Separate Rooms

‘Ready? Where would you like to go?’ It was a lovely spring afternoon and anything would be better than sitting here enduring the inevitable disapproving monologues. A pootle round the countryside might take her mother’s mind off the way her only daughter chose to ‘work in a shop’, the way she obstinately refused to ‘settle down decently with Graham and do the right thing by her dear dead father’s company’. As if her father would have scorned her chosen career! He had always advised her to decide what she wanted and then go out and get it. And it was he who had taught her to love and respect the world of antiques, taught her to identify the excellent from the merely good, the acceptable from the dross.

‘I don’t feel like going anywhere.’ Avril laid aside her glossy magazine and put a plump hand on her bosom. ‘As you know, I haven’t been feeling well just lately—all this worry over the business...’ Her voice tailed off pathetically and Honey sighed and sank down on to the end of the over-stuffed settee.

‘The business is fine, as you very well know,’ she pointed out. ‘Henry and Graham see to that. Henry’s brainwashed you into thinking that the only thing that can hold it together is a marriage between your sole offspring. And the only thing that’s worrying you is my refusal to do as I’m told. That, and your desire to have a daughter who sits quietly at home, properly married to her husband’s career, bearing his children and entertaining his business colleagues and golfing cronies and ironing his bloody shirts!’ Her voice had risen and she made an effort to rein in her temper, explaining more quietly, ‘And the only thing that’s worrying Henry is the shares Dad left me. Henry himself holds fifty per cent and you and I the other fifty between us. And, at the moment, you never question any of his decisions and neither do I because I don’t know a component from a carpet sweeper. Your loyalty to his management will never be in any question, he knows that. But mine? Who knows? I might decide to sell my shares, mightn’t I? The premises next to my shop will be going on the market within the next month or so. I would like to expand. I need to expand—’

‘You wouldn’t!’ The powerfully indignant protest gave lie to the earlier excuses of ill health and Honey bit back a smile, shaking her head.

‘Only if I could find the right buyer, someone with BallanTrent’s best interests at heart. And admit it—’ she fixed her parent with a level look ‘—that’s what Henry’s so afraid of, isn’t it? He wants BallanTrent kept entirely under his control, in the family. That’s why he’s been bleating on about marriage for the last twelve months. Don’t forget, he told me himself that when—when, mind you, not if—Graham and I married the shares I own would come under his control because, as he piously pointed out, I had no knowledge of the business. And that,’ she ground out, aware that her volatile temper was threatening to explode, ‘would have been enough to make me dig my heels in and refuse to do any such thing—even if I had been head over heels in love with his dull son!’

The genuine sheen of tears in her mother’s eyes helped Honey back into a state of control and her voice was softer as she queried, ‘Were you and Dad in love when you married?’

‘Of course we were—what a thing to ask!’

‘And you were happy?’ Honey pressed, earning herself a tart,

‘Very. We had our disagreements, what couple doesn’t? But, in the end, they weren’t important.’

‘Because you loved each other,’ Honey made her point. ‘Would you really want to see me tied in a loveless marriage? Would you? And how long do you think it would last? We’d end up hating each other in no time at all.’

‘I’m sure Graham’s very fond of you,’ Avril defended. But there was a cornered look in her eyes that made Honey believe she was at last beginning to win her parent round. But Avril fluttered her hands and grumbled, ‘I simply can’t understand why you’re so against him, that’s all. I can think of half a dozen young women who would be only too happy to be his wife.’

The conversation had gone full circle and Honey was in no mood to endure any more. She knew from experience that when her mother was in this mood she wouldn’t let the subject rest and wondered, fleetingly, if Graham had reported the quarrel they’d had last night back to his father and if Henry had been on the phone to Avril this morning, grumbling about her daughter’s lack of good sense and grace.

She got to her feet and collected her bag. If she stayed any longer she would lose control of her temper and, no matter how much her mother sometimes irritated her, she didn’t want a fight on her hands.

‘As you don’t feel up to doing anything this afternoon, I’ll go back and get on with some paperwork,’ and managed to keep her smile pleasant, her voice light as she countered Avril’s snippy,

‘But you always stay on for supper,’ with,

‘Usually, not always. I do have a business to run. I’ll phone you in the week.’

Guilt and relief waged a battle as she drove back into town but by the time she’d parked her car in the lock-up she rented and walked the few hundred yards back to Stony Shut relief had won. She would not be made to feel guilty because she had walked away from a fight in the making, or because she refused to contemplate marriage to a man she didn’t much like, let alone love.

She threw herself into the backlog of paperwork with a will and only stopped to make herself a pot of tea and carry it down to the desk she used at the rear of the shop, picking up the phone to remind Fred Wilson that she would be gone before he arrived at nine in the morning, on her way to a country house sale in Cheshire.

Giving herself a moment’s grace, she sipped her hot tea and reflected, as she often did, on how lucky she’d been to find Fred. A year ago, almost to the day, he—and his wife, Mary, she was to discover—had walked into the shop carrying a Georgian sofa-table between them. He was a big, blunt-featured man in his fifties, and his first words had been a no-nonsense, ‘How much?’

‘You want to sell?’ Honey was already casting her eyes over the clean, graceful lines, noting that one of the legs was not original. However, the piece had been beautifully restored, the repair difficult to spot unless one knew what to look for, and, if the price was right, she had a customer who was looking for just such a table.

Her pleasure was not even slightly dented by the middle-aged man’s blunt, ‘We wouldn’t have humped it halfway across town if we hadn’t.’

‘The piece is yours?’

It was a question that had to be asked but she instinctively knew the couple were honest and quite forgave the man’s growled, ‘Well, it didn’t fall off the back of a lorry.’

‘Fred—really!’ his faded companion admonished, her worried eyes on Honey’s as she explained, ‘My husband has always collected antiques and, well, as he was made redundant eighteen months ago, we thought we ought to part with some of them.’ Fred gave her a withering glare but she met it without flinching, stating, ‘There’s no point being proud, is there? Anyway, the house is bulging at the seams; we could do with a bit more space.’

And more money in the bank, Honey thought sympathetically. The proud Fred would be unlikely to find employment at his age when so many younger men were desperately seeking work too.

Straightening up from her inspection, she offered a price that was as generous as she could viably make it, telling them, ‘It’s the best I can do. I suppose you know the table’s been restored at some stage of its life? But the quality of the work is such that it doesn’t affect the value too much. I don’t suppose you know who restored it?’ There was always a slim chance that they did, that they—in more affluent days—had commissioned the work. The restorers she used weren’t altogether reliable and, just lately, their prices had begun to soar. So if—

‘Fred did.’ There was real pride in his wife’s voice. ‘It’s been his hobby for years—buying damaged antiques and doing them up. He’s always been good with his hands.’

‘In that case—’ Honey gave the blunt-featured man a huge grin ‘—why don’t I make us all a cup of tea and we can discuss business?’

Which was how the talented Fred Wilson had come to work for her, performing his magic in the workroom at the back of the shop, looking after the customers for her on the days when she attended sales. She didn’t know what she would do without him now...

Returning her cup to her saucer, Honey gave her attention back to her work. Soon deeply engrossed, the tapping on the shop door didn’t impinge at first, but when it did her mouth went dry. Looking beyond the circle of light shed by the desk lamp, over the dark shapes in the dim body of the shop, she could just make out the black silhouette of a threateningly large male outside the small-paned windows.

She should have turned on the interior lights ages ago, activated the alarm system, she thought uselessly, then took herself in hand. Felons didn’t knock to announce their presence, fool! she told herself. She got to her feet, reaching for the light switch, and remembered.

Ben. Of course. Despite what she had told him he had said he would come at seven. And he had. A rapid glance at her watch confirmed the time and she was smiling idiotically as she went to let him in. Relief. She was just pleased she hadn’t a weirdo, or something worse, on her hands. That was all.

‘So you changed your plans, after all. Sensible lady.’

His smile was as smooth as cream as he walked through the door and waited while she shot the bolts home. And in case he got the wrong idea, believed she’d done so for the pleasure of sharing a meal with him, she explained coolly, ‘I wasn’t expecting you, actually, not after what I’d said. I left Mother sooner than I’d intended because if I’d stayed we’d have been at each other’s throats.’

One dark, well defined brow drifted upwards. ‘Your unspeakable silliness regarding the gorgeous Graham, no doubt?’

‘Something like that.’ Honey relaxed enough to offer him a wry smile. He had a calming effect on her and, although he was a virtual stranger, she felt more at ease in his company than with anyone else she knew. And she watched, her brown eyes warm, as he strolled among her things, lingering in front of her collection of early pewter displayed on a sixteenth-century carved oak chest.

‘You have some fine pieces,’ he approved at last. ‘You can tell me how you came to get started over dinner.’

No mention of his promised solution to the problem of Graham, she noted drily. Not that anything he could have dreamed up would have helped, of course, but knowing that it had been an excuse to date her left a nasty taste in her mouth. She had, in the past, been dated by experts, men who had, in various ways, let it be known that they regarded dinner for two as an unobstructed pathway into her bed. This man was smoother than most, though, more devious. But his intentions had to be the same.

The disappointment was so intense that the withering look she gave him took even her by surprise and her voice was frozen acid as she refused.

‘I’m working. I have no plans to go out to dinner.’

His mouth twitched.

‘You still have to eat and we don’t need to go out. In fact, it’s probably better if we stay here, we have so much to talk about.’

‘We have?’ Honey’s mouth curled cynically. The few dates she’d been misguided enough to invite into her home hadn’t been into conversation. But the derisory tone of her voice rolled off him as if it had never been there in the first place and his long, strong fingers were already unfastening the buttons of his obviously tailor-made soft leather jacket.

‘Sure.’ The fingers stilled and, for some unknown reason, she couldn’t tear her eyes from them. He had beautifully crafted hands. They mesmerised her. ‘If it’s any help, I could go out for a takeaway.’

His afterthought was softly considerate and Honey denied throatily, ‘No. There’s no need.’ And watched those fingers deal with the remainder of the buttons and swallowed hard. Somehow, she seemed to have committed herself to spending time with him, cooking for him, inviting him against her better judgement into the sanctuary of her home.

She didn’t quite know how it had happened.

Leaving him to wander around her overstocked showroom, she activated the security system then turned and watched him, her head on one side. Had he really tried to figure out a solution to the problems she was facing from her mother, Graham and Henry? And if he had, why had he bothered? She was simply a woman he had met at a party, he hardly knew her at all, so why should any problems of hers be of the remotest interest to him?

Or had he simply used it as an excuse to get her on her own? And if he had, it shouldn’t worry her. She knew how to signal a pretty formidable ‘hands off’ message. She’d had plenty of practice. Besides, he hadn’t shown the tiniest flicker of sexual interest last night...

‘You need more space.’ Ben eased himself between a jewellery showcase and a mahogany bachelor chest, that unique, relaxed smile of his softening his utterly masculine features and Honey smiled back because with this man she couldn’t help it.

‘Tell me something I don’t already know. Shall we go up?’ And she was still smiling as she led the way up the twisty stairs and he was just as easy to talk to as she remembered from the night before because by the time they had finished the pasta with tomato sauce he had helped her prepare in the tiny kitchen she had told him her life story, such as it was.