“But you told me they’ll think I’m just another girl passing through your life?” she teased.
Paul chuckled. “Get out of that one big brother and don’t pretend you don’t deserve it.”
Emlyn stopped smiling as he looked at Katy. “I’ve never pretended have I, and I won’t in the future I promise.”
“I trust you,” she curled her fingers into his, suddenly very sure of her feelings for the man standing in front of her, his love exposed for all to see. “And I won’t ever pretend again either.”
* * *
“Is that really Emlyn in the restaurant with a new girlfriend?” Tony asked as Connie collected another bottle of wine for the restaurant.
“It really is,” she told him with a grin.
He frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“You are. New girlfriend indeed! He’s with Katy.”
“But Katy is…well you know how Katy is.”
“Yes I do, she’s beautiful.”
“No she’s not. She’s okay, of course she is, but she’s far too neat and professional to be beautiful, and she never wears anything other than those interminable navy-blue slacks. Not Emlyn’s sort at all.”
“You obviously haven’t seen her off duty then. If you had then you would know she’s just his sort, right down to the hair that reaches nearly to her waist and the scarlet dress that shows off every single one of her very attractive curves.”
He stared at her. “You’re kidding.”
“No I’m not, and if you accept that you’ll owe me a huge favor after this, then I’ll let you serve their wine.” She handed him the bottle of Sancerre she had just taken from the cooler.
Without another word he stalked into the restaurant while she made her way back to the kitchen, chuckling as she did so. For once she was sorry they were so busy, because if she had the time she’d phone Izzie and tell her that she’d been right about Katy and Emlyn all along. As it was, the news would have to wait until tomorrow.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Please come down early Jodie,” Izzie struggled to keep the strain out of her voice as she spoke to her sister because she knew she couldn’t tell her about Katy over the phone.
“Why, what’s the matter? Has something happened? Are you worried about the baby?” Jodie fired questions at her with such rapidity that Izzie struggled to keep up with them.
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that things will be so busy at the festival that we won’t have much time to talk, and it seems ages since you were last here. Besides, Marcus is already here, so arriving early means you’ll get to see one another sooner. How long has he been away?”
“Ten days and I’m sure I can survive a few more. As for talking, we met in London three weeks ago in case you’ve forgotten,” her sister said drily.
“No of course I haven’t forgotten but that was just me and Jack and you and Marcus. The girls and William weren’t there, and nor was Luke. It seems ages since we all had some real family time together.”
“I guess,” Jodie’s voice softened, as it always did when Izzie asked for something. Although she was only eleven years older, she had spent so much of her early life bringing Izzie up and worrying about her, that she seemed more like another daughter than a sister. “All right, we’ll come on Tuesday as long as I can get another therapist to cover for me at such short notice.”
With a sigh of relief Izzie cut the call after a few more minutes of general enquiry about her nieces. Now she could concentrate on the final details of her concert. After that she would make arrangements for her, Jodie and Katy to have a DNA test. Shaking her head in disbelief she picked up the photocopy Jack had taken of the picture of Katy as a little girl and looked at it for the hundredth time. They really didn’t need a DNA test. The proof was right there in front of her.
* * *
“Hello you,” Jodie lifted her face for a kiss as her husband came out of the Corley Hall Art Centre and round to the driver’s side of her car so that he could lean in through the window.
“Hello yourself,” he gave her a long, lingering kiss that promised much, much more when they were alone, and then turned to smile at the two little girls clamoring for his attention in the back seats.
“Well if it isn’t my favorite children. How come you’ve all arrived so early? I thought I was going to have to wait until Friday to see you.”
“Don’t be silly Papa. We’re your only children except for Luke,” his eldest daughter told him in the withering tones she reserved solely for when his teasing became too much for her. “And you did know we were coming because I heard you talking to Mama about it on the phone yesterday.”
“Oh so I did,” he opened the car door, scooped her out and smothered her in kisses before she could protest further. With a squeal of delight she forgot she was trying to be grown up and reverted to the little girl she really was, while her younger sister hastily unfastened her seat belt and launched herself at the pair of them.
Katy, who was on her way to collect Penny Brooks from where she’d been working since early morning, smiled at Marcus as she walked past the car. He grinned at her as his daughters swung from his arms, chattering nineteen to the dozen as they competed to bring him up to date with their news.
“That’s my peace shattered," he told her, and then he turned back to speak to Jodie. What he saw made him shake off Annetta and Maria and open the car door.
“Whatever is the matter darling? You’re white as a sheet. Do you feel sick or something?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“Well you don’t look fine to me. Go and find Auntie Izzie girls. She’s in the studio, and William is there too. Tell her I’m taking Mama back to the Hall because she’s feeling poorly, and tell her we’ll see her later when she’s finished rehearsing.”
“Okay,” excited to be the purveyors of such important news, and equally excited to be seeing Izzie and William again after a gap of several months, they ran off. Marcus watched them until he was sure they were safely inside the cordoned off studio, then he turned back to his wife with a worried frown.
“For goodness sake Jodie, you look terrible. Tell me what it is.”
She tried to smile but when she discovered that she couldn’t manage it, she burst into tears instead. “It was that girl Marcus. She looked exactly like my mother.”
“What girl?” He looked around him in puzzlement.
“The girl you spoke to just now,” she told him. “The girl with dark hair who smiled at you when she walked past the car.”
“I don’t remember any girl but it’s nothing to get so upset about sweetheart. Lots of people look familiar and besides, your mother died so long ago that you’ve probably forgotten how she looked.”
She gave him a fierce scowl as her tears turned to anger. “I have not! I can remember everything about her right down to how she parted her hair and the dimple at the corner of her mouth. I idolized her Marcus, probably because she was away so much when I was a child so I learned to store up every memory in case she forgot to come back to me.”
When he slid into the seat beside her and tried to take her in his arms she resisted him, pulling sharply away from him as she continued to talk. Realizing that she was suffering from the shock of seeing someone who had vividly reminded her of her past, he took hold of her hand instead and chafed it as he listened to the grief he’d heard many times before, and silently cursed the mother who had caused it.
“You already know everything about her,” she told him, her dark eyes haunted by past memories. “You know how my father died just before I was born and left her a widow at the age of twenty, and then how her second husband, Izzie’s father, also died, leaving the three of us penniless and in debt, and you know what happened after that too. You know she started singing again so she could support us, and how performing in clubs and pubs instead of the concert hall where she belonged dragged her down, and how she w
as dumped by her so- called agent when he learned she was pregnant with his child.”
“I remember everything you’ve ever told me about her,” he said soothingly. “And I know, too, how upset you are that she died as she did, and how you think it wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed with her and Izzie instead of moving to the other side of the country to train horses. I also know how you’ve spent every single day since trying to make up for it by first caring for Izzie, and then by being the best wife and mother it is possible to be but it’s time to let it go Jodie. You can’t hold onto the guilt forever, and you can’t carry on looking for the baby that was born on the side of the road when your mother crashed her car. Not a single adoption agency admits to having records about her so you really must try to accept it and move on, you know you must.”
With a weary sigh she gave in and leaned against him. “I know you’re right and mostly I manage to tuck it away in the back of my mind, but sometimes something happens that brings it all back. The thing is, Marcus, she had the same sort of charisma as Izzie. That’s why she had such a successful singing career when she was young, and that’s why I spent most of my early childhood waiting for her to come and fetch me from Nonna’s house in Italy, because to me she was like a princess, and although I try, I can’t quite forget how it felt.”
Knowing the truth behind her relationship with her mother, and how the only real love she had received as a child had been from the Italian grandmother she had lived with until she was eight, and then, later, from her stepfather before he died suddenly from a heart attack, Marcus bit his lip. Now was not the time to remind her of that, not when a girl who he couldn’t even remember seeing, let alone talking to, had stirred up such vivid memories. He nudged her.
“Come on, shift across to the passenger seat so I can drive the car over to the Hall. The sooner I can get you into a comfortable chair with a glass of wine at your elbow, the better.”
She smiled at him as the color slowly returned to her cheeks. “It’s not so bad that I need a drink at four o’clock in the afternoon.”
He pushed his hand through his hair and yawned. “Is it really only four o’clock? I seem to have been up for hours, and rehearsing for even longer.”
“That’s because you’re still suffering from jet-lag,” she told him, resting her hand briefly against his cheek. Seizing it he pressed his lips into her palm. With a chuckle she pulled it away.
“Keep your eyes on the road Mister. There’s time enough for all that later.”
“All what?” he said, his eyes wide with feigned innocence, and then they were laughing and the past few minutes of sadness slipped away.
Sighing with relief, Marcus keyed a number into the security panel that led into the courtyard in front of the private apartments where Izzie and Jack lived. When the gates opened he drove the car slowly inside. To his surprise the courtyard was full of people. Jack was there, in conversation with an older man who looked as if he might be one of the gardeners, and Luke was there too, fixing up some sort of trellis while an elderly woman watched him. Emlyn, Jack’s longtime friend who was also the Corley family solicitor was there as well, standing next to a pretty dark-haired girl. Both of them looked as if they were waiting for something.
“It’s always the same just before the concert; total chaos,” he said conversationally to Jodie as he parked the car. When she didn’t answer, he turned to look at her and the words he’d been about to utter dried on his lips because she had fainted clean away.
His shout of alarm brought everyone running across the courtyard. The dark-haired girl, who, close to was a bit older than she looked, was the first to reach the car, and she wasted no time pulling open the passenger door and feeling Jodie’s pulse.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “She’s just fainted. Help me get her out of the car and onto the ground, and it would help if you got a glass of water and a cold flannel,” she told Emlyn when he joined them.
Nodding, he hurried towards the house, while the girl asked Marcus some questions. “Has she done this before? Is she allergic to anything? Does she have a heart condition?”
When he answered no to everything, she gave him another smile. “Well all of that is good, so don’t worry too much. It’s a hot day so maybe the heat got to her or perhaps…”
“It was you wasn’t it?” He interrupted her, his question as urgent as it was unexpected.
“Me what?” She stared at him, puzzled.
“You’re the girl who walked past the car and smiled at me. The girl I spoke to just now.”
She nodded, looking slightly alarmed. “Yes I was but I was just being friendly. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He shook his head impatiently. “I know you didn’t but it’s not that, it’s your face. You shocked her, that’s why she’s fainted.”
Her eyes widened as she paused in her ministrations and looked directly at him and this time it was Marcus who went pale. “My god, she’s right,” he said. “I’ve seen pictures and you do look like her, and you look like Jodie too…not exactly, but plenty enough to be her sister.”
* * *
“I didn’t mean for you to learn about Katy like that,” Izzie said, throwing herself onto the bed beside Jodie. “I was going to tell you all about her and then introduce you once you’d had time to get used to the idea.”
“Yes, well you didn’t reckon on the speed of your sister’s driving,” said Marcus as he came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and his wet hair sleek against his head.
Jodie smiled at both of them, her color fully restored. “I think I’d have reacted in the same way however carefully you introduced her because she’s the image of Mamma,” she said.
Izzie, who had only just celebrated her sixth birthday when their Italian mother died at the wheel of a car, gave her sister a sad smile. “I wish I could remember her like you do,” she said. “But I can’t. All I can remember are the lullabies she used to sing to me and the perfume she used to wear.”
“I know,” Jodie took hold of her hand and gently rubbed it. “And Marcus would tell you it’s a good thing because she wasn’t the best of mothers but I don’t agree with him because I can remember the nice bits. When she was happy she was such fun Izzie, and she loved you so much you know. You were always her favorite.”
“Don’t say that. Parents shouldn’t have favorites.”
“I know they shouldn’t, but she did. I think it was because you look so much like your father.”
“Yes, well that’s something else that’s not fair, because I can’t remember him either.”
Jodie laughed and squeezed her hand. “You only have to look in the mirror to see what he looked like. He was so tall and blond and handsome, the exact opposite to me and Mama, and he adored you.”
“That’s when she was really happy wasn’t it?” For a moment Izzie sounded like she had as a child when she used asked Jodie to tell her about her parents, and after a pause Jodie nodded.
“It was the best time of her life.”
“Can anyone join in or is this a private party?” Jack pushed open the bedroom door with only a very perfunctory knock. He was carrying a tray of glasses and a bottle of brandy.
“It’s actually more public than I was expecting,” Marcus told him with a grin as he secured his towel more tightly around his waist.
“In that case what are we waiting for?” Jack unscrewed the bottle top and poured a generous measure into three of the glasses. The fourth one was already full of apple juice and he handed it to Izzie.
“Sorry my darling, but that’s all you’re getting because you’ve already had your fun.”
Rubbing the bump of her fast growing pregnancy, she laughed. “Is that what you call it? Well I’ll remind you of that when I go into labor Lord Corley.”
He grinned at her as he raised his glass. “Here’s to the next Bella Blue concert, and here’s to your new sister, although I must say if the DNA test is positive then Katy
being part of the family will take almost as much getting used to as the fact that she and Emlyn are now an item. I didn’t believe it when Tony first told me, but he assures me it’s true. He saw them being all lovey-dovey in The Corley Hall restaurant."
“I told you, didn’t I tell you?” Izzie gave a whoop of triumph as she rolled off the bed, ran over to where he was sitting, and plopped herself down on his knee, her face wreathed in smiles.
“You did, and you were right and I was wrong,” he agreed, settling her more comfortably against his chest. “I’m not sure how it’s going to work out though, not with her in Corley looking after his mother and him back in the city working silly hours, which is what he intends to do.”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Marcus said, draining his glass. “Now if you good people don’t mind, I really do need to go to bed because although it’s only ten o’clock in the evening, my body thinks it’s sometime tomorrow morning and that it’s owed some sleep.”
Chuckling, Izzie got up and held out her hand to her husband. “Come on, we know when to take a hint. Let’s leave these poor old people to it Jack and see if we can find something to do that’s much more fun.”
Marcus pulled Jodie close as the door closed behind them, reveling, as he always did, in the softness of her skin as his fingers loosened her wrap. Almost two weeks without her was a long time. “Poor old people indeed…they have absolutely no idea.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“Katy my dear, I almost didn’t recognize you,” Mary Tomlins’ eyes were full of approval as she greeted Katy and Emlyn, her sharp gaze missing nothing from the way Katy was dressed to the fact that Emlyn had her hand in his.
Flushing slightly, Katy smiled at her. “I…we…”
“Are very happy and it shows,” the older woman finished for her. “Now if you’ll just tell me where you’ve parked Penny and that silly father of yours Emlyn, then I’ll go and find them and leave the two of you in peace.”
Saving Katy Gray (When Paths Meet Book 3) Page 18