by Penny Jordan
‘Some men can never really let go. Their vanity demands that they are the controlling force in a relationship, the most loved. It strikes me that you and your mother had a lucky escape, Star,’ he added wisely.
‘A lucky escape? What on earth do you mean?’ Star challenged him.
‘Look around you,’ Kyle instructed her, ‘and tell me what you see...’
‘My father,’ she responded belligerently.
‘Your father and who?’ Kyle questioned patiently.
‘My father and his children... the ones he really wanted,’ she told him angrily. ‘The children he really wanted and their mothers...’
‘Mmm. Shall I tell you what I see?’ Without waiting for her to answer he continued, ‘I can see a man who cannot bear to be ignored, who must come first—a man who is quite happy to manipulate and undermine those he claims to love to ensure that he is always the prime focus of their attention. Look at the way he plays one person off against another, the same way he played you off against Emily—the same way, in all probability, that he played you off as a child against your mother and vice versa.’
Star immediately opened her mouth to deny what he had said, her eyes mirroring both her shock and her outrage.
He forestalled her. ‘It’s human nature for us to want our parents to be paragons and perfect, Star, especially when our contact with them is limited. I know, I’ve been there and suffered the consequences. It can be devastating for children when they realise that the mother or father they love so much isn’t perfect—devastating enough to turn that love to deep-seated resentment and even hatred.’
Star spun on her heel and walked away from him, angrily reacting to his comments in much the same way as she might have done to someone physically probing a painful wound with a surgical instrument, but thereafter she couldn’t help observing how accurate his assessment had been.
Her father did encourage his different families to compete for his attention, he did manipulate chaos rather than encourage harmony between them, sometimes even between different members of the same family group, and she was shocked to realise that, whereas in the past she had always thought of herself as the lone outsider to the charmed, extensive family unit that he had formed around himself, there were in fact several others who shared her painful isolation and exclusion from the family fold.
Withholding his love and his approval and singling out one particular person at a time for this treatment was something her father was adept at, Star recognised. And she had also recognised something else which was even more disturbing, she acknowledged as she watched the way that Kyle encouraged the smallest of the triplets, the one who had held back as the other two had yet again rushed into his arms, to come forward, deftly hoisting one child onto his shoulders, leaving both arms free to gather the remaining two.
The look of relieved, grateful joy that radiated from the third small face made Star bite down hard on her bottom lip. What she had finally realised was that Kyle would never behave like her father. He would never willingly or wilfully hurt anyone, much less someone he professed to love. Kyle was different... Kyle was—
‘Thanks... for coming.’
The hesitation in Emily’s voice as she came to join her made Star quell her normal hostile response to her stepsister.
‘You look beautiful,’ Star told her, and meant it. ‘Dad looked so proud as he walked you down the aisle.’
‘Did he?’ Emily gave her a surprised complacent look. ‘He wasn’t at all pleased when I told him that David and I were going to get married. David’s been married before, you see, and John made a big thing about him marrying me on the rebound. He knew David’s first wife and, according to him, David was desperately in love with her. It brought it all back for me, of course—how desperately jealous I was of you as a child and how desperately jealous my mother was of yours.’
‘You jealous of me?’ Star stared at her. ‘But you were always his favourite... You were the one he—’
‘No, I wasn’t.’ Emily cut her off, shaking her head decisively. ‘Oh, I know it may have seemed that way, but he was always comparing me with you, saying how much cleverer you were, how much prettier. Everything I did you had done before me and so much better——even though you were younger. Just as everything Mum did your mother had done before her and so much better.’
She pulled a wry face. ‘I didn’t want any of this, you know,’ she told Star, gesturing towards the lavishly expensive marquee thronged with guests. ‘I wanted to get married very quietly...for it just to be me and David...but John made such a fuss... He kept going on about the huge wedding that David and Naomi had had and what people were going to think and say if we didn’t do the same. He wanted me to have all the children as attendants, you know—all of them,’ she stressed meaningfully, ‘including you...’
‘What?’
Emily laughed as she saw Star’s look of revulsion.
‘I told him you’d never agree—thank God. And of course you know what he’s like—he had to make a big thing of it, claiming that I didn’t want you because I’d always been jealous of you and then insisting that if all his children couldn’t be included then none of them should be. Not that I minded. I was more than happy with David’s two nieces as my bridesmaids.’
‘I should think you were,’ Star said feelingly, unable to stop herself from mentally counting up all her father’s children and then looking at the triplets who were still with Kyle.
‘I know; it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’ Emily murmured, reading her mind.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Star agreed.
They looked at one another and then burst out laughing, the laughter in Emily’s eyes suddenly turning to bright tears as she reached out and hugged her fiercely, saying emotionally, ‘Oh, Star, I so much wanted you as my sister, but somehow we never got it quite right did we?’
‘No...no, we didn’t,’ Star said grimly, and then to her own surprise she heard herself saying, ‘But that doesn’t mean that we still can’t.’
‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Emily agreed, giving her another fierce hug.
‘Ready to go?’ Kyle asked a few minutes later, deftly avoiding a would-be rugby tackle from someone’s child as he crossed the hotel lawn to join Star.
Heavens, he was like a modern-day Pied Piper, Star decided in fascination; none of the children, it seemed, could keep away from him.
‘What on earth is it about you?’ she asked him distastefully. ‘Your aftershave?’
‘Nope.’ Kyle laughed good-humouredly. ‘Nothing special; I just like kids.’
‘So I see,’ Star responded disdainfully. ‘Let’s hope your wife, when you do marry, is equally enthusiastic; after all, she’ll be the one who ends up playing the major role in their upbringing.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Kyle corrected her. ‘I’m quite happy to be a house-husband father if things work out that way.’
Star digested his statement in silence as he drove them back to their hotel. Her tension headache had spread to her neck and the muscles of her shoulders and upper back now and she instinctively tried to ease the stiffness out of them.
Kyle frowned as he saw her discomfort and asked her in concern, ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’ve just got a bit of tension, that’s all,’ Star answered him brusquely. She wasn’t used to anyone showing concern about her health; her relationships with men had never included that type of intimacy.
‘Don’t worry, I know just the thing for it,’ Kyle assured her as he turned into the drive that led to their hotel.
‘So do I,’ Star snapped.
Typically Kyle refused to take offence or retaliate, simply smiling at her as he parked the car. Uncharacteristically, Star let him take the lead in dealing with the receptionist.
The day had drained her both emotionally and physically—as she had guessed it would—but for very different reasons from those she had imagined.
She was amazed at how easily and how dispassionately she h
ad been able to watch her father ignore her and turn to fuss with the triplets instead. And she had felt for them, rather than experiencing her normal sense of humiliation and shame at being passed over in favour of her father’s other children.
Their suite was large and comfortable, with two bedrooms and bathrooms and a shared sitting room. Star, like Kyle, carried her own overnight case, and she was just about to put it in her room when Kyle told her quietly, ‘I’ve arranged for the bill to be made out to me; we can split the cost later. I thought you’d prefer it that way rather than have your father pay.’
She stopped and stared at him, unable to say a word, her eyes filling with quick, irrational tears, and virtually stammered a low, ‘Y-yes...thank you...I would.’
How had he known that she would feel like that? she marvelled as she walked into her room. That she would want...? She put down her case and closed her eyes. From the other side of the half closed door she heard Kyle saying, ‘I’ve ordered a room service meal—if that’s OK? I didn’t think you’d want to bother going down to the restaurant, but if—’
‘No...no, that’s fine,’ she assured him wearily. Her head had started to ache really badly; all she wanted to do was to get undressed, have a warm, relaxing bath and then lie down.
She closed the bedroom door and started to remove her suit.
‘Star?’
Groggily Star opened her eyes. She was lying on her front. Kyle was standing at the side of the bed, looking down frowningly at her. Her room was in semi-darkness and as she glanced automatically at her watch she realised that she had been asleep for over two hours.
‘What happened to dinner?’ she demanded huskily, wincing as she moved and discovered that the tension from her headache had remained in her neck and shoulders.
‘I cancelled it,’ Kyle told her drily. ‘We can always reorder later. How do you feel?’
‘Lousy,’ she told him feelingly.
‘Perhaps I can help; where does it hurt?’
‘What are you doing?’ Star demanded breathlessly as he placed his hand on the bare skin of her naked shoulders and gently started pressing the tense muscles.
‘Giving you a massage,’ Kyle responded easily. ‘It’s a proven fact that it’s just about the best way to relieve stress-induced tension.’
‘A massage!’ Star started to sit up and then subsided as she remembered that she was completely naked.
‘I don’t need a massage,’ she tried to protest crossly, but her body was telling a different story as it positively revelled in the sensation of Kyle’s fingers easing the knots of tension from her taut muscles. Star tried to tell him to stop but her demand was muffled by the pillow as Kyle pressed more firmly into the knotted tissue.
‘No wonder you’ve got an aching head,’ he told her wryly. ‘The whole of your back feels like it’s virtually seized up. Breathe deeply and slowly,’ he instructed her, ‘and we’ll do this properly; you feel like you need it.’
She felt like she needed what? Star wondered edgily. If it had been another man she would have been highly suspicious of that type of comment, but Kyle, of course, was different.
‘There you go, tensing up again,’ she heard Kyle complain as her body reacted to the message that her brain had just given her. Kyle was different. Kyle was different.
An odd sensation, a combination of breathlessness, light-headedness and exhilarated relief, burst upon her, causing her to feel somehow as though she had just laid down an extraordinarily heavy burden that she had been forced to carry. She opened her mouth to tell Kyle about it and then closed it again as her habitual protective caution reasserted itself. As she turned her head she saw a neat pile of clothes on the chair next to her own and recognised that they were Kyle’s.
‘Just stay right where you are,’ she heard him instruct her before she could ask what he was doing. ‘I’ll be right back.
‘Here you are; you can lie on this,’ he announced several seconds later as he emerged from her bathroom carrying a huge bath towel. ‘I haven’t got any massage oil but I guess this will do...’
‘Massage oil?’
Star’s head whipped round. Kyle was standing beside the bed holding what looked like a courtesy bottle of some kind of body oil. He had stripped off to his underwear—a pair of snugly fitting black briefs.
The sight of a man in his underwear was not one that Star normally found in the least erotic. In her opinion men looked sexy either fully dressed or wearing nothing at all; a man wearing briefs and, even worse, his socks in her view looked totally unalluringly and ardour-dampeningly coy. But in Kyle’s case...
She gulped and tried to look somewhere else. From the way her pulse was starting to race it was just as well that he hadn’t stripped off completely, she thought.
‘I don’t think this is a good idea...’ she started to say, but Kyle refused to listen.
‘It’s OK, I know what I’m doing,’ he told her. ‘I had a lot of practice when I was in my teens.’
‘Thank you,’ Star told him through gritted teeth, ‘but I do not want to hear an account of your youthful sexual adventures...’
‘My youthful sexual adventures? What have they got to do with this?’ Kyle asked her. ‘Like I was saying...I had a vacation job one summer, working for the coach of the local hockey team. He swore by a thorough massage for relieving heavy bruising and muscle strains... He was the one who taught me how to do it...
‘It’s a pity we don’t have a proper table, but I suppose the bed will have to do,’ he added, whipping away the duvet before Star could protest.
Unlike him, she had removed all her clothes, and for some reason she did not feel in the least mollified when Kyle tactfully draped a small towel over the rounded curves of her behind.
‘Now try to breathe slowly and deeply and just relax,’ he instructed her.
‘Just relax’. And how on earth was she supposed to do that when he—? Star stiffened in startled surprise as she felt him start to knead not her shoulders as she had expected but her foot.
‘It’s my back that’s stiff, not my feet,’ she protested.
‘Your whole body is stressed out and tense,’ Kyle informed her firmly. ‘Now keep still and just relax. A good massage should be a pleasurable, enjoyable experience...’
Star looked back over her shoulder suspiciously but Kyle’s head was bent as he concentrated on massaging her calf and she couldn’t see his expression—couldn’t see his and quite definitely didn’t want him to see hers, she acknowledged as she fought to suppress the very definite quiver of sensation that shot up her leg and which she knew perfectly well had nothing to do with the efficacy of a good massage and everything to do with the efficacy of the massager.
By the time he had reached the top of her thigh, Star was both gritting her teeth and curling her hands into two small, agonised fists beneath the controlling protection of the pillow.
‘I don’t understand it,’ she heard Kyle protesting. ‘It just doesn’t seem to be working. You’re every bit as tense as you were when I started...’
On the contrary, Star could have told him, it was working only too well, but in a rather different way from the one he had obviously envisaged.
‘Well, there isn’t much point in going on, then,’ Star said in relief, but Kyle shook his head.
‘No, my guess is that what you need is a whole course of treatment with a qualified physio...’
‘You’re probably right,’ Star agreed. ‘I’ll organise something.’
‘I’ll just try and see if I can free some of the tension from your back,’ Kyle told her, adding, ‘You’ll have to move further down the bed, though, so that I can come to that end and work that way...’
Work that way...? Work what way? He surely didn’t mean...?
But apparently he did, and Star smothered a small, protesting groan as Kyle pushed the pillows out of the way and positioned himself on the bed in front of her. Did he have to kneel there like that? she wondered indignantly. And if
he did...if he did... Dizzily she closed her eyes. Weren’t men past the youth of their teens and twenties supposed to lose muscle tone and develop potbellies, especially those of them who were desk-bound executives?
Kyle didn’t... Kyle hadn’t...
‘You really are in a bad way,’ she heard him complain as he leaned over her and placed his hands on her back. ‘You’re actually twitching.’
Twitching... He would twitch if he... She smothered another groan as his fingers stroked slowly over her spine. She didn’t know which was having the more destructive effect on her self-control—the sensation of him touching her or the sight and scent of him. The sight at least she could blot out, but the scent...his scent...
There was no masking the shudder that tormented her as Kyle worked his way over her back, and it was almost a relief when he found the flat, hard lump of knotted muscle which had formed as a direct result of her tension and worked on it, causing her to gasp with pain.
‘It’s all right,’ he assured her soothingly.
All right? Oh, of course it was all right, Star decided helplessly. After all, all he was doing was reducing her to a helpless, gibbering wreck of agonised female desire—an aching, tormented, thoroughly aroused bundle of female cells and hormones.
As she ground her teeth against the moan of arousal that she could feel rising in her throat, Kyle asked solicitously, ‘Did that hurt? Sorry...’
Star had had enough.
‘No, it did not hurt,’ she told him forcefully, wrenching herself out of his hands.
‘Turn over, then,’ Kyle suggested, ‘and I’ll—’
Turn over!
Star closed her eyes. ‘I can’t,’ she told him in a small, mortified voice, and then added despairingly, ‘Kyle, will you please put some clothes on?’
‘On.’ He was actually laughing wickedly at her, Star recognised as he released her. ‘I kinda hoped you were going to ask me to take them off.’
‘Off?’ Star tried to sound quellingly acerbic but she knew her voice was trembling and she knew her body was as well.