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‘You still haven’t told me exactly how it happened,’ she said.
For the first time since his arrival Rory looked uncomfortable. He had rehearsed what he was going to say over and over again in the car—aloud and in his head—and yet now his pat words of explanation seemed curiously inadequate, especially when he was confronted by the sight of Angel’s over-bright eyes.
He decided to try a different approach from the one he had planned. ‘Tell me about the last time you saw Chad,’ he instructed softly.
Angel blinked. ‘But you know all about that! When he just completely disappeared like that, I came to see you.’ Thinking that if anyone would be able to trace Chad, then it would be his dynamic older brother.
‘But at the time you explained very little, Angel—other than the fact that he had gone,’ he reminded her quietly.
Because she had felt raw and humiliated, with her confidence in tatters. Wondering just what sort of person she must be if her husband of less than a year could go off and leave her like that, without a word to anyone.
‘So tell me again, Angel,’ he insisted, in his deep, compelling voice. ‘Only this time tell me everything.’
And, despite any reservations she might have had about discussing something as painful as Chad’s departure, Angel was no exception to anyone else in responding to the force of Rory’s personality. With those blue eyes boring into her like that it was impossible not to answer him. She focused her mind to concentrate on what he had asked her, though, to be perfectly honest, it was a relief to have something else to focus her thoughts on other than the wrenching realisation that Chad was dead.
‘The last time I saw Chad he was leaving for work,’ she began slowly, as she cast her mind back to that morning more than eighteen months earlier. ‘I remember that it was a glorious, golden June day. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and I was going to meet him for a drink after work that night.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing.’ Angel shrugged. ‘That was it.’
Rory’s face became shuttered. ‘Did he show any signs that something could be wrong?’
She frowned at him in confusion. ‘Wrong?’ she echoed. ‘What could be wrong?’
‘With the relationship,’ he elaborated. ‘Anything which might have indicated to you that he was planning to disappear from your life without a word?’
Angel bit her lip. With the benefit of hindsight it was easy to see that there had been plenty wrong with their relationship—but she had been so young. So green. So determined to prove wrong everyone who had prophesied disaster that she had ignored the danger signs looming large on the horizon. But she couldn’t possibly tell Rory about those, now, could she? She couldn’t really start explaining that within mere months of her marriage to his brother their sex life had not merely died down but had petered out all together.
‘We weren’t communicating that well,’ she hedged, which she supposed was one way of saying it.
‘But you hadn’t argued?’
Angel shook her head. ‘No. That was the oddest thing. We hadn’t. Chad just seemed very distracted during those last few months. That’s all.’ She fixed him with an unblinking green stare that dazzled him with its emerald blaze. ‘But that’s all irrelevant, surely? Isn’t it time that you told me exactly what you’ve found out, Rory?’
There was a fractional pause. ‘Do you want me to break it to you gently?’
She cocked her head to one side and looked at him perceptively. ‘Is that possible?’
‘Not really, no,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘He had another woman, you see.’
His words confirmed her unspoken fears. Yes. Of course he had. Some part of her had known that all along. The part that wasn’t affected by her relative youth and lack of experience. The part that was passed on down through the generations and was known as a woman’s instinct. The part that had registered his complete lack of desire for her whenever he had looked at her. Angel swallowed.
‘He had another woman,’ Rory repeated baldly, because her total lack of reaction to his controversial statement made him imagine that she had not heard him the first time.
‘Yes,’ said Angel, and let out a long, low sigh. ‘That figures.’
‘Do you want me to continue?’ he questioned.
She drew her chin up proudly. ‘I hope to God that I’m not the kind of person who runs away from the truth, Rory. So, yes, please continue. Tell me about this woman. Does she have a name?’
Some indefinable emotion briefly escaped from the shuttered confines of his face, hardening his mouth into a forbidding line. ‘Jo-Anne. Jo-Anne Price.’
Angel wrinkled up her nose as the name struck a familiar chord in her memory. ‘And she’s Australian. Am I right? She worked as a temporary at the advertising agency.’
‘That’s right.’
‘She had just finished uni,’ Angel remembered, racking her brain. ‘And she had come to get work experience in England.’ Angel pushed a stray strand of hair off her forehead, finding that actually she seemed to know an awful lot about a woman she had only met once or twice. So how was that? Maybe Chad had spoken about her lots, and she simply hadn’t noticed. ‘Hadn’t she?’
Rory nodded uncomfortably. ‘Yes, that’s right. She had. Chad met her in a pub near the office, found her a temporary job at the agency, and, bingo, suddenly he was in love.’
Angel drew in a deep breath, stunned by his cruel candour, despite all her protestations that she could take whatever he had to tell her. ‘And I was his bride of less than a year,’ she reminded him bitterly. ‘So was he not still in love with me?’
There was a small, uncomfortable pause. ‘I think that Chad thought he loved you, Angel, and that’s why he married you.’ Rory’s face hardened again with the pain of the truth. ‘Only then Jo-Anne appeared on the scene, and…’
‘And?’ prompted Angel acidly, glaring at him, as though it was his fault.
Rory held his palms out in a gesture of apology, realising that he owed her the truth, however painful. ‘He wasn’t quite sure what had hit him. This wasn’t just a fling, you see. It was that once-in-a-lifetime thing—if you believe it exists. I don’t, personally.’ His face darkened. ‘But Chad certainly did.’
Angel winced.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said—’
‘Oh, yes, you should!’ she declared fiercely. ‘I told you that I wanted the truth, and that’s exactly what you’re giving me. And, yes, you are absolutely correct in your assessment, Rory. Chad thought he was in love with me—that’s why he married me. And then…’ But she shook her head, unwilling to pursue it further. What on earth was the point of dissecting her relationship with her husband? Especially now. And especially not with his big brother.
But Rory did not prompt her, or press her to continue. Instead he sat back in his seat and raised the glass of brandy to his mouth to take his first sip, then he put the glass carefully back down on the table.
‘Chad couldn’t face telling you what had happened. Or me, for that matter. He and Jo-Anne just took off for Australia. They wanted to get away from anyone who might cast censure on their perfect relationship. A form of geographical escape, I guess.’
‘Well, not quite—since I presume that she had family living in Australia? And most parents wouldn’t really want their daughter involved with a married man, surely?’
‘No, you’re right. They wouldn’t.’ Rory frowned. ‘But that wasn’t going to be a problem. Not in Jo-Anne’s case, anyway. All her family were dead, you see. She was completely on her own, and I think that fact triggered a protective quality in Chad which he hadn’t realised existed.’ He gave a deep sigh, as though his next words were the hardest of all to say. ‘And it meant, of course, that they had something very big in common. They were both orphans—united against the world.’
Angel’s green eyes narrowed as something in his voice alerted a sixth sense in her. A sense of danger. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there, Rory? Something that you aren’t telling me?’
He gave her the kind of smile which told her she shouldn’t worry her little head about anything, but Angel had grown immune to men with dazzling smiles. Immune to most men generally. Broken marriages tended to have that effect on women.
‘Why don’t we take this one step at a time?’ he suggested silkily, but his eyes had taken on a watchful gleam.
‘Because you’re hiding something from me!’
He expelled the breath he had been holding. Damn the woman, and damn her intuition, too! ‘Okay then, Angel,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. Chad and Jo-Anne went to Australia together and travelled around and were, by all accounts, extremely happy together.’
‘And how did you find all this out?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t have just pieced it together since Chad’s death. You told me that the accident only took place…’ she frowned to remember ‘…twelve days ago.’
This had been one of the questions he had been dreading answering. ‘He wrote to me just before Christmas,’ he admitted quietly.
‘He did what?’ Angel rose to her feet, her face disbelieving. ‘Then why the hell didn’t you tell me then?’
‘Because he asked me specifically not to—’
‘And blood is thicker than water, I suppose?’
‘That wasn’t why I agreed—’
‘And tell me, Rory,’ she cut across his words sarcastically, ‘if Chad hadn’t died, how long would you have kept news of his whereabouts from me?’
‘It wasn’t my decision to make. It was Chad’s. He wanted to speak to you himself. Face to face. Not by letter.’
‘But he decided to wait until after Christmas?’ she questioned frostily. ‘So why put off the moment of truth? For surely once he had seen me then he would be able to ask for a divorce.’
‘He had to. He wasn’t able to travel until then.’
Angel glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Because?’
This was proving a lot more difficult than Rory had imagined it would, but then he had quite forgotten the impact that his sister-in-law could make with those beacon-bright green eyes of hers. God, a man could lose his soul in eyes like that…And yet it wasn’t fair on her to pussyfoot around like this, was it? To search for polite platitudes where none would ever be appropriate.
‘Because Jo-Anne was expecting Chad’s baby,’ he told her bluntly, ignoring Angel’s shocked intake of breath as he ploughed relentlessly on. ‘And she was naturally precluded from flying in the latter stages of her pregnancy. Chad wanted to come and see you in person, to ask your forgiveness for his behaviour and to request an early divorce. And he wanted me to meet my brand-new nephew,’ he finished heavily.
Fragments of what he was saying began to make sense at last, and the picture that they formed in Angel’s brain had connotations which made her blood run cold.
‘You mean that they all came over?’ she demanded in horror. ‘Jo-Anne and Chad and—’
‘And the baby,’ he concluded, only now his words sounded as though they were steeped in something bitter that he wanted to spit as far away from him as possible.
Still standing, Angel gripped onto the arms of the chair, her fists white-knuckled with fear. ‘Wh-what happened?’ she whispered.
‘They were on their way from the airport to my house,’ he told her. ‘We don’t know exactly what caused the accident. The other driver had been drinking, but he was still within the legal limit. Chad was under the limit, too,’ he added quickly, meeting the question in her eyes. ‘He’d changed, Angel, I knew that much from our telephone conversation. He had become a family man, proud of his new baby—nothing would have induced him to wreck all that. He may have been jet lagged. The baby might have been crying. Who knows? No one will ever know. Not now.’ A muscle began to work convulsively in his cheek, but that was the only outward sign of his grief. ‘Anyway, the car hit the central reservation just beyond Heathrow Airport. Chad and Jo-Anne were killed instantly—’
Angel’s heart was in her mouth. ‘And the baby?’
Rory buried his head in his hands so that his face was hidden, and Angel was suddenly filled with an unpalatable fear.
‘Rory!’ she demanded urgently. ‘What happened to the baby?’
As he slowly lifted his head his features looked so ravaged with pain that Angel feared the very worst. Then he suddenly said in a bleak voice, but a voice nevertheless, which held more than a trace of hope in it, ‘Somehow the baby survived. Miraculously. Without a scratch. He’s fine.’
‘Oh, thank God!’ cried Angel, and sank back down onto her chair, not noticing the tears of relief which slid down her cheeks. ‘Thank God!’
He glanced over at her gratefully, incredibly moved by her generosity of spirit. ‘Thank you for that, Angel,’ he said softly. And in a way her reaction justified his reasons for coming to see her. Made what he had to say next a little bit easier…
‘Where is he now?’ she demanded quickly.
His eyes narrowed. He was unsure of whether she meant her husband or his son, and knew that a huge degree of sensitivity would need to be employed if she was referring to Chad.
‘The baby,’ she enlarged. ‘Where is he? And what’s his name?’
‘He’s here with me now,’ Rory told her steadily. ‘I brought him with me.’
CHAPTER THREE (#uf53cd2bd-42bd-593a-bd5a-9c05fb8ba988)
RORY had anticipated all kinds of reaction to the news that he had brought his infant nephew with him, but the one which he got had not even featured near the bottom of the list.
Angel sprang from her chair like a jack-in-the-box and turned on him, her face white, her eyes spitting green fire and looking so incredibly angry that he seriously thought that she was about to start pummelling those small fists against his chest.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ she demanded, her breath coming in trembling bursts, ‘that you’ve brought a new baby—and an orphaned baby, to boot—over to a strange country and then just left him out there, in the car?’
‘Angel—’
‘In the middle of winter?’
‘Angel—’
‘Just what kind of a man are you to have charge of a young child, Rory Mandelson?’ she stormed. ‘I’ve a good mind to report you to the authorities!’
Despite everything, Rory smiled—and it was a relief to know that he still could. It was, he realised, the first time he had smiled since the police had arrived on his doorstep with the grim news of his brother’s death.
‘But I didn’t leave him in the car,’ he objected.
‘Then where is he now?’
‘With Mrs Fitzpatrick.’
‘With…Mrs…Fitzpatrick,’ repeated Angel slowly, as though he was speaking to her in a foreign language. But didn’t that make sense? Wouldn’t that explain the hotel owner’s rather agitated preoccupation earlier this morning—rather than the conclusion to which Angel had immediately jumped? That Mrs Fitzpatrick had been bowled over by Rory’s good looks!
Nonetheless, his conduct with the baby sounded like a serious case of neglect to her. ‘So you just arrived here this morning and handed the baby over to her, did you?’ she quizzed, as passionately as if she had been the barrister instead of him. ‘Just like that?’
He nodded his dark head, reluctantly impressed by her tenacity. And by her temper! She was much more fiery than he remembered. And far too young and beautiful to be wearing those horrible black mourning clothes. ‘Pretty much,’ he agreed.
‘And what would you have done if she had refused to babysit for you and told you she hated babies? Or what if she’d looked like an axe-murderer?’
This time he actually laughed, and that simple, un-complicated sound of mirth reassured Rory more than anything else could have done. For it told him that heartache—even the intense, almost unendurable heartache of a sibling’s tragic and premature death—could heal eventually. And that the human spirit was a most resilient thing.
‘Well, I presumed that you wouldn’t have sought employment under an axe-murderer, Angel, though I suppose one can never tell,’ he mused. ‘But if I’d thought that Mrs Fitzpatrick was unsuitable to babysit for half an hour—or was unable to cope with the demands of a new baby, or if I’d had any reservations about her whatsoever—then naturally I would have brought him in here with me.’
‘But you didn’t want to do that?’ she guessed, narrowing her green eyes as she wondered why.
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I thought that it would be too much for you to handle—on top of everything else I had to tell you.’ His face had resumed its sombre expression.
‘That was very thoughtful of you,’ observed Angel, hoping that her expression didn’t show the surprise she felt at his concern for her feelings.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Not really,’ he murmured, and something in the husky quality which tinged his voice made Angel feel suddenly and inexplicably aware of him as a man, and not just as a man who had been related to her by marriage.
She swallowed down her confusion, pushed the troubling thought away. ‘C-can I see him?’ she asked tentatively.
