Emma didn't answer.
'I wish I could see what went on behind that cool exterior of yours,' Conrad murmured, his eyes running over her body and finally resting on her face. 'You were vibrant enough at the dinner table, when you were discussing politics, but the minute the topic becomes too personal you close up like a clam.'
'Really?' Emma feigned indifference, but she could feel her heart pounding.
'Yes, really. Why are you so secretive? You've got some ulterior motive for being here. Why don't you just come out with it and tell me what it is? I'll find out sooner or later, you know.'
'Why do you keep trying to pry into what's no concern of yours?'
'If only it were that easy.' His words were spoken so softly that Emma barely caught them. There was a brief, electric silence broken only by the sounds outside of crickets and frogs.
'I'm surprised Alistair objects to the...to your arrangement,' she said hurriedly, 'when...'
'When what?'
Emma stared at him, realising that she had dug a hole for herself.
'When he opposed his own daughter's marriage for just the opposite reason, namely that it had not been thought out thoroughly, that it was solely an affair of the heart.'
'Did he say that?'
'Yes.' It was too late now for her to try and remember whether he had told her that or not. That watchful curiosity was back on Conrad's face and she turned away, not wanting to meet the questions in his sharp blue eyes.
'He's changed. Maybe that's the very reason he's against my engagement. Anyway, he's right about one thing. You'll be meeting Sophia soon enough. Her parents own a house on the golf course near here. She's coming to stay for three weeks.'
'How nice.'
Sophia, she thought. What a name. Hardly conjures up the picture of an ambitious career woman.
'Is she a model?'
Conrad looked at her in surprise. 'As a matter of fact, she is. She does a bit of acting as well, but from what I've seen she's hopeless.'
'That's charitable of you.'
Conrad's sensuous mouth curved into a smile and he raised one mocking eyebrow. 'I'll say this for you: you do have a certain dry wit that I haven't found in too many members of the opposite sex.'
'Maybe you've been hanging around with the wrong members of the opposite sex,' Emma said, trying to stifle the spurt of pleasure his compliment had given her.
'Maybe I have. Would you say it's too late to remedy that?' His voice was low and warm. Suddenly the room
felt hot, too hot for comfort, and tiny needles were pricking under her skin.
'Far too late,' she replied crisply. Perhaps she was imagining the speculative intimacy behind his words, or maybe he was playing some kind of game. Whatever, she would do well to remember that she could not afford to let her guard drop. Not for an instant.
Anyway, she had no intention of being his victim. She rose abrupdy, tossing her hair behind her shoulders.
'Well, I think I'll hit the sack.' She yawned and threw him a courteous, slightly dismissive look. 'I want to be up early to finish some work.'
'On a Saturday? No beach?' he asked with an air of feigned innocence.
The implication behind his words was blatant enough, and Emma replied more hotly than she intended, 'No, no beach! So you can find someone else to do your sneaking up behind!'
She slammed the door on his low chuckle.
Their conversation was still jarring on her nerves the following morning, and she made a deliberate point of avoiding him. There seemed little use in courting another battle of words, with her, she admitted, coming out the loser; and, besides, there was the typing to do.
As she settled in front of the word processor in Alistair's office she eyed the pile of notes, some scribbled, some astonishingly coherent, with an expression of reluctance.
Alistair had retired with his book to the pool at the back of the house. He had invited her to sit with him, but she had refused. She was not in the mood for lazing in the sunshine, even though the prospect of three hours' worth of typing did not do a great deal for her either.
She flicked through the sheets of paper, but her thoughts kept returning to Conrad.
She felt that she had guessed accurately enough at his character when she had first met him. A powerful man.
aware of his own sexual attraction to women, and not against using it when it suited his purposes. The fact that he was almost frighteningly clever as well made his charm all the more lethal when he decided to use it.
She should have been prepared to meet him with the stony indifference which would have protected her against all his barbs, especially as he had had no qualms about telling her precisely what he thought of her when they first met.
It annoyed her that, after all that, he had still managed j to get under her skin, like some wretched virus she couldn't quite manage to shake off.
A couple of throwaway compliments from him, a few ambiguous remarks which she had most probably imagined, and she had been squirming like a gawky teenager on her first date. Good grief! He probably acted precisely the same when he was talking to his sixty-year- old female employees. She frowned in self-disgust.
Shouldn't the fact that he was engaged have made him more reserved? she wanted to know.
He had disappeared to meet Sophia from the airport. When she saw them together, she would probably be able to put it all into perspective. They would be holding hands and whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears, even if he did profess to be cynical about love, and she would be able to relax and treat him as an almost married man. Easy. She would be able to harness her emotions and get her mind under control as it always had been.
She slipped the disk into the word processor and began clattering on the keyboard, sifting through the disorder until what appeared on the screen before her made sense.
The tiny dark grey print on the paler grey screen was soothing. After a while, Emma could feel the tension begin to ease out of her and her concentration take over.
Reading over what she had done, she saw Alistair in a more detached manner, the young Alistair at any rate,
the boy still struggling to become a man and make his fortune in the world.
As yet, they had only covered his very early years, before he met her grandmother, and long before they'd had her mother and his story began to weave into hers.
He had been single-minded even as a young man, with the sort of blinkered drive that ground obstacles into dust. Emma could see how his ambition could have blighted any relationship he might have had with her mother. Her mother had been a sensitive woman. Incomprehensible to someone like the young Alistair, whose thirst for success had no time for the fine, subtle swings of emotion.
How he had changed, Emma thought. The old man with whom she now worked bore only a shadowy resemblance to the hard young boy about whom she was writing.
She became so absorbed in her work that it was nearly midday the next time she glanced at her watch.
She looked through the window at a perfectly clear blue sky. Even though the office was air-conditioned, she could almost feel the sun beating down outside. In weather like this it was no wonder everyone moved in slow motion. She did now, as well.
She stretched with a lazy, cat-like movement. The thought of lounging around the pool was beginning to look distinctly tempting, and she packed away her files quickly, flicking them into order as she did so.
Alistair was still by the pool when she emerged half an hour later, wearing a modest flowered one-piece and a pale blue beach coat. He was sitting in the shade, fully dressed in a shirt and cotton trousers and wearing a hat.
'Doctor's advice,' he said, pointing to the hat. 'He's managed to get me off the drink and the cigarettes, and now he even dictates my wardrobe. Pretty soon he'll be telling me what television programmes I can and can't watch.'
Emma laughed, her green eyes crinkling. Esther had prepared snacks for lunch, and Emma bit into one of the pasties, catching the crumb
s with one hand.
In between mouthfuls of food, she chatted to Alistair about work. All the time she found herself watching for Conrad, almost disappointed when there was no sign of him.
Probably locked up in a bedroom somewhere, she thought, making up for lost time with Sophia.
The thought was so distasteful that Emma pushed it aside and concentrated on the surroundings, half listening to what Alistair was saying, half drowsing in the heat.
'Lying there, for a moment, my dear, you reminded me of someone, but I can't for the life of me think who. In fact, over the past few days, something about you... your mannerisms... It'll come to me in time, I expect. Old age. Dulls the memory, you know.'
Alistair's words cut through the haze of her drowsiness, and Emma sat up, trying not to let any surprise flicker across her face.
For the past few weeks she had been lulled into a sense of security, appreciating Alistair's company, almost forgetting the blood tie between them. Almost forgetting the letter lying in the drawer upstairs.
'I can't think why I should remind you of anyone,' she said warily, propping herself up on one elbow, and avoiding his speculative gaze. The niggling suspicions rose their heads, and she stamped them down resolutely. 'My goodness, you very nearly woke me up. I was beginning to fall asleep here. It's so peaceful and quiet. When will Conrad be making a reappearance?'
It was a line of conversation which she did not want to explore, but from experience Emma knew that Alistair could be distracted easily by the mention of Conrad's name. He seemed as proud of him as if he were his own son. If the alternative was a trip down memory lane,
with Alistair trying to plumb his memory for a recollection of her, then far safer to stick to discussing Conrad DeVere, however unappealing the subject was.
'Some time this afternoon. He's gone to meet that wretched woman at the airport. He'll probably bring her back here with him, though thankfully she's not actually staying here. She'll be at her parents' house.'
'Yes, Conrad told me.'
'He's been discussing her with you?' Alistair's bright eyes looked at her slyly. 'I didn't realise you two were on such confidential terms already. Not that I mind in the least. On the contrary.'
'We're not on confidential terms,' Emma corrected him firmly. 'In fact, we're not on any kind of terms at all, confidential or otherwise. In fact, he didn't tell me a thing about his fiancee apart from her name and where she was staying.'
'Weren't you curious about her?' Alistair probed.
'No,' Emma lied.
Alistair shot her a disappointed look. 'Well, she's no competition for you at all, my dear.'
'Competition? I'm not in competition with anyone for that man's attention!' Emma responded hotly. She scowled at Alistair and he chuckled.
Alistair was needling her and clearly enjoying her discomfort. Emma resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Instead, she turned over on to her stomach and let her arms fall on either side of the red and white sun lounger. Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at Alistair, who still wore the remnants of a grin on his face.
'Don't think much of Sophia. Nice enough, but I don't think they're suited. Don't approve of this engagement one jot. Never have.'
'So Conrad said.'
'Ah!' He sounded like the cat that had just discovered the pot of cream. 'So you were chatting about her! I thought you said that you hadn't been?'
'You're incorrigible!'
They both laughed. Emma stood up, bending her head forward and scooping up her hair, quickly braiding it and securing it with a coloured elastic.
'I,' she said, making a face at him, 'am going for a swim!'
'Not to get away from me, I hope?'
'You flatter yourself!'
With a lithe movement she stood poised on the edge of the pool for a few seconds, then dived cleanly into the water, gasping as she felt its coldness on her body.
She was a good swimmer and she enjoyed it. It was the closest thing to total freedom of movement that she could imagine. In England she had shied away from the public swimming baths, finding them overcrowded in the summer and too unappealing in the winter.
Here, she was making up for lost time. She held her breath and swam, using deep strokes to cover the length of the pool. When she re-emerged into the air, she threw her head back, her eyes shut, her face lifted towards the sun with an expression of hedonistic enjoyment.
Yes, swimming pools in England, she thought, had a long way to go.
She opened her eyes and turned towards Alistair, her mouth open to shout out her pleasure to him.
With a sensation of stunned surprise, she turned instead to face Conrad and Sophia, both staring at her, while in the background Alistair waved, gesticulating at Sophia's back and raising his eyes to heaven.
Emma reluctantly swam to the side of the pool and pulled herself out.
'Typing all done?' Conrad asked in a faintly mocking tone of voice. 'Not that I wouldn't have come to rescue you from the word processor if you had still been there.'
'How gallant.' Emma looked at his lean, muscular body with a shiver of unwelcome awareness, then she turned her attention to Sophia who had reached out and was holding Conrad at the elbow.
From behind them Alistair did the introductions. Emma barely heard him. She was looking at Sophia, thinking that, if her name did not conjure up the picture of a career woman, then her face and body certainly didn't.
She was tall and seemed to be tanned all over. Even her hair, cut fashionably short, was bronzed and so were her eyes, a peculiar shade of brown-gold. She was wearing five or six bangles on her wrist and every time she moved her hand they jangled like tiny bells.
Emma decided that she found the noise irritating. She herself possessed almost no jewellery at all and could never understand other people's fascination with it.
'You were working?' Sophia addressed her, raising her eyebrows in surprise. 'In weather like this?' She turned to Conrad. 'Darling, do you hate me too much because I wouldn't dream of being quite so industrious?'
Good grief! Emma thought, reaching for her towel and trying to ignore the indulgent smile on Conrad's face. She dried herself vigorously and then wrapped the towel around her, sarong-style. She stretched out on the sun lounger alongside Alistair. Through semi-closed eyes, she watched Sophia discard her silk wrap and twirl seductively in front of Conrad, showing him every possible angle of her body, scantily wrapped in what Emma estimated couldn't have been more than a few inches of white Lycra.
'Delightful,' Conrad commented, standing back to appreciate her. His eyes flicked across to Emma and she yawned widely. Pure coincidence, but, seeing him frown, she grinned back and stretched out for her book.
'Well, I'll see you lot later,' Alistair said, allowing Conrad to help him into his wheelchair. 'Sophia, dear,
I can't imagine why you bother with a swimsuit. There's so little of it that you might just as well have spared yourself the expense and gone for the all-nude look instead. A lot cheaper.'
Sophia's teeth clamped together angrily and Emma stifled a laugh.
'Silly old man,' she muttered to Emma, sitting on the edge of her sun lounger.
'Anything but,' Emma disagreed coldly. 'He happens to be extremely clever.'
'Oh, I know,' Sophia agreed quickly, 'Still, brains aren't everything.' She threw Emma a knowing look which said it all.
They may not be all, Emma thought, but they help. Then she looked at Sophia and wondered whether they did after all.
Face it, she admitted to herself, the woman probably earns a thousand times more than you do, and she's certainly no Einstein.
'Conrad tells me that you're a model. I would have guessed,' Emma confessed honestly, 'if he hadn't said.'
Sophia looked pleased.
'You may have recognised me? I was on the cover of Vogue a couple of months ago.' She raised her chin slightly, her eyes narrowing against the sun, her movements poised and slightly artificial.
'I
don't get much time for reading magazines,' Emma said, wondering what greater accolade there could be for a model than to appear on the front cover of such a reputable magazine. She thought with amusement that the only place her picture was ever likely to appear would be in a photo album.
'And what exactly do you do?' Sophia slipped a pair of large sunglasses over her eyes and directed her gaze to the flat surface of the pool.
'I type,' Emma replied succinctly, deciding that an elaborate job description would be guaranteed to bore someone like Sophia to tears.
'I once went to a secretarial college,' Sophia said offhandedly, 'I only lasted about a month and a half. The typing was all right, but the shorthand was too difficult. All those silly little symbols. I couldn't really get the hang of it at all. And I hated being surrounded by women! Anyway, I never could concentrate on anything for too long. Besides, modelling pays much more. Not that I need the money. I could quite adequately have kept going on my trust fund, and now that I'm about to marry Conrad, well...' She allowed the sentence to drift to a meaningful pause.
Emma wondered where the husband-to-be was. He seemed to have taken an inordinately long time dropping Alistair back to his room.
'You must be very excited about the wedding,' Emma volunteered, a little ashamed at the triteness of the remark. She was finding the conversation heavy going. For the first time, she wished desperately that Conrad would reappear.
'No, not really. I would quite happily have lived with Conrad, but he insisted on marriage. I think he's afraid that someone else might snap me up if we're not legally hitched.' She laughed, a deep, throaty laugh, and Emma thought sourly that even that sounded sexy. She could not have been a day over twenty, if that, but already with the self-confidence of someone quite accustomed to being the centre of attention. Every gesture she made proclaimed it.
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