Tomorrow...Come Soon

by Steele, Jessica

  Hastily she got out of bed, and was in the bathroom before it occurred to her that she did not have one single solitary niggle in her hip this morning.

  By the time she was showered and was dressed in a light summer frock, Devon had relived every part of the previous evening. But by then it was not the memory of the feeling Grant Harrington' s expertise had aroused in her when he had begun gently kissing her that was large in her mind; but thoughts that now she had told him that she wanted to co-operate--her father was still not out of the wood until Grant Harrington too had co-operated!

  She found him in the kitchen frying bacon and eggs when she went downstairs. But the flick of a glance she received in greeting was sufficient to tell her that although it was a beautiful day outside, the sun had not risen with his world this morning.

  `Er—good morning,' she said, pink in her cheeks that he was too busy with the frying pan to notice.

  Her blush deepened that she was ignored. With a feeling of not staying where she wasn't wanted, Devon turned about and would have gone swiftly to another room.

  `Breakfast will be ready in a minute,' Grant grunted as she reached the doorway.

  She turned, observing he had flicked another sour glance at her, noting what she had been about, and still ready with his orders—albeit that his order had been veiled, an order that she should not leave the kitchen.

  `Can I do anything to help?' she asked, resigned again as she left the doorway and went back into the streamlined, last-word-in-modern-equipment kitchen.

  His sarcasm she should have expected, she realised. But she was annoyed nevertheless, when, either thinking she was some ninety-year-old granny, or having come round to being sceptical about her performance last night, he threw over his shoulder not the answer she was expecting, but:

  `How are your aches and pains this morning?'

  `I wasn't lying to you last night to get out of . . .' she started to flare—but was made to go on as he turned, one eyebrow going insolently aloft as though to say, tell me more. 'I—want to—as much as you . . .' again she faltered. 'Where do you keep your cutlery?' she snapped, going red. 'This table wants laying.'

  He smirked, she was sure he did. Even if there wasn't a

  smirk about him as he pointed to the cutlery drawer and said, 'Want to play housewife?'

  `I kept house for my father,' she told him sharply. And just in case he was going to belittle that, 'And very efficiently too,' she tacked on. And she slammed knives and forks down, one knife bouncing to the floor to prove her inefficient.

  `Visitors,' he said, and suddenly her ill humour had gone, and her lips were twitching that he knew the old saying that a dropped knife meant visitors. .

  Of course, her face instantly went into straight lines when she caught him looking at the curve to her mouth. She didn't want to be amused by any unexpected thing he said. Solemn-faced, she checked that the table had everything they would need. And then as Grant placed two plates of bacon and egg down on the table, she realised she was starving, and did not need a second invitation to:

  `Sit down and tuck in'

  He was quite good with a frying pan, she thought, not being small-minded, deciding to give him credit for something. She stood up when her bacon and eggs had been demolished, and held her hand out for his cleared plate. A piece of toast and a dab of marmalade would finish the meal off nicely, she thought, resuming her seat after depositing their used plates on the draining board. But then she heard, having thought he didn't like conversation with his first meal of the day, that Grant Harrington had more than one or two questions he wanted to put to her.

  `Why,' he asked for starters, as she selected a piece of toast from the toast rack, do you "want to" as much as I?'

  Blankly she looked at him, then she went off all idea of wanting a piece of toast. She would have preferred that he

  had chosen any other subject for a breakfast time discussion than that one.

  Feeling pink about the ears that he must have felt her response to him last night—however small—and might somehow have got the impression she was hot for him, she was quick-to knock that idea straight out of his head.

  `Why, because of my father, of course,' she replied.

  And looking at him and seeing that he didn't look brokenhearted, not that that would have worried her, she told him more than she had to, in the faint hope that when he knew, he might yet say that in the circumstances he couldn't possibly prosecute, that her father was free, and so was she.

  `While I'm still a . . .' the word stuck, `. .. a virgin, you have a hold on my father,' she explained, an unconscious note of appeal in her voice.

  `You're a virgin!' His exclamation had her eyes shooting to him, wonder in her, as she saw his stunned look, that she hadn't thought to tell him that before—though he wouldn't have believed her then, would he? 'Ye gods,' he said, and she Could see he was getting over his surprise, and wasn't ready to believe her even now, as he added shortly, 'With your looks—that's rich!'

  Swine, she thought, not for the first time, and vowed then that he'd have to put her on the rack before she would tell him anything else.

  `It is, isn't it,' she said coldly, and set about spreading butter on a piece of toast she didn't want.

  She had the toast halfway to her mouth, when the lengthy silence coming from the other end of the table made her look at him. And it seemed to her then that he was going over her every action with him in that big bed last night. For his eyes were going from her eyes to her mouth, and as her hand started to shake so that she

  returned the toast to her plate and put her hands in her lap out of sight, she just knew that he was remembering her trembling, and was now accepting, when adding the way she had been to what she had just told him, that her trembling was not an act, but that she had been scared stiff.

  For all of two seconds she forgot to hate him. She very nearly smiled, when for all of two seconds he proved that he was after all a gentleman, and a man who would not rob an innocent girl of her virginity.

  `You can forget all your fears for your father, Devon,' he said, and there was a great deal of the charm she had seen him use on the stunning Vivien last night, as, his look wry, he smiled.

  Her mouth wanted to pick up at the corners that clearly he was telling her that her father was saved without the diabolical need for her again to sleep in that over-large bed.

  But—there was something about the look in his eyes that, while joy leapt in her heart, some cautionary instinct was there to remind her that once before she had been ready to kiss him enthusiastically for his goodness—only to discover very shortly afterwards that he was more devil than saint.

  `You mean . . . ?' she questioned, that hope buoyantly alive, hope still on top.

  `I mean, my dear Devon,' he smiled, 'that since you've confessed yourself so willing to—co-operate--why then should you worry about your father's fate?' And while her hope started to die, Grant Harrington made it abundantly plain what he meant, as with not a smile about him, he said, 'To put it more bluntly, Miss Johnston, virgin you may be now—but not for very much longer.'

  Warm colour flared to her face. She felt let down, though she was not sure why she should feel so. She had

  known the score from the start and if given the same choice, she would still have taken-the same course. Grant Harrington might have left her alone last night because of her nagging hip, but that did not mean the contract was made null and void. And whether she was a virgin or not, it was all the same to him—nothing was altered by that fact.

  `That--er . .' She coughed to clear her throat, hating that he was witnessing her nervousness. 'That,' she said more firmly, 'goes without saying.'

  In moody silence they shared the chore of the washing up. Then when, to her relief, he seemed to have a need to work off some of his excess energy and went outside to mow the lawns, Devon took herself off upstairs.

  She had taken her time in generally tidying the bedroom and the bathroom, when she sudde
nly became aware that the mower had stopped. She wasted no time in leaving the bedroom, though she was to meet Grant halfway on the staircase.

  - Not missing his sardonic look, she would have passed him without a word. But he murmured softly, 'You have been mixing with the wrong company!' just as if to say that he knew why she had bolted from the bedroom, but that he was not the type to grab whenever an opportunity presented itself. It had her replying acidly as he went up one stair and she went down one:

  `Only recently.'

  And, when the exchange had not been funny, she couldn't help, as she continued down where he could not see her face, that her lips should twitch to hear him smother what surely had been a laugh at her matching sarcasm, as he tossed after her:

  `I'll take mine black—without sugar!'

  He had joined her in the kitchen by the time she had the coffee made. And it was he who found a tray and loaded it,

  and said, 'We'll have this in the sitting room.' And it was Grant who carried the tray through, making her feel redundant as she wondered, since they didn't have a lot in common, what on earth they would talk about.

  She spotted a newspaper on the arm of a chair as he placed the tray down; and was hopeful, as she daintily poured out two cups and handed one to him, that perhaps he would bury himself in newsprint.

  `The paper's come,' she said in a broad hint, as she sat in one easy chair and he settled himself back in another. `So tell me more.'

  `More?' she enquired, having not an idea what he was meaning. `More—of what?'

  `Of how you, Devon Johnston, possessor of more than your fair share of . . .' his eyes skimmed over her, 'everything,' he drawled, 'come to be the ripe old age of nearly twenty-two, if your father's personnel record is right,' so he had done some checking up? 'and yet have still managed to steer clear of half the panting males in Marchworth.'

  He could only be referring to the fact that she had told him she was a virgin, she thought, not wanting this conversation, thinking that if she didn't answer, he might tire of it. But that was before he went on to be more personal, adding when he could see from the hostile look she threw him that it was to be a one-sided conversation:

  `Scared you might be, but you're certainly not frigid!'

  That he had picked that much up from the way his gentleness had stirred her made Devon want to refute it hotly. But that would be one time when he would know for sure that she was lying.

  `I didn't—go in for—boy-friends,' she was forced to confess. And she started to hate him again, not sure when she had ever stopped, as she saw from his doubting

  expression that he did not believe she had never had a boy-friend, and that he thought she and the truth were enemies still. Tartly, she told him, 'If you must know, I had an—an unsightly limp—before my last operation. I preferred to stay at home.'

  She flicked him a look of dislike that he had got that out of her. But she saw in that flick of a glance that though he was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, and looking the epitome of a man relaxed in easy conversation, there was an alert look to his eyes. Though she was glad to note that he had left the subject that would have had her blushing at any minute had he continued, even if she didn't care that he now seemed set to find out more about her old injury.

  `Your hip cause you pain?' he enquired, his voice quiet, casual.

  `Occasionally,' she muttered in understatement.

  `You were in pain the first night I called at your home? That was the reason you appeared to be lolling about on the settee?'

  `I . . .' She tried to think back. Had she been in pain? She often had been, so most likely she had been then. `Probably,' she said—and recalling how impolite she must have seemed, not wanting sympathy for her pain if Grant was thinking of extending it, though that was doubtful, didn't mean to be rude that night, only,' by the very fact he was saying nothing, but was waiting, patiently by his look, for her to continue, had the words forcing themselves out, 'only I wasn't---walking too well, and . . . and whenever I went to stand, it always took me a couple of seconds to get my balance.'

  She-wouldn't look at him as the silence stretched. She wondered if she had said too much. He couldn't possibly be interested in what she had been like those few months ago. But in that, she found herself mistaken.

  `You didn't want some unknown man to see you the way you were?'

  `I hated anyone to see me the way I was,' she agreed. 'I hated meeting strangers. M-my father understood about it. And, ordinarily, he would never have brought you into the room where I was, but—but he was so shaken to see you at the front door that for once in all his caring for me, he forgot about me and my—hang-up.'

  Silence again, and she still wouldn't look at him. That was until, for the very first time she felt some sort of understanding in him when his voice came, quietly, and he said:

  `It was a very real hang-up, wasn't it, Devon?'

  She flicked another glance at him, and saw that he was still relaxed, but that there was no hardness in his face. And though she did not want to talk about it, she found herself thinking, as she looked away, that maybe if she told him a little more that he would understand a little too why her father had felt compelled to do what he had.

  `The doctor said it had something to do with the fact that my mother was killed in the car accident that left me injured,' she told him, and confessed, 'Though he was of the opinion that I would have overcome what had happened by the time I was eighteen.'

  `But you didn't,' he slipped in. But he did not wait for her answer as he went on to ask, 'How old were you when this accident occurred?'

  `Fifteen and a half.'

  `Your mother was driving the car?'

  Devon shook her head. 'My father was,' she said, and quickly, 'But it wasn't his fault.' Then, going on more slowly, 'Although he has suffered agonies from it.'

  `Your father was injured too?'

  She heard surprise there that he should not be aware of any such injury, and again she shook her head. 'Not

  physically,' she said. 'But he lost my mother, and he loved her very much.' And all of a sudden it was important in her view that Grant should see that her father had suffered enough pain, and she told him, 'Apart from losing my mother, every day he had the reminder of the accident in me, in the way I walked, in the way I could never get out of a chair and get going until my hip let me know it was all right to move.'

  She looked at him as she came to an end. She had been truthful and honest—and hopeful. But when she saw his face, his expression serious, casual no longer, so her spirits dipped. He was looking harsh again, she saw, and knew she could have saved her breath in trying to get him to understand how her father had done what he had.

  `My father only took the money because . . .' she went to try again—only to be sharply interrupted by a question that called her honesty into doubt as well as her father's.

  `Did you never wonder from where he found that amount of money—or did you know?'

  `Of course I didn't know,' she replied, annoyed as much by his sharp tone as by his question. 'He told me . . .' She didn't want to go on, but again, by the silence coming from the other chair, she had to. 'He told me that an— endowment in my name had matured on my twenty-first birthday.' And hating to add liar to her father's short list of crimes, she said quickly, 'But he only did it for me. I've kept him poor paying out all he had for treatments, but he knew what this operation could do for me—if it proved successful. He would never . .

  f it proved successful.' Sharply she was cut off. 'Is there some doubt?' he rapped.

  `No,' she was quick to deny. 'That's to say, I've had a few panicky moments about it,' and more than enough

  panicky moments where you're concerned, she thought, and had the chance then to explain, 'That first night I came home, I was expecting to find my father in the sitting room. When I clutched on to you, it was because I was showing off the new me to him in my first pair of high heels—only I forgot, I hadn't been practising twists and tur
ns in hospital—it hurt, and I lost my balance,' she said with rueful remembrance. 'And I thought for a panicky moment that the operation was a failure. But,' she went on, that happily out of the way, 'after years of trekking to consulting rooms, I have just one last appointment four weeks on Monday, and then,' she said, unable to stop her eyes from shining, 'I've been assured that I'll be able to do absolutely everything I've ever wanted to do!'

  That alert look was still with him when, her eyes shining still, she looked across and saw that his eyes were steady on her. But the shine left her eyes when he suggested coolly, sarcasm, disbelief only in him, she thought:

  `Meantime—you've been advised not to overstrain that hip?'

  `As a matter of fact,' said Devon, her chin tilting, her voice cold, 'yes.'

  She saw his eyes narrow at her cold tone, and was not altogether surprised to hear him jibe:

  `Now isn't that just too bad!'

  And she had been afraid of his sympathy! She should get to be so lucky. 'Not really,' she said, following his train of thought, pride about all she had. 'As well as telling me to rest frequently, Dr Henekssen told me that exercise is good for me.'

  She was back to wanting to thump him when he stood up and, looking ready to return to his labours in the garden, loftily reminded her:

  `But you exercised too much yesterday. And in consequence we both suffered for it.'

  I

  By the time darkness fell that night, Devon was beginning to think that thumping did not begin to nearly cover what she would like to do to Grant Harrington!

  It had been he who had cooked their lunch. He who had cooked the dinner they had just consumed. And she was just about sick and tired of having him bossing her about.

  Nerves, she knew, had a lot to do with the way she was feeling. For just as he had refused to allow her to do anything that day, telling her mockingly that he didn't want her wearing herself out with the wrong sort of activity, he had just refused to allow her to do the washing up, telling her it wouldn't run away if it was left until the morning.