Elusive Obsession

by Carole Mortimer

  And then she looked at Reece, a Reece with eyes so black with disillusionment that they were like twin coals of burning emotion.

  And Diana knew she couldn’t stand any more, that she had to get away. She, who had tried never to run away from anything in her life, had to go. And now.

  She turned and fled, tears choking in her throat as Reece called after her, knowing that he probably wanted the pleasure of choking her himself!

  The need to escape was paramount. She didn’t care where she went, only knew she had to get as far away from Reece and Janette as she possibly could!

  The people who crowded the street outside were just a sea of faces to her, dark, curiously intent faces as she burst on to the pavement not knowing which way to go. Several people stopped to stare openly as they obviously recognised her, and with another anguished cry she turned to run away from them too!

  She didn’t even see the car, didn’t even feel its impact with her body; she only knew the blessed relief of the blackness that engulfed her as her head struck the ground…

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE minutes ticked by as if they were hours. So slowly, so very slowly. And as they passed with agonising slowness Reece sat in the chair beside the bed, unmoving himself, his gaze riveted on the soft rise and fall of Diana’s breasts as she lay so still beneath the bedclothes, her face almost as white as the sheets themselves—or the thick bandage that swathed her head to cover the deep gash she had sustained when she first fell on to the road and was knocked unconscious.

  There were no other injuries; the car—a taxi that had just picked up a fare and was moving away from the pavement—hadn’t been travelling fast enough to do more than actually knock Diana off-balance.

  No other injuries that showed, Reece acknowledged heavily. But inside Diana was a pain he knew would never go away: that of losing her father in the way that she had.

  How she must hate him, must have hated him all these years. He hadn’t known that day twelve years ago, hadn’t realised just how desperate Lambeth was. If only Howard had listened to him, none of this——But the other man had been too angry that day to be reasoned with, hadn’t wanted to hear anything Reece had to say, and so in the end Reece had left him, intending to talk to Howard when he was in a more reasonable frame of mind. Reece had rebuked himself time and time again for not having realised there would never be another day for Howard, but in the end he had had to accept that he was punishing himself for something that couldn’t be altered—that it was the living that counted.

  Diana, for whom the nightmare was a continuous thing, hadn’t been given that luxury…

  He had known Lambeth had a young daughter—of course he had; but it had never occurred to him, not even for a moment, that Diana was that child. God, he could kick himself now when he remembered how casually he had dismissed from his mind that lack of information Paul had come up with on Diana’s childhood, how he had been so sure it wasn’t important, that it was the woman she was now that mattered. How wrong he had been! Diana’s painful childhood was what had made her the woman she was today.

  Which woman was she going to be when she woke up—the one who had agreed to marry him and then hesitated about fixing a date for the wedding, or the one who had hated him enough to engineer this whole thing so that she could make him pay for his part in her father’s death?

  If she woke up. The doctors had warned him there could be an ‘if’ involved in that. The blow to her head had knocked her unconscious, and so far, twelve hours later, she had shown no signs of coming out of it. And the longer she remained unconscious, the more afraid the doctors were that she could go into a coma without ever regaining consciousness, suffering from an internal injury they had no control over. Reece couldn’t bear even to think about the possibility; Diana had already suffered enough. Except… what did she really have, in her own injured mind, at least, to wake up for?

  ‘No change?’ Chris appeared at his side, having been at the hospital on and off all day himself—the doctors were not too happy about letting Reece stay in with Diana all the time, and flatly refused to let any other full-time visitors stay.

  ‘No change,’ Reece acknowledged heavily. And yet his life had been changed forever by this ethereally lovely woman who lay so still and unmoving. And, no matter what the future held for them, she had to recover. She had to!

  * * *

  It was so nice floating in this world of half-light, so peaceful, so still, nothing to——But she could hear the soft murmur of voices, half recognised them, frowning as she tried to remember who——But the voices had gone away again now, leaving her to the grey darkness that cocooned and carried her…

  But she wasn’t being left in peace now—she could hear a voice again. Just a single voice, talking softly, a voice that was so achingly familiar now as she remembered …remembered—Reece! It was Reece, talking so gently. But who was he talking to?

  ‘I’m so sorry, Diana—Divinia——God, I don’t even know what to call you any more!’ he groaned huskily.

  Her. He was talking to her. She was Diana—wasn’t she…? She wasn’t sure. She thought she was.

  She wanted to open her eyes and look at him—maybe then she would know who she was; but her lids felt so heavy, so very heavy.

  ‘You have to wake up, Diana. You have to,’ he told her more forcefully.

  Diana. She was Diana. Divinia, whatever traces of her had been left, had disappeared when she fell in love with this man. And she did love him, was sure that she did, the sound of his voice waking her. But what was he sorry for? She didn’t understand.

  ‘I have so much to tell you,’ he groaned, his hand clasping the limpness of one of hers as it lay on the bed beside her. ‘So much to explain!’

  She was listening; didn’t he know she was listening?

  ‘I’m going to be here when you wake up, damn it,’ Reece rasped as she still lay so still. ‘I don’t care when it is—I’m going to be the first person you see when you open your eyes!’

  She wanted to smile at his arrogance, to tell him he was the person she wanted to see when she woke up, but it was all too much for her, she realised, when she tried to return the clasp of his hand and knew she had failed, the deep heaviness of sleep claiming her once again.

  * * *

  Today was the day. It could be delayed no longer. And, whether it turned out a disaster or not, Reece knew he couldn’t stand the strain another day longer.

  Diana wasn’t in the bed when he entered her room, and for a brief moment he felt panic course through him. And then he saw her through the open french windows, sitting in the sunshine, looking out over the hospital gardens, her face pale in profile, the bandage completely gone from her brow now, just a small dressing in its place to cover the wound that had received half a dozen stitches.

  It was almost a week since she had regained consciousness and all the doctors’ fears—and his own!—concerning brain damage had been put to rest. Apart from that gash, and a king-sized headache, Diana seemed to have escaped the accident unharmed.

  And since that time the two of them had been dodging the issue completely that had caused her to take flight in the first place!

  It wasn’t like Reece to be so cowardly, but he was very much aware that this time he was facing possibly the greatest challenge of his life, that there was still so much to lose. And he was far from sure of the outcome.

  For her part, Diana seemed as reluctant to face the confrontation as he. And as the two of them were so rarely alone, Chris usually accompanying him on his visits to the hospital, or one of Diana’s model friends already in the room with her, it hadn’t been so difficult to avoid the subject of the past; in fact, it had been virtually impossible to bring it up!

  But today it would be different; today Diana was due to go home. And Reece was the one who was going to drive her there.

  She turned to look at him now, as if sensing his presence, the green gaze becoming suddenly wary as she sensed too that the time for p
revaricating was at an end.

  She stood up calmly, wearing the clothes she had asked one of her friends to call at the flat and collect for her the day before: a light woollen top the same colour as her eyes, and a floral skirt in autumn colours that reached almost to her ankles. Her hair was newly washed, a golden cascade down her spine, that small dressing on her brow adding to her look of vulnerability.

  She had never, apart from that time when she modelled the Oxley wedding gown—and just thinking about that twisted a knife inside him!—looked lovelier to him.

  She felt like a sacrificial lamb being driven to her slaughter. Reece had been very patient this last week, but they both knew his patience was at an end. She was going to know that heart-wrenching pain again, to know exactly what it was like to lose him.

  And who could blame him? She had been found out, exposed, and Reece wasn’t a forgiving man. She was prepared, if not exactly fortified, for the ordeal that lay ahead of her.

  What she wasn’t prepared for was Janette waiting outside her flat for them when they arrived there!

  And, from the mutinous expression on Janette’s face as she joined them, she wasn’t there through choice either! ‘I have a plane to catch in a couple of hours,’ she snapped irritably. ‘So if we could just try and keep all of this short?’

  ‘You’ll stay as long as it takes, Janette,’ Reece told her hardly as Diana let them into the flat with her key, the flat feeling very empty, Puddle still being over with Roger.

  She wasn’t altogether sure she was going to stand up under the strain of this; the journey from the hospital, full of tension, had already tired her—and now this. She had known she and Reece had to talk, but this promised to be so much worse than that would have been, and the pounding in her head told her she would have to sit down soon—or fall down!

  ‘Go into the sitting-room,’ Reece instructed harshly after looking at her with narrowed eyes. ‘I’ll make us all some coffee and bring it through——

  ‘I don’t have time for coffee,’ Janette told him sharply.

  He returned her gaze coldly. ‘There are two other people here who do,’ he told her in a voice that brooked no further argument, before going off assuredly in the direction of the kitchen.

  Diana dropped down wearily on to one of the big bean-bags, closing her eyes briefly, only to find when she opened them again seconds later that Janette was looking down at her with open scorn. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Diana invited dully. ‘This seems to be Reece’s show.’

  ‘Arrogant bastard!’ Janette muttered resentfully as she sat down on the edge of the only chair in the room. ‘Marco has at last agreed to be reasonable and sit down and discuss a divorce settlement, and instead of flying back to Italy as I want to do before he changes his mind and divorces me without——’

  ‘Marco is divorcing you?’ Diana stared; this wasn’t the way Janette had originally told it.

  The other woman looked flustered. ‘What difference does it make who divorces who?’ Her face was very flushed in her agitation.

  ‘None at all.’ Diana shrugged dismissively. ‘I just thought——’

  ‘Marco has decided it’s time for a newer model, all right?’ Janette snapped, her mouth twisting sneeringly. ‘He’s found himself a cute little redhead from Texas, only twenty-three, with a very rich daddy. I should have realised his taste ran to young girls after he tried to make love to you——’

  ‘You always said you didn’t believe me about that!’ Diana gasped.

  ‘Look, I just want to get out of here.’ Janette looked around her impatiently. ‘I would have been at the airport now if Reece hadn’t seen fit to demand my presence here instead!’

  Diana didn’t have time to dwell on what Janette had just admitted knowing about Marco five years ago as Reece strode back into the room.

  ‘And you know damned well why I demanded that,’ he rasped.

  Janette tilted her head back defiantly. ‘I don’t for one minute believe you would have gone through with prosecuting me!’

  Grey eyes narrowed to icy cold slits. ‘Try me,’ Reece invited softly.

  Diana watched the exchange with puzzled eyes. She felt a little stronger now after having sat for a few minutes—but, at the same time, she didn’t have the vaguest idea what these two were talking about!

  Janette paled slightly beneath tanned cheeks. ‘She didn’t suffer——’

  ‘Didn’t she?’ Reece scorned incredulously, shaking his head disgustedly. ‘Maybe not by your standards, Janette,’ he accepted insultingly. ‘But, by all that’s decent, the next eight years of her life, at least, were a nightmare for her!’

  ‘Implying my standards aren’t decent!’ Janette realised heatedly, standing up now, her face twisted into an ugly mask. ‘I don’t have to stay here to be insulted like this——’

  ‘No,’ Reece acknowledged just as angrily. ‘To quote an old cliché, “You could go anywhere and be insulted in exactly the same way”!’ His eyes glittered dangerously. ‘But don’t have any doubts about it, Janette; you are going to stay right here until the truth has finally been told. And then you can go anywhere you please!’ Hell and back, for all he cared, his tone implied.

  Diana was still completely in the dark about the meaning of their conversation, and she could have screamed her frustration when Reece chose that moment to go back into the kitchen and pour the coffee! Janette didn’t give the impression that she was prepared to enlighten her either, shooting her a venomous look before flouncing off to stare out of the large window, her back firmly turned on Diana. But she was worried; Diana could tell that by the way she fidgeted constantly.

  And by the time Reece finally came in with the laden tray Diana herself was a bundle of nerves. ‘Will someone please tell me what all this is about?’ she demanded impatiently.

  Reece arched dark brows pointedly at the resentful Janette who had now turned back to face them. ‘Well?’ he prompted tautly.

  Her cheeks were flushed with anger. ‘Why the hell do I have to be the one——? Oh, all right!’ she snapped furiously as his expression took on a dangerous quality, and she turned impatiently to Diana. ‘After your father’s—death,’ she bit out resentfully, every word obviously forced out of her, ‘Reece made us an allowance——Oh, all right, he made you an allowance,’ she corrected as Reece’s mouth thinned warningly. ‘For your schooling to continue. Holidays. Things like that,’ she dismissed. ‘But as your legal guardian I was to administer the allowance,’ she added defensively.

  ‘And the rest,’ Reece grated. ‘Chalford,’ he reminded tautly, his head back challengingly.

  ‘Her birthday was only three months ago, for God’s sake,’ Janette snapped. ‘I’ve had a lot of other things on my mind during that time than trying to remember exactly when Divinia reached twenty-one!’

  ‘Your problems with your errant husband are none of my concern,’ Reece dismissed with distaste for the subject. ‘Diana, however, is!’

  ‘Divinia, Diana, what difference does it matter what I call her?’ the other woman said impatiently.

  ‘Indeed,’ he acknowledged with a slow inclination of his head, his gaze steady on her. ‘It’s what should have been hers, which you took for yourself, that matters!’

  Diana was feeling ill again. Reece was the reason she had been able to stay on at her boarding-school, and not because there had been enough money left over from her father’s estate. But why had he done that—unless he had a guilty conscience about the way her father had died…?

  ‘I needed the money.’ Janette was too agitated herself to realise just how angry Reece was—and he was very angry indeed, the cold fury emanating from him. ‘How else was I suppose to live?’ she defended.

  ‘Until you could find yourself a husband rich enough to continue supporting you in that extravagant lifestyle you had so come to love!’ Reece accused disgustedly. ‘You stole from a child, Janette,’ he said incredulously. ‘A child who had already suffered a shock so severe it had lef
t her with lasting scars.’

  Janette gave a harsh laugh. ‘She took something of mine too, once she was old enough to realise how susceptible Marco was to a young lissom body!’

  ‘That isn’t true!’ Diana gasped, at last able to contribute something to a conversation that was becoming more and more incredible by the minute. ‘I was just sixteen, Reece,’ she told him defensively. ‘Had no idea—certainly didn’t want—Marco tried to rape me!’ She swallowed hard at Reece’s sharply indrawn breath. ‘And when I told Janette she said she didn’t believe me.’ She looked at the other woman accusingly now for what she had admitted to the contrary such a short time ago. How could she have done that to a young child?

  ‘Of course I believed you,’ the other woman admitted again. ‘I had had to sit by for months watching as Marco’s interest in you slowly changed as he realised you were growing up; I saw the way he looked at you, knew that he wanted you!’

  ‘Then——’

  ‘If I had once acknowledged that I knew of his interest in you, then my marriage would have been at an end!’ Janette explained tautly. ‘I would have had no other choice, not with my own stepdaughter. So I pretended it had never happened, and you helped to lessen the tension by keeping to your room for the rest of that holiday, and having the good sense never to come back. But Marco never forgot you,’ she rasped bitterly. ‘When your modelling career took off and your photograph began to appear with sickening regularity in the newspapers I used to see him leering over them, and he would tell anyone willing to listen that you were his beautiful stepdaughter!’

  Diana had felt a cold shiver down her spine at the thought of Marco looking at her at all. It was disgusting, obscene, made her feel as if she never wanted her photograph taken ever again.

  ‘I’ve never hit a woman, Janette,’ Reece spoke in slowly measured tones, his face pale, that warning nerve pulsing in his tautly held cheek. ‘And I’m certainly not about to soil my hands on you,’ he added contemptuously as she instantly looked alarmed. ‘So I want you to just tell Diana about Chalford now and then go—before I forget my principles, get over my aversion, and strike you anyway!’