by Penny Jordan
“He seems to be under a lot of strain,” Chris commented to Harold as they left the restaurant.
“Yes, well of course, his wife is virtually an invalid. That can’t be easy for a man—a normal healthy man, to live with. Of course he would never divorce her,” he added, “she comes from an extremely wealthy family. He was in private practice before she became ill; the work he does now can hardly pay as much, and once one has become used to a certain standard of living…”
His comments nauseated Chris, but then Harold would think that way, she told herself as they headed back to his office. That, of course, did not mean that John Howard did. He had struck her as far too sensitive and caring a man to jettison his wife when she needed him the most, but then men as a race rarely thought as women did. Women were capable of great sacrifice on behalf of the men they loved, men seldom returned the favour.
When they returned to his office Chris discussed with Harold the work she believed needed doing on the cottage. As she had hoped he knew of several firms who could carry it out and promised to obtain estimates for her.
“So, it could be that we might see a little more of you in the future,” he commented as he walked with her to the car. “I’m very glad.” Before she left he asked her out to dinner mentioning that some friends of his were holding a twenty-first party for their daughter and that he would like her to accompany him. The party was on Saturday, and Chris asked him if she could let him know. She hadn’t come to Little Martin to socialise, but for Sophie’s sake, then again though by Saturday she might be glad of an excuse to escape from the house and Slater’s disturbing presence.
Sophie was having a nap when Chris got back to the house. Sarah had left but Mrs Lancaster raised her eyebrows when Chris asked what progress had been made. “Sarah gets too impatient with her. Succeeding with Sophie is very important to her—too important perhaps. I think she hopes to impress Slater…”
Chris was a little surprised that the housekeeper should speak to her so freely, but then no doubt Mrs Lancaster, who couldn’t know of the events of the past, considered Chris as a member of Slater’s family. Had Natalie envisaged how she would feel; how she would suffer being in such close proximity to Slater. She shuddered suddenly. Could that thought perhaps even have been in her cousin’s mind in those last moments before her death? All at once she could almost feel Natalie’s malevolence reaching out to touch her. Shrugging aside the unpleasant sensation she went upstairs to Sophie’s room. The little girl was fast asleep. She had been drawing, and sheets of brightly coloured paper littered the bed. Almost absently Chris started to pick them up, freezing as she studied the stick figures. In one drawing a small stick figure was confronting a larger one, both, to judge from the dresses Sophie had drawn on them, female. The larger one’s face was contorted in an expression of anger so violent, Chris could almost feel it. She couldn’t see the smaller figure’s face because Sophie had drawn her back view. Quite irrationally she felt that the drawing had some relevance to Sophie’s trauma, and she riffled through the other drawings, studying them all carefully, but there were none similar.
Extracting the drawing she bent down to touch the sleeping child’s hair. Poor Sophie. If only she was her child Chris thought achingly, hers and Slater’s. Angry with herself she went into her own room, putting the drawing in the drawer beside her bed. She wanted to show it to Slater, but she was afraid he would dismiss her suspicions as childish.
Restless; pursued by unwelcome thoughts she wandered out into the garden. Beyond the expanse of lawn a winding path led to a secluded summerhouse, built beside an ornamental fish pool. The pool had always entranced Chris; the peace and solitude of the summer house drawing her, and she headed there now. Sheltered from the rest of the garden by a screen of trees, it had a secret, ageless air.
The summerhouse was unlocked and Chris walked inside, noticing that since she had last visited it, new cushions had been made for the seats that lined one wall. She had often imagined Edwardian ladies taking afternoon tea here, swinging gently in a hammock beside the pool perhaps, while fanned by some ardent, but bashful admirer. Lost in daydreams, she jumped tensely when she heard Slater’s voice, calling her name, her instinctive, “what are you doing here?” drawing a sardonic smile from his lips. “I live here,” he drawled, “What’s your excuse?”
She shrugged, striving to steady her racing pulses. “The summerhouse always drew me.” Too late she recalled with intense clarity that they had once taken shelter here from a sudden summer storm, her thin cotton dress had been soaked in their impulsive instinctive dash for shelter, and she had not realised why Slater was studying her so intently until she looked down and saw the outline of her breasts clearly delineated beneath the thin cotton. That had been the first time he had kissed her with real passion, his hands molding the firm shape of her breasts, teaching her things about her own burgeoning sexuality she had never dreamed possible. With an effort she dragged her thoughts away from the past.
“Enjoy your lunch?”
Slater was watching her, waiting to trap her, she sensed intuitively. “Very much,” she responded coolly. “Enjoy yours?”
“Financially it was extremely rewarding, as no doubt was yours. Two new possible lovers discovered in one day, but that’s all they’ll ever be Chris—lovers. Harold won’t marry anyone less than someone with the right social pedigree, and John Howard will never leave his wife. But then you always did have a penchant for other people’s men, didn’t you? Those were always the sort of men you wanted.”
She could sense his anger without knowing the cause for it. She could feel it reaching out to envelop her like a blast of heat and she responded to it, driven to goad him by saying mockingly. “I once wanted you Slater…remember?”
For a moment the folly of her taunt crystallised in her mind and she wanted to call the words back, but Slater was already reacting, his mouth twisted in a bitter parody of a smile.
“Oh yes, I remember all right…” he agreed smoothly. “I just wish to hell I didn’t,” Chris thought she heard him mutter under his breath as he came towards her. “I remember this.” He reached her before she could evade him, the back of the cushions brushing against the back of her knees as she tried to move away.
“What are you so nervous about, Chris?” he asked her mockingly. “Why the timid virgin act? You must have played this scene a thousand times since we first rehearsed it here in this summerhouse. How did it go?” His voice had an ugly taunting sound that tore at her heart. “Oh yes… Take one rain-dampened girl…conveniently not wearing a bra.”
“Stop it.” The words were torn from her throat making it ache with pain. He was deliberately trampling on all her memories, destroying not just her future but her past, turning something that to her at least had been poignantly beautiful into something mundane and even unpleasantly calculated. There had been nothing calculated in her response to him nor in her embarrassment when she found him looking at her. Her breasts rose and fell in quick agitation beneath her cotton shirt, her breath tightening painfully into an explosive knot in her chest when Slater deliberately placed one hand either side of her head on the wall behind her, leaning his torso towards her.
He was close enough for her to catch the scent of his body, male and slightly musky as though tormenting her like this was something that vaguely excited him. The thought made her nauseous, her body trembling with reaction. She was old enough to be able to handle this situation with sophistication, she reminded herself, so why wasn’t she doing so? Why was she reacting like an adolescent, torn between escape and desire.
“Stop it?” His eyebrows rose. “I haven’t even begun to start yet Chris. And besides you don’t really want me to stop do you?”
She turned her head away so that she wouldn’t have to look at him, shocked when his fingers suddenly bit into her arms, and he hauled her against his body. “Do you?” he grated, almost shaking her.
“What am I supposed to say Slater?” For a moment she had
almost believed the harsh voice held a note of fierce agony, but she dismissed this as sheer imagination, reminding herself of how he had hurt her; of how he must not guess how she felt. Summoning all her courage she threw back her head, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “What do you want from me Slater? What do you want to hear me say? That I want you?”
“Yes…damn you. Yes! You owe me Chris…” His voice dropped slightly over the last few words, his eyes dark with anger.
Chris was too stupefied to respond. She owed him? How could he stand there and expect her to accept that?
“You owe me…” He repeated the words as though they were some private incantation as he bent his head, the hard pressure of his body against hers making Chris acutely aware of his arousal. It was all so unexpected and inexplicable that she had no defences against him. The pressure of his mouth was fiercely, angrily demanding, savaging the softness of her lips, invoking a response from her that brought thickly muttered sounds of pleasure from his throat.
She was lost, completely and utterly, Chris thought hazily, melting beneath the heat of his kiss, wanting him…loving him…
“Slater?”
Sarah’s voice from outside the summerhouse broke into the dreamworld Chris had entered. Instinctively she tensed, breaking away from Slater. He was breathing heavily, the pupils of his eyes dilated, whether by anger or passion Chris could not tell. She was old enough now to know that men did not necessarily love and respect where they desired and she had to turn away as Sarah entered the summerhouse, sickened by her own blind, betraying response to him.
“Oh there you are,” she heard the other girl saying peevishly. “I’ve been looking for you. We’re supposed to be going out to dinner tonight…”
“Yes, I know. What progress have you made with Sophie today?”
If she had needed confirmation that Slater cared nothing for her, she had it in his swift reversion to normal; his complete lack of interest in her.
“Not much.”
Chris forced herself to turn round, shaken by the open hostility in Sarah’s eyes as she studied her. “She seems to be very disturbed by your presence.” She looked directly at Chris. “If you want my opinion Slater, you’ll get rid of her. Sophie will never make any progress while she stays here upsetting her.”
Chris held her breath, almost dizzy with the effort as she waited for Slater to denounce her and agree with Sarah.
“I can’t do that,” he astounded her by saying. “Natalie chose Chris as Sophie’s guardian…”
“Heaven alone knows why,” Sarah cut in impatiently. “She never had a good word to say for her while she was alive.” She turned away opening the summerhouse door. “I’ll see you later then Slater…”
She went without a word to Chris, who wondered why she had come when she was seeing Slater later on that evening. Perhaps she wanted to reinforce to Chris her involvement with him. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable and insecure. Perhaps Sarah was right? Perhaps she was having a bad effect on Sophie? Her negative feelings made her murmur softly, “I don’t know why Natalie appointed me either…”
The tension emanating from Slater as she made the admission startled her. His face was pale under his tan, the skin drawn tightly over the bones of his face. “Oh come on, Chris,” he said icily. “We both know exactly why…”
He turned on his heel and left her before she could say another word, but Chris was glad she was alone. The pain of the blow he had just dealt her was so severe that she would have broken down if he’d stayed. He knew… He knew how she felt about him and just why Natalie had appointed her. He knew and he was adding to her torment deliberately. He must hate her nearly as much as Natalie had!
Instinctively she wanted to escape, to put as much distance between herself and Slater as she could, but she could not do it, for Sophie’s sake. She must simply stay and endure.
CHAPTER SIX
THAT night Chris went to bed early, but sleep eluded her. Of course her wakefulness had nothing to do with the fact Slater was out with Sarah, she derided herself, as she lay tense waiting for the sound of his returning car. All these years she had deluded herself that she was over him; that he meant nothing to her other than bad memories and now in a few short days the protective cover she had built around herself had been blasted away.
Not until she heard Slater’s car stop outside the house did she manage to sleep. A glance at her watch showed her that it was nearly two o’clock. Jealousy, fiercely corrosive and painful, overwhelmed her as she pictured Sarah in Slater’s arms. Her desire to find out why Natalie had taken her own life was fast being overtaken by an instinctive need to get away from Slater before he haunted her; he knew why Natalie had appointed her Sophie’s guardian; he knew exactly how vulnerable she was, but please God he did not know yet why she was so vulnerable. If only she could leave, but there was Sophie to consider; Sophie who she sensed needed her. Perhaps she was over-dramatising she reflected in the morning as she dressed. Why should Sophie respond to her when she did not to Sarah or her own father? She went from her own room to the little girl’s and found her getting dressed. Her smile when she saw Chris banished all her doubts, and Chris hugged her instinctively, tensing as the door opened and Slater walked in.
He surveyed them with unreadable eyes for several long seconds. Dressed formally in a business suit he looked so physically attractive that Chris felt her stomach actually clench in fierce desire.
Sophie, unaware of the under-currents flowing deep and fast between the two adults, beamed at her father.
“I’m leaving early this morning,” Slater told Chris when she had transferred Sophie into her father’s arms, “and I don’t expect to be in to dinner tonight.”
Sarah again? Chris thought jealously. She had to avert her face so that he wouldn’t see what she was feeling. “Oh, I nearly forgot,” he added drawlingly, an expression in his eyes that Chris could not define, but which made her shudder with tense dread, “some mail arrived for you this morning.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a bundle of envelopes. Chris had left his address as her forwarding address with her agent and she took the letters from him in silence. Like most of the others it carried an air mail sticker. Written on pale blue paper, on the reverse side was the sender’s name and address and Chris smiled involuntarily as she reached for it, unaware of how much her smile changed her expression.
“You’re still in touch with Thornton then?”
The harsh contempt in Slater’s voice made her stiffen, her head bowed as she retrieved her letter. “I read that he married…”
“Yes… He has a little boy now,” Chris told him smoothly, unable to understand the reason for his obvious contempt. She knew that he and Ray had not been particular friends when Ray had lived locally, but she could see no reason for him to react in the manner he was doing.
“You’re a very cool lady Chris.” The way he said it wasn’t a compliment. “Does his wife…” He stopped as the telephone started to ring, putting Sophie down on the floor. “I’m expecting a call,” he told Chris curtly. “That will be it.”
When he had gone Sophie looked uncertainly up at her. Just because the little girl could not speak, it did not mean she could not understand, Chris thought guiltily, forcing a smile and reaching out to take Sophie’s hand. Her responsive smile made her heart ache. There was something so familiar about it, and yet it wasn’t Slater’s smile, she realised, with a small stabbing shock, and it certainly wasn’t Natalie’s. It must be Sophie’s resemblance to herself that she saw in her smile Chris reflected, and yet something tugged at her memory, something elusive that she knew she should remember but could not.
She read Ray’s letter over breakfast. It was teasingly chatty and included an invitation to visit them later in the year. It was high time she learned to stop leaning on Ray and Dinah she thought wryly as she put it back in its envelope and then turned to study the photographs he had sent her. Both of them were of Dinah his wife, and Jeremy, now
nearly three years old. The toddler beamed out of the photograph, and sensing Sophie’s curiosity Chris showed it to the little girl.
“My that’s a bonny little boy,” Mrs Lancaster commented, coming in with their breakfast, and glancing over Chris’s shoulder, she put her head on one side, and ruminated, “Reminds me of someone, but I can’t just think who for the moment.”
“His father used to live locally,” Chris offered, “and Jeremy is very like him facially, although he has his mother’s colouring.”
They chatted for a while and then Chris offered to take Sophie out into the garden so that Mrs Lancaster could get on with her work.
Chris had brought some more books back from the cottage and she ran upstairs to get one. Half an hour later, she glanced up from the page she was reading to study Sophie’s entranced face. Winnie the Pooh was obviously as firm a favourite with Sophie as it had been with her.
“I’ll just read to the end of this chapter and then we must stop,” she told her with a smile. She had fallen easily into the habit of talking to Sophie as though she had expected her to respond. The little girl had her own ways of communicating what she wanted or needed, and Chris sighed faintly when she closed the book, wondering if she would ever talk again.
“Time for my exercises,” she told Sophie, standing up. “Want to watch?”
As a model her exercise regime was an integral part of Chris’s life, and when Sophie nodded her head she held out her hand to her. “Come on then. We’ll do them outside today as it’s so nice. Let’s go upstairs and get my cassette.”
While Chris changed into shorts and a brief top Sophie watched her gravely. An idea suddenly occurred to Chris. “You can do them with me this morning,” she told her with a smile. “Let’s go and find your shorts shall we?”
When Sophie made no demur Chris took her into her bedroom and helped her to change into shorts and a tee-shirt.