Summer's Awakening (54 page)

The long night wore on.

The next time she woke from a doze the sky was beginning to lighten. James was standing by the window, watching the dawn break. At first he was only a dark silhouette. Gradually, as night dissolved into day, his tall frame took shape and form.

Even if he had managed to nap again, he must be exhausted, she thought. The ordeal of waiting must be even worse for him than for her because it had been his decision not to notify the police immediately. The fact that three other people had seconded that decision wouldn't help if it turned out to have been the wrong one. He would feel the misjudgment was his alone, and he wasn't the kind of man who could forgive himself for a mistake... certainly not one involving the safety of someone dear to him. Emily was the only family he had... the only person he loved.

He turned. Seeing that she was awake, he said, 'I'm going to take a shower and change my clothes. I suggest you do the same. Then we'll have an early breakfast.'

Her bathroom was as she had left it, suggesting that James hadn't informed Victoria that she had gone and wouldn't be back. Yet he must have accepted her decision because he hadn't got in touch with her until Emily's disappearance had forced his hand.

Her toilet bag was at the Barbizon, but the bathroom cupboard contained a spare toothbrush which she hadn't packed and sachets of shampoo and body lotions which she had collected on their travels. Her hair-dryer was at the hotel, but Emily had one she could borrow.

Emily... Emily... where are you? Summer thought, standing under a hot shower and shivering with fatigue and dread that today might bring back that terrible pain and desolation she had been through before when they told her her parents were dead.

Fortunately, the clothes she had worn the day before had survived the night without looking too scruffy. She could have borrowed one of Emily's shirts, but somehow she shrank from doing so.

When she returned to the living room José was there, laying the table at which she and Emily often ate when there were only the two of them in the apartment. While she was talking to him James reappeared. Now the early sun was gilding the tops of the highest buildings and she could see how haggard he looked, his lean, angular face seeming even more rawboned than usual, with bruise-dark shadows under his eyes.

When José left them, he said, 'I think you should call the Barbizon in case there've been any calls for you.'

'But nobody knows I am staying there except you and Emily.'

'Precisely. Emily might call you. I'll look up the number.'

When the hotel operator answered, Summer said, 'Good morning. This is Miss Roberts. I checked in yesterday but an emergency came up and I left the hotel last evening and haven't been back. If anyone calls me, would you tell them where I can be reached, please? It's very important.'

Before she could give the number of the apartment, the operator said, 'What is your room number here, Miss Roberts?'

'Oh, God... I don't remember. Wait a moment. I have the room key. I was in too much of a hurry to leave it at the desk.' As she spoke, Summer signed to James that the key was in her bag.

He was quick to find it and hand it to her. When she had given the number, the operator said, 'There's already been one female caller for you. I remember it because we don't have many incoming calls that early, and also we couldn't reach you.'

'Did the caller leave a name?'

'No, no name and no message.'

'It was definitely a girl? You're sure?'

'Yes, I remember her accent. I think she was British.'

Summer gave a gasp of relief. 'If she calls again, would you tell her I in at home now... permanently. She'll know the number. Thank you. Goodbye.' She replaced the receiver and turned to him. 'A girl with a British accent called me. It
has
to be Emily. Oh, James—'

She wanted to fling her arms round him and weep on his shoulder. But instead she collapsed in the chair beside the telephone, covering her eyes with her fingers, holding her emotions in check.

There was a pause before he said, 'She must have called you to see if her strategy had worked. If you weren't there, she'd guess it bad. I'd better have a word with Morton.'

His cool reaction amazed her. She could have sworn he had spent the night racked with anxiety. Yet now, speaking to his lawyer, he sounded calm and unemotional.

Seconds after he finished the call the door opened and his niece walked in. She must have entered the apartment by using her key rather than ringing for José to admit her.

'Emily!'
Summer sprang up, intending to rush across the room and embrace her.

But James grabbed her and kept her beside him, his hard fingers painfully tight on her soft upper arm.

'You're just in time for breakfast,' he said mildly. 'But perhaps you've already had it?'

Emily shook her head. She came forward, moving rather gingerly, obviously uncertain of her reception.

'I—I in sorry if you've been worried.'

'Wasn't that the object of the exercise?'

'I had to do something, James. I couldn't let you and Summer—'

Her explanation was cut off as he let go of Summer and transferred his grip to his niece, seizing her by both shoulders and towering over her, rage erupting from him like lava from a volcano.

'Worried! I'll say we've been worried. We've spent the whole bloody night thinking the next time we saw you would be on a slab in a mortuary. Don't you know what can happen to girls alone in this city? Don't you read the papers? Have you any idea what it's like to spend a night waiting to hear that someone's been mugged, raped or murdered?'

He began to shake her so violently that her neck seemed in danger of snapping and Summer sprang to the rescue.

'James... for God's sake... stop it! You'll hurt her,' she protested, grabbing his arm.

He ignored her, roaring at Emily like a man demented. The savagery of his anger was terrifying.

And then, quite suddenly, while the girl's head jerked back and forth and Summer clung to his arm, shouting, 'Stop it... stop it,' he stopped.

All at once the wild rage evaporated. Ceasing the brutal shaking, he pulled Emily into his arms and held her close. Whereupon she began to cry and Summer let go of his arm and fell back and stood watching them hug each other, her own eyes brimming.

Before noon she recovered her belongings from the Barbizon. After lunch she caught up on some lost sleep. They all did.

Half an hour before dinner James called her into his study. He came to the point with his customary directness.

'I don't want you to come back under pressure of emotional blackmail. Emily won't repeat last night's folly.'

'I acted equally foolishly. I realise that now that I've had time to think things over.'

He said stiffly, 'You have my assurance that the... circumstances which upset you won't happen again.'

She said nothing. What could she say?

There was an uneasy silence which he ended by remarking, 'Last night you told Hurst that Emily was in love with an older man. I take it you meant Skip Newman? How long has she had that idea?'

'He's been her hero since our first winter in Florida. Please don't let her know I told you. I wouldn't have mentioned it except that it was the only way to explain her lack of interest in dates.'

'I shan't say anything to her, but I don't approve of a girl of her age building an adolescent crush into something so important it kills her interest in boys of her own age. Maybe she should spend next winter somewhere other than Florida.'

'I think she'll be terribly disappointed if we don't go to
Baile del Sol.
My feeling is that loving a nice person like Skip can't do her any harm, even if it doesn't come to anything. And who's to know that her first love won't be her last love? It happens sometimes.'

'Skip's a nice guy, agreed. But he's not up to Emily's weight. As you said last night, she's on the brink of being a beauty. She also has brains and breeding, not to mention substantial private means. Rushing into an early marriage would be a mistake she would almost certainly regret. I think you should try to discourage her from taking this calf-love too seriously. Skip is already committed to the family business and the same small-town life as his parents. Emily still has a lot of the world to see.'

In the weeks following Emily's drastic method of repairing the rift between her elders, James spent less time away than he had before her disappearance.

He was in New York most of that autumn. When business took him to the West Coast, he took Summer and Emily with him, showing them the birthplace of his empire, the area south of San Francisco, between Palo Alto and San José which because of its soil and climate had once been verdant with orchards of cherries and apricots, and the plums which, dried in the sun, became Californian prunes.

To Summer it seemed rather tragic that so richly fertile a region should be despoiled by a sprawl of factories making silicon semiconductors and other products of the electronics revolution, hence its new name, Silicon Valley.

Although Emily agreed it was a pity the factories couldn't have sprung up in a desert, she was thrilled at being introduced to many of the still-young pioneers of the industry.

The trip intensified the intellectual bond between her and her uncle, and made Summer wonder if he could ever be happy with a woman unable to grasp the complexities of his life's work.

But it wasn't till the day he told them to pack for a trip to Europe, and added that he was coming with them, that she began to question his motive for spending so much time with them. The more she thought about it, the more uneasy she became. For Emily's beauty was blossoming rapidly now. People in the street turned to stare at her—especially men.

Sometimes, when he thought himself unobserved, James watched her; with the hint of a smile playing round his hard, sensual mouth, and a look in his eyes which forced Summer to face the painful fact that he might have fallen in love with the one girl he could never have.

In London they stayed at the flat where they had spent their last night in England after leaving Cranmere. It seemed half a lifetime ago. This time they didn't wander, wide-eyed and wonder-struck, round Harrods but went to Bellville Sassoon, in a quiet street behind the great store, where the Princess of Wales bought clothes, and to Caroline Charles in Beauchamp Place, another of her favourite designers.