Old Desires/A Stranger's Kiss (2-in-1 edition) (32 page)

‘No one will ask.’ She stopped overnight at a small hotel and telephoned Lola to warn her of her imminent arrival. Her complete lack of surprise was exactly what Tara needed. It would be a relief to spend a few days with someone who didn’t know or care that Adam Blackmore existed.

* * *

She spent the days walking, reading, listening to music and watching Lola paint the delicate water colours with which she illustrated her books on the world’s flora. She had been her mother’s best friend from her school days, the only contact she had with the young unknown faces in old albums of photographs, and when the mood took her, a fund of stories.

Lola had been in India on a field trip when her parents were killed by a lorry plunging out of control across a motorway barrier. She had immediately returned to England to assume whatever responsibilities were to be thrust upon her, but Tara always suspected that it had been something of relief to find her goddaughter already happily settled with the kindly neighbour who had been babysitting her while her parents went away for the weekend.

But she had dealt with the financial side of things and invested her parents’ small estate so there was enough money for Tara never to be a burden to the Lamberts. Enough even for a deposit on the tiny new house she and Nigel were to have lived in.

She had always kept an eye on her from a distance. Always remembered the important things. And she had been there when she had been desperately needed. It was Lola who had taken the brunt of her grief when Nigel had died.

The week passed too quickly. She arrived back at Beth’s just before lunchtime on Sunday morning and her partner was delighted to see her.

‘You’re looking better.’

‘I’m recovering, Beth. Apparently a broken heart isn’t fatal.’

‘Thank God for that,’ she said with conviction. ‘But it is like being ill. Take one day at time. You’ll wake up one morning and realise that the pain isn’t unbearable any more.’

‘I’ll take your word for it. You’ve been there often enough.’ Beth’s eyes sparkled. ‘I don’t believe it! Not again?’

‘This time it’s the real thing. I swear it.’ Tara shook her head, wondering at her friend’s stamina. Once was enough for her. ‘And you were wrong about there being no enquiries for you.’

Her hand trembled and she set down the mug of coffee, afraid it might spill. She wasn’t strong enough yet. ‘He telephoned?’

‘He came to the office.’ Beth pursed her lips. ‘I know you think he’s the pits, but frankly, I was very taken with your Mr Blackmore.’

‘He’s not mine.’ Her pulse was hammering in her ears. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘Simply that you had gone away and I wasn’t at liberty to tell him where you were.’

‘Did he just take that?’ Why had she said that? Why did she want the answer to be no? She closed her eyes. It mustn’t matter so much. Recovery was still a long way from certain.

‘He didn’t actually try to beat your address out me, if that’s what you’re wondering.’

Tara flushed. ‘Well, thanks.’

‘You could be more enthusiastic. Did you expect me to crack under his charm and spill the beans? He looked fit to come after you.’

‘Of course not,’ she said, quickly.

Beth did not look convinced. ‘Can I offer you something to eat?’

‘No, if I can just beg a lift home via the Italian shop to pick up some bread and milk.’

They had to drive by Victoria House to get to the mews. Tara kept her eyes firmly on the road ahead, terrified that he might just glance down from his penthouse and spot her. Beth said nothing, but Tara saw her mouth twitch.

‘I know he can’t see me. Doesn’t even know your car. I just feel... vulnerable.’

She felt safer inside her flat. She stepped over the pile of mail and newspapers on the mat. It was home, a bolt hole; it represented safety. She checked the rooms. Everything was exactly as she had left it, apart from a week’s dust that had settled quietly over the furniture. She whisked quickly around with the duster, then made herself a sandwich.

She forced herself to eat every mouthful. If she kept going through the motions it might eventually become habit-forming. She washed the dishes, unpacked, loaded the washing machine, made her bed, vacuumed. Opened the mail and sorted it all to deal with at the office on Monday. All tedious little jobs that kept her mind from dwelling on heartache. But it was still only five o’clock.

A sudden desperation overtook her to stay busy. She would make Beth a chocolate cake. A thank you for loaning her the car. She switched on the radio to some cheerful commercial station and gathered her ingredients. The electric mixer was noisily whisking sugar and butter to soft peaks of cream to the accompaniment of the top twenty, when another sound, an insistent tapping, gradually began to overlay the general clatter. Tara switched off the whisk. It was someone knocking at the door.

Her first reaction was to switch the mixer back on and ignore it. She didn’t want to see anyone and if it was next door she could always say she hadn’t heard.

Tara sighed and turned down the radio. She wasn’t much good at fibs. The only lie she had ever told with any conviction, the only one anyone had ever believed was the one she had told Adam about wanting Hanna Rashid.

Having decided to answer the door she almost ran. There was no way of knowing how much longer her caller would wait.

But when she flung open the door she wished she had obeyed her first instincts. Her visitor was the last person in the world she expected to see. And the least welcome.

‘Hello, Tara.’

She took an involuntary step back and Jane Townsend, reading this as an invitation to enter, sailed blithely over the threshold. ‘I’m so glad you’re home. I was just about to give up and go away,’ she said. ‘May I use your bathroom? I’m afraid Charlie needs changing.’

CHAPTER NINE

STUNNED as she was by the unexpectedness of Jane’s arrival, Tara could do nothing but direct her unwanted guest to her bedroom with its tiny en suite bathroom.

Jane looked appreciatively around her. ‘What a lovely apartment. Adam described it to me.’ She glanced sideways at Tara. ‘Not the bedroom of course.’

Tara felt the swift rush of blood to her cheeks. ‘Of course not,’ she said, quickly. ‘He hasn’t seen it.’

Jane laughed. ‘That’s what he said, but I hardly believed him.’ Seeing Tara’s shocked expression, she was immediately apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t tease. In fact considering the state he’s in it has to be the truth.’ She held out the baby. ‘Could you take him while I fetch his bag from the car?’

Tara took Charles Adam Townsend in her arms. He lay there, quite content, staring with unfocussed intensity at her. He wasn’t like Adam at all, she thought, or even much like Jane. It was probably the crop of fair hair, already growing fast and beginning to curl. She touched it and the baby grabbed for her hand, catching her little finger and pulling it down to his mouth.

It was a moment before she realised she was not alone. She looked up to find Jane watching her and she felt quite naked, as if she had exposed herself in some very private way.

‘He likes you. He won’t let just anyone hold him like that.’

Tara made an effort at a smile. ‘Then I’m flattered.’

Jane retrieved her son and went about the task of changing him. ‘That’s better, isn’t it my darling.’ She picked him up and kissed him. ‘Much nicer.’

Tara led the way back to the living room and her unexpected guests settled themselves on the sofa and Jane lifted fiddled with her top and began to feed the baby.

‘He’s grown,’ she said, and felt quite stupid at saying something so obvious. But she began to understand why mothers talked incessantly about their babies. Charles seemed to dominate the room with his tiny presence. But his mother had something else on her mind.

‘How are you, Tara? I’ve been trying to phone you all week. We never had a chance to talk with Adam turning up when he wasn’t wanted.’

‘I’ve been away for a few days. It’s been hectic at work and I needed a break.’

‘Adam asked me to look in as soon as you got back and explain everything. He had to go to Wales, something to do with the new factory I think and since he didn’t know when to expect you back there was no point in putting it off.’ She looked up at Tara. ‘Beth wouldn’t tell him where you had gone.’

‘I asked her not to.’ A headache was beginning to tighten in a band around her forehead and she just wished Jane would go

‘He looks terrible.’ Tara made no comment. She told herself she didn’t want to know why he looked terrible, but her eyes betrayed her and Jane went on. ‘I don’t think he’s ever been in love before and thirty-three is a bit late to taste the agony of it for the first time. If he wasn’t suffering quite so much I have to confess that I would find it amusing.’ She offered a tentative smile. ‘Couldn’t you be just a little kinder?’

‘Kinder?’ Tara stood up, folding her arms tightly about her chest as if she could hold in the pain. ‘I don’t understand you, Jane. Don’t you love him?’

‘Adam?’ Jane frowned. ‘Of course I love him.’ She pulled a face. ‘Although whether he feels the same way about me at the moment is in some doubt. According to the wretched man I’m as expensive and time consuming as a wife, but none of the fun.’

‘But that’s... dreadful.’

Jane seemed quite unconcerned. ‘He’s got a point. I’m afraid I’ve exploited him quite shamefully.’ Charlie stopped feeding and began to cry. Jane murmuring gently, put him over her shoulder and patted his back gently. He promptly threw up. ‘Oh my poor darling. Mummy will take you home.’

She groaned as she moved, her shirt sticking cold and wet to her back. Tara ran to get a towel from the bathroom and mopped up the worst of the damage.

‘There wasn’t much, but it seems to have gone rather a long way.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jane apologised. ‘One day perhaps we can talk for more than five minutes without interruption.’ She stood up and gathered her belongings. ‘I must get home and change Charlie.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘And me. I’ll phone you.’

Tara helped Jane down the steps with her bag, handing it over to the chauffeur of her silver Mercedes. Then she bolted for cover.

The wild surge of emotion that swept over her as she leaned weakly against her front door was not pleasant. Anger at herself and at him. Fury at fate for conspiring with such glee to show her love, only to snatch it from her lips. Rage against a life that determined she should be on her own for ever.

No. Not on her own. She flung herself across the room to pick up the local paper, searching almost frantically through the pages seeking the for sale columns.

Pets. Retrievers, kittens, tropical fish. No lap dogs. Not even a pug. She began to cry, hot bitter tears that seemed never ending.

Afterwards she washed her hair, spent a long time in the bath, painted her finger and toe nails a vivid defiant red, before wiping it off again.

There was a comedy on the television. She switched it on and made a pretence of watching it. It made no sense to her, but another half an hour had gone by. She wondered idly how she had spent her time before she met Adam Blackmore. There had never seemed enough hours in the day, now every hour seemed like a week.

Slowly she prepared for bed, pulling on the first thing that came to hand, an old nightdress, white with tiny pink flowers, a ruffle of lace at the throat and at the wrists, a deep frill to her toes at the hem. She brushed her hair until her arm ached. She would have it cut a little shorter, she decided, into one of those sleek bobs she had seen in a magazine. She’d had enough of hairpins. She would make an appointment first thing in the morning.

And with that decision a determination to spring clean her life overtook her. She opened her wardrobe and began to drag out all the dull, boring clothes she wore to the office. She carried them into the kitchen and bundled them into a plastic sack. They could go to the charity shop in the morning. Never, she fervently avowed, would she wear grey again.

Then, as she wondered what to do next tiredness suddenly overwhelmed her, a combination of her long drive and an excess of emotion. She checked the door and windows and settled herself in bed. Ten minutes later she was fast asleep.

* * *

Someone was pounding on a stake with a mallet and she wished they would stop. It was a long way off, but the noise dragged her relentlessly back to consciousness. For a long moment, on the brink between sleep and waking she thought she was dreaming. Then she sat up with a start. It was someone hammering at her door.

She switched on the lamp and looked at her alarm clock. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. Someone must need help. She threw off the bedclothes, dragged on a dressing gown and ran to the door where a sudden attack of self-preservation made her slide the chain across before she opened it a crack.

‘Tara, let me in!’ Adam slammed the door back against the chain.

She fell back. ‘Go away, Adam. I don’t want to see you.’

He didn’t bother to argue with her, he simply put his shoulder to the door and the wood splintered, the screws hanging on for a desperate moment before giving up the unequal struggle. The door burst open with a crash and Adam was standing in the opening, dark, angry, a day’s growth of beard on his face. Then he stepped into her tiny hall, filling it, overwhelming her with his presence and kicked the door shut behind him, without ever taking his eyes from her.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded.

She wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. Defiance was all that was left and she lifted her chin and hurled it at him. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Wrong, Tara. I’m making it my business.’ He moved swiftly and she backed nervously until the sofa was behind her knees and she had to stop or fall backwards across it. ‘Who were you with?’

She closed her eyes to blot out the cold green fire in his eyes. ‘Stop it, Adam. For pity’s sake stop it,’ she begged. ‘Haven’t you made me suffer enough?’

‘Suffer? You, my lady? I don’t believe you know the meaning of the word. You’re ice all through. But I intend to make you suffer for the agony you’ve put me through this week.’

‘You can’t—’

‘Believe it. You have my personal guarantee. You like to play games, Tara, lead a man on with those eyes that promise so much, until he’s half mad, crazy with—’

She flung her head from side to side. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He grasped her shoulders, dragging her towards him until she could feel the heat of his body, hammering in waves against her own. ‘Oh believe me, Tara, I know.’

She put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it. Stop it do you hear! You’ve no right to say such things—’

‘Then tell me. Who were you with?’ His eyes were angry slits. ‘The truth!’ He shook her, fiercely. ‘I promise you, I’ll find out if you’re lying.’

Her mouth was dry. She recognised in Adam a man at the end of his tether and the danger of goading him any further. Whatever he might believe, she had no intention of lying to him.

‘I stayed with my godmother in Kendal for the week.’

‘Your godmother?’ This was clearly the last thing he had expected. He released her and she staggered slightly, retaining her feet with difficulty.

‘I had to get away. I needed a breathing space. Some time…’

He raked his hand through his hair. The slash of silver across his forehead seemed more prominent than she remembered. ‘Time.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work, does it?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I’m afraid not. But there’s nothing either of us can do about it.’

‘Oh, yes there is.’ He groaned and pulled her roughly against him. ‘Only one thing. Marry me, Tara. Put us both out of this misery.’

Shocked, she stood rigid, unresponsive in his arms. ‘How can you ask me that?’

‘I’m simply bowing to the inevitable. I’m asking you to do the same. I know you still feel strongly for that boy who died, but you can’t live your life in the past, Tara.’

‘And Jane?’ she asked, coldly. ‘Is she to be relegated to the past as well?’

‘Jane?’ He stared at her. ‘What has she to do with this?’

‘She needs you, Adam. Her baby needs you.’

‘For God’s sake, Tara, haven’t I done enough? I can’t give up a life of my own simply because her husband spends half of his in one remote jungle after another—’

‘Jungle?’ Tara interjected.

‘That’s why she came to work for me, because she couldn’t stand being in the house all day by herself.’

‘And all night?’ Tara demanded.

‘All night? What are you talking about?’ He held her at arms length. ‘My God, she didn’t tell you!’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Didn’t she come here? I made her promise that she would.’

So that was why she had come. To please Adam. ‘You needn’t worry. She kept her promise. She asked me to be... kinder.’

‘But she never told you?’

‘Told me what, Adam? What was so important?’

‘I don’t believe she could be so stupid. This baby has turned her wits to sawdust.’ He stepped forward and took her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. ‘Jane phoned me in Wales to say you were home. I told her I was coming straight back and that she had better get around here and clear up all misunderstandings before I arrived.’

Her eyes were huge in her pale face. ‘What possible misunderstanding could there be, Adam? Everything seems very simple.’

‘No, my lady. The only simple thing around here is me, for allowing my sister to get me into a situation where I was in danger of losing the one woman I have found it impossible to live without. No matter how hard I tried.’

He watched while the words sank into her brain. ‘Your sister?’

‘Jane is my sister,’ he repeated carefully, making sure she understood. ‘She is married to Charles Townsend.’ She didn’t immediately respond to this information, still trying to take in what he was saying.

‘Charles Townsend? The explorer?’ She had seen photographs of him in a Sunday supplement. A great blond Viking of man.

‘Yes,’ he said, evidently relieved that he was finally getting through to her. ‘By the time Jane realised she was pregnant it was too late for him to back out of this latest expedition. But I’m happy to assure you that young Charles is their sole property.’

She shook her head. ‘But you were paying the bills for the clinic. You raced back from Bahrain...’ She stopped, a tiny bud of hope growing somewhere deep inside. She mustn’t look at it too closely, or it would wither. ‘Is this true?’

‘He’s been in the Amazon basin, Tara. Not exactly at the end of a telephone. He needed someone to rely on, someone to look after Jane while he was away, so I was lumbered with all the messy details. And the bills until Charles got home. I assumed you knew, I don’t know why, but it just never crossed my mind to doubt it.’

‘But why was she working for you?’

‘She never could bear rattling around the house all day when Charles was away. It worked very well.’ He grinned. ‘If I was unbearable she felt quite at liberty to be unbearable back.’ He pulled her closer, holding her against him. ‘Shall we sit down? That sofa looks comfortable and there are a few details to be worked out.’ He tilted her chin up and kissed her, very gently. ‘It may take some time.’ She felt ridiculously shy as he looped his arm around her waist and pulled her down onto the sofa with him, drawing her so close that it was a struggle to breathe.