The Valentine Bride

Just like everyone else, her birth mother wanted her to understand, absolve her from her guilt…

‘I’ve had a lovely life,’ Louise said.

It was true, she had.

She’d been cherished, loved, given everything she’d ever wanted. Everything except the truth. The companionship of a sister she hadn’t known existed…

They’d all known. Her grandparents, Max’s parents. And they’d all lied. The bitterness was as strong, as tangible as the aloes her nanny had painted on her fingernails to stop her from biting them.

But she couldn’t get past the fact that she’d had a blessed life. That she owed them for that. She’d always intended to help with Bella Lucia—once Max could bring himself to ask nicely. She would repay them with her time, her skill and then she would be free to do whatever she wanted. Be whoever she wanted to be. The only thing she wasn’t prepared to do was give up the business she’d worked so hard to build, give up her independence.

It more important than ever now.

Her rock.

And, in a heartbeat, she understood a little of what Bella Lucia meant to Max. It had been the one fixed point in his life. When his parents had packed him off to boarding school to get him out of their hair, when Aunt Georgina had disappeared for months on end on some painting expedition with her latest lover, when his father had been drooling over his latest wife, Bella Lucia had been his rock…

While she had two mothers who cared about her, who had ever been there for him? They’d been so close once…Because of what her family had done, their lies, he’d lost that, too.

Without warning tears stung against her lids, not for herself this time, but for Max and to distract her she picked up her bag, opened it, said, ‘I’ve brought you some photographs. If you’d like them?’

And suddenly they were both blinking and laughing as she produced a little wallet filled with her firsts: first steps, first birthday, first day at school in a blazer a size too big with her hat set just so, so that the badge showed…

‘Oh, please, put them away and look at them later, or we’ll both end up with panda-eyes,’ Louise said, torn between laughter and tears. ‘I want to hear about you, Patsy. Jodie told me you’ve just got married again. Tell me about Derek.’

She lit up. ‘Every woman should have a man like Derek Harcourt in her life.’ As she poured the tea the blaze of diamonds on her left hand caught the lights. ‘He really cares about me. Keeps me on the straight and narrow with my diet—I’m a diabetic, did you know?’ she said, pulling a face.

‘Jodie told me.’

‘You’ll need to keep an eye on your own health. It’s hereditary.’

‘I’ll take care.’ Then, ‘Tell me about your honeymoon trip. You went on a cruise?’

‘It was heaven…’ Once she was off, the conversation never lagged.

They talked about Jodie, Australia, Louise’s business. About everything but the Valentine family. It was like talking to someone she’d known all her life. But eventually the conversation came back around to her.

‘I have my Derek and Jodie has her Heath. What about you, sweetie?’ Patsy asked. ‘They say everything happens in threes. Is there anyone special in your life?’

In that split second before she spoke, Louise remembered the way that Max had looked at her. The way she’d felt…

‘No,’ she said, quickly, but even as the word left her mouth a little voice was saying, No problem. No impediment. Nothing to stop you…

Her mother raised one perfectly groomed brow and Louise distracted her with tales about old boyfriends. The ones she might have married if they’d asked.

‘Just as well they didn’t ask,’ she said, laughing. ‘It would have been a total disaster.’

She didn’t tell her about the one she’d convinced herself was everything she was looking for in a husband: the one who’d told her to stop fooling herself before he’d walked away.

‘I hate to say goodbye,’ Patsy said as, finally, they walked towards the lift. Then, when she didn’t immediately respond, ‘You do want to see me again?’

Louise, momentarily distracted by the back view of Max, apparently absorbed in a painting, said, ‘Yes, yes, of course I do.’

He’d come.

He’d actually turned up, had waited in case she needed him.

‘I, um, want to meet Derek, too.’

The lift arrived and Patsy stepped in, holding the door. Louise forced herself not to glance back and stepped in beside her, arranged dinner for the next week, then hugged her mother goodbye on the pavement before seeing her into a taxi.

‘You’re sure I can’t give you a lift?’ she asked, from the back of the cab.

‘No. I’m fine. I’ll give you a call about next week.’

She waited, waved as she drove off. Then turned and walked back into the gallery, took the lift back up to the top floor.

When the doors opened, she saw that Max had not moved and she didn’t know whether she was irritated by his certainty that she’d come back, or warmed by the fact that he’d waited for her. There were no clear cut lines with him.

‘I thought it was best to stay put,’ he said, as she held the door and he stopped pretending, joined her in the lift, ‘or we might have been chasing one another around the houses for the next ten minutes.’

‘Only if I came back,’ she pointed out, trying not to smile, but without much success.

‘True.’ He seemed to be finding it easy enough to keep a straight face. Then, ‘You’re very like her.’

‘Yes. It’s strange. All my life people have been telling me I’m like my…Like Ivy Valentine…’

‘She’s still your mother, Lou. She was the one who raised you. And you are like her. Okay, some of it’s superficial, chance. Your colouring, height. But it’s not just that. You hold your head the way she does, you use the same gestures. You have her class.’

‘You don’t think Patsy has class?’

‘Patsy?’

‘It’s a bit late in the day to start calling her Mum, don’t you think?’ She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. ‘She asked me to call her that.’

‘It suits her,’ he said, taking her arm as they headed for the door.

She stiffened momentarily, then forced herself to relax. If she pulled away, he’d think that what he said, did, mattered to her.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, once they were outside, but keeping her voice light.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘She’s classy.’

‘Not quite the same thing.’

‘What can I say? She’s a real head-turner, Lou.’ Then, with a wry grin, ‘Don’t let her near my father. He has a fatal weakness for that chorus-girl-fallen-on-good-times look.’

‘Your father has a fatal weakness for women full-stop.’