‘Do you remember how bossy you were with poor Miss Taylor?’ she asked, scoring points wherever she could find them and trying hard to ignore what his hand was doing to her. Out of sight of his mother’s eyes because of the positioning of the chairs, his roaming hand came to rest on her thigh just below the apex where her legs met. When she thought of how that hand would feel just there, were it against bare skin, were he able to brush the downy hair with his fingers, her brain went into instant meltdown.
‘We all got the impression that you were terribly important—too important to be time wasting at a school because the CEO couldn’t make it... I’ll admit, Mrs Carver, that my first impressions of your son were that he was a tad on the arrogant, conceited, bossy side...thoroughly unbearable, if you want the truth...’
‘And yet you couldn’t tear your eyes away from me,’ Damien murmured in quick retaliation. He smiled and leaned across to feather a kiss on the corner of her mouth, making sure to keep his hand just where it was. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice when you thought I wasn’t looking...’
‘Ditto,’ Violet muttered in feeble response because what else could she do, short of launching into a scathing attack on everything she had decided was awful about him?
‘So true.’ Damien allowed himself the luxury of looking at her with lazy, speculative eyes. ‘And how could I ever have guessed that underneath your shapeless clothes was the figure of a sex goddess...?’
Violet went bright red. Was he joking? Continuing with their subtle duel of words which carried an undertone that his mother would not have clocked? Was he laughing at her? What else? she wondered, hot and flustered under the scrutiny of his deep blue eyes. She kept her gaze pointedly averted, looking at his mother with a smile that was beginning to make her jaws ache, but every inch of her was tuned in to Damien’s attention, which was focused all on her. One hundred per cent of it. She could feel it as powerfully as if a branding iron had been held to her bare skin.
‘Hardly a sex goddess... There’s no need to tell lies...’ she mumbled with an embarrassed laugh, while trying to play half of the loving couple by awkwardly leaning towards him and at the same time taking the opportunity to snap her legs firmly shut on a hand that was getting a little too inquisitive for her liking.
‘You’re just what my son needs, Violet,’ Eleanor confided with satisfaction. ‘All those girls he’s spent years going out with... I expect you have a potted history of Damien’s past...?’
‘Mother, please. There’s no need to go down that road. Violet is very much in the loop when it comes to knowing exactly the sort of women I’ve dated in the past...aren’t you, darling...?’
‘And I find it as strange as you do, Mrs Carver, that someone as intelligent as your son could have been attracted to girls with nothing between their ears. Because that’s what you’ve said, haven’t you, dearest? I’m sure they were very pretty but I’ve never understood how you could ever have found it a challenge to go out with a mannequin...?’
Damien smiled slowly and appreciatively at her. Touché, he thought. She had been gauche and awkward when she had come to him with her begging bowl on her desperate mission to save her sister’s skin but he was realising that this was not the woman she was at all. Warm and empathetic, yes—that much was evident from the way she interacted with his mother. She had also been prepared for him to walk all over her if she thought it would help her sister’s cause. However, freed from the constraints of having to yield to him in the presence of his mother, her true colours were emerging. She was quick-tongued, intelligent and not above taking pot shots at him under cover of a smiling façade and the occasional glance that tried to pass itself off as loving.
He found that he liked that. It made a change from vacuous supermodels. Certainly, a charade he had been quietly dreading now at least offered the prospect of not being as bad as he had originally imagined and, ever creative when it came to dealing with the unexpected, he had no misgivings about making the most of a bad deal. So she thought that she’d get a little of her own back by having fun with double entendres and thinly cloaked pointed remarks? Well, two could play at that game and it would certainly add a little spice to the proceedings.
‘You’re so right, my dear...’ Eleanor’s shrewd eyes swung between the pair of them. Their body language...their interaction...her son was set in his ways...so where did Violet Drew fit in...? How had the inveterate womaniser become domesticated by the delightful schoolteacher who seemed willing to trade punches...? And where were the airheads who simpered around him and clung like leeches? Sudden changes in appetite were always a cause for concern, as her consultant had unhelpfully pointed out. So what was behind her son’s sudden change in appetite? For the first time Eleanor Carver was distracted from her anxiety about her cancer. She enjoyed crosswords and sudoku. She would certainly enjoy unravelling this little enigma.
‘Of course...’ she glanced down at the wedding ring she still wore on her finger and thoughtfully twisted it ‘...there was Annalise...but I expect you know all about her...?’ She yawned delicately and offered them an apologetic exhausted smile. ‘Perhaps you could come back tomorrow? My dear...it’s been such a pleasure meeting you.’ She warmly patted Violet’s outstretched hand. ‘I very much look forward to getting to know you much, much better...I want to find out every little thing about the wonderful girl my son has fallen in love with.’
CHAPTER FOUR
SO WHO WAS ANNALISE?
Violet was pleased that she had not been tempted to ask the second they had left his mother’s room. She didn’t know, didn’t care and was only going to be in his company for a short while longer in any case.
Infuriatingly, however, the name bounced around in her head over the next week and a half, as their visits to the hospital settled into a routine. They met at a predetermined time in the same place, exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries on the way up in the lift and then played a game for the next hour and a half. It was a game she found a lot less strenuous than she had feared. Eleanor Carver made conversation very easy. Little by little, Violet pieced together the life of a girl who had grown up in Devon, daughter of minor aristocratic parents. Childhood had been horses and acres of land as a back garden. There had been no boarding school as her parents had doted on their only child and refused to send her away and so she had remained in Devon until, at the age of seventeen and on the threshold of university, she had met, fallen head over heels in love with and married Damien’s father, an impossibly dashing half Italian immigrant who had wandered down from London with very little to offer except ambition, excitement and love. Eleanor had decided in seconds that all three were a better bet than a degree in History. She had battled through her parents’ alarm, refused to cave in and moved out of the family mansion to set up house in a little cottage not a million miles away. In due course, her parents had come round. Rodrigo Carver might not have been their first choice but he had quickly grown on them. He offered business advice on the family estate when fortunes started turning sour and his advice had come good. He had a street smart head for investment and passed on tips to Matthew Carrington that saw profits swell. In return, Matthew Carrington took a punt on his rough-diamond son-in-law and loaned him a sum of money to start up a haulage business. From that point, there had been no turning back and the half Italian immigrant had eventually become as close to his parents-in-law as their own daughter.
Violet thought that Eleanor Carver probably believed in fairy tale endings because of her own personal experience. Whirlwind romance with someone from a different place and a different background...a battle against the odds... Was that why she had accepted her son’s sudden love affair with a woman who could have been from a different planet?
She had posed that question to Damien only the day before and he had shrugged and said that he had never considered it but it made sense; then he had swiftly punctured that brief bubble of un
expected pleasure by adding that it was probably mingled with intense relief that she had been introduced to a woman who wouldn’t run screaming in horror at the thought of wellies, mud and the great outdoors.
For once, Violet arrived at the hospital shop ahead of schedule and was glancing through the rack of magazines when she heard him say behind her shoulder, ‘I didn’t get the impression that you were all that interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous...’
She spun round, heart beating fast, and in that split second, realised that the hostility and resentment she had had for him had turned into something else somewhere along the line. She wasn’t sure what, but the sudden flare of excitement brought a tinge of high colour to her cheeks. When had she started looking forward to these hospital visits? What had been the thin dividing line between not caring what she wore because why did it matter anyway, and taking time out to choose something with him in mind? She had always felt the sparrow next to her sister’s radiant plumage. She couldn’t compete and so she had never tried. She had chosen baggy over tight and buttoned up over revealing because to be caught up in trying to dress to impress was superficial and counter-productive. So when had that changed?
Everything they said in that room and every fleeting show of affection was purely engineered for the sake of his mother and yet she found that she could recall each time he had touched her. She no longer started when his hand slid to the back of her neck. A couple of days ago he had casually tucked some of her hair behind her ear and she had caught herself staring at him, mouth half open, transfixed by a rush of violent confusing awareness, as if they had suddenly been locked inside a bubble while the rest of the world faded away. His mother had snapped her out of the momentary spell but it was dawning on her that lines were being crossed. She just didn’t know what to do about it. She would have to find out just how long the charade was destined to continue. Yes, she had made a deal but that didn’t mean that she could be kept in ignorance of when the deal would come to an end. Her life was on hold while she pretended to be his girlfriend. She needed to find out when she would be able to step back to reality.
‘Aren’t we all?’ she snapped, taking a step back and bumping into someone behind her. Flustered, she muttered apologies and then looked straight into Damien’s amused blue eyes. Usually he came straight to the hospital from work. Today was an exception. He wasn’t in his suit but in a pair of black jeans and a thick cream jumper. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from him.
‘My apologies. Shall I buy the magazine for you?’
Violet discovered that she was still clutching the magazine and she wondered why because she had had no intention of getting it. ‘Thank you, but there’s no need. I was just about to buy it myself.’
‘Please. Allow me.’ He made an elaborate show of studying the cover of the magazine. ‘I dated her,’ he mused, but his interest stopped short of flicking through the magazine to look further.
If that passing remark was intended to bring her back down to earth, it certainly succeeded and Violet was infuriated with herself for the time she had taken choosing which pair of jeans to wear and which jumper. Ever since he had made that revealing remark about her body, and even if it had been meant for the benefit of his mother, she had chosen her snuggest jumpers to wear, the ones that did the most for a figure like hers. Now she was reminded of just the sort of body he looked at and it wasn’t one like hers.
‘What’s her name?’ Violet wondered if it was the mysterious Annalise his mother had dropped into the conversation on that first evening.
‘Jessica. At the time, she was on the brink of making it to the catwalk. Seems she got there.’ He paid for the magazine and handed it over to her.
‘I’m not surprised. She’s very beautiful.’
And once upon a time, Damien thought, she would have encompassed pretty much everything he sought in a woman. Compliant, ornamental and inevitably disposable.
He looked down at the argumentative blonde staring up at him with flushed cheeks and a defiantly cool expression and felt that familiar kick in his loins. The complication which he had been determined to sideline was proving difficult to master. He wondered whether it was because denial was not something he had ever had the need to practice when it came to the opposite sex. When he had concocted this plan, he had had no idea that he might find himself at the mercy of a wayward libido. He had looked at the earnest, pleading woman slumped despairingly in the chair in his office and had seen her as a possible solution to the problem that had been nagging away at him. Nothing about her could possibly have been construed as challenging. There had not been a single iota of doubt in his mind that she might prove to be less amenable than her exterior had suggested.
While it was hardly his fault that his initial judgement had a few holes, he still knew that the boundaries to what they were doing had to be kept in place, although it was proving more challenging than expected. Every time he touched her, with one of those passing gestures designed to mimic love and affection, he could feel a sizzle race up his arm like an electric current. Those brief lapses of self-control were unsettling. Now, as they began moving out of the hospital shop, he stopped her before they could head for the lift.
‘We need to have a chat before we go up.’
‘Okay.’ This would be an update on how long their little game would continue. Perhaps he had had word back from the consultant on the line of treatment they intended to pursue. When she thought of this routine coming to an end, her mind went blank and she had to remind herself that it couldn’t stop soon enough.
‘We could go the cafeteria but I suggest somewhere away from the hospital compound. Walking distance. There’s a café on the next street. I’ve told my mother that we might be a bit later than usual today.’
‘There haven’t been any setbacks, have there?’ Violet asked worriedly, falling into step beside him. ‘A couple of days ago your mother said that they were all pleased with how things were coming along, that it seems as though the cancer was caught in time, despite concerns that she might have left it too late...’
‘No setbacks, although my mother would be thrilled if she knew that you were concerned...are you really? Because there’s just the two of us here. No need for you to say anything you don’t want to. No false impressions to make.’
‘Of course I’m concerned!’ She stopped him in his tracks with a hand on his arm. ‘I may have agreed to go through this charade because my sister’s future was at stake, but your mother’s a wonderful woman and of course I would never fake concern!’
Damien recognised the shine of one hundred per cent pure sincerity in her eyes. For a second, something very much like guilt flared through him. He had ripped her out of her comfort zone and compelled her to do something that went against the very fabric of her moral values because it had suited him. He had thrown back the curtain and revealed a world where people used other people to get what they wanted. It wasn’t a world she inhabited. He knew that because she had told him all about her friends in and out of school. Listening to her had been like lifting a chapter from an Enid Blyton book, one where good mates sat around drinking cheap boxed wine and discussing nothing more innocuous than the fate of the world and how best it could be changed.
Still, everything in life was a learning curve and being introduced to an alternate view would stand her in good stead.
‘How is your sister faring in Ibiza?’ he asked, an opportune reminder of why they were both here.
Violet smiled. ‘Good,’ she confided. ‘Remember I told you about that job she wanted? The one at the tapas restaurant on the beach?’ Despite the artificiality of their situation, she had found herself chatting to Damien a lot more than she had thought she might. Taking the lift down after visiting his mother, wandering out of the hospital together, he in search of a black cab, she in the direction of the underground...conversation was always so much less awkw
ard than silence. And he was a good listener. He never interrupted and, when he did, his remarks were always intelligent and informative. He had listened to her ramble on about her colleagues at work without sneering at them or the lives they led. He had come up with some really useful advice about one of them who was having difficulties with a disorderly class. And he had cautioned her about worrying too much about Phillipa, had told her that she needed to break out of the rut she had spent years constructing and the only way to do that would be to walk away from over-involvement in what her sister was getting up to. If Phillipa felt she had no cushion on which to fall back, then she would quickly learn how to remain upright.
Had she mentioned Phillipa and the job at the bar? Damien thought. Yes. Yes, she had. Well, they saw each other every day. The periods of time spent in each other’s company might have been concentrated, but they conversed. It would have been impossible to maintain steady silence when they happened to be on their own. Admittedly, she did most of the conversing. He now knew more about the day-to-day details of her life than he had ever expected to know.
‘I remember.’ No references needed for a bar job. Good choice.
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