by Daphne Clair
‘What on earth did you think might have happened to me?’ he asked. ‘I spoke to you barely an hour or so ago. Less.’
‘I got the impression you might have a cold,’ she said. Or might even have been crying, however fantastic the thought. But she couldn’t suggest that to him. ‘I realise now,’ she added, her voice sharp with relief, ‘it’s only that you’ve been drinking.’
‘A cold,’ he echoed. ‘For pity’s sake, you mean you came rushing to my side because you thought I might have a cold?’
It sounded ridiculous, of course. And so, now that she was here, did the idea that he might have considered killing himself. Nothing, she reminded herself caustically, touched Sholto that deeply. Not even the loss of the woman he had loved and planned to have children by, spend the rest of his life with. Perhaps Averil was well out of it. He might eventually have broken her heart as he had Tara’s.
‘I thought,’ she said stiffly, ‘that if you were feeling miserable you might need a friend.’
‘A friend.’
The brief monosyllables sounded derogatory, and Tara flared into anger, partly a consequence of relief that after all she’d been panicking about something that hadn’t been in the least likely. ‘I know you scarcely understand the meaning of the word,’ she said. ‘But most people value their friends, and rely on them when they’re troubled or grieving. And since you’ve probably driven away all of yours, I could be the nearest to one that you have.’
He said, ‘I had a friend once that I valued a great deal. Between the two of you, you taught me exactly how much friendship is worth.’ As she whitened, her spine straightening, he added, ‘I prefer to rely on my own resources, rather than the uncertainties of so-called friendship.’
‘Your resources? Including whisky, I see.’ She cast a disparaging glance at the drink by his side.
‘Why not? It isn’t something I resort to often. In fact I don’t remember the last time I got even slightly sloshed. But in times of extreme stress it does have the virtue of taking the edge off certain things. And I’m forgetting my manners,’ he said, getting up, but not too fast. She had the feeling that he had to keep still for a moment before he could trust himself to move further. ‘Can I get you something?’ he asked. ‘You don’t like whisky, unless your tastes have changed, but there’s gin, and wine.’
‘No, thanks.’
He said with a hint of impatience, ‘Don’t be a prude, Tara. If you’ve come on a mission of mercy you can join me in a drink or two. Isn’t it supposed to be bad for anyone to drink alone?’
‘I should think you’ve already had more than one or two,’ she guessed.
‘So I have,’ he agreed. ‘But I’ve no intention of driving tonight, and I’m not even halfway as drunk as I might like to be. Unfortunately I’m not particularly susceptible. Anyway, I promise I won’t pass out or throw up if you join me.’
Was that an oblique request for her to stay a while? Perhaps it was the closest Sholto could bring himself to outright asking her to keep him company in his loneliness. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘A gin and tonic.’
He inclined his head ironically and went to a blond wood cabinet that opened to reveal a small refrigerator and drinks shelf. ‘Ice?’ he asked her.
‘Thank you.’
He brought her drink over before subsiding again onto the sofa and picking up his whisky glass.
Tara found the drink cool and pleasantly bitter, if a shade strong.
Neither of them proposed any toasts, and Tara had taken several more sips before Sholto broke the silence.
‘You sent a card to Averil’s parents.’
‘Yes.’ Looking at him a little apprehensively, she asked, ‘Did you mind?’
‘Mind? No. They were very appreciative. Touched.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘You’re different,’ he said, ‘from the way I remembered you.’
‘I’ve matured. Did you expect me not to have changed?’
Sholto looked down at his glass, nearly empty now, and gently swirled the remains of the whisky in it. He said almost inaudibly, ‘I expected never to have to see you again.’
‘You can’t forgive me, can you?’ Tara said, her voice low and shaking with pain.
‘Forgiveness,’ he said meditatively. ‘I don’t believe in it.’
Tara drew a quick breath. ‘Sholto—that’s so... so inflexible. Haven’t you ever done anything that you know was wrong? That you were sorry for afterwards?’
‘Frequently. But I don’t go begging people to forgive me. If it’s possible, I set it right. And if not...’ He shrugged. ‘If not, I just have to live with what I’ve done. The same way that I have to live with what other people have done.’
She waited, but the silence between them seemed to demand a comment. ‘Like me?’ she asked flatly.
He looked at her for a moment, stilling the movement of his glass. ‘Like anyone,’ he said, and lifted the whisky to his lips, finishing it off.
She watched him pour himself another. It was impossible to tell how far down the level of liquid in the bottle was, but he had to tip it quite steeply to fill the glass. She didn’t know, of course, if he had started with a full bottle.
‘It’s a harsh philosophy,’ she said.
‘You’d rather live by the law of forgiveness, I suppose.’ Tara shivered at the note of contempt in his voice. ‘That’s for people who can’t or won’t learn from their mistakes. Who keep on doing the same thing, hurting the same person—or people—over and over again, never making any real effort to change, because they know they’ll be forgiven, so why bother trying?’
‘But it isn’t always like that!’ Tara protested. ‘Surely everyone’s entitled to one more chance?’
He looked at her with eyes that seemed to be seeing something else, and gave a short laugh. ‘How often have I heard that?’ he said. ‘A worker in one of my warehouses was found with his fingers in the till. The manager persuaded me to give the man one more chance— they were related in some way, I think the man was his nephew. They both assured me it would never happen again. Within six months he’d cost me several hundred thousand dollars.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘Called the police and sacked them both. What did you expect? I can’t afford the biblical seventy times seven. I’d be bankrupt in no time, and all my employees would be out of work. He wasn’t just cheating me, he was cheating his fellow workers, as well.’
‘You sacked the manager, too?’ Tara enquired. ‘Why? What had he done, except ask you to do an act of kindness?’
‘A manager needs to exercise judgement in his choice of workers, among other things. Either his judgement or his loyalty to the company was in question. In other words, he was incapable of doing satisfactorily the job he was paid—and paid rather substantially—to do.’
‘But his family—don’t you see he had a duty to them, too?’
‘When his family pays his salary,’ Sholto said cuttingly, ‘they can make claims on him to set them up in work.’
The argument seemed unanswerable, but Tara was repulsed by it. ‘You gave me a large discount,’ she said, ‘for no reason except that you were sorry for me.’
‘A whim. I couldn’t have done that if I’d been working for someone else,’ he pointed out. ‘There are advantages to owning the company that don’t, unfortunately, accrue to the staff.’
Sholto was a hard-headed businessman. She’d always known that, and she had never been revolted by it during their marriage, she reminded herself. Because he had shown a different side of himself to her. A generous, tender and passionate side. The one he had, presumably, presented to Averil. She said, ‘What will you do now?’
‘Do?’
‘You told me you came back to New Zealand because Averil wanted to live here.’ Perhaps he would find it too painful to remain without her.
‘I’ve made my arrangements,’ he said, ‘and I don’t want to change them agai
n. Except that we’d planned to buy a house. I’ll probably keep this place instead. It’s adequate for my needs.’
Tara looked about at the cool, neutral colour scheme, the pricey and rather sterile designer furniture.
When she returned her eyes to Sholto she found a hint of amusement barely curving his mouth. ‘You don’t approve,’ he said.
‘It’s very... classy,’ she said politely. ‘I suppose it expresses your personality quite well.’
His eyes sharpened, gleaming. ‘Is that a dig at me?’
Tara shook her head. ‘Just an observation.’
‘Actually, I don’t look on my living space as an expression of my personality,’ he said.
How typical of him to use the impersonal words ‘living space’ rather than ‘home’. ‘Where do you express it, then?’ she asked with a touch of sarcasm. ‘In your ties?’
He wasn’t wearing one at the moment, but his ties had never been flamboyant, even when bright colours and splashy designs were fashionable. They tended to be dark, of excellent quality and discreetly patterned.
The faint smile on his mouth grew. Without answering, he obliquely turned the tables. ‘I sometimes wondered if your penchant for surrounding yourself with old things was a result of being moved about so much as a child.’
‘Very likely,’ she answered. She’d never particularly thought about it herself, but it made some sense. Her father had regarded houses more as investments than places to spend time with his family, and her mother had developed a habit of not accumulating household belongings. Instead of trucking large lots of furniture about the country, they’d often sell most of it before the move.
Tara had always felt unsettled in a new place, usually in an unfamiliar bed in a bare room or surrounded by unrecognisable furniture. She’d had a small collection of rag dolls and stuffed toys that she always packed herself and unpacked first, before her clothes or anything else.
Sholto, she supposed, had never needed such props to comfort him. Recalling what Derek had said about him, she looked at him thoughtfully. If her taste reflected something about her childhood insecurity, perhaps in a different way his did, also. Was his preference for rather comfortless surroundings an indication of his unwillingness to reveal emotion?
‘What does that pensive stare mean?’ Sholto enquired lazily. But his eyes were guarded, as if he suspected her of some ulterior purpose.
‘I’ve just realised something,’ she said. The steely barriers Sholto maintained against the world were a symptom of deep hurts and insecurities, much worse than hers. He was afraid of letting anyone get too close to him in case he got hurt again.
‘What?’ His gaze had sharpened, the slight glaze that the amount of alcohol he’d been drinking had imparted to them momentarily dissipating.
‘Nothing.’ He’s on the defensive, she thought. Perhaps subconsciously he recognised that she was seeing him more clearly than ever before. And it made him uncomfortable.
During their marriage she’d been too young and too ardently involved with him to even try to analyse his feelings. And at first she’d simply, naively, taken it for granted that they matched hers.
After the shattering breakup she’d spent a great deal of energy in a very determined effort not to think about Sholto at all. It wasn’t so very surprising that she’d never made any serious effort to figure out why he was the baffling, enigmatic, difficult and iron-hearted man that he appeared to be. Nor to find out what really lay beneath that hard exterior.
‘Another drink?’ Sholto offered, getting to his feet.
She had forgotten she was cradling an empty glass. Had Sholto just noticed, or was he simply trying to distract her from thoughts that he couldn’t read but that made him uneasy?
Tara smiled, and handed him the glass. ‘Thank you. But could you go easier on the gin this time? I have to drive home.’
‘Do you?’
Her eyes widened as he held them with his. The blue smalt depths held a veiled, smouldering light, but he turned away from her abruptly, leaving her wondering if she’d mistaken his meaning.
Surely, yes. When he handed her the refilled glass he flicked a brief, dispassionate glance at her and resumed his seat on the sofa.
She took a good mouthful of the gin and tonic, welcoming its cooling, steadying flavour.
‘All right?’ He’d picked up his own glass. It occurred to her that he was emptying it quite slowly now.
‘The drink?’ she said. ‘Thanks, it’s fine.’
She made it last. Sholto had lapsed into silence, apparently relaxed against the glabrous black leather of the sofa, his eyes half-closed. She wondered if he was going to sleep. He must have almost finished the bottle of whisky.
She returned to her speculations. At nineteen she’d been dazzled and grateful that Sholto could have fallen in love with her. Perhaps then she had been exactly suited to his needs—not a woman who might have probed his emotions, exposed his secret, inner self, but a credulous, unknowing girl who adored him and saw only what he wanted her to, the confident, successful sophisticate that he was on the surface. And when she began to grow up a little, to ask more of him than he was willing to give, he’d sloughed her off.
Had he revealed himself more fully to Averil? Had she breached the barriers that Tara had never been able to penetrate? Or had Averil been less demanding than Tara, content with what limited closeness Sholto would allow? Was that why he had preferred her, despite the unwilling attraction that he’d still felt for his ex-wife?
Impossible to ask him any of this. He wouldn’t give her any answers.
‘I should go,’ she said quietly as she emptied the glass in her hand.
She got up, surprised at the speed with which Sholto stood too and came over to her, taking the glass from her fingers to place it beside his own on the side table.
As his eyes met hers again, she said, ‘Will you be all right, alone?’
Even as she said it she remembered his savage innuendo the last time they’d met, and steeled herself for another knife-thrust.
It didn’t come. ‘I’ll have to get used to it,’ he said, ‘won’t I?’
‘Oh, Sholto,’ she said, her eyes suddenly shimmering with tears. ‘I’m so sorry!’
His voice roughened. ‘You’ve no need to upset yourself on my account. Don’t for God’s sake start pitying me, Tara! That would be worse than all the rest.’
‘It isn’t so terrible to be pitied,’ she protested. ‘And anyway, it’s more than that.’ She wiped the threatening tears away with her fingers. He didn’t want her weeping over him.
He went with her to the door. His hand was on the latch when she turned to him to say softly, ‘Good night.’
She put a hand on his arm, and felt its steely rigidity. He was as tense as a stretched wire, she realised, despite the whisky and the apparent slackness of his stance, his shoulders hunched forward, his feet placed apart, and one hand in his pocket.
The light was still off, but she could see he was looking down at her. She leaned forward and briefly pressed her lips to his cheek. ‘Take care, Sholto.’
She was drawing back when she heard the quick hiss of his breath, and then his hand snatched at her hair, holding her head tilted to him as his eyes, even in the darkness, blazed. ‘God Almighty!’ he said, the words escaping through clenched teeth in a muted cry of anguish. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Sholto?’ Dazed, shocked, she tried to read what was in his face. ‘What is it? What have I done?’
‘You may well ask,’ he said strangely. ‘Can you really not know?’
‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered. She was standing close to him, so close she could smell the whisky on his breath, and the scent of his body, and feel the heat of him through her clothes. ‘Sholto, I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘Damn you. I can’t let you go now. I can’t.’
‘Sh-Sholto?’ Her heart was beating fast, in
an uneven rhythm. ‘What are you saying?’
‘You want the words? I need you.’ His voice was harsh, as though the words were dragged from him against his will. His hand tightened, buried in the resilient curls. It urged her closer, until their bodies touched, and then his other arm imprisoned her waist, fitting her against him, and his head came down, his cheek pressed tight to hers, his lips hot on the curve of her shoulder. ‘You can feel it now, can’t you?’ he asked, as she began to tremble in his arms. ‘I’ve fought it ever since you walked in the door tonight. I told myself it was despicable, feeling like this.’
‘Because of Averil,’ Tara whispered.
‘I should have thrown you out then, sent you away. I told myself we’d just talk for a little while, that I’d let you go then. That’s what you came for, isn’t it? To talk. To bring me comfort.’
‘Yes.’ She had one hand on his arm. The other was against his thudding heart. She hardly dared to move.
‘Tara.’ She felt his lips on her skin, heard the intake of his breath, knew he was breathing in her scent—not bottled perfume but her own unique woman-scent.
His mouth reached her cheek, brushed across it to the corner of her mouth. ‘Tara,’ he said. ‘You’re not fighting me. Why don’t you stop me?’
‘Could I?’ she asked, her voice a bare murmur.
His hand in her hair convulsed. He pulled out the combs, clumsily, and they dropped silently to the carpeted floor as he raked his fingers into the loosened mass of curls. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Do you want to?’
Want to stop him? Tara closed her eyes. Her hand moved from his heart to the opening where his shirt had parted. ‘No,’ she whispered, running her fingers over the warmth of his skin. ‘No, Sholto. I don’t want to stop you.’
CHAPTER NINE
She turned her head very slightly, bringing her mouth to his, and felt his lips open over hers as though he’d been starved for her, wanted to devour her. She tasted whisky, and then nothing but Sholto, felt nothing but him, knew nothing in the whole world but him, his arms, his mouth, his being, nothing but this overwhelming sensation of rightness after long years of deprivation.