A Daughter's Dilemma

‘Julian,’ she laughed. ‘I said one day I’d like half a dozen children, not this week, or even this year! And let me assure you that, from the sound of him, your architect is certainly not my type, either for a husband or a lover!’

‘Believe me, love,’ Julian said drily, ‘Vaughan’s every woman’s type.’

‘Not mine. I can’t stand men who...’ Carolyn broke off, doing a double take when the architect’s Christian name really sank in.

Vaughan?

She resisted succumbing to an irrational burst of panic. It was an unusual name, but not that unusual, she reasoned. It couldn’t be the same Vaughan. It just couldn’t... could it?

‘Don’t worry, you should be pretty safe,’ Julian prattled on, ‘since I’m fairly sure our architectural Casanova and the interior decorator have a thing going. Miss Powers is very attractive in an offbeat sort of way, and they’re very intimate in their manner towards each other. But better safe than sorry, so make sure you put that gorgeous hair of yours back up into its usual plait thing when you meet him. And dress like you do for the office. That creation you’ve got on today is a definite no-no!’

Carolyn glanced down at the scarlet crepe sheath she’d worn for her mother’s wedding. Isabel’s choice, not hers. As was her wearing her waistlength honey-blonde hair loose.

‘Whatever you say, Julian,’ she agreed lightly, but her right hand was tightly closed around the business cards lying within her palm. One quick look and she’d be absolutely sure if Julian’s Vaughan and her Vaughan were one and the same. One quick look...

Why, then, wasn’t she taking it?

The answer was quite simple. She already knew the ghastly truth.

The picture Julian was painting of this particular Vaughan coincided too well with the picture that was burnt indelibly in her brain. As well as the two men’s both being architects, there could be no mistaking the other similarities. The man’s age... his magnetic sex appeal... his self-centred ambition... his ego...

Carolyn felt all the blood begin to drain from her face.

‘Go looking like the secretary in the Beverly Hillbillies,’ Julian laughed, not noticing her pallor under her make-up. ‘That should do it! Now, you’re to ring Vaughan’s office to make an appointment to see both parties this coming weekend. They’re already au fait with your role in this and my wish to keep the house a secret from Isabel. Here’s my petrol card as well...’

He extended a plastic card from his wallet and handed it over as well. ‘That car of mine is a real gas-guzzler, so don’t hesitate to use this to fill up. No, don’t argue with me. I insist. I’m the one who’s asking you to travel over fifty miles down the south coast every other weekend, so I’m the one who should provide the transport, free of charge. It’s all tax deductible anyway.’ He smiled.

How she managed to smile back remained a mystery to Carolyn. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. God, what was she going to do?

Nothing at the moment, she realised as Julian bent to kiss her goodbye. ‘Thanks again,’ he said. ‘Keep well, and don’t worry about your mother.’

Don’t worry about your mother...

Carolyn was still shaking her head over the irony of those words as she watched the liner pull away from the pier and slowly make its way across Sydney harbour towards the bridge. If the surname on the architect’s card in her hand was the surname she believed it was, she would do nothing else but worry about her mother over the next two months.

Slowly, as though her palm contained a deadly funnel-web spider, Carolyn lifted her hand and opened the fingers. The card in question was the first on the pile. Plain white, with black lettering. Its wording was simple.

Vaughan Slater - Architect.

Nothing too large or too small.

Carolyn didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or be sick.

In the end, she was simply furious at fate, and stuffed the card in her bag with the others before she ripped it into a million pieces.

‘Vaughan Slater,’ she muttered aloud through gritted teeth.

Vaughan Slater, who ten years ago was a student in architecture at Sydney University and living in their home as a boarder during his final year.

Vaughan Slater, nine years younger than her mother back then. Only twenty-four to her thirtythree. But old enough to take advantage of a woman alone. Old enough to seduce her, sleep with her, make her fall in love with him, then tell her it was ‘only sex’ to her face and just walk away.

Vaughan Slater... the single and sole reason for her mother’s breakdown all those years ago.

CHAPTER TWO

CAROLYN glanced at her watch as she drove into Wollongong. Nearly ten-forty. Her appointment with Vaughan wasn’t till eleven, with the interior decorator following at eleven-thirty. Much as she wasn’t looking forward to meeting Vaughan again, she didn’t want to be late.

She hadn’t actually spoken to the man himself when she’d rung his office earlier in the week, his secretary making both appointments for her for this Saturday morning. So he had no idea of her true identity. The secretary had started calling her Miss Thornton straight away and Carolyn hadn’t corrected her mistake. At the time, she wasn’t sure why she’d kept her real name a secret, but she suspected one never gave an enemy any advantage in advance.

For he was an enemy, she accepted, a bitter taste coming into her mouth. An enemy to her mother’s future happiness. Carolyn knew that, when Julian presented his new bride with a designer-built and fully furnished home, Isabel was sure to want to meet and thank the people responsible.

Carolyn grimaced as she tried to picture how her mother would react to meeting Vaughan again, to having the man she’d loved so obsessively come back into her life. She wouldn’t be able to cope. Of that Carolyn was sure.

I can’t let them meet again, she vowed fiercely. I won’t!

The street that housed Vaughan’s office appeared on the right with Carolyn negotiating the turn across the on-coming traffic with great care. The last thing she wanted was to prang Julian’s beautiful blue BMW. Actually, she’d have driven her old bomb of a Datsun if she’d thought it would make the trip. As it was, she sighed with relief once she slid the car safely into a parking spot and turned off the engine.

Her watch showed ten forty-four by the time she alighted and locked the car then set out to find number sixteen. But as she walked swiftly along, the imminence of her encounter with Vaughan began sending a thousand nervous flutterings into her stomach, and her earlier steely resolve threatened to desert her.

Carolyn ground to a halt and scooped in several steadying breaths. Truly, she just had to get a grip on herself or risk making a hash of this meeting. A cool head was required. Vaughan was a successful and professional man now, who wasn’t going to like being put on the spot, or having old skeletons dragged out of the closet. He certainly wasn’t going to appreciate being told he had to avoid meeting a client’s wife, even if it meant lying to that client. For that was the only way Carolyn could think of to tackle the situation, by virtually throwing herself on his mercy. If the devil had any, that was!

At least she had a few weapons to fall back on to persuade Vaughan into compliance. No doubt Julian hadn’t paid him the full balance of his fat architectural fee for designing the house as yet. The Vaughan Slater she knew and despised would not do anything to make waves and lose out on that, Carolyn thought with bitter cynicism.

Money meant a great deal to him. Hadn’t she subsequently found out, when she’d checked the bankbooks after her mother’s breakdown, that he had not paid one cent in board for the last few months he’d stayed in their home? One didn’t have to have too much of an imagination to work out what happened. Once he’d secured his landlady’s love through pretending a return of affection with some very convincing words and lovemaking, he’d simply not paid any more.

Thinking about this little snippet of damning evidence made Carolyn even more determined not to take any nonsense from this man. He’d do what she asked or reap the rewards of his folly. Julian loved Isabel to distraction. He was also a very wealthy and influential businessman around Sydney and the south coast, being the owner and managing director of a large construction company that built shopping centres. Carolyn didn’t think he’d take too kindly to finding out the unabridged and disgusting truth of the way his womanising architect had once treated his wife.

Carolyn’s blue eyes darkened with fury and her teeth clenched down hard in her jaw.

Amazing, she thought. She’d had no idea she possessed such a capacity for hatred and revenge. People always described her as being mild-tempered. She certainly didn’t feel mild-tempered whenever she thought of a certain individual.

Steeling herself again, she walked more confidently along the pavement, looking for the dreaded address.

It wasn’t far, a modern three-storeyed steel and glass building with huge bluish windows facing the ocean, the kind of glass that one could look out of but couldn’t see into from outside.

Carolyn took one last steadying breath and pushed through the revolving glass doors into a grey marbled air-conditioned lobby. There was no reception desk, only a huge noticeboard on the wall which told her her quarry resided on the top floor. So did the interior decorator—Madeline Powers. Suites Three and Four respectively. A flight of stairs and two lifts serviced these upper floors.

Carolyn chose the stairs. She still had a few minutes to kill.

Would he recognise her straight away? she wondered as she made her way slowly up the carpeted staircase.

It was possible, her basic features not having changed much over the years. She still wore her straight hair in a single plait most of the time, though nowadays she wound it round the top of her head in a coronet. She also never wore make-up during the day, her natural peaches and cream complexion and thickly lashed blue eyes holding up quite well au naturel.

He wouldn’t have changed much, she fancied. Men didn’t from their mid-twenties to early thirties. Unless, of course, they put on weight or went bald, which she doubted he had from Julian’s description.

Carolyn still had a rather vivid mental picture of Vaughan at twenty-four, despite the intervening years. A strong angular face with straight brown brows and deeply set brown eyes; thick, wavy chestnut hair that always seemed to need a cut; a sensual-looking mouth that rarely smiled; and a body that had brought her girlfriends running from miles around, especially when he mowed the lawn with his shirt off.

Carolyn cringed as she recalled some of the comments her classmates had made about his various physical attributes. Maybe she’d been a bit of a prude back then, for she certainly hadn’t shared her friends’ preoccupation with sex. Admittedly, she’d been a young fourteen at the time, but even now she wasn’t impressed by the type of man who flaunted his sexual equipment in overtight clothes, any more than she liked girls who went round half-naked!