by Penny Jordan
She had the satisfaction of seeing the faint flush of anger lying along his cheekbones and leaping to life in the granite eyes, but he had himself under control almost immediately, the anger masked by the cynical expression she was coming to recognise.
‘A great deal,’ he drawled, ‘but millionaires naïve enough to fall for women like you and Teri are thin on the ground, and you might just decide to settle for second best.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘EVERYTHING is arranged. I’ve fixed the ceremony for Tuesday, which gives us the weekend to get organised. First on the agenda, I suspect, will be a shopping trip. You’ll need a wedding ring,’ Joel informed Amber dryly, ‘and new clothes.’ His eyes slid assessingly over the plain grey skirt and dull white blouse she had been wearing for her interview, and which were still the only clothes she possessed, after two days in his home, having vetoed her suggestion that she returned to Birmingham to collect her others. There were things she had to do, she protested—her mother to tell; her landlady.
All tasks which which could be attended to by telephone, Joel had reminded her, letting her know that he wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to back out of their arrangement.
They were in his study, an attractive masculine room at the back of the house furnished with comfortable leather chairs, a desk, some beautiful reproduction Georgian filing cabinets disguised as bow-fronted chests and bookcases containing a wide variety of books from novels to highly technical literature on computer technology which Amber had learned was the field in which his companies operated.
Tomorrow would be her first test as Joel’s fiancée. Mrs Downs, whom Joel had telephoned and asked not to bother to come in the other two days, was due to arrive in the morning. Joel had assured her that she would not find it difficult to keep up the pretence in front of the other woman, but Amber wasn’t too sure.
‘Worrying about tomorrow?’ Joel drawled, accurately reading her mind. ‘Don’t be. Just think of yourself as an actress hired to play a part, for which you’re being paid extremely generously. After that the rest should come naturally. All women are actresses at heart.’
His cynical observation jarred, even though she tried to pretend it left her unmoved. She glanced at her watch. Joel had arrived from Kendal half an hour before and it was now nearly seven.
‘It’s Paul’s bedtime,’ she reminded him. ‘I promised I’d read to him. Shall I wait until you’ve seen him?’
‘Why don’t we both go up together?’ Joel suggested. ‘That way we can break the happy news to him.’
Amber knew that Joel had been observing Paul’s reaction to her—and hers to him—but much as she liked the little boy, she had no intention of encouraging him to become too fond of her. It simply wouldn’t be fair either to him or to her. In some way she almost wished he had taken a dislike to her, but she knew beyond any shadow of doubt now that if he had Joel would have instantly abandoned his plans to marry her. Think of the money, she kept reminding herself; the money which was to be the instrument of her eventual revenge against Rob. If she closed her eyes and thought hard enough she could almost conjure up the image of how it would be; of her own unannounced arrival at wherever Rob was, and his astonishment when he saw her restored to full health, walking as gracefully as she had done in the past. She would be beautifully dressed, elegantly made up; and she would have the pleasure of watching him see what he had so callously thrown away.
As always the mental imagery helped to reinforce her determination. Paul wouldn’t be hurt, she promised herself. She wouldn’t allow that to happen. And Joel? She glanced sideways at him. Any man who could strike the type of bargain he had struck with her and demand written acknowledgement of that bargain wasn’t capable of being hurt.
But he must have been once, a tiny inner voice reminded her, otherwise he would never have married Teri in the first place. What was she like? Amber wondered.
‘So that’s settled,’ Joel said suavely, cutting through her thoughts, ‘Tomorrow we go to Kendal shopping. Mrs Downs will look after Paul. We’d better make a full day of it—and an evening as well. It will be expected; after all, it isn’t every day a man gets engaged.’
Not a woman either, Amber thought sadly, and this would be her first formal engagement. Rob had never given her a ring.
Paul was playing with some toy soldiers when they went up to his room.
He and Amber had grown quite friendly during the two days she had been staying at the house. He accepted her presence as a friend of his father’s without comment, but his mother and the life the three of them had shared before his accident were never mentioned. Amber understood. Like him she found the past still too raw a wound to discuss it with others, and perhaps because of their similar injuries a bond seemed to have been formed between them; to such an extent that Paul had begun to talk freely to her about his leg, comparing it to hers and asking her numerous questions about the operations she had undergone his favourite seemed to be whether Amber would ever get properly better, and recognising it as a plea for assurance that he would get better, she had lied and told him what he wanted to hear.
He asked her again, as she knelt awkwardly to help him pack away the soldiers.
‘I expect so,’ she lied, determinedly cheerfully, glad of the long sweep of her hair to conceal her expression from Joel.
‘Will I?’
This time it was Joel who answered, lifting the little boy up in his arms until the two male faces, so similar in features, were only inches apart. ‘Yes, you will, Paul,’ he assured him firmly. ‘But it won’t be easy. You’ll have to help—do those exercises Doctor Raines told you about.’
Paul pulled a face.
‘I don’t like them,’ he protested. ‘They hurt!’
‘Only at first,’ Amber felt moved to say, adding to Joel, ‘I studied physiotherapy for a few months before I decided on general nursing, if you like I could help Paul with his exercises…’
‘We could do them together,’ Paul suggested, pleased, glancing at Amber’s leg. ‘Then we’d both get better.’
Amber already knew that exercises would do little to improve her own injured muscles; the only hope of full mobility she had was the American operation which replaced destroyed muscles with fresh tissue grafted from other parts of the body, a lengthy and expensive business; but she didn’t want to destroy Paul’s optimism, so she smiled and agreed that indeed it would.
‘Thanks for reassuring Paul like that,’ Joel said when Paul was asleep and they had returned downstairs. ‘One of the most difficult problems has been trying to get over his aversion to the exercises he has to do. The problem is he’s too young to understand the need for them properly, but Doctor Raines says that without them…’ he looked closely at Amber. ‘Can you help him with them?’
‘I think so. I’ll need someone to show me exactly what has to be done.’
‘Doctor Raines told me that swimming would help, but there just aren’t sufficient facilities locally, otherwise both of you…’
‘It wouldn’t do any good in my case,’ Amber began, breaking off as she realised how close she had come to confiding the truth to him.
‘Why not?’ His eyes sharpened and she felt a prickle of awareness as his eyes slid down her body to the leg she had tucked from habit behind the healthy one.
‘I… I have to have another operation,’ she prevaricated a little wildly, ‘in six months’ time.’
‘But you will recover fully?’
‘Oh yes.’ Her voice sounded brittle and false even to her own ears. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘No wonder you accepted my proposition so readily,’ Joel said grimly. ‘A ready-made comfortable existence until your operation; with the bonus of twenty-five thousand at the end of it.’
‘I didn’t ask you to pick me,’ Amber flared. ‘If you want to change your mind…’
‘Incredible,’ Joel muttered under his breath as he shook his head. ‘Who would have dreamed anyone so innocent-looking could
be so hard?’
If I am it’s because that’s what your sex made me, Amber longed to scream at him, but the words were suppressed, her face a tight mask as she forced a smile almost as mocking as his own, and reminded him,
‘But that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? A gold-digger whom you could pay off with a clear conscience and no complications?’
Mrs Downs arrived in the morning just as they were finishing breakfast, a tall gaunt woman with greying hair and a forbidding expression, which belied the smile warming her eyes when Joel introduced her to Amber.
‘So it’s getting wed the two of you are, is it?’ she said forthrightly when Joel had broken the news.
‘We are indeed,’ Joel confirmed, smiling and slipping a hard arm round Amber’s shoulders, drawing her back against the firm warmth of his chest. In other circumstances she would have found something distinctly reassuring about the comfortingly steady thud of his heart, the calm way in which he dealt with Mrs Downs’ surprise, the aura of strength and reliability emanating from him and wrapping her in a protective embrace.
‘So, and you’ll want me to keep an eye on young Paul here while you’re off to Kendal?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Joel agreed courteously. ‘I should like to take Amber out to dinner tonight, if you’re able to stay with Paul. Everything has happened so quickly we haven’t even been able to celebrate our engagement yet.’
The tender look he gave her almost made Amber catch her breath in astonishment; it was so plausibly real. Her eyes widened, and like the skilled master tactician he was Joel was quick to take advantage of the moment, turning her gently towards him and rubbing his thumb provocatively across her parted lips before closing them with a light kiss.
Amber could almost see Mrs Downs’ reserve melting and read the other woman’s mind. It was obvious that Joel had convinced her that they were deeply in love, and her own wildly flushed cheeks and flustered manner would only serve to reinforce her belief.
Paul regarded them with interest from his chair.
‘Why are you kissing Amber?’ he questioned curiously.
He had already accepted Joel’s information that he and Amber were to marry, but still Amber found herself holding her breath, half expecting the little boy to protest about their intimacy.
‘Because she’s going to marry me,’ Joel replied evenly when Mrs Downs bustled out to remove her coat and outdoor shoes.
‘You and Teri were married, but you never kissed her like that,’ Paul remarked, startling Amber both by his use of his mother’s christian name and what he had said.
‘That was different,’ was Joel’s oblique comment, and Amber sensed from his withdrawn look that he was probably re-living certain intensely private moments of his relationship with his ex-wife; moments to which Paul would not have been privy. A kind of dull sickness took possession of her, and as she struggled to fight it off she heard Mrs Downs returning.
‘Time we were on our way,’ Joel said coolly, grasping Amber’s arm. ‘Be a good boy for Mrs Downs, Paul.’
‘If I am, will you bring me a present?’ he asked appealingly.
‘Maybe.’ Joel was stern, and Amber knew instinctively that he would make a good father, loving, but firm.
The car was parked outside the house, which Amber had now discovered overlooked the lake they had passed on the night Joel had first brought her to his house. Landscaped gardens swept down to the lakeside where a motorboat was moored, behind the house rose the fells, thickly forested, protecting the house from the worst of the northern elements. Today the sky was grey and overcast; an icy wind blowing which seemed to go straight through Amber’s thin city coat. She stumbled as she tried to negotiate the gravelled drive, and Joel’s hand came out to support her instantly. She ignored it, flushing to the roots of her hair and assiduously avoiding him as she fought to regain her balance, only to lose it again a minute later.
‘You know what they say about pride,’ came Joel’s voice somewhere in the region of her left ear as he caught her deftly. ‘It always goes before a fall. There’s no shame in what’s happened to you, Amber; you sometimes behave as though being a little awkward in your movements is blood brother to leprosy!’
Amber was still seething over the words ‘a little awkward,’ when he scooped her up and deposited her none too gently in the front passenger seat of the XJ10, closing the door very firmly on her before walking round to the driver’s door and sliding in beside her.
The car smelled richly of expensive hide; and just the faintest echo of the clean masculine fragrance Joel wore. Watching his fluid movements as he set the car in motion, the powerful thigh muscles contracting visibly beneath the fine wool of his suit, Amber felt her own eyes going to her scarred leg.
‘Why are you so obsessed by your injury?’ Joel demanded, shocking her with the realisation that he had noticed and correctly interpreted her look.
‘Perhaps because it’s brought home to me the fact that if you’re a woman, and physically imperfect in some way, it doesn’t matter how intelligent or caring you are, you’re judged and found wanting on the evidence of physical disability.’
‘Which only goes to show that you’re on the wrong road in life; or haven’t you realised yet that when you adopt money as your one god, your reason for living, you say goodbye to compassion, respect, and the sort of men who look beneath the surface to find out what sort of woman lives under the skin. Men who exchange their wealth for a woman are buying a status symbol and they expect it to be as perfect as a masterpiece, an art treasure or a piece of antique furniture. If you make it known that you’re on sale, you can’t blame the buyers for rejecting you as faulty goods—a reject,’ he finished cruelly.
After that Amber sat in white-faced pain as they drove along the lake side and then up, out of the valley, through scenery so peaceful and beautiful that it would have been balm to any soul less wounded than hers.
In the autumn these hills would be a living mass of rich colour, she thought absently, studying the fresh spring green of the ferns growing by the water’s edge, and the new leaves just unfurling from their sticky protective covering.
Kendal was busy, but Joel found a parking space without too much difficulty, outside the office block which housed his company’s offices. The block was new, well designed to blend in with its surroundings, and Amber felt the first stirrings of curiosity about what went on behind the closed doors of the offices. Joel had told her very little about his business affairs apart from the fact that they concerned computer technology. She stole a quick glance at his shuttered profile as he helped her out of the car. The thrusting jaw and square chin belonged to a man who knew where he wanted to go and was determined enough to get there, the cool grey eyes said that he would not be pressured into making rash decsions, while the curling mouth hinted intriguingly at a sexuality which, while not blatant, was a very powerful force nonetheless. He was a man who was intensely male; sure of himself and his masculinity without in any way being brash of overtly macho. There was pride, and unconscious male arrogance, in the way he moved, with all the lithe muscularity of someone born to conquer, both in his personal and business life. Which made it all the harder to understand why Teri had sought diversion elsewhere. Something deep and instinctive within her warned Amber that in Joel’s arms a woman could come dangerously close to forgetting everything but the heady pleasure of just being there; of willingly exchanging the shadowy promised future for the heady reality of the present.
Deep in thought, she hadn’t realised that they had reached the town centre. Joel made unerringly for a discreetly expensive jewellers, whose windows were adorned with precious metals and stones that made Amber catch her breath in purely feminine pleasure.
Inside a salesman stepped forward; Joel murmured something Amber couldn’t hear and the next moment they were being ushered discreetly into a small adjoining room comfortably furnished with deep padded wicker chairs, a selection of rings swiftly produced for their inspection.<
br />
As well as the more traditional rings, the jewellers specialised in an exclusive range of modern engagement rings with matching wedding rings. One of these in particular caught Amber’s eye, as much for its unusual design as for its elegant simplicity. Two interlocking rings comprising three differing shades of gold were displayed on a bed of black velvet, diamonds sparkling brightly in one of them.
‘Ah yes,’ the salesman enthused, noticing Amber’s interest. ‘Those are rather special. The diamonds are excellent quality, and the rings themselves were designed specifically for them. Would you care to try them?’
Amber started to shake her head, knowing instinctively that the rings would be frighteningly expensive, but to her dismay Joel overruled her by the simple expedient of picking up the rings and sliding them one after the other on to her shaking finger. They fitted perfectly, the delicate shape flattering her slender hand.
‘We’ll take them,’ Joel told the salesman decisively, ignoring Amber’s protests. ‘And my wife would like some earrings as well. Something plain and simple—diamonds, I think.’
Again Amber tried to protest, but when the salesman had disappeared to bring some earrings to show her, Joel leaned across and said coolly, ‘As my wife you will be expected to wear some jewellery. Teri was particularly addicted to it, and I don’t want people saying I can’t afford to supply you with the same perks she enjoyed.’
She might have known, Amber thought wretchedly, all her pleasure in the flashing stones the salesman produced negated by the knowledge that they were not so much a gift but more of a publicity exercise, designed to convince the world of a love that did not exist.
She picked the smallest stones she could, but once again Joel overruled her, choosing with an unerring eye for style and quality another pair, far larger, and to judge from the salesman’s pleased expression, more expensive.
Amber had expected Joel to insist on her wearing the engagement ring straight away, but when she went to pick it up, he stopped her, grasping her wrist and scooping up the band of gold.
