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Knight to the Rescue

Page 14

by Miranda Lee


  ‘And what did she think of Elliot?’

  Yvonne laughed. ‘That he liked his own way far too much, and that he needed a woman to stand up to him!’

  It was just a tossed-off remark, but it set Audrey thinking. She was still thinking when she and Elliot arrived home.

  As soon as he shut the door he drew her into his arms. She stiffened. ‘Something wrong, sweet thing?’ he frowned down at her. ‘Come to think of it, you’ve been rather quiet tonight. I thought you’d got over your social nerves.’

  She pulled away from the temptation of his embrace and began walking towards the bedroom. ‘I have, by and large. But I...I have a splitting headache.’

  She felt rather than saw his silent stare.

  ‘This isn’t one of those headache jokes, is it?’ he said at last, following her into the bedroom.

  She pulled a nightie out of the drawer that held her lingerie, then turned to face him. ‘No. It’s for real. I’m sorry, Elliot, but I don’t feel up to making love tonight.’ Audrey tried not to look guilty, for she didn’t have a headache, even though her mind did feel stressed. She did, however, feel compelled to see how Elliot would handle their relationship without sex for a day or so, to force him to just talk to her.

  He glared down at the nightie clutched to her chest. ‘Obviously,’ was his dry remark. She hadn’t worn a thing to bed all last week.

  ‘If you like I could sleep in the spare room,’ she suggested, then waited in trepidation for his answer.

  Please don’t let me do that, Elliot, she willed. Please tell me you want me beside you, anyway.

  She held his eyes and actually saw them harden. ‘You’re lying to me, Audrey. Why?’

  ‘I...I’m not.’ Despite all her efforts at control, a guilty heat claimed her cheeks. ‘I do have a headache,’ she insisted, all the while knowing she was making a mess of this. ‘If you don’t believe me then I can’t help that!’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said coldly. ‘Enjoy your night in the guest room.’ Without another word he strode into the main en-suite bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

  * * *

  ‘You’re looking peaky,’ Edward said to her the next morning at work. ‘Not like last Monday. My God, when you walked in here, looking like a young gorgeous Grace Kelly, I almost fell off my chair. Today, however...’ He pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well you’re having your insurance check-up later this morning. Maybe the doc will be able to find out what’s wrong with you.’

  ‘Oh, goodness, I forgot about that,’ Audrey groaned, thinking of all her good intentions to make up with Elliot at lunchtime. Her night in the guest room had been horrific, and breakfast even worse. Elliot had tried to break the ice and she, like a childish idiot, had accused him of not caring about her at all, of only wanting her for sex.

  He’d given her one of those long, unreadable looks he was good at, then told her that wasn’t true. He did care about her. If he’d wanted a woman ‘just for sex’, he’d have chosen someone better suited, someone a little more mature, not a pouting sulky irrational child who deserved her bottom spanked.

  She’d retorted that he was nothing but a self-centred, selfish, stupid sex maniac who ought to take a good look at himself before he ended up a lonely old man. Whereupon she had stomped out of the house and driven herself to work very shakily, peak-hour traffic and her nerves almost making her run up the back of a bus on one occasion.

  ‘What time’s my appointment?’ she asked Edward.

  ‘Eleven-thirty.’

  An appointment at that time in the city meant she wouldn’t be able to see Elliot at lunchtime. She groaned. He would probably think she was making up an excuse not to see him at all. Her hand shook as she reached for the phone to call him. Dear heaven, what a muddle she was in!

  But Elliot didn’t make any accusations when she told him, his indifferent tone upsetting her more than if he’d ranted and raved.

  ‘I’m really sorry about this, Elliot,’ she babbled on regardless. ‘It’s unavoidable. The whole staff here has a medical check-up every couple of years and the appointment’s been made for ages and I can’t really—’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Audrey,’ he cut in impatiently. ‘You don’t have to answer to me.’

  ‘But...but of course I do!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I...I feel rotten about what happened and I wanted to talk to you about it, explain how I felt. I...I don’t want you to think I don’t want you any more.’

  ‘I don’t think that,’ he sighed. ‘I admit I was angry last night. But I can see now I was wrong. I had no right to question you.’

  ‘Yes, you did!’ she insisted.

  ‘No, Audrey. You were right. I was wrong. End of argument. You go to your appointment and I’ll see you when you get home tonight, fair enough?’

  She fell silent, feeling totally frustrated.

  ‘Audrey?’

  ‘Yes?’ she snapped.

  He sighed again. ‘Now I’ve got a headache. Perhaps it’s just as well you’re not coming home for lunch.’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ she grumped, and hung up.

  Oh, God, she thought, and closed her eyes. Now why did I do that? She shook her head and stared down at her shaking hands. When she looked up Edward was watching her, a rueful expression in his eyes.

  Audrey arrived back at the office shortly before two, armed with the knowledge that she was as healthy as a horse and would live till she was a hundred. The doctor’s words, not hers.

  ‘If I feel as rotten as this all the time,’ she muttered aloud as she dropped her handbag beside her desk, ‘I won’t even want to live till I’m thirty.’

  Edward jumped to his feet from behind his desk and strode out of his glassed-in cubicle. ‘That’s it! I have no hope of concentrating on this sales budget with you muttering away like that.’ He came over and thumped the top of her desk. ‘Besides, life’s too short to ruin what little you have of it. Now get out of here. Go home or wherever that erstwhile lover of yours is and make up with him. That’s an order!’

  Audrey was startled for a moment, but then excited. Edward was right! That was exactly what she should do. Go home and make up. What did it matter if Elliot only wanted sex from her for now? Maybe in time things would change. Why spoil what they had going for them by trying to rush things?

  With a sincere thank you and goodbye, Audrey hurried down to where her red Magna was parked in the street, only to grind to a halt when she spied Russell leaning with casual menace against the driver’s door.

  ‘I knew I’d catch up with you if I waited here long enough,’ came his snarled remark as she continued a reluctant approach, her heart racing. ‘Though it’s rather hard to recognise the new Audrey from the plain little piece of a few weeks ago. Not that it makes any real difference...’ His lips curled sneeringly. ‘You could glam yourself up till the cows came home, honey, and you’d still be the most boring screw in the world!’

  A furious heat zoomed into her cheeks, anger replacing any feelings of fear. ‘Move out of my way, Russell. I have no intention of standing here, listening to insults.’

  ‘Really? And what are you going to do about it? Have me fired again?’

  ‘I didn’t have you fired,’ she bit out.

  ‘Sure you did, sweetheart. But do you know what? You did me a favour. I’ve landed a fantastic job as a sales manager in New Guinea, starting next week. Still, I just couldn’t leave without letting you in on a little secret of mine.’ His mouth pulled back into a malicious smile. ‘Diane wasn’t the only piece I had on the side, you know. I sampled your stepmother too. Yeah...the sexy Lavinia... Now there’s a woman who knows how to please a man. My, you’ve gone a bit pale, ducky. Is your new playboy lover looking in that direction already?’ His laughter was grotesque. ‘I’ll just bet he is. Why don’t you ask him what he gets up to while you’re at work?’

  ‘Get out of my way!’ Audrey cried, and shoved him violently
to one side. He didn’t try to stop her from getting in and driving off, a quick glance in the rear-view mirror showing him still standing there, laughing at her.

  Audrey’s hands shook on the wheel all the way home. She almost sobbed with relief as the car shot up Elliot’s steep driveway. All she could think was having him hold her, comfort her, reassure her. But her relief was to be short-lived, changed to a jolting shock when she spied a pale mauve Fiat parked beside the black Saab in Elliot’s garage. Every drop of blood drained from her face and she braked to an unsteady halt.

  Lavinia drove a pale mauve Fiat. Not a very common colour or make.

  No, she thought, and was almost sick on the spot. No...

  Somehow she climbed out of her car and walked past the Fiat to stare up at the internal staircase and the closed door at the top. But she couldn’t go in that way, so terrified was she of what she might find if she walked in, unannounced. Instead she made her way round to the wooden staircase that led up to an entrance at the side of the house, each step an agony for her.

  Once in front of the solid wooden door, Audrey rang the doorbell, then held the railing behind her for support as the seconds ticked away. What was Elliot doing, she agonised, that he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer the door straight away?

  But in the end the door was reefed open, and her Elliot stood there, his hair mussed, a scarlet silk dressing-gown over nothing but the bottom half of a pair of scarlet silk pyjamas.

  Her mind struggled to find some excuse, some reason for what she was seeing before her. But once she witnessed the guilty fluster on Elliot’s face she sank into utter despair.

  ‘God, Audrey, you said you weren’t coming home till tonight.’

  ‘Audrey?’ she heard Lavinia gasp from somewhere behind him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, almost angrily.

  ‘I came home early to make up,’ she said in an empty voice. ‘I see I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘It’s not what you’re thinking, dammit!’

  She laughed. It sounded like glass breaking. ‘My father has a saying. If an animal looks like a dog, sounds like a dog and smells like a dog, then you can be pretty sure it’s a dog.’ Devastated eyes raked over his undressed state before she whirled and bolted down the stairs.

  ‘Come back!’ he yelled after her.

  She was too fast for him. Far too fast. For one thing, her keys were still in the ignition. She leapt into the Magna, fired the engine and backed up, executing a reverse spin with sheer luck rather than skill, then screeching off down the drive.

  Tears blurred her vision but the traffic was light and she had no trouble putting distance between herself and any pursuer. Or so she thought. But as she was slowing down for a red light at the bottom of a hill, she spotted Elliot’s black Saab in the rear-view mirror coming over the crest, closing fast.

  The red light changed to green at the last second and she shot forward, but simultaneously the driver of a four-wheel-drive vehicle decided to run the red light the opposite way. A collision was unavoidable, Audrey’s brown eyes flaring wide with fear as she saw the vehicle bearing down upon her.

  She didn’t scream for long, the impact throwing her forward, her forehead hitting the steering-wheel, cracking her head and pitching her into a painless black nothingness at one and the same time.

  Bystanders were to tell the tale later of a black car pulling up seconds after the accident and a crazed man in a red silk dressing-gown leaping out to race over to the crushed red sedan. They said they would never forget the look in his eyes when he failed to open the crumpled door, or his desperation as he screamed for someone to ring the rescue squad and ambulance, or the way he eventually sank to his knees on the ground beside the woman driver’s door and cried like a baby.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘NO.’ AUDREY turned her face away from her father to stare blankly across the hospital room.

  ‘Audrey...aren’t you ever going to listen to reason? Nothing happened between Elliot and Lavinia that day. Even I believe that. Oh, I’m not saying she wouldn’t have gone to bed with him if she’d been able to seduce him. She admits it. But Elliot would have none of her!’

  Audrey’s head turned slowly back on the pillow. ‘Sure...’ Her eyes were dead. ‘That’s why he was half naked.’

  ‘But he said he can explain that, if only you’ll let him. Why won’t you see him?’

  Audrey closed her eyes, her mind unwillingly drawn back to the day a week ago when she’d been well enough to have visitors, and Elliot and Lavinia had come into her room to see her, together. She had taken one look at them both and been consumed with the most unbearable pain. Everything had seemed to explode in her head and she’d become quite hysterical, so much so that her doctor had forbidden them entry again.

  Lavinia hadn’t tried to return. Elliot had not been so easy to turn away.

  He’d come back the next day and argued with the doctor vehemently till he was allowed into her room, though only with the doctor in tow. Audrey had heard the vocal confrontation in the corridor outside her door, giving her time to cloak her distress within a hard shell of bitter resolve. But when Elliot actually walked in, she’d been momentarily startled by his ghastly state. My God, he’d looked like he hadn’t slept for a week!

  But she had quickly dismissed any pity and hardened her heart, deciding he was only suffering from guilt. When he’d started to speak, Audrey had looked right through him and told the doctor if her unwelcome visitor didn’t leave immediately she would get out of her bed and leave the room herself. Since she was recovering from surgery on a broken hip and several crushed ribs, her threat was not to be taken lightly.

  When she had started to move her legs sideways under the sheet, Elliot had left. But he hadn’t given up.

  He’d tried ringing.

  She hung up on him without saying a word.

  He’d sent flowers and letters.

  She sent the flowers down to the children’s ward and burnt the letters, watching the paper curling up into blackened ash.

  Audrey knew she would never believe anything Elliot had to say. It was all too clear in her mind. His undressed state. His guilty fluster. The incredible coincidence of Lavinia being there on the one and only day she hadn’t come home for lunch.

  The only thing that puzzled her was why Elliot was trying to secure her understanding and forgiveness at all. If he was prepared to go to bed with the likes of Lavinia then he had no conscience anyway.

  ‘Audrey...’

  She snapped back to the present, realising her father was still sitting next to her. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hear the man out.’

  ‘No.’ Her tone was implacable and her father rose wearily to his feet.

  ‘You’re just like your mother. She was stubborn too, wouldn’t listen when I tried to undo the malicious gossip of some old biddy who’d told her I’d married her for her money.’

  ‘Hadn’t you?’ Audrey said flatly.

  ‘Yes... But your mother didn’t know that, and by the time this gossip did its mischief I’d long really fallen in love with her. We had a good marriage. We’d been happy, especially after you came along. But she wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t look beyond the obvious to the real truth. She threw away the rest of our lives together and made my personal life hell. She refused to sleep with me and in the end I turned to Lavinia for comfort. Don’t do what she did, Audrey. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Elliot loves you. I’ll bet my boots on it!’

  Yvonne said as much to her the following afternoon when she came to visit. ‘I can see the situation with Elliot and that woman must have looked very bad,’ she said bluntly. ‘But Audrey...Elliot assures me he’s innocent and I believe him. My dear, if only you could have seen him during the days after your accident when you were in a coma from concussion. He was beside himself! He didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. Do you know what you’re doing to him, refusing even to see him? He doesn’t know where to turn, what to do. In des
peration he’s asked me to give you a message, to tell you that he’s not a Russell, whatever that means!’

  Audrey flinched. For the concept of putting Elliot in the same category as Russell was simply impossible. Finally, she was forced to face a remote possibility. Maybe she was wrong about Elliot. Maybe he had been the victim of circumstance, or Lavinia’s manipulations. Maybe...

  ‘Think about it, my dear,’ Yvonne said more gently. ‘If you don’t give Elliot a chance to explain, won’t you always wonder if you’d made a big mistake? You love Elliot. But love is never enough to build a future on. You must have trust as well.’

  Audrey’s heart twisted. Trust... That was all very well to say, but there was a fine line between trust and naïveté. Elliot’s message did not mention love and she could not afford to make another monumental mistake. Not if she valued her mental health.

  ‘I...I will think about it, Yvonne. Thank you. You’ve been very kind, coming to visit all the time.’

  ‘My pleasure. Well, I must be going now. I’ll be back to see you tomorrow and we’ll talk some more.’

  ‘I’d like that. You’re a good friend.’

  Audrey was lying there quietly, thinking about what Yvonne had said, when there was a tap on her door. She glanced up just in time to see Lavinia walk into the room.

  Audrey’s whole chest tightened, every fibre of her being reacting violently. Her feelings must have shown on her face for Lavinia stayed well away from her bed, looking distraught herself. ‘Please don’t send me away,’ she blurted out. ‘I...I have to talk to you.’

  Perhaps it was the real tears swimming in Lavinia’s eyes that softened Audrey’s heart. Or the fact that her stepmother didn’t look like herself at all. She was almost...unkempt, her hair in disarray, no make-up on, her yellow linen suit quite crumpled.

  Audrey couldn’t find it in her heart to send her away. But she couldn’t speak, either. In the end, Lavinia gingerly approached the foot of the bed.

 

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