by Anne Mather
Goodness knew, she hadn’t had any peace since he’d kissed her. That was why she’d left the house that morning, in the hope of finding some sanctuary in the church which she’d attended as a child. But the church was full of memories, Penmadoc was full of memories, and she’d known then she had no choice but to leave.
Though not in these circumstances, she thought, after the train had deposited her at Euston station and she had hired a cab to take her to a hotel. She’d had no idea that her father might leave Penmadoc to her—or any part of it—and even the knowledge that it was Stella’s home for as long as she wanted or needed it, couldn’t mar the pride she felt in knowing that the house was going to remain in the family.
Her family.
Aunt Nell’s family too, she acknowledged gratefully. It was good to know the old lady’s position was secure as well. Although Oliver had reassured her that his mother wanted to stay at Penmadoc, she had had her doubts about Stella’s intentions towards her aunt.
Her own position was much more complicated. Apart from the continuing animosity that existed between her and Stella, she didn’t see how she could spend any time at Penmadoc when her work was in New York. Besides which, Stella must be furious that Griff had double-crossed her. Laura had few doubts that her stepmother had expected to inherit the house in its entirety.
As for Oliver...
But she didn’t want to think about Oliver now. Oliver was still at Penmadoc, consoling his mother, no doubt, reassuring her that Laura was unlikely to make things difficult for her. He knew about her work; he’d cleverly found out all about her while they were having lunch that day. He was in the perfect position to assure his mother that she had nothing to worry about.
It was early evening by the time she’d checked into the hotel and unpacked her belongings. She’d had to choose one of the larger hotels because she didn’t know the names of any of the smaller ones. But the one she’d chosen was impersonal and efficient, and she told herself that that was all she needed. After all, this wasn’t a social visit. Staying here would give her time to decide what she was going to do.
Room Service provided her with a light supper. She could have gone down to the restaurant, but it was less trouble to eat in her room. Afterwards, she put aside her misgivings and phoned Aunt Nell to let her know where she was, asking her not to broadcast her whereabouts unless some sort of emergency occurred.
‘You really ought to have stayed here,’ Aunt Nell told her reprovingly. ‘This is your house, Laura. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.’
‘I won’t,’ Laura assured her, recalling the fact that Stella hadn’t said a word to anyone after the solicitor had finished reading the will. Which she might have thought was unusual, she reflected, if she hadn’t been so stunned herself.
‘Well, you see they don’t,’ declared her aunt firmly. ‘Who knows what that woman will try to do now? She’s suffering from shock at the moment, but that won’t last. And once she realises you’ve thwarted her plans she won’t be very pleased.’
Laura sighed. ‘What plans?’ she asked wearily. ‘Aunt Nell—’
‘Her plans to sell Penmadoc, of course.’ Her aunt clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t tell me you thought that she’d want to stay in the village after Griff had no say in the matter? For pity’s sake, girl, she’s been hankering after moving to Cardiff or suchlike for years.’
Laura’s eyes widened. ‘But I thought—’
‘Yes? What did you think? That she and your father lived an idyllic life together?’
‘Well—’
‘Oh, Laura, didn’t he tell you? I should have known he’d be too proud to admit it. He and you-know-who haven’t shared a bedroom for years.’
Laura sat down abruptly on the side of the bed. She’d had no idea that there was anything wrong between her father and Stella. And yet... She remembered again how unusually cheerful he’d seemed last summer when she’d seen him in London. She’d been wondering whether he’d been hiding the fact that his heart was failing. She’d never dreamt he might have been hiding something else.
‘So—what are you implying, Aunt Nell?’ she returned at last, not sure where this was heading or even if she wanted to go there. She took a deep breath. ‘Was there—is there someone else? Is that what you’re saying?’
The old lady seemed to draw back from making such a damning accusation. ‘All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t take too much for granted,’ she said, choosing her words with care. ‘Stella will have her own agenda. You can be sure of it. Things aren’t always the way they seem, you know.’
Laura stifled a groan. It was obvious her aunt wasn’t prepared to make it easy for her. If she wanted to know any more, she would have to find out for herself. It crossed her mind that this might be Aunt Nell’s way of getting her back to Penmadoc, but for the next few days she was determined to stay where she was.
She rang Conor’s uncle—and her employer—a couple of days later. Matthew Neill was sympathetic about her situation, but it was obvious he wanted her in New York. ‘The last time I looked at your desk, I couldn’t see it for a mountain of paper,’ he remarked drily. ‘It’s been over a week, Laura. When are you coming back to work?’
‘Only just over a week,’ Laura pointed out exactly. ‘And he was my father, Matt. I need a little time to settle his affairs.’
‘Yeah.’ She could almost see his scowl. ‘And I suppose inheriting this house rather complicates things, doesn’t it? Are you planning on selling it? I can’t see that it’s gonna be of any use to you.’
Laura gave a rueful shake of her head. Where property was concerned, Matt’s opinion was that you either lived in it or you sold. He’d handled the sale of the brownstone when she and Conor had split up, thus saving her any heartache, and found her the loft apartment in Greenwich Village which she presently enjoyed.
‘It’s not mine to sell,’ she said now, although that was just a prevarication. Even if Stella was prepared to sell in exchange for half the profits, Laura wouldn’t have wanted to get rid of the old house. ‘I’ve told you: my father left half to my stepmother. I couldn’t ask her—or my aunt—to find somewhere else to live.’
‘Well, you’re gonna have to make a decision,’ said Matthew flatly. ‘I need you here. Like I said before, the work’s piling up.’ He broke off for a moment. ‘There’s not something you’re not telling me, is there, sweetie? You’ve not met some man from your past who wants you to stay in England?’
‘No!’ Laura’s response was convincingly vehement, but she couldn’t help the unwilling thought that his suspicions weren’t that far from the truth. ‘I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘Next week at the latest. Until then, you’re just going to have to manage without me.’
Nonetheless, Matthew’s words had unsettled her. What with Aunt Nell’s intimations on the one hand and his insinuations on the other, it was well nigh impossible for her to relax. Was she so transparent, she wondered, that Conor’s uncle could actually sense what she was thinking over the wires? Or was she simply attributing him with extra perception because of her own guilt?
Whatever, when she climbed into bed that night, she was hardly surprised when her thoughts drifted back to that fatal evening. The evening when she’d taken her courage into her hands and gone to Oliver’s room. Looking back on it now, she didn’t know how she’d had the nerve to do it. It was ironic really because she knew she would never have had the courage to do it now.
But then, it was the events that had happened during and after that evening that had made such a difference to her life, she reflected. Without the memories of the past, she wouldn’t be the woman she was today. Or feel such a lingering hatred towards Oliver, she told herself, though hatred was not what she’d felt when he’d kissed her the night of her father’s funeral. She’ll wanted him then; there was no point in denying it; just as much as she’d wanted him fourteen years ago...
It had been a hot day. It had been an unusually hot summer, and the farmers who ran
their sheep on the hills around Penmadoc were crying out for rain. But that night, at least, there was the promise of a storm in the offing, and all evening there’d been the rumble of thunder in the distance.
It was the threat of the storm that had made Laura feel restless. Or so she’d told herself. That, and the fact that she’d spent the afternoon watching Oliver training with the school athletics team. She’d felt such pride when he’d returned to her side after every event, flopping down on the grass beside her, to the envy of many of the older girls.
But it wasn’t just pride that had caused her to feel so unsettled. It was the lean strength of his long body as he’d lounged beside her that had made her aware of him in a totally physical way. The sweat beading on his forehead, running like raindrops down the smooth skin of his torso had fascinated her, and she’d wanted to press him back into the grass and taste his essence for herself.
Something of what she’d been feeling must have shown in her eyes because Oliver had noticed. ‘Hey, don’t look at me like that, baby,’ he said, ‘or you might get more than you bargained for.’
‘Could I?’ she responded tartly, though her cheeks burned with colour, and Oliver covered her hand where it lay on the grass and pressed his thumb into her palm.
Even that small intimacy set off a series of sensual explosions inside her. Her stomach quivered with an unfamiliar excitement, and she desperately wanted to explore further. She was trembling with the strength of her emotions, and she hoped he might teach her what it meant.
But Oliver was called back to the field at that moment and when he returned Laura had no opportunity to rekindle their earlier intimacy. A group of his fellow athletes came with him and they were keen to go down to the pub to quench their thirst with lemon chasers. Some of the older boys were already eighteen and there was a lot of horseplay about who was going to have a beer and who wasn’t. At sixteen, Laura felt very much the outsider, and although she went with them it was the older girls now who held centre stage.
They all walked home together, however, but although she and Oliver covered the last few yards alone all he wanted to talk about was the fact that he hoped to continue with his athletics when he went to university. He was still high from the success he’d had in the last race he’d entered and when they arrived at Penmadoc he went at once to take a shower.
Laura hoped that her father and Stella might be going out that evening. But the prospect of the storm made everybody edgy, and after exchanging words with her husband over the fact that she’d overspent on her allowance again her stepmother announced that she intended to take a bath and didn’t want to be disturbed. Oliver disappeared up to his room as Laura and Aunt Nell were doing the dishes, and as her father always retired to his study when he was upset she spent the rest of the evening on her own.
She went to bed at eleven o’clock and spent the next hour trying to make sense of the Margaret Atwood novel that had previously held her interest. But the words all ran together and, after turning several pages without having the faintest idea what she’d read, she put the book aside.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Oliver. She didn’t know why exactly, but somehow that afternoon their relationship had taken a more serious turn and she badly wanted to talk to him about it. She wanted to know if he felt the same, if he’d experienced any of the feelings that had troubled her since he’d touched her, or whether she’d only imagined the sudden intimacy between them.
She might be only sixteen, she thought, but she wasn’t naive. She knew what went on between a man and a woman, and she’d had first-hand knowledge of how strong that attraction could be. Surely her father could never have become involved with Stella so soon after her mother’s death if he hadn’t been irresistibly attracted to her. Although she still found that hard to stomach, Laura had learned to be philosophical about something she couldn’t change.
Even so, she couldn’t believe that the way she felt about Oliver bore any resemblance to what went on between her father and Stella. They were so much older, for one thing. She wasn’t even sure if they did ‘it’ any more.
She’d learned what ‘it’ was when she was about thirteen, and since then it had become a regular topic of conversation among her contemporaries at the comprehensive. Some of the girls even claimed to have done ‘it’ themselves, but Laura doubted that many of them had actually taken the risk. Even in this age of sexual freedom, most girls would fight shy of inviting an unwanted pregnancy and all that it would mean.
Nevertheless, the idea of making love with Oliver was a captivating thought. Remembering his lean brown torso and the way his stomach muscles rippled beneath his taut skin caused a shiver to feather down her spine. He was hairy, too; not a lot, just a light sprinkling on his chest and over his arms and legs that deepened his tan. But it was the place where it arrowed down below his navel that fascinated her. She was curious to know if he had hair between his legs.
Her thoughts troubled her. She’d always felt a certain contempt towards girls who talked constantly about sex and what it meant to them. Although she’d loved Oliver for years, she’d never imagined herself falling in love with him. Yet there didn’t seem to be any other reason for the way she was feeling. Or for the tingling awareness that was prickling her skin.
It was upsetting, but it was also exciting, and she knew she would never get to sleep if she didn’t share her feelings with someone else. She’d never had a really close girlfriend, and there was no way she could discuss it with her father. As for Stella, well, she knew exactly how her stepmother would react if she confessed her feelings to her.
There was only one solution: late as it was, she would have to hope that Oliver wasn’t asleep. He had a computer in his room, and she knew he sometimes played games on it for hours. So much so that his mother had threatened to deduct the cost of the electricity he was using from his allowance.
It was rather daunting to leave her bedroom. She entertained the nightmare of what she would do if someone saw her going into Oliver’s room. As well as her stepmother’s disapproval, she doubted it would find much sympathy with her father. As far as Griff Williams was concerned, she was still his little girl.
Despite the fact that she was wearing her dressing gown, the corridors were cold and just a little spooky. Although she used to tease Oliver that Penmadoc was haunted, she’d never really believed it herself. Until tonight. Her feet were bare and she shivered uneasily. It was so easy to imagine she wasn’t alone.
It was quite a relief to reach Oliver’s room. There was no sign of a light under the door, but he didn’t always use the light when he was working on his computer, for obvious reasons. However, when she took her courage in both hands and opened the door, the sight that met her startled eyes caused a sudden constriction in her throat.
Oliver was there, all right, but he wasn’t working on his computer. He was in bed, asleep, the sheet which was all that had covered him kicked down around his ankles. He’d once teased Laura that he wore nothing to sleep in. She’d never dreamed she’d find out that it was true.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, Laura stepped into the room, allowing the door to close behind her. Somehow her hand found the handle and prevented any sound from escaping into the corridor, and then she sank back against the panels, gazing open-mouthed at her stepbrother’s reclining form.
The curtains were open, and moonlight streamed down on to his naked body. In the silvery light, his skin had an’ unearthly sheen, like the pelt of a selkie, that mythical creature that was said to haunt the waters around Scotland and which assumed human form to seduce a woman. And seeing him, like this, seduced Laura’s sensibilities, so that instead of getting out of there as she knew she should she pushed herself away from the door and approached the bed.
She stood for several minutes, just looking down at him, and then the temptation to touch got the better of her, and, sinking down on to her knees, she stretched out her hand and ran her fingers over the smooth curve of his hip.
‘What the hell—?’
Oliver came awake with a start, frightening Laura so much that for a moment she couldn’t move. She froze there, her eyes wide, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car, and gazed at him in total panic.
‘Laura!’ Although Oliver must have been as startled to find her there as she was at being caught, he recovered more rapidly, dragging the sheet up around his hips with one hand as he pushed himself up with the other. ‘For God’s sake, what’s wrong?’
Laura’s mouth was dry. ‘I—I—nothing’s wrong,’ she protested, shocked by the awareness that his arousal had manifested itself first in a different part of his body. ‘I—well, I wanted to talk to you.’
Oliver blinked and glanced at the clock on his bedside table. ‘At half-past twelve?’ he exclaimed disbelievingly. ‘For pity’s sake, what was so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?’
‘I—nothing.’ Suddenly, Laura was convinced she had made a terrible mistake. Contrary to her beliefs, Oliver hadn’t been affected by what had happened that afternoon. And why should he have been, for goodness’ sake? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had other girlfriends, other relationships. He’d only squeezed her hand. She’d blown what had been a purely friendly gesture right out of proportion. ‘It was nothing.’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
‘Laura...’
His tone was frustrated, but she had heard enough. She’d made a total fool of herself, and she’d be lucky if he didn’t tell all his friends what an idiot she was. All she wanted to do was get back to her room as quickly as possible and try and forget what she’d done.
She was fumbling for the handle of the door when his hand came over her shoulder and flattened against the panels. ‘Wait,’ he said huskily, his breath warm against the nape of her neck. ‘Tell me why you really came to my room. I want to know.’