by Penny Jordan
Then they had shared a breakfast of kisses and bagels in her bed.
Then…
But this was now and instinct told her that the reason for his absence from her bed had nothing to do with any plans he had to surprise her with early morning flowers or other gifts of love.
She could hear footsteps on the stairs leading to her bedroom but she knew, even before the door was pushed open and Honor’s dark head appeared around it, that they did not belong to Silas.
‘Are you awake?’ Honor asked her.
Forcing a smile, Verity nodded.
‘I wanted you to sleep with me last night,’ Honor told her reproachfully as she ran across the room and scrambled up onto the bed next to Verity, snuggling up to her.
Automatically Verity reached out her arm to draw her close and hold her. Her body, which such a short space of time ago had felt so good, so female, so loved, now felt cold and empty, her muscles aching and tense. But it wasn’t Honor’s fault that she wasn’t her father.
Verity could hear fresh footsteps on the stairs but, unlike Honor’s, these stopped halfway and she heard Silas call out, ‘Honor…Breakfast…’
‘Coming, Dad,’ Honor called back, scrambling off the bed and starting to head for the door, and then unexpectedly turning round and rushing back to fling her arms around Verity’s neck and give her a brief little girl kiss.
Blinking fiercely, Verity watched her leave. The fact that Silas had not chosen to come into her room had told her everything she needed to know about how he felt about last night, as though she needed any extra underlining of the fact that it had meant so little to him.
Fresh tears welled and once again she forced them back, but these had nothing to do with the tenderness she had felt at Honor’s kiss.
She might only have the haziest memory of how she and Silas had come to be making love last night—she could remember waking up to the touch of his fingers on her face, the warmth of his body next to hers. Presumably he must have had some reason to come up to her room.
She might not know what that was, but she certainly knew why he had made love to her—made love! Had sex, she told herself brutally. She might not be able to remember what had brought him to her bed, but she could certainly remember what had kept him there. She couldn’t have made her feelings, her need of him, more plain if she’d written them on a ten-foot banner, she told herself bitterly. He’d have to be made of granite not to have taken what she had so stupidly put on offer for him.
Sexual desire, sexual frustration, could do all manner of things to a man—even make him feel the need for a woman he did not like, never mind love, and that was quite plainly what had happened last night. Silas had used her to vent his sexual frustration. No wonder he hadn’t stayed with her. No wonder he was keeping his distance from her this morning.
The plain, ugly truth was that he had used her and she had let him—and not merely let him but positively encouraged him. And to think that when she’d woken up she had thought…felt…believed…
Would she never learn? She had believed once before that he had loved her, cared for her, about her, and she had been wrong. Now, here she was, eleven years down the line, still hoping, still feeling…still loving.
Verity closed her eyes. No. She did not still love him. She could not still love him. She would not still love him. She opened them again and stared dully at the wall. Just who did she think she was kidding? She loved him all right!
Drearily she got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Coming back to town had been a total mistake. And she was not even convinced any more about her real motives in having done so.
Or perhaps she was. Had it been at the back of her mind all the time that she would see Silas? Even though she knew he was married to someone else?
She gave a small, hollow groan. She had come back because this was her home, the place where she had grown up.
Once she had dressed, reluctantly she made her way downstairs.
When she pushed open the kitchen door, Honor was seated at the table eating her cereal whilst Silas stood at the counter making coffee.
As she walked in he turned and looked at her and then looked quickly away again.
‘I’ve just checked with the garage. They’re going to make picking up your car a priority,’ he told her, his attention on the kettle he was refilling, asking her briefly, ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please,’ Verity responded. Did he really need to ask? Had he really forgotten how he had teased her in the past about her urgent need for her morning caffeine, or was he underlining the fact that, although her preferences mattered, they were of as little importance to him as she was herself.
‘I’ll drop you off at your place when I take Honor to school,’ he told her as he made her coffee.
‘Toast…cereal?’
‘No, nothing, thanks,’ Verity told him coolly.
As he brought the coffee to her she deliberately turned away from him. He smelled of soap and coffee and her stomach muscles churned frantically as he stood next to her. Inside she was trembling and she had to wrap both her hands around the mug of coffee he had brought her, just in case he might see how much he was affecting her.
’When are we going to do the shopping for the dinner party?’ Honor was keen to know.
They were in Silas’ car on the way to Honor’s school, Verity seated in the front passenger seat next to Silas, at Honor’s insistence and very much against her own inclinations. The dinner party! Verity had forgotten all about that.
‘That’s enough, Honor,’ Silas told her crisply as he pulled up at the school gate.
As she hopped out of the car Honor said, ‘Look, there’s my friend Catherine. I want her to meet you,’ and then she was tugging open Verity’s door and leaving Verity with no alternative other than to unfasten her seat belt and go with her to where the young girl was standing watching.
‘Catherine, this is Verity,’ Honor announced importantly. Catherine was smaller and fairer than Honor and it was plain to see which of them was the leader of their twosome, Verity acknowledged as Catherine gave her a shy look and started to giggle.
‘Goodbye.’ Honor reached up and gave Verity a fierce hug before telling her, ‘And don’t forget, will you, about the dinner party?’
Verity watched her race out of sight with her friend before turning to walk back to the car. Bending down, she told Silas through the open window, ‘I can walk home from here, thank you…’
And before he could say anything she turned smartly on her heel and proceeded to do just that.
She wasn’t going to give him another opportunity to humiliate her by keeping his distance from her, she decided proudly, as she lifted her chin and willed herself not to look back at him.
As he watched Verity walking away through his rear-view mirror, Silas hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.
He was the one who was in danger of being hurt, rejected, used, so how come it was Verity who was behaving as though he were the one treating her badly?
He had known all along that last night had been a mistake and there, this morning, was the proof of it. Verity was treating him as distantly as though they were two strangers. It was perfectly obvious that she regretted what had happened between them, and that she intended to make it very plain to him that neither it nor he meant anything to her. Last night she might have wanted him, but this morning…
‘But you promised…’ Honor insisted, tears clustering on her lashes as she stared across the table at her father.
‘Honor. I’ve just explained. I don’t have the time to get involved in giving dinner parties and—’
‘Verity’s going to do it…’
‘Verity is far too busy with her own life to want to get involved in ours,’ Silas told her curtly. ‘And, whilst we’re on the subject, I want you to promise me that you won’t go round there any more. Verity has her own life to live.’
Watching the tears run pathetically down his daughter’s face,
Silas cursed silently to himself.
He hated having to disappoint and hurt her like this but what other option did he have? The more he allowed her to get involved with Verity, the more she was going to be hurt in the end.
‘Now hurry up and finish your homework,’ Silas admonished her sternly. ‘I’ve got to go out at eight and Mrs Simmonds is coming round to babysit you…’
‘Mrs Simmonds.’ Honor glared at him. She liked the elderly widow who normally came to sit with her on the rare occasions when Silas went out in the evening, but she wasn’t Verity.
‘Why can’t I have Verity? Where are you going anyway?’ she demanded suspiciously. ‘Not to see Myra?’
Silas gritted his teeth.
‘No. I am not.’
He knew perfectly well what was in Honor’s mind. She had made it more than plain that she didn’t want Myra as a stepmother—not that there had been any real danger of that happening. Myra was not good stepmother material, Silas acknowledged, especially not for Honor who needed a much more compassionate hand on the reins; a much more gentle touch—like Verity’s! Now where had that thought come from?
Watching him under her lashes, Honor held her breath. For her, Verity would make the perfect stepmother. She remembered the message she had seen on the back of the photo in her father’s desk.
‘To my beloved Silas, with all my love for ever and always.’
‘Why did they say they didn’t know each other, do you suppose?’ Catherine had asked, wide-eyed, when Honor had related this interesting fact to her.
Honor had rolled her eyes and told her severely, ‘Because they’re still in love with one another stupid…’
‘How can they be?’ Catherine had objected naively. ‘Your father married your mother…’
‘It happens!’ Honor had assured her wisely.
‘Maybe they just stopped being in love,’ Catherine had suggested, adding, ‘Anyway, why do you want to have Verity as your stepmother?’
‘Because…’ Honor had told her with quelling dismissal.
If she had to have a stepmother, and it seemed that she did, then Verity was quite definitely the one she wanted, and so she had mounted her own special campaign towards that end.
Now, though, things weren’t going at all according to plan and the tears filling her eyes weren’t entirely manufactured. Cuddled up in Verity’s arms this morning, she had experienced an emotion which had broken through the tough, protective outer shell she had created around herself. From being very young she had resented the pity she had seen in the eyes of the women who had cooed at her father and said how hard it must be for him to bring up a little girl like her on his own, scowling horribly at them when she had digested what they’d been saying. Gradually, she had come to see the adult members of her own sex not as potential allies, but as adversaries who wanted to come between her and her father.
With Verity it was different. Honor didn’t know why. She just knew that it was, that there was something soft and comforting and lovely about Verity and about being with her. She now wanted Verity as her stepmother, not just to protect her from the likes of Myra, but for herself as herself, and now, just as things were beginning to work out, here was her father being awkward and upsetting all her plans.
His suggestion that Verity might be too busy with her own life to have time for her was one she dismissed out of hand. She knew, of course, that it wasn’t true. Verity liked her. She could see it in her eyes when she looked at her; there was no mistaking that special loving look. She had seen it in Catherine’s mother’s eyes when she looked at Catherine and felt envious of her because of it.
Silas was driving past Verity’s house on his way home. Her BMW was parked in the drive. On impulse he stopped his own car and got out.
The gardens looked very much the same now as they had done when he had worked in them. There was the border he had been working on the first time he had seen Verity. Grimly he looked away and then, almost against his will, he found himself turning back, walking across the lawn.
The house might have changed since she had lived here, but the gardens hadn’t, Verity acknowledged as she paused by the fish pond, peering into it in the dusk of the summer’s evening.
Her uncle had used to threaten to have it filled in, complaining that the carp attracted the attentions of a local tom-cat, but Verity had pleaded with him not to do so. She used to love sitting here watching the fish. It was one of her favourite places.
From here she could see the small summer house where she and Silas had exchanged their first earth-shattering kiss.
An unexpected miaow made her jump and then put her hand on her heart as, out of the shadows of the shrubbery, a small, black cat stalked, weaving his way towards her to rub purringly against her legs.
Laughing, Verity bent to stroke him.
‘Well, you certainly aren’t old Tom,’ she told him as she rubbed behind his ear, ‘but you could be one of his offspring.’
Miaowing as if in assent, the cat jumped up onto the stone edge of the pond where she was sitting and peered into the darkness of the water.
‘Ah ha. Yes, you definitely must be related to him,’ Verity teased.
As a child she would have loved a pet but her uncle had always refused, and once she had become adult the business had kept her too busy and away from home too often for her to feel it would be fair for her to have one.
Now, though, things were different. When she finally decided where she was going to spend the rest of her life, there was nothing to stop her having a cat or a dog if she so chose…A cat, I suppose it would have to be, she mused. After all, cats and lonely single women were supposed to go together weren’t they? A dog somehow or other suggested someone with friends, a family…a full, vigorous life.
Bending her head over the cat, she tickled behind his ear.
‘Verity…’
‘Silas…’ Quickly Verity stood up, her stance unknowingly defensive as though she was trying to hold him off, Silas noted, as she held her hands up in front of her body.
Immediately he took a step back from her.
He couldn’t even bear to be within feet of her, never mind inches, Verity recognised achingly as she saw the way Silas distanced himself from her.
‘I was just thinking that this cat could be one of old Tom’s descendants,’ she told Silas huskily, trying to fill the tensioned silence.
‘Mmm…from the looks of him he very probably is,’ Silas agreed.
‘Look, Verity, I wonder if I could have a few words with you.’
Verity’s heart sank.
‘Yes…Yes, of course,’ she managed to agree. Whatever it was Silas wanted to say to her, she could see from his expression that it wasn’t anything particularly pleasant.
‘It’s about Honor,’ Silas told her, still keeping his distance from her. ‘I’ve had a talk with her this evening about…about the way she’s…she’s been trying to involve you in our lives…I’ve explained to her that you have your own life to live and—’
‘You’ve come here to tell me that you don’t want her to see me any more,’ Verity interrupted flatly, guessing what he was about to say and praying that he wouldn’t be able to tell just how much what he was saying was hurting her.
‘I…I think it would be best if she didn’t,’ Silas agreed heavily. ‘She’s at a very vulnerable age and…’
‘Do you think that I don’t know that?’ Verity told him swiftly, her face paling with the intensity of her emotions. ‘I’ve been there, Silas,’ she advised him jerkily, ‘remember…?’
It was the wrong thing to say, the very worst thing she could have said, she realised as she saw his mouth twist and heard the inflection in his voice as he told her curtly, ‘Yes, I remember…Honor’s got it into her head that she needs a woman’s influence in her life,’ Silas admitted slowly, ‘but…’
‘But there’s no way you want that woman to be me,’ Verity guessed angrily.
‘I don’t want Honor to be hurt,�
� Silas interrupted her bluntly.
Verity stared at him. She could feel the too-fast beat of her own heart and wondered dizzily if Silas too could hear the sound it made as it thudded against her chest wall.
Was he really trying to imply that she would stoop so low as to try to hurt Honor? A child…? Did he really think…?
For a moment Verity felt too outraged to speak. Quickly she swallowed, drawing herself up to her full height as she challenged him, ‘Are you suggesting that I would hurt Honor? Is that really what you think of me, Silas?’ she questioned him carefully. ‘Do you really think of me as being so…so vengeful?’
Half blinded by the tears that suddenly filled her eyes, she turned away from him and started to walk quickly towards the house, breaking into a run when she heard him calling her name.
‘Verity,’ Silas protested, cursing himself under his breath. She had every right to be angry with him, he knew that. But surely she could see that he had every right to protect his child?
‘Verity,’ he protested again, but he knew it was too late. She was already running up the steps and into the house.
Quickly Verity dabbed at her hot face with the cold water she had run to stop her tears.
How could Silas imply that she would hurt Honor? How dared he imply it after what he had done to her, the way he had hurt her? It must be his own guilty conscience that was motivating him.
She would never do anything like that. Not to a child, not to anyone… She had wanted to help Honor for Honor’s sake alone. Her sense of kinship with her had nothing to do with the fact that she was his daughter.
Hadn’t it? Slowly she straightened up and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Hadn’t a part of her recognised how easily she might have been Honor’s mother? Hadn’t she felt somehow honour-bound herself to reach out and help the girl because of that inner knowledge?
To help her, yes, but to hurt her, never. Never…never…
She couldn’t stay here in this town. Not after this. She would ring the agent tomorrow, tell him that she was terminating her lease on the house; the charitable trust she had wanted to establish in her uncle’s name in the town could still go ahead—the details of that could be dealt with as easily from London as from here. She had been a fool ever to have come back. She was a fool. A stupid, idiotic, heartbroken fool!
