Enemy From the Past

by Lilian Peake

  The well-cut jacket of his suit revealed a greater breadth of shoulder, the cut of the pants showing a maturity and strength of muscle which had developed with the passage of the years. There was, in fact, a broadening of both mind and body, changing him from the unsure young man she had once known into the academically accomplished, confident business executive who now stood beside her.

  ‘Well, Slade,’ said Patrick, bringing the talk to the personal level at last, ‘do you think my sister’s changed?’

  Slade found a place for his empty glass. He returned to his contemplation of the silky dark hair and piquant features. ‘Let me think—eight years, isn’t it? At our ages it seems a long time, but,’ his eyes ran over the girl about whom they were speaking, dwelling on how womanhood had chased out the flaunting, pouting girlhood and seeking for something which his shrewd eyes would certainly have found had it been present, ‘no, Patrick, I doubt if she’s changed basically at all. Of course,’ with a cynical smile, ‘she’s probably on her best behaviour today, since so much depends on the outcome of our coming discussion.’

  He had no doubt intended to provoke, and provoked Rosalind was. Business deal or no business deal, she was not going to stand accused of hypocrisy without defending herself. ‘If you think, Mr Anderson, that over the years I’ve turned into a plotting, devious-minded female, then you can think again!’

  Slade laughed and Patrick joined him. ‘No, she hasn’t changed. The fire’s still burning, although it may be kept under greater control these days.’

  A dozen retorts jostled into Rosalind’s mind, but Patrick’s fears and Patrick’s hopes kept them securely under mental lock and key. ‘I’ll get the food,’ she said, and swung to go out.

  ‘That’s an improvement in itself,’ she heard Slade say.

  ‘Once she’d have hurled insults at me, cot to mention any missiles within reach. As far as I’m concerned, Patrick, it’s a deal.’

  Rosalind frowned, puzzled. What was ‘a deal’?

  The meal was well received and eaten with hearty appetites. Rosalind, however, discovered that apprehension did not make a good appetiser.

  Coffee was drunk in the lounge. When the cups had been collected and cleared, she joined the two men who were seated in armchairs. They had, she guessed, been waiting for her.

  She curled up on the couch, hoping desperately that her easy manner successfully disguised her deep disquiet. Fretful fingers smoothed the fabric of her dress over her thighs. She immediately regretted her action, however, which had two effects. One was to bring Slade’s evaluating eyes to that part of her anatomy. The other was to give away to his perceptive gaze that, beneath her apparent impassivity, there rumbled an earth tremor of fear.

  As if to prolong her torment, Slade began to talk about the weather. It was more than she could bear, and she used her brother as a weapon to batter through to the secret they were hiding from her.

  ‘What is it that’s “a deal”, Patrick?’

  The question was asked with sugar-sweetness and caught him completely off guard.

  Slade remarked serenely, ‘I thought that was coming.’

  ‘Did you?’ she snapped back, needled by his composure and by the lack of anything about him she could ridicule as she could in the old days. ‘Do you also include mind-reading among your many intellectual accomplishments?’

  He was undisturbed by the sarcasm. ‘Is that what you’d call it?’ He pretended to consider the question. ‘If close observation of the subject matter, plus a bit of imagination and a dash of inspired guesswork, not to mention the gathering of evidence and deducing an answer there from can be called mind-reading, then I might agree with you.’

  He was laughing at her and tormenting her and dancing her on die end of a very long string. She would take no more. She stood up, turned on him—and the stream of abuse dried up in her throat. He was standing too, the length of him towering over her.

  ‘Carry on,’ he said quietly, ‘insult me, call me dull, stupid, skinny, inexperienced. You see, I’ve remembered every word.’

  There was a murmured, ‘I’ll get the contract,’ from Patrick and he went from the room.

  ‘Every word,’ Slade repeated, ‘but each and every one of them would be wrong. “Dull”?’ He counted on his fingers. ‘I hold a Master’s degree in my subject. “Stupid”? I’ve worked in the United States for six years as a computer consultant, commanding a very high fee. I’ve spent only a fraction of my earnings, so I’ve amassed a young fortune since they pay well over there for people like me. “Skinny”? Well, look with your own eyes. Any day you like,’ insolent eyes looked her over, ‘I’ll give you a display of muscle power. “Inexperienced” ?’

  The gleam in his eyes, the lingering look he bestowed on her slightly disordered hair, the wide blue eyes that gazed at him, the full mouth which once had known the immature touch of his—all preceded the action.

  He swooped, like a giant bird on its prey, and she was caught against him. ‘Shall I show the little termagant that still lives on inside you just how inexperienced I am?’

  His mouth descended and pressed against hers so relentlessly that the pain itself forced her to part her lips and give him the taste of the moist sweetness within. His hand skimmed the smooth material of her dress and found the swell of her breast, yet it was with no fondling action that he touched her, but a punishing brutality that jerked from her throat a strangled cry.

  She struggled but could not escape his hold. He pressed her closer and his lips returned repeatedly to hers until after seemingly aeons of time he appeared to be satisfied.

  A shaking hand covered her bruised mouth. Her other hand found its way to push back her dishevelled hair. Her legs felt weak, as if an illness gripped her. Her whole body throbbed in protest at his maltreatment, his ruthless handling of her—and, a sensation that superseded all others, his merciless arousal of her own clamouring desires with no intention on his part of gratifying them.

  It was this blazingly-revealed piece of self-knowledge that horrified her most—that she had actually wanted him to go on—and on—until he induced from her total submission … A need to purge herself of such a feeling made her smooth the creases from her crumpled dress and say in a choked voice,

  ‘You’ve proved your point overwhelmingly. But don’t think what you’ve just done endears me to you any more than w-what you did to me eight years ago. If—if anything I h-hate you more. I h-hate you for your—your lack of refinement, your insensitivity, your—your lack of delicacy and—and consideration.’

  He smoothed his hair with both hands, his breathing still a little heavy. ‘So the tactics have changed,’ he snarled. ‘I’m an amoral, lustful man now, I suppose, instead of a tiresome, celibate boy? Which means that you’re too scared to hurl insults at me, and take refuge instead in a kind of negative abuse.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ she demanded. ‘Open my arms to you and say’—she simpered,’ “I’ve waited eight long years for this”?’ She moved jerkily to the window and stared out at the back garden, neglected yet somehow blooming with a riot of summer flowers. She continued, her voice low, ‘I’ve never forgotten how you wouldn’t leave me alone, how you followed me everywhere, with your eyes, not to mention your legs. How—how you stared and stared, and how even when I told you to go away, you stuck, like— like glue, like a leech.’

  And now, she thought bewildered, when I’m trying to tear you off, to free myself from you for ever, it’s hurting like hell, like nothing I’ve ever known before …

  There were footsteps approaching the room. Patrick entered, holding papers. ‘The contract,’ he said, and Rosalind turned, her expression as blank as she could make it. Patrick looked from one to the other and frowned. It was almost as if he could feel the discord hanging like storm-bearing clouds. He looked at his friend.

  ‘Well?’ he asked, pausing in the act of going for his pen.

  Slade’s mouth tightened. It was as if the taste of the kisses he had
taken so savagely from the girl across the room had turned sour. He said, his voice firm and resolute, ‘Carry on.’ The two men exchanged glances.

  ‘The condition?’ Patrick asked. ‘It still stands?’

  ‘It still stands.’

  Two pairs of male eyes rested on Rosalind. An awful foreboding had her heart hammering, drying her mouth and moistening her palms.

  ‘W-what’s the matter?’ she asked her, brother. ‘Is—is something wrong?’

  Patrick looked away as though he could not hold her gaze. ‘Not—’ He cleared his throat. ‘Not if you co operate, Rosa.’

  She grew cold. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Slade will only agree to put his name to this contract if—if—’

  Slade broke in, ‘You’re part of the contract. I’ll only sign when—not if—you agree to become my wife.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘PATRICK,’ Rosalind whispered, ‘it’s not true. Say it’s not true.’

  Her brother was silent.

  ‘You wouldn’t—couldn’t—trade me, your sister, for the continuation of your company?’ She went to his side. ‘I told you—I’ve got savings, I’ll give them all to you. I don’t mind, honestly …’

  ‘It’s not enough, Rosa.’

  ‘But don’t you see,’ her eyes filled, her voice became thick, ‘you’re trying to use me as a—a sacrificial offering to prevent the collapse of your business! In other words, for purely selfish ends.’

  Patrick moved from her to gaze out at the garden as she had done.

  ‘You’ve never been selfish, Patrick,’ she said to his bent shoulders, ‘never to me, to anyone. You’ve—’ The thought hit her. She swung round to face Slade. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she cried. ‘It’s that super-fantastic brain of yours that’s thought out this cunning little trap. Just to get back at me for the past, out of revenge for my hurting your manly pride.’ Slade did not speak. Patrick remained at the window.

  ‘So the two of you connived,’ Rosalind accused, ‘got together, did a bit of bartering—I’ll give this if you’ll give that. And that was me!’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ her brother said slowly. ‘I wasn’t just thinking of myself. There are fifty employees to consider, a lot of them married men with families.’

  It was so true, Rosalind could find no answer. ‘And if I don’t agree?’ she said to Slade.

  He gazed steadily at her, hands in his pockets. ‘Your brother loses his backer, which means he’s right back to where he started.’

  ‘Facing bankruptcy,’ Patrick added.

  Rosalind said through her teeth, eyes dark with hatred,

  ‘If you aren’t the most diabolical—’

  ‘Thanks,’ Slade remarked. ‘I can guess the rest. After all, it would be just a variation on a familiar theme, wouldn’t it? Do you want time to think it over?’

  ‘How long can I take?’ she asked unpleasantly. ‘The rest of my life would suit me fine.’

  ‘Ten minutes.’ He consulted his watch. ‘From now.’

  ‘Patrick!’ Her appeal to her brother went unheeded.

  She turned on Slade again. ‘I know what I will do,’ she cried. ‘I’ll hate you for the rest of my life!’ and she ran from the room.

  Lying on her bed, she stared upwards trying to read her future in the bumps in the ceiling paper. There really was no choice, she told herself wearily. Looking back, all of her past seemed inevitably to have been leading to this. It was as though Slade Anderson had possessed an evil hold on her—intangible, incomprehensible and mysterious—ever since their families had met and mingled twelve years before, after her parents’ move into the next-door bungalow.

  Maybe that explained the strange fear of him she had always had, the half-formed feeling that he exerted a curious power over her, a power which, eight years before he had put into words—his parting words—when he had said, ‘For you there’ll be no escape from me.’

  There had been days, always in her memories filled with sunshine, spent on the gentle green of the lawns which formed the main part of their large back gardens. Sunbathing, camping out on the grass, Emma and herself in one tent, Slade and Patrick in the other.

  Nor had there ever been money worries for either family. Her father had been a head teacher, while Mr Anderson had held a senior position in the education department of the County Council. So there had been a link there, too. The two mothers had been warm friends—still were—but both fathers had retired now. The senior Prescotts lived in Dorset while the senior Andersons lived in Lancashire.

  The door opened and Slade came in, closing the door behind him. There had been no knock. It was as if, Rosalind fumed, lifting her head and staring at him, she was already his property.

  ‘Ten minutes, you said.’

  ‘Believe it or not,’ he retorted sarcastically, ‘I was generous. I gave you fifteen. Well, what’s the answer?’

  Her head flopped back. ‘Answer? Answer? I don’t know the answer!’

  He leant back against the door, looking her over lazily. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you come to a decision?’ He levered himself from the door and strolled across to the bed. With each step he took, Rosalind’s muscles tightened. He sat at an angle beside her. ‘This, for instance.’

  His mouth approached hers, but she twisted quickly on to her side. ‘I don’t want any more of your brutal kisses.’ He straightened and she turned to face him. ‘Do you know what? You’ve grown into such a hard, unfeeling, materialistic male, I think I’d rather have the self-effacing young man you used to be. Here and now,’ her eyes glittered with the wish to inflict pain because she knew, had known all along, that she had no choice where her future was concerned, ‘I apologise to the Slade Anderson of eight years ago for all the names I called him and the way I insulted him.’

  He rose and stood looking coldly down at her. The afternoon sun shining in the window caught the faint shadows beneath his eyes, glinted on his long lashes, flecked gold over his hair. The green polo-necked shirt he wore under the loose jacket hinted at a hard chest and even harder muscles beneath.

  Rosalind closed her eyes. It was the only way to hide from his keen gaze the disturbing sensations which were stirring deep in her consciousness. She tensed to hold them down, thinking over and over again, ‘I hate you, Slade Anderson’, the words flooding her whole being with that hatred so that when he asked once more, ‘What’s the answer, Rosalind?’ she was able to say, meeting his eyes boldly.

  ‘You know it as well as I do. I have to say yes, don’t I, even though I shall hate you until the day I die.’

  He gave an ironic bow. ‘Good. Since there’s no love between us, it leaves me free of all emotional obligations. I’ll be free, too, to take out any woman of my choice. I never did want to be tied down by the woman I married.’ He turned at the door, ignoring her wide, unbelieving eyes. ‘Both Patrick and I would be glad if you’d join us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To celebrate the signing of the contract—and our engagement.’

  ‘In that order?’

  Slade shrugged. ‘It depends on the amount of importance you attach to each event. Personally, I prefer it in the order in which I said them.’

  His attitude of scientific detachment to the event which was going to change both their lives incensed her. She reached for the nearest missile and found it. It was a threadbare, one-eared teddy bear. With all her strength she threw it at him.

  Anticipating the action, he reached out and caught it. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. ‘Hi, friend from the past,’ he said. ‘You, I recall, were present at that last acrimonious conversation between your owner and myself eight years ago. No wonder your ear fell off!’

  Slade flung the bear back and it hit her in the face. She gave a short, pained cry and he said, ‘Dead on target.’ He went out.

  Next day Rosalind was too annoyed with her brother to speak to him, except when it was necessary to do so. He did not seem put out. In fact, judging by the way
he kept glancing at his sister, he appeared to be expecting a minor explosion, or at least a scene.

  Having waited all day for something to happen, and apparently having taken courage from the fact that it hadn’t, he said, towards the end of the afternoon, ‘I’ve told Slade he can come and live here.’

  Then it hit him like a tornado, and he ducked to avoid it, covering his ears. Four minutes later he looked at the wild-eyed, tearful girl in front of him and said, ‘I’m sorry, Rosa, I’m sorry. About everything, the rocky state of the company, Slade’s terms for helping me, using you—’

  ‘You might have spared me this, this. If he’s got so much money, why can’t he get himself a place, buy, lease, rent, anything but wish himself on us?’

  ‘He didn’t—I invited him. Anyway, this is the London area. Any property that’s worth having is out in the suburbs, which means commuting, and he hates that. Have you tried to rent a flat, a room, even a bedsitter lately?’

  ‘You know I have. I was in one—an awful one—when you asked me to come and share this house.’

  ‘That’s right. You’ve said it. It’s my house, so—’

  ‘You can invite whoever you want to come here. Okay, I agree, but don’t expect me to run around after him as well as you.’

  ‘Rosa,’ Patrick said quietly, ‘he is your fiancé.’

  ‘Ah, but I didn’t choose him, did I? He was forced on me. By my brother.’

  ‘In the tradition of certain countries overseas.’ He grinned. ‘Just exercising my rights as a—’

  ‘Male chauvinist—’

  ‘I know the expression. It’s about time it was classified as a tired—a very tired—cliché.’ He lowered himself into an armchair as if he, too, was tired and it was all suddenly too much for him.