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Dark Summer Dawn - Сара Крейвен - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
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Крейвен Сара
Dark Summer Dawn
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CHAPTER TWO
FOR a moment she could neither speak nor move, and her breathing felt oddly constricted. It was like a nightmare—as if Dane was some demon that her thoughts had conjured up. All these months she had never allowed herself to think about him at all, she had closed him out, incised him from her brain.
Now Julie’s letter had reluctantly forced open the floodgates of her memory, and she had walked through the past like some forbidden city. ‘Talk of the devil,’ people used to say, ‘and he’s sure to appear.’ And it was true because the devil was here with her now.
She made a grab for the door intending to slam it in his face, but her momentary hesitation had been her undoing, because he had already forecast her intention and walked into the room.
He said, ‘Allow me.’ And he closed the door himself, shutting them in together.
Lisa said between her teeth, ‘Get out of here!’
‘When I’m ready.’ His voice was as cool as ever. He had hardly changed at all physically from the first time she had set eyes on him. The lines on his face had deepened with maturity, but his body still had the spare lithe grace of some predatory animal. He moved forward and she recoiled instinctively. He threw back his head and stared at her for a moment, his eyes hooded, their expression enigmatic.
‘Relax,’ he advised caustically. ‘The sooner you hear what I have to say, the sooner I can be gone, which is what we both want.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she almost whispered.
‘I’m not preparing to carry out the fell purposes you seem to have in mind,’ he snapped back at her. ‘For God’s sake, Lisa, sit down and behave like a civilised human being.’
‘What would you know about civilised behaviour?’ She was beginning to tremble inwardly and she folded her arms defensively across her body. ‘Just say whatever you came to say and get out.’
‘Ever the gracious hostess.’ Dane walked past her, looked with a lift of his eyebrow at the littered sofa, then sat down in the chair opposite. ‘You’re very nervous,’ he commented. ‘What’s the matter? You said I’d called at a bad moment when you opened the door. Are you—entertaining?’ His eyes went over her derisively, establishing beyond doubt that he knew quite well she was naked under the old towelling robe, and she flushed angrily.
‘No, I’m not,’ she grated, and could have kicked herself. Perhaps if she’d lied and said, ‘Yes—someone’s waiting for me in the bedroom right now,’ he might have left.
‘Then I’m fortunate to find you alone,’ he said smoothly. ‘I’d like some coffee.’
For a moment Lisa stood glaring at him impotently, then she turned and went into the small kitchen. The towel round her hair was slipping and she tore it off impatiently, thrusting it into the small linen basket next to the washing machine. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly spoon the coffee into the percolator. She began to set a tray with brown pottery mugs, pouring creamy milk into a matching jug. She heard a slight sound behind her, and glancing over her shoulder, realised that Dane was standing in the doorway watching her.
‘Do you have sugar?’ She made her voice cool and social.
‘You’ve a bad memory, Lisa,’ he said sardonically. ‘How many years did we live under the same roof, and how many cups of coffee did you pour for me? No, I don’t have sugar, and never have done.’
‘Too many,’ she muttered.
‘Well, that’s one thing at least we can agree on,’ he said. He strolled forward, trapping her between his body and the worktop behind her. He put out a hand and tilted her chin, studying her face critically.
His touch sent every nerve-ending in her body screaming. She wanted to strike his hand away. She wanted to use her nails and teeth to free herself like a cornered animal, but it would be no good, she knew. He was the stronger, and he would not hesitate to use his strength.
He said silkily, ‘You don’t change, do you, Lisa? I remember you all those years ago—a little hostile creature, all hair and eyes.’
She smiled, a little meaningless stretching of her lips. ‘How odd you should say that. I was thinking much the same about you. Oh, not the hair, of course, but the hostility—and the eyes. They haven’t altered at all. They’re still cold.’
As cold and as cruel as January, she silently added, meeting their greyness, noticing how their bleak light remained unsoftened by the heavy fringing of dark lashes.
Dane said, ‘Cold?’ and smiled. ‘Is that what you really think? Surely not.’
Her breathing quickened a little. ‘You wouldn’t like to hear what I really think. Now if you want this coffee, you’d better let me make it.’
He flung up his hands in mock capitulation and moved away, and Lisa felt limp with relief.
When she carried the tray through to the living room, he had resumed his seat by the fire and was smoking a cigar. She felt a sudden surge of nostalgia as the scent of the smoke reached her. Chas had always smoked cigars and their faint aroma had hung round the house at Stoniscliffe whenever he was there, as if it was Christmas every day, Jennifer had said, laughing.
She put the tray down. ‘What happened to the cigarettes?’
‘I gave them up about eighteen months ago.’ He gestured to the cigar. ‘Do you object to this?’
‘No, of course not.’ She subdued an impulse to add it was the least objectionable thing about him, and poured the coffee instead. ‘Why do you ask?’
He gave a slight shrug. ‘It doesn’t fit in with the image here. A masculine intrusion into a purely feminine environment.’ He paused. ‘Or at least that’s the assumption I’m making. Perhaps I’m wrong.’
‘Perhaps you are,’ she agreed.
He glanced around, brows lifted. ‘You don’t live alone?’
‘I don’t live alone.’
Dane was very still for a moment, then he moved abruptly, tapping a sliver of ash from the tip of the cigar. ‘Of course not. May one ask where he is?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said calmly. ‘Perhaps now you’d like to tell me what you want from me.’
‘Not a thing, sweetheart—now or ever.’ His voice bit. ‘Let’s get that firmly established, shall we? I haven’t come blundering in on your idyll on my behalf but on Julie’s.’
‘Julie’s?’ She was startled, her eyes flying to the creased letter.
His gaze followed hers and his mouth tightened. ‘It looks as if I’ve made a wasted journey. Nevertheless I’ll say what I’ve come to say. Julie’s panicking because she hasn’t heard from you. She’s desperate for you to come home and help with the wedding. She wants to know why you haven’t written or phoned.’
Lisa said, ‘I only got her letter today. I’ve been away—abroad. I only returned yesterday.’
‘The contents don’t seem to have impressed you very much.’ Dane was leaning back in the chair, watching her from beneath lowered lids.
‘You and I both know,’ she said tautly, ‘that there is no way I’m ever going back to Stoniscliffe. You’ll have to stall Julie—find some explanation that will satisfy her.’
‘I can’t think of one,’ he said. ‘And even if I could, I doubt if it would satisfy Chas. He can’t wait for you to come—back.’
She noted ironically the small hesitation and wondered whether the word he’d stumbled over had been ‘home’.
‘How is he?’ She wasn’t merely trying to change the angle of the subject under discussion. She really wanted to know. Letters were pretty unrevealing, and she had kept hers amusing and busy, providing excuse after excuse for not returning to Yorkshire.
‘If you really wanted to know, you would have gone to see for yourself,’ Dane said harshly. ‘How the hell do you think he is—trapped in a wheelchair for the rest of his life!’
‘A wheelchair?’ She gaped at him, her head reeling in disbelief. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He had a stroke,’ Dane said curtly. ‘It’s left him partly paralysed. He can walk a few yards with difficulty and use one hand.’
Lisa shook her head. ‘He said he hadn’t been well, but he never even hinted …’
‘Why should he? If you’d cared, you’d have gone to see.’
‘That’s your reasoning, not his.’ She glared at him.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘He always was too soft with you—too ready to make excuses. He wouldn’t write and ask you to come back because he’s terrified of pity. He’s a strong man who’s suddenly found a physical weakness he can’t command or overcome, and it’s been a struggle for him. He has a nurse living in, but he doesn’t ask for help or sympathy from anyone else. He’s counting on Julie’s wedding to bring you back to Stoniscliffe. I could have told him it was a forlorn hope.’
‘That’s not true!’ Her throat felt thick and tight. ‘I—I love Chas.’
‘So you’ve always protested. According to you, you asked for nothing better than to be a daughter to him and a sister to Julie. Well, now’s your chance. Live up to your words.’
‘It isn’t as easy as you think.’ She was arguing against herself now, not him, although he wasn’t to know that. ‘I have a career—commitments.’
‘As you’ve already made clear.’ His mouth twisted a little. ‘Couldn’t you convince him that you also have a commitment to Chas—a prior commitment? Unless, of course, you no longer see it that way. As for your so-called career,’ he shrugged, ‘I imagine it would survive a slight hiccup like Julie’s wedding.’
‘You can sneer all you want,’ she said furiously, ‘but it’s my life. It isn’t the sort of success you would recognise, but I’m happy. What did you expect me to do—become a “little typist” like my mother?’
‘When you can capitalise on your considerable assets? Hardly.’ Dane looked her over. ‘You must have one of the best known faces and bodies in the country. How does the man in your life like having to share you with the fantasies of thousands of others?’
She shifted her head. ‘He survives.’ She’d deliberately led him to believe that there was such a man, so there was no point in screaming at him that her face and body belonged to herself alone, that in front of the cameras she played the role Jos had written for her, no more no less, and all it needed now was for Dinah, who was away on tour in the Midlands, to walk in and blow the whole stupid pretence sky high.
‘I’m sure he does more than that.’ His eyes seemed to linger on her mouth, on the deep vee where the lapels of the dressing gown crossed. ‘Even with your hair in rats’ tails, you’re quite something.’
Lisa felt herself shrink inwardly, but there must have been some physical movement as well, because he threw up a hand. ‘Don’t be alarmed. I said I wanted nothing from you, and I meant it. All I need is your co-operation for a few weeks.’ He paused, then added cynically, ‘And you won’t be out of pocket over it. I’ll make it worth your while.’
She said between her teeth, ‘How readily you reduce everything to cash terms. You know what you can do with your bloody money!’
‘Spare me the righteous wrath,’ he drawled. ‘I know quite well Chas has been paying out handsomely for the honour of keeping you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed. I can’t stop him, of course, but perhaps you should remember that there’ll come a time when the gravy train will stop permanently.’
And on that day, Lisa thought savagely, it would give her immense satisfaction to return every unspent penny.
She said with assumed lightness, ‘You disappoint me. There was I thinking I was set up for life. I shall have to take care I don’t lose my looks.’
‘I should just take care generally,’ he said gently. He put down the pottery mug and stood up. ‘Thank you for the coffee. I’m driving back to Yorkshire tomorrow. I’ll pick you up around midday.’
‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said. ‘I have arrangements to make, and there are trains.’
‘So there are,’ he agreed. ‘But Chas at least would think it strange that we didn’t travel together. I don’t deny your attractions, but I’m sure there are other models in London.’
‘Plenty,’ she said flatly.
‘Then let’s have no more excuses about arrangements.’ He gave her a long dispassionate look. ‘Play this my way, Lisa, and I’ll see to it that you aren’t bothered in future. You can come back here after the wedding and live whatever kind of life takes your fancy. I’ll see you tomorrow, and don’t keep me waiting.’
He didn’t seem to expect her to show him out, and she was glad of that because she didn’t think her shaking legs would support her. She remained on the sofa staring at the door which had just closed behind him and trying to make sense of the last teeming half hour.
In a moment, she told herself, she would wake up and find she’d been having a bad dream. Whenever there had been nightmares, it had always seemed as if Dane was part of them hovering there somewhere on the fringe of her subconscious.
She hoped very much she would wake up soon. She moved restively and her hand caught her undrunk mug of coffee and spilled it across the hearthrug, and she stared for a moment down at the resultant mess, forcing herself to face reality.
Somehow, without knowing quite how it had happened, she was going back to Stoniscliffe to help with Julie’s wedding. She sank her teeth into her lower lip. It was no wonder Dane was such a success in business. No object remained immovable for long under the pressure of his irresistible force. She loathed him!
She cleaned up the spilled coffee while her mind ran round and round like a small animal trapped on a wheel. She could always vanish, she supposed. She had done it once two years ago, and she could do it again. But to do so would be to hurt Julie who didn’t deserve it, and more importantly, it would grieve Chas.
Lisa caught her breath at the thought of him in a wheelchair. He had always been such a strong, positive man. This new weakness would irk him terribly, she knew, and found herself wondering exactly when it had happened.
At the same time, she told herself fiercely that she wasn’t to feel guilty. If her disappearance from Stoniscliffe had had even a remote connection with Chas’s stroke, then Dane would have mentioned it. A mirthless smile curved her mouth. Boy, would he have mentioned it! So she wasn’t to blame herself, although she knew that her conscience would trouble her. Chas had been ill and needing her, and she hadn’t known. Why hadn’t Julie told her? she asked herself almost despairingly, and then shook her head at her own foolishness. Julie would have been obeying orders.
Chas would have wanted her to return to Stoniscliffe under her own steam, at her own wish. He wouldn’t take kindly to any sort of pleading on his behalf from anyone. Not even from Dane.
So that was yet another secret she had to keep, because Chas had never known the real reason why she had left Stoniscliffe in the first place, and that was the most important secret of all. No one knew the truth except herself, and the man who had just left her crouched, trembling like a child, in a corner of her own sofa.
She went across to the telephone and dialled Jos’s number. Myra answered almost at once, and her voice bubbled down the phone as she recognised Lisa.
‘Did you enjoy the trip? Are you worn out? Come to supper tomorrow night and tell me your version.’
‘I’d love to, but I can’t.’ Lisa hesitated. ‘Is he in a good mood, Myra?’
‘Fair to middling. Why, is there something wrong?’
‘In a way. I have to go away for a few weeks, that’s all.’
‘That’ll be enough,’ Myra said blankly. ‘What’s happened?’ She paused. ‘You’re not—ill or anything?’
Lisa guessed the real question behind the tactful words. ‘No, nothing like that. I have to go up north to organise a family wedding. My stepsister is getting married, and there’s a panic on.’
She could hear Myra talking to someone at the other end, her voice muffled and then Jos spoke.
He said sharply, ‘What is all this, Lisa? Myra says you’re going up north. You have to be joking!’
‘I wish I were.’ Lisa rapidly explained about the wedding. ‘But there’s more to it than that,’ she went on. ‘I’ve just found out that my stepfather had a stroke at some time, and that he wants to see me.’
‘Oh, hell!’ Jos was silent for a moment. ‘You realise that all this couldn’t be happening at a worse time.’
‘Please believe that if I could get out of going, I would,’ she said unhappily. ‘But they’re all the family I’ve got, and I owe them a great deal. Certainly I owe them this.’
‘Then obviously you must go, but for heaven’s sake get back as soon as you can. They have short memories in this game,’ he said grimly. He paused. ‘You said they were all the family you’ve got. Wasn’t there a brother as well? I seem to remember Dinah mentioning him.’
‘There was and there is,’ she said. ‘But I don’t regard him as a brother. It was Julie I grew up with.’
‘Lucky Julie,’ Jos commented. ‘Tell the stepfather he did a good job. And phone me as soon as you get back.’
‘That’s a promise,’ Lisa said, and replaced her receiver. Her hand was sweating slightly and she wiped it down the skirt of her dressing gown.
She would have to write to Dinah and she could pay Mrs Hargreaves and give her any necessary instructions in the morning. There was no great problem there.
The towering, the insuperable, the shattering difficulty was getting through, firstly, tomorrow, and then the days after that. If it hadn’t been for the wedding she might have been able to do a deal—to say to Dane, ‘I want to go back. I want to see Chas, to spend some time with him, and I’ll do it on the understanding that you go and stay far away from Stoniscliffe while I’m there.’
But because of Chas’s paralysis, Dane was going to give Julie away. He had to be there, and so there was no bargain to be struck.
Not that Dane struck bargains anyway, she thought. He made decisions and carried them through to his own advantage. If he negotiated, he expected to be on the winning side, and generally was. She had never seen him bested by anyone, although at one time she had dreamed dreams of doing it herself. But not any more. He had shown her brutally and finally that against him, she could not win, and she still had the emotional scars to prove it.
But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She couldn’t let herself think about that because otherwise she would turn tail and run away somewhere—anywhere, and Dane would know then exactly what he had done to her, and triumph in his knowledge.
She was restless, pacing round the flat like an animal in a cage, and she had to make herself stop, and fetch the hairdryer and sit down and do something about her ill-used hair which was going to dry like a furze bush if she wasn’t careful, and contribute nothing to her self-confidence. There was something soothing and therapeutic in sitting there, brushing the warm air through her hair, and restoring it to something like its usual smooth shine. She wished she could smooth out her jitters as easily.
She didn’t sleep when she went to bed, but she told herself that she wouldn’t have slept anyway. She’d had no exercise or fresh air to make her healthily tired.
There was too much to do in the morning to give her time to think. She packed and tried to eat some breakfast, while she gave a surprised Mrs Hargreaves her instructions. Then she found Dinah’s tour schedule and wrote her a hasty explanatory note, addressing it to the current theatre.
She dashed out, posted the letter, and as she walked back from the box on the corner, she saw there was a car parked in the street outside the flat. She lived over a shop—a boutique really where they sold small pieces of antique furniture and jewellery, catering for the connoisseur market, and of course the car could have belonged to one of the said connoisseurs, but somehow she didn’t think so.
She stood for a moment, her hands buried in her coat pockets, and stared at it, and wished she was able to turn round and walk away again as fast as she could. It was dark and sleek and shining and looked extremely powerful. It proclaimed money and a quiet but potent aggression.
Dane was waiting at the top of the stairs. He swung impatiently to meet her.
‘I was beginning to think you’d run out on me.’
‘I had to post a letter.’ Lisa despised herself for the defensive note in her voice. She had nothing to apologise for. She wasn’t late; he was early. She took her key out of her pocket and Dane calmly appropriated it and fitted it into the lock.
‘Thank you,’ she said between her teeth, and went past him into the flat.
‘If you’re ready, I’d like to leave as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘The weather forecast isn’t too good for later in the day.’
It would be brave weather that would dare interfere with his arrangements, she thought bitterly as she went into the bedroom to close her case. She tugged russet suede boots on over her slim-fitting cream cord jeans, and pulled a matching coat, warmly lined, on top of her cream Shetland sweater. She had left her hair hanging loose round her shoulders as she had worked and packed, but now it was a moment’s task to sweep it into a smooth coil and anchor it securely on top of her head. It was a severe style, but it suited her, highlighting the line of her cheekbones and her smooth curve of jaw.
She picked up her case and the weekend bag that matched it and went into the living room. Dane was standing by the window looking down into the street.
‘Is that all you’re taking?’ His glance ran over her luggage.
‘It’s enough,’ she returned shortly. ‘I’ve learned to travel lightly.’
‘But not alone.’ There was a barb in the smooth words which angered her, but she decided to ignore it. The journey ahead was going to be trying enough without a constant sparring match going on between them.
Dane picked up the cases. ‘I’ll put these in the boot while you see to any locking up you need to do.’
She was fastening the safety catches on the windows when the phone rang.
‘Lisa?’ Simon Whitman’s voice sounded plaintively down the line. ‘Jos has just told me you’re off up north for an unspecified time. What’s going on?’
Her heart sank at the note of grievance in his voice, which she had to admit was fully justified. Before the West Indies assignment, she and Simon had been seeing quite a lot of each other. She had met him some months before through her work, because he was a young and promising executive with an advertising agency which often used Jos’s photographs. They had got on well almost immediately, and she had accepted the invitation to dinner from him which had speedily followed. They were starting to be spoken of as a couple, to be invited to places together, and although Lisa wasn’t sure that was entirely what she wanted, she was happy enough with the arrangement to allow it to continue unchallenged as long as Simon didn’t start making demands she couldn’t fulfil. Up to now, he had shown no signs of this. On the contrary, he had seemed quite happy to keep their relationship as light and uncommitted as she could have wished, but just then she had heard a distinctly proprietorial note in his voice.
She said, ‘A family emergency of sorts.’ She should have let him know, she thought. He should have been on her list ahead of Dinah and Mrs Hargreaves really, but the truth was she had never even given him a thought. She went on, ‘It’s been landed on me so suddenly, I haven’t really had a chance to contact anyone.’
‘I didn’t think I was just anyone,’ Simon said, and there seemed no answer to that, so Lisa didn’t make one. After a pause, he said ‘Will you be gone for very long?’
‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘For as long as it takes, and no longer. I do have my living to earn, and as Jos reminded me, they have short memories in the fashion world.’
‘They’ll remember you.’ His voice warmed, lifted a little. ‘I can’t get you out of my mind, night or day.’
That troubled her a little, but she found herself smiling. ‘It would be nice if the other agencies in town felt the same. Do you think you could become contagious?’
She was aware that Dane had come back into the room and was standing by the door, silently watching and listening. Anyone else would have had the decency to withdraw out of earshot, she thought bitterly as she turned a resentful shoulder on him.
She could hardly hear what Simon was saying. She had to force herself to concentrate on his words because she was too conscious of that other dark and disturbing presence behind her.
Simon said with that special note in his voice which belonged to almost everyone who had spent their entire lives south of Potters Bar, ‘It will be awful in the north at this time of year, and they reckon there’s bad weather on the way. You’ll take care, won’t you, love?’
Lisa said, ‘I can take care of myself.’ And froze as she realised what she’d said, the words acting like a key to unlock the secret place in her mind and unleash the nightmares which lurked there. She found she was gripping the phone until her knuckles went white. She answered Simon in monosyllables ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, praying that each response was the right one because he might have been talking so much gibberish.
Eventually she said with a kind of insane brightness in her voice, ‘Look, I really must go now. I’ll see you when I get back.’
Simon said goodbye in his turn. He sounded disappointed, as if for all his warnings about the weather he had hoped she might give him the address she was going to, the telephone number so that he could make contact.
She replaced the receiver on the rest with unsteady fingers, and turned slowly.
Across the room, Dane’s eyes met hers, cold and watchful, and she knew that her words had triggered off memories for him too and for an endless moment the past held them in its bleak trap.
If she backed away, he would come after her, a jungle cat stalking his prey. But she had no reason to back off. Because this time what she said was true. She could look after herself, and she would. Neither Dane nor anyone else had the power to harm her.
And sitting beside him in silence, as the car devoured the miles on the motorway, Lisa found herself repeating those words over and over again as if they were an incantation that would keep her safe.
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