And Mother Makes Three

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He stepped off the path, followed the lawn around to the back of the house.

Bron put the registered letter from her mother’s insurance company on the kitchen table unopened. Her mother was dead and nothing would change that, but Lucy was alive and needing help now. She picked up the telephone again, pressed redial. She would leave a message, ask James Fitzpatrick to call her. It rang once, twice. A shadow passed the kitchen window, someone coming round to the back of the house, no doubt Mrs Marsh checking up on her, making sure she was coping...

‘Come along,’ she muttered impatiently. And then the voice again. Except it wasn’t the answering machine.

‘Brooke...’ he said and as she spun around, saw the shadowed figure in the doorway, she knew exactly who he was.

‘James Fitzpatrick,’ she said. And as if to confirm it his voice repeated the name in her ear.

For a moment he didn’t move, stayed in the open doorway with the sun streaming in around him. ‘That’s a little formal under the circumstances, Brooke. I still answer to Fitz.’

‘Fitz,’ she repeated dully, while the cogs in her brain freewheeled, trying to catch up with what was happening. Apparently taking this as an invitation, he stepped into the room, into the light. Oh, God, the voice was perfect, the man was perfect. More than perfect, he was beautiful. Tall, broad-shouldered, lean as a whippet beneath a white linen shirt that draped loosely about his torso, beneath old faded denims that stretched tight across narrow masculine hips, clinging to his thighs as though moulded to them. His hair was black, a dishevelled mass of thick dark curls that flowed over his shirt collar, his mouth was sinfully sensuous, his eyes the colour of ripe blueberries. No man had the right to be that good-looking, that sexy, that... ‘I—I was just trying to call you,’ she said.

‘Then that answers my question. You did get Lucy’s letter.’

Bron tore her gaze away from this apparition of manly perfection long enough to glance at the crumpled, slightly grubby envelope lying on the kitchen table. Unfortunately she tried to replace the telephone receiver at the same time. She missed. It swung down and hit the wall, jerking the telephone from its bracket. The whole lot landed on the floor with a crash.

James Fitzpatrick crossed the room, bent to retrieve the instrument. ‘It’s cracked,’ he said, straightening beside her.

‘It was already cracked.’ A bit like her voice.

‘I see.’ He checked the dialling tone, replaced it on the wall before turning to her, his forehead creased in a thoughtful frown. ‘I’ve often wondered where Lucy gets that from.’

Lucy was clumsy? ‘You made me jump,’ she said defensively. ‘Why did you come to the back door?’

‘I thought it might be a good idea to take you by surprise—’ he’d certainly done that ‘—before you had time to put the chain up.’

Close up to him, Bron was finding it difficult to breathe. This was Lucy’s father? Brooke had walked away from this man to film monkeys and spiders and frogs and any number of unspeakable creatures in mosquito infested swamps? If anyone had ever doubted her dedication... His words suddenly got through to her. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘I made a promise. The fact that I’m here must tell you that I’m about to break it.’

What promise? His right hand was against the wall, trapping her in the corner, but it made no difference, her legs weren’t planning on taking her anywhere. She swallowed. ‘Because of Lucy? How is she—?’

‘You’ve had nearly nine years to ask that question,’ he said, cutting off her concern, refusing to acknowledge it.

‘I didn’t mean—’ She hadn’t meant it in that meaningless, ‘How are you?’, kind of way. She meant, What kind of child is she? What are her dreams? Is she happy? But his left hand, the fingers loosely curled, was rubbing mesmerisingly against her cheek, stealing her wits. ‘You don’t have to pretend you care, Brooke, not for me. Save that for your daughter.’

Brooke?

Brooke was looking at him as if she had been knocked sideways and it gave him a small charge of satisfaction to know that he wasn’t the only one struggling for breath. But surely she must have expected him? If she had reached the point where she was going to call she must have realised that he was going to come looking for her. No doubt she had been trying to stop him. As if anything could.

It was odd—he’d seen her on television dozens of times during the years and he’d felt nothing. He’d been so certain that she was incapable of doing this to him again yet it was as if the years had never happened, as if Lucy had never happened and she was still twenty years old and looking up at him from a bench on her university campus.

Her skin was still peachy soft beneath his fingers, a little pink from the recent heatwave but surprisingly unlined by the months, years spent in tropical sunlight. He had expected her harder, tougher, despite the girlish sweetness with which she managed to charm her audience, had long ago charmed him. She was older and yet disconcertingly still the same; looking at him with the same misty, melting grey eyes, still with that look of surprised innocence that she had done so well, that had so captivated him. She still smiled with that made-for-pleasure mouth that had never needed lipstick and, heaven help him, his blood was still hot for her and the heat was straining against the tightness of his jeans.

She had been like a madness in his head when he had first met her. It was apparently a recurring madness and he was having to make a conscious effort to remember his reason for seeking her out.

‘If you’ve got her letter,’ he said, ‘you know why I’m here. Lucy desperately needs you to come to her school sports day, Brooke.’

‘No,’ she began. ‘Not me—’

‘Yes, you.’ His voice was harsher than he had meant as he refused to listen to her excuses. If that was what it took, he could be as hard as she was beneath all that phoney sweetness. ‘You’ll be there at two o‘clock dressed in that Queen of the Amazon chic you do so well...’ As she tried to interrupt him he covered her mouth with his hand. ‘I’m not taking no for an answer. This isn’t for me, this is for Lucy.’ As the warmth of her lips heated his fingers and the heat flickered through him like fire through matchwood, he snatched them back.

‘Please, just listen to me—’

‘No, I’ve done listening. This time you’ll do it my way. You’ll do it or I’ll let all your precious fans know just how you bargained away your baby.’ Fitz was horrified at what he had said. He hadn’t meant it...didn’t know where the threat had come from. But as he surveyed her shocked expression he realised that his instincts had been right—her image meant more to her than her child ever would. ‘I’ll give the story to the tabloids, Brooke. Do you think they’ll still love you then?’

Her watered-silk grey eyes widened, he could almost have sworn in pain. ‘You can’t do that!’

Not pain. Fear. Well, that was good. He could use that, she’d taught him how. ‘Try me,’ he said and the threat arced between them like a lightning fork hitting the ground with explosive force, pure electricity that he could almost taste and because he was human, because despite everything she could still switch him on like a hundred-and-fifty-watt light bulb, he carried her back against the wall and he pinned her there with his mouth, with his tongue, with his body, wanting her, hating her, hating her for wanting her so much.

Bron, pinned against her kitchen wall by the hard body of a man who thought she was her sister, trapped between his hands, pinned by his body, by his mouth, went rigid with shock. Then because she had to tell him, explain, she began to struggle. She grabbed his muscle-packed shoulders in an effort to push him away but her fingers, her short nails, made no impression; the only impression being made in that room was upon her, by James Fitzpatrick’s mouth.

It was hard and angry and demanding, punishing her for what her sister had done. But beneath the anger was a hungry, sensuous longing and everything in her that was feminine, everything that had been stifled during the long barren years when her youth had slipped away, responded to that longing with a reckless disregard for what was right, what was proper, what was the truth. Her breasts tingled, her thighs melted and savage instinct, old as time, took over as her fingers stopped pushing him away and instead slid behind his head, tangling in the thick curls at his nape, her mouth parting beneath his onslaught, her tongue meeting his as her own hunger, her own long-suppressed need kicked in...

Fitz had wanted to punish her, wanted her to feel what he had felt, all the anger, the pain, the resentment, yet after the first moment of shocked resistance, as she softened against him, melted into his arms, he knew that he was only punishing himself. As her lips parted to him, as her hands stopped pushing him away and instead drew him closer, as her body moulded itself to his, he could no more stop himself than fly.

Her scent, the pure woman scent of her was overlaid with the freshness of wind-dried clothes, of grass and roses, and he could have drowned in it, drowned in her... And suddenly he was the one struggling for control, struggling to resist the clamour of his body’s need as he dragged himself back from the brink of self-destruction.

For a moment he remained where he was, hands flat against the wall, his mouth inches from hers, looking down into the face of the one woman in the world it seemed who had it in her power to drive him over the edge, to make him behave in a manner that he despised. Her lips were parted softly, her mouth gentler than he remembered, her lashes darker as she raised them over eyes that looked just a little dazed, eyes in which the pupils were dilated, black with desire. And she was smiling...laughing at him... again...

‘Friday,’ he said hoarsely as he reeled back, putting urgently needed space between them. ‘Two o’clock. Be there, or expect to read about yourself in the Sunday papers.’ And he turned, walking swiftly from the bright sunny kitchen, trying very hard to erase from his head the look on Brooke’s face, the bee-stung lips parted for him, breasts peaked hard against her T-shirt, her eyes a sultry invitation to stay. Dear God, how did she do it? Why did he let her when he knew it was nothing but play-acting? Next time he would be on his guard, keep his distance.

And he found himself smiling too, but grimly. He should be safe enough at a primary school sports day. Brooke would be kept too busy by teachers, parents and children alike clamouring for a moment with her. Lucy would enjoy that. He considered calling Claire Graham and warning her. Then, as sanity returned and he dropped his forehead against his hands on the steering wheel, he decided against it.

How on earth could he have handled that so badly? He had come intending to ask Brooke to do this one thing for Lucy and he had been prepared to offer her anything that it was within his power to give her. Instead he had behaved like an ape on an overdose of testosterone. Then he grimaced. Brooke would almost certainly say that he was being unkind to apes. He undoubtedly was. And how she had enjoyed it One look and she had switched him on like the Christmas illuminations. He had thought himself totally immune to her charm, but maybe it was one of those viruses that needed regular booster jabs.

And maybe knowing that she still had him on a string would be enough.

It would have to be, because someone as bright as Brooke, someone who knew him as well as she did, would realise soon enough that he would never expose her the way he had threatened to. Not to protect her, but to protect Lucy. He would never expose his little girl to the glare of the tabloid press, the nightmare of reporters camped out on the doorstep, at the school gates. That being so, if she decided to ignore her daughter’s plea and his stupid threat it would be better if no one was expecting her. Claire would have to cope with her surprise celebrity as best she could.

Bronte remained perfectly still for what seemed an age after James Fitzpatrick—Fitz—left. One moment she had been quite innocently using the telephone, planing to leave a message asking someone she had never met to call her back, the next she’d been kissed as if the end of the world were nigh by that very same man. How on earth had that happened? How on earth had she let it happen? The moment his hand had touched her cheek she had known...

She touched her lips with the tip of her tongue. They were hot, swollen, throbbing with heat. But it wasn’t just her lips, her whole body felt like that and she finally understood how her sister, her careful, life-under-control sister, had made the age-old mistake of getting pregnant. She touched her cartwheeling waist.

If she were young and foolish, she might have thought that being kissed by James Fitzpatrick would be all it took.

She finally moved, stumbled to the kitchen chair and sank down on it. Then she laughed, a touch hysterically, as she reached for Lucy’s letter. She’d tried to tell him that she wasn’t Brooke, but he hadn’t been listening. Well, he’d only had one thing on his mind.

She couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen the difference straight away. Brooke was so stylish, so confident, so beautiful.

It was true that they were superficially alike with matching bones and skin, the same beanpole height, the same streaky blonde hair, but there the similarity ended. Even at school Brooke had always been the elegant, the poised, the perfectly groomed one, while she had been the one with a torn skirt, inky fingers and bruised shins from constantly falling over the furniture. She looked down at her grass stained knees, her hands which bore the scars of her tussle with the garden.

Then she shrugged. If it had been eight years since they met, if he had only seen her on the television battling against the elements, sweaty, her hair sticking to her forehead, no make-up, if he didn’t know that Brooke had a sister, well, maybe the mistake was not so difficult to understand.

Eight years was a long time—long enough to blunt the details. Not long enough to dull the passion though. She shivered despite the sun spilling through the window, the open doorway, and rubbed at the gooseflesh on her arms. She had tried to tell him...

She should have tried harder.

She glanced at the telephone. She would have to call him, explain. Later. It would take him a couple of hours to get home. Then she swallowed, hard. How on earth could she call a man and tell him that he’d made a mistake like that?

On an answering machine, that was how. Right now. She would just leave a message explaining about the mistake, explaining that Brooke was abroad. That would avoid what could only be an embarrassing conversation for both of them. She would do it now and then she could put it out of her mind.

She dialled the number, waited for the tone. ‘Mr Fitzpatrick,’ she began firmly. ‘Fitz—’ She stopped. Suppose someone else listened to the message? Suppose Lucy came in from school and switched it on? She had assumed he would be going straight back, but he might not. She hung up, unwilling to risk it. She would have to do it face to face. Or rather ear to ear. She was twenty-seven years old, a grown woman. She could handle it. In the meantime she went in search of her secateurs. Cutting back the spring-flowering shrubs would help to take her mind off Mr James Fitzpatrick’s hot mouth. Maybe.

The day dragged interminably, the clock seemed on a go-slow. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to call James Fitzpatrick and make him listen while she explained that he had kissed her by mistake. Yet in some secret part of her she knew that she was just like a child counting down the endless hours of Christmas Eve, waiting to hear his voice...

Seven o‘clock came. Lucy’s bathtime? Time for homework? What had she and Brooke done at seven o’clock when their father was alive? Played, talked, laughed. Laughed a lot. Did Lucy and Fitz laugh together?

Eight o‘clock. Eight o’clock had been bedtime for them. Indisputable. They’d been able to read, they’d been able to listen to the radio for half an hour, but they’d had to be in bed by eight. Old-fashioned rules. Nine o‘clock, she decided. She would be safe at nine o’clock.

At a quarter to nine o’clock she could wait no longer. She picked up the telephone and dialled the number. Mr Fitzpatrick? she’d rehearsed the casual tone. My name is Bronte Lawrence. We met this morning when you mistook me for my sister... A little gentle laughter. No, no need to apologise, I quite understand... She hadn’t got beyond that part. At that point she was hoping he would be too busy grovelling to recall how eagerly she had kissed him back.

‘Bramhill six five three seven four nine.’ A child’s careful voice enunciated the numbers perfectly. ‘Lucy Fitzpatrick speaking.’

‘Lucy...’ Bron’s hand flew to her throat as the word escaped her lips. She sounded so grown up...

‘Mummy?’ The word was an essay in uncertainty, hope, longing. ‘Mummy? It is you, isn’t it?’ Mummy. The word seemed to echo over and over in her head so that she didn’t know if it was Lucy shouting it or just in her imagination, but as Lucy’s careful telephone answering voice disintegrated into childish excitement Bron froze, unable to answer. In her uncontrollable eagerness to speak to James Fitzpatrick, she had done precisely what she had wanted to avoid. ‘Daddy said you wouldn’t get my letter, that you must have moved but I prayed...’

‘Who is it, Lucy?’ James Fitzpatrick’s voice reached her, distantly.

‘It’s my mummy. My mummy! Daddy, she’s rung, she’s going to come. I told you she would—’

Then the mouthpiece was covered so that there was only a distant murmur. Then his voice in her ear. ‘Brooke?’ She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. This was all her fault. She should have made him listen this morning. She should have rung straight away, left a number for him to call back. Suddenly all the things she should have done seemed so obvious, so simple. Why hadn’t she seen? Because she hadn’t wanted to? ‘Brooke, is that you?’ His voice was sharper. How could she have raised the child’s hopes like that when she could only dash them...? ‘Brooke!’

She came to with a start. ‘Fitz, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

He wasn’t interested in apologies. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, ringing here when Lucy might answer the phone?’ He practically hissed the words into the phone.

‘She should have been in bed,’ she hissed back.

‘Motherly advice? From you?’

‘No... I’m sorry... Look, I had to ring. I had to tell you—’

‘What? Tell me what? After what you’ve just done, the only thing I’m prepared to hear right now is that you’ll be here on Friday.’

Oh, Brooke! How could you get me into a situation like this? What on earth am I going to do? And as clearly as if her sister were speaking in her ear she heard Brooke laughing at her dilemma, saying, Do, darling? Why, do whatever you want. If you’re so concerned about Lucy, why don’t you go and play happy families for an afternoon? They already think you’re me and you always were so much better at the caring stuff...

‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What am I to tell Lucy?’

They already think you’re me. ‘Yes.’ She heard her voice as if at a great distance. ‘Tell her I’ll be there. I—um—I need directions.’

‘I’ll fetch you.’

‘No.’ Her brain was back-pedalling as fast as it would go. ‘No, don’t do that.’ An afternoon pretending to be her sister just to make a little girl happy would be difficult enough; a couple of hours in a car with James Fitzpatrick would be impossible.

‘It’s no trouble.’

Then she realised why he was offering, more than offering—insisting. ‘You don’t have to worry that I’ll let Lucy down.’

‘Don’t I?’ The words sounded as if they had been wrenched from him. She didn’t answer because her brain was yelling in her ear: Tell him! Tell him, now! Before it’s too late. But it was already too late. Lucy had heard her, thought she was Brooke. No explanation, a thousand times ‘I’m sorry for raising your hopes’ could ever make up for that disappointment. ‘Have you got a pen there?’

‘What?’

‘A pen. For the directions.’

‘Oh, yes... No, wait,’ she said as she grabbed for a pen and it skittered from her grasp, slid across the floor. ‘I’ve dropped it.’ He waited patiently while she retrieved it and then, assuming she knew where Bramhill Parva was, explained how to find the school.

‘Have you got that?’ Got it? She looked at the notepad with its incoherent scribble, but she didn’t ask him to explain it again, certain if she did he would insist on fetching her, wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d already had a firsthand example of his inability to listen.

‘Yes, yes. I’ll find it.’

Then, as if talking to her was putting too great a strain on his good nature to be sustained, he said, ‘I’ll fetch Lucy to say goodnight.’

‘Mummy? Are you really coming on Friday? Can I tell Miss Graham? Can I tell Josie?’

Still stunned by the sudden turn of events, Bron took in a deep breath. ‘I’ll be there, Lucy, you can tell who you like. Goodnight, darling, sleep tight.’

The nightly ritual of her own childhood. Goodnight. Sleep tight. Watch the bugs don’t bite. Oh, dear God. What on earth had she promised? More to the point, how on earth was she going to carry it through?

CHAPTER THREE

QUEEN of the Amazon chic. Easier said than done, Bron thought the following morning as she regarded the arid desert of her wardrobe. It didn’t need a critic to tell Bron that her wardrobe was short on any kind of chic. Her whole life was short of the kind of glamour that came as second nature to Brooke.

Her hair, for instance. She fluffed it up, more in hope than expectation. It flopped right down again. Brooke might get away with that when she was chatting up orang-utangs in the steam of a Borneo forest, but when in London she visited her Knightsbridge hairdresser as often as necessary to keep the image diamond-bright.

Bron turned from the mirror to the framed photograph of her sister at an awards ceremony, picked it up to looked more closely at the fashionable jaw-length bob her sister had adopted—a bob with attitude was the way one magazine had described it. Actually, she looked more like a little girl who had forgotten to comb her hair, a cheeky, flirty little girl, an impression that was enhanced by the backless Ribeiro dress she was wearing. Nearly wearing. A dress that showed her tanned skin off to perfection, a dress that stopped a foot shy of her knees and showed her legs to perfection too. Not much cloth to show for so much money... but what there was certainly did the trick.

Their mother had tutted when she’d seen it—tutted, but smiled indulgently. Well maybe it was her time for a little self-indulgence, time to find out exactly what it was like to be her sister.

Hair first, then. And nails. She called the Knightsbridge hairdresser to enquire if they could fit Miss Lawrence in during the morning. They fell over themselves to help and when she arrived she was treated with the kind of deference that would have amused her if she could have relaxed sufficiently to enjoy it. She didn’t tell them that she was Brooke, they just assumed. Did she really look so like her sister?

They tutted over the condition of her hair, muttered about too much sun, cut it and cosseted it. Her nails were gentled into gleaming plum-dark ovals. Her skin was cleansed and toned and made up. Before her eyes she was transformed into her sister. But the likeness must have been there all along, it was just that people saw them differently.

The beauty salon expected Brooke and never considered the possibility that she might be someone else. Fitz had expected Brooke and that was who he had seen. It suddenly occurred to her that no one would question her. That if she kept her nerve getting away with it would be easy. All she needed now were some of her sister’s clothes.

She left the salon and hailed a taxi, directing the driver to her sister’s flat.

‘Could I have your autograph for my little girl, Miss Lawrence?’ he asked as he handed her a receipt for the fare without being asked. ‘She’s a real fan of yours. Says she wants to save the world when she grows up, just like you. Gives me hell, begging your pardon, when I spray the greenfly. Says I should leave them for the ladybirds.’