The sound of footsteps echoing on the tiled floor made them spring apart. Matt kissed her briefly, told her to hang on in there and that things would sort themselves out.
With a swift backward glance, he returned to the dining room.
Ashley, more confused than ever, grabbed her coat and went to reception to call a cab. She didn’t return to the fray and say good-bye to anyone. She was beyond that, and they would just have to think of her what the hell they liked.
Ashley’s key was still in her front door when the phone rang. This time she answered it.
“I wanted to make sure you got home safely.” Matt’s voice echoed down the line. He was clearly on his mobile and still at the hotel. She could hear the hum of conversation and a loud bark of laughter in the background.
“Yes, I’ve just walked in.” She paused, before adding, “Alone.”
“I didn’t doubt that, and I wasn’t checking up on you. I accept that I’ve forfeited that right.” The silence that preceded his next words was long and ominous. Ashley wondered if it was possible to sense the gravitas beneath a silence over something as impersonal as a telephone line. “For now, at least,” he told her, in a tone so possessive, underlined with such a sense of loss, that her heart lifted. “I suppose I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice again. And to apologise. I shouldn’t have reacted like I did earlier.”
Ashley didn’t know what to say. “Good night, Matt,” was all she could manage.
“Good night, darling, sleep well. And good luck tomorrow. I’ll be thinking of you.”
“The dressage?” She found herself smiling. “You remembered.”
“I never forget anything you tell me, especially something as important to you as that.” She heard someone calling his name in the background. “I have to go.” His voice dropped another octave. “I love you.”
Ashley smiled when he said the words. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew the situation was hopeless. She was still smiling as she went back down the stairs to accompany Freckles on his late night constitutional.
Chapter Five
“There you go, baby.”
Nine o’clock Saturday morning, Ashley patted Lucius’s gleaming flank and stood back to admire her handiwork. His dapple-gray coat gleamed, his mane and tail were neatly plaited, and everything ready to go. She helped to load Lucius, along with the two other horses competing in the competition, into the yard’s lorry and climbed into the cab. Patrick McMann, owner of the yard and dressage expert of some renown, drove. Ashley and her co-competitors hid their nervousness by chatting in a dilatory fashion for the duration of the short journey to the neighbouring village of Woldingham.
The advanced class was the last on the programme. Ashley spent the hours that preceded it on tenterhooks, supporting the others from the yard as they competed in the lower classes.
Finally, it was her turn.
Dressed in pristine white breeches, long black leather boots, and black jacket, her unruly hair neatly confined within a net, Ashley and Lucius entered the arena at a collected canter. They came to a perfectly straight halt, remaining immobile for a few seconds before Ashley offered the judges the obligatory salute.
Now that she was riding at last, Ashley’s nerves melted away. A sense of calm enveloped her as she applied herself to completing the test. It was her first season at advanced level, the competition was keen, and she was determined not to be found wanting. Even her fear that Lucius would flounder when it came to the half pirouette proved unfounded. She should have had more faith in her horse. He seemed to grasp that this was important and was as focused as Ashley herself, perhaps because he enjoyed being the centre of attention. Not once did he try to look around to see what was going on—a common fault with horses at all levels of the discipline. Instead, they moved together as one highly polished unit. Lucius’s neck remained beautifully arched as he propelled himself smoothly forward from his quarters, maintaining a pristine outline throughout.
Ashley couldn’t have done any better and was delighted when they were placed third. So tantalisingly close to automatic qualification for the regionals, and far better than she’d dared to hope.
Busy removing Lucius’s tack, telling him how clever he was and feeding him sneaky titbits, Ashley was interrupted by a light tap on her shoulder. She turned and found herself face-to-face with an older lady whom she didn’t recognize.
“Please excuse me, my dear, but I just had to congratulate you,” the woman said with a pleasant smile. “That was a splendid ride.”
“Why, thank you. I’m pleased with the way it went.” Ashley returned her smile, instinctively liking her. She was elegantly but casually dressed and, from the expert way she cast her eye over Lucius, well versed in matters equine. There was something vaguely familiar about her, too. Something about her eyes perhaps, even though Ashley was convinced they were unacquainted. “I’m sorry, but have we met?”
Before the lady could answer, Freckles came bounding up to them, Callie stumbling along at the other end of his leash. She was red-faced and out of breath, just about managing to hold on.
“I couldn’t stop him, Auntie Ashley,” the child complained. “He wanted to see you.”
“It’s all right, darling, he knows the competition’s over and thinks it’s time to play.” Ashley stooped to pat the child and dog simultaneously. “He’s very clever like that.”
“Did Lucius win a rosette?”
“Yes, he did. He’s very clever, too.”
“I’m sorry,” the mystery lady said. “You’ve got your hands full, and I’m intruding.”
“Hello,” Callie said, peering up at the woman from beneath her thick fringe. “Did you come to see Lucius?”
“Yes, and Freckles, too,” she said, bending to tickle the dog’s ears.
Ashley frowned. This woman appeared to know an awful lot about them. She was sure Freckles’s name hadn’t been mentioned in her hearing. Not that it really mattered. She was hardly the horse-napping or axe-murdering type. Sandy joined them, and when Ashley looked round again, the woman had gone.
It was late afternoon before Ashley and Freckles finally got home. Ashley, exhausted but ebullient, collapsed in the bath and promptly fell asleep. She only roused herself when the water cooled and her skin was in danger of wrinkling like a prune. Dressed casually in jeans and T-shirt, she wandered into the kitchen and cooked herself a light supper. Wine glass in hand, she and Freckles then made themselves comfortable in front of the log fire.
The doorbell sounded half an hour later. Ashley hadn’t been expecting him but wasn’t surprised to see Matt standing there, dressed as casually as she was. Her heart lifted, even though no good could possibly come out of this visit.
“It’s time to talk,” he said almost aggressively, striding past her into the sitting room without waiting to be invited.
There was something about the set to his features that stopped Ashley from objecting. Instead, she waved the wine bottle in front of him.
“Drink?”
“Please.”
Not making the mistake of trying to touch her, Matt seated himself in the same place as on the night of her birthday, at one end of the settee. Ashley took the chair opposite and stole furtive glances at his face. Much of the tension of the previous evening had gone. Instead, she could read resolution there—determination to say whatever it was he’d come to tell her. Ashley’s stomach fluttered with anticipation, but she schooled her features into a neutral expression, careful not to let her true feelings show. She made the silence work to her advantage by waiting it out. This was his party, so the first move was down to him.
He drank half a glass of wine before speaking.
“I should have trusted you enough to tell what’s been going on long ago,” he said, suddenly sounding tired and fraught.
“What, tell me you’re to be a father again?”
“That’s just the point.” He met her gaze and held it. “I’m not. The baby isn’t mine.”
Ashley gasped. Whatever explanation she’d thought he might dream up, that he might deny responsibility for his wife’s condition hadn’t once occurred to her. The Matt she knew simply wasn’t that shallow. Just for a moment, she allowed herself to believe this improbable explanation. Then common sense kicked in, and she berated herself for being so pathetic.
“It’s true, Ashley.” She threw a scornful glance his way. “I had a vasectomy three months after Ross was born. I’m incapable of impregnating anyone.”
Ashley drew in a sharp breath. She’d anticipated that he’d try to explain away the pregnancy by saying it was the result of a one-off accidental tryst, or something equally trite. Denying culpability had well and truly taken the wind out of her sails, and it was a moment before she trusted herself to speak.
“If that’s the case, why is your wife parading around, leading everyone to suppose that you’re the baby’s father?” Ashley skewered him with a withering glare. “And more to the point, why are you allowing it?”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “That’s where it gets complicated.”
He stood to top off their glasses, more of a delaying tactic than through necessity, Ashley suspected. She’d seen him in this mood several times before. In meetings when he had tricky situations to address and it was important to adopt just the right approach. Was that how he viewed her? An awkward problem that needed skilful handling? She hardened her faltering heart and regarded him dispassionately.
“I’m listening.”
“First and foremost, you need to appreciate that everything I’ve told you is the truth.” He looked straight into her eyes with such apparent sincerity that Ashley desperately wanting to believe him. “Eve and I haven’t shared the same bed, at home at least, since before you and I got together. If we stay with friends, they allocate us the same room, but we never do anything in that room, except sleep.”
“In that case, how can she expect you to believe that she’s carrying your child?”
“For you to understand that, I need to tell you a bit more about the setup at Interactive.”
“Why?” Ashley’s frowned, wondering what that had to do with anything. Matt waved a placating hand in her direction.
“Bear with me, darling, it’s relevant, I promise you.”
“All right,” she said. “I’m still listening.”
“As you know, the company was established by my grandfather and his brother before the war.” Ashley nodded. “Upon my grandfather’s death, his fifty percent share in the company was left to my father. My great uncle’s fifty percent was split equally between his two sons. Charlie’s parents were killed in a car crash when he was eight, and his father’s twenty-five percent was held in trust for him until he was twenty-one.
“Now, this is where it gets complicated.” He smiled at her, but his focus was distant, his mind clearly dwelling somewhere in the past. “My Uncle Peter, our accountant, kept his twenty-five percent intact. What you may not know is that he was a bit of a lady’s man in his day. His first marriage ended in divorce, and his wife named Eve’s mother, Stephanie, when she sued for that divorce on the grounds of adultery. Eve was Stephanie’s daughter from a previous marriage. Anyway, to cut a long story short, when his marriage to Stephanie came to an end, Stephanie wisely asked for shares in the company as part of her settlement. When Eve and I married, Stephanie passed the five percent she’d managed to obtain on to her daughter as a wedding present.”
Ashley listened in rapt silence. She’d known that Eve was a nominal director of the company, but she didn’t play any active part in its running.
“In the true manner of a woman scorned, Stephanie violently detested and bitterly resented Peter and hoped, by passing those shares to Eve, to exact further revenge by giving me extra power within the company.”
“I didn’t realize that there was a power struggle between you. I know you and Charlie don’t always see eye to eye, but I thought you still got along okay.”
Matt harrumphed. “Not exactly.”
“You hide it well.”
“Years of practise.” He smiled at her and took a long sip of wine. “When my father died, I received forty percent of his shares. The other ten percent went to my mother for the residue of her life, at the end of which they revert to me. But in the meantime, we’re stuck with a bit of an impasse. I have forty percent plus my mother’s voting rights, giving me exactly fifty percent. Peter has his twenty and Charlie twenty-five, and so—”
“And so Eve’s five percent represents the balance of power.”
“Exactly. It’s vitally important to any decisions about the company’s future, and everyone knows it.” Matt grimaced. “Especially Eve. Charlie’s very gung-ho and wants to push ahead with expansion plans on our own. I don’t think we’re in a strong enough position to do that, but that’s not what he wants to hear.”
“Can’t you get Peter to side with you?”
“No, I gave up on that long ago. Peter doesn’t want anything to change.”
“But it has to.” Ashley wrinkled her brow. “We can do so much better if we amalgamate with another local company and combine the business on our respective books. Surely he can see that?”
“Afraid not. He’s still stuck in the past, but if there has to be change, then he’ll do whatever Charlie suggests, simply because he associates me, though Eve, with Stephanie.” Matt expelled a long breath. “There’s always been competition between Charlie and me.” Matt shrugged. “If I said black was white, then Charlie would disagree on principle.”
“I can see your difficulties with family squabbles over the company but don’t understand about the baby. If you haven’t slept with Eve, then whose is it?”
“I’m getting to that. But first you need to understand a bit more about my relationship with Charlie.”
Ashley glanced at his features, twisted with bitterness, and realized how much it was costing him to reveal the sordid details of the family’s soft underbelly, even to her.
“You don’t have to tell me, Matt,” she said softly.
“Yeah, I do. It’s relevant.” He drained his glass, refilled both, and strode about the room, presumably to assemble his thoughts. “When his parents died, Charlie came to live with us. I was ten at the time, and he was eight. My mother had had several miscarriages after she had me and eventually accepted that she wouldn’t have any more children. And so being “gifted” another son was a dream come true for her. And for me. The strain of being an only child in a family where I was expected by my father to excel at absolutely everything I did was already beginning to tell. I welcomed Charlie with open arms, and at first we got along fine. Charlie joined me at Winchester, where I was already a boarder—”
“Where your boys are now?”
“Yes, but that’s when I started to realize just what a competitive streak Charlie possesses. He wanted to beat everyone at everything, both academically and, where he excelled most, on the sports field. The trouble was, although he had a good brain, he was too lazy to use it and resorted to cheating so that his results always trumped mine. I did well academically, through sheer hard work, but Charlie did better by using his wits to beat the system.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Ashley said, a wry twist to her lips.
“As the years went on, that’s all that seemed to matter to him. It was a compulsion that I never understood. I’d never been unpleasant to him, helped him to settle at school, and tried to be his friend.” Matt sighed. “It was a long time before I realized it was my father he was trying to impress, and to do that, he felt the need to trump everything I did.”
Ashley was totally fascinated by what Matt’s account. “What compelled him?” she asked. “Why did it matter to him so much?”
“I never found that out. I guess it’s just the way he was. And still is.”
“Go on,” she said when Matt paused for a little too long.
“When it came to university time, I
managed to win a place at Oxbridge to read Law. Charlie was unable to cheat with his A-level exams, the system had been tightened up by then, and his grades weren’t good enough to get him into a decent college. Instead, he went straight into the business, doing what he does best, using his charm to get new business on the books. I was happy for him because it took the pressure off me. I knew my father wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and we’d disagreed about it. I wanted to be a barrister, you see.”
Ashley, chin propped in her hand, offered him the ghost of a smile. “Then why didn’t you do that?”
“I was in my final year at Oxford, doing well. My father was delighted about that and kept banging on about it. I subsequently discovered that it drove Charlie demented. I’ve often thought that was the real start of the rift between us.”
Ashley blew air through her lips. “It’s too ridiculous for words.”
“Yes, but that was just the start of it. It got a damned sight worse when Peter married Stephanie and Eve burst on the scene.” Matt stared off into the distance. “She was just sixteen and the most beautiful thing either of us had ever seen. Charlie was instantly smitten, I could tell that much because I was, too. Young as she was, Eve knew the power her looks afforded her, even then. She went out with us separately, and together, forcing us to be civil to one another.”
“Playing you off against each other?”
“Yes, she enjoyed the power she wielded over us, I can see that now. Anyway, it went on for over a year. Charlie had her to himself whilst I was at college, but as soon as I came home for the holidays she latched on to me. In retrospect, that was the worst possible thing she could have done from Charlie’s perspective. I know he begged her to marry him, but she wouldn’t give him an answer. I thought she was being unnecessarily cruel, started to see through her, and backed off a bit. I was dating other girls at college and didn’t want to get tied down. She obviously sensed that I was losing interest, which only made her more determined to get her claws into me.”
Soliman, Wendy - The Name of the Game (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 6