‘Stop being obtuse, Eve. You know exactly who I’m talking about.’ She paused, eyeing her granddaughter with shrewd grey eyes. ‘What do you think of him?’
Eve swallowed, giving herself time to think. ‘I—he seems—all right.’
‘All right? What kind of an answer is that?’ Her grandmother clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t you think he’s too young for Cassie? She is forty-seven, you know.’
‘Forty-six,’ corrected Eve, before she could stop herself, and the old lady gave her a beetling look.
‘Stop splitting hairs. Is she too old for him or what?’
Eve caught her breath. ‘I—lots of women marry younger men.’ She sought for an example. ‘Look at Joan Collins!’
‘Cassie is no Joan Collins,’ retorted Mrs Robertson scathingly. ‘And I don’t believe I mentioned marriage. Why would he marry her when he can get what he wants without even buying her a ring?’
Eve felt her stomach tighten at the images her grandmother was unknowingly creating, and hurried into speech. ‘So long as they’re happy together,’ she mumbled, wishing this conversation had never started. ‘Um—would you like me to put these boxes away?’
‘You know what’s in them, of course?’ The old lady arched an enquiring brow. ‘I’ve shown you them before. Photographs. Some of them loose, some in albums. Your grandfather was very keen on photography. He said pictures are an incontrovertible record of the past. I thought I might show some of them to Mr Romero.’
‘No!’ Eve was horrified. ‘You can’t, Ellie. That would be malicious, and you know it!’
‘Why?’ Her grandmother was defiant. ‘What’s malicious about a few photographs? He might be interested to see pictures of what Cassie was like when she was a young girl.’
‘You can’t do that.’ Bending, Eve gathered a couple of the boxes into her arms and carried them across the room to stow them in the bottom of the cupboard where they were usually kept. Then, straightening, she said, ‘Anyway, I have something to tell you.’
‘About Cassie? Or Mr Romero?’
‘Neither,’ said Eve tersely, hoping the sudden colour in her cheeks would be put down to her exertions. She gathered up another couple of boxes and stowed them as she spoke. ‘According to Mrs Portman, the school is due to close next Easter.’
‘No.’ Her grandmother was shocked, and Eve hoped it would serve to distract her from thoughts of embarrassing her daughter. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, it’s all part of the government’s plans to make schools more efficient,’ said Eve, stowing the last box with some relief. ‘We’ve known for some time that Falconbridge is attracting fewer and fewer pupils, and those we have are to be transferred to East Ridsdale, which is bigger and more economically viable.’
‘Since when has education needed to be “economically viable”?’ The old lady made a frustrated sound. ‘We’re dealing with children here, not robots.’
‘I know.’ Eve came to stand beside her grandmother’s chair. ‘Looks like I’ll be needing another job.’
‘Just when you’d settled down,’ exclaimed the old lady bitterly. Then, with a look of anxiety in her eyes, ‘You won’t move away, will you?’
Eve squeezed her grandmother’s shoulder. ‘As if,’ she said softly. ‘No, you’re stuck with me now. This is my home.’
‘You’re a good girl.’ Mrs Robertson reached up to cover her hand with her own. ‘A better granddaughter to me than either Cassie or I deserve.’
‘That’s not true,’ protested Eve, not wanting to get into Cassie’s shortcomings again, but before the old lady could reply the phone rang.
There was an extension in the library and Eve went to answer it, not without some relief. Saved by the bell, she thought, picking up the receiver. ‘Hello? Watersmeet Hall.’
‘Could I speak to Miss Wilkes, please?’
‘Miss Wilkes?’ The woman’s voice was unfamiliar, and for a moment Eve’s mind felt blank. But then she remembered that Wilkes was the name Cassie used professionally. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, making a quelling gesture to her grandmother. ‘I’ll get her for you.’
‘Who is it?’ the old lady asked as Eve made for the door, and she paused to whisper that it was some woman wanting to speak to Miss Wilkes. ‘Cassie!’ Her grandmother made no attempt to lower her voice. ‘What does she want Cassie for?’
Eve shook her head helplessly, but she didn’t have time to answer her now. Going out into the hall, she considered merely shouting Cassie’s name up the stairs. But it was a big house, and it would be just like Cassie to pretend she hadn’t heard her even if she had.
Instead, she ran up the stairs and hurried down the corridor to Cassie’s room. A knock aroused no response, and with some trepidation she tried the door. Cassie could be in the bathroom and not have heard her, she reasoned defensively, but in any event the room and its adjoining bathroom were empty.
Sighing, she closed the door again, aware that there was only one place Cassie could be. In Jake Romero’s room. And approaching that was an entirely different matter.
Even so, it had to be done, and, taking a deep breath, she walked back along the corridor to the room Mrs Blackwood had assigned to their other visitor. She knew it was on her grandmother’s orders that the two rooms were some distance from one another, but, as both Cassie and her lover were young and agile enough to cover the distance without any problem, it was obviously a wasted effort.
Her first knock elicited a shrill protest, and her heart sank at the prospect of what she would find when the door was opened. But, to her surprise, it was jerked open almost immediately and Jake Romero confronted her—still fully clothed, she noticed a little breathlessly.
‘Um—there’s a call—for Miss Wilkes,’ she stammered, feeling stupid—particularly when Cassie appeared behind him, draping a possessive hand over his shoulder. The older woman’s sweater had been discarded, and her shirt was partly unbuttoned, revealing a tantalising amount of cleavage.
‘A call? For me?’ Cassie’s brows drew together in some confusion. ‘Are you sure?’
‘You’re the only Miss Wilkes here,’ replied Eve shortly, recovering some composure. She started towards the stairs again, adding over her shoulder, ‘You can take it in the hall, if you want some privacy. Your mother’s in the library.’
‘Privacy? In the hall?’ Cassie snorted, forced to remove her arm from Jake’s shoulder and button her shirt again with obviously irritated fingers. ‘I mean, can you believe it?’ she asked, turning to him for support. ‘A house of this size and no phone upstairs. It’s ludicrous!’
‘I’m sure your mother doesn’t find it a problem,’ Jake retorted drily, aware that Eve’s reaction to finding them together irritated him quite a bit, too. ‘Go ahead. I need to take a shower anyway.’
‘Oh, but we were—’
‘You were about to go back to your own room,’ said Jake flatly. He waited until she was outside, and then closed the door behind her with rather more force than was necessary.
CHAPTER FIVE
JAKE took the precaution of locking his door before going to take a shower. He didn’t trust Cassandra not to come back after she’d taken her call, and the last thing he needed right now was for her to try and break the rules her mother had so subtly engineered. He didn’t know why, exactly. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t say no. And since leaving London their relationship had definitely faltered, and he no longer had any desire to prolong it.
Perhaps it was seeing the way she treated her family, he mused, tipping his head to allow the hot water to rain down upon his shoulders. Cassandra certainly gave her mother little consideration, and if there was an argument that said the old woman deserved it, he was unaware of it.
As for Eve…Well, her situation was strangely ambiguous. She evidently worked for her living, and helped out around the estate when she could, yet there was an odd connection between her and the old lady that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. There was affection there, and a gentle understanding. The kind of relation
ship, in fact, that he would have expected Cassandra to have with her mother.
But she didn’t.
Had Eve caused the rift between them as he’d suspected on the journey here? She didn’t appear to be devious in any way, but who was he to judge? He hardly knew the girl. But he did know, from experience, that appearances could be very different than they seemed.
Not least his own reaction to her, he admitted dourly, lifting his face to the spray. If she’d told him to his face, she couldn’t have made her dislike of him any clearer. So why did he have this persistent need to show her he wasn’t the bastard she apparently thought he was? Why, when she consistently provoked him, was he aware of her in a way that heated his blood and disrupted his sleep?
Crazy! Disgusted with himself, and with where his thoughts were leading, Jake swiftly soaped his chest and abdomen, suppressing a groan when he saw he was already half aroused. Dammit, what was wrong with him? Since when had he acquired this insane desire for a woman who had no interest in him?
He was drying himself when he thought he heard someone knocking at his bedroom door, but he ignored it. If it was Cassandra, he would be doing her no favours by opening the door. And if it wasn’t…?
But he didn’t go there. There was no chance that Eve would come to his door a second time. She’d made her opinion of what she’d found earlier clear enough, and, if he was honest, he would admit that that was what had initiated the soul-searching he’d indulged in during his shower. He resented it; resented her attitude. And he decided there and then that he’d had it with trying to humour her.
He dressed in narrow-legged woollen pants and a burgundy silk shirt. It was cold, but he’d found that Cassandra’s mother tended to overheat the main apartments of the house. And, although it was chilly in the hall, and as he descended the staircase, he guessed the library would be almost uncomfortably hot.
He hesitated outside, not sure whether he ought to knock and announce his presence. But there was no light visible under the door, and he assumed he was the first to arrive. Without ceremony, he turned the handle and opened the door, and surprised a startled Eve sitting cross-legged beside the log fire burning in the huge hearth.
She sprang to her feet at once, reaching for the nearest lamp and flooding the room with light as he closed the door behind him. And Jake realised that any preconceived notions he’d had about her were just so much hot air. He couldn’t ignore her; didn’t want to ignore her. He’d been a fool to think he could.
She was wearing the same black cords she’d been wearing the evening before, but now they were teamed with a V-necked black sweater whose lace-trimmed neckline and bloused waist only hinted at the pert breasts he knew were beneath. Lamplight gave those smoky grey eyes an opacity he longed to penetrate, but perhaps penetration—of any kind—was not something he ought to be thinking about right now.
Nevertheless, just looking at her, at her pale exotic features and night-dark hair, he was arrested by the instinctive urge to know what it would be like to bury his hard swollen flesh in her softness…
Enough!
He almost growled the word aloud as she gazed at him across the back of the armchair she’d been using as a backrest, tugging a scarf of some kind from her neck. Evidently she’d been cold, even sitting in front of the fire, he thought, hoping he wouldn’t regret not wearing a sweater. But then she held the woollen item out to him and he realised what it was.
His scarf!
‘I tried to return this earlier,’ she said, stepping forward to push it into his hands. She tossed the heavy braid of her hair over her shoulder. ‘You didn’t hear me.’
Once again he had to suppress the expletive that came so readily to his tongue. If he’d known, he thought. If he’d only known it was Eve who had been knocking at his door…
But it was just as well he hadn’t. ‘I was probably in the shower,’ he said, and saw the way her lips twisted at his words. She didn’t believe him, he realised indignantly. She obviously thought he and Cassandra had resumed where they’d left off.
He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that it was because he hadn’t wanted another argument with Cassandra that he hadn’t opened his door. But he didn’t. Instead, he moved towards her, dropping the scarf onto the desk as he did so, saying, ‘How is Mrs Robertson this evening?’ As if talking about someone else could cool his resentment. Dammit, she had no right to judge him. If he and Cassandra had chosen to make out on the front lawn of the house it would have been nothing to do with her, for God’s sake. He glanced about him. ‘I thought she’d be here.’
‘No.’ Eve didn’t know what to do with her hands now that she didn’t have the scarf to occupy them, and after an awkward moment she pushed them into her pockets. ‘I expect she’ll be down later.’
‘Would she like me to—?’
‘Carry her downstairs?’ Eve interrupted him. ‘No, I don’t think that will be necessary.’
‘Do you make all her decisions for her?’
His dark eyes were far too intent, and Eve moved a little uncomfortably under their regard. ‘Of course not,’ she said tersely. Then, moving purposefully forward, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and see if she—’
‘And if I won’t?’
Eve caught her breath. ‘If you won’t what?’
‘If I won’t excuse you,’ he said softly. Then, his eyes darkening, ‘Come on, Eve, would it hurt you to keep me company for a few minutes? It’s not as if I’m threatening to jump your bones.’
‘You couldn’t,’ she asserted, hoping like hell that he wouldn’t put her to the test, and his lips thinned.
‘Don’t be too sure,’ he murmured drily, but Eve thought she could see reluctant amusement lurking at the corner of his mouth. ‘You might do well to humour me.’
Eve shook her head. ‘Why should you want me to?’
‘Oh…’ He considered for a moment. ‘Perhaps I just want to know more about you. No harm in that, is there?’
Eve shivered in spite of the fire at her back. ‘Cass—Cassandra will be down soon. She—she can tell you all you need to know.’
‘I doubt that.’ He gestured towards the chair behind her. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me yourself?’
‘Perhaps I don’t want to.’
‘I’d gathered that.’ His brows drew together. ‘I wonder why?’
Eve expelled a nervous breath, but short of pushing him out of the way she was trapped. In more ways than one. With a sound she hoped he identified as frustration she stepped back and subsided into the chair he’d indicated with obvious ill grace. Then, when he made no attempt to seat himself opposite, but stood over her like some dark predator, she forced herself to look up at him. ‘Well?’
Jake was intrigued in spite of her evident irritation. She was so aloof, so defensive, almost, and his earlier interest deepened into an attraction that had little to do with sex. Well, not a lot, he conceded honestly, aware that he was still sexually aroused by her cool, remote allure and, yes—why not?—her obvious reluctance to let him get close to her.
Why he should want to was not something he chose to go into right now, and, realising he couldn’t conduct a conversation from this angle—however advantageous it might be—he stepped across the hearth and took the chair opposite.
‘So?’ he said, when she made no attempt to speak to him. ‘Tell me about yourself. Have you always lived in the north of England?’
Her shoulders seemed to sag at this question. But, ‘No,’ she responded shortly, leaving him with no choice but to ask another.
‘Your parents lived in another part of the country?’
‘I don’t have any parents,’ she replied. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, it’s not all,’ he exclaimed, annoyed in spite of his determination not to let her rile him. This was her way of avoiding any further conversation, and he wasn’t going to let her get away with it. ‘Everyone has parents, Eve. Or do you still believe babies are found under a gooseberry bush?’
Jake caught his breath. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
Eve looked a little nervous now, and he suspected she’d spoken without considering the possible consequences. But she had no choice but to go on. ‘I—don’t have children, Mr Romero,’ she said primly. ‘Perhaps you do.’
He was fairly sure that that wasn’t what she’d meant when she’d made that earlier observation, but he didn’t contradict her. ‘No,’ he told her, his eyes enjoying her confusion. ‘I don’t have any children. None that I know of, anyway.’
If anything, her colour deepened, but she wasn’t about to back down. ‘Not everyone cares one way or the other,’ she said, surprisingly, though her gaze flickered away from his as she did so. ‘In any case, for your information, I never knew my parents. My biological parents, that is.’
Jake frowned. ‘You were adopted?’
Eve sighed. ‘Of what possible interest is this to you?’
‘Take my word: I’m interested.’
She was silent for a long moment, but then she lifted her head and looked him in the eyes. ‘For a time,’ she agreed. ‘I ran away when I was twelve years old.’
Twelve? He couldn’t conceive of it. At twelve she’d have been—what? A girl with pigtails in her hair? A rebellious pre-teen who didn’t know when she was well off?
‘I didn’t get away with it, of course,’ she went on. Her gaze was riveted on her hands, which were twisted together in her lap now, and he wondered if she was aware of what she was saying. ‘I was found and sent back. Twice, actually. But I only ran away again, until the authorities decided it would be easier to let Social Services take the strain.’
Jake shook his head. ‘But you were so young.’
‘I was old enough.’ Her lips pressed together, as if to silence any further confidences. Then, with a gesture of dismissal, she added, ‘It all happened a long time ago. I’d forgotten about it.’
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