‘This is crazy!’ He stood up and began pacing the room. He slammed his fist on the wall and was grimly satisfied when she swung around to look at him. That remarkable hair, which he had brushed, played with, threaded through his fingers, hung around her like a fall of vanilla silk. His hands itched to touch it again, to touch her again, and his weakness was driving him crazy. He paused to position himself right by her, then leaned over her, face darkly angry.
‘Why ask questions about a future when you can destroy the present in the process?’
Abby thought of the life growing inside her. Actually, she wanted to say, I have a pretty good reason now that you mention it. She didn’t need much of an imagination to figure out what his reaction would be.
‘You don’t even sound as though you like me, Theo,’ she said hollowly.
‘For God’s sake! Of course I like you!’ He pushed himself away from her. ‘What sort of self-pitying remark is that?’
Abby didn’t look at him. She stared straight ahead at the door of the sitting room, which was almost closed. She needed him to go. Soon. Now. Just having him share her space was tearing her to shreds.
‘Well?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Do you think I would ever sleep with a woman I didn’t like?’
Abby shrugged. ‘You tell me, Theo. Would you? It’s not so very much worse than sleeping with a woman you don’t trust, is it?’
When he didn’t immediately answer she inclined her head to look at him. He was leaning against the wall, hands thrust aggressively into his pockets. She knew that as far as he was concerned trust didn’t enter into the equation. Just so long as she didn’t demand anything of him, didn’t try to pin him down, then things were fine. He could dispense money, could talk about maintaining her, but as long as the situation remained fully within his control he could continue to enjoy what they had. Asking for more raised ugly questions.
‘You’re determined to push this to a conclusion, aren’t you?’ He interpreted her silence for assent. ‘How could you ever expect that I would trust you?’
‘Because…’
‘Because we made a good team between the sheets?’
That stung. Control was now something very small bobbing about on rough seas, something she was finding difficult to get a hold of.
Was that all he saw? The laughter, the times they had shared with Jamie, the conversation…did it all come down, for him, to a necessary part of getting her between those sheets so that he could have a good time? She couldn’t believe it, but that was what he was saying, wasn’t it? She bit back the dam waiting to burst and gathered herself together sufficiently to point to the sitting room door. No shaking finger. That would come later.
‘Out.’
‘When I walk through that door I won’t be walking back,’ Theo said grimly. ‘I have never begged for a woman and I am certainly not intending to start now.’
Abby, who couldn’t bear to look at him, gritted her teeth. Prolonging the conversation was a waste of time. She could never convince him that he could trust her and, even if she could, it would make no difference. He didn’t love her and he never would.
She was aware of him moving but it was only when he came into her line of vision, when he had pulled open the door and was standing there, starkly silhouetted by the light in the hall shining behind him, that she truly looked at him.
‘What will you tell Jamie?’ Theo asked roughly.
‘Do you care?’ She saw his jaw clench and his face darkened. ‘I’ll tell him that…that you had to return to Greece and that we probably won’t be seeing you again…He’ll understand. Kids adapt. He’ll have forgotten all about you in two weeks’ time.’ She barely noticed the shadow that crossed his face at those words. Her mind was already vaulting ahead to a life without him in it.
‘Right.’ Dammit! She wouldn’t even look at him! He had walked through that front door with champagne and apologies. He was leaving with a sackful of memories. And, he told himself, it was for the best. She had been a pleasing distraction but that was it and it would have been unfair on her to have continued what they had for longer anyway. But she still wasn’t looking at him. He felt stupidly deprived of his right to leave on the last word.
In the end he simply turned his back, gathering his jacket en route, leaving with a quiet click of the front door.
Released from the tension, Abby felt herself go limp like a rag doll. She almost expected to hear the ring of the doorbell, could hardly believe that everything could end so quickly and quietly, but there was no ring and, after a couple of moments, she heard the sound of his engine starting and the crunch of the tyres as he sped away from her and her life.
Then, and only then, did the tears come.
Later, when the tears had dried up, still sitting on the sofa in the sitting room because her body couldn’t contemplate the exertion of mounting the stairs to the bedroom, she considered what she would have to do next.
Leave Brighton. Her stomach was flat now but it wouldn’t be in a couple of months’ time and there was no way she could risk being seen by him accidentally should he come down to visit his brother. Leave Brighton like a thief in the night and face pregnancy on her own. Again.
Her parents might have roamed all four corners of England and finally ended up on the other side of the world, but they had stayed together in a loving, united relationship. Whereas she…
She rested her hand on her stomach and closed her eyes. Well, there was no point feeling sorry for herself. She had to carry on and she would do it the best she could.
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU’RE moping again, Abby. You really can’t afford to, you know. Jamie senses it and it makes him unhappy.’
Abby looked at her mother and dredged a smile up from somewhere. Since when had her mother ever been brisk? Then again, since when had her mother ever worn her hair in a neat, short, tailored style and dressed in a trouser suit?
The past four weeks had been a series of revelations and frenetic action, and all because she had picked the phone up the day after Theo had walked out through her front door for ever and called her parents.
She had expected vague sympathies and some sort of faraway offer to bring her over to Australia just as soon as they got their act together and started saving some money. That had always been their refrain.
Instead, she had got some crisp no-nonsense advice from her mother and an immediate decision to fly to England so that she could take her daughter in hand.
That had been three and a half weeks ago and during that time she had sold her small house in Brighton, accompanied her mother on an energy-fuelled property hunting foray in Cornwall and received all the down-to-earth, sensible words of comfort she had never in a million years expected.
Right now they were looking around a cottage, the fifth property they had seen in as many days.
‘Right. What do you think?’ Mary Clinton pulled out her stenographer’s pad, in which she had been making comprehensive notes about every house they had looked around, and began jotting a few things down.
‘Mum…I don’t know…what if it doesn’t work? What if you hate it here? I mean, you’ve lived with dad in Melbourne for such a long time and Cornwall…well, Cornwall isn’t Melbourne…’
‘I gathered that straight away.’ Her mother quietly shut the pad and looked at her daughter’s drained, pretty face. ‘But the time is right to move. We were going to make the move early next year, surprise you with a Christmas visit to break the news, but now is as good a time as any. Better. Moving in the depths of winter wouldn’t have been much fun, would it? As it stands, we can all celebrate Christmas together in a new house in a new place…’ She patted her short fair hair thoughtfully. Really, Abby mused, her mother looked like a million dollars. Her face glowed with good health and she had lost none of the willowy slenderness she had had as a young woman. It was just encased in vastly different clothing. No more long, flowing skirts and cheesecloth tops. Instead, smart grey trousers, neat brogues
and a snappy little jacket that hugged her figure.
But then, as she had discovered over the many conversations they had shared over the weeks, times had changed for her parents. Their organic food shop had gradually turned into a first class restaurant and the ethnic ornaments had become such successful sellers that they had opened a shop. They had, in effect, become entrepreneurs in their middle age. Her father had brushed up on his business skills and handled all the books. Her mother had become an astute buyer. Together, their vague venture had turned slowly but surely into a hugely profitable concern, and the move to Cornwall was really a business expansion. A friend and manager would continue to run their concern in Melbourne, the eventual plan being to convert the profits into a small, specialised hotel, catering for tourists who wanted unusual surroundings and purely organic food.
According to her mother, the market in Cornwall was ripe for a similar enterprise. There was a great deal of money flying around, there were tourists and there was a substantial number of people willing to pay for something just a little bit different when it came to accommodation and cuisine.
They had discussed the business venture over cups of tea and glasses of wine, they had talked about Abby moving in with them, helping them run their business for as long as she wanted. The only thing they never seemed to talk about was Theo, and Abby knew that that was her fault. Her mother would have been happy to talk about what had happened but somehow Abby just couldn’t bring herself to dwell on it. Maybe in time. It still hurt too much to think about him. So she had dispensed the barest bones of information and repeatedly changed the subject until her mother had got the message. In time, she would open up but not yet.
The only thing that stopped her succumbing to despair was Jamie. He had embraced his newly found grandmother with childish, unquestioning enthusiasm and had greeted news of a move to Cornwall without trepidation. He was a ray of light in her twilit world.
She had also not disappeared completely from Michael’s life. They would continue to communicate, though chances were that she would seldom see him, but he would always be a link and at the moment that helped. Just knowing that he knew how she felt about his brother, knowing that he would feed her titbits of information if ever she asked, although she had warned him never to mention Theo unless she brought the subject up. In due course, she might even tell him about the pregnancy although she wasn’t sure that it would ever be fair to put him in such an untenable position.
She surfaced from her thoughts to realise that her mother was speculating on putting an offer on the cottage, was planning what might go where and how the bedrooms would work, with Abby and Jamie having the rooms at the back, overlooking the distant view of the sea.
Which seemed to remind Jamie that he had been promised a trip to the beach for a little walk.
‘You needn’t come, love,’ Mary said, catching her daughter’s mood and knowing that the best thing she could do would be to take Jamie out for an hour or so. She hated to see her daughter wrapped up in unhappy thoughts, but the grieving process had to be endured to be overcome. In time, this man who had hurt her would become a part of her past and she would move on. In the meanwhile, she would simply have to face her misery and learn to accommodate it into her life.
Abby smiled gratefully at her mother and remained sitting at the kitchen table, watching as Jamie slid his small hand into her mother’s. They disappeared from view and she continued to sit, looking out of the window, not really focusing on anything at all. After ten minutes of sitting, she listlessly did a tour of the cottage herself so that she could try and work up some spark of enthusiasm. Oh, she was happy to be away from Brighton and out of that house that held too many memories but, even with such a dramatic change of scenery to help her, she still felt flat and tired. The fact that she was two months’ pregnant didn’t help her energy levels, although increasingly it did give her a sense of quiet contentment that there would always be a part of Theo with her when this baby was born.
She heard the crunch of tyres on gravel as she was descending the staircase and assumed it would be the estate agent. They were nothing if not aggressive in their follow-up techniques.
Just a shame that they had missed her mother by a quarter of an hour, because Mary Clinton knew how to deal with them. Lord knew when she had developed that thread of steel, but Abby had been very grateful for it on more than one occasion when she just couldn’t be bothered to tackle the day-to-day realities that had needed tackling.
The polite knock on the door had turned into a more insistent rapping and she wondered, fleetingly, whether there was any hope of hiding. Considering the man would have a key, she abandoned the idea because being caught under the kitchen table would not be dignified. She pulled open the door and blinked. The sun was bright and sharp and threw the man’s silhouette into dark perspective. Abby shaded her eyes with one hand and then a whirling dizziness began to spread through her, radiating out from deep inside until it was filling every inch of her body. She was barely aware of breathing and had only a second’s warning that she was going to faint.
She came to to find herself lying flat on a sofa in the living room. For a few disorienting moments she wondered whether she had dozed off and had had some wildly improbable nightmare, then her eyes fluttered open and there he was, kneeling on the floor beside her. Abby closed her eyes quickly and re-opened them, knowing that the spectre next to her would disappear. It didn’t. It spoke.
‘You fainted. If you wait a few seconds I’ll get you some water.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Abby asked weakly. She pulled herself into a sitting position and gaped at the man calmly staring back down at her.
The weeks since she had seen him had etched lines of strain into his face. The dark eyes were shuttered.
‘I went to your house. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it had been sold. All in the space of two weeks!’
‘Why?’ She shuffled up a little higher and carried on looking at him as though she had seen a ghost. ‘Why have you come here? How did you find me?’ With every syllable her panicked voice rose one notch higher.
‘Which question do you want me to answer first? I’ll start with the easier one, shall I?’ He moved away, which was a relief, but only to drag a chair across to the sofa so that he could reposition himself a bit more comfortably. ‘I went to see my brother. He had been trying to get through to me urgently, but I wasn’t taking calls. In the end, I decided to drive to Brighton and talk with him face to face. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Why did you let me think…’ He tore his eyes away from her and sat back, folding his arms. His expression was fiercely, intensely vulnerable. Abby, too shocked by his arrival, just watched and waited. When he next spoke, his voice was controlled and even but it was costing him effort. ‘I’ve been to hell and back these past four weeks…’
‘Sorry?’ Abby whispered.
‘I wasn’t expecting to find you here on your own. I thought your mother and Jamie might have been with you. I was hoping for…’ haggard eyes swept over her face ‘…a little time before I launched into this speech…’
‘You prepared a speech?’
‘Michael told me that your mother had come over, that you were thinking of moving to Cornwall. A pretty big place to start looking for a slip of a girl, and I’m not sure it wouldn’t have taken a hell of a lot longer if I hadn’t found your postcard on his mantelpiece. Missing Brighton but glad to be out. Will call soon, the card said. I telephoned every estate agent in the book until I came across the one you had used to see this place.’ He laughed wryly. ‘I never thought I had the makings of a detective, but it would seem that strange situations reveal hidden talents.’
‘I still don’t understand…’
‘Nor do I.’ For the first time, he met her eyes directly and smiled with faint bemusement. ‘I’ve spent the past four weeks waiting for my life to return to normal, waiting to be interested and focused
in my work, waiting for my food to taste like food and for my social companions to amuse me. It didn’t happen. The only person I could think about was…was you.’
Abby’s mouth dropped open and she discovered that she could hardly breathe. A sweet buzzing filled her ears. If this is a dream, she thought, then let me sleep for ever.
‘Michael called repeatedly and I refused to take any of his calls. Just thinking about him, thinking that I might never see you again but he would, filled me with rage. And, yes, jealousy.’
She saw the dark flush spread over his face and her heart soared. It would have taken enormous honesty to have admitted to that and she loved him for it.
‘In the end, though, I had to see him. And he told me everything and I just want to know…’
‘What did he tell you?’ Abby whispered.
‘He told me about his sexuality, that he is gay, that your engagement was something you both cooked up between yourselves. He said that it gave him respectability with the family and it gave you safety from undesirable men.’
‘Poor Michael.’ Her eyes filled up. ‘That must have been the hardest thing he ever had to do. He was so afraid of disappointing you and your mother.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I couldn’t breathe a word, Theo.’
‘Instead you let me believe…’
‘I had no choice.’
‘And I love you for that.’
For a few precious moments time stood still as she savoured the words she had longed to hear. He loved her! This big, powerful, controlled, invincible man loved her! The thought of his baby inside her, the secret she had kept from him, brought her down to earth with a painful bump. She swallowed hard and stood up, turning her back to him and walking towards the window, arms folded, body language expressive.
Theo watched and felt a chill of pure fear snake through him. This, he thought, isn’t right. He hadn’t had a plan when he had driven like a lunatic down to Cornwall, covering the distance in record time, clutching the names of the two cottages they were due to see. He had just known that he had to see her, had to express what he had kept hidden from himself until he couldn’t hide it any longer. His love had been an uncontainable force.
The Greek's Forbidden Bride Page 16