A Scandalous Engagement

by Cathy Williams

  ‘A girl with spirit. Unusual for my brother.’

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ Jade asked quickly, shooting back to the furthest edge of the bed just in case he got it into his head to try another lunge at her. The man seemed to have a bad effect on her nervous system, and she was rapidly discovering that the closer he got, the worse the effect was.

  ‘It means that the few trollops he’s ever had, to my knowledge, have all been watery, insignificant bores with the personalities of wet rags.’

  Jade sighed. She had never thought that she would meet Curtis Greene. When she and Andy had moved into his house he had assured her that his brother was a workaholic, firmly ensconced in the fast-living bowels of Manhattan, and rarely came to London. When he did there would be advance notice, and they would simply move out until he had cleared off.

  He clearly disliked his older brother, even though she had detected a certain awe and admiration in his voice whenever his name was mentioned, and conversations about him had been limited.

  ‘So I think it’s question-and-answer time, Miss Summers, don’t you?’ No wonder he had failed to be intimidated by her withering looks, she thought miserably. Lord of the house and master of the withering look, himself. The sort of man who would fail to be intimidated by a charging rhino, never mind a diminutive blonde with more lip than common sense.

  ‘And, charming though the bedroom is, I don’t think it’s quite the place for a conversation.’ He began walking towards the door, looking around only when he was standing in the doorway. ‘Why don’t we adjourn to the sitting room? We’ll be far more comfortable there. Unless, of course, you’re the sort who finds bedrooms the best place to be…?’

  Jade sprang out of the bed, barely sparing him a glance, her arms protectively folded across her chest, and brushed past him, irritated to find that, despite his high-handed, despicable, loathsome arrogance, she still found that fleeting physical contact with his shirt slightly unnerving.

  ‘I don’t care who you are,’ was her opening shot, as soon as they were in the sitting room, ‘I don’t like your attitude. You may think it’s a whizz threatening people but it won’t work on me. And rubbing my nose in the fact that this is your house and I’m a trespasser isn’t going to work either. I have no problem with packing up my things and moving out.’

  Her bank manager might find it a little worrying, she thought, but she had enough money saved from her last job to see her through finding a place to rent. And working while she studied was hardly inconceivable. The offer from Andy to share this house, with space for her to paint and only their bills and food to cover, had been manna from heaven, but if it involved bowing and scraping to the brute in front of her, then forget it.

  ‘Spirited, and full of indignant, outraged pride,’ was his only comment, as he moved to one of the chairs and sat down. Like his brother, Curtis Greene paid scant attention to his surroundings, and, like his brother, he fitted in, from the casual elegance of his clothes to the unspoken assumption of authority he exuded. But unlike his brother, who was a charming and loveable player, Curtis Greene was neither charming nor loveable. He was a shaker and mover whom, she imagined, moved through life playing by his rules and expecting the rest of the world to fall obediently in line.

  ‘Why don’t you drop the act, Miss Summers? It’s just the two of us now, and we both know what you are.’

  Jade tentatively perched on the chair furthest from his and stared at him in bewilderment.

  ‘An art student,’ she said after a while.

  ‘So-called.’

  ‘You can telephone the college in London and confirm it,’ she told him coldly. ‘What do you think I am, if not an art student? Do you think that I sit at the kitchen table every morning with a load of phoney drawings scattered around me, idly waiting for someone to drop by so that I can launch into a string of pathological lies?’ She gave a short, derisive laugh and his mouth tightened.

  ‘You have a brain and a vocabulary,’ he mused aloud. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’ He frowned thoughtfully, as though genuinely baffled by the phenomenon, but she wasn’t fooled for a minute. This series of observations was all linked to his own agenda, and she was pretty sure that when she discovered what the agenda was she wasn’t going to like it.

  ‘Now what would my brother see in you?’

  Poor Andy, she thought. If he had spent a lifetime coping with this sort of condescending attitude. No wonder the shutters came down every time he mentioned the name Curtis.

  ‘Just get to the point, Mr Greene, so that I can pack my bags and leave.’

  ‘Now, you don’t really want to do that, do you?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Jade agreed, flummoxed. ‘But it is your house, as you pointed out…’

  With a sudden movement he stripped off the thick cream sweater to reveal a checked shirt in muted greens and creams and browns. Very slowly he began to roll back the sleeves, exposing strong forearms, liberally sprinkled with fine, dark hair. Jade watched, mesmerised. For a big man, his movements were as graceful as a cat’s.

  ‘How did you meet my brother?’ he asked conversationally, pausing briefly to glance in her direction, then sitting back in the chair, his head tilted backwards so that his eyes became narrowed, watchful slits.

  Had Andy mentioned anything to him about the counselling? she wondered. Doubtful. Aside from Christmas cards and the occasional letter, he’d said that their communications had always been restricted to faxes and E-mails about the company.

  ‘Oh, we met through mutual friends,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘What mutual friends might those be?’

  ‘None that you would know,’ she answered shortly.

  ‘So you met and…what? Instantly hit it off? Started dating?’

  ‘We did instantly hit it off, yes,’ she replied uneasily. She was being led somewhere and she didn’t like the feeling. She got the impression that every word she spoke was ensnaring her yet further in whatever ambush he had surreptitiously laid down.

  ‘And then you moved in? I thought Andy refused to have anything to do with this house? Hasn’t he got his own flat in the Barbican? And what about you? Where were you living?’

  ‘I don’t know whether he refused to have anything to do with this house or not. He’s never spoken to me about that. I just assumed that it was your house and so—’

  ‘He’s always known that he can live here whenever he wants to,’ he interrupted abruptly. ‘My question is why has he chosen to move in here now? What’s suddenly wrong with his flat?’

  ‘He’s lent it out to a friend of your sister who’s over here from Australia for six months.’

  ‘Ah, so Sarah asked him if he would do her the favour…?’

  ‘And also…’

  ‘Yes?’ He looked at her with interest, or at least the interest, she thought darkly, that a shark might show in a prospective meal.

  She squared her shoulders and came right out with it. ‘When Andy quit his job, we both thought that it might be a nice idea for us to move in here so that we could have more space respectively for our art work. We had no idea that you would be returning to London.’

  ‘So I gather. My apologies if I’ve broken up the cosy little love-nest.’

  Jade went bright red at his words, opened her mouth to contradict him, and then closed it again. She might as well wait for his full sheet of accusations before she started defending herself.

  ‘You must have both known that I’d be back, though. Didn’t you?’ His mouth curled. ‘Did Andy imagine for one second that he could fax me his letter of resignation and get no reaction from me but a good luck card and a transatlantic pat on the shoulder?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask your brother that one,’ she muttered uncomfortably, shifting in the chair, aware that she was perspiring slightly and highly resenting the way he made her feel, like a criminal being tried for charges as yet unspecified.

  ‘I’m asking you!’ he exploded, shedding his cool demeanour
and giving her a taste of what lay underneath. A dangerous wolf in dangerous wolf’s clothing. As if she hadn’t already figured that one out. All wolves had teeth and he was baring his.

  She steeled herself not to wilt at his outburst and gave him a serene smile.

  ‘Yes, well, there’s no need to raise your voice, Mr Greene, and you must know that I can’t answer your question, since I don’t know what’s going on in every recess of your brother’s head.’

  ‘Well, answer me this,’ he rasped. ‘Did you coerce Andy into this move so that you could get your pretty little foot through the door?’

  The accusation, thinly disguised as a question, was followed by such a long silence that the soft noises in the room, the gentle ticking of the antique clock on the mantelpiece, became resounding explosions. She felt fury rush through her, and she had to clamp shut her mouth just in case she started yelling at him. Yelling never got anyone anywhere. It just made a situation worse.

  ‘I see where all this is leading. No wonder you didn’t want me to call Andy. You needed a bit of time on your own to try and pin me down into…what, exactly? Breaking down and confessing that I’m a gold-digger who’s ruthlessly using your brother for his money?’

  ‘It won’t be the first time that a woman’s head has been turned by a big bank balance,’ he grated, recovering his deadly calm. ‘And Andy’s a gullible victim. He likes the underdog.’

  ‘I am not an underdog, Mr Greene. I happen to have been holding down a very good job before…’ She paused, pulling herself sharply back from any mention of counselling. ‘Before I decided to go back into art.’

  ‘Which is why it just doesn’t add up, if you don’t mind my saying.’ He gave her a cold, triumphant smile. ‘The few girls I have ever known my brother to associate with have all been simpering females without a brain between their ears. You have to admit that it’s a bit strange to find him here with you now, cohabiting in the family mansion which he swore he would never return to. I’m not a complete fool, Miss Summers, and I’m nothing like my brother. I’ve never been taken in by feminine wiles in my entire life and I can smell a scam from a mile away.

  ‘You’re clever. Clever enough to interest my brother long enough to get what you want. Did you flatter his ego? Was that how you decided to operate? A cunning word here, a sideways glance there, a soft gasp of admiration when he confided that he had always been interested in the world of art? Was that how it went, Miss Summers? Then a hesitant suggestion that perhaps moving in together might be a good idea? Get to know one another better? Share your love of art at close range? Was that how things progressed?’

  Jade’s fists clenched into balls at her sides. It was all so ridiculous that she very nearly burst out laughing. If only he knew. But the fact was that Curtis Greene knew nothing at all about his brother. He had never taken the time to find out.

  ‘What’s so damned funny?’ he asked with narrow-eyed suspicion.

  The ghost of a smile which had curved her lips upwards turned into a grin which became even broader as she watched his expression go from hostile suspicion to outright wrath. She began to laugh, throwing her head back and giving full vent to the sound that had become so alien to her over the past two years. She laughed until the tears rolled down her face, and then she subsided into giggles, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands like a child. Eventually she sobered up enough to look at him.

  ‘I haven’t laughed so much in years,’ she said in a sudden, confiding outburst. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ There was naked curiosity in the cool blue eyes now, but instead of trying to slake it he lowered his eyes for a few seconds, then returned his gaze to her face.

  ‘But I don’t get the joke.’

  ‘The joke, Mr Greene, is not just that you’re utterly and hopelessly wrong about me. It’s how utterly and hopelessly wrong you are. I’m not after your brother’s money, or anyone else’s money for that matter. I learned the hard way that money doesn’t buy anything that really makes a difference.’ She paused, shocked that for the second time this aggravating, misguided man had almost succeeded in reaching a place in her that very few people had reached thus far. If any.

  ‘Very philosophical for a girl of…eighteen? Nineteen?’

  ‘Twenty-six, actually.’

  ‘Then what is your relationship with my brother?’ he demanded.

  ‘What business is it of yours?’

  ‘What business is it of mine? What business is it of mine?’ he spluttered, wearing the expression of someone who could hardly believe what they were hearing. ‘God, woman, you’ve got some bare-faced cheek!’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Now that his mask of thunderous wrath had slipped, she allowed herself to relax. The atmosphere had altered between them. She couldn’t quite work out how, but she suspected that it was because however much his logic tried to tell him that she was up to no good, his instincts were telling him otherwise. And, peripherally, he was not accustomed to being answered back. She sensed that in some strange, intangible way. He was a man who had prematurely assumed a mantle of power and had grown to accept the respect and subservience it would have brought him.

  She knew enough from Andy to piece together Curtis Greene in a way she would not have been capable of doing had she simply met him out of the blue. She knew that he had been the first born, the love-child of his parents when his mother had been only a girl herself. The marriage that had ensued had been going for quite some years before two more children had been produced. By the time his parents had died, in a light aircraft accident, Curtis had been a young man in his early twenties, and without warning had found himself catapulted into a dynasty which he had proved himself more than equipped to handle. More importantly, he had found himself surrogate parent to his two younger siblings and, from what she had gathered, had fulfilled his role through the iron rod of discipline rather than the gentle hand of love.

  His past had made him the person that he was today, just as it had made his brother the person he had turned out to be.

  She found that she was staring at him, mentally trying to piece him together in much the same way he had been trying to piece her together earlier on, and she only snapped back to the present when he said roughly, ‘He’s my brother. I have to look out for him.’

  ‘In which case, you have nothing to fear from me.’ She lowered her eyes and half smiled to herself as she played the secrets she held in her head. ‘Andy and I are simply very good friends. Two people who get along.’

  ‘I find that difficult to believe.’

  ‘Why? Men and women can have very satisfying relationships that aren’t based on…’

  ‘Sex?’ He shot her a slow, crooked smile and she felt her breath suddenly quicken. From her previously secure vantage point, she now experienced a disconcerting slip in her mental resources. Something about his smile, the way his mouth curved when he murmured that one word, the sudden change in the tenor of his voice, made the room seem much smaller and very hot.

  ‘Yes. Quite.’ She cleared her throat and adopted an expression of mature concentration.

  ‘Even when they share the same bed?’ he enquired mildly.

  For a few seconds she had to think about that one, then her face cleared. ‘Watching television in the same room. Your brother and I aren’t sleeping together, and you have a sordid mind if you can’t believe that.’

  ‘I prefer to call it experienced.’

  ‘Then I guess that we just agree to differ.’ She shrugged, tugging back the reins on her imagination, which threatened to veer off down those experienced paths to which he had alluded. Oh, yes, she had heard all about Curtis Greene’s experience. There had never been a time, she had been told by Andy one evening, when the drink had overcome his natural reserve about his brother, when Curtis had not had an adoring female at his side. For experienced male she preferred to read practised womaniser.

  ‘So,’ she asked into the growing silence between them, ‘how long do you plan on stayin
g in London?’ A particularly tactless question, she realised, as soon as she had uttered it.

  ‘Long enough to have a word with my brother.’ He stretched out his long legs in front of him and crossed them lightly at the ankles. ‘A very serious word.’

  Jade licked her lips nervously and felt a protective rush of feeling. This visit was going to shock Andy to the core. He wasn’t ready to deal with Curtis and all the demons associated with him. Not yet.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll listen to a word I tell you, but can I ask you not to be hard on Andy?’

  For some reason he seemed to find the request amusing.

  ‘Not be hard on Andy? Since you two seem to be so touchingly close, you must know that I’ve been in charge of his welfare from the time he was eight years old and I was an old man of twenty-one?’

  His eyes darkened and she caught something in there, the shadow of regret, but the moment was fleeting enough to make her doubt what she had seen. He leaned forward, his body rigid, and hit one open palm forcefully with his closed fist. The subdued violence behind the gesture made her wince. It also made her determined to fight this man all the way, if only to protect his brother.

  ‘Being hard was the only way to teach Andy how to cope with his wealth, how to cope with life. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a bloody tough world out there, and when our parents died, it fell to me to teach him how to cope with it.’ His eyes glittered.

  ‘Well, he’s not a child of eight any longer,’ Jade said steadily, ‘and maybe he’s learnt whatever lessons he needed to learn to give him the strength to go his own way.’

  ‘Is that the sort of claptrap psychobabble you’ve been pouring into his head? As one good friend to another? Feeding him with idiotic notions about running away from the rat race and doing his own thing with bits of clay and oil paint?’ He laughed acidly. ‘You must have thought you’d hit jackpot in my brother.’

  ‘I told you, I’m not interested in Andy for his money.’ She heard the trace of contempt in her voice, and knew that he had caught it as well, from his sudden stillness. ‘And I haven’t fed him with any notions of doing anything. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s got a mind of his own!’