by Penny Jordan
Beth smiled loftily and disbelievingly at him.
‘That’s easy to say now,’ she told him cynically. ‘You don’t fool me, Alex. I’ve been caught that way before.’
‘Beth, you’re wrong,’ Alex protested stubbornly. ‘I love you.’ His voice softened and then roughened slightly. ‘And I believe that you love me...from the way you loved me just now... If that wasn’t love, then just exactly what was it?’ He reached out and touched a fingertip to her swollen lips.
‘That wasn’t love, it was just lust—just sex, that’s all,’ Beth interrupted him scornfully.
‘Just sex?’
‘Just sex,’ Beth confirmed firmly. Why was the look in his eyes making something hurt so much deep inside her chest? He didn’t really care about her. She’d be a fool if she started believing that he did. He was another Julian, just out for what he could get.
‘I know exactly what’s going on, Alex,’ she told him coolly. ‘Your cousins pay you to put as much new business their way as you can.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘I can’t blame you for trying to push me into buying from them, I suppose, but what I can do is make it plain to you that it’s a ploy I’m simply not going to fall for. I may have been a gullible little fool in the past, but I’m not any more.’
‘I understand,’ Alex told her gently. ‘Another man has hurt you badly. I’d like to kill him for it, but more than that I’d like to take the pain away for you, Beth. I’d like to love you whole and happy again. Do you still love him?’
‘Julian Cox?’ Beth looked scathing. ‘No, the man I thought I loved, the man I thought loved me, never really existed. Julian was like you. He just wanted what he could get out of me financially. Fortunately for me, though, unlike you, he wasn’t prepared to use sex to get it.’
‘You weren’t lovers?’ Alex asked her swiftly.
‘You and I aren’t lovers,’ Beth couldn’t resist telling him. ‘We just had sex. And, no, Julian and I didn’t have sex. I suppose part of the reason I wanted you was because I was just quite simply sexually frustrated,’ she told Alex carelessly, with a small dismissive shrug, before adding musingly, ‘Perhaps I should give your cousins a small order after all. You were very...thorough...’
Beth knew that she was behaving outrageously, but something was driving her on, forcing her to do so. Some protective, deep-rooted instinct for self-preservation was warning her that she must use every means she could to keep Alex at bay emotionally, to make sure that there was an unbridgeable distance between them.
‘My God, if I thought you actually meant that—’ Alex swore savagely.
‘I do mean it,’ Beth fibbed, tilting her head defiantly.
‘So you don’t love me?’ Alex demanded quietly.
‘No. No, I don’t love you,’ Beth agreed in a slightly tremulous voice.
There was a long, deathly silence and then Alex said bleakly, ‘I see...’
He started to get dressed, and without looking at her he continued, ‘In that case I’d better drive you back to Prague.’
‘Yes, I think that would be a good idea,’ Beth agreed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WHAT ARE YOU looking at?’
Alex didn’t move as his mother raised herself up on her tiptoes and looked over his shoulder at the photograph he was studying. Her face became sad and shadowed as she recognised it.
‘You still feel the same way about her.’
It was a statement, not a question, and Alex simply nodded as he replaced the photograph he had taken of Beth in Prague back in his wallet.
‘Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry,’ his mother sympathised.
‘Not half so sorry as I am,’ Alex told her dryly.
Alex’s mother had heard the full story about her son’s meeting with Beth in Prague and the events that had followed it from Alex himself, after he had returned home to England to take up a new appointment as the Chair of Modern History at a local university. It was a prestigious appointment, and one she felt her cherished only child entirely merited, but it had soon become plain to her that Alex was far from happy. When questioned he had grimly explained to her that he had fallen in love with a girl who had not returned his feelings, a statement which had aroused all his mother’s protective maternal instincts. How could any woman not love her wonderful son?
In any other circumstances Alex would have been amused by her reaction. His mother was neither possessive nor clinging, quite the opposite, and she had taught him to value his independence as she and his father valued theirs. Loving someone meant allowing them the right to choose their own way of life, she had always told him. One thing Alex had not told her, though, was that he and Beth had been lovers—or rather, as Beth had so clinically put it, had had sex. That was something that was far too private to be discussed with anyone. The truth was that Beth might only have had sex with him, but he had quite definitely made love with her. Made love, and put love, his heart and soul, his whole self, into every kiss, every touch, every caress he had given her.
Even now he could hardly believe the accusations she had made against him. The day after he had left her at the hotel following their return from the castle he had gone to see her, only to discover that she had checked out of the hotel without leaving a forwarding address.
It had been some time before he had been able to return home, and he had lost count of the number of occasions he had been tempted to get in his car and drive to Rye-on-Averton to see her, to demand an explanation...to beg for a second chance. But on each occasion his pride and his self-respect had stopped him. If she didn’t love him then he had no right to try and compel her to accept him. But how could she have responded to him the way she had if she did not love him?
‘Lucy Withers’ daughter is back from Greece. She really is the most pretty girl. I saw her the other night when I called round to see Lucy. Do you remember the way she used to follow you around?’
Alex shook his head.
‘Nice try, Ma, but I’m afraid it isn’t going to work. You can’t stop a haemorrhaging artery with a sticking plaster,’ he told her grimly.
‘Why don’t you go and see Beth...talk to her...?’ his mother urged him softly.
Alex shook his head.
‘There wouldn’t be any point.’
He couldn’t tell her that to do so would, in his eyes at least, be tantamount to forcing himself on Beth, and besides, he didn’t think he could face the look in her eyes when she told him she didn’t want him. He still woke up in the night, his body tensing in denial as he relived the first time. To go from the heights he had believed they had both reached to the depths of despair he had felt when she had told him that she didn’t love him had been too much to endure at one gulp.
‘Well, you know best,’ his mother told him, and then added, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you—your aunt telephoned. The authorities have released the stolen glassware back to them at long last. You know they were told that it had been recovered but the police wouldn’t tell them anything else?’
Alex nodded.
‘Well, it turns out that it had been stolen on the orders of a gang of criminals who were using it as bait to draw in unwary foreign buyers. They promised them glass of a similar quality as a means of getting their hands on foreign currency, but in reality fulfilled the orders they took with the very poorest quality, cheap stuff. The whole thing only came to light when customers started complaining to their own embassies about the orders they had received— ‘Alex! Alex! Where on earth are you going?’ his mother demanded as Alex suddenly started to stride towards the door.
‘Alex,’ she protested, but her son wasn’t listening.
His mind working overtime, Alex hurried out to his car. As he swung his powerful BMW into the main stream of traffic his thoughts were busy.
Supposing Beth had been caught in this scam hi
s mother had just described to him?
He didn’t live very far away from his parents—less than fifteen minutes’ drive. He soon pulled into the driveway to the large Edwardian mansion where he owned a handsome ground-floor apartment.
‘Alex, it’s beautiful!’ his mother had exclaimed the first time he had shown it to her. ‘But it’s far too large for a single man.’ She had looked hopefully at him, but he had shaken his head.
‘I like my home comforts and my own space,’ he had told her, but what he had not told her was that when he had been viewing the apartment what had clinched the quick sale for him had been the resemblance of the drawing room to the salon at the castle where he and Beth had made love.
There had been many times since he had bought it when he had looked into the flickering flames of the fire and wondered if he was crazy to torment himself the way he was doing...many, many times when he had had his hand on the receiver to dial the number of a builder to come and take the fireplace out. And then he had looked into the flames and remembered the way he had seen the firelight flickering shadows on Beth’s body what seemed now like a lifetime ago, and he just hadn’t been able to make the call.
There was no need for him to pack anything—Rye-on-Averton wasn’t that far away.
Half an hour later, as he swung his big car out onto the motorway slip road, it was as though he had already driven the route before, and in his thoughts he already had.
This wasn’t mere indulgence of his own needs and feelings, he assured himself as the powerful car ate up the miles. This was a duty, an almost sacred charge. An act of responsibility, an act of faith...an act of love.
* * *
White-faced, Beth replaced her telephone receiver. She had spent most of the morning on the telephone, and the call she had just received from the Board of Trade had confirmed what she had already begun to fear. The factory...her factory...simply did not exist. She had been conned...cheated...
Beth sat down on the floor of the storeroom and covered her face with her hands. What on earth was she going to do? It was bad enough that she had wasted all this time reliving what had happened in Prague with Alex, reminding herself of...of things she just did not want to remember: the silent drive back to Prague, her decision the moment she reached the hotel to find somewhere else to stay, just in case Alex refused to accept what she had told him and just in case she weakened...just in case her emotions weren’t as uninvolved as she had claimed...
Then there had been her visit to the factory with the gypsy: the peculiar silence of the factory itself, the ramshackle untidiness of it, the overgrown car park, and then the oddly sumptuous office, with its dirty faded wallpaper and its completely contrasting heavily locked cabinets filled with that beautiful glass.
Beth winced as she remembered how nearly she had backed out of giving them an order when she had been told just how much glass she would have to take.
‘That’s far too much,’ she had protested. ‘I can’t afford to buy so much.’
In the end they had agreed that she could divide the order into the four different colours of glass, but she had still needed to go back to her new hotel and ring home, to persuade her bank manager to increase her overdraft facility.
‘I can’t increase it to that level,’ he had protested. ‘The business doesn’t merit it. You don’t have the security.’
Beth had thought frantically.
‘I have some security,’ she had told him, and it was true; she’d had the shares her grandfather had given her for her twenty-first birthday and an insurance policy that was supposed to be the basis for her pension. In the end her bank manager had agreed to lend her the money, secured by these assets.
She had returned home from Prague, jubilant at having succeeded in securing the order—and on her own terms. But her jubilation had been short-lived—rootless, really—and underneath it there had been a vast subterranean cavern of pain and loss which she had fought valiantly but hopelessly to deny.
‘It was just lust—just sex, that’s all,’ she had told Alex, but she had lied... Oh, how she had lied...to herself as well as to him. The tears on her face when she woke from her longing dreams of him and for him told her that much.
‘I love you,’ he had told her, but she knew he hadn’t meant it.
‘I don’t love you,’ she had said, and she certainly hadn’t meant that.
How was it possible for her to have fallen in love with him after all she had done to try to protect herself, all she had told herself...warned herself...? Beth had no idea, and in the weeks following her return she had been too exhausted by the pain of keeping her feelings at bay, too driven by the fear of what was happening to her, to look too deeply into the whys and wherefores of what had happened. It was enough, more than enough, just to know that it had. To know it and to bitterly, bitterly wish that she did not.
The only thing that had kept her going had been the thought of her glass, her precious, wonderful glass, and now, like the love Alex had claimed he felt for her, that too had revealed itself to be false and worthless.
Her telephone rang and she tensed. Twice since her return home she had received calls from Prague. On one occasion it had been the hotel, telephoning about a scarf she had left behind, and the second time it had been an anonymous caller who had rung off when she’d answered the phone.
‘Alex, Alex,’ she had cried out frantically, but she had been simply crying into silence.
‘Beth, it’s Dee...’ her landlady announced at the other end of the line. ‘Is it unpacked yet? Can I come round?’
Immediately Beth panicked.
‘No. No...’
‘Is something wrong?’
Beth bit her lip. Dee was too quick, too intelligent to be fobbed off with a lie.
‘Well, actually, yes...there is,’ she admitted. ‘The order isn’t—’
‘They’ve sent you the wrong order?’ Dee interrupted before Beth could finish. ‘You must get in touch with them immediately, Beth, and insist that they ship the correct one, at their own expense and express. Tell them that if they don’t you’ll be submitting a claim to them for loss of business. Did you stipulate on your contract that the order had to be delivered in time for your Christmas market? I know they’ve already delayed delivery several times.’
‘I...I have to go, Dee,’ Beth fibbed. ‘There’s another call coming through.’
What on earth was she going to do? How was she going to explain to Kelly, her partner, that because of her...her stupidity...they were probably going to have to close the shop? How could they keep it open when they didn’t have anything to sell? How could they continue to pay their overheads when they had no money? She had already received one letter from the bank, reminding her that they were expecting her overdraft to be repaid just as soon as Christmas was over.
There was no way she was going to be able to do that now. She knew, of course, that Brough, Kelly’s husband, was an extremely wealthy man, and no doubt he would be prepared to help them out, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to be a party to that. And besides, Brough was essentially a businessman, and Beth was under no illusions about what he was likely to think of her business capabilities once he knew what had happened.
Was she never going to get a thing right? Was she always going to be taken for a fool...was she always going to be a fool?
It was all too much...much too much. Beth bowed her head. She couldn’t cry. She was beyond that—way, way beyond the easy relief of tears—and besides, she had cried so many times since her return from Prague.
Only now, when she had reached the very bottom of her personal hell, could she truly admit to herself just how deeply she had fallen in love with Alex...how much she missed him...ached for him...
* * *
Alex found Beth’s shop without any difficulty. It was, after all, on the main
shopping street of the small town. He parked his car and got out, walking towards the elegant three-storey building and pausing to study the attractively set out window for a few seconds. There was no sign of anyone inside the shop, although the sign had been turned to ‘open’. He hesitated for a few seconds, and then pushed open the door.
Beth heard the shop doorbell ring and called through the half-open storeroom door, ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’
Beth—Beth was here. Alex closed the shop door and swiftly turned, striding towards the open stockroom door.
Beth was just getting to her feet as he walked in. The blood left her face as she saw him, and for a moment she actually thought that she was going to faint.
‘Alex...you...what...what are you doing here?’ she whispered painfully, her eyes huge with the intensity of her shock.
Alex hardly dared to look at her.
The moment he had heard her voice, never mind seen her, he had been filled with such a need, such a hunger that he’d had to clench his hands into fists and stuff them into his pockets to prevent himself from taking hold of her.
As she saw the way Alex was avoiding looking at her, focusing instead on the untidy disarray of the half-
unpacked packing cases in the storeroom, Beth knew immediately why he had come. The breathtaking cruelty of it stabbed right through her.
She saw him look at the crude unsaleable items of her order which she had already unpacked, and then, for the first time, he looked directly at her, with an expression in his eyes which she immediately interpreted as a mixture of distaste and pity.
Immediately her hackles rose defensively. Immediately she knew exactly what he was doing, that he had come to crow over her, to mock and taunt her, to tell her ‘I told you so’. The fact that her thought processes might be a little illogical didn’t occur to her; her emotions were far too aroused and overwrought for any kind of analytical thought.