Payment In Love
PENNY JORDAN
Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.Heather dreaded seeing Kyle Bennett again. Six years ago, her stupid, childish jealousy had driven him away from the only home he had ever known. But for her father's sake, now she must ask for his help."What are you asking me for, Heather?" he demanded. ''You want money from me… a cash payment for the years you had to put up with me in your home?''There seemed to be no way to convince Kyle that she regretted what she had done. No way to make him believe that money was not her only driving force.
Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
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About the Author
PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Payment in Love
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
THE sitting room was strewn with pieces of dissected fir tree, and the reel of scarlet tartan ribbon the cat had unrolled made bright pools of colour against the dark background of the carpet. Heather noticed these details as she walked into the room, just as she saw how the flickering flames from the apple logs in the fireplace threw cheerful shadows to lighten the dreariness of the darkening winter’s afternoon. She couldn’t help noticing them—that was how she had been brought up, to observe and then store what she had seen for use later on—but today she noticed them absently, without her normal enthusiasm.
She had just finished speaking to her mother, and what she had heard had not reassured her. It was hard to believe that it was less than two days since her father had been rushed into hospital.
Neither she nor her mother had known there was anything wrong. Gordon Burns was a lean, tanned man in his late fifties, with a boundless energy for life that nothing seemed to quench.
Even now, when his shock of once dark hair had turned iron-grey, Heather still had difficulty in accepting the fact that he was growing older. She frowned and nibbled tensely at her bottom lip. They had always been such a closely knit family.
Many of her contemporaries found it odd that she should not only be quite content working for her parents, but that she should also voluntarily choose to live at home. At twenty-three, she supposed she was rather unusual, but she had never felt any desire to share their so-called independence.
The phone rang sharply and she hurried to answer it, her heart racing. It could be her mother again from the hospital. They had agreed she would ring only when there was anything to report. So far, her father’s condition was stable, although there was talk of the necessity of an operation to bypass some of the damaged arteries, and avert the danger of further heart attacks.
Only last night the specialist had cautioned them about the seriousness of her father’s condition. Such an operation would have to be carried out privately, Heather knew, and again she gnawed distractedly on her bottom lip. A tall, slender girl, she took after her father more than her petite blond-haired mother; she had his colouring and his dark red hair, but in temperament she was like neither of her parents. A throwback to the MacDonald clan, with its reputation for fierce pride and intense emotions, so her father often teased her, and it was true. As a child and a teenager, the intensity of her own bewildering emotions had often left her disturbed and defensive. Now, as an adult, she had learned, if not to control them, then at least to understand them.
She picked up the receiver, her mouth dry with apprehension, but it was only Mrs Anstey, the mainstay of their small village population and the uncrowned head of the local Women’s Institute.
‘Heather, my dear, I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, but how are you doing with the decorations?’
Many years ago, Heather’s father had worked in London’s top store as a departmental manager, and it was while he was there that he had conceived the idea of starting up his own business to make and supply to small shops the kind of window-dressing and design service normally only available to stores large and profitable enough to afford an in-house window-dressing team.
In retrospect, even Gordon Burns had been surprised by the success of his small venture. Within two years of starting up in business, his wife had joined the company, and then, once she left art school, Heather had been co-opted on to the team.
Normally, she loved her work. There was something immensely satisfying about being given a relatively small budget and then asked to create the impossible.
Over the years her father had been approached several times with offers to buy him out, but he had insisted that he liked his business the way it was, small and modestly successful.
If her father had one fault, it was that he was too soft-hearted; too generous, Heather acknowledged wryly; and the Christmas party for the old folk’s home was a prime example of his generosity.
When Maureen Anstey had approached him about decorating the church hall for the party, he had immediately thrown himself into the preparations with vigour and enthusiasm, and Heather knew from past experience that, when it came to submitting his invoice, the sum quoted would have very little bearing on the actual cost of time and materials.
They had always had a comfortable life-style, but she knew that her parents had no savings, nothing to finance something as expensive as the open-heart surgery it now seemed her father was going to need.
She had been the one to find him, slumped over his desk in his study, and the shock of that discovery was still with her, adding a new vulnerability to her shadowed eyes and full mouth.
Having assured Maureen Anstey that the decorations would be completed in time, she returned to the sitting-room. For once, the sight of it failed to soothe her. The sitting-room was her favourite room in the small rectory her parents had bought when they first moved down to Durminster. All the downstairs rooms had open fires, and this room, with its collection of comfortably old furniture and its general air of being very much a family room, had an immediate ambience of warmth.
The cat miaowed plaintively, reminding her that it was tea time. She would have to take Meg out for a walk before it got too dark.
The old collie thumped her tail on the kitchen floor as Heather walked in. Meg had been a thirteenth birthday present to her. A shiver suddenly touched her skin, as memories she would rather not have had slid, betraying, to the surface of her mind. How clearly she could picture that birthday morning. Her parents’ faces, happy and expectant, the excited yaps of the small puppy; it should have been the most perfect of memories, but it was marred by another face, sharp and haunting still, after all these years.
As she had reached out to take hold of the puppy, her mother had said warmly, ‘Of course, you must share Meg with Kyle, Heather.’
And instantly she had dropped the little pup back into her box. Even now, down the years, she could still hear the truculent bitterness in her childish voice as she’d said bitterly, ‘I don’t want her, then. You can give her to him, because I’m not sharing her.’
Even now, the memory had the power to make her suffer a wild see-saw of emotions, some of them so complex and still so only partially understood by herself that she could scarcely bear their oppressiveness.
She had been jealous, of course. Bitterly and immensely jealous, and the remnant of that jealousy and what it had led her to do still haunted her.
One of her closest friends at art school had accused her of being motivated by guilt when Heather had explained to her why she felt she must go home and work with her parents, and she had been partially right. Deep in her heart, she knew that nothing she could ever do could wipe out what she had once done; there was no going back and, even though her actions had been those of an immature child, their repercussions still echoed through all their lives.
She had been seven when her parents first mooted the idea of fostering a teenage boy. She had hated the idea right from the start, resentful of their need to introduce someone else into their small family circle, but she might have grown to accept the idea if she had not happened to overhear someone commenting that they suspected that her mother had never really got over the loss of the baby boy she had been carrying before Heather’s own birth.
Until that moment, she had never known that she might have had an elder brother, and with that knowledge had come the first seeds of doubt about the strength of her parents’ love for her.
While they talked about their fortunate circumstances and the value of sharing them with someone less fortunate, she had grown more and more bitterly resentful of the as yet unknown male intruder who was apparently more important to her parents’ lives then she was herself.
And her resentment and fear had grown, so much so that, well before the social worker had brought Kyle to see them, she had already hated him.
She had steadfastly refused to go with her parents on their visits to the children’s home, bitterly resentful of their determination to carry out their plans in the face of her own strongly voiced and expressed disapproval.
She knew now that her disapproval had only increased her father’s determination, and that he had been disturbed by her displays of temper and jealousy, for her own sake. At the time, she had simply seen, in their calm continuation with their plans, a total lack of regard for her and her feelings, which had increased her fear that she wasn’t loved or wanted and that this stranger would supplant her in her parents’ lives.
They had known none of this, simply seeing in her resentment and anger an only child’s lack of vision and narrowed upbringing. Both of them had been only children themselves, and were far more aware of the pitfalls that could lurk ahead than Heather herself, but she had not known of any of this.
The seeds of resentment and hatred had been sown, and when Kyle had finally arrived she’d been determined to hate him.
And hate him she had. It hadn’t been hard. For one thing, he was obviously bigger and more powerful than she was, a whole six years older, and thirteen to her seven; for another, he was a whole lot cleverer as well, talking with her parents on a level that totally excluded her.
Now, of course, she could see that Kyle had felt just as insecure as she had herself, that the fact that he had totally ignored her had sprung from feelings very close to those she was herself experiencing, and not a desire to cut her out of her parents’ love.
She also knew now that love was something that wasn’t necessarily apportioned; and that it was something that grew rather than diminished when it was shared with others. Yes, she knew all these things now. Now, when it was too late.
She frowned and reached for her hooded duffel coat. It was cold outside. Snow threatened; she could smell it in the air.
Meg barked excitedly as she opened the door. At the back of the rectory garden was a stile and a footpath that led through the fields. It had been a clear, bright day, and as she climbed over the stile the fields lay spread out against a winter skyline, the sky that deep, dense dark blue that only occurred on very cold and clear winter evenings. The full moon illuminated the scene brilliantly, and her breath hung on the air in steamy puffballs of vapour. The sharpness of Meg’s yaps was intensified by the crystal clearness of the air, and far away a farm dog heard it and set up a bark in response.
From the copse Heather heard the unearthly cry of a dog fox, and Meg pricked up her ears. Some instincts never died, Heather acknowledged, shaking her head at the collie as she crouched, belly down, on the crisp frosted field.
It was just the right sort of evening for a brisk walk, the sort of evening she would normally have thoroughly enjoyed. She knew that her parents sometimes worried about her solitary state; her mother was constantly urging her to join in the village’s extremely varied social gatherings, but so far she had not experienced any desire to find a mate and settle down, and she knew herself well enough to accept that a string of casual relationships was not for her.
She was frightened of committing herself in a male-to-female relationship, she knew that. Her experiences of the intensity and depth of her capability for emotion had affected her in the same way a small child reacts to an accidental burn when faced with the threat of a real fire: she shied away, apprehensive and alarmed, remembering past pain.
The relationship between her parents, its stability and longevity, had spoiled her; she could not adopt the careless manner of her contemporaries towards the commitment of marriage, and she doubted that she would ever find a man who could and would commit himself to her with the wholeheartedness she knew that she would crave if she ever allowed herself to fall in love.
That being the case, she was better off not allowing herself to do so. The heady sixties with its laissez-faire attitude towards casual sex had gone, and in its place was a new awareness, a new carefulness about the use and abuse of the human body. One was no longer considered odd if one did not agree to go to bed with a man on a first date, and Heather preferred things that way.
She did date occasionally—boys, now adult, whom she’d known from school, men she met through her work—but so far there had been no one special in her life; no lover.
Frost crunched underfoot as she took the familiar path. Meg darted off to investigate a long empty rabbit burrow. This route was well known to both of them, and yet she always found something new about it, Heather acknowledged, her heavy thoughts dismissed momentarily as her artist’s eye was caught by the black and silver tracery of bare branches illuminated by the moon.
The weather men were predicting snow for Christmas. Maureen Anstey had commented wryly that the village children were delighted. Not so pleased were those members of the community whose jobs meant driving daily to Bath and Bristol. This part of the country was notorious for its heavy winter snowfalls, and the opening of the M4 had suddenly made it far more accessible to London-based businessmen looking for a country environment for their wives and families. A small influx of newcomers during the summer months had added to the population, but Heather wondered how many of them realised what they would have to face during the winter months.
Their coal-house was already stacked with fuel, the logs her father had cut only two weekends ago drying out; gas had been bought in ready for their annual power-cuts. She remembered how astonished Kyle had been by the depth of their snowfalls. He had come from London, where snow never lay for very long on the busy streets. Just momentarily she had felt superior to him but, as always, he had quickly turned the tables on her. She shivered and called to Meg.
She knew why Kyle Bennett was in her thoughts so much, of course; she had known from the first moment the specialist had told them that her father was going to need surgery and she had seen the fear and exhaustion on her mother’s face.
Things had not been going well for them businesswise recently. Too many shops were closing; too many small businesses going to the wall. It hadn’t helped, seeing all those huge signs plastered all over Bristol for Bennett Enterprises. Who would ever have thought that the scruffy-at-heel boy her parents had taken in would turn out to be such a successful businessman?
He was a millionaire several times over now, and with a life-style to match his wealth, if the popular Press was to be believed. And, knowing him as she did, Heather did believe it.
He had always liked the very best life had to offer, she remembered sourly. She only had to think of the succession of pouting would-be model girls he had brought home to show off to her parents. Glossy, expensive creatures who had made her feel clumsy and ugly, and she had seen in his eyes that he had known and enjoyed her discomfort.
It had always been like that between them. From the very first moment, they had recognised in each other a mortal enemy. She had never imagined then that she would be the one to vanquish him. She shivered, and not from the cold, remembering the price that had had to be paid for her victory. And she had not been the one to pay it. She swallowed hard against the lump of pain buried deep in her throat. Her parents never mentioned him, never referred to the events of that dreadful night, the night of her seventeenth birthday. They had never reproached or condemned, but she knew how they must feel. In demonstrating the strength of their love for her, they had also shown her a mirror-image of her own selfishness, an image reinforced by the counselling she had received while in hospital. She shuddered again, not wanting to recall those dark days and that stupid emotional teenage threat made out of jealousy and anger, without thought for its consequences.
Even now, the memory of how easily it could all have gone dreadfully wrong haunted her. She had been criminally stupid, selfishly determined to vanquish Kyle once and for all, to ruin his triumphant homecoming from Oxford, and to make her parents choose between them.
And she had succeeded, but at what price?
Never would she forget the reproach and fear in her father’s eyes when she’d woken up in her hospital room.
The indignity of having her stomach pumped out by the hospital staff had left her sore and exhausted, her brain not mentally capable of reasoning properly.
Her first croaked words had been, “Where’s Kyle?”
And they had had the compassion and the love not to tell her then that he had gone.
It had all been so silly, her resentment of the fact that he’d chosen to return home on the very day of her birthday, and thus, in her eyes, taken the limelight from her. She had refused to get changed for the special birthday dinner her parents had organised at a local hotel, and instead had stayed upstairs in her room sulking, sure that her father at least would come up and coax her to go down.
But it had been Kyle who had come up to see her. A Kyle older and far more mature than she’d remembered from his last visit, almost twelve months ago. During his last year at Oxford he had worked during his holidays and so they had not seen him, and she had managed to persuade herself that he was gone from their lives for ever, even though he wrote and telephoned regularly every week.
He had been curt and derisive with her, sparing her nothing, making her see herself as a spoiled, petulant child, determined to make everyone dance to her bidding. She had hated him even more for that, because she had seen in his coolly deliberate criticism the seeds of the truth, and that had hurt.
She had reacted wildly, close to the point of tears at what she considered her parents’ betrayal of her in choosing to let him come up and torment her, when they should have sent him packing and spent the evening coaxing her out of her black mood.
‘If you have the slightest bit of feeling for your parents, you’ll get dressed and come downstairs right now,’ Kyle had told her, getting off her bed. ‘It’s time you grew up, Heather, and stopped trying to use emotional blackmail to get what you want. OK, so you and I are always going to be poles apart, but for your parents’ sake we should at least try to appear to get on.’
She had hated him for his calm, reasoned argument, for the realisation that he was showing more concern for her parents than she was herself; and all the nebulous and real fears she had experienced in the years since he had become an adopted member of her family had exploded inside her.
She’d refused to get dressed, and in the end her parents and Kyle had gone out without her.
Nearly demented with rage and jealousy that this should happen on her birthday, she had flown to the medicine cabinet and extracted a full bottle of aspirin.
She hadn’t really wanted to die, just to punish those who should have loved her more than they did Kyle … much more.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Kyle had persuaded her parents to return home half-way through the meal, she would not be here today.
She’d been unconscious when they’d found her hysterical note. She had been rushed to hospital, and brought round by the unsympathetic and very angry hospital staff, who quite rightly felt that their time was far too valuable to be spent on one silly, jealous teenager, when there were so many other people in greater need of it.
She had said many bitter and angry things in her letter: accusing her parents of wishing she had been a boy, accusing Kyle of trying to steal their love away from her, and finally saying that, since she wasn’t wanted or loved, she might as well end her life.
During the counselling she had received after her release from hospital, she had come to understand that it had not been Kyle she had hated so much as the threat she’d thought he represented; and that it was her own nature that was responsible for her feelings, rather than anything he had done.
She had been angry and resentful at these assertions, and then later, when she had come to understand the reality of them, very penitent. But by then it was too late. Kyle had disappeared, leaving only a note saying that in the circumstances, although he would always love and be grateful to them, he felt it would be as well if he didn’t see her parents again.
His absence was never mentioned, but Heather knew how much her parents missed him. Her mother could have leaned on Kyle’s strength, while her father could have turned to him for financial advice. If only …
But life wasn’t a fairy story. It wasn’t possible to simply close one’s eyes and wish.
There was another way, though. Her mouth went dry at the very thought of it. It had been in her mind since her father had first been taken ill. She kept trying to dismiss it, to find another way out of her dilemma, but deep down inside she knew there was no other way.
Call it reparation for an old wrong, call it a test she had to face before being able to call herself fully adult, call it what you liked, it all boiled down to the same thing.
She had to go and see Kyle; she had to ask for his help on her parents’ behalf. She had to humble and abase herself before him; she had to have his help.
She was out for longer than she had intended, and when she got back the phone was ringing again. She raced to answer it, tensing as she heard her mother’s familiar but anxious voice.
‘It’s all right, darling. There’s not been any change. Your father is still holding his own, but Mr Frazer has confirmed that he will have to have an operation. There’s one surgeon in particular who’s highly skilled in this particular surgery, but he’s very much in demand. He’s in New York at the moment, apparently, but he’s due back at the end of the week. I’ve told Mr Frazer that we can’t possibly afford a private operation, but he’s asked me to talk to Mr Edmondson anyway. If only your father hadn’t had to let his medical insurance lapse.’
Heather clutched the receiver, echoing her mother’s thoughts, but money had been so tight this last year. She wondered if her mother knew about the bank mortgage her father had taken out on the house so that he would have some capital to inject into the business. The bank was already pressing for its payment, and once they knew her father was ill …
She shivered inwardly. Added stress at this particular moment in time was the very last thing her parents needed. She couldn’t forget that, when she’d found her father, he had been slumped across his desk where he had been studying a depressingly long list of outstanding debts.
‘I’m going to stay here tonight. The hospital has found me a room for as long as I need one. How are you … are you coping?’
How like her mother to be concerned for her, Heather reflected. How on earth had she ever managed to convince herself that her parents didn’t care? All right, so maybe they would both have loved another child, especially a boy. They had loved Kyle, she acknowledged that, but their love for him had never diminished their love for her, although she herself had been too jealous and angry to see that.
‘I’m fine. I’m working on the decorations for the church hall. I’ll have to go to our suppliers tomorrow, I’ve run out of some stuff I need,’ she added on sudden impulse. ‘I’ll be out for most of the day, so don’t worry if you can’t reach me.’
‘Well, just be careful if you’re driving,’ her mother warned her, accepting her lie at face value. ‘They’re forecasting heavy frost for tonight, with snowfalls in the morning.’
Heather felt guilty as she hung up. She hated lying, but she needed time for what she had in mind, and not just time to accomplish her self-imposed task, but time to psyche herself up into carrying it out.
CHAPTER TWO
HEATHER slept badly, waking well before dawn and then lying in bed watching the darkness give way to light. An ominous faint pink flush tinged the sky, a threat of snow to come. Her sleep had been tormented by dreams that were made up of old memories and fears: Kyle’s arrival, and the shock of his reality. He had been so much bigger than she had expected, and so very aggressive towards her. That aggression had been his only means of defence in an alien situation, she knew this now from her counselling. He had grown up in one of the toughest areas of London, deserted by his father and then left to the care of elderly grandparents when his mother had died at twenty-five from the results of an illegal abortion that went wrong. He had probably never known real kindness in his life before her parents came into it, she realised with hindsight. He was only one of several grandchildren cared for by his grandparents for one reason or another, and whereas the others had living parents he had not, and after his mother’s death his grandparents had been more than happy to hand him over into state care.
He had been in and out of several children’s homes since he was five, and had earned himself the reputation of being hard to control, and below normal intelligence.
What on earth had made her parents pick him out as a potential foster child, Heather still didn’t know. To talk about him now was to enter forbidden and mined territory. Her parents missed him still; she only had to remember how her father had asked for him in those first minutes after he had recovered consciousness to know that, but out of love and fear for her they pretended he did not exist. It was a constant ache within her that she had allowed her own insecurity and jealousy to be the cause of so much hurt to them, but it was too late to go back now, too late to re-write the past.
But not too late to alter the future, she reminded herself, shivering a little as thoughts she didn’t want to contemplate filled her mind.
Just as he had known she hated and resented him, so Kyle seemed to know that her parents genuinely loved him. It had soon been discovered that, far from being backward, he was actually of above average intelligence. Her father, delighted with the quickness of his brain, had organised special coaching for him; and when he won a scholarship to a local public school, they had been intensely proud of him.
Her last memory of him had been the fateful night of her seventeenth birthday. He had filled out during his time at university, his shoulders broad enough now to match his six-foot-odd physique. His skin had still been tanned from his working vacation abroad, and his black hair had curled strongly into his collar. He had brought into the femininity of her room a male essence that she had instinctively disliked. She could vividly remember how her whole body had almost quivered in response to it, as hatred for him filled her.
It was no good re-running the past, she couldn’t alter what lay there, and there was no escape to be found down those avenues. There was something she had to do, a debt she owed her parents that must be repaid. A debt of love and sacrifice which she was surely now mature enough to give back.
She looked down at the piece of paper beside her bed. Yesterday she had looked up the head office address of Bennett Enterprises. To her surprise, it was in Bath. Less far away than she had thought. She had written it down, but there had been no need, it was practically burned into her brain.
She had it all planned. Her stomach muscles tightened tensely. What if he refused to even speak to her? What if he wasn’t there?
Already she was looking for ways out, but for her parents’ sake she had to go on.
She showered and dressed, agonising over what to wear to create the best impression, to show him how much she had grown and matured.
In the end she plumped for an elegant black jersey wool dress. It had been expensive and looked it, she admitted ruefully, as she zipped it up. It had been a ‘thank you’ present from someone for whom she had done some interior decoration schemes some months ago. She had enjoyed the challenge of the unexpected task and had flatly refused to take any money. The dress had been a surprise present, and one she had not had the heart to give back. It suited her, showing off her lean, narrow, feminine waist and the soft curves of her body.
Over it she wore a loose silk-effect coat with huge silver buttons and odd lace appliqués. It was the handiwork of a fellow art college friend, and against the rich darkness of her red hair she knew the black looked good.
For once her curls had obeyed the dictates of her brush, and lay smooth and controlled. Too nervous to eat, she made herself a cup of coffee, estimating how long it would take her to get to Bath.
The van they used for company business was her only means of transport, as her mother had their one and only car. The van was old but reliable, and she was used to driving it.
The threatened snow started to fall just before she reached the outskirts of Bath, reminding her that the brakes on the van needed checking. Grimacing faintly at the thought of the additional expense, she found somewhere to park.
There was just time for a calming cup of tea before she bearded the lion in his den. She headed for a favourite tea shop with a Dickensian ambience that surrounded its customers like a comforting favourite blanket.
The waitress recognised her, and gave her a beaming smile. Most of the customers seemed to be tourists, mainly Americans, Heather judged from their accents.
She poured her tea and drank it piping hot, trying to suppress the ever-increasing weight of memories.
When Kyle had been accepted at Oxford she had taunted him with the fact that his London accent would make him a laughing stock. It made her shudder to realise what a bitch she had been, but she had still been a child, and children did not fight by the rules. In point of fact, by that time he had had little trace of the very shrill Cockney accent he had had on first coming to them. Kyle, giving as good as he got, had said nothing at the time but, during their evening meal that night, in full earshot of her parents, he had mimicked her own voice, complete with the soft Dorset burr she had picked up at school. Of course, she had been bitterly humiliated, just as he had intended. She had still had to learn in those days that Kyle could outmatch her in almost every skill there was.
She realised her cup was empty and gave a faint sigh. It couldn’t be put off any longer. Resolutely she got up and paid her bill.
Outside, it was still snowing. Her coat wasn’t really designed as a protection against winter weather, and she shivered a little as she hurried in the direction of Kyle’s offices.
She knew roughly where they were and, given that she was familiar with the nature of his work from the many newspaper articles published on him, she shouldn’t have been surprised by the carefully restored Georgian façade of the building, nor the discretion of the small brass plate outside, announcing that within were the offices of Bennett Enterprises Limited.
Even in his choice of name for his company Kyle had to be different, she thought wryly. Any other young man starting out as a speculative builder and developer would have chosen something like Bennett Builders Limited, but not Kyle; even then he had seen his building company only as a cornerstone on which to build and expand.
Now his company was known as one of the most forward-thinking and responsible building firms around. His architects were called in whenever important restoration work was required, his expertise sought when the planners were at their wits’ end on how to appease both the conservationists and the needs of an ever-growing population.
Recently he had branched out into sheltered accommodation for retired people, and by all accounts was proving as successful in that field as he had been in so many others.
At twenty-nine, he had a reputation for being one of the country’s shrewdest and richest entrepreneurs.
For almost a moment Heather dithered, longing to turn tail and run, and yet held there by a stubborn desire to do what she knew was the right thing. This was her chance to make amends. To show that finally she had grown up and that the lessons learned from the months of counselling she had undergone after her attempted suicide had brought some return. That finally she had come to accept that love could be shared; that Kyle never had and never could be a threat to her own place in her parents’ hearts.
In the end, it was the cold that drove her inside the building; that and the fact that she was attracting curious looks from busy passers-by.
Inside, her heels tapped noisily on the black and white marble-tiled floor; so noisily, in fact, that she was rather surprised that every one of the five doors leading off the rectangular entrance hall did not immediately open.
On either side of the hallway, between the two sets of doors, stood elegant console tables with matching mirrors hung over them. The Georgian period had always been a favourite of hers, and Heather recognised the value of the antique mirrors almost at a glance.
Attractive dried floral displays, in keeping with the winter season, decorated the tables, but it was only when she headed rather nervously for the stairs that one of the doors actually opened.
She must, she realised, as a uniformed commissionaire politely enquired her business, having triggered off some sort of silent alarm.
She told him rather hesitantly that she had come to see Kyle Bennett, and then felt ridiculously foolish when she was forced to admit she was here without making an appointment. Plainly, that was simply not the sort of thing one did when approaching the head of Bennett Enterprises, and she felt a tiny surge of well-remembered resentment start up inside her.
She almost turned to go, but then remembered why she had come here in the first place. Almost in desperation, she said hurriedly, ‘Look, if I could write a note, could it be sent up to Ky—to Mr Bennett?’
That small slip in almost using Kyle’s Christian name was making the commissionaire eye her even more suspiciously, and she stiffened when she realised that the man suspected that she was one of Kyle’s cast-off girlfriends.
Even as a teenager he’d seemed to have had a fatal fascination that attracted members of her sex, and since he had become successful the gossip columns had regularly mentioned his name, connecting it with a variety of pretty socialites and would-be models-cum-actresses.
Surely one glance at her had been enough to inform the commissionaire that she was scarcely the type to attract the great Kyle Bennett, Heather thought bitterly.
‘Mr Bennett knows my … parents,’ she told him coldly. ‘If I could just write that note …’
‘In here, miss.’
The commissionaire obviously believed her, because his manner relaxed slightly as he showed her into one of the empty downstairs rooms.
Obviously a waiting-room of sorts, it was decorated with watered-silk wall hangings, the Georgian panels painted in a chinoiserie design of birds and branches. Two deep-cushioned settees were covered in the same pastel watered silk as the walls, a cheerful open fire burned in what Heather suspected must be the original Adam grate, and the commissionaire escorted her over to a pretty early Victorian writing-desk, fully equipped with notepaper and pens.
She wrote quickly, before she could change her mind, feeling the desperation and dislike building up inside her as she did so. When she had finished, she studied what she had written for a second.
‘Kyle, I need to talk to you about Mum and Dad. Please don’t ignore this note.’
And she sighed it with her full name.
She sealed it before she could give way to any second thoughts, and handed it to the waiting man.
Once he had gone she was seized by a wave of dread, so strong that she was actually half-way to the door before she realised what she was doing. She couldn’t leave now. She had to see this thing through. What was she frightened of? Making a fool of herself in front of Kyle, laying herself open to his mockery and contempt? Was her own pride really so important that it mattered more to her than her father’s life?
Instantly ashamed, she went back into the room. The very worst thing Kyle could do would be to refuse to see her. It didn’t matter how much he humiliated her, as long as he agreed to pay for her father’s operation.
For the first time she contemplated what was likely to happen if her mission failed. The thought made her skin go cold, and she started to shiver.
The commissionaire, walking in and seeing her, frowned and asked anxiously, ‘Are you all right, miss?’
‘Yes, yes … I’m fine.’ Heather gave him a distracted smile. She was so tensed up that her body was aching with the strain she was imposing on it.
‘Mr Bennett said to show you up.’
Was she imagining that new tinge of respect in the man’s voice? Plainly the man thought she had been given something approaching an accolade, but she could not allow herself to relax yet. All she had achieved was one tiny step forward.
The lift was hidden away discreetly, behind another of the doors. As it slid smoothly upwards, Heather pressed a protesting hand to her taut stomach. She was only just beginning to realise the true meaning of the phrase ‘butterflies in the tummy’. The ones in hers seemed to be involved in a mad, frantic dance.
The lift stopped and, following the commissionaire’s directions, she walked down the elegantly decorated corridor to its solitary door.
It was opened before she reached it, and the young woman who motioned her in made Heather all too aware of the shortcomings in her own face and figure. This girl could have posed from the front cover of Vogue and drawn gasps of awe from everyone who saw her.
She was a perfect, frosted Nordic blonde of the type normally found in sophisticated American cities, cool and very sure of herself, her glance sweeping dismissively over Heather’s now tousled curls and clothes.
The simple little outfit she was wearing looked very like a Donna Karan, the silk jersey fluidly tracing every lush curve of her perfect figure. Her nails, medium length and impossibly glossy, reproached the lack of attention Heather paid to hers. It was impossible to keep them immaculate when she was working, and instinctively she tucked them away in her pockets.
‘Kyle said to show you straight in.’
Her smile revealed perfectly capped teeth, her accent pure Sloane Ranger, whose whole manner was designed to intimidate, Heather reflected as she followed her through an anteroom and up to a heavy panelled door.
She tapped on it and then pushed it open, standing aside so that Heather could go in.
It was furnished exactly as she might have expected, all stripped-down panels and a huge status-symbol desk, behind which she expected to find Kyle sitting.
Only he wasn’t. He was standing in front of the fire, engaged in the homely task of putting fresh logs on it.
He turned round as his secretary closed the door, dusting off his hands, his cool eyes taking their time in surveying her.
‘Well, this is a surprise.’
There was nothing in his manner to give her any clue as to how he was going to react to her request. She had half expected a sarcasm that wasn’t there, but the lack of it only made her skin prickle with increased nervousness.
She had forgotten how magnetic he was, how he dominated every situation he was in, simply by the power of his personality. No man who had made of his life what he had, from the very worst of beginnings, could have achieved so much without it, but she had forgotten, or overlooked, how awe-inspiring he could be.
The immaculate dark suit and crisp white shirt added to the image, of course. His tie was discreet, and toned beautifully with his suit. When he shot back his cuff and glanced frowningly at his watch, as though warning her that her time was limited, she caught a flash of gold against the snowy white, and the firelight played momentarily on the sinewy strength of his wrist, his flesh brown and firm, crisscrossed with a dark feathering of hairs. Her stomach somersaulted and she was shaken by a sudden surge of inexplicable reaction. She wanted to turn tail and run, and probably would have done so, if he hadn’t moved, fragmenting the image burned on her brain.
‘Your note said you wanted to see me about your parents.’
His voice hadn’t changed, although now all trace of his accent seemed to have been obliterated. It had almost gone that last time he had come home, she remembered, surprised by the sudden shudder the sound of it sent off deep inside her.
He had moved, so that he was blocking the heat of the fire from her, and suddenly she realised how cold she was. She could feel the shivers building up inside her, her fingers icy-cold, in direct contrast to the heat she could feel filling her cheeks and throat.
It was just tension, she told herself, that was all. And yet, even knowing what was causing her physical symptoms, she still found it very disconcerting to have to acknowledge the physical effect he was having on her.
‘It’s Dad,’ she blurted out, desperate to say what she had come to say and get away. ‘He’s very ill. He’s had a bad heart attack. The specialist says he needs open-heart surgery and a bypass operation.’
She looked directly at him for the first time since she had come into the room, her white pallor broken only by the two over-bright patches of hectic colour in her cheeks.
‘We can’t afford it, and the waiting list on the NHS is so long that Dad could well be dead before he can have the operation.’
‘What are you asking me for, Heather?’ Kyle’s eyebrows rose, his mouth twisting sardonically, and she felt the old familiar flare of dislike rise up inside her. Strange to think of that hard mouth being pressed to a woman’s in passion. She shuddered deeply, stunned by the uncharted direction of her thoughts, the heat in her face increasing. What stupid tricks were her mind playing on her now? Kyle’s sex life was the last thing she could be thinking about.
‘Shall I make a guess?’
The smooth drawl brought her back to reality, her head snapping back as she looked at him.
‘You want me to pay for the operation, is that it? You want money from me, in other words … a cash payment for the years you had to put up with me in your home. What price have you put on that intrusion, Heather, or haven’t you worked it out yet?’
She almost choked in her rage, aching to retaliate and fly at him as she had ached to do so often as a child. Why was it he had the power to rile her like this? Why was it he seemed to know exactly how to find her Achilles’ heel?
‘How much do you want, Heather?’
He had turned away from her, but she could still hear the weary cynicism in his voice, and suddenly she knew that nothing … nothing could make her beg from this man.
‘Nothing,’ she told him bitterly. ‘I don’t want anything from you, Kyle. I thought you cared about my parents. I know they still love you. I know that they still miss you, especially my father … You were the first person he asked for when he finally regained consciousness. He was confused, you see,’ she told him, her throat tight with pain and her own bitter remorse. ‘He had forgotten that you’d left us.’
The tears that filled her eyes flowed on to her face and she dashed them away impatiently, too caught up in her own feelings of inadequacy and pain to care any longer how she might demean herself.
‘They love you, Kyle, and I love them, and when I saw my father lying there in intensive care I wished with all my heart that I could wipe out the past, that I could …’ She broke off, horrified with herself and what she was betraying, but it was too late.
‘Go on,’ Kyle demanded grimly. ‘What did you wish, Heather? That you hadn’t been such a stupid, spoiled little brat? That you hadn’t nearly destroyed your own life out of spite and jealousy?’
Anguish made her veil her eyes from him as the memories she had been fighting to suppress flooded back. It had always been like this between them. The very air in the room seemed fraught with tension and dislike. Why? They were both adults now. She knew that she had been more at fault than Kyle, but surely he could see, just as she had come to see, that each of them had been equally jealous of the other.
‘My parents need you, Kyle,’ she told him quietly, pride strengthening her voice as she added, ‘not because you can pay for Dad’s operation. If either of them knew I was here now, they would be furious. No, they need you because they miss you; because they need someone to lean on.’ She took a deep breath and added shakily, meeting his brooding look head on, ‘They need you because they love you.’
She couldn’t interpret the look he gave her. The silence seemed to last for ever, broken only by the soft hiss of the burning logs. She looked blindly towards the window, sure that she had failed and that he was about to throw her out. Outside, it was still snowing and she shivered. What was the matter with her? She shouldn’t be so cold. She felt hollow and empty inside, and she frowned, trying to remember when she had last had something to eat.
Her muscles ached from the control she was imposing on them; if she relaxed even for a second she would be quivering like a tormented child.
‘I’ll ask you again,’ Kyle said softly. ‘What is it you want from me, Heather?’
He hadn’t thrown her out; she could hardly believe it. Relief made her muscles go weak, the hiss of the logs sank echoingly in her ears, and her own voice seemed to reach her through a vast echoing chamber as she replied huskily, ‘I want you to go and see Dad … You could pretend you’d heard about the heart attack from someone else. Please, Kyle … It would mean so much to him, to both of them. They miss you and I can’t talk to them about it. They … they don’t want to hurt me.’
She made the admission huskily, hating what she must be betraying to him, but although she tensed herself against it, strangely he made no attempt to probe deeper.
‘And you want me to offer to pay for him to have his operation privately?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed baldly, ‘but not because I think you owe them anything, Kyle. What they gave you, they gave freely. If you want to think of it in terms of a payment, then tell yourself it’s payment to me for finally admitting what I’ve known for years, and refused to admit. That my parents love and need you, possibly more than they love and need me.’
There, she had said it. She couldn’t endure any more. She couldn’t wait for his reaction, for his possible cruelty. She turned and headed blindly for the door, desperately trying to blink away her tears.
‘Heather.’
She winced and cried out beneath the fierce pressure of his fingers as they dug into her shoulders.
‘For God’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you. You can stop bristling like an angry cat,’ Kyle told her curtly. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘You already have,’ Heather retorted shakily, as he released her. Her shoulder felt bruised where he had grabbed hold of her, and as she moved it experimentally she saw him frown.
‘You’re almost skin and bone,’ he told her flatly. ‘What the devil have you been doing to yourself? Don’t tell me you’ve discovered anorexia …’
The gibe hurt, all the more so because it could have been so pertinent. Had the slimmers’ disease received its present-level publicity when she was a teenager, she could all too easily have used it as a form of blackmail against her parents, she suspected. Trust Kyle to see that and turn it to his own advantage.
‘I’m an adult now, Kyle,’ she told him stiffly. ‘I don’t play stupid games like that.’
He studied her in a way that was very unnerving.
‘Yes, I forgot. You opted to undergo counselling after …’
‘After I stupidly pretended I wanted to commit suicide, and it nearly all went wrong? You can say the words, you know, Kyle. That’s part of the therapy. I don’t try to hide away from what I did, and yes, you’re quite right, I did opt to undergo counselling, and it did teach me a lot about myself and my motives, as well as those of others …’
If he realised she was trying to retaliate, and break through his own armour, he did not betray it.
‘You’re too thin,’ he repeated, ignoring her comment. ‘You’ll have to be careful, otherwise you’re going to end up looking haggard. How old are you now? Twenty-four … five?’
He knew damn well she was only twenty-three, Heather thought bitterly, and if he liked his women as lushly curved as the elegant doll in his outside office, then yes, she was too thin.
She said what she was thinking without monitoring her words, and was surprised by the attractiveness of the amused smile that slashed across his face. She had forgotten those creases either side of his mouth, had forgotten how maddeningly, physically compelling he could be when he wished. Possibly because he had never bothered to even try to charm her, she acknowledged wryly.
‘She’s quite something, isn’t she?’ he agreed appreciatively, and then asked blandly, ‘Is there anyone serious in your life at the moment, Heather, or are you still playing at pretending to have a career?’
The taunt hurt, particularly since she herself had always felt that her father had manufactured her job for her. It made no difference that she had flair and a definite artistic talent, she still worked for her father and was paid a salary the business could not really afford.
‘I came here to ask you to go and see my father, Kyle,’ she told him coolly. ‘Not to discuss my personal life. If you won’t …’
She made to walk towards the door and then faltered when he made no move to stop her.
‘Still the same old Heather,’ he drawled cynically. ‘Still trying to use emotional blackmail.’
Instantly, all her good intentions deserted her; her temper, always quick, flared to red-hot heat and she said fiercely, ‘That’s not true. I was not trying to blackmail you.’ She turned round quickly, too quickly, she realised dizzily, as she felt the room start to spin and fade ominously around her.
She was aware of Kyle grabbing hold of her, and then forcing her down into one of the fireside chairs. She even heard him cursing her and calling her a stupid little fool, but for once she felt too confused to protest at the sensation of his hands on her body, pushing away her coat, reaching behind her to release the zip of her dress as he yanked her forward, so that her head flopped down, and she could feel the coldness of the air against her naked back.
The whole affair could only have lasted seconds. No sooner had Kyle pushed her head down than she felt the dizziness start to clear and full awareness return. She sat up immediately, furious to discover that he had lowered her zip so much that she couldn’t reach it without contorting herself.
‘Stop struggling … I’ll do it for you.’
She tensed beneath the cool firmness of his hand on her back. She could feel his breath against her skin, and to her shock the warmth of it raised a betraying rash of small goose-bumps.
‘No holiday this year,’ he remarked casually as he closed the zip for her. ‘Or don’t you believe in exposing such pale skin to the sun’s rays?’
His comment, although impersonal, threw her; she wasn’t used to the intimacy of having a man’s hands on her body, and his comment seemed a further intrusion into her privacy.
‘My skin doesn’t tan. I should have thought you’d remember that,’ she snapped bitterly, remembering the one summer she had tried to outdo his almost permanent golden-brown skin, and had practically given herself third degree burns.
Her body had swelled up and her skin had flamed painful scarlet. And, as if that hadn’t been enough, she had been diabolically sick, and had had to stay indoors for almost a week with the curtains closed, and her mother constantly applying calamine lotion.
‘Your skin will be like leather by the time you’re forty,’ she added acidly.
‘While yours will still feel like the most expensive kind of silk velvet.’
It took several seconds for his comment to sink in, and when it did she turned and stared open-mouthed at him, her shock registering in the rounded darkness of her amber eyes.
‘What’s wrong, Heather? Surely you’re used to men commenting on the delicate quality of your skin. Your lovers …’
His voice was having a curious effect on her senses. She had never had him speak to her in that soft, caressing tone before, and apprehension flared to life inside her as she tried to reject its effect.
The images he was conjuring up shocked her. She felt tongue-tied with a mixture of embarrassment and fury, and although she was unaware of it her eyes had darkened as they always did when she was either disturbed or afraid.
‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t come here to talk about my private life, Kyle …’
‘As I understand it, there isn’t much to talk about.’
He straightened up and carried on before she could digest the full import of his words. ‘I will go and see your father, Heather. When I’ve seen him, you and I will probably need to talk again. Are you free to lunch with me tomorrow? I have to fly to the States the day after to see a potential client.’
What could she say? She had to agree, and she was half-way back to the van before she realised exactly what Kyle had said to her before making that lunch appointment. She stopped dead in her tracks, aware of the black looks her unexpected action was earning her from people forced to avoid colliding with her.
How could Kyle know anything about her personal life? It had been six years since they had last met, and yet he had spoken with such authority, such confidence—almost as though he knew all there was to know about her. But how could that be? Unless … unless he had been keeping tabs on them. She frowned. But if that had been the case he would already have known about her father. Frowning now, she tried to recall if he had shown any reaction to her announcement, but Kyle had always been good at keeping his feelings to himself. Besides, she had been far too tense and wrought up to pay much attention to how he was looking.
She had achieved what she had hoped for, or at least the first part of it. She ought to be feeling triumphant and relieved, but she wasn’t. She didn’t want Kyle Bennet back in their lives, not in any capacity; and yet, for her parents’ sake, she knew she would have to endure him. If he allowed himself to become a part of their lives. There was always the chance that he would go back on his word, or perhaps just visit her father, and leave it at that.
Whatever happened, her parents must never know that she had prompted his visit. They would hate that. No, that must remain her secret, hers and Kyle’s. It gave her an odd feeling to know that she shared something with him from which her parents were excluded.
CHAPTER THREE
THE snow, which had not lain particularly deeply on the road in Bath itself, thickened once Heather was clear of the city, although fortunately it had stopped falling. The van was old and inclined to be temperamental, and by the time she got home Heather was suffering from the most excruciating tension headache.
She knew that she ought to have something to eat, but the thought of food was totally nauseating. Instead, she made herself a strong cup of coffee and sat down in the old kitchen chair that the cats thought of as their special preserve. Hilda, the oldest of them, a farm tabby of immense dignity, glared balefully at her and then vented her ire on Meg, spitting at the dog as she sat down at Heather’s side.
Was she cushioned from reality living here with her parents? It was an almost idyllic existence for anyone who felt the way she did about the countryside; her work was not particularly arduous, and certainly could never be compared with the rat-race suffered by those who had to commute every day to cities like London. Without putting his scorn into words, Kyle had still managed to imply that he found her contemptible; or was it just her own intense sensitivity where he was concerned that made her question herself like this? Kyle had remarked that the business was barely able to support her parents, never mind providing a salary for her as well. That had been quite true, but what he could not know was that recently she had found herself shouldering more and more of the responsibility for the company. Her father had complained of feeling tired, and now she berated herself for not questioning him more deeply, for not seeing that his lack of enthusiasm was a pointer to his physical vulnerability.
She wasn’t a complete fool. She knew that the business was slowly going downhill, that the work was going to be too much for her father, and yet, without the business, how could her parents possibly survive?
Her anxiety drove her to abandon her comfortable chair in the kitchen and go instead to the small, cold backroom they used as an office. Once there, she opened the desk drawer that held the company’s books.
It took the lack of light in the small room to make her realise how long she had spent there. Raising her head, she massaged the back of her neck tiredly. It made no difference which way she did the calculations; they were still perilously close to the edge of bankruptcy. Why had her father never told her about the mortgage he had taken out on the house? She closed her eyes, alarmingly near to tears, longing for someone to confide in and hand her worries over to, and yet at the same time knowing that there was nothing anyone could do to help.
It was almost four o’clock. Soon her mother would be ringing, and she had promised that she would go round to the village hall tonight and help to put up the decorations.
Almost on cue, the phone rang, but to her shock it wasn’t her mother on the other end of the line, but Kyle Bennett. She was so stunned that it was several seconds before she could speak.
‘Not still sulking with me because I told you a few home truths, are you?’ Kyle asked her dulcetly, and instantly her fatigue vanished and anger burned through her.
‘You’ve got the wrong woman, Kyle,’ she told him crisply. ‘I don’t sulk. What do you want?’
‘I’ve got a couple of tickets for the Phantom. I thought you might like to see it.’
The total unexpectedness of his invitation took her breath away. She remembered reading somewhere that tickets for the fantastic Phantom of the Opera show were impossible to find and, if she was honest with herself, she would have loved to go, but not with Kyle.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she told him, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. ‘I’ve got something else on tonight.’
There was a long pause, during which Heather had time to ask herself why Kyle should want to take her out and to wonder exactly what sort of macabre game he was playing with her. Then he said, sardonically, ‘I see … where will you finish your evening off, I wonder, his place or yours? It must cramp your style, surely, living at home. Or do you make sure that all your lovers …’
She had slammed down the receiver before she had thought about what she was doing. She was literally shaking with rage and chagrin. How dared Kyle infer that she was making use of her father’s illness to bring a man home? How dared he imply …
Shakily she sat down, trying to calm herself. He was not deliberately trying to taunt her, she told herself, he was simply assuming that she lived her life in the same way that he lived his.
Not even the peacefulness of her tea-time walk with Meg had the power to fully restore her to normal.
Her mother rang when she got back to say that her father was making slow progress. They chatted for a while and then she rang off. As she replaced the receiver, Heather frowned. There was a note of constraint in her mother’s voice, almost as though she was concealing something from her. Her heartbeat increased in tempo, her skin chilling with fear. Could her father be worse than she thought? She looked at the phone, longing to pick it up and call her mother back, and yet knowing she couldn’t.
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