But she must tell him the truth now. She owed it to him. Maybe to both of them. There had been too much lying.
I was not faking when you made me come last night, she said in her head. It didn’t even occur to me to fake it. I’ve been calling you my love in my head since the flower meadow.
She went scarlet at the thought. But, scarlet or not, it had to be done. Nobody ever actually dies of embarrassment, she told herself dryly. They just wish they had!
She did not know where she was going to start. Or whether he would listen to her for a minute, let alone through the whole story. It was all too likely that he would never want to see her again. But she had to try.
Izzy heard the old Jeep coming up the drive before she saw it. She knew the noise of that engine now as she knew the ring of her mobile phone or the sound of Jemima’s laugh. She stood up slowly, took several deep breaths, and went to meet him.
Dom had parked just outside the kitchen again. He was unloading several boxes. When she went up to him he had his head in the back of the vehicle.
‘Hello,’ she said in a small voice, to the seat of his jeans.
He said impatiently, ‘Okay, Abby, I’m going as fast as I can. The damn things won’t melt for five more minutes out of the fridge.’
He straightened and saw who it was. At once his face changed like a slate that had been wiped clean. No impatience, no laughter, no curiosity. Just a deadly, deadpan politeness.
‘Hello. Did you sleep well?’
Izzy gave a laugh that broke in the middle.
Expression flared into Dom’s eyes like a forest fire springing up from nowhere. ‘Then maybe we have something to talk about.’
She swallowed. That look was almost too much to bear after she had just been telling herself that he would never want to see her again.
‘Please,’ she said.
He drew several breaths, as if he had been running. ‘Right.’ He looked round, distracted. ‘Let me get rid of these damned mousses of Abby’s and I’ll be with you.’
But before he could move a tall woman so like him she had to be his sister came pounding out of the house. She was waving a newspaper. It was, saw Izzy, one of the Sunday tabloids.
‘Dom, you did it,’ she squealed. ‘Aunt Margaret said you did it. It’s here in the diary column. Operation Model-Girl Mistress. Oh, I’m so proud of you. Shackleton would have been proud of you. Just wait until we see the other papers…’ She trailed off, realising her audience was not with her.
Izzy had thought nothing else could shock her. It seemed she was wrong.
‘Operation Model-Girl Mistress?’ She was white to the lips.
Abby turned to her eagerly. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s a silly publicity stunt my employer cooked up for him. I’m with Culp and Christopher PR.’ She thrust out a hand. ‘Abby Diz.’
‘Isabel Dare,’ said Izzy mechanically. She let Abby seize her hand and pump it energetically. She did not look at Dom. She gave a bright, bright smile aimed at the middle distance and hoped that she could get away before she was actually physically sick. ‘A PR stunt, eh? I’ve heard about those. Never been part of one before, though.’
‘Part—?’ Abby looked to her brother for help. ‘I don’t understand.
‘I’ll explain later,’ he said, not taking his eyes off Izzy. ‘For now, just get lost, Ab, there’s a good girl.’
‘But my puddings—’
He stepped back from the car with an expansive gesture. ‘Are all yours.’
He took Izzy by the elbow and walked her away from the house. She remembered that grip. He had held her like that when he walked her out of the nightclub.
‘A PR stunt?’ she said again. She felt stunned. She sounded it, even to her own ears.
Dom said urgently, ‘It’s not as crude as it sounds—’
But Izzy was groping her way through this new betrayal. ‘I was going to come and grovel,’ she said blankly. ‘I was going to tell you that I’ve always looked after my sister Jemima, since she was a baby. That I know when she is in trouble. That’s how I knew it was bad this time. I was trying to give her a breathing space to get her life back together when—’ She broke off, suddenly looking up at him. ‘But none of that matters, does it? As long as I posed for the cameras you didn’t care sixpence who I was or why I was doing it.’
‘No,’ he cried.
But she swept on. ‘To think I was going to apologise! To you. And you set me up for a—publicity—stunt?’ She could hardly get the words out.
‘No,’ said Dom quietly.
‘I hate you,’ yelled Izzy.
She was nearly dancing with rage. She fed the flames deliberately. Rage was a lot, lot better than the other thing that was waiting to break out. Betrayal. Once she let herself feel his betrayal she was going to drown.
Dom marched her down to a secluded corner surrounded by laurel hedges. They could not see the house. The house could not see them.
Izzy hardly noticed. She was shaking with reaction.
Dom took her by the shoulders and swung her round to face him. ‘Listen to me, Izzy. That is your name? Izzy?’
She nodded. Little tremors kept rippling through her like the tide. Mostly anger. Please let it be anger—until I’m alone.
‘Right. That’s one step forward, then. Listen to me. The daft bats that run Culp and Christopher kept talking to me about getting column inches on the celebrity circuit and I kept telling them to forget it. And then I saw you—and all I could think of was finding you again.’
Izzy was still breathing hard. ‘Then why didn’t you?’
He clutched his hair. ‘Because you didn’t have so much as a credit card in that damned red handbag. I hadn’t a clue who you were. I tried to ask—but the only woman who knew had gone out of town, blast her. Everyone else had helpful suggestions. Lots of helpful suggestions. I was working my way through the list when I found you again.’
Izzy said flatly. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I know you don’t,’ Dom said in despair. ‘I don’t know how to convince you.’ His eyes were wild but he was making great efforts to stay rational. ‘How do you think I knew you weren’t Jemima? Everyone else was taken in.’
‘You’re lovers?’ suggested Izzy, her eyes narrowed to evil slits in case she cried.
Dom looked appalled. ‘You can’t think that!’
‘You know her,’ she said unanswerably. ‘She knows you.’
A muscle beat in Dom’s jaw. ‘Yes. Because, my darling, I sat next to your sister Jemima for several hours at a charity ball. She’s a skinny kid, quite sweet in her way. But I’d never have manhandled her into a taxi and taken her off to have my wicked way with her, like I did you.’
‘What?’
He took hold of her again. ‘What I did that night—what I’ve been doing these last three days—it is so unlike me none of my friends, none of my family would believe it if I told them. I wouldn’t have done it for Jemima. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. Izzy—’
The look in his eyes made her head swim. Quite suddenly she thought, Maybe I can trust him after all. Maybe I can even convince him to trust me.
‘I knew as soon as you stuck your leg between my thighs on that damned dance floor,’ he said simply.
Izzy felt her ears go scarlet.
‘I love the way they do that,’ said Dom, distracted.
‘Stop it,’ she shouted, clapping her hands to the side of her face.
‘Yes, all right,’ he said hastily. ‘Look it wasn’t just sex, Izzy. I’ve had lots of that and it’s great. But it doesn’t grab you by the throat and make you think about nothing else. All I wanted, from the moment you ran out on me, was to find you again. And make you stay the night.’ He grimaced. ‘And then when I did—’
Izzy put her hands on his chest. ‘Don’t.’
He looked tortured. ‘I have to. Let me say this now, Izzy. I need to—get it out, somehow. I love you. I don’t know why or how it happened. I just know it has.
And if you won’t have me—well, it doesn’t make any difference. I still love you.’
‘Oh,’ said Izzy humbled. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he countered. ‘I gave you opportunity after opportunity to tell me you weren’t Jemima. You never trusted me.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Izzy quietly.
‘Hell, I even took a gamble and trusted you with my own big secret. I thought it might encourage you to reciprocate. But—it didn’t work. Nothing worked.’ His face looked thin and pinched.
She stared. Then realised what his secret must be. ‘The book you can’t write,’ she said, on a wondering note.
He nodded. ‘No one knows how bad the dyslexia is. Though I’m going to be found out soon. No one can understand why I won’t write a book about the Antarctic trip.’
An idea occurred to her. ‘Now you mention it—’
‘I’m not going to let you get me off the subject,’ he said fiercely. ‘Izzy, I need you to know that I never wanted to use you. Never intended to use you. The only people who were getting used were Culp and Christopher. They seemed to be my only point of contact with you.’
‘But I’ve got a really great idea. You could—’
‘Stop it,’ he shouted, rocked out of his English gentleman’s cool for the first time since she had known him. ‘Listen to me. I would have stripped naked and walked on fire if that’s what it took to find you again. A publicity stunt was nothing. I would have done anything.’
She’d wondered what would happen if he decided to stop being a gentleman, Izzy remembered suddenly. Well, now she knew. He took possession of her heart.
She said quietly, ‘I love you. And I want to write your Antarctic book.’
That stopped him as nothing else would have done.
‘Izzy—’
‘You can dictate messages for me, can’t you? Even if you don’t want to dictate for a publisher?’
He looked shaken to the heart. ‘I’ll dictate you a love letter every day. I’ll even try my hand at damned poetry if that’s what you want.’ He grabbed her hands and held them strongly.
‘Izzy,’ he said with difficulty, ‘I’m not a great bet. I disappear off into wild places for months at a time. I’ve never read a sonnet in my life. And my family dress up as penguins. But I know your secrets. And you know mine. I think we need each other.’
The scent of roses filled the air. But all Izzy could smell was sandalwood. Sandalwood was going to mean happiness to her for the rest of her life.
A great laugh began to bubble up. ‘You mean you’ll settle for a mistress who isn’t a model girl after all?’ she said, looking at him from under her lashes. ‘Are you going to tell the papers you fell over me by accident?’
Dom narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Accident be blowed. I worked damned hard to fall over you.’
‘The Accidental Mistress,’ she mused naughtily. ‘Nice headline. It’s got something.’
But Dom was back on form again. He gave her one of his bland smiles. ‘But I kept telling Culp and Christopher. I don’t want a mistress.’
Izzy was taken aback. Suddenly all her lovely confidence fell away, leaving her once again the sister who wasn’t the pretty one, the third wheel, the one a man only made love to by accident. ‘Don’t you?’ she said uncertainly.
He shook his head. ‘But if you care to change the offer…?’ he suggested.
‘Change it?’ She was lost.
‘I could,’ he said magnificently, ‘be persuaded into marriage.’
‘Oh,’ said Izzy.
There was a stunned silence.
Dom lost some of his magnificence. ‘It doesn’t have to be at once. If you need time, I mean. I’m certain, but I can see that you may not be—’ He broke off. ‘What are you doing?’
Izzy looked up innocently. ‘I thought I’d take my clothes off,’ she explained helpfully. She started to unbutton Jemima’s crisp cotton shirt. ‘As we got in such a pickle last night, I thought it might be a good thing if I started it this time.’
Dom went very still. ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me,’ he said quietly. ‘Whatever the problems, we’ll sort them out together.’
‘Good,’ said Izzy. ‘But one problem we don’t have.’ She let the shirt drop to the grass.
Dom swallowed. The grey-green eyes were intent and very serious.
Izzy put her hand on the zip of her jeans. It was half a challenge. Half something a lot more than that. And they both knew it.
Izzy did the long, lingering come-and get-me look that Jemima had shown her. She gave it her best shot.
It seemed to work. Dom’s head went back. He looked thunderstruck.
She began to feel better. ‘Do you think this would persuade you?’ she asked in an interested voice. ‘To marry me, I mean?’
‘You mean—’ he sounded stunned ‘—you will? Just like that? I don’t have to write poetry or do twelve months’ hard labour or anything? I don’t have to try?’
‘No,’ said Izzy.
It did not seem as if he could believe it.
Izzy stopped fiddling with her jeans and straightened her shoulders. She looked him straight in the eye and tried not to think about her semaphore ear colour.
‘I have,’ she said bravely, ‘been calling you my love in my head for the last twenty-four hours. And last night I could not keep my hands off you.’
His eyes glinted. ‘I remember. Though I was beginning to think it was an illusion.’
‘No illusion. I think,’ said Izzy in her most businesslike tone, though she knew her ears must be incandescent, ‘you’ve covered all the salient points. Don’t think there’s anything left to do.’
‘Oh, yes there is,’ said Dom, his eyes glinting wickedly. ‘Bring those jeans over here. Now.’
Izzy laughed. And then she gave a great sigh and walked into the shelter of her lover’s arms.
They made it to the celebration lunch by the skin of their teeth. Izzy’s shirt, thought Dom with satisfaction, was looking very pleasantly rumpled, in spite of the fact that they had both applied their attention to making sure that it was properly buttoned before they came back into the house. Izzy had wanted to change, but Dom felt a fondness for that shirt and had wanted her to keep it on.
So Izzy had laughed and said, ‘Right you are. If it makes you feel good.’
He ran a finger up her spine in a way which he was learning made her shiver voluptuously.
‘I wouldn’t say good, exactly,’ he murmured.
Izzy thumped him companionably. ‘Behave. We’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’
Dom looked astonished.
‘We have.’ She looked nervous suddenly. ‘I’m here under false pretences, after all.’
‘Leave that to me,’ said Dom, his magnificent assurance restored. ‘I know how to handle my family.’
So she should not have been surprised now, when he tinged his glass with a fork to bring the table to silence just as his sister was about to serve her collection of puddings.
‘Three things,’ said Dom crisply. ‘One, the woman you thought was Jemima is her sister Izzy.’ He barely paused, simply talking over the top of the intrigued buzz. ‘Two, I’m in love with her. Three, I’m going to marry her.’
Izzy choked.
Dom sat back, well pleased. There was total silence.
His sister looked at Izzy hard. ‘Is this true?’
‘Yes,’ said Izzy with total confidence.
‘All of it?’
After her morning in the rose garden she was never going to doubt that Dom loved her again. She reached her hand to him across the table. ‘All of it,’ said Izzy softly.
Dom took her hand. His eyes were so full of love that he hardly looked the same man. ‘Good,’ he said, smiling into her eyes with an alluring combination of promise and shared memory. ‘That’s two puds for everyone, please, Abby. We’ve got a second engagement to celebrate.’
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6606-6<
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THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS
First North American Publication 2003.
Copyright © 2003 by Sophie Weston.
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