THE FINAL FALSON SAYS I DO (6 page)

For a while after the disaster of her wedding she’d been able to continue believing. Jackson had reached out to her, and while she’d been able to cling to him the world had still been a good place. The discovery of his betrayal had been a blow over the heart that had affected her as much as Dan’s. Perhaps even more.

Now the comfort that Jackson had seemed to offer was gone. Gone for ever. For how could she ever believe in anyone again?

She dropped her head, covering her eyes with her hand, seeking escape, forgetfulness, while her body trembled with sobs.

‘No,’ she told herself sharply. ‘I said I wasn’t going to give in to this again. And I’m not. I’m going to have a new world that I’ll build myself, without anyone’s help.’

But somehow strength and resolution were no help to her now. She gazed yearningly at the pyramid, looming high and peaceful as it had done for thousands of years—as it would do for thousands more. How petty seemed human problems against that monument and the ancient wisdom it represented. How many humans had stood before its magnificence feeling their own triviality?

‘If only I knew what I—’ she whispered. ‘If only I could tell—’

But there was only silence and the awesome, unyielding beauty that seemed to come from another universe.

At last she turned away and moved inside, where she went to bed and lay sleepless for several hours.

* * *

For several minutes after Freya went inside, the man standing on the next balcony stayed silent and motionless, relieved that she hadn’t discovered him.

Jackson wasn’t proud of himself for watching Freya while she hadn’t known he was there, but her entrance had taken him by surprise. He remembered that day several weeks ago, when she’d discovered his innocent deception about Dan and attacked him furiously. A few hours later he’d spotted his father standing outside the door, secretly listening to Freya and her mother talking inside. Without being able to make out the words, Jackson had guessed what was being said.

Seeing his son, Amos had placed a finger over his lips and shaken his head. When Jackson had tried to make him leave he’d refused. Nor would he discuss what he’d heard.

‘And don’t you tell them that you saw me,’ he’d demanded. ‘There are things a man should keep to himself.’

Jackson had agreed, though reluctantly. Having concealed the truth from Freya once, it hurt him to deceive her by concealment a second time. It had been a relief to leave for Egypt soon afterwards. Now a malevolent fate had tricked him into spying on her. Leaving the balcony had been impossible. The door to his bedroom was too noisy to risk. He’d had no choice but to stay and see things his conscience told him he had no right to see.

Like father, like son, he thought bitterly. He always said he wasn’t like Amos, but then something like this happened and—oh, hell!

The quarrel with Freya had hurt him. When he’d first tried to help her through the misery of her cancelled wedding it had been partly from kindness, partly from guilt. Gradually he’d come to enjoy their relationship. The sense that he could bring her comfort had made him feel good about himself in a way that had been new to him.

Which just went to show how conceited he could be, he told himself wryly.

The pleasure of protecting her had been real, and her fury when she’d discovered the truth had been a blow to his heart. Then she’d seen him off at the airport and demanded a hug, giving him a moment of hope. He’d dared to think next time they met the past would be forgiven, their friendship restored.

But then had come his call to England about Amos’s health, and the things he’d said to Freya thinking he was speaking to Janine. He’d said nothing that could offend her, but he’d adopted a pleading tone that now embarrassed him. How foolish he must have sounded.

When they’d met again earlier that day she’d been coolly affable, full of calm good sense. No sign of hostility, but no pleasure either. It was as though the old, friendly Freya no longer existed.

But she’d returned tonight at the dinner table. Chatting with Larry, she’d burst into delighted laughter, then indulged in a bout of teasing backchat with him.

Debra, sitting beside himself, trying to lure his attention away from Freya, had murmured, ‘Those two are really on each other’s wavelength, aren’t they?’

‘Are they?’ he’d responded with a fairly convincing display of indifference.

‘No doubt of it. He took to her from the first moment. You’ve got to admit she’s a looker.’

‘Is she?’ Freya’s personality had always appealed to him more than her looks. Studying her at that moment, he’d had to admit she was at her best—much as she had been on her wedding day.

‘Oh, come on!’ Debra had exclaimed. ‘She’s really pretty, but Larry likes them best when they laugh with him.’

‘Would you like some more wine?’ he’d asked with a fixed smile.

He would have offered her anything to shut her up.

Now there was no doubt. The Freya he’d once known hadn’t disappeared after all. She was reappearing, as lively, jokey and fun-loving as always.

But for Larry. Not for himself.

He’d promised to keep his distance, and for his father’s sake that promise had to be kept. So he’d given her only the attention that courtesy demanded. Then he’d hidden behind the shield Debra offered, flirting with her, seeming riveted by her company, to conceal the fact that his real attention was for Freya. He’d tried to be glad that she was getting on so well with Larry, but somehow he just hadn’t been able to manage it.

When the meal was over he’d seen Debra to her door and bade her a courteous goodnight, pretending not to see the invitation in her eyes, or her bafflement when he ignored it. Then he’d returned to his own room.

There had been no light under Freya’s door, suggesting that she hadn’t returned. Where was she? he’d wondered. Alone? Or had her joke about dodgy characters being fun actually held some meaning? Was she exploring that meaning? With Larry?

No, not Freya. Not after one brief meeting.

Surely not.

But then where
was
she?

He’d gone out to look at the pyramid, looming in the darkness, and had still been standing there when she’d arrived next door. Straining his ears, he’d heard no voices and realised, with relief, that she was alone. Next moment she’d appeared on her balcony.

He’d moved forward, meaning to speak to her, then stopped. Something about her as she’d stood there, gazing up into the night, had made him pause, enjoying the air of rapture that seemed to permeate her being. But it had passed suddenly, replaced by a sigh.

He’d watched as her shoulders had sagged, hoping to see her pleasure return. Instead she’d dropped her head in her hands and he’d been able to hear her weeping.

He’d clenched his hands, longing to reveal himself and comfort her but knowing that he didn’t dare. She would never forgive him.

He’d seen the sobs convulse her, possessing her whole body with a nameless grief. Frantically he had sought for the answer. Was it the sight of himself that had hurt her after so long? Or did the pain of that terrible day still torment her, reducing everything else to nothing?

In the aftermath of her wrecked wedding, how often had he heard her declare defiantly that she wasn’t going to cry? She hadn’t always managed to fight back the tears, but her courage and defiance had seldom faltered. He’d known her confident, efficient at her job, ready to confront life on equal terms. But until now he hadn’t known her defeated.

The sight of her yielding to despair had made him long to reach out and console her. It would have been easy to climb the low wall that separated his balcony from hers and take her in his arms, lavish her with warmth and comfort. For a moment he’d been fiercely tempted, knowing that only he could comfort her because only he knew the full extent of her hurt.

He had reached out his hand to the wall.

But then he’d stopped himself and drawn back in alarm. Once he could have consoled her as a brother, but those days were over. The physical attraction that had flickered between them might have been brief, but its memory was searing. Neither of them could forget it, and it would destroy everything he tried to do for her. Now she was alone as never before.

The sight of her tears had seemed to bring a treacherous stinging to his own eyes, and bitterly he’d cursed the malign fate that made him helpless when she needed him so much.

At last Freya had turned away and stumbled inside, leaving him distraught and asking himself for the thousandth time,
What have I done?

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
RINGING
OF
the phone awoke Freya before dawn the next morning. It was Janine, sounding worried.

‘Please come,’ she said. ‘He’s gasping again.’

Freya pulled on her dressing gown and hurried out into the corridor. To her surprise she saw Jackson there, turning the key in his own door.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Amos. Mum’s just called me to say he’s gasping.’

‘Let’s go.’

They found Amos sitting on the side of the bed, his chest rising and falling heavily. He looked up at Freya, and nodded when she produced the stethoscope she’d taken the precaution of bringing.

‘So now we have the truth,’ he said caustically. ‘Your visit is just another way of mollycoddling me.’

‘I’m always ready in case you need me. Now hush and let me do my job.’

‘Are you giving me orders?’

‘Yes, I am. So do as I say and be quiet.’

‘You’re as big a bully as your mother.’

‘Luckily for you I am.’

She listened to his heart, fearing the worst, but was pleasantly surprised to hear it beating strongly.

‘That’s good,’ she said.

‘Of course it is. There’s nothing the matter with me. Why must women always make a fuss?’

‘Because you mean a lot to us,’ Janine said, sounding cross. ‘Although I sometimes wonder why. You miserable old so-and-so.’

Amos gave a bark of ironic laughter. ‘And those are the words of a woman who says I mean a lot to her. Isn’t it lucky I have a sense of humour?’

‘No, it’s lucky you have a wife who can put up with your carry-on,’ Freya said. ‘Your health isn’t too bad but don’t overdo it.’

‘If you’re trying to stop me going out today, forget it. It’s our last day here before we go to Edfu and I’m not going to miss it.’

‘Perhaps you should,’ Jackson said. ‘You’ve seen this place. Why not stay here and rest today so that you’re fit for tomorrow?’

‘I’m fit for anything I say I’m fit for,’ Amos said, outraged. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve started taking their orders? That any son of mine—’

‘As a son of yours I’m practical,’ Jackson said. ‘And being practical means I’ll listen to suggestions from someone who knows better than I do.’ He inclined his head to Freya. ‘Find the experts and pick their brains. It’s the most profitable way forward. You taught me that.’

‘I’m going with you,’ Amos repeated.

‘All right, but take it easy,’ Freya told him. ‘Walk as little as you have to.’ She had a sudden burst of inspiration. ‘After all, our next stop is Edfu, where you and Horus will confront each other. You wouldn’t want to be taken ill before you get there, would you? Imagine missing him when you’ve come so far to meet him. He’s probably laying out the red carpet for you now.’

Amos cast her a wry look, conveying that he understood exactly what she was up to. But to their relief his mood improved.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Nothing must get in the way of Edfu.’

‘It’s still early,’ Freya said. ‘Try to get some more sleep.’

Amos nodded and slid down in the bed. Jackson and Freya patted Janine’s shoulder, and left.

‘Is he really all right?’ he asked as they went along the corridor.

‘Yes, his heart sounds better than I expected. But he shouldn’t walk too much. It might help to have a wheelchair on hand, just in case.’

‘Gladly. You really got the better of him back there.’

‘No, you did, with your talk about profiting from the advice of experts.’ She put her hand over her mouth to smother a yawn.

‘And you’re the expert,’ he said. ‘You’d better get a little more sleep. You might find tomorrow tiring. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

Where was he going? she wondered as he walked away. Back to Debra, perhaps.

She remembered hearing him spoken of as ‘a man who likes to enjoy life, taking pleasure wherever he finds it’, and she guessed the pleasures must be many. Women would be drawn to both his looks and his growing fame as a television personality. And his easygoing good nature would add to his attractions.

As for his darker side, the one that had ruined things between them, who else but her had ever discovered it?

She had no desire to sleep. She switched on the light and took out the book about the pyramids that she’d brought with her. But even this failed to calm her mind and at last she closed it, turned the light out again and went to the window that looked out over the hotel’s garden.

In the faint light she could just make out the figure of a man wandering beneath the trees. Something about him caught her attention. He seemed not merely alone but strangely cut off from his fellow humans.

Then she recognised Jackson.

So he wasn’t with Debra, she thought. Unless Debra was coming out to join him.

But minutes passed and he was still alone. Again she had the mysterious feeling that loneliness was natural to him.

How could that be? Nobody as popular as Jackson was ever lonely.

Yet the thought would not be banished. For all his large family, his popularity, Jackson had nobody who was completely his. His brothers were all happily married; his father had Janine. But he drifted through life in mysterious isolation. The thought had never occurred to her before, and now she wondered why.

He turned, looked up and saw her. She half expected him to turn away, but he raised his arm in a gesture that invited her to join him. Her heart leapt. She waved back, and hurried away to slip some shorts and a T-shirt on before going to meet Jackson.

He was waiting for her at the door.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come.’

‘But this is a lovely place. I don’t wonder you like to be here.’

He took her hand and led her through the trees to where there were some seats at the end of the garden. The pyramids were more visible now, easing their way into the light, magical, magnificent, mysterious.

For a while they sat in silence, relishing the experience, his hand still holding hers. Then he said softly, ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for coming to Egypt. It must have been difficult.’

‘I wouldn’t just abandon Amos. I know he means the world to you.’

‘In a way.’

‘In a
way
?’

‘Don’t misunderstand me. I love my father. But—how do I say it?—I don’t always like him. He does what suits himself, no matter who he hurts.’

He paused and she had a vivid sense of indecision tormenting him. His words were heavy with a meaning he’d never hinted at before and perhaps couldn’t speak of now.

‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’ she asked gently.

His hand tightened on hers.

‘I’ve never talked about it before,’ he said huskily. ‘But now I— For the first few years of my life I seemed to be part of the ideal family. There were my parents, and Darius, my brother, and everything was fine. Then my mother found out about my brother Marcel—the son he’d had by Claire, a Frenchwoman, five years earlier.’

‘While he was still living with your mother?’

‘Yes. I think that was one of the things that hurt her most. That he’d carried on with another woman while still playing the loving husband.’

‘How could she ever believe a word he said after that?’ Freya breathed.

‘She couldn’t. She left him. They divorced and he married Claire. Darius and I lived with our mother until she died a few years later. After that we had to return to Amos.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Eleven. I could never be at ease with Claire. It wasn’t her fault. She was my father’s victim as much as any of us. But I blamed her for my mother’s death.’

‘You don’t mean your mother—?’

‘No, she didn’t take her life. Not exactly. But she went down with an illness that she didn’t have the strength to fight, and I don’t think she wanted to fight it. I was with her when she died, and the last thing she said to me was, “I’m sorry.” Then she closed her eyes and just let go. Meanwhile Amos was playing the field again, with Travis’s mother in Los Angeles and Leonid’s mother in Moscow. Claire found out and left him, taking Marcel. By then Darius was making his own career, so I was alone with Dad for much of the time.

‘It was like living with two versions of the same person. There was the man who’d broken all our hearts and didn’t care—a man I resented. But there was also the “Big Beast”, whom the world admired and feared, and in a way I admired him too. I wanted to be like him, earn his praise. I did some really stupid things, and the stupider I was the more he approved of me.’

‘But approval wasn’t enough, was it?’ she asked.

‘No. I wanted more. I wanted—I don’t know—something else.’

‘Love,’ she said. ‘The kind that puts you first—the kind you should expect from your parents. When grown-ups are so taken up with each other they can sometimes forget what the children need.’

He stared. ‘How did you know that? Surely your parents loved you?’

‘Oh, yes, but they loved each other first. I got lavish presents, but somehow I always sensed something missing. One year my father paid for me to go on a really expensive school trip. I thought he was being generous, finding so much money for me to enjoy myself. But while I was gone he and my mother took a holiday together. I thought there would be another holiday, with the three of us, but there wasn’t. They’d seized the chance go away without me. I know it sounds crazy and self-centred to say it like this—’

‘Not to me, it doesn’t,’ Jackson said. ‘Everything’s fine on the outside, but inside there’s a place that’s sad, hollow.’

As he said it she could see the child Jackson, surrounded by money and success but knowing there was no one who would put him first. The father playing the field with other women...the mother more concerned with her own misery than her children’s needs.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘I grew up knowing that I’d have to be enough for myself. Or at least pretend to be.’

‘Yes.’ Jackson sighed. ‘Exactly like that. It can be good to be enough for yourself, as long as you know when to drop the defences. That’s Dad’s trouble. He never knew. Through all those love affairs he had to be the one in control.’

They looked at each other, sharing the same curious expression.

‘We’ve known each other for six years,’ he said. ‘And we’ve never shared this before.’

‘It was never the right time before,’ she said.

‘Yes. And when the right time comes, you know. And you have to take it because it may never come again. I think you’re the only person I could ever talk to about Dad, and how tense I feel about what I’ve inherited of his nature.’

‘You can’t help what you were born with. And you’re not as bad as he is.’

‘Thanks. I treasure that.’ He added wryly, ‘And a gift for getting your own way
can
be useful. But sometimes it makes me wonder about myself. I’ve got a bad side.’

‘So have we all,’ she said. ‘Don’t be hard on yourself.’

‘That’s nice of you, but my bad side is worse than you know. And you know plenty, after the harm I did you.’

‘But you didn’t do it on purpose. You made an incautious remark. You couldn’t predict what Dan would do. It was a mistake, but I’ve made plenty of those myself. Let’s draw a line under it.’

He stared. ‘You’ve really forgiven me?’

‘There’s nothing to forgive. You might have been a bit clumsy—’

‘Clumsy, stupid, idiotic, thoughtless—’ he supplied.

‘If you say so. But you weren’t spiteful. You’re not capable of spite.’

‘That’s kinder than I deserve.’

His voice was heavy and she knew he was still deeply troubled—not only by their past hostility but by the burdens Amos had loaded onto him when he was too young to bear them.

He dropped his head, fixing his gaze on the ground. She knew a deep and worrying instinct to protect him. Dazzling, self-confident Jackson had never seemed in need of anyone’s protection before, but this was a new man—one he’d revealed to her and perhaps to nobody else. He trusted her. He’d said so, and had proved it by showing his vulnerable side.

In another moment she would have reached out and taken him in her arms, offering him all the comfort she could, but a warning sounded in her head. That way lay danger. The faint, flickering attraction between them might revive at any time. The memory of his lips brushing hers warned her not to take the risk.

Yet who else was there to help him? His obnoxious father? The women who came and went but never seemed to get really close to his life or his heart?

She could have cursed the malign fate that had given such insight to
her
—the one person who didn’t dare use it, and yet who wanted to use it with all her heart. It was alarming how much she wanted that.

She ventured to reach out and touch his shoulder.

‘Jackson—’

He raised his head and their eyes met. For a brief moment she saw him defenceless, without the mask that she now realised he wore so easily.

‘What is it, Freya?’ he whispered.

She drew a trembling breath. Another moment and she would have thrown caution to the winds. But alarm came to her aid, forcing her to speak common sense words.

‘Let’s put it in the past,’ she said. ‘We’ve always been good friends and we’re not going to let anything spoil it.’

‘Right,’ he said, and the mask was in place again. ‘Good friends it is—just like always.’

‘Always have been, always will be.’

They shook hands.

‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘It’s there.’

The great pyramid loomed gloriously above them, golden in the fast growing light, full of promise for the day to come.

‘Yes, it’s there,’ he said. ‘It could be there for ever.’

‘When we’re not here any more—in a thousand years.’

They sat in silence for a while. At last they rose and wandered back into the hotel. It was time for the day to begin.

* * *

At breakfast Amos was in good spirits.

‘I’m beginning to find Ancient Egypt fascinating,’ Freya told him. ‘This place we’re going to today—’

‘The Giza Necropolis,’ Amos put in.

‘Yes, the place with all those pyramids. Will I see Tutankhamun’s tomb?’

‘No, that’s not here,’ Amos said. ‘He’s further down the Nile, in the Valley of the Kings. But it’s quite near Edfu, so you can see him when we go there.’