A Daughter For Christmas

‘No, but—’

‘This establishment,’ he said, eyeing her up and down and clearly finding her wanting, ‘is not open to the public. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ He looked like the sort who disapproved of women in general, having access to the club, members or not. The fact that she was not obviously reduced her to the status of the undeserving. He placed his hand on her elbow and Leigh sprang back angrily.

‘Wait just a minute!’

‘Now, miss,’ the gimlet-eyed man said, his voice hardening, ‘I hope I’m not going to have any trouble from you.’

And vice versa, Leigh thought acidly, but she forced herself to remain calm.

‘I have an appointment to meet someone here,’ she said coolly, bristling as he threw her a dubious look.

‘And might I ask whom?’

‘A Nicholas Kendall.’

The name was enough to bring about a complete transformation. The man deigned to smile, stiff though the smile was.

‘Of course, Miss...?’

‘Walker.’

‘Miss Walker. Ah. If you would care to follow me, I will show you to Mr Kendall’s table.’ He set off at a leisurely pace, talking all the while. ‘I do apologise if I appeared rude, Miss Walker, but we really cannot be too careful here. In winter, particularly, people have an alarming tendency to try and take refuge in here from the cold. The tourists mistakenly think that it’s some kind of up-market restaurant.’ Complete idiots, his voice implied. ‘Others simply try and use it as a bolthole out of the weather.’ By ‘others’ he evidently meant undesirables.

Leigh didn’t say anything. She looked around her, taking in the large sitting room areas, all with the same dark furnishings and hushed atmosphere, where businessmen—and a very few businesswomen—sat on comfortable chairs, reading newspapers over lunch or else chatting in library tones. It was, she felt, the sort of place where faces might be recognised—politicians, perhaps, or celebrities of one kind or another. No one so much as glanced in her direction as they walked past. A well bred lack of curiosity.

They went up a flight of stairs past what appeared to be a very large library with leather chairs placed seemingly at random and then entered a formal dining area.

She could feel her stomach going into tight, painful knots as destiny drew closer. She blindly followed her guide, staring straight at his back in a useless attempt to ward off the inevitable, and only refocused when they stopped and she became aware of a man, sitting at a table, in front of her.

‘Mr Kendall, this young lady, a Miss Walker, is here to join you for lunch, I believe...?’

What, she thought, would he do if the great and good Mr Kendall shook his head and disclaimed knowledge of any such thing? Would she be hurled out of the place by the scruff of her neck, like someone in a cartoon? Would all these discreet, eminent people rise up in anger at having their private bolthole invaded?

‘That’s right.’ The voice was deep, commanding, and she finally forced her eyes to take in the man on the chair. He was scrutinising her, and making no attempt to disguise the fact. Green eyes, not translucent but the peculiar colour of the unfathomable sea, looked at her unhurriedly. There was no open curiosity but calculated assessment. She had the strangest feeling that she was being committed to memory. It was disconcerting.

‘May I fetch you an aperitif?’

Leigh nodded distractedly and said, clearing her throat, ‘A mineral water. Please. Sparkling.’ She could hear the awkward timbre of her voice and realised how, like her clothes, it betrayed her gaucherie in these surroundings.

‘Same for me again, George.’ Nicholas Kendall continued to look at her as he spoke and, despite the fact that she had never felt so uncomfortable in her life before, Leigh couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from his face.

She had seen one or two pictures of him when she had been doing her research, grainy newspaper photos which had not prepared her for the immediate impact of his looks.

He had a mesmerising face. As someone who had studied art, she could appreciate the harsh definition of its contours. There was nothing soft or compromising about this face; it held a great deal of strength. It would be a wonderful face to try and capture on canvas but a difficult one because, aside from the physical layout of the features, there was a sense of real power and self-assurance there and that was what held her transfixed.

His hair was dark, almost black, as were his lashes, and contrasted disconcertingly with the inscrutable seagreen of his eyes.

‘Do you intend to sit down, Miss Walker?’ he asked unsmilingly, ‘or do you intend to remain clutching the back of the chair and staring at me?’

His words snapped her back to her senses and she sat in a rush of embarrassed confusion. She could feel her heart pounding under her ribcage, and the sheer enormity of trying to sift out what she was going to say left her tongue-tied

It didn’t help that he offered no encouragement whatsoever. He may well have agreed to meet her—a brief interlude between meetings, judging from his impeccably tailored grey suit—but he wasn’t going to make her task easy.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began, ‘to have sprung myself on you like this.’ She laughed nervously and fiddled with the stem of her empty wine glass. He neither smiled nor did his expression relax. He merely folded his arms and waited for her to carry on. Leigh felt as though she finally knew what it must have felt like, trying to plead your case before the Spanish Inquisition. She didn’t dare meet his eyes.

‘I guess you must be a little curious as to why I made contact with you...?’ She left that as an unspoken question, hovering in the air between them.

‘A little...yes,’ he drawled.

Their drinks were brought to them, and Leigh gulped a mouthful of mineral water. Anything to steady her nerves. She wished she had ordered a double whisky on the rocks. She could have bolted it back in one swallow and that would have loosened her up, if nothing else.

There were no menus. George, who looked much more human now that she had proved herself to be no intruder, informed them that there was a choice of roast beef, with all the trimmings, roast lamb, with all the trimmings, or poached salmon.

They both ordered the same thing—the salmon—and as George left them she looked at Nicholas’s hard, immutable face with helpless foreboding.

‘So,’ he said finally, ‘are you going to tell me why you contacted me? I’m intrigued, but not so intrigued that I intend to waste my time, trying to drag it out of you bit by reluctant bit.’ He swallowed some of his whisky and tonic and surveyed her dispassionately over the rim of the glass.

Leigh wondered what her sister could have seen in this man. Sure, he had a certain style, but he was hardly full of warmth and gaiety, was he? Or maybe, she thought, in the right circumstances he was a bundle of laughs. Then, again, her sister had probably not seen him at all. He had simply been the recipient of her own personal, distressing frame of mind at the time.

‘I’m not sure where to start,’ Leigh said honestly. She wished that she had never arranged to meet him. She wished, frantically, that she had never found herself in the situation that she had, torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, assured of disaster whatever course she chose to take. In a way she almost wished that her sister had never burdened her with this terrible confidence, although she could understand why she had done it. She had wanted to go with a clear conscience.

‘Try the beginning

’ he told her abruptly.

‘Right In that case, I have to start around eight years ago.’ She lowered her eyes, as though not seeing him might dull the impact of what she had to say. She could feel his attention on her, though, wrapped around her like something tangible and forbidding.

‘Majorca, nearly eight years ago. A large, expensive, secluded hotel on the coast.’

Business had been booming then. Order books had been full. She could remember it clearly. Jenny had been married a year at the most and she should have been in the throes of newly wedded bliss, but she had been depressed.

At the time Leigh had questioned her but she hadn’t persisted. She had only been a teenager then and her sister’s problems had hardly been able to dent the youthful bubble around her. Besides, she’d naively assumed that nothing could really be amiss with Jenny—Jenny, who had always been there for her, always looked out for her, the prop which had never wavered ever since their parents had died, leaving them with only each other to turn to.

‘Majorca.’ Nicholas frowned, and she could see him trying to dredge up memories from years back. ‘I could have been there.’ He shrugged noncommittally. ‘What’s the relevance? If you’re going to try and convince me that I met you there, you’d better try again. I’ve never seen you in my life before, and I never forget a face.’

No, he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who ever forgot a face. Who ever forgot anything, come to that.

Their food was served. It was a reprieve from trying to figure out just how she was going to tell her little tale, and Leigh gazed at it, weak with relief for the temporary distraction.

Nicholas Kendall had a strong effect on her, though she didn’t quite know what it was. She assumed it was because he represented a type she had never encountered in her life before. Certainly, he was as far removed from her sister’s husband as to make you wonder whether they even belonged to the same species.

Roy had been a simple, cheerful man, with the rounded frame of someone who enjoyed his food and drink a bit too much. She had always wondered, in fact, what her sister had ever seen in him. Physically, that was, because Jenny was everything to look at that she, Leigh, had never been. They had been the same height, but there the similarity had ended.

Blonde as opposed to Titian, long, wavy hair as opposed to short and straight, a voluptuous body as opposed to the boyishly slender build which Leigh had long ago discovered did very little to bolster her attractiveness to the opposite sex. In the end she had simply accepted the truth that opposites attract.

Now, though, it was something of a shock to be confronted by the man with whom her sister had had her fated one-night stand.

‘I’m still waiting to hear what you have to say, Miss Walker.’