her in his usual scarily cool way. ‘I’ll expect you to fill me in on my godfather’s progress every day. With your own personal laptop, there’ll be no room for excuses about forgetting.’
She hadn’t cared to think what would happen if she skipped a day, if she forgot. ‘Off with her head’ sprang to mind.
And then there were his visits.
These were frequent and often unannounced and they always, but always, left her a dithering wreck. Andreas was an expert in making his presence felt in a way that was subtle and invasive at the same time. How on earth did he always manage to find just the question that could stick a pin in her conscience and leave her flustered and hunted? She didn’t know, but he excelled at it. Those spectacular dark eyes would lock onto her, she would feel dizzy and faint and then she would babble.
Consequently, she had become adept at avoidance tactics. She would disappear to the town for a spot of shopping, which was something that didn’t interest her in the slightest, and reappear just in time to vanish for a bath
. She would join them for dinner and would endeavour to keep as low a profile as possible, cringing when James sang her praises, and breathing a sigh of heartfelt relief when she could reasonably excuse herself for bed.
Once the thought of Andreas got into her head, it lodged there like a burr, and not even the luxury of her deep bath could sweep the disturbing images from her mind. Nor was there any image she could super-impose over his. It was as if her disobedient mind had wilfully decided to commit to memory that striking, dark face, those cool, assessing eyes, that wide, sensuous mouth and, once committed, was determined to hold on to the image with ruthless tenacity.
She emerged, warm and flushed, from the bathroom with just her bathrobe around her—and ran slap-bang into the alarming sight of Andreas lounging indolently in her doorway.
It was such an unexpected sight that she had to blink a couple of times because she was convinced that what she was seeing was just a continuation of what she had been thinking only moments before.
The illusion was well and truly shattered when he spoke.
‘I knocked.’
Elizabeth went bright red and stared at him until he shook his head impatiently. He walked forward into her room, half-closing the bedroom door behind him, which sent her nerves rocketing into even deeper, helter-skelter frenzy.
‘What are you doing here?’ she squeaked, following his every movement with trepidation. He was the last person she had expected to see. In fact, he wasn’t due a visit until the weekend, two days hence.
Andreas wasn’t sure whether to be amused or thoroughly irritated by her obvious dismay. No one could ever accuse the woman of enjoying his company, he thought. In fact, give her a magic wand and he was pretty sure that her first wish would be to make him disappear. But he had knocked, which as far as he was concerned gave him every right to enter when his knock hadn’t been answered.
Anyway, this wasn’t a social call, and he wasn’t about to let her scuttle into hiding until it was safe to emerge, which would be when his godfather came down later for his cup of afternoon tea.
‘I’ve come to see you,’ Andreas said smoothly. ‘I wanted to get hold of you without James, so I timed my visit to coincide with his siesta. Aren’t you flattered?’ He looked round the room curiously. ‘Would you believe, this is the first time I’ve been in this particular bedroom? Nice, if a bit heavy on the pastel shades and chintzy fabric. The four-poster bed has Portia’s touch written all over it. She had a flair for the showy.’ Inspection over, he turned to Elizabeth, devoting every ounce of his attention to her wary, flustered face.
‘What do you want?’ Elizabeth cleared her throat and tried very hard to disengage from the reality of her naked body under the bathrobe.
‘How are you finding it here?’ He walked across to the imposing bay-window and perched on the ledge, his long legs stretched out and loosely crossed at the ankles. ‘I mean, we’ve had innumerable conversations about James and his progress, but surprisingly few about you.’
‘You’ve barged into my bedroom to talk about how I’m enjoying the job?’ Elizabeth felt a rare surge of anger, because this was really too much. Did he imagine that she was undeserving of even a modicum of privacy? Did he think that because he had set himself up as her taskmaster that he could do whatever he wanted?
‘I didn’t barge into your bedroom. I very politely knocked and, when there was no answer, I entered. If you’re that obsessive about your privacy, then I suggest you lock your bedroom door as a matter of course.’
‘I would have, if I’d known you might have been prowling around,’ Elizabeth muttered to the ground.
‘But, as a matter of fact, your job satisfaction is only one of a few things I want to talk to you about.’
‘The others being…?’ She momentarily forgot her embarrassing state of undress, because she couldn’t think of anything Andreas might want to chat to her about that was going to be to her benefit. The fact that he had travelled down especially to catch her when James wasn’t around sent a shiver of apprehension racing up and down her spine.
‘I’m more than happy to have this conversation here,’ he drawled by way of response. ‘But you might want to get changed and join me in James’s office downstairs.’
Which brought Elizabeth right back down to earth at lightning speed. Her fingers tightened on the cord around her waist, threatening to cut off circulation, and she nodded at him tightly.
‘And don’t even consider stretching it out until James wakes up in two hours’ time. Or even gate-crashing his siesta so that he can chaperone you.’
‘I wouldn’t do that. Don’t you think I know how important it is that James has his rest during the day so that he can build his energy back up?’
‘Of course you do,’ Andreas said in a honeyed voice. ‘Although I can’t help but notice how much more visible you are when James is around. Almost as though you don’t like being in my company. But then that’s probably me just being cynical.’
‘You are a very cynical person,’ Elizabeth agreed on a sigh, and Andreas shot her a look of open disbelief.
‘I don’t suppose anyone ever tells you anything like that, because everyone is so desperate to please you, but you are cynical. It’s not a very nice trait.’ Over the course of time, James had told her about Andreas’s girlfriends, or ‘blasted airheads’, as he liked to describe them. Whilst Elizabeth knew that she shouldn’t really indulge in gossip about him behind his back, curiosity had driven her to listen, and what she had learnt had pointed to a guy who played the field with the same ruthless determination as he played the stock markets, always making sure never to stay with one woman long enough for her to get any silly ideas. If that wasn’t cynicism, then what was? Even though she had been deprived of the whole two-parent business, and even though she had seen lots of marriages first hand that had ended in tears, Elizabeth still firmly believed in love.
‘Not a very nice trait?’ Andreas paused on his way out to repeat her frankly spoken remark with incredulity. He had long decided that diplomacy was not one of her more prominent characteristics, but the softly spoken put-down still managed to get under his skin.
‘Some people may think it’s okay,’ Elizabeth told him hurriedly and he raised his eyes skywards with a long-suffering expression.
‘I’ll expect you in the office in fifteen minutes,’ he told her abruptly, not giving her any ghost of an opportunity to latch onto some other random topic which might ambush him into one of those dizzying side roads that her brain seemed to love. He had never met a woman like her. Not only was ‘coy’ an alien word to her vocabulary, but she could divert him from whatever he happened to be saying with an ease that would have had members of his board gasping with envy.
The last time he had come home, he had casually mentioned over dinner that a dog had almost ended up under the wheels of his Ferrari, only to find himself treated to a disingenuous diatribe on fast cars—which were a threat to other road users, and totally unnecessary, given that a much slower car could easily get a person from A to B without running over poor, innocent animals en route. All counter arguments had fallen on deaf ears, and much to his godfather’s vast amusement, he had found himself back on the road, doing thirty miles per hour, searching the roadside to make sure that the dog had in fact escaped an early death.
On certain issues, the shy, blushing maiden was not at all backward in coming forward, he had found.
And yet she continued to be patently awkward in his presence. It was a conundrum which played on his mind a lot more than he cared for.
He would not have been struck dumb with surprise if she had dawdled in her room, against his express instructions, but in fact he heard her timid knock on the door precisely fifteen minutes after he had poured himself a cup of coffee and settled behind the desk in James’s grand office.
She h
ad changed into one of her seemingly never-ending supply of nondescript flowered dresses, which were perfect for the long, warm summer days but incredibly unflattering. This one was shapeless, and over it she wore a very thin cardigan that reached practically down to the tops of her thighs.
‘I’ve printed off your report,’ she said, walking hesitantly towards the desk and proferring him two sheets of paper.
‘Why would I want to read what you’re perfectly capable of telling me yourself face to face?’ He gestured to the chair in front of him and then folded his hands lightly on the desk.
‘Right. Okay; yesterday James and I went into town. I thought it’d be nice for him. There’s a lovely tea shop down one of the side roads, although naturally I made sure that he didn’t stray from his diet.’ She waited for some interruption from him, perhaps reiterating the importance of obeying doctor’s orders when it came to James’s food intake, but he carried on watching her in complete silence—which was really, really offputting. ‘He…he’s thinking of joining a bridge club, in fact. One of his friends, a lovely gentleman by the name of—’
‘We were going to talk about you,’ Andreas smoothly cut in. ‘How you’re enjoying working for my godfather. You two seem to have clicked. In fact, I hear from him regularly, and it seems that you can’t put a foot wrong.’
Elizabeth smiled with real pleasure, and for a few seconds Andreas was distracted into thinking how much that smile lit up her face and transformed her from average to… He frowned and focused.
‘It’s been absolutely, well, brilliant meeting Mr Greystone—James. He’s an incredible man. So, if you’re asking me how I’m enjoying working here, then I can tell you with my hand on my heart that I’m loving it.’
Andreas held up one imperious hand. ‘I get the picture.’ He steepled his fingers together and looked at her thoughtfully, his expression shuttered. ‘I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I didn’t think you’d last the month. James is ferociously intelligent and he can be very wilful if he puts his mind to it. He has almost no tolerance for anyone who can’t keep up with him, and the fact that he’s physically constrained now against his will, the fact that he’s in a position of dependency, has made him unbearably short-tempered. I thought you would have been screaming and waving the white flag before you had time to fully unpack.’
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