by Anne Mather
‘He said—I’m pregnant,’ she said with a rush, unable when it came down to it, to spin the news out. ‘I—I said it wasn’t possible, but he said it definitely was.’
Morgan’s hands gripped her shoulders very tightly. ‘You mean—?’
‘I mean, my throwing up every morning has a perfectly innocent explanation,’ said Catherine lightly, anxious that he should be as pleased about the news as she was. ‘Are—are you pleased? I couldn’t believe it when he told me.’
Morgan pulled her into his arms, burying his face in the hollow of her neck. ‘Of course I’m pleased,’ he muttered roughly. ‘But are you? It’s not something you expected, is it?’
Catherine caught her breath. ‘Oh, love,’ she whispered, turning her lips against his shoulder, ‘to be having your baby! Are you joking? If I couldn’t believe it, it’s because I wanted it so much.’
He kissed her then, his mouth warm and passionate, sharing with her the very special delight of their love. Her spectacles, which always got in the way in moments like this, were quickly discarded on to the trolley beside her bag, and, picking her up in his arms, he carried her back to the sun lounger.
‘So, where did you get the idea that you couldn’t have children?’ Morgan demanded, a few minutes later, and Catherine, whose hand had been straying innocently to the waistband of his shorts, gave a rueful sigh.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Or, at least, I do.’ She looked up at him with a grimace. ‘Neil told me.’
Morgan’s eyes darkened. ‘And what gave him the right to make judgements of that sort?’ he asked harshly. ‘I knew I should have flattened that guy when I had the chance.’
‘You did,’ said Catherine, with a guilty giggle, but Morgan shook his head.
‘Not nearly,’ he told her, loosening the strap of her dress on her right shoulder. ‘Go on. I’m listening. What medical qualifications does he have?’
‘None.’ Catherine felt her cheeks turning pink. ‘He went to one of those clinics, where they make tests; that sort of thing. His result came back positive. I saw it.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘He said it had to be me.’
Morgan shook his head. ‘It didn’t occur to you that you just might not have been compatible, did it? I mean, let’s face it, he and his second wife don’t have any kids, do they?’
‘No.’ Catherine’s eyes widened. ‘Do you think that’s why he made all those accusations about her?’ She had told Morgan everything that had happened between her and Neil, including the unsatisfactory relationship they had had when they were married.
‘Probably,’ agreed Morgan now. ‘Though my guess is he’d realised he’d made a mistake. He wanted you back, baby. But he was too late.’
‘He was always too late,’ said Catherine, touching his cheek. ‘As soon as I met you, I knew what Neil and I had had…’ She shook her head. ‘Well, you know.’
‘Tell me,’ said Morgan wickedly, and Catherine did so shyly, pressing her lips against his ear.
‘What about your job?’ Morgan asked at last, playing with the other strap of her sun-dress. ‘I know you said you were going to free-lance, but—’
‘I don’t care about my job.’ Catherine gazed at him adoringly. ‘I’m going to have a baby! Our baby. I’ll think about my job when I’ve got nothing better to do.’
Morgan shifted then, until she was lying on the lounger, and he was supporting himself over her. ‘I guess this means we’ll have to—well, be a little less energetic in our relationship, hmm?’
‘Don’t you believe it!’ Catherine grasped his neck with possessive hands, and pulled him down on top of her. ‘The doctor says I’m already three months into my term. And you know what that means, don’t you?’
‘You conceived the first time we made love?’ suggested Morgan, his voice just a little thick. ‘What a way to start our lives together.’ He grinned. ‘Though, in the circumstances, I can’t say I’m really surprised.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ declared Catherine, sliding her hands beneath the waistband of his shorts, and inching them over his hips. ‘I meant—everyone knows, you only have to take care for the first three months, in a normal pregnancy. And as the doctor says I’m excessively normal, and we didn’t even know—’
‘I guess we don’t have to worry, right?’ Morgan finished for her lazily. ‘Hey, I hope you locked that door when you came in. I wouldn’t want Steve to be embarrassed.’
‘Would you be?’ asked Catherine, as the second strap of her dress came undone, and Morgan laughed.
‘Me? I’m used to an audience,’ he said, with an endearing lack of self-consciousness, and Catherine thought Hector turned his head the other way.
*****
Blind Passion
Anne Mather
CHAPTER ONE
‘BUT WHY DOES Jonathan have to come this weekend?’
Ignoring the sunlight streaming on to the terrace, and the blue-green waters of the Sound creaming on to the rocks below the balcony, Victoria Wyatt regarded her brother’s bent head across the breakfast table with an unconcealed air of frustration. It wasn’t as if it was the first time she had asked the question, since her nephew had phoned to say he was coming home for a couple of weeks at the beginning of July and bringing a guest. But either Reed wasn’t listening, or he refused to give her a straight answer, and the time was fast approaching when it would be too late to make alternative arrangements.
‘Reed!’ she said again, sharply and impatiently, and, as if her shrill use of his name had at last got through to him, her brother lifted his eyes from the air-mailed copy of the Financial Times that had arrived from London the previous afternoon.
‘This is his home, too, Tori,’ he remarked mildly, though his expression was not entirely serene. ‘It’s not as if he spends a lot of time on the island, is it? What do you want me to do? Tell him he can’t come?’
‘No. No, of course not.’ Victoria plucked irritably at her napkin, her long nails scarlet slashes against the crisp white linen. ‘It’s just that I’ve made all the arrangements for the party, and I don’t want Jonathan, or one of his awful girlfriends, fouling things up. This is an important occasion, Reed. The opening of a new gallery is always a media event, and with Luther Styles making his debut it promises to be a huge success.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Or it did.’
Reed sighed, and put his paper aside, realising he was not going to be allowed a moment’s peace until this matter was settled, one way or the other. ‘So,’ he said evenly, ‘what do you want me to do?’
His sister lifted her rather well-padded shoulders and then, as she met Reed’s cool grey gaze, her resentment subsided. ‘I don’t know, do I?’
‘Don’t you?’ Reed contained his own impatience with an effort. ‘I thought that was what this was all about. I thought you had a solution to the problem.’
‘Not exactly.’ Victoria’s shoulders hunched. ‘I only asked why it had to be this weekend that Jon came home. After all, as you said a few moments ago, it’s not as if he treats this place as his home. More like a hotel, actually. Somewhere he comes when he’s out of work, or out of cash!’
‘I don’t know any hotels, even here in Bermuda, that provide quite that service,’ responded Reed drily. ‘Nor do I remember saying that Jon didn’t regard this place as his home. On the contrary, it’s because this is his home that he expects to be able to invite himself here any time he chooses. And if he brings along a girlfriend, why should we object?’
‘Because of the type of girls Jon is attracted to,’ retorted Victoria shortly. ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten that awful hippy type he brought here two summers ago? The one who insisted she was “into” painting, and didn’t know a Monet from a Matisse!’
‘I know a lot of people who wouldn’t know a Monet from a Matisse,’ observed Reed flatly, but Victoria just ignored him, and continued her tirade.
‘What about that dancer he brought last year?’ she insisted. ‘She said she performed body sculptu
res, and it wasn’t until she had had too much to drink and started taking her clothes off that we discovered she was really a stripper!’ She snorted. ‘I was never so embarrassed in my life!’
‘Oh, God!’
Reed breathed a sigh of resignation as Victoria wrapped the folds of her pure silk wrapper about her generous curves, and started to get up from the table. It was obvious his sister was not going to let the subject drop, and her sulky expression boded ill for family unity.
‘Very well,’ she said now, pausing by his chair. ‘As usual, you refuse to listen to reason. So be it. Just don’t blame me if the opening is a complete fiasco. It’s not my money you’re wasting.’
Reed groaned then, and, pushing back from the table, he got to his feet. ‘You’re seriously telling me that Jon’s arrival could jeopardise the whole affair?’
‘I’m saying that we don’t want any adverse publicity, that’s all. And after all, Jon is some thing of a—minor celebrity on the island.’ She said this grudgingly. ‘If he appears at the opening with some totally unsuitable female in tow, you can imagine what will be said. The tabloid Press would much rather print some gossipy piece about Jon and his latest conquest than concentrate on the real reason they’ve been invited.’
‘Which is?’
‘To give Luther Styles and the other painters the publicity they deserve,’ exclaimed Victoria impatiently. ‘Oh, really, Reed, you know that as well as I do. You just don’t seem to care about the work I’ve put in.’
Reed shook his head. ‘That’s not true. I know you’ve worked hard to get the support, and the backing, to open the gallery.’ He hesitated. ‘How would it be if I expressly asked Jon not to attend the opening party? It’s not as if it’s his kind of thing anyway. And if he’s bringing a—guest—with him, I doubt if he’ll care about missing your “media event”.’
Victoria sniffed and looked up at him a little mistily. At a fraction over six feet, Reed was considerably taller than she was, and despite her ample girth he always made her feel small, and feminine. Indeed, only Reed had ever been able to make her feel that way, and, knowing she owed her position in Bermudian society to the fact that her brother was one of the most influential men on the island, she never failed to thank providence that Reed’s marriage had floundered. Of course, it had been a most unsuitable alliance, right from the start. Although Diana had had the right background, she had been far too flighty to settle down to marriage. She had needed constant amusement, and attention, and if Reed didn’t give it to her she had sought it elsewhere. That was why Jon had turned out as he had, Victoria thought now. What else could you expect, when his parents had spent the first twelve years of his existence fighting a war of attrition? Nevertheless, it had made her life considerably easier, and, as marriage for its own sake had never appealed to her, she had happily returned from exile to pick up the pieces.
Now, she summoned up a beguiling smile, and lifted her hand to touch Reed’s cheek. ‘Will you do that, darling?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, I’d be so grateful. And relieved. You’ve no idea how important this is to me. To actually open a gallery here, in Hamilton. Well, it’s like a dream come true!’
Reed wouldn’t have put it in quite those terms, but he was quite prepared to believe that, to his sister, it was a momentous occasion. It was what she had been working towards ever since she returned to the island ten years ago. Oh, allegedly she had come back to take charge of his household, to take over the role Diana had never really played, and to look after Jonathan. But it was obvious, from the beginning, that Victoria had ideas of her own.
Until then, she had had to content herself with working in someone else’s gallery, with discovering new talent for someone else to reap the kudos from. That was what she had been doing in New York, during the latter years of his marriage to Diana, but it was apparent that this didn’t satisfy her—didn’t fulfil her, as Victoria herself had put it.
Of course, it had been her choice to go and live in the United States after his marriage. Until then, she had been quite content to stay on the island, and ambition, in a woman, had been quite a dirty word. But, not surprisingly, she and Diana had never got on. Because Victoria had always been overweight, her size had never been a problem, but after his marriage to Diana it had suddenly become an issue. And Diana could be quite a bitch, when it suited her. Reed grimaced. Didn’t he know it!
Anyway, Victoria had eventually decided to go and stay with some friends on Long Island, and from there she had graduated, with Reed’s assistance, to her own apartment on the Upper East Side. That was when she had got her first job in a gallery, and from then on she had devoted herself to learning all she could.
Even so, it was quite a step from working in someone else’s gallery to establishing a gallery of one’s own, so perhaps it was not so surprising that she should be touchy about the opening, Reed reflected, as he lifted his jacket from the back of his chair and slid his arms into the sleeves. And because she had been there when he needed her, and because she was so intensely loyal, he felt he owed it to her to do what he could to make the occasion a success. Which probably meant playing the heavy father with Jon, he conceded, without much enthusiasm. But his son was inclined to mock what he called ‘the establishment’.
He left for his office a few minutes later. His house, which was set on a promontory, overlooked the bay, with the white roofs of the island’s capital, Hamilton, visible across the clear blue waters. Like other houses around it, it sprawled over half an acre, with extensive grounds. Their privacy was protected by thick screens of flowering shrubs. A private unpaved track gave access to the Harbour Road, and Reed negotiated the dusty Mercedes out of his driveway for the fifteen-minute drive to the city.
It was a beautiful morning, but then, most mornings on Bermuda were beautiful, he reflected drily. It had an almost ideal climate, and although he had been tempted many times to move nearer one of the financial capitals of the world, Bermuda was his home and he loved it.
His father had brought his family here thirty-five years ago. Robert Wyatt had unexpectedly inherited half a million pounds from a distant relative, and, although he might have been more sensible to invest the money in Britain, he had chosen to give up his job as a teacher and move to Bermuda.
With hindsight, of course, he had realised his mistake. Without a job, without roots, without any of the friends he had had in England, Reed’s father had found that the idle life of a rich man soon began to pall. Reed supposed they could have moved back to England then, but his father had been a proud man, and giving up what he had seen as an impossible dream would have smacked too much of failure to Robert Wyatt. Instead, he had started to drink, and gamble, and by the time Reed was eighteen his parents’ marriage was veering towards the rocks.
Even so, no one could have foreseen the tragic sequence of events that had happened during Reed’s first term at university. Driving home from a drinks party one evening, his father had crashed his car, killing himself and a woman who had been with him. The shock had been too much for Reed’s mother. The day after her husband’s funeral, she had had a stroke from which she never recovered, and Reed had abandoned his studies to come home and be with his sixteen-year-old sister.
Of course, that had all happened many moons ago, thought Reed ruefully, braking for the lights at the entrance to Front Street. It was twenty-five years since his parents had died, and what to his father had never been a real home had become for him the place where he had put down roots. It had never occurred to him to pack up and go back to England when he and Victoria were orphaned. There had been enough money left for him to employ a housekeeper to take care of the house, and he, and Victoria, had completed their education on the island.
He had been lucky, he knew that. In his public life, at least. It was as if his father’s lack of success with money had given him the will to succeed, and his ability to predict trends was quickly recognised. Banking had always fascinated him, and he had been fortunate enough, upon leaving co
llege, to join a firm of merchant bankers with worldwide connections.
Unfortunately, he had not been so successful in his private life. His precipitate marriage to Diana Charters, soon after leaving college, had been a big mistake. They had both been too young to make such a binding commitment, and, unlike Victoria, he didn’t blame Diana for what had happened. During the early years of their relationship he had spent a lot of time travelling, visiting and working in the various branches of Jensen Lockwood, and learning the international money markets inside out. It hadn’t made for a strong personal relationship and, not unnaturally, Diana had resented what she saw as the exciting life he was leading. She, meanwhile, had been closeted at home, knowing her sister-in-law resented her, and with a baby she had never wanted.
Yet, if it hadn’t been for Jonathan, Reed knew the split would have come sooner. As it was, he had done his best to keep the marriage together for Jon’s sake, even though common sense had told him that the boy would suffer either way. Eventually, when Diana deserted him for an American football player she had met during one of her frequent visits to the States, he had felt a sense of relief, a relief which was compounded when Jon decided he wanted to stay with his father.
Reed sighed now, manoeuvring the car through the stream of tourists disembarking from one of the cruise ships berthed at the quay. Hamilton was lucky enough to have a deep-water harbour, so that cruise ships could actually tie up in the heart of town, and during the summer months it was rare if one or more vessels were not tied up along Front Street.
