Jay poured himself juice. ‘The word is merge, Gramps. They’d do the advertising. We’d do the PR. We’d share the research. There are lots of synergies.’
‘Except they’re a bunch of international sharks and you’re an honourable man,’ said his grandfather.
Jay shrugged. ‘Can’t stand in the way of progress,’ he said lightly.
‘You ought to compete again,’ said his grandfather. ‘You’re not too old. Cross-country running is a mature man’s sport.’
Jay’s lips twitched. ‘Thank you. I’m thirty-five, not ninety.’
‘Better use of your time than making more and more money you don’t need,’ said his grandfather. ‘It’s time you—’
‘—settled down,’ said Jay, his mouth suddenly grim. ‘So you’ve said before. Thank you for your advice.’
‘I only—’
Jay put down his juice and leaned forward. ‘No.’
‘What?’
‘No,’ said Jay again, very quietly.
His grandfather had commanded men and negotiated with leaders, foreign and domestic, who had volatile temperaments and the means to enforce their will. He had never been silenced by anyone as he was by his grandson. He huffed a bit. But he did not say any more.
Before dinner that night, though, he said to his daughter- in-law, ‘I—er—mentioned the future this morning.’
Bharati Christopher looked at him with calm eyes. She had iron-grey hair and her son’s air of detachment.
‘That will only drive him away.’
‘But—’
‘He will marry when he falls in love. Not before.’ She added, very deliberately, ‘He is like his father in that.’
Brigadier Christopher had thrown his son out long before Robert went on the hippy trail to India and met Bharati. But the old man never forgot that he had missed the first seven years of his grandson’s life because he had stubbornly refused to admit that a cross-cultural union had ever taken place.
Now his eyes fell.
He harrumphed. ‘I suppose Jay will go off to see that gardening trollop tomorrow.’
Her eyes lit with affectionate laughter. They had mended their fences a long time ago. ‘Or tonight, if you start telling him how to run his life.’
But Brigadier Christopher had the last word.
‘Not my Jay. He doesn’t spend the night. Taught him that myself. Spend the whole night with a woman and she gets serious. Jay,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘knows how to keep his affairs under control.’
Zoe zipped through the rest of the clearing up in a couple of hours on Saturday morning. She liberated the family’s few decent pieces of furniture from their locked sanctuary in her mother’s room. By lunchtime the house was back to normal.
‘When’s Mother coming back?’ said Harry, appearing heavy-eyed at two in the afternoon.
Zoe was stretched out on her stomach on the sunlit lawn, reading a novel. She squinted up at him.
‘When Aunt Liz kicks her out, I guess.’
He flopped down beside her. ‘I hope she stays away until the mocks are over,’ he said, surprising her.
She sat up. ‘Really?’
‘She makes me jumpy.’
Zoe pulled a face. ‘She only wants you to do well.
‘When she remembers,’ he said with brutal truth ‘Then she tries to cram a year’s worth of nagging into three days.’
Zoe gave a choke of laughter. ‘Do you want me to change the locks?’
‘No, but—don’t persuade her to come back if she wants to stay with Aunt Liz,’ he said in a rush.
‘Harry—are you really worried about these exams?’ she asked seriously.
‘No.’ He was matter-of-fact. ‘I’ve done the work and I’ve got the brain. But everyone at school is going a bit mad. I need to stay focused and not get in a flap. And mother flaps me.’
She thought about that. ‘You mean minimal fuss, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So if I get a job which means I have to leave the house before you go off to school in the morning, that wouldn’t bother you?’
He was surprised. ‘’Course not.’
‘So what do you want to make these next few weeks least stressful?’
‘Regular meals and no one crowding me,’ said Harry promptly.
It was like being let off a major task. Zoe laughed and ruffled his hair.
‘You’ve got it.’
And she would be at Culp and Christopher so early she would make the Mogul Prince’s eyes spin in his head, she promised herself. This summer was going to be fun.
Jay Christopher snapped awake as he always did, instantly alert. He was alone in the mussed Sunday-afternoon bed. Surprised, he came up on one elbow, looking round.
The room was full of dusty sunshine, but the shadows were longer than he’d expected. The summer afternoon was hot and very still. There was not so much as a tweet from the birds in the tall trees outside, although all the windows were open to the air.
The woman was standing at the open French window. She had thrown a blue kimono over her nakedness. He had brought it back from Japan for her at Christmas. They had only just started seeing each other then. She had been delighted, dancing round the room, laughing.
She was not dancing now. She turned and stood there, watching him levelly.
Jay’s heart sank. Here we go again, he thought. Why are you like this? Are you commitment-phobic? What do I have to do to make you love me?
He looked at his watch. It was the only thing he was wearing.
‘Time I was on my way back.’
The woman’s eyes flickered. He braced himself.
But all she did was pull the kimono round her and say quietly, ‘Yes, of course.’
He drew a sigh of relief. He liked Carla. He never told her lies. He had been faithful ever since they’d got together. And he was always honest about how little he was committed; how far he was from being able to commit.
She had always said that was enough. But lately it had not seemed enough any more. Some of their recent goodbyes had been positively scratchy. He had been here before. It was beginning to look as if it was time to move on.
Jay knew himself very well. He was not going to change. And Carla was too nice to hurt. The last couple of times he had left she had had that taut, holding-in look that he dreaded seeing on a woman’s face. He knew it meant they were being brave, and he hated it.
But now she went and sat on the dressing stool and brushed her dark hair, chatting cheerfully through the bathroom door while he showered.
‘Heavy week?’
‘The usual.’ Jay rootled through the bathroom cupboard for unscented shampoo. Ever since Carla had found that he did not like to use her lavender-scented stuff she had stocked up on an alternative. ‘At least I’ve got rid of the troublemaker. New girl starts on Monday.’
He turned on the shower and got under it.
Carla knew about the troublemaker. She had even held hands with him fondly, all through an office party, hoping that it would discourage the girl’s patent crush before any harm was done. It had not worked, but they had been friends then, united in their kindly conspiracy.
‘Was it difficult?’
Jay soaped his hair viciously. ‘She cried.’
‘Poor Jay. That’s bad.’
‘You’re laughing at me,’ he said, pleased.
But her voice was odd. ‘No. I’m laughing at me.’
He did not like the sound of that. He rinsed off his hair, the brief flare of hope dying. He stuck his head out of the bathroom door and she passed him his discarded underwear.
‘Thanks.’
She carried on talking as he towelled off. ‘Travelling?’
‘Not too bad, for once. Brussels on Wednesday, but I’m hoping I can get in and out in a day. Manchester, and then a couple of question marks.’
She laughed. ‘It sounds so glamorous. But I’ve done it. I know it’s all cramped planes and wasting time in dirty airports.’<
br />
‘Wasting a lot less time since they invented laptops.’
‘Do you ever want to stop?’ she asked curiously.
Jay curbed a sigh. Here it comes, he thought. He could write the script.
Don’t you ever get tired of your frenetic lifestyle? Wouldn’t it be nice to stay in the same place for a while? We could put a home together. Share our lives.
He said quietly, ‘No, I don’t ever want to stop.’
He came out of the shower room in his underpants. Towelling the sleek dark hair, he looked at her.
He said gently, ‘I’m a migratory animal, Carla. You always knew that.’
She looked away. ‘Yes, but—’
He did not want her to hurt herself any more by making a case that he knew was hopeless. ‘I’ve done the country house bit,’ he said firmly, pulling on dark chinos. ‘Along with the neighbours in for drinks at Christmas and the ten- year plan for the garden. I was brought up with it. That’s how I know it isn’t me.’
The country cottage, with its fruit trees and summer-silent birds, was hers. She was a gardener by training, a journalist and broadcaster by profession. But he was beginning to see that she was a home-maker by instinct. Only it would never be his home. He saw the moment when she accepted it.
‘Yes, I see,’ she said after a long pause. She stood up.
Jay braced himself. But she was only getting the fine silk shirt from where he had hung it on the wardrobe handle.
‘Nice colour,’ she said.
He knew she didn’t mean it. Carla was a successful, professional woman. She liked her men in conservative suits. In Carla’s world, real men wore crisp white shirts in town, earth colours in the country. She had never come to terms with Jay’s taste for hot ochre and tangerine and emerald.
Today it was turquoise. His grandfather—his lost grandfather, soft-voiced and laughing in the endless dusty enchantment of Jay’s childhood—would have said that it was the colour of hopeful travel. Jay thought of it as that shade of the sea where it meets the sky: the horizon on a clear day with calm water. Carla would not have got on with his lost grandfather.
‘I like it,’ he said truthfully.
Carla shrugged, as she always did when they disagreed. For a moment he wondered if things would be better if they argued. But he knew, in his heart of hearts, that they wouldn’t. He was a man born to be alone. He could not change that, no matter what Carla did.
She made a brave effort at a smile. ‘Is the new girl nice? Or don’t you know yet?’
Jay grinned. ‘I know. She’s a slick chick with her life under control. Gives great parties. Also I insulted her, and she hates my guts.’
‘Good grief. Is that going to make for a good working relationship?’
He laughed aloud. ‘Well, at least she’s not going to fall in love with me,’ he said with feeling. ‘Couldn’t take that again.’
He regretted it at once. Only, of course, once you’ve said it, you can’t call it back. She looked stricken.
He had meant that he couldn’t take another puppyish filing clerk with her eyes following him all round the office and her passionate ill-spelled e-mails. But that was not what Carla had heard. And maybe that was not all he had meant, after all.
‘Hell, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
He slipped his arms into the shirtsleeves and shook out the silk. For a moment the turquoise stuff billowed around his golden chest like a parachute settling. He glimpsed it over her shoulder in the mirror. The silk shimmered, like the cloak of one of the Mogul emperor’s bodyguards that his grandfather had shown him in old paintings. Not his lost grandfather. The other one, the Brigadier, with his impeccable standards and his careful culture and the sherry on Boxing Day. Carla got on just fine with the Brigadier.
He buttoned the shirt briskly. Ran fingers through his still- damp hair. Looked at his watch again.
‘I know,’ she said dryly. ‘You have to go or you’ll run into the Sunday evening traffic.’
‘You’re an understanding woman,’ he teased.
‘Yes.’ But she did not laugh.
She came down the rickety stairs with him, still in the kimono. She did not let it billow. She clutched it round her like a blanket in a storm. At the front door she put a hand on his arm as he went to slip the latch.
‘Jay—’
He suppressed irritation. He had so nearly got out of the door without a fight! But he was a gentleman. Both grandfathers had seen to that, in their different ways. He turned to her courteously.
‘Yes, my dear?’
She gave a faint smile. ‘Thank you, Jay.’
‘What?’ He was bewildered.
‘You have such lovely manners. But I’m not your dear. And it’s time we both faced it.’
He searched her face. She was rather pale, but her eyes were steady. No pleas, no desperation. Jay had never respected her more.
‘Is it?’ he said gravely.
She swallowed, but then she nodded once, decisively. ‘I made myself a promise. If you looked at your watch as soon as you woke up today I’d finish it. You did. So I am.’
He winced. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It’s overdue.’
‘I mean I’m sorry I hurt you,’ Jay said painfully.
She shook her head. ‘It’s a shame. I could have loved you if— But you don’t let anyone get close. Maybe you’re right and you can’t. Well, not me, anyway. Time I recognised that.’
He had nothing to say.
She bit her lip. ‘I’ve met someone. It’s nothing yet. But— it might be, in time. If you know what I mean.’
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I know what you mean.’
Carla’s chin came up. ‘I don’t want to cheat. Not on you. Not on him. Not on myself. So—I want to be free now. Free to look for a relationship that works for me.’
Jay drew a long breath. ‘Can we be friends?’
‘Maybe. I don’t want to see you for a bit, though.’
He was surprised at how much it hurt. But he had no right to complain. Carla had never lied, either. This sort of rejection came with the way he ran his life. From the way he was.
‘Very well.’ He touched her face briefly. ‘Call me when I can buy you a drink.’
She gave him a watery smile. ‘Sure.’
On a burst of anger at himself he said, ‘I wish—’
But she stopped him, soft fingers over his mouth. ‘No, you don’t. You know yourself very well, Jay Christopher. You don’t have to tell white lies to comfort me.’
‘No. I know I don’t.’ He kissed her quickly on the mouth. They had been making love just a couple of hours ago, but already it felt awkward, as if she were a stranger. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for.’
She brushed back his hair. ‘You, too. You’d be a prince— if anyone could ever get through.’
She closed the door before he reached the garden gate.
It was lonely journey back. He liked lonely.
He played sitar music. And Josquin des Pres. And Bach. Every girlfriend he had ever had hated them all. It was exhilarating, playing them again, not having to tread carefully any more.
But not as exhilarating as it had once been. He had hurt Carla. He had never meant to. He had tried not to. She had said she understood his limitations, accepted them. But in the end he had hurt her. It didn’t feel good.
Was it always going to be like this?
You’d better give up nice women, he told himself bitterly. You can’t change. And they can’t cope.
But what was the alternative? One-night stands? He pulled a face.
His lost grandfather had said to him once, ‘You must be careful. Very few men are made for solitude.’
But, as Carla had said, Jay Christopher knew himself very well. And he knew that he needed the right to walk away from a relationship—any relationship—the way he needed the right to breathe.
‘Hello, solitude,’ he said aloud. ‘
Welcome back.’
CHAPTER FOUR
DEBORAH BROWN came back on Sunday afternoon. She walked out into the garden, where Artemis and Ed were playing a deeply dishonest game of croquet and Zoe was swinging in a hammock, and it was as if the sun had gone in.
‘What are you doing?’ said Deborah, in a high, anxious, scolding voice. ‘Harry should be studying. Zoe, you know how important it is. It’s his whole life. How could you let all this noise—?’
Harry unfolded himself from the corner, where he was reading, and slipped indoors. Artemis put down her croquet mallet, stuck her chin in the air and announced that she was moving in with Ed completely. It had the effect Zoe would have predicted.
‘You are punishing me,’ said their mother tensely. ‘This is because your father walked out on us.’
Artemis looked mutinous. Zoe flung herself out of the hammock and into the breach. As she always did.
‘This is because Art’s hormones are on full alert and Ed’s cute,’ she said patiently. ‘Nothing personal.’
‘Thanks, Zo,’ said Ed, grinning.
Deborah Brown looked round distractedly. ‘Where are my tablets?’
‘Look, Ma,’ said Artemis, stepping in between her and the pill packets in the house behind her, ‘everyone lives with their boyfriend these days.’
Deborah seized the cue eagerly. ‘Zoe doesn’t.’
‘Only because Zoe’s got men coming out of her ears. She can’t make up her mind,’ said Artemis, quite convinced she was telling the truth.
Deborah didn’t care. Ever since her husband had walked out she had had a pathological fear of change of any sort.
‘I never interfere. You girls have your own flat up at the top of the house. Why can’t things stay as they are?’ Deborah’s voice rose frantically.
‘Because I want to grow up,’ yelled Artemis, losing it.
So Zoe had to wade in and try to calm them both down. Artemis raged. Deborah gabbled maniacally, refusing to listen to anything either daughter said in case it sounded reasonable. It took the whole afternoon.
Then Artemis stamped out with a couple of cases and a sobered Ed beside her. Deborah took to her room and closed the curtains. And Zoe had time at last to finish her washing and get her clothes ready for the next day.
The Millionaire's Virgin (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 37