`There wasn't anyone special there,' Alethea denied mildly. But, ridiculously, she found she wanted to smile as a voice in her ear reproached, How could you lie...?
The rest of the day passed off noisily—with only a short period of quiet when, exhausted, Polly had a nap. Alethea's two older nieces were quite interesting when they weren't squabbling. But she was glad to see Monday. Somehow, for all that life in the office was most often hectic, it seemed more tranquil than home.
She drove to work musing, at first not very seriously, that perhaps she should consider moving out. Maybe find a flat somewhere. Then, staying with the notion, she realised that there seemed to be a lot going for it. Maxine had seen neither hide nor hair of her husband since she had left him They were in telephone communication; she knew that Maxine shed floods of tears when she rang Keith, often about the non-appearance of the maintenance money he kept promising but which never materialised.
But it was all of a month now since Maxine had left him and had she had any thoughts of going back to him, then Alethea felt she would have seen some sign of them by now.
Life at home went from her mind the moment she arrived at the office she shared with Carol. There was the usual buzz about the place and, as ever, they were busy.
Carol was closeted with Mr Chapman around mid afternoon when Alethea looked at the 'Celebrations' file she had opened to check what accounts might be outstanding. She came across the guest list.
Without fully realising what she was doing, she skimmed her gaze over the names. She halted at de Havilland. Halted, and paused for some moments, for
while almost every other invitation had been sent to couples, the invitation to the man who had so elegantly waltzed her around the dance floor had been sent to Trent alone. `Mr Trenton de Havilland,' she read—and was back in his arms, back on the dance floor, the music was playing, the ...
`Have you time to do this for me?' Carol, who clearly had more than enough to do, if the paperwork in her hands was anything to go by, brought Alethea quickly back to earth.
`Of course,' she smiled obligingly, and went home that evening a little later than normal, but satisfied with her day.
She let herself in; the house was noisy. It seemed that the children were as boundlessly energetic and as vocal as ever. She earned herself another bruise as she knocked into a chest of drawers that stood in the hall simply because there was no other place to put it—and found she was again thinking, a little more seriously this time, that perhaps it might not be such a bad idea after all to find somewhere else to live.
Despite Polly being such a bad-tempered child, there was something quite loveable about her. She had such a beam of a smile, that it had them all forgiving her every misdeed. But there was no sign of that smile about her later in the evening when, around eight-thirty, she was brought downstairs so as not to disturb Sadie and Georgia who were already asleep. Polly had decided that she wasn't going to go to sleep. She yelled and screamed, and held her breath, and quite terrified Alethea lest she never breathed again. So that when, at last, she finally exhausted herself and did fall asleep, the adults were feeling very much frazzled.
`You must be hating like crazy the fact that we moved in and shattered the peace and calm of your life,' Maxine opined as she flopped in a chair and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Alethea handed her.
`Nonsense!' her mother decried stoutly. Alethea knew she never had wanted Maxine to leave home in the first place and was delighted to have her back again. Her mother was impervious, it seemed, to the chaos about her.
The phone rang and Maxine went to get up. 'I'll get it,' Alethea volunteered, instructing herself to be polite if it was her uncaring brother-in-law calling to tell his wife why he wasn't able to pay her any maintenance this week either.
But the call wasn't for Maxine, nor was it for her mother. 'Hello,' Alethea said, into the receiver.
She went hot all over when, after a moment's pause, a firm voice answered pleasantly, 'Hello, Alethea, Trent de Havilland.'
She'd known that—even though she could not believe it. She had just known that it was his voice. 'Oh, hello,' she said lightly, and, feeling confused and jumbled up again and totally unlike her real self, asked, 'What can I do for you?'
Perhaps he needed Mr Chapman's home number to ring and thank him for Saturday, or something of that sort.
That, it transpired, was not the reason for Trent's call. Her unflappable self disappeared when he came straight to the point of his call: `I'd like you to have dinner with me tomorrow. Are you free?' he asked.
Alethea opened her mouth. 'I ...' she began. Half of her head still believed this was a business call and she almost asked, In what connection? Rapidly she got
herself together. Only he jumped in before she could formulate the words she wanted—in truth she didn't know what they were!
`Good,' Trent stated, and, continuing every bit as if she had just accepted his invitation, he said, 'I'll call for you at seven.'
Alethea came rapidly out of the confusion his call had instigated. 'Presumably you know where I live?' she questioned faintly.
`Goodnight,' he said, and the phone went dead.
Alethea stared at the receiver in her hand with astonishment. Had she just agreed to go out with the man who, it had to be admitted, seemed to have a knack of disturbing her previously unflappable self?
Apparently she had. Though, from what she could remember, he had given her very little chance to refuse.
CHAPTER TWO
BY MORNING Alethea had decided that she would ring Trent de Havilland and tell him that she was not going to go to dinner with him. She would tell him that she had been so surprised by his call, she hadn't had a chance to recall a prior engagement. Into her mind loomed the thought of another evening of Polly deciding she did not want to go to sleep and, what was more, she was never going to sleep—and if she wasn't ever going to go to sleep, the whole world was going to hear about it.
Hating herself for thinking that it would be quite nice to have a tantrum-free evening, Alethea took her mother a cup of tea and went to her office, where she found time during the day only to discover that Trenton de Havilland's home phone number wasn't listed. With Mr Chapman dashing to various meetings, she had no chance to ask him if he had Trent's number. Or, failing that, if Mr Chapman knew where Trenton de Havilland worked.
`Bye, Alethea,' Carol said when they parted in the car park twenty minutes after five.
`Bye,' Alethea smiled, and drove home with her tummy all of a flutter. She had been out on dates before, but only with men she had known for some while—and never with any man like Trent!
`Dinner will be late,' her mother greeted her. 'We've had such a day of it.'
`Polly playing up?' Alethea guessed.
`She's been as good as gold.' Her mother purred as if the high voltage tot had never ever known a temper tantrum. 'We went to the house—it hasn't been sold yet—and he was there.'
`Keith?'
`Who else? He's been suspended.'
`SEC have found out about the missing money?'
Her mother nodded. 'They're investigating. I couldn't resist telling him a few home truths. He called me an interfering old bat! Can you imagine?'
There was more in the same vein. Eleanor Pemberton only broke off momentarily when Maxine came into the room, looking as if she'd been crying. Alethea guessed that her sister had heard more than enough of what her mother had to say on the subject of her husband, and broke in quickly, 'Actually, I'm going out to dinner this evening, so I won't be needing —'
`With Carol?' her mother asked sharply, her thoughts swiftly taken away from the man her other daughter had married.
' No —er — a —an acquaintance.'
`A male acquaintance?' her mother fired at her before she could add more. 'You never did get round to saying who phoned last night—is it him?'
`Yes, actually.'
`Hmmph,' her mother grunted. 'Do I know him?' was the next ques
tion. Alethea had been through the third degree on several occasions before.
'I'll introduce you; he's calling for me at seven,' she replied, and quickly made her escape to go and shower and change, and to wonder why if, as she told herself, she did not want to go out with Mr Trenton de Havilland, she should feel so churned up; somehow she was very
wary, yet at the same time she was experiencing a prickle of excitement at the prospect.
Alethea found it a rush to be ready on time. Sadie and Georgia came in to help—which added another five minutes.
A high-pitched squabble broke out between the two little girls when they both wanted to use her face powder at the same time. However, having separated them and placated them with a spray of perfume behind their ears, Alethea and her two 'helpers' finally left her room with one minute to go before seven.
She knew that, good manners aside, there was no way in which she was going to be able to avoid introducing her escort to her family, but she was hopeful of making that introduction as brief as possible.
It was not that she was ashamed of her family in any way. It was just that Trenton de Havilland was a very sophisticated man. She wanted him out of there before her mother attempted to give him the grilling which had been the fate of her other escorts.
`Aunt Alethea gave us a squirt with her perfume ...' The girls rushed ahead of her into the sitting room—and stopped dead.
A prickle of apprehension had already started along Alethea's spine as she followed them. She, too, stopped dead. Trent de Havilland had already arrived! The strained atmosphere spoke volumes.
How long he had been closeted with her mother and her sister and, for once, an angelic-looking Polly, Alethea had no idea. She hadn't heard his car, though perhaps with Sadie and Georgia squawking in her bedroom that wasn't so surprising.
`I'm sorry I wasn't here to introduce you.' She smiled as she went into the room, trying to ignore the fact that
her mother looked as if she'd been on a diet of vinegar for a week. Maxine was looking much the same—what on earth had been going on?
`I was several minutes early.' Trent had risen to his feet as, in a mustard-shade dress, she'd entered the room. He paused to say hello to Sadie and Georgia, and started to come over to her. 'I introduced myself,' he com-
mented easily. But, for all his relaxed manner, he seemed not inclined to delay their departure. 'Shall we go?' They said their goodbyes, and Alethea led the way out
into the hall, followed by her mother's sharp warning,
`Don't forget you have to be up early for work in the morning, Alethea!'
Oh, grief! She skirted the chest of drawers and heard a thudding sound as Trent didn't, and just knew that the evening was going to be a disaster before it began.
`I'm sorry about that,' she apologised tensely, already guessing that her mother had asked him some pretty pertinent questions and he was probably ready to call the evening off right then and there.
`Sorry?' he queried, opening the passenger door of a black, extremely expensive car that suggested that whatever job he did, he was well paid for it.
Loyalty to her family, plus a sudden realisation that, whatever had passed between him, her mother and sister—Maxine had been looking on the sour side too—she did not want to know about it, made her say, 'At a guess, I'd say you cracked your shin on that chest in the hall.'
`Is it there as some sort of test you give to all your men friends—to see how brave they are?'
`You didn't cry,' she replied—and suddenly the tension was eased, and they were both laughing.
Miraculously, though she rather knew Trent had a lot to do with it, the evening which she thought had started off badly progressed to a fine start.
He took her to a restaurant which served excellent food. But she had little recollection of what she ate, for he was an excellent dinner companion: witty, serious, knowledgable.
`Yes, but, Trent —er —Trenton ...' She went on to put forward her point of view, but the subject went straight from her mind. It was the confusion he seemed to have a knack of arousing in her. She started to grow hot at the thought that this astute man who had introduced himself to her as Trent de Havilland might think she had been checking up on him, and had found out his name was Trenton. 'It's on file—your name.' She dug a bigger hole for herself. Oh, Heavens, this was dreadful. 'I wasn't checking up on you!' she blurted out.
`That's not very flattering of you,' he teased.
She started to feel a bit better. Enough, anyway, to be able to explain, 'I was checking Mr Chapman's silver wedding celebrations file, ready to finalise everything before putting it to bed. Your name was on the guest list.'
Trent smiled and, as if realising from the gentle tide of pink that had washed her skin that she had been feeling a trifle awkward, he smoothly turned the conversation to enquire, 'You enjoy working for Hector?'
`Very much,' she answered, but felt honour bound to add, 'Though I'm not his PA. She's Carol Robinson and I assist her.' Alethea's voice started to fade as it suddenly dawned on her that he probably knew that anyway. `Didn't Mr Chapman want to know what you wanted my address and phone number for?' she asked, and had to admit that she liked the way Trent de Havilland's
mouth quirked at the corners whenever she managed to amuse him.
`You're too sharp to be a mere assistant,' he responded charmingly.
She enjoyed his charm, though she had sense enough to see that it wouldn't take a genius to guess from where he had obtained the information he needed. Though Hector Chapman giving that information spoke volumes. She knew, indisputably, that Mr Chapman would never have imparted anything about her unless the enquirer was not only very well known to him, but also a man whom he knew to be trustworthy.
Given that she had been brought up to be distrustful of all men, Alethea was feeling more relaxed with Trent than with any man she'd ever known. To suddenly realise, too, that she already had all the evidence she needed, because Trent must be well known to her boss to have been invited to his anniversary celebration, only went to make her feel even more relaxed.
Relaxed, and able to ask him what she considered to be a most natural question, 'What sort of work do you do?'
`I'm in science engineering,' he answered.
`Well, that leaves me dead in the water,' Alethea laughed, 'Science was my worst subject at school.'
`I'm sure you were brilliant at others,' he commented. `So tell me more about you.'
For no reason, she started to feel tense again. 'There's nothing to tell,' she replied.
He wasn't having that. 'You live at home with your mother and sister—plus your sister's children,' he documented. How much had he guessed? Alethea started to feel wary of him. 'Are there no men in your household?'
he asked, and Alethea, knowing she was being prickly,
but somehow unable to help it, resented his questioning.
`Are there any women in yours?' she asked bluntly.
`I live alone,' he answered quite openly, adding drily, `though it's true that I have a dear soul who comes in and sets the place to order three times a week.'
There were traces of a smile about his expression, but suddenly the evening was going badly for Alethea and she could not respond. 'Have you ever been married?' she asked abruptly.
Trent he Havilland studied her unsmiling face for some seconds, as if trying to gauge what, if anything, lay behind her question. 'No, never,' he stated at last. But his eyes were alert, his expression all at once unsmiling. `Have you?'
`Good Heavens, no!' Alethea exclaimed.
`You sound as if you find the idea appalling?' he suggested, his dark eyes steady on her violet ones.
Suddenly her tension vanished, and her sense of humour quite unexpectedly bubbled to the surface. 'So long as you weren't asking,' she replied and, when his eyes remained unflinching on hers, she continued, 'I should hate to hurt your feelings.'
`Like hell you would,' he rejoined.
`I'd never hurt a
nyone on purpose,' she informed him coolly.
Her coolness didn't so much as touch him. 'Turn them down gently—is that your motto?' he surmised, as if he truly thought she must have received several marriage proposals by now. She wasn't interested in marriage, for goodness' sake! Nor did she care much for the subject under discussion, she decided. Though, before she could open her mouth to change it, she discovered that Trent had had enough of it too, and was heading in another
direction himself to ask, 'May I enquire after your father?'
Alethea was not sure that she cared for this new subject any better. 'My father?' she prevaricated.
`He doesn't live at home?' Trent pursued, not a man to give up easily, even if her look did have a chilly edge to it.
Had her mother told him that? She did not want to think so But, much as she loved her parent, she was not blind to the fact that her mother could be manipulative when it suited her. She remembered the sour expressions on both her mother's and her sister's faces when she had gone into the sitting room. And, even though she had earlier been convinced that she didn't want to know what had gone on in that room before she had come downstairs, she found she was asking in a rush, 'What did my mother say to you?'
`Nothing to cause such distress in those beautiful violet eyes,' he answered. Quite gently, she thought, but it was a non-answer just the same.
`So tell me,' she insisted.
He shrugged, but he was watchful as he revealed, `Apparently you're more interested in your career than you are in men.'
She could cope with that. 'Anything wrong in that?' she asked.
`Not a thing,' he replied pleasantly. Only, remembering her mother's expression, Alethea couldn't leave it there.
`And?' she further insisted.
`You're a devil for punishment,' he murmured lightly. `So?'
The Trouble with Trent! Page 2