The Tempestuous Flame

by Carole Mortimer

  She shook her head, smiling at his disappointment. ‘Not from the first,’ she denied. ‘That came later. I suppose I was always aware of him as a sensually attractive man, but he annoyed me so much at first that I didn’t have time to notice anything else.’

  ‘You do understand why I would have liked him to have Rayner Enterprises? He would run it successfully,’ he said with certainty.

  ‘No doubt. So why not just sell it to him if you feel this way? He has enough money to buy it, there’s no need to marry me off to him.’

  Matt looked disgruntled. ‘I wanted to keep it in the family.’

  ‘In other words you still wanted to have a say in the running of it even though it no longer belonged to you.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘No wonder you changed from introducing me to men like Anthony, he would never have been able to cope with the firm.’

  ‘Much too weak,’ he agreed.

  ‘And André is much too strong a personality to allow you to interfere in the running of any business he owned. You should have known that, Daddy. It just wouldn’t have worked out the way you wanted it.’

  ‘It would if he had fallen in love with you. I’ve been on the receiving end of your wheedling, remember? I know how you can twist people who love you around your little finger.’

  Caroline made a scoffing noise. ‘Not someone like André. Men like him don’t fall in love, they have affairs.’ She should know, she had so nearly begun one with him herself. A few more minutes alone with him and she would have been totally committed, both in body and soul.

  ‘It’s this ruse of yours that gave him the wrong impression about you. I really thought when you left the party together that you’d told him the truth,’ he sighed. ‘When I came in and André reacted so violently I realised I’d been mistaken. He was furious, Caroline. He really thought you’d brought him back to the apartment of your middle-aged lover.’

  She rubbed her hands nervously. ‘He wouldn’t listen to me. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen!’

  ‘All right, don’t upset yourself. His cable didn’t say when he would be back from the States, but I think you should see him and explain as soon as he returns.’

  Caroline looked taken aback. ‘I couldn’t—I can’t see him again! Not after the names he called me.’

  ‘They were mild compared with what he could have called you. In the same situation I would have probably gone to town on you.’

  She sighed. ‘He probably would have done too if he hadn’t been quite so boilingly angry.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re going out with your friends this evening. An evening out at one of the clubs is just what you need.’

  ‘You know I don’t want to go. I only agreed to it because you kept pushing me. This is your first evening home, I wanted to stay with you.’ Her eyes were pleading.

  ‘You’re going out. Go to your room and get yourself ready.’ Matt sank down below the covers. ‘I feel like a rest. It’s amazing how easily tired I get, and we have been talking quite a while.’

  Instantly she was at his side. ‘How thoughtless of me! Now lie back and rest and I’ll get you—’

  ‘You won’t get me anything. Maggie’s here, she’s just dying to fuss around me.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Please, Caroline! I don’t have the strength to argue with you. You’re taking unfair advantage of my weakness.’

  ‘All right, I’ll go. But make sure you do rest, none of this sneaking looks at business files like you were in hospital until that young nurse caught you.’

  He chuckled. ‘Believe me, I’m going to rest.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  CAROLINE was spending the evening with Esther, John, and Nick, something she hadn’t done for some time. The club was crowded as usual, but Nick had little trouble finding them a table, laughingly telling them that he was a friend of the management, and it seemed to be true from the preferential treatment they received.

  She enjoyed the light bantering that made up the evening, using up masses of energy as she danced almost every dance. She was much in demand by the two men, as Esther cried off dancing.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ Caroline asked her during a quiet moment.

  Esther gave a glowing smile. ‘Everything’s fine. You’ll have to excuse John if he gets slightly merry this evening. I only told him a couple of hours ago that he’s going to be a father.’

  ‘Really? That’s wonderful!’

  The four of them ‘wet the baby’s head’ so much that night that Caroline felt quite tipsy by the time she let herself into the apartment. She was totally unprepared for the sight that met her eyes.

  ‘André!’ She stepped back, coming up against the closed door.

  He was just as attractive as ever, more tanned and virile-looking, but that was probably from the American sun. He was dressed casually in denims and a roll-necked sweater that moulded to his muscled shoulders and flat stomach. ‘Caroline,’ he nodded arrogantly.

  Taking a deep breath, she moved further into the room, throwing her wrap and evening bag on to the side table. ‘When did you arrive?’ She straightened her hair in front of the mirror.

  ‘A couple of hours after you left to meet your friends, I believe,’ he remarked tautly, watching her movements through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ she asked rudely, completely unnerved by his unexpected presence in her own home. Was nowhere safe from him?

  ‘Not in the hope of seeing you, I can assure you,’ he retorted equally cuttingly. ‘Matt’s just fallen asleep. I came out here to collect my jacket and then leave.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were about to steal the family silver,’ Caroline told him sarcastically. ‘Greg Fortnum has no need of other people’s silver.’

  ‘For God’s sake, what’s this hang-up you have about my name?’ André demanded impatiently.

  ‘Hang-up? I don’t have a hang-up about it. You lied to me, deliberately deceived me.’

  ‘Okay, so I lied, but only to get a little peace and quiet.’ He ran an agitated hand through his thick dark hair. ‘How the hell Matt can still stand to have you about after finding us together I can’t imagine! I would have throttled you if the positions had been reversed.’

  ‘And instead he collapsed with a heart attack,’ she put in quietly.

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘You heard me. Did it never occur to you that we might have been the reason for his attack—you, me, and the situation he found us in? Didn’t you realise I would have followed you and explained if something hadn’t happened to stop me?’

  ‘How the hell would I know? As far as I was concerned we had nothing left to say to one another. You mean Matt collapsed after I’d left?’

  She nodded confirmation. For the past few weeks she had kept her emotions firmly in check, not wishing to distress her father any more than necessary. But with André she felt her defences crumble away and the misery she had held back for so long threatened to overflow.

  Her shoulders shook as she cried. ‘Oh, André!’ she muttered miserably. ‘It was terrible. You can’t imagine how I felt when I saw him sink to the ground, that ghastly blueness about his lips.’

  ‘We weren’t to blame for the attack.’ He sounded preoccupied, her tears not moving him at all. ‘I’ve just had a long chat with Matt, and he didn’t sound as if he blamed me.’

  Caroline sniffed inelegantly. ‘He wouldn’t do that, he isn’t the type of person to point fingers.’

  ‘Matt’s a brutally honest person, and if he blamed me at all he would have said so. As it turned out we didn’t mention you at all.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You—you didn’t?’ So her father hadn’t told him the truth. He was leaving that to her, trusting her to be brave enough to reveal the truth about their living together. She wasn’t sure she was up to it.

  ‘Except for Matt to tell me you’d gone out with friends. I find it incredible that he still bothers with you. You left him to stay with a stranger in a r
emote cottage, he walks in on a very heated moment in that stranger’s arms, and then you proceed to leave him alone on his first evening home from hospital to go out with your own friends.’

  ‘Da—he insisted I went, I didn’t want to go.’

  ‘You don’t exactly look as if you sat miserably in the corner all night. You’re ever so slightly drunk.’

  ‘I’m not. I—we’ve been wetting the baby’s head.’

  His look sharpened. ‘Baby?’

  She sighed at the suspicion in his face. ‘Not mine, a close friend is expecting her first child.’

  ‘Mm,’ he frowned darkly. ‘Well, I think I should be on my way now. I don’t want to help you make Matt any more jealous” than he needs to be, not in his condition.’

  ‘André, I—I—’

  ‘Yes?’ he asked sharply, shrugging his shoulders into the dark leather jacket he had left thrown across an armchair. Caroline didn’t think Maggie would appreciate his untidiness.

  ‘I have something to—to tell you.’ Now it had come to it she really felt nervous. André wasn’t the easiest of people to sit down and talk to, and what she had to tell him wasn’t going to please him. She had taken her deceit a lot further than he had, hadn’t owned up to it, and now she felt only nervousness instead of the elation she had planned.

  He straightened the collar of his jacket. ‘And what is that?’

  He sounded so uninterested that she felt her temper rising. ‘It’s important,’ she insisted, delaying the dreaded moment for as long as possible.

  André sighed. ‘It’s late, Caroline, and I’m not in the best of tempers. Say what you have to say and then I can get home. I only flew in from the States earlier today.’

  ‘I—It isn’t easy.’

  He sighed again. ‘Nothing is ever straightforward where you’re concerned, I’ve found.’

  ‘If you’re going to be nasty…’ What a coward she was! Why didn’t she just get it over with?

  ‘Aren’t I always?’ he taunted.

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped, her tenseness making her sharper with him than she intended. ‘I’m—Matt isn’t my—my lover,’ she saw his disbelieving look and this spurred her on. ‘And my name isn’t Rawlings, you were right when you suspected it wasn’t.’ She took a deep breath. ‘My name is Rayner, and Matt is my father.’

  It had all come out in a rush and she could see his face becoming darker with anger at each word. If she had thought she had seen him angry before she now knew differently. His green eyes blazed down at her and his face was pale with anger, a whiteness about his mouth that pointed to him almost being out of control.

  ‘André?’ she looked at him anxiously.

  He still remained silent, moving away to the other side of the room as if he might strike her if he didn’t do so. ‘My God!’ he finally muttered. ‘Matt’s daughter!’

  ‘I—You—Yes!’ What else could she say?

  Suddenly he turned on her, his eyes accusing. ‘I should have realised, should have guessed you were his spoilt little daughter. How could I have been so blind, so damned stupid!’

  ‘You weren’t to know. It was your attitude that annoyed me to start with, the way you had formed an opinion of me without even knowing me, so I lied about my name.’

  His mouth turned back in a sneer. ‘Don’t add insult to injury. Matt made no secret of his matrimonial plans concerning his daughter and myself, and I was equally voluble about my dislike of such plans. So he sent you to the cottage, knowing full well I was going there.’

  ‘He did no such thing!’ she said indignantly.

  ‘All right, maybe you decided that all by yourself. But you were there, no matter how it came about. You set out from the first to attract me—and don’t deny it, because you know it’s true.’

  It was true, but not in the way he was implying. ‘I don’t deny it, but—’

  ‘Good God!’ he swore. ‘And I fell right into your trap. No wonder Matt warned me off—he hoped to make me more interested in you.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘He didn’t need to do that, I found you very attractive already.’

  ‘You’re wrong, André. Please believe me.’

  ‘No, you believe me, Caroline. I wouldn’t marry you under any circumstances. I find you sexually attractive and exciting, but I wouldn’t marry you. Matt may be able to give you a lot with his money, but he isn’t giving you me. He doesn’t have anything I want that badly, and neither do you.’

  She had expected anger from him, but not this hatred and disgust. ‘Oh, André…’ Tears gathered in her limpid eyes.

  ‘You knew who I was all the time,’ he said scathingly. ‘So you can drop the act now, no one’s impressed, especially me. I have no particular wish to see you ever again.’

  ‘Oh, please—’

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Rayner,’ he said chillingly.

  * * *

  Caroline looked much healthier for her prolonged stay in Barbados; long weeks of doing nothing but laze in the hot sun had agreed with her. Her skin glowed with a golden hue that was due entirely to the healthy tan she had acquired, and although still far too slender she no longer had those unhappy shadows in her eyes.

  Her father was the main cause of that, giving her back the confidence she had lost at André’s ruthless hands. He had also at last managed to convince her that she was in no way responsible for his illness, blaming himself totally for not heeding David Clarke’s expert advice.

  He was still in Barbados, accompanied by the faithful Maggie, and was likely to stay there for the rest of his life. They had all moved out there as soon as her father was well enough to fly, and her father had decided now was the right time to sell Rayner Enterprises. His health would always be a fragile thing and so there was only one thing left to do, sell his prosperous business.

  And so Caroline was here in London to meet the prospective buyer and take him back to the villa with her. There had been quite a few people interested in the company, but her father seemed to consider this one the most suitable, the one most likely to keep things as they were, and retain the same staff. She had at first refused to come here, not understanding the need for her actually to come here in person to meet this man. But her father had insisted that in business it was the personal touch that mattered. She had agreed to come in the end, mainly because she also wanted to do some shopping.

  The apartment seemed curiously empty without the presence of Maggie and her father, rather ominous in a way. She had been back two days now and would meet the man at the airport on their way to the villa. She had a complete new wardrobe for her trouble, but she would still be glad to get back to Barbados. So far she had seen nothing of André during her visit—and she intended for things to remain that way.

  She sighed, turning away from her reflection in the full-length mirror. Just the thought of André was enough to reduce her to misery. The last few months had done nothing to lessen her feelings towards him, if anything they were stronger. But what was the good of even thinking about him, he didn’t even want to see her again.

  She glanced at her watch; almost time for her to leave for the airport and meet Mr Andrews. She had never met the man, but her father assured her that she would be recognised. He had jokingly told her that she was beautiful enough for her face to be well known.

  She was a picture of cool self-confidence as she waited in the first-class lounge, the brown tailored suit and cream blouse emphasising her slenderness. She would have to change before they reached Barbados, but the weather in England wasn’t yet warm enough to merit a summer dress.

  ‘Are you ready to leave, Caroline?’ enquired that familiar taunting voice.

  Her skin pale she turned to face him. She had thought she was imagining things when she heard that voice, but no, it was definitely André before her. He hadn’t changed at all, perhaps slightly leaner than she remembered, but otherwise exactly the same, the same taunting quirk to his mouth and mockery for her in those green eyes. He was dressed in a dark grey business suit and w
hite shirt, looking much more the successful business man she knew him to be.

  ‘André…’ she trailed off faintly.

  ‘That’s right.’ He indicated her handbag lying on the chair behind her. ‘Is that all you have with you?’

  ‘I—Yes.’ She couldn’t take her eyes off him, he was the last person she had expected to see.

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘We’re leaving. I’ve arranged for your cases to be taken off the flight. Come on!’ He looked at her impatiently.

  Caroline moved jerkily, her eyes dazed. ‘I—but I can’t leave. I’m—I’m meeting someone.’

  ‘I know—me.’ He pushed her bag into her hands and taking her arm in a firm grip he led her out of the waiting-room and out of the airport.

  She waited until he had seated her comfortably in the car before saying anything further, the shock of seeing him again making her feel so confused she couldn’t think straight. She finally gathered her wits together enough to make some comment. ‘You?’ she squeaked. ‘But your name isn’t Andrews.’

  His mouth lifted at the corners as he secured her safety belt for her. ‘Very observant, Caroline.’

  ‘Then what did you mean? Look, I can’t be here with you. My father is expecting—’

  ‘Me,’ he repeated. ‘I’m Mr Andrews.’

  ‘But you can’t be,’ she said desperately.

  ‘Oh, but I am. Now just calm down, all will be explained to you in due time. Until then I suggest you just settle back and enjoy the scenery.’

  ‘I’m not enjoying this at all,’ she told him crossly. ‘I want my explanation now.’

  ‘Then you can just want, because you aren’t going to get one now. I’m not your father, and I won’t be swayed by a little of your pouting.’

  He remained stubborn throughout the whole of their journey, insisting she watch the scenery and not worry so much. The one thing that really annoyed her was that her father had managed to trick her once again. He had known she didn’t want to see André, had known that she would never willingly meet him again, and so he had engineered this little plan to dupe her. She would have a few things to say to him when she saw him again. When she saw him again! She had no idea when that would be.