Well, maybe that would be’ all for the best. Carol would not be very pleased; she thought highly of Blaize Oliver, and he was a good customer. But Leila had enough faith in her intelligence to know that Carol would accept her explanation of how and why things had gone wrong.
But she was not looking forward to her imminent interview with Blaize.
The rest of the afternoon continued dark and wet.
She spent it well away from Katherine and the guests, in Terry’s room. They played games with the boy until he drifted off to sleep, and then Tracey took Leila to see her shell collection. It was immaculately kept, and every piece was catalogued with a skill that was quite striking―not at all what would be expected from a girl who didn’t do well at school.
A few casual questions about her schoolwork showed that Tracey was in a mood to open her heart to Leila.
No doubt Katherine would have classed it as ‘getting her hooks in’, but Leila was genuinely concerned, and she listened sympathetically to what Tracey had to say. It was an escape from her own problems, at least, to have this glimpse into the troubled world of Tracey Oliver.
And if she was to be sent off back to London next week, this was her last chance to do anything for Tracey.
The situation was much as she’d suspected it to be.
Tracey was not short of intelligence, or even application, but her concentration had been badly affected since her parents had split up, and relations with her teachers were at an all-time low.
Her father had been sympathetic at first, Leila gathered, but had become increasingly impatient over the past couple of years.
‘He’s on their side,’ was the way Tracey put it. ‘There’s only Kate who sticks up for me. If Dad married her, everything would be so much better…’
Leila listened in silence. Tracey’s faith in Katherine Henessey, she was certain, was misplaced. She’d had time to assess the impeccable Kate and had found a coldness beneath the charming surface that had disturbed her.
Whatever her attractions for Blaize, Katherine was far too selfish and spiteful a person to make a really loving mother to this difficult girl, who’d already once had to I have professional guidance. Leila knew in her heart that Kate had been using Tracey, and that, once she was Blaize’s wife, her interest in his ‘unstable’ daughter would rapidly fade.
But that was another issue. The things she wanted to say to Tracey right now were about school, and, in order I to get her confidence, she would have to tell Tracey a fair bit about herself, to show her that she really did understand.
‘Want to know something about me?’ she began, sitting down beside Tracey on the girl’s bed.
Tracey nodded.
‘I had problems a bit like yours when I was at school.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Well, it’s a long story…’
She missed supper, not really wanting to face Katherine again. Some of the guests were already leaving, their weekend over.
Blaize had not yet returned. She questioned Lucy about his manner.
‘Was he angry about our taking Tracey out?’
‘He always looks angry to me these days.’ Lucy shrugged. ‘I’m getting terrified of him. Katherine was angry, that’s for sure. She gave me a right blast this morning. For all she’s so sweet and ladylike, she can use some awful language sometimes.’
‘Did she swear at you?’
‘I don’t mean swearing. She says things that cut into you, things that really hurt. She really knows how to manipulate people.’ Lucy made a face. ‘It won’t be a happy day for the staff when Mr. Oliver marries her. What have you and Tracey been talking about so busily all afternoon?’
‘Oh, this and that…’
She went back to her room, and read for an hour or two. Then, as ten o’clock approached, she got up and ran herself a bath. She hadn’t showered after her swim that morning, and the smell of chlorine was still on her skin. She was thinking about Blaize and Katherine. Men were such bad judges of women. She’d always felt that.
For all his formidable intelligence, Blaize hadn’t really known what his first wife, Vanessa, was like.
And she suspected that he didn’t really know what Katherine was like, either. In common with most men, he often didn’t bother to look beyond the surface of a woman, and Katherine took care to show him a highly polished surface.
Ah, well. Maybe women weren’t such good judges of men, when it came to that …
She added jasmine bath-salts, so that the water creamed and frothed in fragrant white mounds, and she slipped into the warm water. The sweet smell was infinitely soothing, and she lay back, resting her head.
It was good to clear her mind of everything, and just dream.
She was half-asleep when she heard the peremptory knocking at her bedroom door.
‘Damn,’ she muttered to herself, and rose out of the water, dripping. ‘Hang on!’ she called aloud as the knocking started again. ‘I’m just in the b—’
But the knocker wasn’t waiting any longer, and she heard her bedroom door open and close again with a bang. Footsteps headed heavily her way.
With a little gasp, she sank down among the suds again, scooping some of the froth around herself as a frail covering for her nakedness.
The bathroom door opened, and Blaize was framed in the doorway. His tan leather jacket was spattered with rain, and his dark hair was damp. The stare of those tiger’s eyes was awesome. Had she been at her most collected, instead of sitting naked and dreamy in the bath, his presence would have shattered her composure. As it was, she quailed behind her flimsy covering of bath-foam, sinking as deep into the water as she could, and drawing her knees up. Her nakedness was covered, but only just.
‘Can’t I even turn my back for a day?’ he rasped, towering over her. ‘What the hell have you been getting up to, Thomas?’
‘Nothing,’ she gasped, wide-eyed. ‘You shouldn’t be in here—’
‘Nothing? The whole bloody household is in a turmoil because of you.’ He was too angry to have even noticed that she was stark naked beneath the foam. ‘You’ve been appallingly rude to Katherine, and my daughter’s crying her eyes out in her bedroom. For heaven’s sake, don’t you know that Terry’s still sick? Don’t you realise that the house is full of guests? Have you no consideration for anybody or anything?’
‘B-but what have I done?’ Leila stammered, going into shock. She’d anticipated hard words, but not this fury.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ Blaize said forbiddingly. ‘But let’s start with your little jaunt this morning.’
He pointed a finger at her like a revolver. ‘I told you to stay away from Jason Tennant. You were disobeying my explicit instructions when you went off with him, but you could at least have kept your little dalliances private!’
‘Dalliances? ’
‘You had no damned right to involve Tracey in your misconduct,’ he seethed. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you how vulnerable she is? Did you think you were being clever, using her as cover for your escapade with Jason?’
She felt herself go pale. ‘That’s a disgusting assumption! It was a harmless outing—’
‘And then you had the towering insolence to come back and be abominably rude to Katherine, simply because she asked you for an explanation.’ His eyes were smoky with anger. ‘Frankly, I can hardly believe some of the things you said to her.’
Frankly, Leila thought wryly, neither could she. No doubt Katherine had given him her own version of the conversation, suitably edited and embellished. ‘I can’t talk to you sitting in my bath,’ she said, trying to haul her tattered dignity around herself. ‘Will you just have the decency to let me get dressed—’
‘But your prize piece of impertinence was prying into Tracey’s private life,’ he rasped on, ignoring her interruption. ‘What the hell makes you think you’ve got the right to play amateur psychologist with my daughter?’
‘All I did was offer her some advice about her schoolwork!
I said nothing that could have upset her! When I left her, she was happy and optimistic.’
‘Optimistic?’ he sneered. ‘You tried to draw some kind of parallel between what Tracey’s going through and your own childhood,’ he said savagely. ‘You had the tactlessness and presumption to do that!’
Leila looked at him in horror. Her little mountain of foam was slowly starting to disintegrate. She hugged her slippery knees. ‘I thought it might help Tracey—’
‘Help her?’ His voice was harsh. ‘You and I might have come out of the gutter, but Tracey didn’t―thank heaven. There is no connection between the kind of childhoods we had, and the situation Tracey is in.’
Bitterly hurt by his tone, she answered him in a low voice. ‘I repeat, all I did was try and give her a little advice about the problems she’s having with her schoolwork. 1told her something about my own teenage years, because I thought it might be relevant.’
‘Well,’ he said with sulphuric force, ‘all you succeeded in doing was upsetting her to the point where Katherine found her crying hysterically on her bed.’
‘She wasn’t crying when I left her—’
‘I’ve just seen her,’ he grated. ‘She’s crying now.’
‘1-1 don’t know what can have happened!’
‘Don’t you?’ He put one fist on his hip. ‘Well, clever Miss Thomas, if you’ve got such an insight into my daughter’s heart and soul, let’s hear what you have to tell me.’
Leila flushed with discomfort. ‘You won’t like what I have to say.’
‘That’s par for the course.’ He nodded bleakly. ‘Go on, anyhow.’
‘Well, there is one thing that I know really upsets Tracey.’
‘Yes?’
She didn’t know how to phrase the damnably awkward thing she wanted to say. ‘1-1 can understand that you’re wary of another marriage. But casual relationships aren’t the best thing for children, either.’
He looked into her eyes, making her quail behind her foam barrier. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘If―if you really want to spare the children pain, then perhaps you should make sure they don’t know about your―your—’
His expression was growing even more dangerous. ‘My what?’ he rasped.
‘Your conquests,’ she finished on a gulp. ‘The girls on the side.’
He stared at her balefully. ‘I expected something sensible, not that old chestnut,’ he growled.
‘Well, you did ask me for my advice―'
‘There are no girls on the side,’ he said impatiently. ‘I won’t say that I’m some kind of monk, but I know how to control myself in front of my children. They’ve never seen me with any loose women, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘I don’t think you’re aware just how much they do see,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Especially Tracey. She’s nearly a woman now, and she understands a lot more than you give her credit for.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if she were a teenage Einstein,’ he retorted. ‘There is nothing for her to see or understand. Do you think I parade half-naked floozies through the house every night?’
‘No. But I do think that you have too many affairs, and that you could be more discreet. I knew you’d be angry,’ she concluded unhappily as his face darkened.
‘Discreet? Did Tracey tell you that I have all these affairs?’
To add to the horrible situation, her stock of foam was dwindling rapidly, leaving her naked to his angry eyes. Leila hesitated, then nodded miserably. ‘Yes, Blaize. She did.’
‘You’re lying,’ he snarled.
‘Please get out of here,’ she said in an anguished voice. ‘I’ve told you what you wanted, and you have no right to interrogate me in my bath like this!’
‘Do you think I’ve never seen a naked woman before?’ he said contemptuously. Unexpectedly, he reached out Iron hands clamped around her arms, hauling her upright.
Leila gasped in pain and dismay, but his strength was overwhelming. His eyes devoured her streaming body, his normally passionate mouth a hard line in his tanned face.
‘Let me go,’ she said, close to tears of anger and humiliation. ‘Let me go!’
‘I ought to—’ He bit back the rest of it, his eyes lifting to impale hers. ‘The only reason I’m not going to pack you off back to London is because I don’t want to embarrass Carol Clarewell. She and I go back a long way, and I’d rather she didn’t know just how badly her prize employee has behaved. She thinks more highly of you than you can imagine, though goodness knows why.’
‘Have you finished?’ Leila asked tightly, her eyes blurred with tears.
‘Almost,’ he grated. ‘Stay away from my children from now on, Leila. And stay away from Katherine .You’ve done enough damage. I don’t want to have to tell you again.’
He released her at last, his fingers leaving livid marks in her creamy skin. Something seemed to explode inside her. Unable to stop herself, she lashed out at him with a sob. Exactly as had happened last night, her slap caught him off guard, landing squarely across his mouth.
‘You bully,’ she panted, swinging at him again. ‘You cruel, arrogant, selfish pig—’
He caught her wrists, pulling them down, or else she would have hit him again, even harder. ‘Control yourself,’ he rasped, immobilising her.
‘What for?’ she demanded furiously. ‘We come from the gutter, don’t we? You’ve got the manners of a gutter hoodlum, so why should I restrain my squalid instincts?’
‘Stop struggling, damn you!’
‘If I were a man,’ she spat at him, ‘I’d thrash you! If I only had a brother or a father to defend me―get your hands off me!’
‘Not until you settle down,’ he said meaningfully.
‘I could tell you one or two things about your precious family arrangements,’ she said bitterly, pulling away from him as his fingers eased. She snatched up her towel and covered her nakedness. ‘Your kids haven’t had a kind smile or an understanding word out of you for years. What are you punishing them for? For being half Vanessa?’
‘You’re being absurd,’ he ground out, touching his tender lip, where she’d caught him fair and square.
‘What kind of life do they have?’ she demanded shakily. She wound the towel around herself, like a sarong. ‘You treat them like little adults, expecting them to understand everything, get everything right, and do everything they’re told. But you don’t give them a scrap of help. They’re not adults. They’re vulnerable, confused children, and they’ve been hurt more than you can imagine. Children need understanding, Mr. Oliver, not coldness and bullying.’
‘And you understand my children better than I do?’ he sneered.
‘At least I understand that they need affection! You just ignore them. You won’t even take them up in your precious helicopter!’
‘Children have no place in a helicopter,’ Blaize replied stiffly. ‘Especially not Terry. He’s too young. Once they’re older, then of course they’ll come with me.’
‘The reason Tracey is doing badly at school is because she needs more love and understanding from you. She worships you, can’t you see that? You could make her study every hour that God sent, and it still wouldn’t help as much as a minute’s quiet talk.’
‘Tracey is lazy and rebellious. Like her mother, she has been spoiled more than is good for her.’
‘Spoiled? A girl who’s already had to see a child psychologist? ‘
‘Ah.’ His mouth twisted. ‘You really have been digging in the dirt, haven’t you?’
‘A child’s problems are not ,dirt,’ she gritted. ‘And I didn’t find that out from Tracey.’
‘From dear Jason, then?’
‘As it happens, yes. But there’s no use in talking to you,’ Leila said, brushing tears away from her cheeks with her wrists. ‘Your mind is as closed as your heart.’
Blaize’s eyes dropped involuntarily to the dark spots on her skin where bruises were already starting to form.
‘Well, there’s certainly no use in talking nonsense,’ he said shortly.
She took an unsteady breath. ‘I don’t see any point in my staying here any longer, Mr. Oliver. My presence has obviously been a disruption from the very start.
There are plenty of others to take my place, who won’t give you nearly as much trouble.’ She turned away from him, reaching for her bathrobe. ‘I’ll go back to London as soon as there’s an available flight. You can tell Carol exactly what you want to. It doesn’t matter to me.’
He stood in silence for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. ‘There’s no question of your leaving me until your replacement arrives. This is a crucial time. I’m flying to Gerona tomorrow morning, for a meeting with some important people in the Catalan clothing industry. I need you there.’
Tiger's Eye Page 14
