Aunt Lucy's Lover

by Miranda Lee

  'I wish I'd had a chance to know her personally,' Jessica said with a sigh.

  'And look after her. Was she in much pain towards the end?'

  'Terrible. The doctor used to give her morphine, but she claimed it made her lose her mind, and she didn't like that much. Still, there were times when she just had to have it.'

  'Oh, I feel awful that I wasn't here to help.'

  'That wasn't your fault, Jessica. Think how happy Lucy would be knowing you've decided not to sell. She wouldn't care about your not running Lucy's Place as a guesthouse as long as it stayed in the family and was looked after and loved. How long do you think it will be before you can come back?'

  'I'm not exactly sure. No more than four weeks. Sebastian will stay and look after the place for me. But I'll be back, never fear.'

  'I know you will. Must go. I have friends popping by shortly. See you tomorrow. Enjoy your dinner out with Sebastian tonight.'

  It was their habit to go out to dinner a couple of times a week in one of the many restaurants around the island.

  'I will. Bye, Evie. Thanks for the lovely lunch.'

  'My pleasure.'

  Talking to Evie about her imminent return to Sydney prompted another guilty thought. She hadn't rung work once during the last month, either. She could have at least called Mark to see how he was managing. It was very remiss of her.

  Not that he would really care after he found out she was going to resign. He was a very ambitious young man and would make an excellent public relations manager. She would recommend him for the job and hope management could overcome their ridiculous bias against hiring a man for the job.

  Perhaps she would give him a ring now, see how things had been going. Jessica rose and made her way to the telephone in the living room, perched herself on the wide arm of the nearby sofa and dialled. Mark's answer was quick and crisp.

  'Public relations. Mark Gosper speaking.'

  'Mark, it's Jessica.'

  'Jessica! Great to hear from you. Don't go telling me you won't be back on Monday. Things are hectic here. I need you.'

  'You need me?' she repeated, laughing. 'That's a first. It's me w-ho usually needs you.'

  'I never knew how much work you did till you weren't here,' he groaned.

  'I've missed you like mad.'

  'Well, it's nice to be appreciated. And I've missed you, too. I haven't had anyone here to bring me my morning cup of coffee. I've had to get it myself.'

  'Poor Jessica.'

  'Oh, I wouldn't say that. My stay on Norfolk Island has been ... interesting to say the least.' Jessica smiled at this huge understatement. But she'd never been one to tell her private life to people at work. Or anyone else, for that matter. Even Sebastian hadn't been able to coerce much from her as yet, though he'd tried several times.

  'I'll bet you've been bored to death,' Mark stated confidently. 'I'll bet you can't wait to get back here and at it.'

  'No, definitely not bored. Not at all! But I won't deny I'm keen to get back. Though I don't..

  At a sound behind her, Jessica turned her head. The sight of a stony-faced Sebastian glaring at her from the doorway confused, then worried her. Had he overheard her conversation with Mark and misunderstood it?

  'Jessica, are you still there?' Mark called down the line. 'Hello! Hello!'

  Still frowning, she returned her attention to the telephone. 'I'm still here, but I must go, Mark. Sorry to cut you off like this. I'll see you Monday, okay?'

  She hung up and stood to face a still glowering Sebastian.

  'That was Mark,' she said. 'My secretary. I thought I'd better give him a call.'

  'A male secretary?' he drawled in caustic tones. 'How modern of you.'

  'Don't go imagining things, Sebastian.' She tried a sweet smile as she walked towards him. 'You do have a vivid imagination, darling heart.'

  'Don't try to con me, Jessica,' he snapped. 'I know what I heard. The one thing I didn't hear, however, was your telling him you were quitting.'

  Dismay held Jessica silent for a few seconds. My God, but he was quick to condemn. Maybe her one-sided conversation with Mark could have been misinterpreted, but he wasn't even giving her a chance to explain. She couldn't help remembering the day Myra had come, making all sorts of nasty accusations about Sebastian. But she hadn't believed them, not for a moment. Because she felt she knew Sebastian, knew the man he was, what he could do and what he couldn't do.

  One thing he could do, she realised unhappily, was be blindly, blackly jealous. He'd told her once a relationship was based on trust. Where was his trust, then? Was it so thin that one slightly ambiguous conversation could blow it away?

  'Are you sleeping with your secretary,?' he demanded before she could explain or voice her concerns.

  'No,' she denied, trying to stay calm. But it wasn't easy.

  'Perhaps I phrased that badly. I dare say one doesn't sleep with one's secretary. Are you screwing your secretary, Jessica darling? Does he bring you your coffee in bed in the mornings, or just at your desk, afterwards?' he asked, sneering.

  'You've got a dirty mind, do you know that?'

  When Jessica went to brush past him, he grabbed her arm and twisted her quite cruelly. 'Don't play prude with me, sweetheart. I'm the man you've spent most of the last month in bed with, remember? You did a damned good job of pretending to be pretty inexperienced at first, but it was wise of you not to claim complete innocence. That way you could become amazingly accomplished at sex with a lot more speed than some simpering virgin. How about telling me the truth now, lover? Just how many men have there been before me? Or are you going to claim your darling Mark was only one of the lucky three?'

  She tried to pull out of his hold but failed. 'You're hurting me!' she cried, her face twisting with pain as his fingers dug deep. 'Let me go!'

  'I'll let you go, all right,' he snarled, releasing her with a savage twist so she staggered against the doorframe. 'Right back to where you came from.'

  'And that's where I'll stay, too,' she flung back, rubbing the ache from her arm. 'There's no future with someone as warped and twisted as you are!'

  'And there's no future with you, you lying, conniving, deceiving madam. You're your father's daughter, all right!'

  The immediate grimace of pained regret on Sebastian's face betrayed more than his actual words.

  'What...what do you mean?' she asked, her voice faltering. She grabbed his arm and shook it. 'Sebastian, what are you saying?'

  'I'm not saying anything, damn it!'

  'Yes, you are. You don't even know my father, and yet you said...you said... Oh, no,' she groaned. 'I don't believe it. Not my mother and Lucy's husband!

  That's too awful to be true. And it can't be true! My mother didn't have me till over a year after she left the island. Tell me it's not true!'

  'I can't do that,' he groaned.

  'But how? How?'

  'He met up with her again on the mainland,' Sebastian admitted tersely. 'I think it was your mother's pregnancy that finally convinced him to have a vasectomy, not that other unfortunate girl's.'

  Jessica felt her heart was breaking, so tightly was it being squeezed within her chest. 'I don't believe you,' she choked out.

  He grimaced. 'Do you honestly think I would make this up?'

  'You... you said Aunt Lucy hadn't told you why my mother left the island. You lied to me.'

  'No, I didn't. Not technically. Lucy didn't tell me. She used to rave on while under the influence of morphine. She had no idea she was talking out loud, or that anyone was listening. I eventually put two and two together and worked out what happened.'

  'Weil, go on!' Jessica raged when he fell silent. 'Tell me. I want to know it all, every last pathetic putrid detail!'

  'No, you don't.'

  'Tell me! No more lies, either. The whole truth and nothing but the truth!'

  'Very well,' he said. 'Lucy's sister came to her just before the wedding and told her she was in love with Bill and he with her. She sa
id they were sleeping with each other. Lucy didn't believe her and Bill denied it, called Joanne a jealous little troublemaker. Lucy said she never wanted to see her again and Joanne left, devastated by her sister's hatred and her lover's betrayal. But that wasn't the end of it. Bill often went to the mainland, apparently. He must have looked up your mother and talked her into having another affair with him.'

  'Why must he?' Jessica wailed. 'Why must I be his child and not the daughter of the man my mother married?'

  'Because you're the spitting image of Bill, damn it! You'd have seen the likeness if you'd been a male. You have his hair and his eyes and his mouth. Lucy knew it the moment she saw you. It so shocked her she ran away. Before that, she'd thought of you only as Joanne's daughter, not Bill's.'

  Jessica could only stare at him, too appalled to speak. She didn't know who to feel sorriest for. Her mother, for being so weak as to love a man like that. Lucy, for being betrayed over and over again. Or herself, for being the offspring of so ghastly a man. She hadn't thought much of her supposed father, but her real one was even worse!

  'Jessica...' Sebastian reached out as though to take her in his arms.

  'Don't touch me!' she snapped, her nervous system in a very fragile state. 'Go away! I don't want to speak to you ever again. I don't want to see you ever again. You don't love me. You don't trust me. I dare say you never even liked me. You lied to me more times than I can count. For all I know, you probably did seduce my aunt, for the same rotten reasons you seduced me. For this house. Or money. Or tax reasons. Or all three! You're despicable, Sebastian Slade, and I hate you!'

  She could not look him in the face, for of course she did not hate him. She loved him. But she didn't want to have anything to do with him ever again. He had hurt her terribly this day, and she would never forgive him.

  'I'll be putting this place on the market before I leave,' she said, her eyes fixed on a spot on the far wall. 'I want you out of here today. Be damned with the will! And be damned with you!'

  'Jessica, I...'

  When her eyes flashed black fury at him, he closed his mouth again.

  'Don't even try to talk your way out of this. You'd be wasting your breath. I've known men like you before. Now get out! I'm sick of the sight of you.'

  He looked at her for a long moment with a stony face, then whirled and walked away.

  For a split second, Jessica almost ran after him, but in the end, she ran to her room instead, threw herself down on the bed she had not spent one single night in since the first, and wept as she had never wept before. Her tears seared into her very soul, for she knew she would never love a man again as she had loved Sebastian. Never.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  'BAD news?' Mark asked as Jessica put down the telephone.

  'No,' she said. 'Just business. Now where were we?'

  'We were discussing how best to entertain the group of American VIPs we have arriving next week. They're only going to be here three days. Darned hard to show them Sydney in three days.'

  'I agree. But what they miss out on, they'll never know, as long as what they do see is memorable. Put down a harbour cruise on day one, dinner here in the hotel that night followed by whatever's on at the Capitol Theatre. We've still got plenty of seats for the show there, haven't we?'

  'Not enough.'

  'Pop off and see what you can rustle up at one of the other theatres, then come back. By then I'll have figured out what to do with them on days two and three.'

  'Right, boss. You sure do make snap decisions. But I like it,' he grinned, and turned to leave.

  Jessica watched him go, a very good-looking young man who was also gay. If only Sebastian had known that when he'd accused her of sleeping with her secretary, Jessica thought bitterly.

  Her mind turned to the phone call she'd just taken. It had been the solicitor, informing her that the sale of Lucy's Place had been finalised the day before, with contracts being exchanged.

  Jessica found the news depressing in the extreme. But it was done now, and could not be undone.

  The buyer had been a company called Futurecorp, who refused to divulge their plans for the property to the vendor, though the solicitor thought it would likely be developed into a larger resort.

  In hindsight, Jessica wished she'd put a covenant on the sale not allowing the house to be torn down or changed. But she'd been so upset and emotional at the time she'd merely demanded it be sold as quickly as possible for the best reasonable offer.

  The offer had been more than reasonable, as it turned out. It had been exceptional. Jessica had originally consoled herself with the thought that if she could not be happy, she could at least be rich. Now, she wondered what insanity had possessed her. She should have protected her aunt's home and her own heritage. She'd let Aunt Lucy and herself down, and she felt terrible.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. She was just reaching for a tissue when the telephone rang.

  'Jessica Rawlins,' she answered.

  'Jessica, Michelle here, from the front desk. I'm afraid we have a problem with the gentleman who booked into the presidential suite this morning. He's just rung down and demanded to see the public relations manager. I'm sorry, but he hung up before I could find out what about.'

  Jessica sighed. 'It's all right, Michelle. I'll go up and see him. What's his name?'

  'Mr. Slade.'

  Jessica's heart missed a beat. It was not such an uncommon name, she supposed, but it was still an awful coincidence. A part of her began to panic.

  'Do you have a Christian name to go with the Slade part? Or an initial?'

  'Sorry. He paid with a company credit card.'

  Jessica sighed with relief. Sebastian would not have done that. Neither would he have been in the presidential suite. It was another Mr. Slade.

  'All right, I'll pop straight up and sort out whatever the problem is.' No doubt some trivial little thing. These company executive types could be so arrogant and demanding, especially when they were spending their company's money.

  Jessica gritted her teeth and rose reluctantly from her desk. Where once she'd relished the challenge of soothing the most difficult guests' ruffled feathers, now she found such daily tasks a grind. There was no pleasure or satisfaction in her job any more, or in her life in Sydney. What she had once loved, she now hated. The hustle and bustle, the noise, the pace, even the smell.

  She longed for the salt-sea breezes that wafted over the back veranda at Lucy's Place in the afternoon. Longed for the rolling green hills, and the warm waters of Emily Bay. Longed for...

  She dragged in a deep breath as she punched the lift button for the top floor of the hotel.

  I must not think of him any more, she told herself. If I do, I'll go mad! The man was devious, and wicked, and a lying con man, prepared to use his undoubted sexual charms for material gain, not only with her but with Lucy before her! And she wasn't just guessing about that any more. She knew that for a fact.

  She hadn't really believed he had slept with her aunt, not even when she'd accused him that awful day. She'd been upset and angry, and wasn't thinking straight. Afterwards, she'd worried for a while that she might have possibly jumped to the wrong conclusions about him again.

  But she finally reasoned if he'd been so damned innocent and misjudged, then why had he left within the hour? Why hadn't he stayed and fought for her love and trust? Any lingering doubts she still had about him had been obliterated the following Sunday when Evie had driven her to the airport. For one of the passengers waiting for a flight that day had been none other than Myra, off to find work in Brisbane.

  When Evie had left momentarily to go the ladies, Jessica had not been able to resist asking Myra exactly how she'd known Sebastian was sleeping with Aunt Lucy. And Myra had told her with blunt candour how she used to get the house early in the morning to do the laundry and how she'd seen Sebastian one morning, tiptoeing from Lucy's bedroom out through the French doors onto the veranda, wearing next to nothing, then sneaking to his own
room that way. And this had been ages ago, well before Lucy became ill, when there were still guests at Lucy's place.

  Given the circumstances, Jessica could find no reason for Myra to lie. It was Sebastian who was the liar, she concluded with despairing finality, like most of the men she'd ever known.

  The lift doors opened and Jessica emerged, squaring her shoulders as she made her way briskly along the lushly carpeted corridor. The personal valet attached to the presidential suite was just emerging when she arrived.

  'What's the problem with Mr. Slade?' she asked, her curt tone reflecting her mood.

  'Problem?' The efficient young man's forehead wrinkled with a puzzled frown. 'He said nothing to me about a problem.'

  'He probably wants me to fix up a squash partner for him,' she said tartly, 'or some such similar emergency. Don't you worry about it. If you could let him know I'm here before you go, I'd appreciate it.'

  The valet nodded and disappeared for a few short seconds before reappearing.

  'He's in the sitting room, having a drink,' Jessica was informed. 'He said to go right on in.'

  Her first impression was of superbly suited shoulders and perfectly groomed brown hair. And that was only from the rear. Mr. Slade was standing at the plate-glass window, his back to her, his body silhouetted in the afternoon sunshine. Sydney's city skyline lay behind him, dominated by the Centrepoint Tower.

  'How do you do, Mr. Slade,' she said crisply as she walked across the spacious room. 'I'm Jessica Rawlins, the public relations manager. How may I help you?'

  He began to turn, the light catching gold streaks in his light brown hair as he did so. Jessica stopped breathing once his face came fully into view.

  'Sebastian!' she gasped, shock coursing through her in a shivery wave. What on earth was he doing here? And why was he dressed like that? Surely he hadn't come after her, hoping to get her back?

  He said nothing at first, penetrating blue eyes raking over her, perhaps taking in her pallor and her thinness. She hadn't had much appetite since her return from Norfolk seven weeks before.

  'Hello, Jess,' he said at last.

  'You.. .you've had your hair cut,' she blurted, thinking he looked incredibly handsome and suave, in a sleek, citified sort of way.