‘Not that you don’t look fantastic now,’ Claire conceded. ‘In fact I was a little shocked.’
If that was an olive branch, then Heather decided there and then that she would take it. Claire was the only close family member left to her in the world—and anyway, what was the point of bearing a grudge? With her natural inclination to forgive, she told herself that, whatever impression Claire had of her, it had been gained with Heather’s assistance. She had meekly lived down to her sister’s sweeping generalisations. Even her e-mails had played down her plans for her career. No wonder Claire thought that she had no dreams.
‘But getting back to Theo…’
‘Must we?’
‘Did anything happen between the two of you while you were living in that apartment and working for him?’
Heather frantically tried to come up with a lie that wouldn’t be a lie. Eventually she said, with a little self-deprecating laugh, ‘I’d be a fool if it had…’
‘In which case you wouldn’t have a problem if I got in touch with him? You know, just to say thanks for lending me the use of his shower and being so courteous when I showed up at his place out of the blue? Men can be such pigs. Honestly. Your hair would stand on end if I told you some of the things that have happened to me!’
‘Well, no…’
Claire regarded her sister narrowly. ‘Good. Because you’re way out of his league—and I’m not saying that to be insulting, Heath. Okay, I admit I was out of order to pigeonhole you into the type that old dullards would be attracted to, but…face it…Theo’s a sex god, and sex gods just don’t look at…well, girls like you…’
‘No. No, they don’t. They look at girls like you.’ And maybe Claire was right. After all, Theo hadn’t wanted her in the end, had he? So she had grown in self-confidence. Reality was still a bucket of cold water she couldn’t avoid. And, sure, Claire was blunt to the point of rude, but truth was truth, however nicely it was packaged.
For the duration of the trip back Heather was aware from a distance that she was mouthing the right answers as her sister rattled on speculatively about her chances with Theo.
America had taken Claire’s arrogance and honed it into a lethal weapon. Heather had visions of Claire gradually dismantling all the confidence she had slowly gathered for herself over time and had to tell herself not to be over-imaginative. But she was finding it difficult to remember the reasons she had once admired her stunning sister, and to put her finger on the loyalty she had always shown to someone who now seemed shallow and just a little cruel.
CHAPTER TEN
HEATHER was standing in the middle of her small sitting area and surveying the sight that now greeted her with dismay.
They had arrived back at the flat the evening before, and after a quick cup of coffee she had retired to bed. That in itself had been a further cause for stress. Claire had objected to being planted on the sofa in the sitting room, claiming that she was so exhausted after her long haul flight that surely she could have the bed for one night.
The old Heather would have easily obliged. The new Heather had seen the start of a precedent from which it would be difficult to backtrack. In the complicated world of family dynamics Claire had always been allowed to get her own way, whatever the cost to everyone around her. The bed for ‘one night’ only would become a permanent state of affairs, and Heather was just not going to let that happen. So she had stuck to her guns and had even refused to make up the sofa, instead handing her disgruntled sister a bundle of linen and, as politely as she could, telling her to get on with it.
Obviously she had got on with more than just making up the sofa and going to sleep. Rudimentary unpacking had begun, and the effects of it were a glaring reminder of why she had to make sure her sister moved out as quickly as possible.
Clothes trailed out of unzipped cases. Some had been stacked on one of the chairs but the rest randomly covered the ground, seemingly in an attempt to stage a complete takeover of all available free space. The towel she had given her sister the night before had been dumped over the coffee table, and the clothes Claire had worn were a rumpled heap at the bottom of the sofa on which she now lay, sleeping like a baby.
Heather’s first impulse was to scream. Then to begin tidying up. She did neither. Instead, she marched across to the sofa and gave her sister a brief but very firm shake.
‘Come on, Claire. Time to get up.’
‘Uh.’ Covers were pulled up over her head as Claire squirmed into retreat from the intrusion.
Heather took a deep breath and did the unthinkable. She yanked the covers right off her sister and watched as the very scantily clad body writhed in protest and then Claire finally sat up and glared.
‘It’s nine,’ Heather said calmly. ‘And you can’t carry on sleeping in here. This place needs to be tidied up, for a start.’ She looked around her with irritation. ‘I told you last night, Claire, my flat is very small, and I’m not going to live in a state of chaos, cleaning up behind you…’
‘I never asked you to!’
‘Because you assume that I will…!’A flood of unfortunate memories took a stranglehold and Heather had to calm herself by taking deep breaths. Then she perched on the edge of the sofa—the lovely pale sofa she had bought, after much indecision, only a few days previously. ‘I’m not tidying up after you, Claire. And I’m not allowing you stay here indefinitely, doing whatever you want to do, bringing back whatever friends you decide to bring back, until such time as something better comes along. This is my flat, and you’re not going to move in and wreak havoc with it.’
Claire was wide awake now and glaring. ‘Mum would have a fit if she could hear you now!’
‘That’s as maybe…’ Heather thought that their mother might have been quite proud. ‘But I’m just laying down a few rules and regulations…’
‘Oh, you and your rules and regulations!’ Claire leapt out of her bed, lean brown body barely clothed in a clinging vest and a pair of stretch pyjama shorts.
Heather noted that her sister was positively bristling with anger, and worked out that for once in her life she was having to deal with the harsh reality of not being treated as special. Claire had done a great deal of bristling in the past, and had always succeeded in getting her own way. Heather thought with some regret of the extent to which she had aided and abetted her sister’s selfishness by tiptoeing around her, backing off rather than facing an unpleasant confrontation.
Feeling very serene, she watched as Claire stormed out of the room. There was the sound of the tap being run and things being slammed down in the bathroom, then she was back, scooping up her clothes with the ill grace of a child who had thrown a temper tantrum but lost the battle.
‘There,’ she announced finally. ‘Happy?’
‘No. You’ll have to clear the lot into your suitcases and then put the suitcases behind the sofa. It’s no good piling them into bundles on the ground. There’s not enough floor space and it looks horrible.’
While Claire continued to grumble, Heather went and made herself a cup of coffee and some toast for her breakfast. That was something else she wasn’t about to start doing. Cooking for her sister, who was faddy in her eating habits and inclined to complain.
No wonder Theo had felt sorry for her, Heather thought sadly. He had sussed Claire out from the word go and presumed that Heather was no match for her.
‘You haven’t made me any breakfast.’ Claire materialised in the doorway of the kitchen and folded her arms. ‘If you’re going to be horrible to me, then I’ll leave right now. I thought you might be happy to see me, but obviously I was wrong.’
‘I am happy to see you, Claire, but I’m not so overjoyed that I’m going to hand over the keys to my flat…’ Not to mention my life. ‘Anyway, where would you go?’ She sighed. ‘I don’t understand why you left America in the first place. I thought you were having a brilliant time there. I thought it was the sort of place where anyone with ambition could strike out. Not like England which wa
s too small and narrow-minded.’
Claire looked uncomfortable, then she shrugged and strolled into the kitchen and began going through the contents of the fridge.
Even from an impersonal point of view, and feeling pretty strong at that moment, Heather could still reluctantly admire her sister’s utter contentment with her body. She doubted she would ever get to that point in life, however mentally strong she became. Having always been conditioned to think of herself in elephantine terms, showing off her body would have been an alien concept.
Claire sat on one of the chairs, bread, butter and honey in front of her, and began preparing a sandwich without the benefit of a plate to catch any falling crumbs. Her silky flaxen hair fell around her face like a curtain, flicking up against her thin tanned shoulders. ‘Anyway,’ she said between mouthfuls, ‘I could always go crawling to your pal Theo for a roof over my head.’ Her face adopted the expression of someone doing a few mental calculations. ‘I mean, I figure he would let me stay, since he knows you and he’d be kind of doing you a favour…’
‘You can’t do that!’ Heather said sharply, her colour rising, and Claire looked at her shrewdly. ‘Ah. Why not? Would that be because you don’t believe in asking for favours unless you’re, like, best friends with someone? Or would it be because you might just be a teensy-weensy bit jealous?’ She grinned and pretended to look innocently surprised at her own processes of deduction while Heather looked at her in silence. ‘I knew it! I just got a feeling. I thought that you two might have had something going on, but of course that would have been ridiculous, which means that you must have had some kind of crush on him!’
Heather could feel her sense of power and control begin to seep away. In an effort to hold on to it, she stuck her chin out and said with bravado, ‘Why do you assume that Theo and I didn’t have something going on, as you put it?’ Phrasing it as a question, Heather didn’t feel so bad about revealing the possibility of the truth just to shut her sister up.
With determination, and a good following wind, Claire could strip her of all her defences just when she thought they were firmly in place. Winning the battle over the tidiness issue was one thing, but going back to that place where she had lacked the strength to believe in herself was quite another matter. Heather wasn’t about to let that happen without a damn good fight.
‘Because I don’t. You wouldn’t be able to keep that kind of thing to yourself, for a start.’
‘I don’t want to be having this conversation.’ Heather stood up abruptly and turned her back on her sister’s amused, taunting face. She felt hot and bothered. In a minute she would have to escape, go out, but she had a sinking feeling that the conversation would resume the minute she was back in her flat. A tide of frustration and anger clawed at her throat. Not only had Theo demolished her life, now here was Claire, picking over the wreckage.
In the midst of her miserable thoughts the doorbell rang, and never had she been more pleased to hear it peal through the flat. She briskly turned around and realised that Claire had similarly risen to her feet. Her privacy was beginning to look like a thing of the past. She didn’t stop to question her sister’s state of dress. She just felt mightily annoyed at the shadow trailing in her wake as she pulled open the door, expecting to find Beth.
Claire skidded to a halt behind her as Heather stared up at Theo. She was wearing a hunted, harassed expression, and in that fleeting instant Theo knew he had done the right thing. He held out the blood-red roses and stepped through the door, past a shell-shocked Heather, to be confronted by her sister, who seemed to be wearing very little and not be much ashamed of it, judging from the broad smile on her face.
‘We were just talking about you,’ Claire announced with satisfaction. She strolled across to the sofa and sat down, drawing her knees up. ‘That’s really sweet of you to bring us some flowers. I love roses. They’re my favourite.’
Theo hid the distaste from his face. He couldn’t imagine what nature of conversation Heather and her sister had been having, but Heather looked fairly distraught. She had managed to scuttle away, and he could glimpse her in the kitchen, doing something industrious with the roses.
Even with her back to him Theo felt as though he could read her mood, see it in the slump of her shoulders.
‘Come sit by me.’ Claire patted a space on the sofa next to her, which Theo ignored. ‘I have a little favour to ask of you,’ she carried on as Heather emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her trousers and then hovering in the background. Claire obliged him with a hundred-watt smile. ‘Heather’s been having fits since I arrived here.’ She pouted attractively. ‘She can’t bear the mess—even though I’ve tidied it all away.’ She coiled one strand of that impossibly silky hair around her finger and wriggled her toes. ‘So here’s my request…is there any chance that I might kip down in your place for a couple of days…?’ She inclined her head teasingly to one side and managed to give a very good impression of a beautiful lost little kitten in dire need of a kindly helping hand.
Heather gritted her teeth together and wondered what was going through Theo’s head. She was only just recovering from the shock of seeing him, and was beginning to wonder about those red roses. He wasn’t a flowers and chocolates kind of man. More the sort to get his secretary to purchase something impossibly expensive as a gift, or to arrange a flight to Paris for lunch for a woman. She had done enough gift-purchasing in her time to know that his gestures were expensive but entailed almost no effort on his behalf. She wondered, jealously, if her feisty self-willed sister had managed to strike some chord in him, and was chewing her lip and pondering the possibility when he turned to look at her.
‘Somehow I don’t think Heather would approve of that arrangement,’ Theo drawled, moving behind Heather and resting his hands on her shoulders.
Heather’s brain went into immediate shutdown. All she was aware of was the feel of his hands through her top, gently massaging her shoulders, and his warm breath against her hair. Her intention to pull away was brutally ambushed by leaden legs that suddenly couldn’t function properly.
Claire’s expression had gone from flirtatious helplessness to frank confusion.
‘I don’t see what Heather has to do with anything,’ Claire eventually said, recovering her aplomb. ‘Actually, you’re wrong about that, anyway. Heather doesn’t want me here.’ Her lip wobbled. ‘She practically told me to leave.’
‘I can understand why, judging from the state of chaos in this place.’
‘It looks worse than it is,’ Claire stammered, backing away at speed from her damsel in distress routine in a scramble to reassure Theo that she would be a very tidy guest. ‘I wouldn’t make a scrap of mess in your apartment. In fact, I’m kind of looking for work at the moment. I could do whatever Heather did when she worked for you. And…’ Claire smiled triumphantly at her sister, unnerved by the way Theo was draped around her protectively ‘…you wouldn’t have to worry that I might embarrass you by developing an unhealthy crush…’
Heather wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. Her face had gone bright red. She knew that without the benefit of any mirror. Telling Theo what she had worked out for herself had been a low trick on her sister’s part—but then Claire had always been full of low tricks, to which she happily resorted if she thought they would help her get what she wanted. Right now she wanted Theo—and his apartment.
Heather felt movement return to her stricken limbs as Theo moved away from her to stand by the window, obliging Claire to twist around to look at him.
‘I don’t think you’re getting the message, Claire,’ he said, his voice dripping cold disdain. ‘You won’t be staying in my apartment.’
Claire’s mouth sagged open in shock, and Heather could see her sister regrouping her ammunition. She almost felt sorry for her. Almost, in fact, waded in with a soothing confirmation of her own offer of free lodging. In the nick of time she bit back the instinctive sympathetic response.
‘You haven’t
told her, have you, darling?’
‘Told me what?’ Claire demanded.
At the same time Heather said, gaping, ‘Told her what?’
‘About us…’ Theo felt a powerful kick of sweet satisfaction as he strolled towards Heather. Claire looked as though she had been whacked on the head by a sledgehammer. Her mouth had formed a perfect circle of pure astonishment.
He slung his arm around Heather’s shoulder and pulled her against him, expecting some resistance but encountering none. He didn’t know why, but his heart was soaring. He could feel her tremble slightly, and he wanted to tip her face up to his and kiss her.
‘About you?’ Claire looked between them in bewilderment. ‘What about you?’
‘That we’re engaged…’
Heather was appalled by the lie, but just for a few precious moments she savoured the unique sight of her sister looking utterly flabbergasted. The colour had left her face and her attempts to speak emerged as strangled gasps.
Through the fog of her muddled thoughts she was aware of Theo talking, expressing surprise that the little confidence hadn’t been shared between sisters—but then they weren’t exactly close, were they?
In the middle of his coolly confident revelation Claire leapt to her feet and shot off to the bathroom with a handful of clothes, to re-emerge seconds later, upon which she slammed out of the flat without so much as a goodbye.
Heather felt inclined to say a big thank you to Theo for providing that moment of uncharitable satisfaction—which was wrong, she knew, but she was only human after all, and it would do Claire no harm at all to discover that her sister wasn’t the complete nitwit she seemed to think she was.
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