by Penny Jordan
‘I…’ Verity hesitated. She too knew what it was like to feel alone, to feel abandoned, to feel that you had no one.
‘Your father—’ the nurse was beginning firmly, but Honor shook her head.
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t want…He’s away…on business and he won’t be back until…until next week,’ she responded.
The nurse was pursing her lips.
‘Look, if it helps, I’ll wait…and take full responsibility,’ Verity offered.
‘Well, I don’t really know. It is most unorthodox,’ the nurse began. ‘Are you a relative, or—?’
‘She’s…she’s going to be my new mother,’ Honor cut in before Verity could say anything, and then looked pleadingly at her as the nurse looked questioningly at Verity, seeking confirmation of what she had just been told.
‘I…I’ll, er…I’ll just wait here for you,’ Verity responded, knowing that she ought by rights to have corrected Honor’s outrageous untruth, but suspecting that there was more to the girl’s fib than a mere desire to short-circuit officialdom and avoid waiting whilst the hospital contacted whoever it was that her father had left in official charge of her.
It baffled Verity that a parent—any parent, male or female—could be so grossly neglectful of their child’s welfare, but she knew, of course, that it did happen, and one of the things she intended to do with her new-found wealth was to make sure that children in Honor’s situation were not exposed to the kind of danger Honor had just suffered. What Verity wanted to do was to establish a network of secure, outside-school, protective care for children whose parents for one reason or another simply could not be there for them. She knew that what she was taking on was a mammoth task, but she was determined and it was also one that was extremely dear to her heart.
It was almost an hour before the nurse returned with Honor, pronouncing briskly that she was fine.
‘I’ll run you home,’ Verity offered as they walked back out into the early summer sunshine.
Honor had paused and was drawing a picture in the dust with the toe of her shoe.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Verity asked her.
‘Er…Dad doesn’t have to know about any of this, does he?’ Honor asked her uncomfortably. ‘It’s just…Well…’
Verity watched her gravely for a few seconds, her heart going out to her, although she kept her feelings to herself as she told her quietly, ‘Well, I’m certainly not going to say anything to him.’
Wasn’t that the truth? The thought of having anything…anything whatsoever to do with Silas Stevens was enough to bring her out in a cold panic-induced sweat, despite the fact that she would dearly have loved to have given him a piece of her mind about his appalling neglect of his daughter’s welfare.
‘You’re not. That’s great…’ A huge smile split Honor’s face as she started to hurry towards Verity’s car.
When they did get there, though, her face fell a little as she saw the dent and scraped paintwork where she had collided with the car.
‘It’s a BMW, isn’t it? That means it’s going to be expensive to repair…’
‘I’m afraid it does,’ Verity agreed cordially.
She sternly refused to allow her mouth to twitch into anything remotely suspicious of a smile as Honor told her gravely, ‘I will pay you back for however much it costs, but it could take an awfully long time. Dad’s always docking my pocket money,’ she added with an aggrieved expression. ‘It isn’t fair. He can be really mean…’
You too, Verity wanted to sympathise. She knew all about that kind of meanness. Her uncle had kept her very short of money when she’d been growing up, and even now she often found it difficult to spend money on herself without imagining his reaction—which was why her cupboards had been so bare of designer clothes and the car she had driven before kind-heartedness had driven her to purchase Charlotte’s BMW had been a second-hand run-of-the-mill compact model.
‘I get my spending money every week. I wanted to have a proper allowance but Dad says I’m still too young…Where do you live?’ she asked Verity.
Calmly Verity told her, watching as she carefully memorised the address.
‘Can you stop here?’ Honor suddenly demanded urgently, adding, when Verity looked quizzically at her, ‘I…I’d rather you didn’t take me all the way home…just in case…well…’
‘I won’t take you all the way home,’ Verity agreed, ‘but I’m not going to stop until I can see that you get home safely from where I’m parked.’
To her relief Honor seemed to accept this ruling, allowing Verity to pull into the side of the road within eyesight of her drive.
‘Will there be someone there?’ Verity felt bound to ask her.
‘Oh, yes,’ Honor assured her sunnily. ‘Anna will be there. Anna looks after me…us…She works for Dad at the garden centre when I’m at school…I won’t forget about the money,’ she promised Verity solemnly as she got out of the car.
‘I’m sure you won’t,’ Verity agreed, equally seriously.
So Silas still had the garden centre.
She remembered how full of plans he had been for it when he had first managed to raise the money to buy it. Her uncle had been scornful of what Silas had planned to do.
‘A gardener?’ he had demanded when Verity had first told him about Silas’ plans. ‘You’re dating a gardener? Where did you meet him?’
Verity could remember how her heart had sunk when she had been forced to admit that she had met Silas when he had come to do the gardens at the house. She had hung her head in shame and distress when her uncle had demanded to know what on earth she, with her background and her education, could possibly see in someone who mowed lawns for a living.
‘It isn’t like that,’ Verity had protested, flying to the protection of her new-found love and her new-found lover. ‘He’s been to university but…’
‘But what?’ her uncle had demanded tersely.
‘He…he found out when he was there that it wasn’t what he wanted to do…’
‘What university has taught me more than anything else,’ Silas had told her, ‘is to know myself, and what I know is that I would hate to be stuck in some stuffy office somewhere. I want to be in the fresh air, growing things…It’s in my blood, after all. My great-grandfather was a gardener. He worked for the Duke of Hartbourne as his head gardener. I don’t want to work for someone else, though—I want to work for myself. I want to buy a plot of land, develop it, build a garden centre…’
Enthusiastically he had started to tell Verity all about his plans. Six years older than her, he had possessed a maturity, a masculinity, which had alternately enthralled and enticed her. He had represented everything that she had not had in her own life and she had fallen completely and utterly in love with him.
Automatically, she turned the car into the narrow road that led to the house originally owned by her uncle—the house where she had grown up; the house where she had first met Silas; the house where she had tearfully told him that her responsibility, her duty towards her uncle had to take precedence over their love. And so he had married someone else.
The someone else who must have been Honor’s mother. He must have loved her a great deal not to have married for a second time. And he had quite obviously cherished her memory and his love for her far longer than he had cherished his much-proclaimed love for her, Verity acknowledged tiredly as she reached her destination and drove in through the ornate wrought-iron gates which were a new feature since she had lived in the house. Outwardly, though, in other ways, it remained very much the same. A large, turn-of-the-century house, of no particular aesthetic appeal or design.
Both her uncle and her father had spent their childhood in it but it had never, to Verity, seemed to be a family house, despite its size. Her uncle had changed very little in it since his own parents’ death, and to Verity it had always possessed a dark, semi-brooding, solitary air, totally unlike the pretty warmth she remembered from the much smaller but
far happier home she had shared with her parents.
After her return from America her uncle had sold the house. His own health had started to deteriorate, during Verity’s absence, so he had set in motion arrangements to move the manufacturing side of the business to London. It had seemed to make good sense for both he and Verity to move there as well, Verity to her small mews house close to the river and her uncle to a comfortable apartment and the care of a devoted housekeeper.
Stopping her car, she reached into her handbag for the keys the letting agent had given her and then, taking a deep breath, she got out and headed for the house.
She wasn’t really sure herself just why she had chosen to come back, not just to this house but to this town. There was, after all, nothing here for her, no one here for her.
Perhaps one of the reasons was to reassure herself that she was now her own person—that she had her own life; that she was finally free; that she had the right to make her own decision. She had done her duty to her uncle and to the business and now, at thirty-three, she stood on the threshold of a whole new way of life, even if she had not decided, as yet, quite what form or shape that life would take.
‘What you need is a man…to fall in love,’ Charlotte had teasingly advised her the previous summer when Verity had protested that it was impossible for her to take time off to go on holiday with her friend and her family. ‘If you fell in love then you would have to find time…’
‘Fall in love? Me? Don’t be ridiculous,’ Verity had chided her.
‘Why not?’ Charlotte had countered. ‘Other people do—even other workaholics like you. You’re an attractive, loving, lovable woman, Verity,’ she had told her determinedly.
‘Tell that to my shareholders,’ Verity had joked, adding more seriously, ‘I don’t need any more complications in my life Charlie. I’ve already got enough and, besides, the men I get to meet aren’t interested in the real me. They’re only interested in the Verity Maitland who’s the head of Maitland Medical…’
‘Has there ever been anyone, Verity?’ Charlotte had asked her gently. ‘Any special someone…an old flame…?’
‘No. No one,’ Verity had lied, hardening her heart against the memories she’d been able to feel threatening to push past the barriers she had put in place against them.
She’d had her share of opportunities, of course—dates…men who had wanted to get to know her better—but…but she had never really been sure whether it had been her they had wanted or the business, and she had simply never cared enough to take the risk of finding out. She had already been hurt once by believing a man who had told her that he loved her. She wasn’t going to allow it to happen a second time.
Squaring her shoulders, she inserted the key into the lock and turned the handle.
CHAPTER TWO
AS SHE stepped into the house’s long narrow hallway, Verity blinked in astonished surprise. Gone was the dark paint and equally dark carpet she remembered, the air of cold unwelcome and austere disapproval, and in their place the hallway glowed with soft warm colours, natural creams warmed by the sunlight pouring in through the window halfway up the stairs. The house felt different, she acknowledged.
Half an hour later, having subjected it to a thorough inspection, she had to admit that its present owners had done a wonderful job of transforming it. Her uncle would, of course, have been horrified both by the luxury and the total impracticality of the warm cream carpet that covered virtually every floor surface. Verity, on the other hand, found it both heart-warming and deliciously sensual, if one could use such a word about something so mundane as mere carpet. The bedroom carpet, for instance, with its particularly thick and soft pile, was so warm-looking that she had had to fight an urge to slip off her shoes and curl her bare toes into it. And as for the wonderful pseudo-Victorian bathroom with its huge, deep tub and luxurious fitments, not to mention the separate shower room that went with it—it was a feast for the eyes.
‘It’s the best we’ve got on our books,’ the agent had told her. ‘The couple who own it had it renovated to the highest standard and if his company hadn’t transferred him to California they would still be living there themselves.’
Well, at least she had plenty of wardrobe space, Verity acknowledged a couple of hours later, having lugged the last of her suitcases up the stairs and started to remove their contents.
It had been Charlotte who had decided that they should have a ceremonial clear-out of all the plain, businesslike suits Verity had worn during her years as Chief Executive and Chairperson of the company.
‘Throw them out!’
Verity gasped in shock as she listened to what Charlotte was proposing.
‘They’re far too good for that. That cloth…’
‘…will last forever. I know. I remember you telling me so when you originally ordered them—and that was five years ago.’
‘Just after Uncle Toby died, yes, I know,’ Verity agreed sombrely.
‘I hated them on you then and they don’t have any place in your life now,’ Charlotte reminded her, adding, ‘and, whilst we’re on the subject, I just never, ever, want to see you wearing your hair up again—especially when it looks so wonderful down. Nature is very, very unfair,’ she continued. ‘Not only has she given you the most wonderful skin, a profile to die for and naturally navy blue eyes, she’s also given you the most glorious honey-blonde hair. It’s every bit as thick and gorgeous-looking as Cindy Crawford’s and it curls naturally…’
‘Cindy who?’ Verity teased, laughing when Charlotte began to look appalled and holding her hands up in defeat as she admitted, ‘It’s okay. I do know who she is…’
‘What you need to do is to cultivate a more natural, approachable look,’ Charlotte counselled her. ‘Think jeans and white tees, a navy blazer and loafers, with your hair left down and just a smidgen of make-up.’
‘Charlie,’ Verity warned, telling her friend, ‘I’ve been in business far too long not to recognise someone trying to package an item for sale.’
‘The only person you need selling to is yourself,’ Charlotte countered. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of men I’ve introduced you to who you’ve simply frozen out…One day you’re going to wake up on your own heading for forty and—’
‘Is that such a very bad deal?’ Verity objected.
‘Well, there are other things in life,’ Charlotte reminded her, ‘and I’ve watched you often enough with my two to know how good you are with children.’
It wasn’t a subject which Verity wanted to pursue. Not even Charlie, who was arguably her closest friend, knew about Silas and the pain he had caused her, the hopes she had once had…the love she had once given him, only to have it thrown back in her face when he had married someone else, despite telling her…But what was the point in going back over old ground?
She had been nineteen when she and Silas had first met; twenty-two when he had married—someone else—and what time they had had together had been snatched between her years at university, followed by a brief halcyon period of less than six months between her finishing university and being sent to America by her uncle. Halcyon to her, that was. For Silas?
Face it, she told herself sternly now as she hung the last of her spectacular new clothes into the wardrobe. He was never really serious about you, despite everything he said. If he had been he’d have done as he promised.
‘I’ll love you forever,’ he had told her the first time they had made love. ‘You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I will ever want…’
But he had been lying to her, Verity acknowledged dry-eyed. He had never really loved her at all. And why on earth he had encouraged her to believe that he did, she really could not understand. He had never struck her as the kind of man who needed the ego-boost of making sexual conquests. He was tall, brown-haired and grey-eyed, with the kind of physique that came from working hard out of doors, and Verity had fallen in love with him without needing any encouragement or coaxing. She had just finis
hed her first year at university and come home for the holidays to find him working in her uncle’s garden. He had introduced himself to her and had watched her quizzically as she had been too inexperienced, too besotted, to hide her immediate reaction to him, her face and her body blushing a deep vivid pink.
Verity tensed, remembering just how betrayingly her over-sensitive young body had revealed her reaction to him, her nipples underneath the thin tee shirt she had been wearing hardening so that she had instinctively crossed her arms over her breasts to hide their flaunting wantonness. He, Silas, had affected not to notice what had happened to her or how embarrassed she had been by it, tactfully turning his head and gently directing her attention to the flower bed he had been weeding, making some easy, relaxed comment about the design of the garden, giving her time to recover her equilibrium and yet, somehow, at the same time, closing the distance between them so that when he’d started to draw her attention to another part of the garden he’d been close enough to her to be able to touch her bare arm with his hand.
Verity could remember even now how violently she had quivered in immediate reaction to his touch.
Fatefully she had turned her head to look at him, her wide-eyed gaze going first to his eyes and then helplessly to his mouth.
He had told her later that the only thing that had stopped him from snatching her up and kissing her there and then had been his fear of frightening her away.
‘You looked so young and innocent that I was afraid you might…I was afraid that if I let you see just how much I wanted you, I’d frighten you, terrify the life out of you,’ he had told her rawly, weeks later, as he’d held her in his arms and kissed her over and over again, the way she had secretly wanted him to and equally secretly been afraid that he might that first day in the garden.
Looking back with the maturity she had since gained, she could still see no signs, no warnings of what was to be or the full enormity of how badly she was going to be hurt.