Payment In Love

His absence was never mentioned, but Heather knew how much her parents missed him. Her mother could have leaned on Kyle’s strength, while her father could have turned to him for financial advice. If only …

But life wasn’t a fairy story. It wasn’t possible to simply close one’s eyes and wish.

There was another way, though. Her mouth went dry at the very thought of it. It had been in her mind since her father had first been taken ill. She kept trying to dismiss it, to find another way out of her dilemma, but deep down inside she knew there was no other way.

Call it reparation for an old wrong, call it a test she had to face before being able to call herself fully adult, call it what you liked, it all boiled down to the same thing.

She had to go and see Kyle; she had to ask for his help on her parents’ behalf. She had to humble and abase herself before him; she had to have his help.

She was out for longer than she had intended, and when she got back the phone was ringing again. She raced to answer it, tensing as she heard her mother’s familiar but anxious voice.

‘It’s all right, darling. There’s not been any change. Your father is still holding his own, but Mr Frazer has confirmed that he will have to have an operation. There’s one surgeon in particular who’s highly skilled in this particular surgery, but he’s very much in demand. He’s in New York at the moment, apparently, but he’s due back at the end of the week. I’ve told Mr Frazer that we can’t possibly afford a private operation, but he’s asked me to talk to Mr Edmondson anyway. If only your father hadn’t had to let his medical insurance lapse.’

Heather clutched the receiver, echoing her mother’s thoughts, but money had been so tight this last year. She wondered if her mother knew about the bank mortgage her father had taken out on the house so that he would have some capital to inject into the business. The bank was already pressing for its payment, and once they knew her father was ill …

She shivered inwardly. Added stress at this particular moment in time was the very last thing her parents needed. She couldn’t forget that, when she’d found her father, he had been slumped across his desk where he had been studying a depressingly long list of outstanding debts.

‘I’m going to stay here tonight. The hospital has found me a room for as long as I need one. How are you … are you coping?’

How like her mother to be concerned for her, Heather reflected. How on earth had she ever managed to convince herself that her parents didn’t care? All right, so maybe they would both have loved another child, especially a boy. They had loved Kyle, she acknowledged that, but their love for him had never diminished their love for her, although she herself had been too jealous and angry to see that.

‘I’m fine. I’m working on the decorations for the church hall. I’ll have to go to our suppliers tomorrow, I’ve run out of some stuff I need,’ she added on sudden impulse. ‘I’ll be out for most of the day, so don’t worry if you can’t reach me.’

‘Well, just be careful if you’re driving,’ her mother warned her, accepting her lie at face value. ‘They’re forecasting heavy frost for tonight, with snowfalls in the morning.’

Heather felt guilty as she hung up. She hated lying, but she needed time for what she had in mind, and not just time to accomplish her self-imposed task, but time to psyche herself up into carrying it out.

CHAPTER TWO

HEATHER slept badly, waking well before dawn and then lying in bed watching the darkness give way to light. An ominous faint pink flush tinged the sky, a threat of snow to come. Her sleep had been tormented by dreams that were made up of old memories and fears: Kyle’s arrival, and the shock of his reality. He had been so much bigger than she had expected, and so very aggressive towards her. That aggression had been his only means of defence in an alien situation, she knew this now from her counselling. He had grown up in one of the toughest areas of London, deserted by his father and then left to the care of elderly grandparents when his mother had died at twenty-five from the results of an illegal abortion that went wrong. He had probably never known real kindness in his life before her parents came into it, she realised with hindsight. He was only one of several grandchildren cared for by his grandparents for one reason or another, and whereas the others had living parents he had not, and after his mother’s death his grandparents had been more than happy to hand him over into state care.

He had been in and out of several children’s homes since he was five, and had earned himself the reputation of being hard to control, and below normal intelligence.

What on earth had made her parents pick him out as a potential foster child, Heather still didn’t know. To talk about him now was to enter forbidden and mined territory. Her parents missed him still; she only had to remember how her father had asked for him in those first minutes after he had recovered consciousness to know that, but out of love and fear for her they pretended he did not exist. It was a constant ache within her that she had allowed her own insecurity and jealousy to be the cause of so much hurt to them, but it was too late to go back now, too late to re-write the past.

But not too late to alter the future, she reminded herself, shivering a little as thoughts she didn’t want to contemplate filled her mind.

Just as he had known she hated and resented him, so Kyle seemed to know that her parents genuinely loved him. It had soon been discovered that, far from being backward, he was actually of above average intelligence. Her father, delighted with the quickness of his brain, had organised special coaching for him; and when he won a scholarship to a local public school, they had been intensely proud of him.

Her last memory of him had been the fateful night of her seventeenth birthday. He had filled out during his time at university, his shoulders broad enough now to match his six-foot-odd physique. His skin had still been tanned from his working vacation abroad, and his black hair had curled strongly into his collar. He had brought into the femininity of her room a male essence that she had instinctively disliked. She could vividly remember how her whole body had almost quivered in response to it, as hatred for him filled her.

It was no good re-running the past, she couldn’t alter what lay there, and there was no escape to be found down those avenues. There was something she had to do, a debt she owed her parents that must be repaid. A debt of love and sacrifice which she was surely now mature enough to give back.

She looked down at the piece of paper beside her bed. Yesterday she had looked up the head office address of Bennett Enterprises. To her surprise, it was in Bath. Less far away than she had thought. She had written it down, but there had been no need, it was practically burned into her brain.

She had it all planned. Her stomach muscles tightened tensely. What if he refused to even speak to her? What if he wasn’t there?

Already she was looking for ways out, but for her parents’ sake she had to go on.

She showered and dressed, agonising over what to wear to create the best impression, to show him how much she had grown and matured.

In the end she plumped for an elegant black jersey wool dress. It had been expensive and looked it, she admitted ruefully, as she zipped it up. It had been a ‘thank you’ present from someone for whom she had done some interior decoration schemes some months ago. She had enjoyed the challenge of the unexpected task and had flatly refused to take any money. The dress had been a surprise present, and one she had not had the heart to give back. It suited her, showing off her lean, narrow, feminine waist and the soft curves of her body.

Over it she wore a loose silk-effect coat with huge silver buttons and odd lace appliqués. It was the handiwork of a fellow art college friend, and against the rich darkness of her red hair she knew the black looked good.

For once her curls had obeyed the dictates of her brush, and lay smooth and controlled. Too nervous to eat, she made herself a cup of coffee, estimating how long it would take her to get to Bath.

The van they used for company business was her only means of transport, as her mother had their one and only car. The van was old but reliable, and she was used to driving it.

The threatened snow started to fall just before she reached the outskirts of Bath, reminding her that the brakes on the van needed checking. Grimacing faintly at the thought of the additional expense, she found somewhere to park.

There was just time for a calming cup of tea before she bearded the lion in his den. She headed for a favourite tea shop with a Dickensian ambience that surrounded its customers like a comforting favourite blanket.

The waitress recognised her, and gave her a beaming smile. Most of the customers seemed to be tourists, mainly Americans, Heather judged from their accents.

She poured her tea and drank it piping hot, trying to suppress the ever-increasing weight of memories.

When Kyle had been accepted at Oxford she had taunted him with the fact that his London accent would make him a laughing stock. It made her shudder to realise what a bitch she had been, but she had still been a child, and children did not fight by the rules. In point of fact, by that time he had had little trace of the very shrill Cockney accent he had had on first coming to them. Kyle, giving as good as he got, had said nothing at the time but, during their evening meal that night, in full earshot of her parents, he had mimicked her own voice, complete with the soft Dorset burr she had picked up at school. Of course, she had been bitterly humiliated, just as he had intended. She had still had to learn in those days that Kyle could outmatch her in almost every skill there was.

She realised her cup was empty and gave a faint sigh. It couldn’t be put off any longer. Resolutely she got up and paid her bill.

Outside, it was still snowing. Her coat wasn’t really designed as a protection against winter weather, and she shivered a little as she hurried in the direction of Kyle’s offices.

She knew roughly where they were and, given that she was familiar with the nature of his work from the many newspaper articles published on him, she shouldn’t have been surprised by the carefully restored Georgian façade of the building, nor the discretion of the small brass plate outside, announcing that within were the offices of Bennett Enterprises Limited.

Even in his choice of name for his company Kyle had to be different, she thought wryly. Any other young man starting out as a speculative builder and developer would have chosen something like Bennett Builders Limited, but not Kyle; even then he had seen his building company only as a cornerstone on which to build and expand.

Now his company was known as one of the most forward-thinking and responsible building firms around. His architects were called in whenever important restoration work was required, his expertise sought when the planners were at their wits’ end on how to appease both the conservationists and the needs of an ever-growing population.

Recently he had branched out into sheltered accommodation for retired people, and by all accounts was proving as successful in that field as he had been in so many others.

At twenty-nine, he had a reputation for being one of the country’s shrewdest and richest entrepreneurs.

For almost a moment Heather dithered, longing to turn tail and run, and yet held there by a stubborn desire to do what she knew was the right thing. This was her chance to make amends. To show that finally she had grown up and that the lessons learned from the months of counselling she had undergone after her attempted suicide had brought some return. That finally she had come to accept that love could be shared; that Kyle never had and never could be a threat to her own place in her parents’ hearts.

In the end, it was the cold that drove her inside the building; that and the fact that she was attracting curious looks from busy passers-by.

Inside, her heels tapped noisily on the black and white marble-tiled floor; so noisily, in fact, that she was rather surprised that every one of the five doors leading off the rectangular entrance hall did not immediately open.

On either side of the hallway, between the two sets of doors, stood elegant console tables with matching mirrors hung over them. The Georgian period had always been a favourite of hers, and Heather recognised the value of the antique mirrors almost at a glance.

Attractive dried floral displays, in keeping with the winter season, decorated the tables, but it was only when she headed rather nervously for the stairs that one of the doors actually opened.

She must, she realised, as a uniformed commissionaire politely enquired her business, having triggered off some sort of silent alarm.

She told him rather hesitantly that she had come to see Kyle Bennett, and then felt ridiculously foolish when she was forced to admit she was here without making an appointment. Plainly, that was simply not the sort of thing one did when approaching the head of Bennett Enterprises, and she felt a tiny surge of well-remembered resentment start up inside her.

She almost turned to go, but then remembered why she had come here in the first place. Almost in desperation, she said hurriedly, ‘Look, if I could write a note, could it be sent up to Ky—to Mr Bennett?’

That small slip in almost using Kyle’s Christian name was making the commissionaire eye her even more suspiciously, and she stiffened when she realised that the man suspected that she was one of Kyle’s cast-off girlfriends.

Even as a teenager he’d seemed to have had a fatal fascination that attracted members of her sex, and since he had become successful the gossip columns had regularly mentioned his name, connecting it with a variety of pretty socialites and would-be models-cum-actresses.

Surely one glance at her had been enough to inform the commissionaire that she was scarcely the type to attract the great Kyle Bennett, Heather thought bitterly.

‘Mr Bennett knows my … parents,’ she told him coldly. ‘If I could just write that note …’

‘In here, miss.’

The commissionaire obviously believed her, because his manner relaxed slightly as he showed her into one of the empty downstairs rooms.

Obviously a waiting-room of sorts, it was decorated with watered-silk wall hangings, the Georgian panels painted in a chinoiserie design of birds and branches. Two deep-cushioned settees were covered in the same pastel watered silk as the walls, a cheerful open fire burned in what Heather suspected must be the original Adam grate, and the commissionaire escorted her over to a pretty early Victorian writing-desk, fully equipped with notepaper and pens.

She wrote quickly, before she could change her mind, feeling the desperation and dislike building up inside her as she did so. When she had finished, she studied what she had written for a second.

‘Kyle, I need to talk to you about Mum and Dad. Please don’t ignore this note.’

And she sighed it with her full name.

She sealed it before she could give way to any second thoughts, and handed it to the waiting man.

Once he had gone she was seized by a wave of dread, so strong that she was actually half-way to the door before she realised what she was doing. She couldn’t leave now. She had to see this thing through. What was she frightened of? Making a fool of herself in front of Kyle, laying herself open to his mockery and contempt? Was her own pride really so important that it mattered more to her than her father’s life?

Instantly ashamed, she went back into the room. The very worst thing Kyle could do would be to refuse to see her. It didn’t matter how much he humiliated her, as long as he agreed to pay for her father’s operation.

For the first time she contemplated what was likely to happen if her mission failed. The thought made her skin go cold, and she started to shiver.

The commissionaire, walking in and seeing her, frowned and asked anxiously, ‘Are you all right, miss?’

‘Yes, yes … I’m fine.’ Heather gave him a distracted smile. She was so tensed up that her body was aching with the strain she was imposing on it.

‘Mr Bennett said to show you up.’

Was she imagining that new tinge of respect in the man’s voice? Plainly the man thought she had been given something approaching an accolade, but she could not allow herself to relax yet. All she had achieved was one tiny step forward.

The lift was hidden away discreetly, behind another of the doors. As it slid smoothly upwards, Heather pressed a protesting hand to her taut stomach. She was only just beginning to realise the true meaning of the phrase ‘butterflies in the tummy’. The ones in hers seemed to be involved in a mad, frantic dance.

The lift stopped and, following the commissionaire’s directions, she walked down the elegantly decorated corridor to its solitary door.

It was opened before she reached it, and the young woman who motioned her in made Heather all too aware of the shortcomings in her own face and figure. This girl could have posed from the front cover of Vogue and drawn gasps of awe from everyone who saw her.

She was a perfect, frosted Nordic blonde of the type normally found in sophisticated American cities, cool and very sure of herself, her glance sweeping dismissively over Heather’s now tousled curls and clothes.

The simple little outfit she was wearing looked very like a Donna Karan, the silk jersey fluidly tracing every lush curve of her perfect figure. Her nails, medium length and impossibly glossy, reproached the lack of attention Heather paid to hers. It was impossible to keep them immaculate when she was working, and instinctively she tucked them away in her pockets.

‘Kyle said to show you straight in.’

Her smile revealed perfectly capped teeth, her accent pure Sloane Ranger, whose whole manner was designed to intimidate, Heather reflected as she followed her through an anteroom and up to a heavy panelled door.

She tapped on it and then pushed it open, standing aside so that Heather could go in.

It was furnished exactly as she might have expected, all stripped-down panels and a huge status-symbol desk, behind which she expected to find Kyle sitting.

Only he wasn’t. He was standing in front of the fire, engaged in the homely task of putting fresh logs on it.

He turned round as his secretary closed the door, dusting off his hands, his cool eyes taking their time in surveying her.

‘Well, this is a surprise.’

There was nothing in his manner to give her any clue as to how he was going to react to her request. She had half expected a sarcasm that wasn’t there, but the lack of it only made her skin prickle with increased nervousness.

She had forgotten how magnetic he was, how he dominated every situation he was in, simply by the power of his personality. No man who had made of his life what he had, from the very worst of beginnings, could have achieved so much without it, but she had forgotten, or overlooked, how awe-inspiring he could be.

The immaculate dark suit and crisp white shirt added to the image, of course. His tie was discreet, and toned beautifully with his suit. When he shot back his cuff and glanced frowningly at his watch, as though warning her that her time was limited, she caught a flash of gold against the snowy white, and the firelight played momentarily on the sinewy strength of his wrist, his flesh brown and firm, crisscrossed with a dark feathering of hairs. Her stomach somersaulted and she was shaken by a sudden surge of inexplicable reaction. She wanted to turn tail and run, and probably would have done so, if he hadn’t moved, fragmenting the image burned on her brain.

‘Your note said you wanted to see me about your parents.’

His voice hadn’t changed, although now all trace of his accent seemed to have been obliterated. It had almost gone that last time he had come home, she remembered, surprised by the sudden shudder the sound of it sent off deep inside her.

He had moved, so that he was blocking the heat of the fire from her, and suddenly she realised how cold she was. She could feel the shivers building up inside her, her fingers icy-cold, in direct contrast to the heat she could feel filling her cheeks and throat.

It was just tension, she told herself, that was all. And yet, even knowing what was causing her physical symptoms, she still found it very disconcerting to have to acknowledge the physical effect he was having on her.

‘It’s Dad,’ she blurted out, desperate to say what she had come to say and get away. ‘He’s very ill. He’s had a bad heart attack. The specialist says he needs open-heart surgery and a bypass operation.’

She looked directly at him for the first time since she had come into the room, her white pallor broken only by the two over-bright patches of hectic colour in her cheeks.

‘We can’t afford it, and the waiting list on the NHS is so long that Dad could well be dead before he can have the operation.’

‘What are you asking me for, Heather?’ Kyle’s eyebrows rose, his mouth twisting sardonically, and she felt the old familiar flare of dislike rise up inside her. Strange to think of that hard mouth being pressed to a woman’s in passion. She shuddered deeply, stunned by the uncharted direction of her thoughts, the heat in her face increasing. What stupid tricks were her mind playing on her now? Kyle’s sex life was the last thing she could be thinking about.

‘Shall I make a guess?’

The smooth drawl brought her back to reality, her head snapping back as she looked at him.

‘You want me to pay for the operation, is that it? You want money from me, in other words … a cash payment for the years you had to put up with me in your home. What price have you put on that intrusion, Heather, or haven’t you worked it out yet?’

She almost choked in her rage, aching to retaliate and fly at him as she had ached to do so often as a child. Why was it he had the power to rile her like this? Why was it he seemed to know exactly how to find her Achilles’ heel?

‘How much do you want, Heather?’

He had turned away from her, but she could still hear the weary cynicism in his voice, and suddenly she knew that nothing … nothing could make her beg from this man.

‘Nothing,’ she told him bitterly. ‘I don’t want anything from you, Kyle. I thought you cared about my parents. I know they still love you. I know that they still miss you, especially my father … You were the first person he asked for when he finally regained consciousness. He was confused, you see,’ she told him, her throat tight with pain and her own bitter remorse. ‘He had forgotten that you’d left us.’

The tears that filled her eyes flowed on to her face and she dashed them away impatiently, too caught up in her own feelings of inadequacy and pain to care any longer how she might demean herself.

‘They love you, Kyle, and I love them, and when I saw my father lying there in intensive care I wished with all my heart that I could wipe out the past, that I could …’ She broke off, horrified with herself and what she was betraying, but it was too late.

‘Go on,’ Kyle demanded grimly. ‘What did you wish, Heather? That you hadn’t been such a stupid, spoiled little brat? That you hadn’t nearly destroyed your own life out of spite and jealousy?’

Anguish made her veil her eyes from him as the memories she had been fighting to suppress flooded back. It had always been like this between them. The very air in the room seemed fraught with tension and dislike. Why? They were both adults now. She knew that she had been more at fault than Kyle, but surely he could see, just as she had come to see, that each of them had been equally jealous of the other.

‘My parents need you, Kyle,’ she told him quietly, pride strengthening her voice as she added, ‘not because you can pay for Dad’s operation. If either of them knew I was here now, they would be furious. No, they need you because they miss you; because they need someone to lean on.’ She took a deep breath and added shakily, meeting his brooding look head on, ‘They need you because they love you.’