A Trial Marriage

He sighed, as if becoming impatient with himself as well as her. ‘What’s your name? Rachel? Rachel—do you know how old I am?’

She shrugged uncertainly. ‘Thirty-eight, thirty-nine …’

‘I’m forty-one. How about you?’

She shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Nearly nineteen.’

‘Eighteen!’

‘All right. Eighteen.’

He raised his eyes heavenward. ‘I must be out of my mind!’

Without another word he stepped out of the lift, and the automatic mechanism set the doors gliding closed. Unable to prevent herself, Rachel pressed the button to open the doors again, and stepped through them, feeling a sense of inevitability as they closed behind her, and the lift whined away upward.

Jake, who had been striding along the corridor towards his apartments, glanced over his shoulder as he heard the lift depart, and his brow furrowed angrily when he saw Rachel standing there. He halted abruptly and came slowly back to her, his hands deep in the pockets of his coat.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.

Rachel shook her head, unable to voice what she had thought. ‘I—I can use the service stairs,’ she stammered, and he uttered a word she scarcely understood.

‘You’d better go,’ he said. ‘If anyone sees you on this floor——’

He broke off expressively, and her lips trembled. ‘That would never do, would it?’ she burst out, unable to prevent the words in her humiliation.

Jake’s dark eyes raked her savagely. ‘All right, all right,’ he snapped. ‘If you don’t care, why should I?’ He spread a mocking hand towards his door. ‘Come into my parlour!’

Rachel pressed her lips together. ‘Couldn’t we—couldn’t we have a drink together?’

‘I thought I heard you telling Yates you didn’t drink?’ he countered.

‘I don’t. Not much, anyway.’

‘Nor do I. My—doctor won’t allow it.’

This last was said with heavy sarcasm, and she guessed it had not always been so.

‘We—we could have a coffee …’ she ventured, but he shook his head.

‘I think not.’

‘Why not?’

‘I have no intention of inciting that Draconian guardian of yours by creating gossip of that kind.’

Rachel caught her breath. ‘Della’s not my guardian. She’s my employer. I’m over age. I can do what I like.’

‘And what do you like, I wonder?’ he demanded grimly. ‘Oh, Rachel, why me? Why not Carl—or that handsome wine waiter—or practically anyone, for that matter!’

Rachel took an involuntary step forward. ‘You do—like me?’

His lips twisted. ‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘I like you.’

Turning away, he pulled his keys out of his coat pocket and inserted them in the door to his suite. As he did so, two elderly women came along the corridor towards them, their curiosity sharpening as they recognised Rachel. A quick exchange of glances indicated the direction of their thoughts, and their reproving: ‘Good evening, Miss Lesley!’ brought the hot colour to her cheeks.

Jake ignored them, pushing open his door and switching on the light just inside. Then he turned, leaned against the frame, waiting until Rachel looked at him again.

‘Well?’ he said, as her eyes followed the two women’s progress to the lift. ‘Wouldn’t you like to go with them?’

Rachel hesitated only a moment, and then shook her head, walking determinedly towards him, and preceding him into a luxuriously furnished lounge. The door closed behind her, and only then did she feel relief from the disapproving eyes she had felt boring into her back.

CHAPTER THREE (#u2c6b0d84-4bee-512e-9b6c-4bf1e108b22c)

AT least her surroundings were reassuring. This had to be the best suite in the hotel, she thought. Della’s rooms were not like this, and the green and gold pattern of the carpet was reflected in the long curtains and matching cushions. A self-coloured hide suite looked soft, and squashily comfortable. There were several small tables, as well as a television, as big as the one downstairs, and the dining table, in the window embrasure, commanded a magnificent view over the lights of the harbour.

While she looked around, assuming an interest in the concealed lighting above the ceiling moulding, Jake took off his overcoat and slung it carelessly over a chair near the door. Then he moved to stand before the huge marble fireplace, obsolete now, since the introduction of central heating. Against its veined beauty his profile had a dark, forbidding quality, and a momentary sense of panic gripped her.

‘Regretting it already?’ he inquired dryly, and she looked up at him defensively.

‘No.’

‘Who were those women?’

‘Acquaintances of Mrs Faulkner-Stewart,’ replied Rachel offhandedly. ‘You have a wonderful view——’

‘Will they tell her where you are?’

Rachel sighed frustratedly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re not worried?’

‘No!’

He moved his shoulders in a gesture of dismissal, and her eyes were irresistibly drawn to the lean muscularity beneath the fine material. ‘If you insist …’ he commented carelessly. Then: ‘Tell me about Mrs Faulkner-Stewart? Is she some relation of yours?’

‘I’ve told you. She’s my employer,’ replied Rachel stiffly.

‘Only that?’ He seemed surprised. ‘An unusual occupation for a girl of your age.’ He paused. ‘And generation.’

Rachel sighed. ‘She was a close friend of my mother’s. When—when my parents died within a few weeks of one another, Della looked after me.’

‘But surely that wasn’t what you intended doing with your life,’ he probed. ‘A girl like you. Had you no ambitions of—an academic nature?’

Rachel nodded. ‘As a matter of fact, I was planning to go to university. But—what with Daddy and Mummy dying … Della said it was better to give myself time to get over it.’

‘And in so doing provide her with a ready-made companion.’

‘It wasn’t as callous as that,’ she protested. ‘Who knows? I might have failed the exams.’