“She didn’t have to,” Hugh said. “I was happy to take her on whatever terms she wanted.”
“But you didn’t love her enough to help her face her father and sort it all out, did you? Because you knew you had her all to yourself for as long as she held onto this irrational fear of hers.”
Anastasia was trembling now and it was with more than the cold. “You didn’t come back here to do that, did you?” she asked, horrified. “You’re not going to ask my father…” The thought was terrifying. She couldn’t voice it.
David looked at her steadily. “Yes.”
“You’re mad,” Hugh said with a snort. “You saw the brawl they had last night. Christopher would rather confess to the devil himself that openly discuss Katherine, especially with Anastasia in the room.”
“It’s time he did just that.” David looked at his friend. “Hugh, I could use your help. He knows you better.”
Hugh wavered for a long moment, torn between his feelings and his friend. Finally he slowly shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “Christopher and I are business partners and after today, all I have left is my work.” He turned to her and picked up her hand. “It’s been wonderful knowing you, Anastasia Kirk. Don’t go out of my life altogether, will you? Every addict will tell you the cold turkey treatment is the most painful.”
She tried to smile. “Goodbye, Hugh.”
He kissed her hand, as David had the night before and walked away.
Chapter Nineteen
Anastasia watched Hugh’s Volvo pull out onto the main road, trying to still her heart and muster courage. When she thought she had managed it, she looked back.
“You look like a street urchin,” David said, with a smile. “An utterly adorable, quite gorgeous street kid.”
Behind them, Hugh’s car accelerated away with a shower of gravel and a racing motor.
“Dad’s still asleep. Benitta gave him a sleeping pill last night.”
David shrugged. “I’ve missed the plane anyway. I’ll wait. But inside. You’re shivering.”
“It’s not the cold.”
“I know but I can’t do anything about it out here. For the last few minutes someone has been watching us from one of the upper windows and I’d rather not set the cat among the pigeons by taking you in my arms.”
“That wouldn’t help anyway,” Anastasia snapped. “You’re not serious about confronting my father about Mom, are you?”
He took her arm and led her back across the gravel toward the house. “Dead serious. Your reaction to the idea alone is enough reason for doing it.” David opened the door for her and led her inside. “You’re terrified,” he observed.
She nodded.
“Then it’s high time to kill off the ghosts.” He looked over her shoulder. “Good morning, Benitta.”
“David.” Benitta closed the last high button on her dressing gown and looked at Anastasia curiously. “I smell a story here,” she said.
“I’d better get changed,” she said. “There’s going to be enough misunderstandings and God only knows what flying about here soon. There’s no point in—”
“No, I want you to stay right where I can see you.” David halted her before she could take more than a step toward the stairs.
“I won’t run,” she said.
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you this time.” He tugged her gently toward the drawing room. “Is Christopher awake, Benitta?”
“I think so. I heard movement from his room not long ago.” Benitta was still eyeing them both, curious and vaguely excited. “Do you know you have blood on your mouth?”
David nodded. “The price of loyalty,” he said.
Benitta seemed to understand. “I’ll get some coffee.” She crossed to the back hall door, her slippers slapping on the tiles.
David drew Anastasia into the drawing room, looked around for the ideal place to sit and selected one of the long sofas by the window, drenched in sunlight from the tall windows. There was a coffee table in front of it and two overstuffed chairs pulled up in a casual group arrangement.
He sat and pulled her down onto the cushions beside him, keeping his hold on her hand.
“Are we just going to sit until Dad comes down?”
“Yes.”
“But it could be ages before he does.”
“No, he’ll be down pretty soon. His curiosity will bring him down. It must have been your father who was watching us from the window upstairs. If it had been Benitta she wouldn’t have asked about the blood, she would have known how I’d got it. So your father will be down very soon, to find out what is going on.”
She studied him in the wash of light from the windows. “Why are you doing this?”
He looked down at his hand, the one that held hers captive. “You’d be a fool if you believed I was doing this solely for your benefit, so I won’t try to hide that there is a large chunk of self-interest in this for me. If I can get you to talk to your father, to discuss this at least once, so you can find out the truth and examine it from an adult perspective, it might alleviate this huge fear of risking yourself in love.”
He looked at her then. “I said I would do whatever I could, to hear you tell me you loved me. Truth is powerful and if you hear some truths today, you will at the very least put an end to the wondering that has been plaguing you for so long.”
“It will hurt him to talk about it.”
“His silence has hurt you more. I’m sorry if it causes your father pain but you are infinitely more important to me.”
“And if he won’t talk about it?”
“I don’t intend to give him that option.”
She shivered suddenly. Her father was a strong man. He had been a leader of men for decades and she had no doubt he would not simply accede to David’s request for information. It would have to be drawn from him, one fact at a time. He would fight David every step of the way.
Benitta appeared from the kitchen, carrying a tray with fresh coffee and the remains of the cake Hugh had sliced up. She silently placed the tray on the coffee table and laid out cups. Two in front of David and Anastasia and one each in front of the chairs. Four cups. It was as if Benitta sensed, or guessed David’s intentions. And she was silently supporting him.
After pouring the coffee, she sat on the chair at the side of the table, leaving the chair directly opposite David free for her brother.
With almost magical timing, Christopher Kirk appeared in the doorway of the drawing room. He was washed and dressed and not a thread was out of place. He looked alert and fresh. Anastasia would never have guessed he had tried to drink himself into oblivion the previous night. His eyes flicked over her and then at the group of them waiting by the window.
“You’re just in time for a cup of coffee before lunch, Christopher,” Benitta said, filling the spare cup. “Come and sit down.”
“You have been waiting for me?” he asked, indicating the cup and chair.
“Yes,” said David.
Christopher sat and looked at him. “I see.” His expression was bland.
He suspects something is afoot, Anastasia thought. The need to stand and walk away from this confrontation was strong enough to make her tremble and she felt David’s hand tighten its grip on her own.
Christopher ignored the coffee cup. “I assume this is about last night’s contretemps?”
“Indirectly,” David replied. “What I would really like to talk about is your wife, Katherine.”
“I see,” Christopher said again.
Anastasia felt her hand clench slowly tighter upon David’s. This wasn’t the way to make her father open up. He wouldn’t talk if David intended to tackle him this way. Christopher was an old hand at boardroom strategies. He would turn the attack back against David somehow.
Christopher brought his hands together and rested his joined forefingers on his lips. “Why are you asking me about this, David? I would have thought it more appropriate that Hugh attempt to tackle the subject. Where is H
ugh?”
Anastasia focused on the word “attempt” and sighed. No, her father wasn’t going to buckle under.
But neither was David. “Since you witnessed the scene outside a few minutes ago, you already know the answer to both those questions.”
“Have you broken off your engagement to Hugh, Anna?” Christopher asked her, his steady gaze pinning her to the settee.
“Yes.”
“I see.” This time, his voice was heavy with an exhaled sigh. There was very little surprise in his expression. “And you, David, feel you have some rights, now, to broach this family’s personal history?”
“Thanks to you, Christopher, I have no right to ask at all. But I’m asking anyway and mostly I’m asking for Anastasia’s sake.” David’s voice hardened. “Are you aware that last night I had to haul your daughter out of the river?”
Benitta drew in a sharp breath but Christopher remained perfectly still.
“David, no,” Anastasia whispered. He was misrepresenting the events.
“I don’t for an instant imagine she threw herself into the water in suicidal remorse over our disagreement last night, if that is what you’re implying,” Christopher replied. “I know my daughter too well. She is stubborn, strong willed. Suicide would never enter her mind.”
“No. Nor did it last night. The reason she was in the water was because I was pressuring her to choose between Hugh and me. Because she has grown up with the idea that a loving relationship is ultimately too painful to live with, she has rejected both of us. Hugh has accepted that. I will too but only after Anastasia hears the truth from you.” David leaned forward and his voice grew harsh. “It’s entirely your fault she had reached this unhappy solution. Even if you believe you owe her nothing else, you at least owe her the truth about what happened twenty years ago.”
Christopher studied them both. “Is this right, Anastasia? You’re turning your back on any sort of relationship? Not even settling for Hugh?”
She felt her mouth opening and caught herself back. “You knew!”
“Of course I knew,” he shot back, rising to his feet. “Do you think I am incapable of recognizing love…or the lack of it? I kept silent because I knew that if Hugh was who you wanted, for whatever reasons you wanted him, then I would do my best to make that happen for you.” Abruptly he turned away.
She sank back against the cushions, shocked and appalled.
David’s other hand covered hers within his grip and she found her fingers tightening their hold. Her father’s reaction was so unexpected.
David pressed his advantage. “Talk to her, Christopher. Now. Anastasia believes Katherine left because she hated you both. She thinks you have lived in bitterness ever since. She believes you have done your best to curb any traits in her that reminded you of Katherine because the reminders were painful.”
“They were,” Christopher said roughly.
“Don’t ruin your daughter’s life and chance at happiness just because you were cheated of your own.”
Christopher wavered, tossed between loyalties Anastasia hadn’t suspected he’d held until this moment. David had seen and understood far more clearly than she what was in her father’s mind. Her failure was humbling. Had she really been that blind? How far had the blindness stretched?
Christopher sank back onto the cushion. “What do you want to know?” he asked David, his voice a thready whisper.
“Why did Katherine leave? How did she die?”
Christopher lowered his head for a moment. He began to speak.
“Katherine had leukemia. I knew she was dying and it was as if I were dying too. I kept it from her because I wanted her to be happy, for as long as she continued to suspect nothing. But the injustice of it drove me mad—I was so utterly helpless to prevent it. Katherine was going to be taken away from me and I could do nothing. I became angry, irritable all the time. I was acutely sensitive and over-reacted to the most trivial of matters.” Christopher stopped, frowning, staring down at his hands.
“So you found yourself fighting with her all the time,” David finished for him.
He nodded. “I couldn’t help myself. It did help in a way—to be able to release some of the bottled up tension. But I would watch my fury grow and hate myself and even hate Katherine for dying and making me do this to her.” Christopher sighed. “Then she ran away.”
“You drove her from you?” Anastasia whispered.
Christopher lifted his head to look at her and she was amazed to see the deep cloud of pain in his eyes. “For six months I thought I had. I tried—desperately—to find her. You have to believe that. But your mother was always cunning. I never found her. Until very shortly before she died, when she contacted me.”
“Mom came back?”
“She couldn’t come back. She was in a private hospital, being cared for. She sent a message to me and I went to her. She was very near the end and she wanted to see me, to explain. She’d left because she had known all along she was dying. Watching me trying to cope so inadequately with the knowledge, trying to deal with it, was too painful for her. She knew I would only find it harder to bear as she…deteriorated and she didn’t want you to witness the horror of it all. So she left. To die alone.” Christopher closed his eyes and Anastasia watched his throat work convulsively.
Her grip on David’s hand was fierce now but he made no move to take his hand away nor to ease the pressure. And as the force of tears built up inside her she focused on that grip and battled to keep them contained.
Her father’s voice was a gruff shell, as he continued with many small pauses to maintain his composure. “But she couldn’t do it. Ultimately, her loneliness and her love made her reach out and I came to her side just in time to learn the truth and to hold her in my arms as she died. We had wasted that last six months… I wasted them. I had hurt her and sent her away from me because I’d misjudged her and thought her not strong enough to face the truth, when all along it was me who hadn’t been strong enough.”
“Just as you misjudged Anastasia’s strength,” David added.
Christopher nodded. “She was too young to know the truth, I thought. I decided to leave it for a while. And then I thought she would despise me for my mistake and I might lose the one person I loved most next to Katherine, if I told her. And so I kept silent. It was easier that way. And so time kept rolling on and not until now have I known that I was making a much graver mistake.” Christopher looked at her. “I never hated your mother, Anastasia. Never. The bitterness rose from the knowledge of my own mistakes. Of what I had lost as a result. And you are a constant reminder of what I once had—the most happiness a man could ask for. At the same time you remind me I was human. Flawed and imperfect. Sometimes I blamed you for that reminder and for that I am sorry.”
Anastasia rose from the lounge, disentangling her hand from David’s, feeling her fingers tingle with the release of tension and crossed to kneel at her father’s side. The years of icy distance between them prevented her from holding him—it would take time to overcome that barrier. So she contented herself with picking up his hand. “We can’t turn back the clock, Dad, so let’s start afresh. You talk to me and I will talk to you. No more secrets. You have to trust the people you love, or you only hurt yourself.”
“Take heed of your own words, Anna,” her father said. “Don’t turn your back on love because you fear the future. That’s a choice your mother made and she couldn’t live with it. And you, as you are rightly tired of hearing, are like your mother. You need love in your life. You can draw strength from it. The more you fill your life with love, the stronger you can grow.”
Anastasia looked across to David and her heart contracted. He had gone. The sofa was empty. She whispered his name.
“Go,” her father said. “Go, before it’s too late.”
She stumbled to her feet, feeling her father’s hand steady her and raced across the room to the double doors that led into the entrance hall. She pulled it open and stepped into th
e hall.
David was at the front door, one hand on the handle.
“Why are you leaving?” she demanded, fear making her voice strident.
He turned to face her. “As your father pointed out, I have no rights to intrude on your family’s history and affairs. The strongest claim I have is friendship and that only gets me this far.”
She flew across the tiling and flung herself against him, grasping the material of his shirt in her hands. Her voice shook as she said angrily, “You’re wrong and you know it. You’re just doing this to scare me. David, I love you. Don’t you dare step outside that door. I love you. I want you to stay. Come back. Stay with me.”
His arms crushed her to him, holding her so tightly she could feel the frenetic beat of his heart against her chest. His breath against her cheek where he rested his head was uneven. He was trembling.
“You didn’t really think I would let you go, did you?” she said. “I love you.”
“I’ve suspected for days now that you love me,” he said, his voice muffled against her skin. “But I’ve been watching you fighting it, wondering…” He sighed. “I stayed away, hoping you’d see it then.”
“I did,” she whispered.
He kissed her, his lips firm and promising and for long moments they lost track of time and the world except for each other. Anastasia let herself experience the full strength of her love and she could feel it emerge from her, a powerful warmth that made her light-headed.
“You were right,” she said. “All along, you were right and I couldn’t believe you.”
He cupped her cheek with his hand, caressed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “Has hearing the truth from your father restored your faith in marriage, Anna?”
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
“It’s what I’ve been asking you all along. The highest of high stakes.”
She smiled and almost laughed as happiness bubbled over inside her. “Yes, I’ll marry you,” she said. “I’ll marry you, I’ll love you unreservedly and I’ll stay with you until I die. Will that do?”
Inconvenient Lover Page 19