Stranger from the Past & Proof of Their Sin

by Penny Jordan

  She was hardly aware of having said his name. He was looking at her in such a confusing way. Gone was the anger…the fury of their last meeting, and instead the look in his eyes was one of remorse…of anguish almost.

  But that was impossible. She must be imagining things. She blinked slowly and took a deep unsteady breath.

  Behind her she heard Belinda saying courteously, ‘Mr Seymour, I’m sorry there was no one in the outer office.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Gareth was responding, looking beyond her now towards Belinda. ‘I’m a little early, anyway.’

  ‘You obviously know my partner.’ Belinda looked at her curiously, no doubt wondering what on earth was wrong with her, Sybilla reflected as she virtually bolted through the door, deliberately keeping as great a distance between Gareth and herself as she could.

  ‘Yes, indeed. Sybilla and I are old…friends.’

  Friends. They had never been friends, Sybilla reflected bitterly as she retreated to her own office. Oh, she might once have deluded herself into believing that those long hours they had spent together talking had meant as much to Gareth as they had to her, but of course she had been deceiving herself. She had been a girl…a child almost, while he had been a young adult. Even now she writhed in self-mortification to remember the anger in his voice when he had told his grandfather how little he’d wanted her adoration, her hero-worship…how impossible he found it to deal with the situation.

  Well, she had made it easy for him, removing herself from his presence, determinedly avoiding him…throwing herself into such an orgy of tennis, swimming and teenage parties that even her parents had started to protest that she was wearing herself out.

  Wearing herself out. What she had been trying to do was to wear out her love for Gareth, instead of wearing it on her sleeve.

  And she had succeeded too, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she? Of course. Of course she had.

  Why had he come to see Belinda? What possible need could he have for their services? she wondered fretfully, unable to settle to her own work, and yet too proud, too stubbornly determined not to show the least bit of interest in him to find an excuse to join them.

  A sudden fit of sneezing took her off guard, causing Meg, who had just come into her office with a mug of coffee, to exclaim, ‘There, I told you…it’s that virus!’

  ‘It’s no such thing,’ Sybilla contradicted her, breaking off to sneeze again, and to curse her own weakness under her breath.

  Just at that moment Belinda’s office door opened and both she and Gareth walked out. He seemed about to pause, to hesitate as he drew level with her open office door, but she deliberately turned her back on him and started to ask Meg about a file she needed for one of her own interviews later in the day.

  It was only when the outer office door had actually closed behind him that she realised how tense she was, and that she was actually physically compressing her muscles as though against some kind of attack. Or some kind of danger.

  ‘Well, there’s a bit of luck,’ Belinda pronounced as she came back and walked into her office. ‘I’d expected that with old Mr Seymour’s death the business would be closed down. Everyone seems to have been speculating that that would be the case, but it seems that his grandson is not only going to keep it going but intends to come back here to run it himself.

  ‘He wants us to supply him with half a dozen new key people. Computer experts in the main, who shouldn’t be too difficult to find, and a new factory manager, who will…’

  Sybilla couldn’t say a word. Gareth was coming back and intended to take over the family business, to step into his grandfather’s shoes…

  She couldn’t believe it. She refused to believe it, but how could she when Belinda was talking excitedly about the boost this would give their business, far outweighing what they would lose if Ray Lewis did go elsewhere?

  ‘Not, of course, that there’s the slightest comparison between them,’ she was saying. ‘Ray Lewis is obnoxious, while Gareth Seymour…’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Now, if I were ten years younger…and he’s unattached.’

  Legally, perhaps. Sybilla wondered how serious his relationship was with his snooty lady-friend; wondered if he intended not only to step into his grandfather’s shoes and revert to family tradition, but also to marry and produce a family…the great-grandchild old Tom had always wanted.

  ‘What is it, Syb? What’s wrong? You look dreadful,’ Belinda was saying, having at last ceased singing Gareth’s praises and realised how white and strained her partner was looking.

  ‘She’s going down with the flu bug that everyone’s got,’ Meg pronounced direfully.

  ‘No, I’m not doing any such thing,’ Sybilla almost snapped, and then, seeing their faces, apologised and explained a little untruthfully, ‘I’m still a bit on edge after my run-in yesterday with Ray Lewis…and as for being ill…well, I’m afraid I just can’t afford to be. It’s Rita and Paul Gittings’s silver-wedding party this weekend and I can’t miss that…’

  ‘Good heavens, no. Paul is your godfather, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sybilla confirmed. ‘And he was marvellous about recommending us when we first set up in business.’

  ‘Yes, he was. I expect your parents will be coming over too.’

  ‘Yes, they’ll be there. And Anthony and Claire. They had originally intended to bring the children and stay overnight with me, even though it would have been a bit of a squash, but Simon’s in a swimming competition on Sunday, so they’ll all be driving straight back.’

  While she answered Belinda’s questions her brain was seething with anxiety. Gareth moving back…permanently. How was she going to cope with that…with the possibility of seeing him… of knowing that she could virtually bump into him at any time? And then if he did marry…

  Her heart gave a painfully sharp leap. Despair filled her. What on earth was the matter with her? She had got over Gareth years ago. He was a stranger to her now. There was absolutely no reason for her to get herself into this kind of state. And what was she frightened of anyway? That he would guess…would think that she was still that same idiotic adolescent who had burdened him with her unwanted adoration, her youthful love? Well, if so, the remedy lay in her own hands. All she had to do was make it clear to him how much she had changed. How indifferent she was to him.

  What a pity she wasn’t married with a couple of children, she reflected grimly. That would have convinced him. As it was, she didn’t even have a boyfriend. It was true that there were two or three men in the town who regularly asked her out on dates, but she had always made it plain to them that the occasional date was as far as she wanted any relationship with them to go. Two of them had in fact offered to escort her to the silver wedding, but, since her family would be there, she had kindly but firmly refused. Now she wondered if she had done the right thing.

  Of course, it didn’t necessarily follow that just because Gareth was going to stay here permanently he would be invited to the party, but the Gittingses had known his grandfather very well, and if he turned up at the party with his soignée blonde friend on his arm while she was there on her own…

  She was being absurdly sensitive, she told herself firmly. She was creating problems for herself that simply did not exist.

  She had a busy day in front of her and by rights the only thoughts occupying her mind right now should be confined to the business ahead of her.

  The reality, though, was rather different. The reality was that, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on her work, Gareth Seymour kept intruding on her thoughts, breaking through the barriers she tried to erect against him, so that by six o’clock she felt more physically and mentally drained than she could ever remember feeling, even in the early days when she and Belinda had first gone into business.

  ‘You ought to be in bed,’ Belinda scolded her, seeing her wan face when she popped her head round Sybilla’s office door to announce that she was on her way home.

  ‘Rubbish—there’s nothing wrong
with me.’ She stopped as Belinda raised her eyebrows, and admitted defensively. ‘Well, perhaps I have got a bit of a cold, but that’s all it is.’

  ‘Says you,’ Belinda murmured sotto voce, adding more seriously, ‘and, if you’re still worrying about Ray Lewis, then don’t. I’ve been thinking things over, and quite honestly I believe we’re better off without his business; if he’s unscrupulous enough to try to blackmail you into sleeping with him then I really think that sooner or later we’d have had other problems with him as well. He’s obviously a bully and, like all bullies, he can’t resist trying to use what he considers to be his superior strength against those he believes to be weaker than him.’

  ‘Mm…’ Sybilla gave a small shudder. ‘…I suspect you’re right, but…well, I honestly believe that he actually hates women. I could hear it in his voice when he rang me. It was quite frightening really. I…’

  ‘I should imagine it was. Look, if he rings you again at home just put the phone down, and if he gets in touch with me—well, I’ve already decided that I’m going to suggest he takes his business elsewhere.’

  ‘I feel so guilty,’ Sybilla told her.

  ‘Well don’t. You’ve nothing to blame yourself for. In fact, I suspect I should have realised earlier what a problem he was going to be and done something about it then. You’re not staying on here too much longer, are you?’

  Sybilla shook her head. ‘No. I’m just about to leave.’

  She had an interview in the morning with a potential new member of their temporary workforce, a computer-program writer who had apparently moved to the area only recently, and who was presently working sixty miles away in the city, but who wanted to try and find work which involved less travel. While he looked he was apparently prepared to consider working for them as one of their ‘temps’. Sybilla was very pleased that he had approached them. They were desperately short of his kind of highly qualified and skilled people; the problem would be not in finding him work but in satisfying the demands of those clients who would want to use his services.

  It was almost seven when she finally locked the office door behind her and walked over to her car.

  Her throat felt raw and painful and her body was aching, but she was grimly determined not to give in. All she needed was a decent night’s sleep and she would feel fine, she told herself firmly as she drove home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SYBILLA’S house was at the end of the small row and therefore had a garage and a short drive. As she turned into this drive she noticed that there was an unfamiliar car parked outside her house. Presumably its owner must be visiting one of her neighbours, she decided uninterestedly.

  She frowned a little as she studied its vaguely familiar expensive paintwork.

  Wondering who it belonged to, and then dismissing it from her mind as she opened her own car door, she paused while she extracted her house keys from her shoulder-bag.

  As she closed her own car door she was vaguely aware of the expensive clunk of another car door closing, but didn’t realise who had closed it until she reached her front door and heard Gareth saying from behind her, ‘At last! I was beginning to think you were going to work all evening.’

  Her response was automatic, instinctive. She turned round immediately, too surprised to conceal her shock, and then wished she hadn’t as she realised how close to him she was. She tried to take a step back from him and discovered that she couldn’t.

  ‘I have no idea what you want,’ she began tersely, remembering his previous visit, ‘but—’

  ‘What I want is to apologise to you.’

  The soft words made her gape disbelievingly at him. ‘To apologise…’ Without knowing why she did it, she found that her tongue-tip was automatically seeking the small wound that still marked her bottom lip.

  ‘Yes! And for that as well,’ he told her in an oddly rough voice that raised a betraying rash of gooseflesh on her body. ‘But primarily—’ He stopped and raised his hand as though he was about to touch her.

  Immediately she flinched and then flushed dark red as she realised how betraying and juvenile her reaction had been…the reaction of a woman quite obviously not used to a man’s touch no matter how casual or non-sexual.

  She tensed, waiting for some sardonic comment, her face averted from him, her fingers trembling as she tried to insert her key in her front-door lock and escape from him.

  ‘I suppose I deserved that.’ His voice was harsh again now. ‘Sybilla, I’m sorry. I should never…’ He broke off and then said quickly, ‘Look, can we go inside to discuss this?’

  Go inside. She opened her mouth to refuse, to tell him that he was the last person she wanted in her home, but before she could speak he was continuing, ‘It’s just that we do seem to be attracting rather a lot of attention from your neighbours.’

  To her consternation, Sybilla saw that he was right. ‘Yes. Yes, you’d better come in,’ she agreed with obvious reluctance.

  So obvious in fact that his mouth twisted wryly. ‘Not exactly a warm welcome. But then I hardly deserve…warmth…in the circumstances, do I?’

  Why had he hesitated like that over the word ‘warmth’? she wondered sensitively. Was he, like her, remembering that once she would have welcomed his presence with a good deal more than mere warmth?

  She could feel her face starting to burn again, and because of those memories, because she was so acutely conscious of the past she immediately withdrew from him, physically as well as emotionally, saying in a clipped accent, ‘I’m rather tired, Gareth. I don’t know what you’re doing here.’

  ‘I’ve already told you: I’ve come to apologise.’

  ‘What for? Accusing me of having an affair? There was really no need. It’s hardly something of world-shattering importance. After all…your opinion of me—’

  ‘Oh, I already know you don’t give a damn about my views, my feelings,’ he interrupted her, causing her to pause in the act of removing her jacket to stare at him.

  What she had been about to say was that his opinion of her had sunk so low when she was a teenager that it could scarcely have sunk any lower, and now she was so shaken that it was impossible for her to hide her reaction from him.

  She had started to tremble slightly, her fingers gripping her jacket far too tightly.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m upsetting you.’

  She started to shake her head in defensive denial, and then had to stop as a fit of sneezing overtook her.

  ‘You’re not well.’

  He sounded brusque, stern almost, reminding her momentarily of the time when he had treated her with a mixture of vaguely older-brotherly concern mixed with affection and humour.

  But those days were gone, she reminded herself fiercely, and that heady blending of affection and humour had never really existed other than in her imagination. If it had…

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got a bit of a cold, that’s all.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be standing here in a draught.’

  Before she could stop him he was walking her towards her open kitchen door. She had no alternative other than to follow him, and once she had he floored her completely by striding over to her sink and filling her kettle, telling her firmly,

  ‘Sit down. I’ll make us both a hot drink.’ Sit down. In her own home! How dared he boss her around like this? How dared he assume that she would want to be in the same room with him, never mind calmly sit down and drink tea with him? And yet his actions were so reminiscent of the easy relationship they had once shared…which she had thought they had once shared, she reminded herself grimly.

  He was, she realised, removing two mugs from the open shelf above his head, and while she had fumed in silence at his high-handedness the kettle had started to boil. Unless she wanted to find herself drinking his damned tea she was going to have to find a way of making him leave.

  ‘Tea-bags,’ she heard him murmuring under his breath, and then, like someone watching disaster approach them in slow motion, she tense
d as she saw him reach unerringly for the ugly pot pig sitting on its haunches on the shelf.

  ‘You’ve still got this!’

  Was that amusement she could hear in his voice or contempt?

  ‘I intended to give it to one of the vicar’s jumble sales when I moved in here, but somehow I felt he’d have been less than thrilled with it,’ she told him with as much casual wryness as she could manage, while inwardly she was cursing herself for her idiotic sentimentality, not just in keeping the damn thing but also for having it on open display where he could so easily see it.

  In her own defence, she could hardly have expected him to walk uninvited into her home, her kitchen, and coolly start making her tea.

  ‘I remember the day I won it for you,’ Gareth was saying softly. ‘It was either this or a goldfish. I thought you’d opt for the fish. After all, that’s what you’d said you wanted.’

  ‘I know, but there was only one left, and that little boy wanted it so desperately. I could see it in his eyes.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed soberly. ‘You always were a softie…sensitive to the feelings and needs of others…putting them first.’

  For some reason his quietly spoken words made her feel uncomfortably vulnerable.

  ‘I was a child,’ she told him quickly. ‘People change.’

  ‘Some do,’ he agreed, still with that same sober note in his voice, his eyes intent as he studied her. Looking for changes in her. She tilted her head proudly. Well, if he thought she was still that same sentimental child he had taken to the town fair…

  ‘They have to if they want to survive,’ she added, and then flushed wildly, praying that he wouldn’t sense the self-betrayal hidden within her words.

  To her relief he didn’t, instead saying curtly, ‘Do you still take your tea without sugar?’

  She nodded and watched as he poured the tea into two mugs, bringing one over to her.

  ‘I meant what I said about owing you an apology, you know,’ he told her sombrely. ‘I was standing outside your partner’s office this morning and I overheard what you were saying to her about Lewis. I should have known really…should have realised that you simply aren’t the type to—’