A Daughter For Christmas

‘I’m not through with you yet, Miss Walker. Your little plan may have backfired and you may well want to beat a tactical retreat now but you can forget it. You started this and you’ll damn well finish it, and I may as well warn you that blackmail is a crime.’

‘Don’t you threaten me!’ She stared at him in wide-eyed horror. Crime? What was he talking about? She hadn’t done anything wrong but she felt like a criminal.

‘Oh, dear, losing your grip on the proceedings?’ He gave a short, acid laugh.

‘You’re mad,’ she said flatly. ‘Completely mad. You can believe what you like about my motives for being here, but if you have no intention of hearing me out I certainly don’t intend to stay here while you have fun, pulling me to shreds.’ She met his eyes, without blinking.

He didn’t answer. He stared back at her in silence and she knew that he was working out whether to give her a chance to say what she had come to say, even if it confirmed every accusation he had levelled against her, or whether to have her thrown out and put the whole thing down to an unpleasant episode with a crackpot.

‘We’ll talk in one of the sitting rooms,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m prepared to listen to what you have to say but, so help me, if this is a ploy to get money out of me I’ll personally see to it that you regret the day you—’

‘Are you accusing me of gold-digging?’ Leigh whispered, trying hard to feel relief and gratitude instead of sheer fury at his assaults.

They were walking through another part of the building, towards what she now saw was yet another sitting area, though not one of those she had passed on the way in. Its only occupant was a man who was well into his seventies and was fast asleep with a newspaper open on his lap. The room was furnished in dark reds, heavy colours that brought to mind images of clarets and ports and the savouring of fine wines. There was a very masculine feel to it which was daunting though not entirely unpleasant.

They sat in chairs furthest away from the sleeping man, facing one another like combatants. Which, she considered bleakly, was what they were.

‘I’m an extremely wealthy man, Miss Walker. It does tend to instil a certain amount of cynicism.’

Leigh didn’t say anything. She was here, she knew, for help. True, she had not come voluntarily, but because she had found herself in a corner from which all other routes seemed barred. But wasn’t she appealing for some kind of financial assistance when all was said and done? It was a humiliating situation in which to find herself, particularly because Nicholas Kendall had no intention of letting her off the hook with pleasantries. He was accommodating her now, but only because he was curious.

‘I suppose so,’ she admitted reluctantly, linking her fingers together on her lap.

‘You suppose so?’

‘Yes. well, I really have no experience of... I’ve never mixed in circles...’ She had no real idea what he’d meant when he’d said that he was extremely wealthy but she was beginning to get an idea. It was there in the deference of George, in his self-assurance, which spoke of someone accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed, and in the cut of his clothes.

It was stamped on him so clearly that he might just as well have been carrying a sign on his forehead. A ready target for gold-diggers, she assumed. More so because of his compelling good looks.

Not many men had such a combination. The thought of anyone cultivating someone else because of the size of their bank balance was something she found so distasteful, however, that she could barely get her mind around it.

Another elderly man, who bore a striking resemblance to George and treated Nicholas in the same deferential manner, took an order for two coffees. As soon as he had left, Nicholas leaned forward and said bluntly, ‘So you’re telling me that I went to Majorca eight years ago, spent one night with your sister and I am the father of a seven-year-old child as a result.’

Leigh nodded.

‘And if all that is true, which I don’t for a minute concede it is, why have you only now come to me with this information? Why didn’t your sister tell me about the pregnancy? She knew my name, she could have tracked me down without a great deal of difficulty. I’m well known in financial circles.’

‘It’s a long story,’ Leigh replied nervously.

‘I’m all ears.’ He sat back, crossed his legs and regarded her with those bottomless green eyes. ‘I’m eager to know why you would suddenly decide that my paternal rights might count for something.’

He might be sitting here, she thought, he might have told her that he was prepared to hear what she had to say, but she could tell from the look on his face that he was less prepared to believe what he might hear.

‘My sister was married at the time you met her,’ Leigh began slowly, and his eyebrows shot up.

‘Really? Well, she certainly kept quiet about that.’

‘She would have been wearing a wedding ring,’ Leigh pointed out, and he shrugged.

‘I don’t automatically look at a woman’s finger when she’s in the process of throwing herself at me.’

‘Oh, I see. You just take what’s on offer.’

‘Before you start questioning my morals, I’d advise you to look a little more closely at your sister’s, Miss Walker.’

He made it sound as though Jenny had been nothing more than a common tramp, and Leigh clamped down on the temptation to launch into a vitriolic defence of her sister’s state of mind at the time.

Jenny had been no tramp, she knew that She had thrown herself into her night of insanity with the abandon of someone trying to forget the present, drowning her sorrow in a single act whose repercussions she could never have foreseen.

‘Jenny had her reasons for her behaviour, Mr Kendall,’ she said coldly. ‘What were yours?’

He didn’t like that His face darkened. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come here to debate my morals, Miss Walker, but if it’s of any interest to you I tried to get in touch with her the following morning, only to find that she had checked out.’

‘And what a blow that must have been to you.’

‘No one speaks to me like that!’

‘I can speak to you any way I please.’ She couldn’t, she knew, but wisdom was trailing very far behind a reckless desire to speak her mind, whatever the consequences. She refused to be cowed by his money and power.

‘I don’t fool around with married women.’

Leigh shrugged, abandoning the impulse to give him a lecture on Men Of His Type. What was the point? He said that he didn’t fool around with married women. What was to be gained by debating the issue? Besides, maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he was loaded with moral virtue, maybe principles were coming out of his ears. If that were the case, then it was unfortunate for him that his looks seemed to tell a different story.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘whatever. Your principles are your business and they have nothing to do with why I’m here.’ He looked as though he wanted to shake her into agreeing with him, and she ignored the look on his face. ‘Jenny was married at the time and...’ she scoured her brain for the right way of saying what she was about to say ’...things weren’t going too well. Or, rather, they were going very well, but—’

‘Perhaps you could get your facts straight...’

‘I would if you’d give me half a chance!’ She glared at him, pausing while George’s clone sidled towards their table and deposited a tray with percolated coffee, cups, saucers, sugar and milk.

‘She had just had some bad news,’ Leigh hissed, leaning forward and sloshing coffee and milk into her cup. Let him pour his own. If he found it so difficult to be civil to her she was damned if she was going to make an effort to show any civility towards him. This whole meeting was turning out to be a full-blown disaster, anyway.

‘Odd way to react to bad news, don’t you think?’ He poured his coffee—no milk—and sat back in the chair and regarded her coldly. ‘Leaving the country for a jaunt in a foreign hotel away from hearth and home and, now you tell me, husband.’

‘You don’t understand...’

‘If she was that blissfully married why didn’t she talk out with her husband whatever problems she was having? You haven’t exactly thought out this story logically, have you, Miss Walker? Or did you think that I’d fall for whatever you said to me, hook, line and sinker, with no questions asked?’

Two bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks, and Leigh swallowed back the renewed temptation to storm out of the club.

‘Look, Mr Kendall,’ she said evenly, ‘I realise that you think yourself the world’s most eligible bachelor. You seem to think that no woman could possibly approach you unless her intentions were devious, which, incidentally, is a very sad state of affairs, but I assure you that I haven’t lain in bed, plotting and planning this meeting. I’m here because I’ve found myself in the position of having no other option.’

‘World’s most eligible bachelor...’ He linked his fingers together and a half-smile crossed his darkly cynical face, though not quite reaching his eyes which remained cool and shrewd. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ His eyes caught hers and held them fractionally too long for Leigh’s comfort.

‘No,’ she said politely, ‘I don’t think so either. Anyway, if I might be allowed to continue?’

‘Carry on.’

‘You have to understand that all of this...everything that I’m telling you now... I knew nothing about all this at the time. I only found out...’ She hated talking about Jenny, about the accident. At the time she had had to be brave for Amy’s sake, but the awful reality of it had been only a heartbeat away. Time made it easier to accept