by Penny Jordan
Speechless, Star watched him as he walked into her kitchen and re-emerged carrying his discarded jacket. She waited for what felt like a very long time after he had gone before walking unsteadily to her door to lock and secure it.
Nothing in her life, in her experience, had prepared her, could have prepared her for what had just happened... Nothing and no one.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I’M REALLY sorry you had to miss the barbecue, you would have enjoyed it,’ Sally sympathised as she handed Star one of the mugs of coffee that she had just made, settling herself onto one of the pair of garden chairs that she had drawn up on the patio overlooking her garden.
Star had planned to spend the whole day working but a phone call from Sally halfway through the morning, inviting her over for a coffee and a natter, had changed her mind.
‘How was your mother?’ Sally added solicitously.
She was fine, Star was about to say, but then she shook her head and admitted quietly, ‘I never went to see her. She...she... There was a mix-up over the arrangements and—’
‘Oh, Star, why on earth didn’t you come round?’ Sally chastised her.
‘I...I wasn’t really in the mood... I...I’m having a bit of a problem with this campaign for Brad...and I—’
‘But you were so excited about it,’ Sally reminded her.
‘Yes, I was,’ Star agreed, ‘but that was before...’
‘That was before you realised you’d be working so closely with Kyle?’ Sally suggested. ‘Oh, Star, I wish you could... I wish the two of you had hit it off better,’ she amended tactfully. ‘He was a real hit with everyone on Saturday.’
‘Really?’ Star tried to keep her voice flatly uninterested and non-committal, but she knew that she had failed when she saw Sally frown. Part of her itched to tell Sally the truth about her precious, wonderful Kyle, to tell her how he had come straight to her bed, her arms from Lindsay’s, but another part of her—a new, unfamiliar, illogical part of her—shrank from revealing to even so close a friend as Sally just what had happened.
‘Mind you, I still haven’t managed to find anyone for Kyle,’ Sally admitted ruefully. ‘I introduced him to Lindsay and the two of them were chatting for simply ages. I even saw Lindsay fling her arms around him and give him a kiss at one point and I thought... She disappeared shortly afterwards but Kyle stayed on, although not for much longer.
‘However, Lindsay rang me the day after to tell me that, thanks to the heart-to-heart conversation she’d had with Kyle, she’d realised how much Miles meant to her and how much she wanted to save her marriage and so she had gone straight home and telephoned him to tell him so.
‘He apparently had been feeling exactly the same way and the upshot of the whole thing is that they’ve decided to give their marriage a second chance. She was even talking about them starting a family,’ Sally added slightly wistfully.
Kyle had been having a heart-to-heart with Lindsay about her marriage. Kyle had not taken Lindsay home... Lindsay had kissed him out of gratitude and happiness. Kyle and Lindsay had not been lovers. He had not come straight from Lindsay’s arms, from her bed to her own.
‘Star...what is it? Are you feeling all right?’ she heard Sally asking her anxiously.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ she assured her friend.
‘You look dreadful. I thought you were going to faint, you went so pale,’ Sally told her.
‘I...I’ve just been a little tired; this campaign...I’ve been...’
‘Why don’t you talk to Kyle about it?’ Sally suggested practically. ‘Perhaps he could—’
‘No.’ Star cut her off sharply, firmly changing the subject by asking her, ‘Have you managed to change Chris’s mind yet about the two of you starting a family?’
It was no secret to Sally’s friends that she wanted a baby.
‘I’m still working on it,’ Sally admitted. ‘I know we both agreed that we wanted several years together before we even started thinking about a family, but since both Poppy and Claire have become pregnant... It isn’t that Chris doesn’t want children; it’s just that he feels we’re not ready for them yet. I know what he means, but I just feel so...’
‘Broody?’ Star supplied for her dryly.
‘Well, yes,’ Sally confessed. ‘We’re off to Italy at the end of September, Poppy and James are lending us the villa for a month and I’m hoping to work on him then.’
‘Perhaps he feels that having a baby is becoming more important to you than he is,’ Star suggested.
Sally looked shocked. ‘Oh, no...he couldn’t think that...could he?’
‘You have become rather obsessive about it,’ Star pointed out.
‘Mmm...a bit like you with this thing you’ve got about men in general and poor Kyle in particular, do you mean?’ Sally came back slyly.
‘I’ve got to go,’ Star told her quickly, and finished her coffee. ‘I’ve got a deadline to meet...’
‘So have I,’ Sally said mischievously. ‘I want to be pregnant by Christmas...’
After she left Sally, Star didn’t go straight home, despite the fact that she had spoken the truth when she had said that she had work to do. Instead, she drove aimlessly along the country lanes outside the town, trying to bring some kind of order to her chaotic thoughts.
Even she couldn’t refuse to accept that Sally had been telling her the truth. An unfamiliar feeling of panic seized her, her hands literally shaking as she held the steering wheel, a sense of foreboding and unease rushing threateningly towards her like thunderclouds in a summer sky—menacing, obscuring, gathering on the horizon.
It just wasn’t possible that she had been wrong about Kyle. She couldn’t have been. She knew that. All that rubbish he had mouthed about needing love and commitment, about finding sex empty and meaningless without them—it was just a clever way of tricking a woman into lowering her defences; she hadn’t been wrong about that. She couldn’t have been. Her whole body was trembling now, fear invading her like a black miasma. But fear of what?
She remembered how badly her body had ached after Kyle had left her, how she had woken at dawn with it still aching and shreds of misery-inducing dreams still lingering painfully in her mind—dreams from her childhood in which she had been left abandoned and fearful, knowing that she had done something dreadfully wrong as she cried out after the angry, disapproving faces of the adults around her, who ignored her pleas for them to remain, turning instead to leave her...to punish her.
She had rationalised her feelings, of course: her aching body had quite simply been the result of sexual frustration. It had, after all, been a long time since she had last had any sexual satisfaction and she had never been embarrassed or ashamed about acknowledging her body’s needs before, she had reminded herself angrily, so why should she be so now, just because it was Kyle who had aroused her? And as for her dreams... Well the cause of those had quite obviously been the letter that she had received from her father.
She still hadn’t replied to it; the letter itself had disappeared and although she couldn’t actually remember doing so she imagined that she must have thrown it away. She would have to acknowledge it, of course, and with the formal ‘regrets’ card and a wedding-gift cheque—after all, she already knew, didn’t she, that her money would be far more welcome than her actual presence? It was just as well that the rest of her commissions had gone so well recently, she decided tiredly as she turned the car around and headed for home.
Her flat seemed unusually sterile and empty after the untidy busyness of Sally’s kitchen. Her friend would make a good mother, Star acknowledged—unlike her. But then Sally had Claire to model herself on, whilst she... Her mother had hardly been the maternal type and had said frequently and openly in front of Star that her life would have been much easier without the burden of a child, especially since that same child’s father had managed to evade all responsibility towards her.
The issue of children had never been one which Star had given much thought
to—there had been no need. She had known almost all her life that she would not have any, just as she had known that she would never commit herself to a man. Kyle, of course, would want dozens of them and would adore and dote on them.
Kyle! Angrily she cursed herself under her breath. Well, she wished him joy of them and of the woman he would marry to mother them. Star knew exactly what she would be like, of course: the complete antithesis of her—small, sweet, loved by everyone who knew her, universally praised as a perfect mother and wife, docilely content to let Kyle take the lead in every aspect of their lives and to dutifully turn a blind eye when he chose to stray from his proclaimed path of virtue. And, of course, he would stray, but not with her, Star decided savagely as she brought her car to a halt outside her apartment block. Never with her.
The phone was ringing as she opened the front door, tantalisingly stopping just as she managed to reach it. So what? Whoever it was would no doubt ring back; in the meantime she had work to do, or rather she desperately wished she had work to do. Despite all her efforts to do so, she had not as yet been able to come up with a satisfactorily inspirational alternative to her original idea for Brad’s campaign, something that enthused her sufficiently for her to feel that familiar bite of excitement that she knew she needed to bring out the best of her inventive mind.
The phone rang again. She reached for the receiver and stiffened as she heard her father’s voice.
‘Star...just thought I’d give you a ring to apologise again for not being able to put you and your friend up here at the house, but you know how it is. Everyone’s going to be home for the wedding and we’re already having problems fitting everyone in as it is. Mind you, you’ll probably be far more comfortable at the George; I’ve booked you a suite for the night.
‘We’ll be having a small family dinner party here at the house on the Friday evening and of course the pair of you will be more than welcome to join us if you wish, although Kyle didn’t sound too sure you would.
‘Nice chap. Where did you meet him, by the way? He’s obviously American... Must admit, it came as a bit of a surprise when he rang to confirm that you’d both be coming, but he explained that you were right in the middle of a big campaign—’
‘Dad...’ Star tried to interrupt him chokily, but she could already hear the sound of children quarrelling in the background and before she could tell her father that, whatever Kyle might have said, she had no plans to attend her stepsister’s wedding he was speaking again quickly.
‘Look, I must go... It’s the triplets. Louise has gone out shopping and left me in charge. Look forward to seeing you both.’
‘Dad...’ Star tried again, this time with more desperation in her voice, but it was already too late—the line had gone dead; he had more important, more pressing matters to deal with than listening to her. When had it been any different?
Just what did Kyle think he was doing? she fumed silently as she replaced the receiver. Who did he think he was? What gave him the right to take it upon himself to telephone her father for any reason, never mind to accept an invitation that she had already decided to decline, and never mind including himself in it at the same time?
‘I could come with you...’ he had suggested casually, and at the time she had simply thought that he was trying to find another way of undermining her. Perhaps he still was. Why, after all, should he want to go with her?
If he had been a different man and it had been a different situation, his motives would have been obvious: a night away in a hotel would give him the ideal opportunity to try to seduce her; but, given the situation which existed between Kyle and herself, such a scenario was ludicrously laughable. Kyle would run a mile rather than put himself in a situation where there was any possibility of any kind of intimacy between the two of them; any thoughts of seduction entering his head were more likely to be centred on his fear that she might attempt to seduce him, rather than by any desire on his part to take advantage of her.
Take advantage! In spite of herself, Star laughed. What a thought! She couldn’t imagine herself ever being in a situation where she might be the hesitant and uncertain recipient of a man’s sexual intentions, the helpless, vulnerable female to his powerful sexual machismo, swept away by the force of the passion that his desire ignited within her, all fluttering pulses and eyes as she clung to him and pleaded with him for temperance.
What a farce. She had certainly never had to drag a reluctant mate to her bed, but then she had certainly never had to be coaxed against her will either. She either wanted a man or she didn’t. If she didn’t, she said so, and when she did...
When she did, she took great care to make sure that she was always in control, both of herself and her partner.
Just as she had been in control with Kyle the other night, a taunting voice mocked her. So much in control in fact that just for one heart-stopping, faith-shaking moment before he had turned and left her, when the effect of what he had said to her and what he had physically done to her had been so strong, she had actually wanted... What? To beg him to stay? No, never...never!
Never! The denial was still reverberating angrily through her head half an hour later as she slammed the receiver back in its cradle, having discovered from his secretary that Kyle was out of the office and not expected back until much later in the day.
She had phoned him to demand an explanation of just why he had taken it upon himself to contact her father and announce that they—they, mark you, not merely she—would be attending Emily’s wedding, and she was now furiously aware that without any outlet for her pent-up rage it was going to be almost impossible for her to concentrate on her work.
She could picture the wedding now: Emily looking traditionally pale and feminine, clinging to Star’s father’s arm as she walked down the aisle of the small village church, then the reception in a marquee at a local hotel—not, fortunately, the prestigious hotel where her father had booked them a suite. Just who was he trying to impress? Certainly not her; rather, it was a subtle underlining of her position as family outsider.
Yes, she could visualise the reception—the noise, the confusion, the busyness, the heat. She stood transfixed, her eyes widening slightly as the mental images unrolled inside her head.
Noise, heat, cross children, tired, irritable adults, a buffet table groaning with wilting food, a tearful bride, hot, screaming babies slightly too plump, middle-aged aunts with flushed faces. Ah, but how different it all could have been if only the hotel management had had the thought to install air-conditioning...
Switch to a different scene: a twenty-first birthday party—dim lights, loud music, gyrating bodies, flat drinks, discontent and complaints, overheated tempers, overheated and over-excited young men resorting to cooling themselves and their screaming girlfriends with the aid of shaken champagne bottles and the hotel’s expensive ornamental indoor waterfall... Again how different it could have been.
Four hours later Star flung down her pencil, eased her aching back and flopped back in her chair. It wasn’t the kind of campaign that she had originally envisaged—not quite as tongue-in-cheek or provocative—but her drawings certainly got the point across and, what was more, she acknowledged, they showed a year-round usage of Brad’s air-conditioning units and not simply their necessity in hot weather.
She had even managed to accommodate Brad’s requirement to bring in the superior efficiency of their installation and maintenance service by showing a game show in which Kyle’s engineers came out points ahead as the clear winners in a competition with a rival organisation. And there was quite definitely nothing either smutty or sexist in any of the ads, Star decided in tired triumph.
All she had to do now was get them past Kyle. All... As she pushed her hair wearily off her face, she wished bitterly that she were able to go straight to Brad with her proposals, but, of course, she couldn’t.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. The phone rang just as she walked into
the kitchen but it was not Kyle returning her call as she had anticipated, much to her disappointment—she was still spoiling for a fight with him—but Lindsay.
‘I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be around for a few weeks, and also that we are going to give our marriage another try.’
Your marriage... What about your career? Star wanted to ask her, but she forced herself to hold her tongue. Obviously, she decided bitterly, Kyle’s point of view meant far more to Lindsay than hers.
She would certainly not have advised the other woman to make the first move; she would have told her to let her husband do that. After all, he was the one in the wrong. All Lindsay had done was prove that she was a successful businesswoman. If her husband’s pride couldn’t take that, then in Star’s opinion that was his problem and not Lindsay’s.
After Lindsay had rung off Star tried Kyle’s office number again but wasn’t surprised when there was no reply. It was, after all, past seven o’clock.
She would have to wait until he returned home and tackle him then. And tackle him she certainly intended to do, because there was no way she was going to allow him to get away with his outrageous behaviour—no way at all.
It was gone ten o’clock when Kyle did eventually come in. Star saw him pull up next to her own car, but the phone rang before she could intercept him. This time it was her mother, who had heard the news about Emily’s wedding and wanted to have a long moan about the situation: Star cut her short just as soon as she could. She was not really in the mood to listen to her mother’s complaints; she had complaints of her own to lodge, far closer to home.
She had just replaced the receiver when she heard the sound of Kyle’s front door opening. Suspecting that he must be about to go out, she hurriedly opened her own front door, determined to stop him.
The smile he gave her was warmly disarming but Star was not deceived; he must have realised that it wouldn’t be long before she discovered what he had done.