by Penny Jordan
Joss frowned and then raised his eyebrows. ‘Why should you be? I invited you to come down here, remember?’
‘Yes, but only so that I could break the ice for you with Sophy… I’m seeing her tonight at her flat for dinner. I thought that might be a good opportunity to tell her…and then perhaps tomorrow I could bring her here to see you…’
‘Always supposing she’ll want to see me.’
Kate had spent all week thinking about Sophy’s reaction to what she had to tell her; privately she had few doubts that, after her initial shock, Sophy would want to meet her father…as her father and not just as John’s relative. She wanted to tell him so, but the words stuck in her throat, almost as though she begrudged him the knowledge that Sophy wouldn’t reject him. Why was that? Because she already felt jealous?
‘You must be hungry,’ he announced curtly. ‘It’s a bit late for lunch, but if it appeals to you I thought we might perhaps go somewhere for afternoon tea. The Ritz…’
Kate was just about to refuse his invitation, feeling quite sure that it was an invitation made purely out of politeness, when he added with a surprisingly boyish grin, ‘It’s something I’ve always wanted to try, but it’s one of those things that a male definitely needs a female companion to indulge in without collecting odd looks.’
Kate almost said waspishly that she was sure that if that was the case he had had no need to wait for her to come along, and that she was quite sure there were any number of women who would jump at the chance of having afternoon tea with him, but she stopped herself and gave him a rather forced smile instead.
‘That would be lovely. I am rather hungry, and Sophy suggested I join them for dinner at about eight.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘She thinks I’m spending the afternoon shopping. She was talking about asking John to arrange for us to go out for dinner somewhere tomorrow evening.’
‘Well, if she does consent to come and see me tomorrow afternoon, I expect she’ll be glad of the opportunity to spend the evening alone with you and John,’ Joss said easily.
His sensitivity surprised Kate. She was not used to men who so quickly picked up on her thoughts and apprehensions, and she wasn’t sure if she welcomed his ability to do so. It made her feel edgy and vulnerable.
‘You must have work to do,’ she said lamely, suddenly alarmed at spending time alone with him, frightened of what she might betray.
‘Nothing that won’t wait. The company has now reached the stage where I have a very competent staff and can quite easily delegate.’
‘It must be convenient for you living here…above your offices.’
‘Convenient, yes…but this place was never intended to be anything more than a pied-à-terre. It’s somewhere to sleep and eat, but it isn’t a home, and I’ve reached that stage in my life where I want a home.
‘In fact, I’m planning to move out to the country. Dorset. I’ve bought a property there…a vicarage with a couple of acres of land. It’s liveable-in—just. With the new advanced computer systems that are available, I’ll be able to live and work from there, and keep in touch with my personnel here.’
‘Won’t you miss London?’ Kate asked him curiously.
He shook his head. ‘No. Not now. You must come to Dorset and see the house. I could do with a woman’s advice on décor and furnishings.’
Kate stared at him, sure that he was merely making conversation, not daring to allow herself to believe that he actually meant her to take the invitation seriously. Flustered and uncomfortable with her own unruly reactions to him, she said awkwardly, ‘Well, I expect Sophy will be delighted to help you. She has a real flair for that kind of thing. You should see their apartment…’
She thought she heard Joss give a faint sigh, but she had turned away from him and did not dare turn round to look at him. Every time she looked into his eyes she went almost weak at the knees, a ridiculous reaction in a woman who was supposedly mature.
‘I…I think I’d better tidy up a bit if we’re going to the Ritz.’
‘Your room’s this way,’ Joss informed her, crossing the room and opening one of the doors into a small corridor.
Two doors opened off it. He opened one of them and held the door for her to precede him into the room.
It was a pleasantly large-sized bedroom, with a double bed, a large wardrobe, an easy chair and a writing-desk, decorated in muted shades of terracotta and blue. Kate had no doubt that everything in it was very expensive, and had been chosen with care and an eye for detail, but the room lacked soul. It was more like a hotel bedroom than a bedroom in a private home, she reflected sadly as she stared around it.
And not for the first time she felt a tiny shaft of pity for Joss.
‘Bathroom’s through here,’ he told her, indicating another door. ‘The other room off this corridor is my bedroom. Kitchen-cum-dining-room’s on the other side of the sitting-room.’
Her case was already in her room, and Joss glanced at his watch and said casually, ‘Ten minutes be long enough?’
Kate nodded.
Once she was alone in the room, she moved round it uncertainly. The last thing she had expected was that she would be staying with Joss, and her heart started to beat with fierce excitement which she sternly tried to quell, reminding herself that in the circumstances it was the most sensible course, and that for her to read anything personal into his decision was to court unhappiness.
A quick look in the bedroom mirror assured her that her make-up was still intact, and, removing her toilet bag from her overnight case, she went into the bathroom.
The brilliant lights focused on the mirrored walls dazzled her for a moment. The bathroom was elegantly opulent, decorated in the same restrained terracotta and blue colours as the bedroom, but once again it lacked warmth and intimacy. It might have been the bathroom in a very upmarket and expensive hotel, rather than a private home.
Her hands stilled as she brushed her hair. There had been something bleak and heart-rending in Joss’s expression when he told her that he had no home. She wondered what the house he had bought was like, and fought against allowing herself to feel excited and flattered at his invitation to go and see it. She really must stop taking everything he said to her personally, she derided herself, as she renewed her lipstick and then stepped back from the mirror, making a rueful face at her own reflection.
The silk dress was elegant and easy to wear, her arms slim and tanned beneath the short cap sleeves.
It really was time she found a more suitable hair-style, she decided, frowning at the unruly mass of thick blonde curls.
Her ten minutes was up, and she hurried back into the bedroom, picking up her jacket and opening the bedroom door.
As she opened the door into the sitting-room she could hear Joss talking to someone, but it was too late for her to withdraw. Joss was standing with his back to her, demanding almost curtly, ‘Are you sure this isn’t something you can handle?’
And standing at his side, eyeing Kate with dismissive contempt, stood his secretary.
‘Hardly, Joss. You know that Mac Phillips prefers to deal personally with you.’
Joss was frowning as he turned round and saw Kate. ‘I’m sorry, Kate,’ he apologised tersely. ‘Something’s come up that I have to deal with, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to forgo the Ritz.’
Over the years Kate had become adept at the use of camouflage to hide her real feelings. It hadn’t always been easy being a single parent in the days when to be an unmarried mother was not considered either fashionable or appropriate.
She summoned the smile she had perfected in those early days, an easy, protective widening of her lips that didn’t reach her eyes, her voice cool and reasonable as she assured him that she didn’t mind.
Lucille, his secretary, was now standing behind Joss, and Kate watched as the other woman gave her a triumphant, malicious smile. Lucille was jealous of her. Kate subdued a bitter desire to laugh. If only the other woman knew.
‘I’ll just ge
t his file. It’s in my bedroom. I was reading it the other night. I am sorry about this, Kate,’ Joss apologised again, still frowning. ‘I can’t understand why he should be ringing today when I’m seeing him next week.’
Out of the corner of her eye Kate saw the tiny twitch Lucille gave as Joss left them, and she wondered if the redhead knew how much her body language was betraying.
The moment the door had closed behind Joss, she turned on Kate and said warningly, ‘Don’t read too much into this invitation of Joss’s, will you? He’s a sucker for lame ducks and, after all, he could hardly refuse to let you stay here when you’d virtually invited yourself to do so.’
Where originally Kate had found herself slightly intimidated by the other woman’s elegance and sophistication, now a sudden spurt of anger came to her rescue and she was able to challenge quietly, ‘Is that what Joss told you? That I invited myself here?’
A thin tide of angry colour darkened Lucille’s skin.
‘Not directly,’ she admitted with a tiny shrug. ‘But it’s obvious what happened.’
She might think so, but it was plain to Kate that she had no idea of the real reason for her visit, and that cheered her. Joss had described Lucille as his personal secretary, and Kate had realised from everything he had said to her, that the intimacy she thought she had seen between them during the reception had been misleading.
Apparently it had, but Lucille was plainly trying to warn her off Joss.
Only a woman who was desperately insecure resorted to such tactics, Kate acknowledged when Joss came back, still frowning.
‘I shouldn’t be more than half an hour or so—’ he began, but Lucille interrupted him, saying quickly,
‘Oh, Joss, I forgot. The estimates for the Harwood contract are ready, and you said you wanted to go through them as quickly as possible.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Kate said calmly, smiling at them both. ‘I’ve got some shopping to do.’
It was a lie but she was too proud to allow Joss to think that she was dependent on him in any way.
He didn’t seem as relieved by her claim as she had expected.
‘How long will you be gone?’ he demanded tersely.
Kate shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Two hours…maybe three.’
His mouth tightened, as though her response had displeased him. He gave her a brief, indecipherable look, and then glanced at the papers in his hand, almost as though he resented the fact that they were taking him away from her.
Fool, she mocked herself, after Joss had given her two keys to let herself back into the apartment. He was probably only too relieved to be spared the boredom of entertaining her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOME stubborn impulse Kate didn’t really want to admit to kept her out much longer than she had said and, sitting in a small café she had found, she decided that, rather than go back to Joss’s apartment and face the possibility of being confronted a second time by Lucille’s jealous resentment, she might as well go straight to Sophy and John’s.
She wiled away the intervening time window-shopping and then having a light snack in another café, before giving in to the extravagance of taking a taxi to Sophy’s.
In the event, because of the traffic, she was not much earlier than they had arranged.
The apartment Sophy and John had bought in a brand new Dockside development was familiar to Kate from an earlier visit, but once again she couldn’t help marvelling at the way the old building had been converted and the whole area turned into a highly desirable residential district.
Sophy and John’s apartment complex included a large private sports centre complete with swimming pool. A whole rash of new and very upmarket shops selling everything from home-made French bread to every type of exotic fruit and vegetable imaginable gave testimony to the wealth and life-style of the inhabitants of the area.
Sophy answered the door to Kate’s knock, almost dragging her inside and hugging her enthusiastically. Both she and John were sun-tanned from their honeymoon, and Kate reflected as she looked at her daughter that she had never seen her looking so well and happy.
‘I’m sorry I’m a bit early…’
‘Don’t be,’ Sophy told her firmly. ‘Let’s go into the sitting-room and have a glass of wine. We thought we’d get a take-away later, but we haven’t ordered anything because we weren’t sure what you’d fancy. There are three or four places near here.’
‘I’m not hungry at the moment,’ Kate told her, accepting the glass of chilled wine John poured for her, and following Sophy out on to the large terrace that overlooked the river.
‘Where are you staying?’ Sophy asked conversationally, as John disappeared into the kitchen to fill her glass and his own.
Kate took a deep breath. She had gone over and over in her mind all week how best to introduce the purpose of her visit, and now suddenly she knew that the simplest way was to tell the truth.
‘I’m staying with Joss Bennett,’ she said as casually as she could.
The effect on Sophy was immediate and electric.
‘John’s mother’s cousin!’ Her mouth dropped as she stared at her mother. ‘But, Ma…’
John had returned with their own drinks and looked as confused as Sophy.
‘Sophy, there’s something I have to tell you,’ she said quietly, reaching out to touch her daughter’s arm There was no easy way to do this. ‘Joss Bennett is your father.’
She bit her lip as she saw the colour drain from Sophy’s face, but, much as she ached to hold her, she forced herself not to move as John went quickly to Sophy’s side and held her tightly.
‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a shock, but there’s no easy way to tell you any of this.’
‘Joss is my father. But you told me that my father was a married man with a family,’ Sophy accused shakily.
‘Yes, I know. And that’s exactly what I thought he was…’ She took a steadying breath. ‘I think it might be easier if I started at the beginning.’
Quietly she did so, relating the course of events as both she and Joss now realised they must have happened.
‘So Joss’s landlady deliberately lied to you…deliberately lied to you both… How could she do that?’
‘She didn’t know I was pregnant,’ Kate told her. ‘I didn’t even know it myself at the time. It was quite a shock to find out what must have happened after all these years.’
‘Yes, it must have been,’ Sophy agreed soberly. ‘And I suppose if Joss…my father…’ she stumbled a little over the words, but Kate saw, with a sudden sharp pang, that beneath her shock Sophy was already beginning to adjust to the reality of Joss as her father ‘…hadn’t turned up at the wedding, you’d never have known.’
‘Very probably,’ Kate agreed. ‘He came to see me the weekend after the wedding, because he’d realised from what John’s mother had told him about us that you must be his child. He thought I’d deliberately kept you from him…and that was how the truth came out that both of us had been deceived.’ She stretched out her hand to cover her daughter’s. ‘He wants to meet you, Sophy…to get to know you. I promised I’d break the news to you. He doesn’t want to force the relationship on you.’
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the quick look Sophy gave John, and the reassuring way he squeezed her hand.
‘And would you mind, Ma…if…if I did see him?’
She forced herself to smile warmly and fib, ‘Of course not. He is your father, after all, and I feel guilty at having deprived you of him all these years…’
That at least was the truth.
Instantly Sophy reassured her. ‘But you didn’t know! You did what seemed to be best.’
‘He’s invited you and John round to his apartment tomorrow. It will give the two of you a chance to talk properly,’ Kate told her jerkily, her emotions threatening to get out of control.
‘I suppose he didn’t want to approach me directly in case you were upset,’ Sophy mused, obviously following her own train of th
ought, her eyes suddenly sparkling mischievously as she began to get over her shock. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the two of you were to fall in love all over again and—’
‘That’s hardly likely, Sophy,’ Kate interrupted her curtly, so curtly in fact that Sophy frowned at her curiously.
‘You don’t still hate him do you, Mum?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘I know that he hurt you terribly, but it wasn’t his fault and…’
Hate him? She had never hated him, Kate acknowledged angrily.
‘No, of course I don’t,’ she reassured Sophy, and then added more gently, ‘Perhaps I over-reacted a little. I know you were only joking and that you know how embarrassing it would be both for your father and for me if people started linking us together.’
Sophy was frowning.
‘Embarrassing—why? Both of you are free and over eighteen! What could be embarrassing about it? Unless…are you worried that they might guess that Joss is my father?’
Kate blinked. She hadn’t got as far as worrying about that, but now it struck her that if Joss was going to acknowledge Sophy publicly as his child it would mean acknowledging her own past role in his life. How was she going to feel about John’s family and her own friends knowing who Joss was?
‘Sophy, I’m thirty-seven years old,’ she reminded her daughter stiffly. ‘Naturally Joss would feel embarrassed if people were to start assuming there’s some kind of romantic link between us.’
‘What?’ Sophy exploded indignantly. ‘Baloney! For heaven’s sake, Ma, you’re thirty-seven, not eighty-seven!’
‘Lucille is thirty, if that,’ Kate pointed out rawly, her face flaming brilliantly as she recognised how much she might have betrayed, but although John gave her a quick, keen look Sophy was fortunately too caught up in her own emotions to notice her mother’s slip.
‘And looks a good deal older! Anyway, age isn’t important. It’s the person you are that matters. You loved one another once.’
‘We thought we did, Sophy,’ Kate corrected wryly. ‘I was barely sixteen and Joss only five years older and, no matter what we might have thought we felt at the time, neither of us was really anywhere near mature enough to call those feelings love.’