Two-Timing Love

He raised a hand to his head and began running his fingers absent-mindedly through the dark thickness of his hair. It was a gesture suddenly so achingly familiar to her that Jenny found herself dropping her gaze to escape it.

‘I left messages all over the place for you,’ he accused inconsequentially. ‘Jenny, where the hell have you been—and where are your parents?’

‘I work in London now and my parents are in New Zealand—they left last week,’ she replied, determined to keep calm. She was a fully fledged adult now, she reminded herself sharply, and there was no way she would ever let Jamie Castile get under her skin again—ever! ‘And as for your leaving me messages all over the place—I was under the impression they came from Clare and Graham.’

There was mocking amusement in the glance he gave her.

‘The implication being that you’d have ignored any message emanating from me, is that it, Jenny?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Jamie, be serious!’ she exclaimed, mortified to feel the hot colour flooding her cheeks. ‘When I got a message asking that I bring copies of Graham’s and Clare’s birth and marriage certificates here I assumed they’d lost their passports in the earthquake…I was worried!’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ drawled Jamie. ‘The medical conference they were attending was in Bratislava, which experienced no more than the mild rumbles registered here in Vienna.’

‘So why do they need all those documents?’ demanded Jenny exasperatedly. ‘I was under the impression they were stranded in Czechoslovakia!’

‘It’s more a case of the baby being stranded,’ replied Jamie. ‘Though why the hell they insist on carting a child that young around with them is beyond me.’

‘I think it’s wonderful that they can do it,’ retorted Jenny. ‘Obviously the best place for him is with his parents.’

‘And obviously that’s precisely where he can’t be right now,’ pointed out Jamie infuriatingly. ‘Getting him out of Czechoslovakia and into Austria didn’t present too many problems—I collected him from Clare the day before yesterday.’

Jenny bit back a comment on how Clare must have felt—having to hand her infant son into the care of a brother few would describe as either predictable or dependable.

‘The authorities at the British Embassy here in Vienna have agreed to issue temporary travel documents for the child—on production of the papers you’ve brought with you,’ he continued. ‘So you won’t have any problems getting him into England.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ croaked Jenny.

‘Clare seemed to think your parents would look after him till she and Graham felt free to leave…obviously they weren’t aware they’d taken off for New Zealand.’

‘They weren’t going till the New Year, but then they decided…Jamie, all this is beside the point!’ she exclaimed frustratedly. ‘There’s no one to look after him in England…unless your mother—’

‘I believe my mother’s off on one of her jaunts,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘And besides, you know how vague she can be—which is why Clare didn’t even bother trying to contact her and got on to me instead.’

‘Precisely—she left him with you,’ observed Jenny decisively. ‘And now that I’ve brought you the necessary documents you’ll have no problem getting him back to England.’

‘I’m not going back to England,’ he informed her icily. ‘I was just about to catch a flight for Brazil when your brother rang—right at this very moment I’m supposed to be doing trial runs on a new boat I’ve entered in an important race—’

‘And you’d rather play with your boats than see to your nephew’s well-being—’

‘You know damned well I don’t play with boats—I design and race them,’ he informed her coldly. ‘And a lot of skilled men depend on my designing and racing abilities for their living.’

‘And I suppose that I, being a mere woman, couldn’t possibly have a job of any importance!’ exclaimed Jenny, perilously close to losing her temper. ‘Well, it so happens that I have. I only started it a couple of weeks ago and I’ve already put it in jeopardy by dashing off here at a moment’s notice. And I’ve lost the flat I was hoping to move into—thanks to having to chase all over the place getting those papers—so if you think—’

‘Give it a rest, will you, Jenny?’ drawled Jamie dismissively, getting to his feet. ‘Because, after two nights without a wink of sleep, I’m not in the least receptive to any sob-story you choose to come up with.’

‘Choose to come up with?’ shrieked Jenny, beside herself with rage as she too leapt to her feet. ‘Jamie Castile, just who the hell do you think you—?’

The two of them froze as the baby’s piercing cries reached their ears.

‘You’re the one who woke it with your histrionics,’ muttered Jamie, striding towards the second of the doors leading off the room, ‘so you can damned well deal with it.’

‘My God, you’re all gentleman, aren’t you?’ she flung after him.

He turned as he reached the door.

‘And you, my dear Jennifer, are one woman supremely qualified to vouch for that fact,’ he murmured mockingly.

Her face burning with humiliation, Jenny turned on her heel and marched into the room containing her protesting nephew. Trust him to throw that up at her, she fumed to herself, under no illusion as to what his taunt had referred, then forcefully hurled all thought of the subject from her mind.

‘Poor little man,’ she whispered, her face softening as she picked up the distraught baby and cradled him to her. ‘Are you missing your mummy and daddy?’

He quietened miraculously in her arms and remained silent as she laid him on the bed and made an attempt to inspect his nappy.

‘Why—you little rascal!’ she laughed, as his face broke into a lop-sided smile and he began gurgling with contentment. ‘You just wanted some attention, didn’t you?’

Tiny feet began pummelling at her ribcage, dislodging the nappy she was clumsily trying secure around him.

‘Jonathan, you’ll have to co-operate,’ she protested with a chuckle. ‘This is my first encounter with the mysteries of nappy-changing!’

The instant she tried returning him to his cot, he protested deafeningly. In the end she gave up trying and lay down on the bed with her nephew lying in angelic peacefulness against her.

She closed her eyes, a feeling of total mental and physical exhaustion wafting through her. She had gone to work early that morning and had worked flat out to clear what she could from her desk—just in case she didn’t make it back to London at a reasonable hour tomorrow.

She gave a soft groan of dismay as she remembered the icy response with which her unorthodox request for a day off—possibly two—had been met. She was still at the stage of waking each morning unable to believe she actually had landed the job of her dreams with Wardale’s, one of the most dynamic and prestigious advertising companies around…and now, in her first month and in the vital preliminary period of an important campaign in which she had to prove herself, she was taking time off!

A rueful grin crept over her face as she found herself switching her thoughts towards Jamie. Never in her entire twenty-three years had she thought the day would come when she would regard concentrating her thoughts on Jamie as the lesser of two evils!

For the best part of four years she had just about managed to erase him from her mind, she reminded herself with drowsy detachment. And it had probably taken the best part of that time to cure her of her obsession with him, she admitted with reluctance. As a child she had openly hero-worshipped him, dazzled by the recklessly adventurous spirit of the godlike creature who was almost eight years her senior and her older brother’s closest friend. Child and man, Jamie Castile was one who regarded life as something to be lived to the hilt—and live it to the hilt he had done with a total disregard to either convention or his own personal safety.

‘That Castile boy’s been allowed to run wild for far too long—he’ll come to no good,’ had been the oft-voiced opinion in the small Sussex village in which they had both been born…yet there had always been a note of grudging admiration—pride almost—behind the words.

And Jamie, with his strange background of opulence and poverty, had turned their dire predictions upside-down. Never one to compromise, he had thrown himself heart and soul into what he loved most, racing and designing yachts. The fact that he had made a considerable fortune from what he so loved had probably been of scant consequence to him initially, although, judging by his earlier remarks, he now seemed fully aware of his responsibilities towards those deriving their livelihoods from the fortune his skills had brought him.

It was around the time she was fifteen that she had stopped bemoaning the fact she hadn’t been born a boy and that her heart had begun doing strange things whenever Jamie was around. At sixteen, finding herself plotting painfully lingering deaths for any female who caught his attention—a veritable army, for Jamie’s eye roved far and wide—she had finally faced up to the fact that the hero-worship of her earlier years had matured to love. And with a maturity far beyond her years she had bided her time, the woman’s heart within her adolescent body vacillating between despair and relief as a daunting procession of rivals caught and then lost the attention of his restlessly roving eye.

Three years later, on the night of her brother’s wedding to Jamie’s sister, she had decided, at nineteen, that even Jamie could no longer regard her as a child. That night—a full four years ago—the brutal totality with which he had rejected her naïvely explicit advances had devastated her; and today had been the first time she had so much as laid eyes on him since. She was cured of her obsessive love of him, but the savage wound he had inflicted on her pride had left a scar that she now realised would always be with her.

‘Jenny?’

As her eyes flew open they found Jamie standing in the doorway, a small circular tray balanced on one hand.

‘He kept crying each time I tried to put him in his cot,’ she explained defensively, thrown by the flash of pure hatred the sight of him had sent searing through her. She struggled upright, the soundly sleeping baby clasped to her.

‘He’s just about due for another feed,’ stated Jamie, approaching the bed, then sitting down on it.

‘Did you make it up for him?’ asked Jenny, forcing her mind back to the present as she glanced down at the two bottles on the tray he had placed on the bed—one filled with milk, the other apparently containing water.

The darkly defined curves of his eyebrows rose in pained disbelief. ‘Mercifully, it’s a service the hotel provides. Clare gave me a few tins of the formula and sheets of instructions—which you’ll no doubt need.’