‘I’ll say.’ Their drinks materialised, and Blaize cradled the long red glass in both competent hands before taking a first gulp. ‘They’re fast movers. I don’t trust people who are in a hurry,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Or am I just getting old?’
Leila made no comment, knowing she wasn’t expected to make one. She drank another mouthful of gin, grimacing slightly as the rather sickly alcohol burned its way down.
‘Something wrong with your gin?’
He didn’t miss a damned thing! ‘No, it’s fine. I’m silly, though, I don’t really feel like gin. I should have had a Bloody Mary instead.’
‘Have mine. I don’t mind gin.’ Before she could protest, he had swapped the glasses round.
‘Well—thank you, but you needn’t have—’ She fished a clean hanky out of her pocket. ‘I’ve smudged lipstick on the rim, I’m afraid.’ Stupidly, she was flushing as she erased the pink trace from the glass.
He watched her drily. ‘I see you’re back in your carefully neutral camouflage,’ he commented. ‘Beige eyeshadow, pale lipstick, formal suit. You positively blossomed on Saturday night, and now you’re back in your shell.’
‘I obviously blossomed more than was good for me. ’she observed in a grey voice. There was no way of telling where his lips had touched the glass, and, for all she knew, she might now be drinking from the same place.
The tomato-juice was refreshing, undercut with the clean tang of vodka. ‘Mmm, that’s better.’
‘And a drop of snake-venom, and call it a Bloody Leila,’ he suggested, watching her. ‘But you were telling me what you thought about the proposals we’ve been listening to all morning.’
She almost choked. ‘Was I?’
‘Indeed,’ he nodded. ‘You’ve got a brain in that blonde head. You must have some comment to make.’
‘How about—this is a rapid-turnover situation of high leverage potential, underpinned by short-term factoring and a strong customer-preferential retail base with built-in analogue input-output differentials?’
He couldn’t help breaking in a grin at her wicked parody. It was like the sunshine pouring in through stormclouds. ‘OK, there was a lot of waffle. What about the underlying concept?’
‘Mr. Oliver, you don’t really want my opinion on a subject like this?’
‘My dear Miss Thomas, I do,’ he contradicted calmly.‘I have to give these gentlemen some kind of reply over the next few days. If I say yes, they’ll be committed to some important, and expensive, preliminary steps. If I say no, I might be turning down a very profitable venture.’ He finished off her gin. ‘You have strong opinions on everything in your vicinity, from the way I bring up my children to what you’re having for your lunch. What’s your opinion on this matter?’
‘Well … I liked the clothes,’
‘Go on.’
‘The colours were good, with unusual combinations.There’s a distinctive stamp to them that’s very nice. And the designs were just the sort of thing people likecomfortable, but riot inelegant.’ She reached under the table, and pulled out one of the tracksuits she’d been presented with. ‘The material is good quality. And these colours are very fashionable this year.’
He tested the material between finger and thumb. ‘Will people buy this kind of thing?’
‘No question. I’ve seen a lot of people wearing this sort of thing already. Not just jogging, either. You could wear this round the house, and not be embarrassed if someone dropped in.’
‘What is this, some synthetic?’
‘A kind of polyester.’ She nodded. ‘It should last well enough. If you’re interested in their offer, we can take these things home today, and put them through half a dozen washes before you go back to England. That’ll show whether the dyes are good, and whether the material goes out of shape in any way.’
He glanced up at her. ‘So you’re in favour of getting this thing off the ground?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she corrected him quickly. ‘I only said I liked the product.’
He held her gaze for a moment, but he wasn’t seeing her. He was thinking so hard she could almost see the wheels of his mind turning. Then he shrugged. ‘All right. I’ll let them get going.’
‘Not on my say-so?’ she gasped.
‘They’re committed to far more expense than we are during the initial phase,’ he answered obliquely. ‘This afternoon we’ll discuss the terms of a preliminary contract, to go to our mutual legal departments for checking. We’ll make sure there’s a get-out clause, in case we don’t like the way things pan out.’ He lifted a sardonic eyebrow at her. ‘You can draw that up for me. Get-out clauses are your speciality, aren’t they?’
‘I should be able to think of something,’ she replied thinly.
Their food arrived, and Leila sampled her stew, which appeared to consist of vegetables, dumplings, and chicken. It was delicious, full of flavour, and the meat was meltingly tender. ‘Gosh, that’s good,’ she said, tucking in. ‘The chicken is superb.’
‘It’s not chicken,’ he informed her casually.
‘Isn’t it?’ She chewed appreciatively. ‘It tastes like chicken. What is it?’
‘Rabbit.’
She swallowed her mouthful hastily, and stared at him.‘You’re joking?’
‘Why should I joke?’ he enquired, evidently enjoying his own steak au poivre, ‘It’s usually very good. Have you any objection to eating a fluffy little bunny?’
‘Oh, don’t,’ she mourned in protest. She stared at her plate, noticing the delicate ribs and slender bones for the first time. ‘I’ve never eaten rabbit before! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You were so busy telling me what an adventurous eater you were,’ he reminded her with a glint in his eyes. ‘Anyway, you wanted something typically Spanish, didn’t you?’
‘But I love rabbits!’
‘And you don’t love sheep, pigs and cows?’
‘They’re different.’ She stared at her plate. ‘Rabbits are … cuddly.’
His expression was droll. ‘Good lord. I would never have suspected you of such sentimentality. Is this the same Leila Thomas who spends her weekends slapping my face?’
‘You should see the bruises on my arms.’ She glared at him. ‘And not telling me that conejo means rabbit was a low-down trick.’
‘You city girls,’ he sighed. ‘Can’t you eat it?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s delicious, but when I think of a cuddly little rabbit with long ears and a twitchy nose—‘ She shuddered.
‘Well, we’ve already swapped drinks…’ He reached over and exchanged her plate for his. ‘I’ll take the cuddly little stew with the long ears and twitchy nose.’
The intimacy of the gesture moved her, even though the peppered steak was not what she would ideally have chosen. It was a fiery, masculine dish with enough peppercorns to make her tongue burn. But it was preferable to the meek flesh of her rabbit.
‘Thank you for swapping. I hate wasting food.’
‘So do I.’ He nodded. ‘It drives me mad to see Terry and Tracey leaving their meals half-finished. I suppose it’s to do with the way we were brought up.’
‘Oh, yes—in the gutter,’ she put in sweetly.
‘Put your claws back in,’ he advised smokily. ‘And don’t keep throwing something at me that I said when I was angry.’
‘But you meant it,’ Leila rejoined, slicing the juicy piece of steak. ‘There was a lot of bitterness behind that remark.’
‘I’ve worked my whole life so that my children’s lives could be different,’ he said, those tiger’s eyes gleaming at her. ‘I didn’t want them to know any of the things I knew. Poverty. Loneliness. Humiliation. Having to grow up without real parents. But I’ve already made one unforgivable mistake with them. I picked the wrong woman to be their mother, and made them go through the hell of a divorce. I don’t want anything else to go wrong for my children, Leila, If that makes me overprotective with them, I’m sure you’ll understand why.’<
br />
That was the closest thing to an apology she would ever hear from Blaize Oliver—of that she was certain!
‘People do make mistakes,’ Leila said carefully. ‘Especially parents. Very few of them are really “unforgivable”.’
‘An unusually circumspect observation from the normally direct Miss Thomas,’ Blaize remarked ironically. ‘What are you getting at?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Just that you shouldn’t blame yourself for the divorce. Not if it wasn’t your fault.’
‘But it was my fault,’ he said flatly. ‘I allowed Vanessa’s beauty and charm to blind me to her fundamental unfitness to be a mother. I wasn’t exaggerating in what I told you a couple of weeks ago, Leila,’ he added, his expression bitter. ‘She doesn’t have the faintest flicker of interest in her children. She wouldn’t admit to anyone that she was even pregnant, you know. She hid it. She wasn’t proud of motherhood; she was ashamed of it. She dieted like fury from the moment she knew she was expecting, to try and hide the bulge. She’s the only woman I’ve known who actually lost weight during her pregnancies: Both times.’ He shook his head grimly.
His face had hardened while he’d been speaking, his eyes changing colour, like the sea. ‘Heaven knows why I wasn’t warned after Tracey. I suppose I thought she would show more interest in her second child. But Terry’s arrival just made things worse.’
‘But then you have nothing to reproach yourself with. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘They say history repeats itself,’ Blaize said, and pushed his plate away, as though he’d lost his appetite.
‘To a certain extent, that’s happened with me. Instead of giving them a happy, stable home, I’ve already subjected them to a lot of pain that they should never had had to go through. I’d rather never marry again, rather never have another woman in the house, than put them through any more suffering.’
Leila sat in silence, picking at her steak. In the face of Blaize’s passion, her own appetite had faded.
Since that blazing row, she was just starting to appreciate exactly how much he loved his children. They meant all the world to him. Far from being a selfish and inconsiderate father, he cared too much, and felt their unhappiness all too keenly. She’d misjudged him badly on that score.
‘You once told me you were constitutionally unable to trust women,’ she said quietly. ‘You meant that, didn’t you?’
‘Sure,’ Blaize said, a shade too casually. ‘I’ve had too many bad experiences with them to be much of a romantic. Mind if I smoke?’
‘I didn’t know you did. But of course, go ahead.’
‘It’s a rare vice, and one I indulge in only on special occasions.’ He summoned the waiter, and ordered a cigar.
Their half-finished meals were cleared away. They both declined a pudding, but, on Blaize’s advice, Leila agreed to a Spanish brandy with her coffee. It came in a huge balloon glass, and was, as he had promised, unusually mild and palatable.
He lit his cigar with due ceremony, and blew a cloud of acrid smoke into the air, watching the curls and plumes with narrowed eyes.
She watched his face, aware of an odd feeling in her heart. How many emotions you’ve made me feel, she thought numbly. At times I’ve hated you, feared you, at times almost loved you. You’re like no one I’ve ever known …
When she went away from here, he was going to leave a great big hole in her life. A hole that would probably be impossible to fill. She suddenly found herself cursing the luck that had ever carried her here, and had brought her into contact with someone who had been custom-made by some malign deity to affect her like this.
Because there could never be anyone like Blaize again.
A man so overwhelmingly attractive, sharing so much of her own experience, yet so diametrically opposed to her in almost every way…
She had been born to love him. And he had been born to break her heart.
‘You also once said you’d made some efforts to trace your parents,’ Leila said, wanting to get away from her own dark thoughts. ‘Would it be an intrusion if I asked what you found out? Or, at least, whether it made you any happier?’
‘Miss inquisitive, is it?’ he rumbled forbiddingly.
‘I’ve told you almost everything there is to know about myself,’ Leila reminded him gently.
‘So you did.’ He was still watching the smoke, rather than her. ‘What makes you want to know my secrets, Leila? Morbid curiosity?’
‘Something more, I think,’ she told him, her skin flushing slightly. ‘But if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll understand completely.’
‘I’ve never told anyone. Never in my life.’ The green eyes were on hers now, intent and dark. ‘Why should I tell you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Maybe because I’ll understand.’
‘Men don’t always want to be understood,’ he commented drily. But suddenly he was talking, his husky voice low and thoughtful. Talking about his childhood, telling her about his growing realisation during those long-ago days that he was not like other children in the little north country village where he’d been born.
Unlike Leila, his upbringing had been rural, rather than urban. ‘I grew up in the context of a farming community,’he told her, his expression faraway. ‘With deep, rustling woods, and hillsides that were covered with heather and gorse. With ‘fields deep in snow, and little, crystal-dear rivers that were so cold they made your bones ache, even in summer.’
‘It sounds beautiful,’ she said.
‘It was,’ he smiled. ‘It still is.’
For the first six years of his life he’d been fostered by a local farmer with a large family, and had gone to a village school, where he’d been happy—even though he’d learned to use his fists early.
‘Children can be very cruel,’ he commented wryly. ‘Especially country children. They’re more direct than city kids, and they pick up the facts of life earlier, and in a more earthy form. When they teased me about having no parents, I used to fight them. Until I learned that it was a better defence to invent stories.’
‘What sort of stories?’ she asked curiously.
He shrugged. ‘Oh … I used to insist that I did have parents, but that they were far away. I used to say that my father was an aristocratic secret agent, working in some foreign country. And that my mother was a beautiful spy, too. I always claimed they’d come back for me one day.’ He met her compassionate look with a slight smile. ‘My foster-brothers and sisters used to listen, open-mouthed. And if they didn’t believe me, they were too frightened of my temper to show it. But it got so that I almost believed my own inventions, in the end. It was a fantasy that I fell in love with. As I grew older, and moved from home to home, I elaborated it, added details, turned it into quite a soap opera. My fictitious parents became quite real to me, Leila.’
‘It was a natural reaction,’ she said gently. ‘Sometimes I used to weave daydreams around my parents, too. I used to have fantasies about them coming to claim me.’
‘Yes,’ Blaize nodded, ‘with some complicated but perfectly reasonable explanation for why they’d abandoned you. And you would forgive them.’
‘You’d hug them and kiss them…’
‘And they’d promise that they would never go away again…’
They were staring into each other’s eyes now, as though hypnotised by the emotion they were sharing.
She had never felt as close as this to another human being in her life.
It was Blaize who broke the spell. He knocked the ash off his cigar with a scornful smile. ‘But there comes a time when the fantasies have to end, doesn’t there?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, looking down into her brandy.
‘When did yours end?’
‘On the day I went to find out the truth.’ His voice had grown cold, remote. ‘Like ‘You, I made some enquiries. I was sixteen at the time, and getting to the stage where I was almost an adult. But not enough of an adult to know when to leave
well enough alone. Not adult enough to know that fantasies are better than the truth, any day.’
He drained the brandy, and nodded to the waiter for another. ‘My researches took me to Newcastle upon Tyne. To an area called Crowther, where I had an address. An address that might, or might not, be my mother’s.’ He looked up. ‘Have you ever been to Newcastle?’
‘I spent a couple of days there once, standing in for a typist. I remember a very elegant Georgian street called Grey Street, and a monument. But I didn’t go to Crowther.’
He shook his head ironically. ‘No. You wouldn’t have done, a nice girl like you. Over the past twenty years, Crowther has improved out of all recognition. It’s still grim. But then it was rough, Leila. A place you didn’t go to unless you had a very good reason. The moment I got off the bus, I knew that my dreams of an aristocratic, romantic background were over.’
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