Her whole life had been on that plane, was all wrapped up in Daniel; she refused to believe that he was dead!
She shook her head. ‘There’s been a mistake—’
‘Heather—’
‘I tell you there’s been a mistake!’ she insisted vehemently at his reasoning tone. ‘Daniel can’t be—he’s still alive!’ Her voice broke emotionally. ‘I would know if he—if he were dead!’
‘They say the plane exploded, Heather.’
‘Then Daniel wasn’t on it—’
‘We both know he was on it,’ her uncle put in softly.
‘No.’ She shook her head, swallowing down the tears that threatened. ‘I refuse—It can’t be true!’ she bit out forcefully, turning towards the stairs. ‘I’m going to get dressed and go over there.’
‘The police will be here soon.’ Her uncle stopped her. ‘They’ll know by now that Daniel was the one on board—’
‘No!’ she cried, collapsing down on to the bottom stair, shaking uncontrollably as the tears cascaded down her cheeks. ‘It can’t be true! It can’t be true!’ She repeated the words over and over again, her arms clasped about her knees as she swayed backwards and forwards in her grief. ‘I only spoke to him a short time ago, told him how much I loved him. He was coming back to me, Uncle Lionel, he was going to tell me how much he loved me; I know he was,’ she added fiercely.
‘Darling, don’t.’ Her uncle sat down beside her, taking her in his arms to hold her tightly against his chest.
‘Don’t call me that,’ she choked.
‘What… ?’ He gently caressed her hair.
‘Darling,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s what Daniel—Oh, God, I have to go to the airport!’ She pulled out of his arms. ‘They could be wrong, Daniel might still be alive.’ Her eyes were feverish. ‘He could have been blown clear. Maybe—’
‘Heather, don’t do this to yourself,’ her uncle groaned. ‘He’s gone, Daniel’s gone.’
The same words she had used to tell him Stella had left him, and yet they weren’t the same at all; Daniel had really gone, and she would never see him again.
A numbed calm settled over her, her breathing ragged. ‘I still have to go to the airport,’ she told her uncle flatly. ‘The police can talk to me there if they have to,’ she added as he seemed about to argue. ‘I am going, Uncle Lionel.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ he sighed. ‘It isn’t going to be very pleasant. But if you insist,’ he calmed her heated protest, ‘then I’ll drive you.’
She was grateful for the offer, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to drive herself if she had tried, and she went to her room to dress, her movements automatic, moving as if in a daze.
But, as she dressed, the numbness began to pass, and in its place was a raw ache that cried out with pain every time she tried to imagine life without Daniel. Until they showed her—until they proved—She couldn’t accept that she would never see him again, never be able to tell him she loved him, never be able to hold him in her arms again.
A heart-wrenching sob dragged at her throat, and her knees gave way beneath her.
Her uncle found her collapsed on the carpeted floor, where Daniel had once made love to her, sobbing out her grief and pain.
She looked up at him. ‘Why Daniel?’ she cried. ‘Why him?’
‘Why the hell not?’ Something seemed to snap inside him. ‘Do you think the two of you have some God-given right to be happy?’
Heather rose slowly to her feet, stepping away from him, sure that her grief had to be giving her hallucinations; her uncle couldn’t have said that! ‘You don’t really mean that…’
‘We all die some time,’ he scorned. ‘Why shouldn’t it be Daniel’s turn now?’
Stella’s leaving him had to have unbalanced him, she couldn’t think of any other reason he would be acting in this way; he had liked Daniel.
‘Why should you have Daniel when Stella has left me?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘It’s because of the two of you that Stella left at all!’
‘Daniel and I?’ she gasped. ‘But—’
‘AI should have been mine,’ he told her savagely. ‘I worked as Max’s assistant all those years, helped him build it up into the success it is today.’ In his fevered anger he overlooked the fact that a couple of years ago, before Daniel stepped in to help, it had been a faltering airline! ‘And instead of coming to me as it should have done, it now belongs to a man Max despised, and a woman who wasn’t even his real daughter! Stella would never have thought of leaving me if AI had come to me as it should have done!’
That he was probably speaking the truth wasn’t to Stella’s credit at all, but that didn’t seem to worry him, his love for her was all-consuming. Even to making him glad that a man was dead, the man Heather loved!
She swallowed hard. ‘I’m going to the airport now. Daniel may not be dead—’
‘He is,’ her uncle rasped. ‘Can’t you understand that there were no survivors, that—’
‘Stop it.’ She put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it! I don’t want to listen to any more!’
‘Then don’t listen,’ her uncle jeered. ‘Go to the airport. But he’s gone, Heather, just as Stella has gone from me.’
She shook her head, turning to run down the stairs, grabbing up her keys from the hall table before running outside.
The wind and snow was an icy blast against her body as she unlocked her car, grateful that she had pulled on a sweater and denims earlier, just wanting to escape from the house now, not wanting to delay while she got a coat.
She couldn’t believe her uncle had said those things, that he was glad Daniel was dead! Tears streamed down her cheeks, her hands tightly gripping the steering-wheel as she fought for control. The car slid precariously on the snow-covered driveway and, as she slowly approached the end of it, bright headlights blinded her. Heather felt the control slip completely from her grasp as she swerved to avoid those blazing lights.
The car slid sideways, going off the driveway on to the grass before coming to a grinding halt as it smashed into the huge mound of snow, grass and earth that edged the driveway.
Heather was jerked forward, and then sharply back on impact, too shaken to release the catch of her seat-belt, not caring if she got out of the car or just sat there and froze to death. Why should she want to live when Daniel was dead, dead?
She had completely forgotten the approaching car that had caused her to panic, but she knew the other driver had come to her aid as the door beside her was wrenched open, the icy coldness it allowed in not touching her as she sat back with her eyes closed.
‘Heather!’ gasped a gentle voice of rough velvet. ‘My God, Heather, are you all right?’
She was dreaming. Or perhaps she was already dead? Yes, maybe that was the answer. It was the only way it could be Daniel talking to her, because he was dead, too. He—
‘Heather, answer me!’ Painful fingers clasped her shoulders and turned her towards the cold and the sound of Daniel’s voice. ‘Damn it, open your eyes and answer me!’ He shook her roughly.
She shouldn’t be able to feel pain if she were dead. But she did feel the pain, Daniel’s fingers bruising through her sweater. And she could feel the cold of the snow and wind too, now.
‘Heather!’ He shook her again.
Yes, it definitely hurt when he shook her like that. And if she could feel pain—!
Her lids flew open, and she looked straight into Daniel’s anxiously concerned face.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘I WAS on my way home when I heard on the radio that a plane had crashed and exploded at the airport,’ Daniel explained grimly. ‘I didn’t find out until the next news-flash that it had been an AI plane. Once I heard that, I knew you must have thought the worst, that you’d probably assumed I was on the plane.’ He shook his head.
Daniel had driven the two of them back to the house some time ago, and even while they spoke to the police who arrived minutes after them, answered their questions,
Heather hadn’t been able to stop touching Daniel, the miracle of his being alive after all still not quite real to her.
He gave a heavy sigh. ‘They must have told Jack to take off again as soon as he’d refuelled.’
‘Uncle Lionel and I assumed—and no one told us any differently—that the plane had crashed on landing not take-off.’ Heather shuddered. ‘I still can’t believe it was Stella and Phillip who were killed and not you. What do you suppose they were doing?’
‘Knowing them as I do, and from what you’ve told me of their mood tonight, I would say it greatly appealed to their sense of humour to use an AI plane to go on a victory trip,’ he rasped. ‘As a member of the family, Stella was at liberty to order Jack to take her anywhere she chose to go.’
‘Poor Jack. And poor Uncle Lionel,’ she groaned. ‘He loved Stella so much.’
‘Too much,’ Daniel bit out. ‘It wasn’t a healthy love.’
‘She can’t hurt him any more,’ Heather choked.
Her uncle had refused to believe the police when they told him his wife was dead; he had rushed out of the house to drive to the airport to see for himself, much as she had done when she thought it had been Daniel on the plane. Her uncle hadn’t made it as far as his car, the strain of the last few hours was too much for him as he fell to the ground clutching his chest, the heart attack sudden—and final.
Heather gave a shaky sigh. ‘I never thought how hurt he must have been to have been omitted from Max’s will in that way,’ she groaned. ‘That fifty-one per cent of Air International should really have gone to him; he worked most of his life for it.’
‘You were Max’s daughter, it was obvious—’
‘But I wasn’t!’ She stood up agitatedly, her hands twisting together as she avoided Daniel’s puzzled gaze. ‘Which must only have made what happened worse for my uncle.’ She straightened. ‘You once asked what I’d done to Max for him to have worded his will the way he did.’ She drew in a ragged breath. ‘At the time, I told you I hadn’t been the son he wanted. There was more to it than that.’ She finally met his gaze. ‘I wasn’t his daughter, either.’ She shook her head. ‘My mother was already pregnant with me by another man when she married him.’
Daniel looked stunned. ‘Did he know that?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She gave a shaky smile. ‘It was the reason he married her. You see, he was incapable of fathering a child himself,’ she revealed breathlessly.
His face darkened angrily. ‘He knew that?’
Heather frowned at his reaction. ‘Oh yes, he always knew that.’
Daniel stood up to pace the room forcefully. ‘The bastard!’ he finally exclaimed. ‘My God, I’m glad that neither one of us is related to a man like that!’
She became suddenly still. ‘What do you mean?’
His mouth twisted. ‘Did you never wonder why I agreed to help Max with his faltering airline… ?’
She frowned. ‘I thought you considered it to be a good business deal.’
‘Or why I put up with his sadistic habit of humiliating me?’ Daniel rasped.
She had always wondered why a man as strong and honest as Daniel had stood Max’s treatment of him…
‘Why I daren’t let myself so much as touch you because I knew that if I did I wouldn’t be able to stop?’ he continued harshly. ‘Even though I always wanted you, too!’
She swallowed hard. ‘Daniel… ?’
His eyes glowed fiercely silver. ‘For two years, until just before he died, when he took pleasure in telling me the truth, I believed that Max was my father, that you were my sister!’
Heather sat down heavily. ‘How—? I don’t understand…’ she said weakly, completely dazed by the revelation. Sister? How could—?
Daniel looked furious. ‘When my mother died I found some letters, old letters that she had kept for years, proving that she’d had an affair with Max Danvers about the time I was conceived. I went to see him, and was instantly struck by the similarity in our colouring. I confronted him with his affair with my mother, asked him if he could be my father, and he—the bastard greeted me like the long-lost son he’d never known existed! And I believed him!’
‘Oh, Daniel!’ Heather cried in her anguish for the pain he had suffered.
He nodded abruptly. ‘It was only after the deal for my financial participation in AI had been finalised that he began to show how he really felt towards me. Even then I thought maybe it was because he was frightened I’d try to get him to acknowledge his illegitimate son into his nicely respectable world. Just before he died he told me the truth, that my mother had been involved with several men when he knew her, that whoever my father was it certainly wasn’t him.’
Poor Daniel. He had been searching most of his life for the man who had fathered him, only to have the reality turn into a nightmare. ‘What he did to you was so cruel—’
‘No crueller than what he did to you,’ Daniel rasped harshly. ‘Shilton knew about it, didn’t he?’
‘I wasn’t the son Max wanted,’ she shrugged. ‘The son he married my mother to acquire.’
‘And I came along claiming to be the son he knew he could never have,’ Daniel realised bitterly. ‘My God, how he must have laughed at that.’
And the bitterness could so easily ruin Daniel’s life a second time, make him forget what they had together. ‘But he didn’t win, Daniel, can’t you see that?’ Heather encouraged eagerly. ‘He forced the two of us to marry, knew that you would be contemptuous of me just because you believed I was his child, was sure that we would never actually find happiness together. But we have,’ she said with certainty. ‘Daniel, we have!’
He looked at her searchingly. ‘Why did you marry me, Heather?’
She gave a serene smile. ‘For the only reason I would ever marry anyone, because I love you.’
He drew in a sharp breath. ‘Did Max know how you felt about me?’
She moistened her lips. ‘I didn’t think so… but yes, I’m sure he did. Daniel, can’t you see I had to marry you, even knowing how mercenary it made me look? I wanted the airline to be yours! And I wanted to be your woman!’
Daniel closed his eyes as if in severe pain. ‘Do you have any idea what it was like to be attracted to you and feel that it was wrong, so very wrong?’ he groaned.
‘Max liked to hurt people,’ she sighed painfully.
He shook his head. ‘I fought against caring for you for so long that even when it became possible for me to marry you I didn’t want to love you. You’re right, I resented you because you were his daughter, because I believed you had to be like him. On our wedding night—’
‘Don’t,’ she groaned, still feeling the shame of that night. ‘I acted very badly—’
‘You acted that way because it was the role I’d forced you into,’ he corrected grimly. ‘The signs of your innocence were all there for me to see, I just chose to ignore them, preferred to think the worst because it was easier that way. Easier for me.’
‘You’d been hurt—’
‘That’s no excuse for the way I’ve treated you,’ he cut in self-disgustedly. ‘Heather, I have something for you, something I—I’ve been carrying around for days but been afraid to give you.’
Afraid? Daniel was never afraid! ‘What—?’
‘Don’t look like that,’ he groaned at her stricken look, enfolding her in his arms. ‘It’s something I should have given you months ago, something I should have told you months ago.’ He reached into his jacket pocket. ‘With my love.’ He handed her a velvet box.
Heather’s hands trembled as she stared at him with wide eyes. His love, he had said. Did he mean it?
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ he chided gruffly, looking uncertain.
She couldn’t bear to see him any less than arrogantly self-confident, awkwardly flicking open the lid to the box she held, her eyes glowing as brightly as the sapphire and diamond ring she had uncovered.
‘If you don’t like it we can change it.’ Daniel hastened int
o speech at her silence. ‘I—it’s an engagement ring. I thought—’
‘You love me!’ She threw her arms joyously about his neck. ‘You really love me!’
His arms closed about her possessively. ‘Until the day I die!’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HEATHER had been watching for the approach of the car, running lightly to the door as she saw the headlights through the raging blizzard. She had been so worried…
The droplet earrings that swung against her neck were a perfect match for the ring that nestled against her wedding band on her left hand.
She threw open the door in anticipation, unconcerned by the snow being blown into the house as she launched herself into the arms of her laughing husband. ‘I thought you were going to be delayed by the weather,’ she told him between kisses.
‘Nothing could keep me from coming home to you,’ Daniel assured her gruffly.
‘I hope you’re feeling strong,’ she grinned. ‘We’re all ready to decorate the Christmas tree.’
‘We are?’ he murmured indulgently, his arm about her shoulders as they walked through to the lounge.
‘We are,’ she nodded, bending down to scoop up the tiny bundle of mischief from the play-pen. ‘We’ve been waiting for hours, haven’t we, darling?’ She nuzzled against her son’s throat, making him chuckle.
The advancement of her pregnancy, already five months along by the time Daniel insisted she see a doctor about her tiredness and weight increase, had come as a complete surprise to them both, her body having played a trick on her and not given her the usual sign that would have told her she was expecting Daniel’s child. At seven months old, Master Jason Taggart was the most treasured thing in their marriage, apart from their deep love for each other.
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