A Suitable Husband

A tense silence was her immediate answer. Followed by a clipped, ‘Ash was wrong to suggest I should try ringing you. You are as hard as he said you were.’

Jermaine’s breath caught. She didn’t even know this man, yet here he was ready to brand her—when all she’d done was to go out with his brother. This, and his brother’s duplicity, was what she received for her trouble!

‘That’s right,’ she agreed.

‘You won’t…?’

‘I won’t.’

‘My…’ He seemed to find her insensitivity beyond words.

‘Oh—go and play with your train set!’ she erupted, and abruptly terminated his call.

Suddenly she was the bad lot in all of this! Jermaine felt like throwing something. She didn’t even know the man. He didn’t know her. Yet, even so, he was ready to believe her to be heartless!

Well, on reflection she supposed it did look bad. But it wouldn’t look half so bad if Lukas Tavinor knew the truth—that all time she’d believed his brother was her boyfriend he had been dallying with her sister. Not that Jermaine was likely to tell him. And it certainly didn’t sound as if Ash had. But she could sit back with a feeling of relief; at least her parting remark had ended any odd chance that Lukas Tavinor Esquire might telephone her again.

Strangely, when the day before Jermaine had thought frequently of how when she had been cosily imagining Ash slaving away in Scotland he had been cosily having a fine old holiday with her sister, it seemed the following day to be his brother that occupied quite a few spare moments.

She’d got the impression that Lukas Tavinor had rather a nice voice, though there had been little to hear of it in the harsh way he had spoken to her. Who did he think he was anyway? He didn’t know her. In fact, he knew nothing about her. Other, of course, than what Ash and Edwina had told him.

While Jermaine wouldn’t put it past her sister to put a little poison down if it would elect some sympathy from Lukas Tavinor, Jermaine couldn’t think that the three months she had gone out with Ash counted for nothing. She had always thought him to have honesty and integrity. Which, if that was true, must mean he was pretty besotted by Edwina to have been carrying on a liaison with her while still going out with her sister.

All of which meant that Ash was going to be the one to be hurt when all of this was over. For, as sure as night followed day, Edwina was going to dump him when it suited her.

It was at that moment that Jermaine, finally over her shock at Ash’s behaviour, all at once realised that she would never have made that commitment to him which he had at one time wanted. She had been fond of him, but her emotions, she now knew, had not been any deeper than that.

Jermaine went home from her office having come to terms with Ash’s duplicity and realising that she still felt a little fond of him. Fond enough anyway to know that she didn’t want him to feel very badly hurt when Edwina gave him the big heave-ho.

Jermaine made herself something to eat, wondering again about his brother. Lukas sounded a particularly nasty piece of work. She smiled. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Edwina pulled it off? From the little she knew of Lukas—and, thank you very much, she didn’t want any more communication with him—they seemed exactly right for each other.

She was still having rosy dreams of one Edwina Hargreaves and one Lukas Tavinor giving each other hell when there was a ring at her doorbell. Thinking it might be one of her neighbours, Jermaine went to the door. But, on opening it, she saw not a neighbour but a tall, dark-haired, firm-jawed, mid-thirties man standing there.

The fact that he was immaculately suited told her he hadn’t come to read the electricity meter. Add to that the grim look about him, and Jermaine’s own anticipatory welcoming smile went into hiding.

He said nothing, this man, until those steady grey eyes had fully taken in her platinum-blonde hair—loose about her shoulders—her large violet eyes, and her slender yet curvaceous body.

‘And you are?’ She hadn’t intended to say a word.

‘Tavinor!’ he clipped.

Her insides gave a funny little squiggle. Grief—and she’d not long since decided she didn’t want anything further to do with him! ‘Which one?’ she snapped right back, knowing full well he had to be Lukas—surely there couldn’t be three of them!

‘You’re already acquainted with my brother, Ash, I believe.’

Like we’d had something going from strength to strength before I introduced my sister—oh, does she have a nice surprise waiting for you, Lukas Tavinor! How fast can you run? ‘We have met,’ Jermaine concurred.

‘Are we going to have this discussion on your doorstep?’ he demanded.

It wouldn’t have taken much for her to have said no and shut the door; end of discussion. But manners were manners, and, regrettably, she had a few. ‘Come in,’ she invited, and led the way to her small but, thanks to her mother’s insistence, very pleasantly carpeted and furnished sitting room.

Jermaine knew why he’d come. She opened her mouth to tell him ‘Not a chance’ but he got in first. ‘I thought perhaps I should call to personally appeal to you to come to Highfield to do your duty to your sister,’ he said without preamble.

You don’t appeal to me personally or any other way, Jermaine fumed, not taking kindly to that ‘duty’ dig. ‘I trust you haven’t come very far out of your way, for nothing,’ she hinted.

‘Aren’t you interested in your sister’s well-being?’ he demanded, her hint not lost on him.

For a moment she was stumped for a reply, but, since loyalty forbade her from telling him what a fraud her sister was being, Jermaine settled for, ‘I’m sure Edwina must be feeling better by now.’

‘Is that all you can say?’ he enquired harshly.

Jermaine had suddenly had enough of the whole of it. Ash, Edwina, and now him. ‘Look,’ she said snappily, ‘if you’re that concerned somebody should look after her, hire a nurse!’ He’d got pots of money—he could afford it.

‘I’ve offered to get a nurse in. Your sister wouldn’t hear of robbing some other patient of a nurses’ expert services.’

I’ll bet she wouldn’t hear of it. It wouldn’t take a nurse very long to realise that there was very little the matter with Edwina’s back. ‘Then Edwina will have to put up with it without a nurse!’ Jermaine stood her ground to tell Lukas Tavinor.

He didn’t like it; he didn’t like her tone. Jermaine could tell that from the slightest narrowing of his eyes. She had an idea that few opposed this man and got away with it. Oh, my word, that jaw looked tough.

‘And that’s your last word?’ he questioned grimly.

‘“Goodbye” seems a better one,’ she said sweetly, and didn’t miss the glint that came to his suddenly steely grey eyes the moment before she moved round him and went and opened the door wide.

Without a word he strode straight past her, and Jermaine closed the door after him and went back to her sitting room—and found that her hands were shaking.

For heaven’s sake, what was the matter with her? She’d repeated to Tavinor what she’d told him on the phone last night, that she was not going to go anywhere near Highfield, his home, to look after her sister. And that was the end of it—so why did she think that, somehow, she hadn’t heard the last of it?

CHAPTER TWO

MEMORY of a pair of grey eyes glinting steel made Jermaine leave her bed the next morning well before her alarm went off. Ridiculous, she fumed, as she showered and went over yet again Lukas Tavinor’s visit last night. She was giving the man far too much space in her head. For goodness’ sake, she hardly knew him—and no way on this earth could he make her go down to Highfield to ‘look after’ her sister.

Jermaine tossed him out of her head. Overbearing pig—who did he think he was? She went to work, however, with the feeling starting to creep in that she wasn’t too happy that anyone should think her the unfeeling kind of monster that Tavinor, and his younger brother, obviously believed her to be. But, since she couldn’t very well tell either of them what an utter sham her sister was, Jermaine knew that she was stuck with the ‘unfeeling monster’ label.

‘Come out with me tonight and make all my dreams come true?’ Tony Casbolt, ace flirt, waltzed into her office with his usual Thursday offer.

‘I’m shampooing the dog,’ she answered without looking up.

Tony knew as well as everyone else that she didn’t have a dog; he never gave up. ‘One of these days you’ll say yes, and I’ll be shampooing my cat,’ he threatened.

She laughed. She liked him. But she wasn’t laughing a half an hour later when she took a call from her mother. Her mother rarely phoned her at her office.

‘Are you all right?’ Jermaine asked quickly; her mother sounded rather strained.

‘I think so—but your father’s getting himself into a state.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jermaine questioned, ready to drop everything and dash to her parents’ home.

‘We’ve just had a visit from Ash Tavinor’s brother.’