by Pamela Fudge
She was suddenly sure that he had known, and that he had wanted it, engineered it, even. But why, if he didn't really want her at all - was it all really just to keep the fans away?
He didn't have to make her fall in love with him, she told herself bitterly, and then she accepted with a sinking heart that he did it all the time. It was his job, purely and simply, as a singer of romantic songs, to make sure that his audience fell in love with him every time they watched him at a concert, and every time they played one of his records.
A professional heart-breaker, no less, and she had allowed herself to fall for a polished, perfectly tuned performance - and the worst of it was that it was far too late for her to turn the clock back, even if she wanted to.
How long she sat there, staring into space, Roz wasn't really sure. Her feelings ran the gamut of sorrow, anger, regret, and quite often, longing found its insinuating way in.
How can you still want him? she asked herself. He's made it abundantly clear that he used you to suit his own purposes, and yet you still hope, against all the odds, that he will suddenly confess that he returns your love.
Well, she sat up straight, and pulled her shoulders back with grim determination, if he's waiting for me to fall sobbing at his feet, begging for crumbs of affection from his table, he'll very surely have a hell of a long wait.
All trace of grief was meticulously erased with the help of her usual make-up, and a generous application of concealer expertly applied beneath her eyes. Dressing in a bright cerise pink that clashed defiantly with her hair, she felt quite confident that no-one would know that beneath it all lay a broken heart.
Roz hadn't expected to have to face Sam quite so soon, but as she approached the kitchen the rumble of his deep voice announced his presence, and caused her to halt for a moment in her tracks. Almost immediately she forced her reluctant feet to move forward, telling herself sternly that this was no time to be faint-hearted.
Something was wrong. She sensed it, even as she put a trainer clad foot over the threshold, and one look at her great-aunt's stricken face confirmed it.
She looked to Sam for the reason, and there she found it. She knew what it was before he even opened his mouth to explain, in a hard tone full of the dislike for her that she could see so clearly written in his eyes, 'I've told Ellen that, to our regret, we have decided that it would be prudent to end our engagement. Despite the evidence to the contrary, marriage is no longer what either of us wants and that,' he flicked a dismissive finger towards the cuttings on the table, ‘was no more than a farewell kiss.’
He sounded so pompous, and so unlike Sam that she found herself staring at him in amazement. It sounded just like a statement to the press, but of course, she reminded herself, that was just what it would eventually become.
How could he? Without taking the time to discuss the wisdom of making such a move, without even waiting for her presence to try and soften the blow, he had once more, gone his own sweet way, with no thought for the consequences that he had urged her to consider such a short time ago.
She bit back the angry retort that so desperately needed to be said, and without so much as another glance in his direction she turned all of her attention to Aunt Ellen.
'I'm so sorry,' she wrapped her arms tightly around the older woman's frail body, and she promised herself that if the shock should cause her aunt any harm she, personally, would see that Sam paid dearly for what he had done today.
'I must admit it's a bit of a blow,' Aunt Ellen sounded so unlike her usual self, as if she had had all the 'go' knocked out of her. 'So unexpected - after all that,' she indicated the newspaper cuttings still strewn across the table, ‘which now, of course, you’ve explained.’
Roz looked over the frizzy white head at the black and white printed proof of her own foolishness. She should have one framed, she told herself hardily, as a permanent reminder to never again let her heart rule her head. Had it really only been just over a week ago that she had been planning a sensible and realistic future...?
With a superhuman effort she forced her attention back to her aunt, and with a freezing glare in Sam's direction, she said, 'You shouldn't have been told like that. It was cruel and unkind.'
She watched the dark flush climb up over his rigid jaw with a strong sense of satisfaction at having managed to hit him where it hurt, at last. What on earth had made him suddenly decide that the time was right, after all that he had said to her to the contrary? Roz had a horrible suspicion that he had actually begun to think that she, like the young girl at the hotel restaurant, was about to make a nuisance of herself and that he wanted her out of his life before she did.
'However,' she went on, and there was no hesitation in her voice, 'Sam was right in that you did have to be told, and if he could have been a little more - er, sensitive - about it, well, it's too late for regrets now. I for one, have none. It was all a mistake from the start.'
The eyes that met hers over her aunt's head were as cold and hard as pebbles. All trace of the Sam she had known for seven long and friendly years seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Roz suppressed a shiver, and wondered if he had been a figment of her imagination all along.
'There's no reason for us not to remain friends,' Sam said suddenly, and her head came up as she stared at him in patent disbelieve.
He wanted them to be friends? He could think of “no reason” that they shouldn't be? She bit back the angry retort that threatened to tumble from her lips, and instead she offered, for her aunt's benefit and to get her away from Sam's immediate vicinity, 'I'll put the kettle on. I think we all need a cup of tea,' and one of us, she added silently really needs to have it poured right over his good-looking head, to show him just what I think of his stupid suggestion.
The thought, however childish, made Roz feel a whole lot better. She even managed a slight twist of her lips in appreciation, as she watched the water gush into the kettle she was holding - only to drop it with a clatter into the sink when Sam appeared silently at her side and put a hand on her arm.
'Don't you dare to touch me,' she hissed with such venom in her tone that his hand dropped immediately, and he took a good step back.
He recovered quickly, and offered, 'I thought we should try to get along - for Ellen's sake,' he kept his tone low and even, and despite all that had gone wrong, Roz wanted to cry out to him, to plead, What about our sake, Sam? What about that?
Instead, she flashed him a brilliant and totally false smile, and agreed, 'Of course - for Aunt Ellen's sake.'
Roz looked in her aunt's direction quickly, concerned that she might have overheard their heated exchange, and she caught the older woman looking at them in such a strange - almost knowing - way. In a minute, it was gone, and she wondered if she had imagined it and, if not, what it meant. Then, she shrugged and busied herself setting the cups out on the tray.
'Extra sugar for you,' Roz ordered, with effected cheerfulness in her hearty tone. 'I know the abrupt end of our engagement has been a shock to you after so long, but it really is for the best.'
'Oh, yes,' Aunt Ellen took the cup with a surprisingly steady hand, 'I'm sure that it is.'
She sounded so untroubled that Roz stared at her and then found Sam doing the same with a mystified look in his eyes until, with a shrug, he reached for his own cup and turned away. They had obviously been worrying about nothing where Aunt Ellen’s feelings were concerned.
It was a struggle to keep any sort of conversation going, and the chiming of the doorbell was a welcome interruption in Roz' opinion. She jumped up, almost merrily to answer it, offering, 'I'll get it.'
'Front door,' her aunt indicated, 'probably that late guest, so show him into the front room while I fetch my visitor's book.'
Relief at her escape from an atmosphere that could be cut into thick slices, made Roz pin an extra wide smile on her face. Whoever it was, she told herself, would be a more than welcome diversion from stone-faced Sam Lawrence and she threw the door open with a th
eatrical flourish.
'Hello, Rosalind. Aren't you going to ask me in?'
To say she was speechless was an understatement, to say her jaw dropped could never have described the way it almost hit the carpeted floor as she stared in amazement at the fair man standing on the front step.
Only Aunt Ellen's, 'Who is it, dear?' finally put words into her open mouth, and gave her back the good manners that had momentarily deserted her.
'It's for me,' she returned in a shaky voice and to the man, she said, 'Hello, Andrew. You'd better come inside.'
CHAPTER TEN
Roz found herself totally unnerved by the unexpected sight of Andrew Reynolds standing, as large as life, on her Aunt Ellen's front doorstep. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was quite unsure how to proceed.
She wanted to ask him why he had come, but she was very much afraid that she already knew the answer to that and the question remained unspoken between them.
How odd it seemed when she realised that if Andrew had turned up only the day before, she would have been thrilled and delighted to see him. However, it was a long, long time since yesterday, she acknowledged, and too much water had flowed under too many bridges for anything to have remained the same.
Somehow, she found the sense from somewhere to usher him into the front room, and to see him seated before she made her escape by insisting on bringing him tea that he was clearly going to have no interest in drinking.
Her relief at finding only Aunt Ellen in the kitchen was immense. She somehow knew that the two men were not going to get along at all, and the longer she could postpone the inevitable meeting, the better she would be pleased.
'A friend of yours, is it?' Aunt Ellen looked up from chopping onions. Her eyes were quite dry and bright with curiosity.
'Yes,' Roz tried to sound enthusiastic, 'that’s right, a friend - from London.'
'How nice,' the older woman smiled encouragingly. 'Why don't you bring him on through? Not very welcoming to leave him on his own, is it?'
Roz had a sudden cosy picture of Andrew drinking tea at the kitchen table, with Aunt Ellen chatting away and chopping onions right next to him. She shuddered, imagining the horrified look dawning slowly on his face as he became aware that the smell would be seeping steadily into the expensive fabric of his Armani suit.
'I'll take him some tea, have a chat, and then bring him in to meet you,' she promised, setting out her aunt's Poole Pottery china self-consciously, and trying not to notice the raised eyebrows as she did so. That particular china was only for royalty, and the like, as far as Aunt Ellen was concerned - even her paying guests only had their meals and drinks served in second best china cups and saucers .
'There are sugar lumps in the cupboard.'
Roz looked at her aunt quickly, but she could detect no sarcasm in her tone, or in her expression, though she knew that in the older woman's book, sugar lumps and the best china went hand in hand so to speak.
'Andrew doesn't take sugar,' she said evenly, and feeling totally embarrassed, no matter how much she told herself that there was no need, she began to slice a lemon.
Not everyone prefers their tea strong, liberally milked and sugared, from cheap and cheerful china, she told herself, as she carried the tray through to the front room and set it down carefully on an occasional table. Her efforts were all wasted, as she had known quite well that they would be. Andrew left the tea to go cold in the cup.
Across the tray of cooling tea they viewed one another for long silent moments. Roz had time to study minutely the man she had been determined, so recently, was all she had ever wanted in a husband.
Nothing but the best - was Andrew's motto, and it showed. From the top of his expensively cut fair hair, to the tips of his glossy, hand-stitched shoes, his whole appearance shrieked money.
Roz had always been impressed with the way he looked, and went to considerable effort, not to mention expense, to dress and behave with the good taste and decorum that would compliment him in the way he had always expected, and almost demanded of her.
Today, she found that his appearance no longer stirred her to admiration, and the critical looks he directed at her own casual clothing - that once would have sent her running to change - affected her not at all. She was in Dorset and on holiday, right now, as she didn't need to remind herself. She no longer felt the pressure upon her, as she did in London, to look like a fashion plate during the waking hours of the day.
The silence lengthened between them, as Andrew waited with growing impatience, for Roz to speak first. She found that she was equally determined to let him begin, just to see what his reaction had been to a tabloid bomb being dropped into his carefully laid plans.
She watched him carefully school his thin features into what he obviously, and probably very fondly, believed was a reasonable expression. He looked, she thought, much as he did when he was expecting unfavourable news from the stock-exchange.
'I think,' he said ponderously, 'that you owe me an explanation,' he withdrew a creased copy of an all too familiar newspaper from the large envelope he had been carrying, and spread it with a look of distaste on the table beside the cooling tea, 'about this.'
'I know that I do,' Roz suddenly felt very sorry for him, 'and I sincerely apologise for the embarrassment that it must have caused you.'
'I simply can't,' he tapped the front page photo, 'believe that you would ever behave in such a way, and in such a brazen fashion that the gutter press could create this sort of a scandal out of it. Did you give no thought at all to what this,' he tapped the page again, 'would do to me, should it get out in the media that you and I are also involved?'
Andrew's pale city skin was flushed with annoyance, and Roz was suddenly quite sure that only his pride was hurt.
'Is it the fact that I was kissing another man that most upsets you?' she asked evenly, 'or the fact that I made the front page while I was doing it?'
He had the grace to look a little uncomfortable, and, she noticed, he couldn't quite meet her steady gaze. Roz was beginning to feel as if the scales were dropping from her eyes with monotonous regularity, and she wondered why the truth hadn't always been so readily available to her.
'Well, of course,' he blustered, 'I wasn't too happy about seeing my future wife in the arms of another man, but I quite realise that it must have been a moment of madness on your part. A country and western singer,’ his tone couldn’t have been more disparaging if he had tried, ‘is hardly your style, now is it, darling?'
He made it sound as if Sam's not inconsiderable talent was worth slightly less than the ability to unblock a sink, and Roz felt her hackles rise immediately, as she plunged in to defend him.
'Sam happens,' she informed him icily, 'to be fast becoming one of the top singers in his field, both here and in America, writing and performing all his own music, and,' she added, as if it clinched the matter, and it probably did where she was concerned, 'he happens to be a very good friend of mine, and has been for a number of years.'
Roz didn't even notice that Sam had been promoted from the role of the bad guy in her life, or that Andrew was rapidly putting himself in that unfortunate position.
'Friends?' Andrew pursed his lips. 'Yes, I see. So where, then, did these - these – fleet-street hacks get the impression that you are in a – and I quote – “a long term relationship” with the man?'
Roz felt heat burn her face like fire, and she quickly hid her hand, with the ring on it, behind her back. She knew that he had her, fairly and squarely, there. She was definitely in the wrong, and for all that she wanted to argue in the face of his very obvious disapproval, she knew that she really had no defence against his righteous and very reasonable, in the circumstances, accusations.
She had only just opened her mouth to begin a very lengthy and complicated explanation, when to her overwhelming relief, her aunt put her frizzy white head round the door, and complained bitterly, 'It's really too bad of you, Rosalind, to keep your friend shut away in h
ere and not have the good manners to introduce him.'
'I'm so sorry,' she leapt to her feet, and hugged her aunt gratefully, 'how rude of me. This,' she indicated the scowling young man, 'is Andrew Reynolds, a colleague of mine from London. We work for the same firm, you know. Andrew, this is my great-aunt Ellen. You've heard me mention her often.'
Roz was depending on Andrew's inbred civility, and to her relief he didn't let her down, rising to his feet he proffered a well-manicured hand, and said, with the politest smile she could have hoped for, 'How do you do - er, Miss...?'
'It’s Mrs, but call me Ellen, dear,' her aunt encouraged, looking suitably impressed at the immaculate appearance of the unexpected visitor, 'everybody does. Ah,' she caught sight of the newspaper on the table, 'I see you've seen the pictures then. I thought they were very good, myself, but,' she shrugged her bony shoulders, 'I seem to be the only one. Now, tell me, what exactly do you do in the city?'
She settled herself comfortably on the sofa, and patted the seat beside her encouragingly. Andrew sat, looking so totally bemused and bewildered that Roz had to hide a grin. She'd have been willing to bet that Andrew had never met anyone like Aunt Ellen in his life before.
'I'll wash up these tea things,' she offered and fled, grinning widely, to the kitchen.
Well, she admonished herself minutes later, as she leisurely washed the precious china in a bowl of warm water, I don't know what you think is so funny. Not only did you choose the wrong man in the first place, but you've made it very certain that neither one of the two will want anything to do with you ever again - or any other decent man, come to that.
She wondered how long Andrew would stay - probably as short a time as it took to listen to her explanation, and to tell her that he wouldn't want to marry her now if she paid him to, if she was any judge. She found herself pondering on why the thought troubled her so little when only a short time ago she would have been devastated.
