One thing was certain, she couldn’t stay here and she couldn’t bank on his leaving simply because she refused to marry him. He might decide to buy her father’s firm, without her consent to marry him, and then while away his time dogging her every move while his leggy, blonde mistress warmed his bed on the sidelines.
‘Which is why,’ she heard her mother say firmly, ‘and especially now that I have decided to spend some time with Dora, I think you ought to come here to stay. At least until you’ve found yourself a place of your own.’
At which point Isobel tuned in with horror to the gist of a conversation which had been wafting over her for the past fifteen minutes.
‘You can be company,’ Mrs Chandler said with a comfortable smile on her lovely face, ‘for Isobel.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
ISOBEL lay on the bed and stared upwards at the ceiling. The light was switched off, so she couldn’t see anything in the dark, but there was no way that she could close her eyes. She would never get to sleep anyway.
‘How,’ she had asked her mother an hour previously, after she had sat through arrangements between Lorenzo and her mother in a stunned silence, ‘could you have invited him to stay here?’ Lorenzo had already left, to return the following afternoon.
‘It seemed logical,’ Mrs Chandler had answered, standing up and heading towards her bedroom. Isobel had followed in her wake, trying to be calm. ‘After all, the house is huge—much too big for just the two of us. And with me gone to stay with your aunt, you would just rattle around here. It would worry me.’
‘Why? I’m fine with my own company. I don’t need…’
‘I would feel happier knowing that Lorenzo was here.’ She had paused outside her bedroom door, and Isobel had pointedly ignored the implication that the discussion was finished, at least until the following morning.
‘But this is our house, and Lorenzo Cicolla is——’ she was close to spluttering ‘—a stranger! And to cap it all, you’re going to go away and leave me…us…here!’ She was spluttering and beginning to sound like a plaintive child and her mother smiled indulgently.
‘He’s hardly a stranger, darling. Anyone would think that you’d never laid eyes on him before,’ her mother had reproved, pulling back the bedspread and then sitting down at the dressing-table to remove her make-up. ‘I don’t know what’s come over you all of a sudden, Isobel. I know you’re still fraught after Jeremy’s death, and your dad’s. We both are. But you were very rude this evening.’
‘I wasn’t rude,’ Isobel had said stubbornly. ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea to throw open the doors to any and everyone who happens to be passing by.’
‘Lorenzo is an old friend!’ She had faced her daughter. ‘I thought it might have helped you. I thought, darling, that the company would be good for you. You’re far too inclined to retreat into yourself. Besides, if you two are thrown together it might knock some sense into both of you, get you working together so that Lorenzo can go ahead and settle the deal on your father’s firm. You used to be such close friends—more than that. I simply don’t know what’s going on here.’
And that, Isobel now thought, had been the end of that.
Lorenzo was going to be moving in. Of course she could have moved out herself, but then that would have seemed like running away, and besides, the thought of moving back into her own house, Jeremy’s house, as she had always considered it, wasn’t appealing. She didn’t know if she could face being surrounded by memories of the unhappiness that had been forced upon her, memories of the silence, the despair born out of secrets which should have remained buried in the past.
She lay in bed, seething, and when she awoke the following morning, she was heavy-eyed and bad-tempered.
It didn’t help that her mother seemed thrilled at the prospect of Lorenzo coming to stay. With what seemed to Isobel indecent haste, she had packed her bags and consulted train timetables. She would leave that evening and Aunt Dora was going to have some late tea laid on, and wasn’t that wonderful, my sweet, oh, it will be restful.
Isobel departed for the surgery on her bicycle with dark thoughts. If she happened to bump into Lorenzo Cicolla, then she would give him a piece of her mind, because she had been too taken aback the evening before to do much more than stare at them both in openmouthed horror.
She didn’t, though. She spent a tiring day at the surgery and emerged at five o’clock into a depressingly cold drizzle of rain.
Lorenzo was outside. He seemed, she thought antagonistically, to make a habit of accosting her outside her work.
She debated whether to pretend that she hadn’t seen his car parked across the road, and while she was busy debating he stepped out and sprinted across the road towards her.
It was cold, and he was wearing a long black coat over his suit, which seemed to emphasise his height and muscularity.
‘I hoped I might catch you before you left,’ he said, not giving her time to say anything. ‘I want to have a few words with you.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘So I’ve noticed. Come on.’
This time she didn’t try to protest. What would have been the point? He would have steamrollered her along with him like the last time anyway.
She wheeled her bicycle along the pavement, putting it between the two of them, hurrying to keep up with him.
She was soaked by the time they made it to the pub.
‘You’re wet,’ Tom said, as if pointing out something that might have escaped them.
‘Very perceptive, Tom,’ Isobel muttered. ‘Coffee would be nice.’
He went off to get their order and returned, saying with his usual forthrightness, ‘Seems to be getting a habit, this, doesn’t it? You two having a drink together.’
It was impossible to get annoyed with Tom. His bluntness was too disarming.
‘We keep running into one another,’ Lorenzo said, not looking at her. ‘Hazards of small-town living, I guess.’
Tom nodded. ‘If you could call it a hazard,’ he replied, with a great deal of philosophical insight for him. ‘I like it myself.’ He pointed towards the table where they had last sat. ‘Your table’s empty. Nice and cosy too, in front of the fire. I’ll bring coffee along when it’s ready.’
‘Our table?’ Isobel hissed to Lorenzo once they were out of earshot. ‘We’ve only been here twice, for heaven’s sake!’
Lorenzo lowered his body into the chair and looked at her through his lashes. ‘In a place this size, twice constitutes a habit.’
Tom approached them with the coffee, and they made polite noises about the weather. He himself lived above the pub with his wife and children, but his brother had a modest farm on the outskirts of the village, and consequently Tom was something of a self-proclaimed expert on the weather and its effects on various types of vegetables and livestock.
Isobel listened while he and Lorenzo conversed and, as soon as he was gone, she turned to Lorenzo and said furiously, not bothering to hide behind politeness, ‘How could you?’
‘How could I what?’
‘You know what! How could you accept my mother’s invitation to stay at the house? Especially knowing that she wasn’t going to be around!’
‘Nothing like coming to the point, is there?’ He sipped from his glass, then carefully put it down on the table. ‘But I’m glad you brought the subject up because that’s precisely what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Snap!’ Isobel looked at his unsmiling face mutinously. She had had a good few hours to consider the situation, and her thoughts on the matter hadn’t become any more accepting.
How was she ever going to stand having him around her, under the same roof? Without even the comforting third presence of her mother?
‘You’re acting like a child,’ Lorenzo said coolly, and she could have hit him.
‘Me? A child?’ She swallowed a mouthful of coffee and then cradled the cup in her hands. ‘You really want to make life as difficult as possible for me, don�
��t you?’ she asked bitterly.
‘Your mother would have been hurt if I had rejected her offer. She wants this deal with your father’s company to go through, which is one reason why she’s throwing us together. And anyway, as far as she is concerned, why should I stay in a draughty, uncomfortable hotel room when her own house is so vast?’
It made sense, of course, but that only made Isobel angrier.
‘Because you’re out of my hair when you’re in a draughty, uncomfortable hotel room.’
‘Don’t be so damned self-centred.’
‘You can stay in my house,’ she offered, clutching a sudden safety belt, and his brows met in a black frown.
‘Are you quite mad?’ he asked smoothly.
‘It’s empty!’
‘Not for me, it isn’t.’ He swallowed a long mouthful of his drink and looked at her savagely. ‘And the reason I wanted to see you before I moved in was to warn you to stop acting as though you want to kill me in front of your mother. She’s going away to relax, and why don’t you just allow her that sensible piece of freedom without having to worry that she’ll return to find a corpse on her hands? That will achieve nothing more than unnecessarily upsetting her.’
‘Don’t tell me what’s going to upset my mother!’
‘I damn well will, because right now you’re not seeing further than your own nose. I’m moving in and that’s a fact, so you might as well grin and bear it.’
‘I’d rather grin and bear a nuclear war,’ she said through gritted teeth, and he laughed, relaxing back in the chair and giving her a long, appreciative look. Isobel reddened and said quickly, ‘Why did you sell your mother’s house if you had plans to return to England?’
Lorenzo looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Because I had no idea when I would return, or, to be honest, where I would live.’
‘Until events propelled you back to this little place.’ The bitterness had crept back into her voice.
He shrugged. ‘At any rate, it seemed foolish to continue maintaining an unoccupied house.’
‘So I take it you’re actively looking for somewhere to live?’
‘Do I detect a note of optimism in your voice?’ he asked lazily.
She didn’t like it when he was like this, when the charm was lurking so close to the surface. He was untrustworthy, she had to remind herself, and he was hell-bent on hurting her. She glanced at him from under her lashes. Why hadn’t the passing years turned him into an unappealing, overweight businessman? Maybe she wouldn’t have found her senses doing somersaults if he wasn’t so damned sexy.
‘Curiosity,’ she answered at last, and he raised his eyebrows.
‘Well, to satisfy your curiosity, yes, I shall be looking for somewhere to live. Any suggestions?’
‘That depends on the kind of house that you’re looking for.’
‘What would you recommend?’
‘I don’t know your tastes,’ she replied succinctly.
‘Don’t you?’
She was beginning to feel breathless.
‘I don’t know what you can afford,’ she said, avoiding the question and he laughed.
‘I can afford anything.’
‘Your best bet is to go along to John Evans on the High Street and find out what they’ve got.’ She began making fiddly movements to indicate that she was ready to leave.
‘Yes, you could do that, couldn’t you?’ he murmured softly, amused at her tight-lipped reaction to that.
‘No.’
‘Why not? You know my taste in houses, whether you want to admit it or not. Didn’t we spend idle hours discussing where we’d live if we ever settled down together?’
Disastrous things were happening to her equilibrium. She didn’t want to remember the past with him; she didn’t want to confront the awful comparison between what they had then and what they had now.
‘Right now,’ he said smoothly, ‘I haven’t got time to visit properties.’
‘Why not?’
‘I have to establish a working base here so that I can communicate with my other companies, before I get down to your father’s, that is.’
‘Over my dead body.’
‘Jessica will be bringing over paperwork, and I shall have to install a fax machine.’
‘Surely the wondrous Jessica would be able to do all that and give you ample time to find your own house? From what you say, she could run a business singlehanded in between raising ten children and knocking out gourmet meals in the length of time it would take most normal people to open a can of beans.’
‘Jealous?’
‘Hardly.’
‘You could have done something with your life, Isobel. You were destined to.’ He leaned forward urgently. ‘Greatness was expected from you. How could you have been satisfied with anything less?’
‘Not everyone lives up to their expectations.’ Her words were practically inaudible. She didn’t want to talk about this and her lowered eyes and set mouth said as much.
‘And there ends the subject?’
‘I haven’t got time to house-hunt on your behalf,’ she said, ending the subject.
‘On our behalf,’ he said with smiling, steely-eyed menace. ‘And I rather think you have. After all, wouldn’t you like me out of here so that you can come to terms, in privacy, with the inevitable?’
He looked at her and smiled, knowing that he had trapped her.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Isobel mumbled, standing up. She couldn’t quite explain it to herself, but she felt uneasy about becoming involved in something as personal as choosing a house for Lorenzo Cicolla. It felt as though she was beginning the process of giving in to his demands, but he was right: living under the same roof as him was going to drive her insane, and she easily had more time than he had to hunt around properties.
‘You’d better come back with me,’ Lorenzo said as they went outside to find that the drizzle was now bordering on a downpour. He took her bike and ran towards his car, with her following him.
They were both dripping once more by the time they were inside the car. He started the engine, turned on the windscreen wipers, and it was only when they had been driving for a while that she realised that they were not headed in the right direction for her mother’s house.
Her body jerked up in panic and she said, in a rushed voice, ‘Where are we going?’
‘The Edwardian.’
‘What for?’
He looked at her sideways. ‘To collect my things. Clothes, papers, my computer terminal. Any objections?’
Isobel tried to look nonchalant in the dark, but she was nervous by the time they arrived at the hotel. When he had first arrived, she had assumed, blithely, that she could more or less avoid having any contact with him, but here she was now, about to face the prospect of sharing her mother’s house with him, not to mention scouring estate agents on his behalf.
The Edwardian was a large hotel on the outskirts of the town, and it was obvious that it must have been quite something in its heyday. Unfortunately, as her mother had said, its heyday had long since vanished, and as they walked into the foyer she was all too aware of those little tell-tale signs of a place that has hit on hard times. The paint needed updating, the wallpaper needed updating—even the furniture dotted about here and there looked as though it had seen much better days.
Mrs Towser was standing behind the reception desk and she looked harassed.
‘So sorry to hear about your father and your husband, dear,’ she said to Isobel as Lorenzo settled his bill. She looked slyly across to him. ‘Your house must seem very empty without your husband around.’
‘I’m staying with my mother,’ Isobel answered shortly. She didn’t want to encourage an interrogation from Mrs Towser, so she looked vacantly around her.
‘Yes, dear. A very good idea.’ She ceased looking curious, and her expression of harassment reappeared. Isobel got the feeling that she was so wrapped up in her own worries that she had little time to concern herself with other peop
le.
Lorenzo handed her the cheque, which she perfunctorily glanced at, and it was a relief to escape the atmosphere of doom which pervaded the area around the desk.
There was no lift. They walked along a network of corridors, through archways, up some stairs, and finally arrived at the room.
‘I’ll wait for you outside, shall I?’ Isobel suggested as he pushed open the door, and Lorenzo said with his back to her,
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know how long I shall be. There’s no point standing out there in the freezing corridor.’ So she reluctantly entered and resumed her inspection of the hotel décor while he threw his things into suitcases.
Her parents had used to come here, occasionally, for Sunday lunch when she was a child. It had always been something of a treat. It seemed sad to think that the place was now a shabby building with all glamour and elegance long stripped from it.
He had finished packing. He briefly glanced around to make sure that he was not forgetting anything, then moved to the door, where she had been standing in silence for the past fifteen minutes.
‘There,’ he said, leaning against the door and surveying her with a certain amount of cool amusement, ‘all done, and you’re unscathed by the experience.’
Isobel didn’t answer. She rested her hand meaningfully on the door-knob and he covered it with his. Immediately her body froze.
‘Why were you so reluctant to come here with me, Isobel?’ he asked mockingly. ‘Did you think that I might be overcome with lust if I found myself in a bedroom with you?’
‘Perish the thought,’ she said promptly.
‘Of course, I’ll admit that there was a time…’ He coiled his fingers in her hair and she looked up at him with a small, inaudible gasp. The room seemed to be closing in and she found that she was perspiring slightly.
She had no idea how long they stayed like that, staring at each other. What was he thinking? His expression was shuttered but there was an unspoken feverish heat about him that radiated from his body.
Her eyes drifted down to his mouth, and his fingers tightened in her hair until he was hurting her.
Vengeful Seduction (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern) Page 11
