by Penny Jordan
Instead a man was climbing out of the car parked on her drive, smiling slightly at her as he acknowledged her presence.
Disappointment mingled with relief. Whoever this man was, he could not be Katie’s precious Silas. He was too old, for one thing, closer to forty-five than twenty-five.
He was probably a stranger who had lost his way. Certainly he wasn’t anyone she knew she had ever met. Had she done so she would have been bound to remember him. He was far too attractive, far too male for any woman to be able to forget. Her heart gave a tiny unsteady thump as her brain acknowledged what her senses had already registered; namely that this stranger walking towards her was an extremely virile and masculine man, whose casual attire of well-worn jeans and soft denim shirt revealed a body packed hard with muscle and male strength.
Hazel could feel the most odd sensation burgeoning into life in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself as though doing so would control this strange, unnerving feeling.
‘Miss Partington?’ he queried, coming towards her.
His voice was deep and pleasant. The way he spoke her name made Hazel feel faintly dizzy. Her name. How had he known her name?
‘Er—yes. I’m afraid I don’t know…’
He was extending his hand towards her, so that she automatically reciprocated the gesture, her eyes registering the shock caused by the brief physical contact between them. What was the matter with her? She had shaken a man’s hand before, for heaven’s sake.
Feeling thoroughly flustered, she looked uncertainly at him.
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m Silas Jardine. I dropped Katie off in the village. She said something about wanting to buy something. She told me not to wait, said she might be a little while, and told me to come and introduce myself. She said something about wanting to catch up on some gossip. It really is kind of you to put me up like this.’
Hazel wasn’t listening any longer. She was staring at him in shocked disbelief.
This man could not be Katie’s Silas. This man could not be Katie’s boyfriend. Boyfriend! This was no boy. Outrage mingled with her shock. How could he stand there, glibly carrying on a conversation with her, when all the time he must know how shocked she was, how stunned, how…yes, how disbelieving that he could…? That he could what? Love her daughter? She caught herself up on the thought. What was that feeling beginning, like a cold, sharp dagger in her middle? That wasn’t maternal protectiveness, was it? That was… That was…
It was nothing, she told herself quickly. It was nothing at all, and it certainly wasn’t an uncomfortable and impossible stab of something almost approaching betrayal.
Her smile had turned to a frown now, as her shock registered all too plainly on her face. She could almost feel him withdrawing from her, distancing himself from her with cool reserve. Panic clawed at her. This was a situation she simply could not deal with, did not know how to deal with. When she had envisaged Katie’s Silas, she had envisaged a younger man—a much younger man. This man was far too old for Katie. Far, far too old.
She started to tremble, suddenly feeling incredibly weak and sick. Tears of shock blurred her eyes, causing her to clench her jaw and hurriedly blink them away.
‘I’m sorry. I seem to have given you something of a shock.’
He was too astute, saw too much, and suddenly she was desperately frightened of him. What if he should sense her anger, her shock, her disgust, her outrage, and punish her for them by trying to turn Katie against her? Once she would have said that could never happen but then once she would have said that Katie would never have any need in her life that would lead her to imagine herself in love with a man old enough to be her father.
‘Look, I think we’d better get you inside. Katie warned me that you hate people saying you look fragile, but…’
Katie had told him that. What else had she told him? Hazel wondered achingly as she stepped back into the hall, fighting to get her shock under control.
She hated him, she decided fiercely as he followed her inside. She hated him already. How could she not do when she looked at him and saw in his face, in his eyes, all his years of living, and then compared those years, that maturity with Katie’s youth?
She knew all about men like him. Men who were too insecure to love women who could match them in terms of age and experience. Their vanity led them to feed off youth, like leeches. Oh, yes, she knew the type all right and she despised it, but she had never, ever envisaged that Katie would fall prey to such a man, no matter how good-looking he might be—and this man was certainly that, she acknowledged grudgingly, trying to ignore the frisson of sensation that danced over her skin as she looked up and discovered that she was being studied with gravely thoughtful interest by Silas Jardine’s disturbingly perceptive cool grey eyes.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asked her quietly. ‘Katie—’
Whatever he had been about to say was forgotten as the front door was flung open, and Hazel heard her daughter calling out cheerfully, ‘Ma, Ma…where are you?’
‘Noisy lot, aren’t they, the young?’ Silas Jardine remarked easily as she hurried towards the door. His comment made her check and turn to give him an indignant look. What on earth was he trying to do, aligning himself with her? Did he honestly think that she was stupid enough to fall for such a ploy or that it would endear him to her, or incline her to accept him as her daughter’s lover?
The sickening sour scald of revulsion that burned through her at the thought turned her indignation to self-disgust, and she turned away from him quickly before her face could betray her.
She was becoming frighteningly aware that if he chose to do so this man could drive a wedge between her and her beloved daughter that might never be removed.
Hopefully, please God, there would come a time when Katie would open her eyes and see him for what he undoubtedly was; a forty-odd-year-old man who was bolstering his ego, his machismo by feeding off her youth. And when that time came he would no longer have a place nor a role in her life, but by then Hazel suspected that it would be too late to heal the rift which he could cause between them.
She would have to be careful, so very careful not to betray to Katie how shocked and distraught she felt, she acknowledged as she hurried into the hallway and was immediately taken hold of and swung off her feet as Katie gave her an enthusiastic hug.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ she scolded her mother maternally as she set her back on the floor and studied her critically, and then, turning to Silas who had also come out into the hall, she demanded happily, ‘Isn’t she everything I told you she was?’ Without waiting for a response, she turned back to Hazel and grinned at her.
‘He wouldn’t believe me when I told him I had a mother who looked like a teenager and not a fully grown-up one at that,’ Katie teased.
To her intense mortification, Hazel discovered that she was actually blushing, something she’d thought she had successfully got under control years ago.
Katie laughed and teasingly tousled her curls, telling her, ‘I stopped off in the village to buy this. I’ve got you a proper present, of course, but I thought we could have this tonight to celebrate.’
When Hazel didn’t say anything, she added in a more gentle voice, ‘You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you, Ma? I shan’t embarrass you in front of Silas by mentioning the fact that you’re thirty-six years old today.’
‘Katie!’ Hazel expostulated weakly. To tell the truth, she herself had almost forgotten that it was her birthday in the anxiety of worrying about her daughter, but now that Katie had reminded her of the date she wished that she hadn’t. It wasn’t the thought of adding another year to her age that bothered her. No, it was the quiet, assessing way that Silas Jardine was continuing to study her that made her feel so uncomfortable. His mouth twitched a little as she removed the bottle of champagne from Katie’s exuberant grasp, and told her as firmly as she could, ‘Katie, you kno
w quite well that I gave up celebrating my birthday years ago.’
‘You may have done so, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to follow suit,’ Katie informed her, adding, ‘What time are we eating, Ma? I’m starving. I wanted to stop off on the way, but Silas said there was no way he was going to poison his insides with the stuff they serve in motorway fast food outlets. He’s even worse than you,’ she added grumbling, while Hazel gave a doubtful look in Silas’s direction, wondering how he was taking this criticism.
A little to her surprise he seemed more amused than annoyed, his manner more that of an indulgent uncle than a passionate lover. It seemed oddly out of keeping, because this man would be a passionate lover. A tiny thrill of shock tingled down her spine, a sensation almost of actually being touched. She shivered under it, sensitively cringing from the intimacy of her own thoughts. Thoughts she had no right to have, no right at all. Silas Jardine was her daughter’s lover and not…
Not what? she asked herself shakily. Not an exceptionally virile and male man, whose simple presence in her home was making her feel as nervous and on edge as though she were the one who was the teenager?
It was all his fault. If he had arrived, as he had been supposed to do, with Katie, she would never…he would not… She bit her bottom lip hard.
What on earth was the matter with her? She had seen good-looking men before, talked to them, spent time with them, without going to pieces like this.
And she was going to pieces. She only had to look at him and she could feel herself disintegrating inside.
This is ridiculous, she told herself firmly. She had to pull herself together. What on earth was happening to her? Surely—she could feel herself going hot with self-disgust at the thought—surely she wasn’t about to turn into one of those dreadful women who in middle age seemed to develop an embarrassing need to prove themselves by flirting very desperately and very obviously with their daughters’ boyfriends?
Desperately she tried to concentrate on what Katie was saying to her, telling her nervously, ‘Well, I’ve made your favourite for supper: roast beef with all the trimmings and apple pie.’
She couldn’t bring herself to look at Silas, and so, instead, she said to Katie, ‘I should have checked with you that your friend—er—Mr…doesn’t mind such plain fare…’
When she had envisaged Katie’s ‘friend’, she had been thinking in terms of a much younger man with far less sophisticated tastes than the very obvious man of the world who was now addressing her, telling her smoothly, ‘Please call me Silas—and to tell the truth a home-cooked meal will be rather a treat for me.’
Katie gave him a dancing look of amusement.
‘Don’t listen to him, Ma. He’s got females queuing feet deep, just longing to offer him all the home comforts.’
She could just bet he had, Hazel reflected acidly to herself, and she doubted that it was just their cooking that they wanted him to sample.
In Katie’s shoes, she suspected that she would have felt far more concerned than her daughter obviously did.
Despite the fact that there was nothing remotely lover-like about their behaviour to one another, Katie must be very, very sure indeed of his feelings for her if she could afford to treat the subject so lightly. She looked at her daughter, rather wonderingly and wistfully. In Katie’s shoes, she doubted that she could have exhibited such self-confidence.
It was all very well for her to tell herself that he was a very lucky man to have the love of someone as precious and wonderful as her Katie, but Katie was, after all, not quite nineteen years old, while he… Oddly enough, he didn’t look like the kind of man who needed to bolster his ego by parading a much, much younger girl on his arm, but then neither had she ever imagined that Katie would look for a relationship with a man so much older than herself, a man more suited in age to be her father than her lover.
Guiltily she wondered if it was her fault; if it was because she had failed to provide Katie with a father that her daughter had now made the dangerous mistake of falling for this man.
‘How long will supper be, Ma?’ Katie pressed her.
‘Oh, not long—about an hour.’
‘Great. I’ll just take Silas upstairs and show him his room and then I’ll come down and give you a hand and we can have a natter. Which room is he in, by the way?’
In the shock of discovering how much older than Katie her lover was, Hazel had almost forgotten her anxiety over their sleeping arrangements.
Now they came back to her abruptly, and she discovered that it was impossible for her to look at Silas as she told Katie uncertainly, ‘I’ve put your—er—Mr…er—Silas in the spare-room; the one next to mine.’
Why oh why was she blushing when she said that? And why of all things was she so intimately and so wrongly suddenly mentally presented with a very disturbing and highly visual image of Silas’s broad-shouldered and very male form lying beneath the covers of her spare bed, his skin tanned and sleek, his…?
She swallowed visibly, weakly trying to dismiss such erotic and unwanted thoughts. Heavens, the man might not even have a tan, never mind…
‘The nursery, you’ve put Silas in my old nursery.’ Katie grinned. ‘If you can’t sleep, Silas, you’ll be able to entertain yourself reading my old books. Come on, I’ll take you up.’
Hazel was just about to go with them, and had even taken a couple of steps towards the stairs, when she suddenly realised that they would most probably want to be alone, and that even the most caring and concerned of mothers could hardly play gooseberry for twenty-four hours a day.
At least Katie had seemed to accept quite happily the fact that she had not put them in the same room.
She couldn’t help wondering if Silas himself had accepted this quite as readily.
He was a mature man, long past the stage surely of sneaking kisses, or anything else, behind the back of an ever-watchful parent.
She froze as he came towards her, and then flushed as she realised she was standing between him and the stairs, hastily stepping to one side.
The look he gave her unnerved her. It seemed to see right inside her skull and left her feeling as though he knew far too well just how ambivalent her feelings towards him were.
As she went into the kitchen, determined not to stand there watching them as Katie slid her arm through his and they went up the wide flight of stairs side by side, she acknowledged miserably that the last thing she had anticipated, when she had worried over the problems attendant on this visit, was that she herself might be physically aware of Katie’s lover, and in such an intense way that it suddenly felt as though her skin had become a little too tight for her body, as though somehow her flesh had become over-sensitive and slightly sore.
She hated knowing that she was so responsive to Silas. Hated realising that in some awful, dreadful way she was almost jealous of Katie’s relationship with him. And yet why should she feel like this? There had been times in the past, it was true, when she had yearned, ached almost if she was honest, for a man of tenderness and concern who would love her, physically and emotionally, but she had quickly learned to put such foolish daydreams from her and to concentrate on reality; those men had never been real, they had merely been vague, fictional characters—a focus for her needs. There had never been a man, a real-life man for whom she had felt the sharply dangerous stab of desire she had felt this afternoon. Perhaps naïvely she had never imagined there could be such a man. She had always imagined that, for her, sexual desire could only follow on from a long-established emotional rapport; and since she never allowed any man to get close enough to her to form that kind of bond she had felt herself safe from the sharp pangs of hunger which now clawed so shockingly at her.
She was standing stock still, staring unseeing into the Yorkshire pudding batter when Katie erupted into the kitchen, exclaiming excitedly, ‘Well, Ma, isn’t he the most gorgeous man you’ve ever seen?’
‘He seems very pleasant,’ Hazel responded colourless
ly.
Katie frowned and demanded scornfully, ‘Pleasant? Come on, Ma. He’s as sexy as hell and—’
‘Katie, I must get the Yorkshires in,’ Hazel interrupted her frantically. The last thing she wanted was a blow-by-blow description of Silas’s sexual prowess, and not just because she felt he was totally wrong for her daughter. She didn’t want to hear it because… Because she was mortally afraid that she simply could not bear to hear it.
‘Ma, what’s wrong?’ Katie was frowning now, the happiness dying out of her voice and her eyes. She came over to the cooker, and removed the full tin of batter from Hazel’s hands, firmly putting it down and then turning her mother round to face her.
‘You don’t like him, do you?’ she accused.
‘No—yes. Of… I… Oh, Katie, I’ve only just met him, and—’
‘Ma, please,’ Katie begged urgently. ‘Just give it a chance. I know you’re going to love him.’
It was an unfortunate choice of verb to say the least, and part of her, a strange, unfamiliar and totally unwanted part, cried out rebelliously, Why should I love him? Because you do? Can’t you see how wrong he is for you?
‘What is it exactly about him that you don’t like?’ Katie demanded when she remained silent.
What could she say?
All she could manage was a strangled, ‘Well, it isn’t that I don’t like him, darling; it’s just that, well, he’s so much older than I’d imagined.’
‘Older.’ Katie’s frown deepened as she demanded almost aggressively, ‘What on earth has his age got to do with it? And anyway I think he’s just the right age.’
Hazel bit her lip, mangling its already sore swollenness between sharp teeth as despair flooded her. Already it was happening—already he was driving them apart. Of course Katie thought he was the right age and she had been stupid to bring up such a contentious subject.
Desperately she tried to find safer ground, asking as casually as she could, ‘You never said how long you intended to stay.’