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No. Stupid. Too chirpy and revealing—Adam would see through her pretence of throwaway confidence immediately. He’d look her deep in the eyes with that intense, melted-toffee gaze...
She found herself trembling, and hurriedly put her mind to the problem in hand. Hell, what was she going to say?
Petra chattered engagingly as they walked along the damask-walled corridor towards a pair of imposing mahogany doors and the Garden Suite beyond. It was a luxurious hotel with ankle-wrecking carpets, impressive oil paintings and antique furniture. All far too beautiful for Trish to dare sit on or risk touching with her sticky fingers. And the silver cutlery looked so heavy that she feared she’d get repetitive strain injury if she tried to wade through the entire five courses for dinner.
As they swept past vast urns and baroque marble hall tables groaning under the weight of stiff floral displays, Trish barely heard a word her friend was saying.
She was too busy keeping her nerves under control and rattling around the pathetically sparse contents of her brain, searching for something casual and witty for her opening lines. Increasingly she longed to turn tail and run like a frightened rabbit back to her burrow.
Apart from worrying about the effort of keeping a bright, see-how-I’ve-forgotten expression on her face the whole evening, she felt stranded, like a fish out of water. London had reduced her to wide-eyed silence. It was horribly noisy and unfriendly—terrifying, even. She’d made a hash of using the underground, and hadn’t a clue about tipping taxi drivers or doormen. Judging by their open-mouthed amazement, she’d funded their children’s private education for life.
City life was all about speed. People spoke faster, their movements were quick and frantic, as if there wasn’t enough time in the day to get things done. After just two days, she felt edgy and stressed.
But this was Adam Foster’s preferred environment. He’d relocated his computer software business from Truro to London four years ago and become a powerful mover and shaker in this alien world. He must love the hectic pace. Perhaps he was hooked on exhaust fumes. A diesel junkie.
Trish bit her lip, encountering the unfamiliar taste of lipstick. She and Adam were from two different planets. Chalk and cheese. Right now, she wanted to be back home where she belonged.
Yet stubborn curiosity kept her heading for the party. She wanted to see him gazing adoringly at Louise. Needed to, for her own peace of mind. Then she’d be able to shrug off the lurking feeling of something unfinished and life-changing. Once this party was over, she’d feel capable of making a commitment to her ever-patient boyfriend.
Time would have changed Adam and she’d probably find that he wasn’t a patch on the man she’d once idolised. He might be more Cardigan Man than Danger Man. More socks than sex. She’d changed too. After all, she’d been an impressionable eighteen when she’d last seen him.
Seen Touched, scoured with her tongue, felt her body dissolve during that long, heart-stopping moment when he’d looked at her and murmured her name... Every detail of their coming together was still fresh and hot in her mind, etched like acid on silver.
Only much later, after she’d fled home in agonies of self-recrimination, had she realised that he’d lost control for one reason only. Adam’s grief over the loss of his wife two months earlier had made him reach out blindly for someone to hold. She should have realised that.
Darling Christine’s death, after five years of battling with cancer of the spine, hadn’t been unexpected. But Adam had been too upset even to attend the funeral. Trish sighed. When he’d looked at her longingly, spoken her name and stretched out his hand, the poor man could never have anticipated that she would react as if he’d made a wholehearted invitation of love!
Never in the whole of her life had she behaved so badly or felt so ill from guilt and shame. Even now, she stumbled on the teetery shoes, knowing she’d never forgive herself.
They had reached the double doors. She was about to come face to face with him.
‘Smile!’ hissed Petra. ‘You’ll strip paint off the skirting boards!’
‘Cheaper than turps,’ she quipped
But she obeyed because Adam must be happy now, his wife’s death merely a sad memory—and he had a loving woman by his side, in his arms... Trish’s smile became a little desperate.
Petra flung open the double doors.
Trish had an impression of raised voices, synthetic perfume and sleek heads. A general air of wealth, confidence and nervous energy emanated from everyone in the banqueting room. Ribbons and roses seemed to be everywhere—nothing jolly, like balloons, she noted wryly. Stiff and awkward, she was horribly aware that she stood out in this high-powered crowd because she looked so ordinary.
‘Don’t leave me!’ she said quickly, turning to Petra. But her friend had been swept into the welcoming crowd, casting helpless, backward ‘sorry!’ looks at her.
As she stood in the doorway, her eyes skittered about, searching for someone a head and shoulders above the rest and who dominated the room with the sheer strength of his personality But he was nowhere to be seen. Her shoulders tensed. The ordeal was to be prolonged, then.
All around, Trish could hear snatches of conversation, none of which made sense because people were tossing words such as ‘gigabytes’ and disk formatting failure’ at each other. She felt like an alien.
‘Hello! What a fabulous tan! Have you been skiing?’
A sentence she could interpret! Trish smiled gratefully at the tall and staggeringly beautiful redhead who’d appeared in front of her. She gave an envious glance at the perfectly cut shoulder-length bob and the fashionably asymmetrical cream dress that hugged her languid body like liquid, and said politely, ‘No. I live on Scilly—’
‘Italy!’ exclaimed the vision coolly, her green eyes narrowing inexplicably as she scrutinised Trish’s face. ‘I adore Italy. How fascinating. What part?’
‘The Scilly Isles, not Sicily,’ corrected a low, well-loved voice from the doorway behind her. ‘They’re in the Atlantic, twenty-eight miles to the south-west of Land’s End in Cornwall. Five inhabited, if I remember aright, the other one hundred and forty islands being left entirely to Nature.’ There was a brief, silken pause. ‘Rather like the inhabitants.’
Adam’s hand rested on Trish’s shoulder. He and the redhead were exchanging words but she didn’t hear them. His power, his warmth flooded through her entire body, releasing her tense muscles immediately and turning them into fluid. Trish pretended not to recognise his voice. She was dealing with a sudden fizz of activity inside her head, and wanted to be perfectly composed when she faced him.
Thanks, Adam, she thought sourly. She was Miss Nature in person, was she? Hiding her irritation, she forced a smile, remembering her decision to be a peasant with straw in her hair and jolly well like it.
‘So!’ exclaimed the vision. ‘This is Trish, then!’ There was a flash of white as Adam moved to the woman’s side. Trish kept her gaze fixed doggedly ahead, a plastic grin on her face, as the woman added lightly, ‘And all this time I thought she was Italian! You look foreign.’
Louise, for that was clearly who it had to be from the way she hung onto Adam’s tuxedo sleeve, was eyeing Trish’s dark colouring as if it were an inferior brand of face cream. Trish felt crushed by her cool assessment. Clearly Louise had been expecting an Italian temptress on the lines of Sophia Loren, not a badly put-together female with macraméd hair.
Hating the little spurts of jealousy which were shooting up her body, Trish adjusted her smile to a decent wattage and said, ‘I can’t oblige you by producing some Italian genes, but some of the time my Spanish blood comes out. When I’m excited, for instance...’ She went pink and hastened to make her meaning clear. ‘When someone annoys me.’
‘Any other time your Spanish blood comes out?’ enquired Adam in a wickedly teasing drawl
She still wouldn’t look at him. Her heart was pumping too hard and he sounded far too amused by her discomfort. OK, so amuse him Go for humour; prove you don’t give a damn, a little voice was telling her.
‘Yes. If I get careless chopping carrots,’ she said sweetly.
He laughed. It was lovely to hear him—and astonishing to see Louise’s reaction Her eyebrows were disappearing into her hairline.
‘That’s not a sound I’ve heard for a long time,’ Louise said, as if she disapproved of frivolity in a mature man. She pointed a sharp, bare shoulder at Adam in accusation.
‘I’d forgotten how. Life’s been a bit fraught, hasn’t it?’ Adam murmured. ‘Not much time for fun.’ Any fool could have heard the irritation lacing his voice.
Aware of a slight tension building between the two, Trish blundered on. ‘Gran says I have quite a few Spanish smugglers and shipwrecked Spanish seamen lurking in my genes. My female ancestors made the most of their opportunities.’ She wondered if her eye-to-eye stare with Louise was becoming unnatural, bordering on the manic. Nerves made her gibber unthinkingly. ‘When you live on an island the size of a dinner plate, you have to grab all the available talent there is.’
Louise’s eyes narrowed even more. Too late, Trish realised she’d now suggested that she was out hunting a man, any man, to take back to her lair. Damn! She wasn’t any good at this small talk stuff. How crass she was!
‘Hello, Trish,’ Adam said, laughter enriching his voice. ‘Good to see you again.’
With a properly convivial smile, she began to unwind one of her rehearsed greetings, speaking to his shirtfront which was so close it came over as a white blur.
‘Such a long tune, isn’t It? How we’ve aged—!’
‘Age be damned!’ he protested.
Startlingly, she found herself in his masterful arms, the sound of her name filling her head like sweet music, the smell of him heightening her senses and driving the breath from her body. She wanted them to stay like that for ever.
Her eyes closed, all the better to imagine that situation. His lush mouth pressed warmly into each cheek It seemed his lips lingered a fraction longer than was socially acceptable but she’d mislaid her brain cells so she was probably wrong. Because when he released her he was smiling—not at her, but at Louise
Her stomach felt as if it had been subjected to a fast descent in a lift. She decided to be stern with herself. What had she been expecting? A dramatic, ‘My God! Trish! I claim you as the woman of my dreams’ Goodbye, Louise, all is over!’?
It seemed that subconsciously, that was precisely what she had been hoping for. His indifference to their clinch really hurt. And she wondered why she kept on wounding herself with so many impossible and downright immoral desires where he was concerned.
She hadn’t come to snatch him away, but to beat it firmly into her dim brain that Adam was far too handsome and talented for the likes of her. For heaven’s sake, how could she compete with a red-headed goddess who’d been given Adam’s seal of approval?
‘I’m a little late with the introductions, but as you gathered, Louise—’ he said easily ‘—this is Trish. Trish, Louise, my fiancée.’
‘Welcome to our Engagement Party.’
Louise made sure Trish knew that the occasion merited capital letters. A little tenser than before, the woman leant forward and kissed Trish coolly, as if embracing a stranger’s child With the emphasis firmly on child.
Trish kept her carefree smile pinned in place. Louise was far more gorgeous than she’d imagined, even if she didn’t know the difference between the Scilly Isles and the island of Sicily But then, brainy people often lacked common sense and everyday knowledge.
‘I’m still puzzled,’ Louise cooed, detached from Adam suddenly as four worshipping blondes surrounded him with cries of adoration.
Casting a furtive glance at him, Trish saw them cover him in lipstick in seconds. Surprisingly, Louise seemed impervious to this. Trish itched to drag the women off and berate him for smiling at them. Instead, she made herself pay attention to Louise, suppressing the brief impression she’d had of Adam. He hadn’t changed one iota. Still very dark, very handsome, fiercely male. Damn.
‘Why are you puzzled?’ she asked Louise, trying to care.
‘A tan! In England, in early April?’ She peered at Trish’s skin ‘Sunlamp or fake tan?’ she suggested with suspicious innocence.
‘Neither! Just sun and wind and rain. Adam said the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles are all children of Nature, remember?’ she said, smarting a little from the description. It had taken her an hour to get ready—longer than she’d ever spent on herself before! ‘I lead an outdoor life—’
‘You run a guesthouse! That’s indoors!’ Louise stated knowledgeably.
Lord! thought Trish. What had Adam told her? ‘Yes, but on my island we don’t have transport—there aren’t any made-up roads,’ she explained patiently. ‘We travel by boat. Bryher is only a mile wide and a mile and a half long—’
‘Good grief! Some people have gardens larger than that! And did you say no roads?’ Louise shuddered elegantly and waved her left hand about, so that Trish could be dazzled by the flashing diamond the size of an elderly broad bean on her ring finger. ‘Sounds hell! Don’t you get horribly muddy going out to dinner and the theatre? Or to the shops?’
‘We don’t have restaurants apart from the one in the hotel. There are a couple of cafés.’ She grinned. ‘No theatres at all. We get the odd liner going aground, and container ships flinging their cargo at us when they’re shipwrecked. Other than that there’s no entertainment—unless you count the activities of the seabirds and tourists and the odd sing-song in somebody’s house.’ Apparently Louise didn’t. Trish giggled at the woman’s appalled expression and didn’t spare her. ‘There aren’t any shops, but we have a really nice post office,’ she said in proud yokel style.
‘No...shops!’ gasped Louise, clearly incapable of imagining life without them.
On the periphery of her vision, Trish could see that Adam was looking at her over the heads of the chattering blondes—and that he was vastly amused. It felt like old times for a moment. They’d enjoyed many a laugh together Trish’s heart started an uncomfortable tattoo against her ribs.
Knowing she had to get used to Adam’s future wife, she tried hard to remain just a hick guest who wished them both well. ‘Bryher has no space for that kind of thing, Louise. It can’t even support a doctor or a pub or a school. We grow our own food or get it from the main island—St Mary’s—or have it shipped in from the mainland, so we need to be highly organised. We go in for mail order a lot—’
‘Yes. So I see.’ There was a meaningful pause while Louise scanned Trish’s clearly undesirable dress which shrieked its catalogue origins. ‘It sounds like the back of beyond! Adam and I eat out every night. We’d die of boredom on your island! You’d loathe it, wouldn’t you, darling?’ she said, appealing to the newly released Adam, who was deftly removing lipstick smears with a handkerchief from his hard-cut jaw and, Trish noted indignantly, across his mouth! ‘It’s such a primitive place, where Trish lives!’
Trish felt flattened, her whole way of life summarily dismissed by the woman Adam loved. While Louise began to scrub Adam’s cheeks fussily, Trish struggled with a nagging little voice inside her head which was questioning the wisdom of his choice of partner. He was a sophisticated city man, she reminded herself, a dominant male who was passionately involved in computer technology. He too would hate her simple life.
Miserably, she stared at her crippling shoes, phrases about megabytes and function keys being flung about over her head and adding to her sense of alienation. She should never have come.
‘Island life has its attractions for certain people,’ Adam said, being polite. There was a hard edge of irritation in his voice, though. He was probably longing to chat about gigabytes instead, she thought forlornly.
Louise reclaimed her prize, slipping an elegant, creamy bare arm around Adam’s waist in almost a defensively possessive gesture. As if, mused Trish, she was marking her territory. Trish went pale beneath her tan. Had Adam indulged in pillow confessions with his fiancée, listing all the women who’d made a pass at him?
‘I know so much about you,’ confided Louise in a pussycat purr.
Trish’s eyes were as round as they could be. She felt Adam’s hot-chocolate gaze melting into her flesh. Combined with the guilt, the heat and the noise, it made her head swim
‘Five-nine, eight stone ten, twenty-two, passion for tea bread, chicken-rearing and weepy films?’ she hazarded, playing the careless, guileless cookie.
‘No!’ replied Louise gaily, relaxing as she was meant to. ‘How you two met. Something about your leaving school at sixteen and staying at Adam’s house in Cornwall, because he and his first wife let out rooms to students.’ The silk-tongued Louise looked expectant and Trish realised she ought to say something.
‘I stayed two years,’ was all she could come up with. Then she felt her cheeks go pink because she’d reminded Adam of the reason she’d left. She was aware that he had stiffened and the pall of silence hung between them accusingly.
Louise seemed impervious to the strained atmosphere and was smugly playing with Adam’s signet ring, turning It this way and that to admire the plain gold band and entwined initials. ‘I forget what you were studying,’ she said. ‘Which university did you go to?’
‘I didn’t mention university—’ Adam began irritably, stuffing his hand in his pocket.
‘Nothing so grand!’ Trish could fight her own battles. In her own way. ‘I don’t have your brains.’ She was pleased at Louise’s satisfied little smile.
‘I’m sure I told you. Trish came to the mainland for a hotel and catering course in Truro,’ Adam said curtly.
Louise smiled at Trish, somehow managing not to disturb the serenity of her face. ‘You and Petra must be virtually the same age.’
‘She’s a year older than me,’ Trish agreed. ‘We found we had the same sense of humour and we’ve been friends ever since.’ Trish looked about wildly for Petra to rescue her. A friend in need was a friend right here!
‘That makes you only a teeny bit older than Adam and Christine’s son,’ Louise said meaningfully.
Trish knew what she was doing. The pussycat was unsheathing her claws. Louise suspected a take-over bid and was making sure they all knew the situation Adam’s son Stephen was nineteen. The message was clear: Keep off this man of mine. Adam is almost twice your age
It amazed her that Louise bothered to get her claws out at all A polyester mouse from a remote island with nowhere to buy sushi or Ralph Lauren was hardly going to turn Adam’s head!
Demurely, she nodded. In the absence of such a possibility, she could at least turn the conversation instead. ‘Is Stephen here?’ she asked politely.
Even he, her old adversary and Prince Pain in the Neck, would be a welcome sight at this moment. She needed an excuse to get away from this ego-destroying conversation.
‘Leeds University. Studying medicine,’ said Adam shortly.
‘Brainy.’ Trish looked suitably impressed.
‘You nursed, didn’t you—in the hospice where Adam’s wife was?’ Louise persisted.
Adam’s tension increased but Trish giggled at the unlikely scenario. ‘Me? No! I earned money evenings and weekends working in the kitchens as a skivvy, dropping pans of spaghetti, knocking the chef’s hat into the cream of mushroom soup—’
‘And kept my wife and everyone else in the hospice in gales of laughter, recounting your mishaps,’ Adam said softly. ‘You made the last months of Christine’s life there bearable.’
There was a deep gratitude in his tone. Louise’s green eyes became strangely washed out. Trish realised that Petra was right; Adam’s fiancée had heard too much too often about Trish Pearce
‘Nice to have a cheerful little friend of Petra’s around,’ said Louise patronisingly. Her voice wobbled, reducing the impact of the cutting remark.
Trish shifted uncomfortably, wobbled too, on Petra’s diabolical heels, and found herself lurching sideways. Adam grabbed her. Their eyes met. Blazed. Lit fires.
Glittering ebony. Searing sapphire.
No, she thought desperately, wishing the world would level itself out again. She was reading his message incorrectly. He was probably warning her not to rock any boats, not to mention what had happened between them.
‘Nearly became intimate with the carpet then!’ she cried merrily. ‘I’ve got to take these shoes off before I break an ankle or get a nosebleed from the altitude!’
Reaching down, she yanked off the stilted shoes and straightened up again with them in her hands.
Louise looked startled at such wanton behaviour as Trish waved them in triumph ‘You can’t go barefoot here!’ she cried in horror, as if it were a social sacrilege.
