by Kim Lawrence
‘Not very long ago there were a lot of things I didn’t believe you’d do, but now I know different.’ She saw Josh’s facial muscles tighten as he heard the crisp, cold conviction in her voice. She felt spitefully pleased. The very least he could feel under the circumstances was uncomfortable—it was the sort of pleasure that made her feel sick to the stomach.
‘Actually I’d have staked my life on it.’ That of course was what hurt most: she’d never trusted anyone as much as she’d grown to trust this man and all the time all he’d wanted was revenge; he’d wanted to hurt her. Objectively she watched as the colour fled his face leaving his vital flesh tinged with an unhealthy grey tone. ‘Now…’ her hunched shoulders lifted and she gave a bitter smile ‘…I think maybe there isn’t much you wouldn’t do.’
‘Ask yourself why anyone would write that stuff,’ he pleaded urgently.
There may not be a signature but he had no doubt as to who was responsible. To think he’d imagined he had that rat of a journalist tied up every which way—this was what you got for being a complacent idiot. This was what you got for imagining she would never find out—he’d been afraid of losing her if he told her the truth and look what was happening now. His jaw tightened with determination—he couldn’t lose her!
‘I’m not an idiot.’
She gave a bitter laugh and Josh winced. If keeping quiet had been intended to spare her pain he’d seriously miscalculated.
‘Under the circumstances I think you’d better cancel that claim,’ she continued stiffly. ‘However, even I can see the motives behind this letter were probably one hundred per cent malicious.’
‘There’s no probably about it,’ he gritted.
‘But that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t alter the facts, fact number one being you followed me with the deliberate intention of making me fall in love with you. A simple little plan, but then they’re often the best, I’m told.’ Her scornful blue glare raked him, daring him to deny it. Even he didn’t have the bare-faced gall to do that. Though she was sure that, being the rat person he was, he’d try and wriggle out of it somehow.
‘Originally I intended to get to your father through you, yes, it’s true.’
‘How noble of you to come clean,’ she trilled caustically. ‘You know the person who came up with that old chestnut, better late than never? He was an idiot.’ She couldn’t imagine feeling better ever again!
A rush of dark colour seeped under his pallor as he forced himself to endure the scorn in her beautiful eyes. ‘That was before…before I fell in love with you, Flora.’ It sounded lame even to his own ears.
She squeezed her eyes tight shut and shook her head vigorously from side to side. ‘Don’t you dare say that,’ she hissed. It made her feel physically sick when she thought of him cold-bloodedly conniving—ironically it hadn’t taken much conniving! He probably hadn’t been able to believe his luck; she’d been a pushover! ‘I seriously doubt you know what the word means,’ she informed him with icy distaste.
‘Yes, I do, Flora.’ If she hadn’t known he was lying through his straight white teeth she might have been swayed by the sheer force of conviction in his impassioned voice. ‘Because I’ve been immensely privileged to feel this way twice in my life.’ One corner of his firm mouth quivered. ‘Something I didn’t think could happen. I tried to hate you, despise you, told myself that you were a cold, icy woman who didn’t have a heart to break. Told myself that if the system wouldn’t punish your father…’
‘My father was punishing himself enough to please even you!’
The colour flooded back into his face as she flung the bitter recrimination at him. ‘I tried to tell myself I was justified in using you. I even believed it for a while. But the more I saw of you, the more I knew how impossible it was to hate you.’
Even cocooned in her own private hell the depth of his sincerity shook Flora. ‘If you want lessons in hate,’ she told him grimly, ‘look no further…’
‘When something bad happens in your life—something you have no control over it’s…’ He swallowed and drew a sharp, ragged breath. ‘You feel impotent and you want to blame someone. The court case with your father meant I finally had someone to blame…’
‘My father may have made a mess of his own life, but he never harmed any of his patients. Every single investigation vindicated him on that count!’
‘I know that, Flora, I just couldn’t let myself believe it. I needed to blame someone. I wanted justice for Bridie. It was crazy…irrational, but, ask anyone, I’ve never been noted for my logic…’
‘I can understand you needed a scapegoat, even appreciate the logic behind your sick revenge. But what I don’t understand is why you carried on with it after Dad died?’ A dry sob caught in her throat. ‘Why did you carry on pretending? Why didn’t you just go away and leave me be?’ Her voice deepened and shook with outraged anguish. Why did you make me love you? she wanted to scream.
Josh shook his head and ground his teeth in frustration. It was hellish hard wanting with every ounce of his being to hold her and knowing full well she’d reject any move he made to comfort her.
‘I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried, Flora, and I did try, I tried bloody hard!’ he admitted loudly.
‘And you’re proud of it,’ she suggested in a choked, disgusted voice.
‘Proud! I’m ashamed. If you want to know, the thought of sitting down to share a cosy family meal with your father brought me out in a cold sweat…being rational is one thing, that is quite another. I had no idea how I’d react, but he was your father and I was prepared to give it a shot.’
‘I don’t believe you. If your feelings for me had been even halfway genuine you’d have told me the truth.’
‘Do you think I didn’t try…?’ he asked her hoarsely. He raked his hair with an unsteady hand. ‘I started to I don’t know how many times. The longer I left it, the harder it got, and then your father died and it somehow didn’t seem so urgent any more. Any obstacles between us were gone.’
‘He may have been an obstacle to you, Josh…’ her voice shook and the tears that had welled in her eyes began to seep out ‘…but he was my dad.’
‘I didn’t see how the truth was going to do anyone any good, and I was right, wasn’t I?’ He bared his teeth in a savage snarl. ‘If the truth be known, I couldn’t bear the idea of you looking at me like…’ he lifted his head, his eyes were burning ‘…looking at me like this,’ he finished bleakly. ‘As if you hate me.’
‘I do hate you!’ she flashed back.
‘No, you don’t!’ he responded with equal vehemence. ‘You love me, you need me as much as I need you, and if you turn your back on what we have a day will never go by that you don’t regret it. There’ll be a gap in your life where I should be! You won’t be able to stand it, I know, I tried to turn my back on you and how I felt…do you remember?’
Flora unwillingly recalled the time when he’d seemed to inexplicably reject her; she’d thought that was painful…only she hadn’t known at the time how bad pain could get!
She was deeply shaken by the stark images his impassioned words conjured up, but she forced herself to respond with scornful indifference. ‘Very clever of you to keep me dangling. Your problem is, Josh, that you’re in danger of confusing real life with art. The critics may have put you on a godlike plain, but in real life you’re just a man. There are thousands…millions just like you out there.’ She could feel the wild tattoo of her heartbeat as it thudded against her ribcage.
‘I’m the only one for you, though,’ he persisted with stubborn arrogance.
What if he was right? Her mocking laughter had more to do with protective instincts than a response to any humour she’d discovered in the grim situation.
‘Even when I didn’t know what a manipulative, cold-blooded snake you were the situation was far from perfect. A man with a ready-made family is rarely a girl’s first choice,’ she told him casually. ‘You’re not the only one who had qualms to overcome.
’ She thought about little Liam and his lovely smile and she almost broke down and retracted the hurtful words. Pride held her dumb.
He looked white-faced and almost haggard as their eyes clashed and locked. It was only stubbornness that stopped her breaking that contact. She’d selected those words to cause him maximum pain; wasn’t it good she’d done just that? A warm tide of triumph didn’t wash over her; instead the sense of joyless desolation intensified.
A nerve in his lean cheek jumped as he slowly shook his head, rejecting what she’d said.
‘Besides, I want a man who can give me children of my own, and you can’t or won’t do that, will you, Josh?’ she reminded him spitefully.
He visibly flinched as her accusation hit home. ‘No, I wouldn’t do that,’ he confirmed quietly. His face was as hard and still as rock.
‘Flora!’ he called as she turned to go.
She didn’t want to turn back but something in his voice overrode her will and made her limbs respond independently of her brain. On autopilot she turned around.
‘I don’t believe you.’
She lifted her shoulders. ‘Which part, Josh? No, on second thoughts don’t tell me, I’m really not that interested in anything you have to say.’
‘Whew!’ Sam Taverner was only half joking when he wiped invisible sweat off his brow as he walked into Flora’s office. ‘Mission accomplished,’ he said, plonking himself down on the edge of her desk. ‘How come,’ he wondered out loud, ‘your desk is always so neat and mine looks like a bomb site—after the bomb’s gone off?’
Flora gave a smile; it was a weak distracted affair. ‘It’s not complicated, you’re a slob. A brilliant slob,’ she conceded. Fingers tightly laced, she rubbed them against the sober material of her skirt. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said that you were in Hong Kong and you wouldn’t be back for weeks. I thought it best to be vague…’
‘Hong Kong! Why Hong Kong?’ she wondered.
He shrugged. ‘First thing that came into my mind,’ he confessed. ‘My brother-in-law is always shooting off to Hong Kong, lucky dog, it’s got a nice ring to it. Besides, if lover boy decides to hotfoot it after you it’ll keep him out of your hair a lot longer than if I’d said, say… Cheltenham.’
As usual Sam’s actions did have a weird sort of logic. ‘Yes, well.’ Flora couldn’t hide her impatience with this rambling explanation. ‘The point is, did he believe you?’ she asked tensely.
‘Well, not at first, but my days in amateur dramatics came into their own. I gave the performance of my life, if you must know,’ he told her modestly.
A wave of curious anticlimax hit Flora. ‘And he went away?’
‘You can thank me later,’ her partner responded drily.
Flora gathered her addled wits and blushed. ‘Sorry, Sam, it’s really good of you.’
‘If you ask me, Flora, my little love, you should get an injunction out on this guy.’ For once her partner dropped his amiable fool persona completely. ‘I mean, he could be dangerous.’
‘No, he’s not.’
Her partner’s gingery eyebrows shot up at the note of complete conviction in her voice. ‘I don’t see how you can be so sure.’
‘I’m sure, that’s all,’ she snapped. ‘Josh is harmless.’ Now there was a novel notion. She’d be safer if a tiger were on her trail. ‘And he’s not stalking me, he’s just…’
‘Turning up uninvited at your flat and place of work.’ Sam gave a disparaging snort. ‘I always thought you were a pretty good judge of character, but this! Harmless is not the first adjective that springs to mind to describe your boyfriend.’ It made his blood run cold just to think of what would have happened if the Hong Kong story hadn’t worked. It was at times like that he wished he’d persevered with the judo lessons.
‘He isn’t my boyfriend.’
‘Why should you feel obliged to move out of your own flat? Not that we’re not delighted to have you stay with us,’ he reassured her robustly.
‘Because I’m not into confrontation, that’s why.’ Also because, although she still hadn’t forgiven him and never would, now her brain wasn’t fogged by the fury of betrayal she had recognised several pivotal moments when he might just have been about to tell her the truth as he claimed.
The point was he hadn’t and almost didn’t make what he had done any the less unforgivable, but how long would she remember that if he started telling her he loved her—he needed her? Or, more likely, how much she loved and needed him, she mused, recalling the arrogance of his parting shots.
‘You hate confrontation…since when?’ Her partner didn’t bother hiding his scepticism.
‘Since I last confronted Josh.’
Having met the guy, Sam found he could identify with her little shudder. ‘Then you haven’t actually seen him since you had your…bust-up…?’
Flora smiled. She had no intention of elaborating on what had happened, and she knew that Sam, who would be acting under strict instructions from his wife Lyn to extract all the juicy details, was agog to hear more. She’d have some news for them soon that would be shocking enough to satisfy even the scandal-hungry Lyn. She still felt pretty shocked herself. What else do I feel…?
‘No and I don’t want to.’
This determination not to reply to a single telephone message he’d left, or answer the doorbell when he leaned on it and stayed there, had nothing whatever to do with the fact she missed him like hell, she told herself. Who am I kidding? Push come to shove, she didn’t trust herself to remember how badly he’d betrayed her if she saw him again.
For her own peace of mind Flora forced herself to identify individually each evil thing he’d done one more time. She made the worrying discovery that his sins, which had seemed very obvious, had started to get indistinct and jumbled in her head. Even if she believed he loved her that didn’t cancel out what he’d intended to do, she told herself severely. She couldn’t afford to start going soft…!
‘Well, promise me you’ll think about the injunction. I mean, if he was after me I wouldn’t sleep a wink.’
My skills with the old make-up palette must be a lot better than I thought if Sam imagines I’m sleeping at all.
‘Rest easy, Sam, I don’t think you’re his type.’
‘You obviously are.’
Giving a very un-Flora blush, his partner averted her eyes and started fiddling with a sheaf of papers.
‘What shall I tell Lyn? Are you going to come to the theatre tonight?’
Flora sighed; helpful friends were a pain sometimes. A person couldn’t even be miserable in peace. ‘You know I don’t like blind dates, Sam.’
‘This is a blind double date.’
‘And that makes a difference?’
‘All the difference in the world. If you can’t stand this guy and things get sticky, Lyn and I will be there to make the whole thing less painfully embarrassing.’
‘With sales patter like that how can a girl refuse?’
‘Excellent!’
‘That wasn’t a yes,’ she protested weakly, but Sam wasn’t listening to her. She watched with amused resentment as her partner, displaying a bad case of selective deafness, made a hurried exit whistling loudly and tunelessly to himself.
‘Well, what do you think of him?’ Lyn whispered during the interval. Her voice was muffled as she reapplied her lipstick.
‘I preferred his last play.’
‘I didn’t mean the play, as you well know! I’ve got some blusher if you want some,’ she added, regarding Flora’s pale cheeks with a critical frown. ‘Your lippie has worn off,’ she added helpfully.
‘No, thanks.’ Flora waved aside the offer. ‘And I’m not wearing any lipstick.’
Lyn looked scandalised by this casual confession, but maintained a tactful silence on the subject. ‘What do you think of Tim?’
‘He’s very nice.’ There was nothing to object to in the man; likewise there was nothing to get worked up about, nothing to set him apart
from the common throng, not like… She pulled her thoughts up short of the precipice.
Lyn gave a smug little smile. ‘I knew you’d like him,’ she crowed triumphantly. ‘I mean, he’s so perfect I did worry that there might be something a bit…I mean, unmarried men his age with no actual deformities are pretty rare.’
‘You mean they’re usually gay.’
Lyn sighed and nodded. ‘Such a waste,’ she bemoaned. ‘But Tim’s not, I made enquiries.’
Flora couldn’t help laughing. ‘You really are impossible.’
‘I’m not the impossible one. Look at you…beautiful!’ she announced indignantly. ‘You should be up to your armpits in men. I know you scare them off deliberately. For God’s sake be nice to Tim, and don’t act too clever,’ she added as an urgent afterthought.
‘You know something, Lyn, you’re probably on the hit list of every card-carrying feminist in town.’
Flora, under Lyn’s approving eye, did smile; she didn’t always know what she was smiling at as her attention showed a marked tendency to drift around the crowded foyer.
Her glass of wine was halfway to her lips when she saw him. The glimpse was only brief, before the back of a large man’s head almost immediately blocked her view, but it was enough to send her nervous system into instant shock.
‘Excuse me.’
She was oblivious to the startled looks of her companions who automatically craned their necks to see what she was looking at as she firmly shoved the large man out of her way. Yes, it was him, there was no mistaking the angle of that jaw. God, but he looked gorgeous in a formal dark tie.
‘Look at that hair!’ Lyn breathed with an envious sigh as the voluptuous redhead draped herself all over Josh.
‘Look at that body!’ Nice Tim breathed with a covetous sigh.
Flora was looking; she was looking at the way Josh pressed the redhead’s hand to his lips when she ran her fingers caressingly over his cheek. She could see the way they were visually eating each other up—it was almost indecent in a public place.
