The Trouble with Trent!

by Jessica Steele

  He ran out on your mother,' Trent corrected. 'And you blame him?'

  `You obviously don't!' she snapped, and, incensed, she was on her feet. Trent was on his too when she let off another volley: 'And if that isn't enough of an example, my sister was unfortunate enough to fall for a man who was constantly inconstant. You think I should meekly walk in and invite some of the same?'

  `Any man who looked at another woman while you were around would want his head examining,' Trent replied, calm when she was going out of control.

  `Huh!' she scorned, acting instinctively, with no time to wonder what it was about this man that gave him the power from one instant to the next to cause her to lose her normal equilibrium. She started to move towards the door, and the reason why she was there at all completely went from her mind as she strove for the calm—and courtesy—to tell Trent, 'I'm going.'

  Trent had moved too, she found, when she felt the grip of his hand on her arm. 'No, you're not,' he informed her levelly, turning her to face him. 'Calm down,' he instructed evenly, his eyes searching hers.

  `I am calm!' she lied, tugging her arm and trying to get free, though to no avail.

  Suddenly, in the face of her blatant lie, Trent laughed. She wanted to hit him. 'What you need,' he had the nerve to utter—despite her protest—while he slowly gathered her into his arms, 'is a good cuddle.' She wanted to laugh and hit him.

  `No, I don't!' she denied heatedly, struggling to get away.

  `Relax, Alethea,' he coaxed softly. There was nothing in any way threatening about him. 'Relax, be yourself. Stop mouthing the words you've been spoon-fed at least

  since your father left home, and, most likely, before he left. Leave home yourself,' he urged. 'Forget most of what your mother has planted in your head. Let the real you through. Learn to trust. To—'

  `Have you quite finished?' Alethea cut him off. `Sweetheart,' he replied, 'I haven't yet started.' And, so saying, he gently touched his lips to hers.

  Alethea was so startled by his action that for a second she was immobile. Then, abruptly, she jerked back. `Don't!' she ordered. But he still had her in his arms.

  `You kiss me, then,' he suggested, and she would have sworn there was the very devil dancing in his eyes.

  `How long can you wait?'

  `I'm not going anywhere—I live here,' he hinted softly.

  Why did she want to laugh, when she felt so cross? Alethea stared at him, at his good-looking face that was so close. Was he saying that she was going nowhere either, until she had kissed him? This was ridiculous! She glanced to his mouth; it really was quit superb.

  She tensed, braced herself, and moved her head a little forward. Then she pulled back nervously and looked into his eyes again. Those dark, calm eyes looked back encouragingly. Again she leaned forward, upward, halted a moment. And then she touched her lips to his.

  His mouth was warm, his arms about her were loose now that she had ceased struggling. 'May I go?' she asked, but not angrily, or crossly.

  `Of course,' he replied, but continued to hold her, and she looked up into his eyes again and felt most peculiarly no longer in need of breaking free.

  `Thank you for the coffee,' she managed, mesmerised. `Any time you're passing,' he invited.

  She laughed, had to, a light laugh that curved her mouth sweetly. She saw his glance stray to her parted

  lips again, and her laughter died. His gaze returned to

  her eyes, held them, and she was transfixed once more.

  When Trent bent to kiss her, she did not move. His mouth was warm and gentle. He drew her a little closer to him. She put her hands on his waist, but did not pull away.

  Trent broke the kiss and brought her nearer to him still. Their bodies touched as he placed tender lips on the side of her neck.

  Alethea had no idea when she had stopped protesting. All she knew, as Trent held her in his arms and his lips sought hers again, was that he was stirring an excitement in her that caused her to have problems with her breathing.

  She moved her hands from his waist, her arms going a little way around him When he kissed her once more, she held onto him, her heart racing.

  Somehow, and she had not the smallest recollection how, she found she was sitting on a sofa with him. 'Sweet Alethea,' he murmured, but when he went to gently ease her into lying down, suddenly some stray realisation of what she was doing managed to get through.

  She resisted. Stiffened in his arms. Became aware, and pulled back, striving hard not to panic. 'I ..' was all she was capable of saying, the word coming out huskily in a voice that did not sound like her own.

  Trent stared into her panic-filled eyes. 'Don't look so worried,' he murmured, and gently, but very briefly, he placed a light kiss on her mouth. Then, drawing back again, he stated, 'My dear, if it's not your intention to spend this night with me, may I suggest I see you to your car?'

  `Where did I put my car keys?' she answered, and didn't know quite how she felt when Trent looked

  amused. He wasn't about to try and pressure her into his bed?

  Nor did he try again to persuade her as he saw her into her car. He waved to her as she drove off, and the last she saw of him was through her rear-view mirror; Trent was standing on the pavement watching her.

  She turned the corner and he went from her view. She had been driving for all of two minutes before she realised that she had the stupidest of smiles on her face.

  Two minutes after that, however, and her smile abruptly departed. Only then did she realise that she had gone to Trent's home with the express purpose of asking him not to prosecute her brother-in-law, and, in the end, she had done nothing of the sort!

  Oh, Heavens! Alethea quickly considered her options. They were few. But one thing was for certain. No way, after Trent had intimated that he would quite enjoy spending the night with her, could she go back and present herself on his doorstep!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ALETHEA opened her eyes on Sunday and promptly closed them again. She was not ready to start this day. Yet she was plagued by memories of last night, and to go back to sleep again was an impossibility.

  Trent de Havilland had kissed her last night. And she had kissed him back. Even now, as daybreak gave way to morning light, Alethea found that she had to swallow as she recalled his gentle kisses, demanding her response. Yet somehow he had been undemanding of her. Somehow he had been more giving than taking.

  Oh, rot, she scorned a moment later, and deliberately turned her thoughts away from Trent de Havilland and instead to how she had flicked the hall light on when she'd got home only to very nearly jump out of her skin as she saw Maxine, who had been sitting on the stairs waiting in the darkness for her return.

  `Let's go into the kitchen,' Maxine had whispered, and Alethea's heart had sunk. Plainly she wanted to hear how things had gone! Equally plainly, she did not want to disturb either her daughters or her mother by discussing the matter in the hallway.

  `Hot chocolate?' Alethea suggested once they were in the kitchen—a delaying tactic, nothing more.

  Maxine clearly had other things on her mind and impatiently shook her head. 'What did he say?'

  All too obviously her sister was suffering, and Alethea felt dreadful. 'I .. .' she began to confess, but at the look of strain on Maxine's face it just seemed beyond her to

  own up that Trent had the power to make her so cross she forgot everything, that he had the power to so confuse her she had no chance to remember why she had gone to the 'party' after all. And nothing on this earth would have her telling anyone, even her sister, how, when Trent had started to kiss her, they had somehow moved from a standing position to be seated, wrapped in each other's arms on a sofa, without her being in any way aware of having moved a step. 'I wasn't able to ask him,' Alethea blurted out hurriedly.

  `Oh, Alethea!' Maxine cried disappointedly. 'Because of the other people there?'

  Maxine sounded so forlorn that Alethea just could not tell her the truth. She felt as wretched as he
r sister looked when she grabbed at the excuse Maxine had given her. 'It just—wasn't convenient—with everybody there,' she lied. But when Maxine looked as though she might break down in floods of tears at any moment, she heard herself add to her lie, 'I'm seeing him again on Monday; I'll ask him then.'

  `Oh, would you? I'll never forget this!' Maxine exclaimed.

  Alethea had gone up to bed incredulous that, in that weak moment of not wanting her sister to be any more upset than she already was, she had said what she had.

  Alethea was still feeling incredulous when, after her restless night, she faced the fact that, whether she was ready to start this Sunday or not, she was too het up to stay in bed any longer.

  She showered and dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen, knowing that she was going to have to confess her lie to Maxine at some time during the day. She could not let her go on a minute longer than necessary in the

  false hope that her husband might not after all be prosecuted.

  Alethea made a pot of tea and automatically poured her mother a cup. She took it upstairs, reasoning that Maxine would probably have had a better night's sleep. She would certainly be less tearful, and looking more able to cope, Alethea decided as she went quietly into her mother's room.

  `What time did you get in last night?' her mother demanded. She was already awake, and full of acid by the sound of it, and all before Alethea could take the cup and saucer from the tray and place it down on the bedside table.

  `I wasn't late,' she replied calmly.

  `I suppose we can count ourselves favoured that you deigned to come home at all,' her mother charged with spiteful sarcasm. On top of everything else, Alethea just did not need this. 'After all I've told you about men, that you should so blatantly ignore ...'

  Her mother's tirade seemed to go on non-stop and suddenly Alethea had had enough. She supposed she had been coming to the boil for some while. It had nothing to do with her having met Trent de Havilland, or his urgings that she leave home, she was sure. But when her mother got to the part about Alethea treating her home like some hotel—totally unfairly, in Alethea's view, since apart from going to her office she so seldom went out—something in her snapped.

  `Actually, Mother, you won't have to worry about me treating this place like a hotel for much longer. I intend looking for somewhere else to live tomorrow.'

  For once her mother was so stunned she was silenced. Alethea went back downstairs amazed that it had been so easy. She had thought she would have to lead up to

  leaving home gently. To tentatively suggest that, if her mother wouldn't mind, and because they were all living on top of each other since Maxine and the children had arrived, she thought she might move out. But it hadn't happened like that. No tentative lead-ups, or anything like that. Just a bald statement of fact: 'I intend looking for somewhere else to live tomorrow'. And that was that!

  Oh, would that it were that easy. Her announcement that she was going had been. But there was still the whole of that Sunday to be got through. It was not going to be a happy day.

  Alethea sorely needed to get Maxine alone so she might own up to lying about seeing Trent on Monday. She realised that her chances of doing that were going to be slender when her mother appeared in the breakfast room at about the same time as Maxine and the girls, and she was made very aware that today was going to be 'Get at Alethea Day'.

  `Did your sister tell you that she is leaving us?' Eleanor Pemberton addressed her elder daughter.

  `You're leaving?' Maxine asked, looking at Alethea in surprise.

  `I thought I'd like to try living in a flat of my own,' Alethea answered, and found she spent most of the rest of the day having to defend her decision. The only bright spot came when Sadie, totally unaware of the strained atmosphere, piped up to ask, practically, if she could have Aunty Alethea's room when she moved out.

  The day's miseries were added to when Polly, who had been quite angelic for most of the day—a sign they should have noticed, but didn't, because she was likely to give them hell later to make up for it—started to scream blue murder around six o'clock, and kept it up as only she could.

  In consequence, Maxine had her work cut out with Polly, which squashed any last-minute chance Alethea had of having a few words alone with her before she went to bed. When Polly finally went to sleep, from sheer exhaustion, Maxine said she was turning in too.

  Alethea spent another worrying night. Any euphoria she might have felt after she had actually told her mother of her intention to leave was negated by the worry that she had lied to Maxine and had done nothing to set that right.

  Nor was she able to do anything the next morning. Because, just as she was leaving the house ready to go to work, an anxious slippered and housecoat-clad Maxine came out onto the drive.

  `You didn't say what time you were meeting Trent de Havilland today. Whether it was for lunch or dinner. But I just wanted to urge you, if it's for lunch, to do your best for me, Alethea, won't you?'

  Alethea opened her mouth. 'I ...' she attempted. The words stuck. 'It won't be for the want of trying,' she found herself assuring her sister.

  Taking a picture of Maxine's pleading expression with her, Alethea drove to her office, aware now—as she had most likely been yesterday, only she had kicked against admitting it then—that at some time before this day was over she was going to have to try and make contact with Trent de Havilland.

  She felt sick inside as she went into her office and began opening the day's post. 'Are you all right?' Carol Robinson asked as they went through the mail together. `You seem worried.'

  `I'm fine,' Alethea stated brightly, but knew that, as the prospect of what she had to do grew larger and larger

  by the minute, she was going to have to take some action sooner rather than later.

  She waited until Carol went in to see Mr Chapman, knowing that Carol would be with him for about a half an hour and that she would have the office to herself. Then she found the telephone number she needed in the private address book Carol kept for Mr Chapman, and put through her call.

  `SEC. Good morning,' answered an efficient-sounding voice.

  `Mr de Havilland's PA, please,' Alethea requested. `One moment, please.'

  Alethea did not have to wait long before another voice answered. She took a steadying breath, 'Is that Mr de Havilland's PA?' she asked.

  `Mrs Tustin's in with Mr de Havilland just now. May I take a message?'

  So far, it had been relatively uncomplicated. Now was not the time to have second thoughts! 'Oh, dear, it's rather urgent I speak with either Mrs Tustin or Mr de Havilland. I'm Alethea Pemberton of Mr Hector Chapman's office. Gale Drilling International,' she added for a little extra clout. 'Is it at all possible you could put me through, do you think`'

  `It's urgent, you said?'

  No time to swallow or wonder if what she was doing—using her employer's name—was a dismissable offence. `Extremely,' she said firmly.

  `Would you hold, please?'

  Alethea had no time either in which to feel relieved that she was actually going to be put through to Trent's PA, for, before she was ready for it: 'Alethea?' queried the voice she would know anywhere.

  `Trent,' she answered—and just didn't know where to go from there.

  The silence stretched as he waited for her to announce her business, but her throat had dried. 'You have something extremely urgent to discuss?' Trent waited no longer; clearly he was a very busy man.

  Alethea took a gulp of breath, and plunged in, 'I n-need to see you rather urgently, if you can spare me a few minutes of your time?' she said in a rush—and died a thousand deaths in the small silence that followed.

  `On a business matter?' Trent questioned crisply, and Alethea knew then that he had her measure. Any business would be done directly with her employer. By no chance would a man in Trent de Havilland's position have business discussions with any assistant PA, no matter whose office she worked in.

  `S-sort of,' she stammered; it wa
s obvious by then, anyway. 'But not Mr Chapman's business.' She took a steadying breath. 'It's—er—sort of—personal business.' Rushing straight on while her nerve lasted, she went on, `Could I see you today, do you think?'

  `It does sound urgent,' he commented, and Alethea's hopes grew when it sounded as if Trent was pausing to consult his desk diary, because there followed a few moments of silence. Then he was back with her once more,

  voice authoritative and decisive. 'There's a park near you. I'll be passing on my way to an appointment just after midday. You're sure this will only take a few minutes?'

  Certain,' Alethea replied. Shortly afterwards she put

  down her phone and ran the whole gamut of emotions.

  he felt panicky inside at what she had to ask him.

  Nervous and sick. And yet, at the same time—when she

  knew full well that if Trent's work was anywhere near

  as hectic as Mr Chapman's, he barely had a moment spare in his day—she also felt slightly rebellious at his intimation that if this was going to take more than a few minutes, she could forget it.

  He hadn't said that on Saturday night, when he'd intimated he wasn't averse to taking her to his bed, had he? Alethea abruptly switched her mind away from such thoughts—this was business. Well, sort of. And she should be grateful, not mutinous, that, probably on his way to some high-powered lunch, Trent had agreed to stop by the park for a few minutes. She should be grovelling at his feet that he was sparing her his time, not feeling irked that he was condescending to let her have those few minutes.

  Pride and panic had a lot to do with how she felt, she realised. Pride that insisted that she simply could not ask him what she had to. Panic that, the question asked, he would castigate her for her nerve. But, whatever the outcome, Alethea now knew that ask she would. The die was cast; for Maxine's sake she would go through with it.