Elusive Obsession

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘Her name is Diana,’ Reece told him through gritted teeth at this childish act of defiance when only minutes ago Chris had been calling her Diana quite naturally. ‘Or Mother, if you would prefer it,’ Reece added provokingly, obviously furious at Chris’s attitude.

  The younger man’s face became flushed with anger. ‘You have got to be joking!’ he scorned. ‘I already have a mother, and she’s thirty-eight years old. Obviously your taste runs to child-brides nowadays!’ He was breathing hard in his agitation.

  Diana watched the two of them as if from a great distance away. This was what she had wanted, wished for when she first met Chris: son against father, father against son, to be the instrument that destroyed each and every layer of Reece’s oh, so comfortable life when he didn’t hesitate to destroy others. And it was awful. Horrible. She had meant it when she told Reece she hated arguments; she hadn’t been able to stand the sound of them since the day her father died.

  Reece was the one in control again today, talking with that quiet stillness that could be so dangerous. ‘You’re the one who is behaving childishly,’ he told Chris now. ‘You——’

  ‘Stop this!’ she cried out—as she had so wanted to do that day in her father’s study. She had always regretted that she hadn’t. Maybe if her father had known she was there, that she loved him, her love would somehow have helped him through that difficult time instead of him feeling as if he had nothing left in the world to live for… She would never know the answer to that question now. But what she did know was that she couldn’t stand by and listen to these two men, who loved each other deeply, at each other’s throats because of her. If nothing else, she was going to emerge from all of this a more loving person—even if her love for Reece would ultimately destroy everything she now wanted for herself. ‘Stop it, both of you,’ she choked, very pale, her eyes wide with distress.

  ‘Oh, hell!’ Chris groaned as he saw how white she was. ‘Divine—Diana,’ he amended tautly at another fierce scowl from his father, ‘I’m just—I can’t believe this is happening.’ He shook his head dazedly, looking at her with pained eyes.

  He had the look of puppy she had just kicked, Diana realised emotionally.

  Reece’s arm tightened instinctively about her shoulders, although his hold was still somehow gently protective. ‘We have nothing to reproach ourselves for, Chris,’ he told his son huskily. ‘Nothing at all. Do I make myself clear?’ he said grimly.

  Very, Diana realised ruefully, as Chris looked at them both disbelievingly. Oh, she had told Chris from the beginning of their friendship her views on physical relationships, and it had been something he accepted from her. But he couldn’t hide his surprise at the way his father had obviously accepted those views too. But Reece’s meaning had been clear enough…

  ‘Yes.’ Chris swallowed hard. ‘I—well, I don’t know what to say.’ He gave an awkward shrug.

  Diana felt Reece relax slightly at her side as they both sensed that the worst of the trauma had passed, that, although Chris might not be too sure he actually liked the idea of their relationship, at the same time he realised there was absolutely nothing he could do to put a stop to it, that he would have to accept it with good grace, if nothing else. Poor Chris—much as he tried, he still looked totally bewildered by the unexpectedness of their engagement!

  ‘“Welcome to the family” might be nice,’ Reece drawled lightly. ‘And then “What’s for dinner?” would be appropriate.’

  * * *

  As he stood to one side watching intently as Chris kissed Diana on the cheek, Reece heaved an inward sigh of relief that the moment of danger was now over; he had never come so close to being completely alienated from his son as he had a few minutes ago. And he knew without a shadow of doubt that, no matter how painful the decision might have been, if it had come to a straight choice between his son and the woman he loved he would have chosen Diana. Not without regret—that was something else entirely. But he certainly would have chosen Diana…

  He wasn’t about to win too many victories with her, though; he had known that by her skittishness earlier today over the ring he had wanted to buy her—something they had compromised on in the end, the diamond ring not as large as the one he had wanted to buy her, but not the little one she wanted either. Compromise. Until he met Diana the word had never entered his vocabulary. The sooner he got his wedding-band on her finger beside the diamond, the more comfortable he would feel; until then he wasn’t a hundred per cent certain she might not change her mind and decide not to marry him after all!

  The irony of the situation struck him suddenly, and he began to smile. For years he had been avoiding matrimony with women who made no secret of the fact they wouldn’t be averse to becoming the next Mrs Reece Falcon, and now the woman he wanted to marry was as elusive as he had been. Perhaps it was no more than he deserved, but he couldn’t exactly say he liked this constant feeling of uncertainty.

  And knowing Diana, as he had come to, she wasn’t going to be any less determined herself even once they were married. His frown returned as he thought of her stubbornness over her career.

  He would have to deal with that later. One thing at a time; he had to get his wedding-ring on her finger first!

  * * *

  Over the next few days Diana learnt that Reece wasn’t about to be talked out of a date next month for their wedding. And once the newspapers got hold of the story of their engagement—she was almost sure it was Reece himself who had given it to them as a way of achieving his objective!—the whole thing was taken out of her control anyway.

  The announcement of their engagement, of the wedding next month, was big news. Charles telephoned immediately he heard and offered her the Paris wedding gown to marry Reece in, an offer Reece was only too pleased to take him up on, telling Diana arrogantly that he couldn’t allow anyone else to wear that wedding gown—not even Madeleine!—when it had been seeing her in that dress that he had first known he wanted her. Diana had never imagined when she modelled the wedding gown that she would be the bride to wear it. It almost made her cry to think of such a beautiful dress being worn on what would, ultimately, be an unhappy occasion…

  She and Reece were followed everywhere they went in the days that followed the announcement, constantly photographed, articles about their movements and wedding plans emblazoned across all the more gossipy newspapers. It might almost have been a royal wedding—the queen of modelling, and the king of enterprise was how one newspaper described them. It was rubbish, of course, but it sold newspapers, Diana realised cynically.

  And once the initial razzmatazz had passed there came the speculation of their future life together, of where they would live after the wedding—although Diana hadn’t known what they thought was wrong with Reece’s apartment!—and, finally, how many little ‘princes and princesses’ they would have to inherit that vast wealth.

  This latter speculation startled Diana to start with, and then she felt only disgust. It was all so utterly ridiculous anyway, when Reece already had an heir in Chris. But the newspapers seemed determined to speculate, much to Reece’s displeasure. ‘They’ll be picking out names for us next!’ Diana pushed one of the newspapers away in disgust, looking across at Reece as the two of them relaxed together in the sitting-room of her flat after eating the meal they had enjoyed preparing together.

  It all looked so cosy, she realised with regret; she was finding these increasing day-to-day intimacies between them more than a little disturbing, and knew that she was actually beginning to anticipate their evenings together, to enjoy the time they spent alone together.

  And she knew without a doubt that it would all come to an end the moment Reece knew who she really was. Her face became shadowed as she thought of that time, a time that would happen all too quickly if Reece had his way—as he seemed determined he would!—and they were married within the next few weeks. She knew now she could no longer wait until the wedding, that she couldn’t do that to him so publically, that she would h
ave to tell him before it came to that.

  She felt the inner pain as she thought of how lonely her life was going to seem without him now. For years it hadn’t bothered her that she lived alone; in fact she had preferred it. But now, she acknowledged, she knew that was because she had never realised before how much loving someone could fill your life. Or how much being without that person could empty it again…

  ‘Diana, you have to know, I don’t want any more children!’

  The harshness of Reece’s statement broke into the misery of the emotional dilemma she had made for herself by falling in love with this man.

  She frowned at him now, at the grimness of his expression. ‘Reece…?’

  He stood up abruptly, hands thrust into his trouser pockets. ‘I’m thirty-nine years old, Diana, forty in a few months’ time; that’s too old to be a father again!’

  It was because she had known there was no point in even thinking about the two of them having children that the speculation in the newspapers had seemed so ridiculous. But as she looked up at Reece’s pale face she knew he had given the subject serious thought…

  ‘I’ve always believed it was the mother’s age that was the important one,’ she said slowly.

  ‘My life wasn’t geared for having children the first time around,’ Reece rasped, eyes narrowed. ‘It’s even less so now!’

  Diana shook her head at his vehemence. ‘Shouldn’t this be something we sit down and decide together?’ She didn’t even know why she was being so persistent—there would be no children between them anyway, so the conversation was utterly pointless. But at the same time this seemed very important.

  Reece was still stony-faced. ‘Is it going to be relevent to whether or not you marry me?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head dazedly. ‘But——’

  ‘No children, Diana,’ he told her harshly. ‘It isn’t true that they enrich a marriage,’ he added less forcibly as he saw how stunned she was by his determination. ‘Children cause more strain between a married couple than anything else.’

  She frowned up at him. ‘Is that what happened between you and Cathy?’

  He scowled at the mention of his first wife. ‘I don’t want to discuss her with you——Don’t look like that,’ he groaned at the hurt puzzlement in her face, moving to sit on the floor beside her. ‘I just don’t happen to think discussing what went wrong in my first marriage is going to help the two of us now, that’s all,’ he told her cajolingly, one lean hand moving up to caress the creamy softness of her cheek. ‘It just opens up old wounds, past bitterness.’

  Diana didn’t happen to agree with him; she thought that talking about what had happened in the past might possibly help not to make the same mistakes again—as she had been doing, by trying to hurt Reece in the way she had! She should have known it was stupid, irrational. That old saying Nanny used to recite to her as a child had never been more true—‘two wrongs don’t make a right’. What they made, what she had made, for both of them, was just future misery on top of the past.

  God, there had to be some way she could make things right between herself and Reece after all. A way, loving Reece as she did, that she could marry him after all. There had to be!

  But when she opened the door to her flat the next morning and saw who her visitor was, she knew there wasn’t…

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘WELL, are you going to keep me standing on the doorstep all day?’ Janette drawled mockingly. ‘Or are you going to invite me inside?’

  Diana just stared at her, too stunned to speak, to move. She hadn’t seen Janette for years, five to be exact. What was she doing here now? Why now? It couldn’t just be coincidence, could it…?

  ‘Really, Divinia,’ her stepmother said scathingly as she made no reply to her opening sarcasm. ‘I would have thought that expensive school you attended would have taught you better manners than this!’ She brushed past Diana and into the flat, leaving a trail of expensive perfume in her wake as she paused to look curiously in the rooms she passed on the way to the sitting-room, wrinkling her nose with delicate distaste as she entered this room and saw the lack of furniture, but large bean-bags instead and scatter-rugs on the floor. ‘Everyone to their own taste, I suppose,’ she said with dismissive scorn as she turned fully to look back at Diana.

  Diana had followed more slowly, stunned at seeing the other woman again after all this time. The years had been kinder to Janette than she perhaps deserved, and, at thirty-seven, she was still undoubtedly a beautiful woman: small and delicately built, with an air of fragility that was wholly deceptive—Janette had a band of steel running through her emotions that didn’t become apparent until she was opposed, and then she wasn’t in the least fragile!—her blonde hair a silken bob to her shoulders, her eyes a deep blue, any ageing of her face hidden by expertly applied make-up.

  Diana—Divinia, as she had still been then—had been sixteen years old the last time the two of them had met, her long coltish limbs and gawky body more of an enemy to her then than an asset, having a total lack of self-assurance because of her height and too-slender curves. But if Janette had changed little over the last five years Diana knew that she had changed a great deal, and now that she had had time to gather her scattered wits together she faced the older woman across the room with cool assurance.

  Janette looked her up and down derisively, duly noting the casual elegance with which Diana wore the denims and loose-fitting T-shirt. ‘So the ugly duckling turned into a swan!’ she taunted.

  She had never been an ‘ugly duckling’, merely a slow developer, and both women knew it; it was just Janette’s way of trying to put her at a disadvantage. But she wasn’t about to succeed, the intervening years having given Diana a calm confidence as well as maturing her body. And, for all her derision, she knew just how hard Janette had to work at her own supposedly natural blonde beauty.

  She eyed the older woman coldly. ‘What do you want, Janette?’

  ‘A cup of coffee might be nice, thank you.’ Janette sat down on the one piece of furniture in the room that was suitable—a high-backed wing-chair, crossing one silky leg over the other, her skin looking deeply tanned against the fitted white dress she wore, a fact Diana was sure she was well aware of. ‘I only stopped off at my hotel long enough to drop off my luggage,’ she shrugged.

  Diana didn’t move. ‘That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.’ She sighed at the pointlessness of this pretence of any politeness between them.

  Blue eyes narrowed coldly. ‘Surely a cup of coffee is the least you can give me?’ Janette rasped harshly.

  Diana met her gaze steadily. ‘I don’t owe you anything. Not even a cup of coffee,’ she added pointedly.

  Fury suddenly glittered in those hard blue eyes. ‘You owe me a damn sight more than——’ Janette broke off abruptly, drawing in a deep breath as she regained control. ‘The coffee on planes is always awful,’ she spoke in that slightly bored drawl now that was so typical of her. ‘And I remember that making coffee was one of the few things you were good at.’

  Considering that on those few brief weeks during the school holidays when she had been invited to join Janette and Marco at their villa the two of them had treated her as nothing more than a glorified maid, Janette should be more than aware of how good her coffee was—Cinderella hadn’t even come into it! Although Janette wasn’t exactly the wicked stepmother of the fairy-story, just an incredibly selfish woman.

  ‘Anyway,’ Janette added softly, ‘we have such a lot to talk about—don’t you agree?’

  No, Janette’s presence here now wasn’t a coincidence… Obviously the other woman had seen the announcement of her engagement to Reece, and the publicity that had followed, in the newspapers. And the last thing Janette lacked, with her inborn deviousness, was intelligence!

  Nevertheless, Diana deliberately kept her gaze steady with the older woman’s. ‘I can’t think of a single thing, to be honest,’ she dismissed drily, deliberately being obtuse. ‘But as I haven�
�t had coffee myself yet this morning I suppose I could make us a pot.’

  ‘So gracious,’ Janette muttered.

  Diana gave her a bright, meaningless smile before leaving the room to go to the kitchen, her breath leaving her body in a shaky sigh once she reached the relative sanctuary of the other room, where she took a few minutes’ respite to steady her nerves before even thinking about making the coffee.

  It was obvious that Janette knew of her relationship with Reece, but what Diana was unsure of was what she had hoped to achieve by coming here. Because Janette never did anything without a specific purpose in mind.

  Diana gave a start of surprise as Puddle brushed against her leg, so lost had she been in her worried thoughts. And as she looked down at the cat she was almost sure she saw sympathy for her plight in the intelligent lime-green eyes.

  ‘A ghost from my past, Puddle,’ she told him softly, bending down to stroke one silky ear distractedly before automatically making the coffee, moving like an automaton now, her thoughts deeply inward.

  Seeing Janette again after all this time was a little like being confronted with a ghost from her past. And until a very short time ago she had been living in that past herself, with the painful memories it evoked, and now she was only left with the powerful love she felt for Reece—and that terrible fear she had of losing him, a fear she knew would all too soon be a reality. Whatever hopes she had gone to bed with the previous night about the possibility of being able to marry Reece after all, without telling him about her father, were now dashed with Janette’s arrival here. If Janette once realised she was trying to keep that information from Reece, then she knew from experience that the other woman would take great pleasure in telling him the truth herself. In fact, Diana couldn’t think of any other reason for Janette’s being here…!

  ‘Nemesis might be a better description of her, Puddle,’ she told the cat heavily as she prepared the coffee-tray.