A Daughter's Dilemma

Not if you smile at her like that every once in a while, came her treacherous and shattering thought.

Carolyn’s stomach fluttered then tightened, the implications of which did not escape her. ‘I have no idea,’ she said stiffly, wanting to look away but unable to.

I’m physically attracted to him, she was thinking with appalled horror.

He nodded, his smile turning wry. ‘It’s just that on one occasion I had a whole month’s work ruined by having something spilt on them. Then a previous secretary of mine let a slick smooth-talking salesman type come in to supposedly wait for me, and while he was in here he photographed a whole heap of my house plans and sold them to some very unscrupulous builders.’

‘How very upsetting for you,’ Carolyn said with a betraying lack of sympathy.

His quite beautiful brown eyes narrowed perceptibly. ‘Tell me, Miss Thornton, I get the feeling we’ve met before. Am I right?’

Carolyn swallowed the enormous lump that was filling her throat.

‘Yes,’ she said simply, merely because she was incapable of elaboration at that point in time.

‘I thought so.’ A brief look of satisfaction passed over his face before it turned into a frown. ‘Yet the name Thornton means nothing to me. Your father is the first Thornton I’ve ever met.’

‘Stepfather,’ she corrected in a strangled tone. ‘My name isn’t Thornton.’

‘Aah, yes... My mistake. But... wasn’t Miss Thornton the name you gave Nora?’

Puzzled brown eyes narrowed some more and a small shiver ran through her. He walked round the desk and cleared a spot on the edge, perching there barely an arm’s length from her. He put an elbow on one knee and leant forward, chin resting in his hand. It brought his face much closer to hers. Suddenly, her eyes were on his mouth and she began thinking how sensually full his bottom lip was.

‘Care to explain the reason for the deception?’ he probed softly.

Her eyes must have revealed something of her inner turmoil, or perhaps it was the way she physically shrank back into the chair to remove herself from his suffocating nearness, for he stiffened and straightened, his expression worried now. ‘I’m not going to like your reason, am I?’ he announced with dry intuition.

‘No,’ she rasped.

‘Out with it, then,’ he said brusquely, sliding off the desk and returning to stand behind his desk, hands on hips. ‘I like to take bad medicine in quick doses.’

‘Very well.’ She had herself under control again now, disgust at her sexual response to this man finding inner steel with a vengeance. How could you? her conscience kept screaming at her. How could you?

‘My name’s McKensie,’ she said with an icily controlled fury. ‘Carolyn McKensie... If you don’t remember me, I’m sure you must remember my mother. Her name’s Isabel McKensie, though it changed last Thursday to Isabel Thornton.’

CHAPTER THREE

IF SHE’D been expecting him to blush guiltily, or show shock, she would have been bitterly disappointed. As it was, Carolyn did expect a little more reaction than she got.

He merely kept looking at her for a few seconds, that faint frown back on his face. Then he bent to scoop his chair under his knees, sinking into it with a sigh. ‘Awkward,’ he murmured, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ she flung at him in simmering outrage. ‘Just awkward?’

He eyed her closely till she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘What else would you like me to say?’

She dragged in a deep breath and took the plunge. ‘I’m not going to beat around the bush, Vaughan. I know what really happened between you and Mum. Not that Mum told me. She never speaks of that time in her life any more. But I saw you both... together... the night before you left. I came home early from ballet rehearsals because there was a bomb scare in the hall. You were...’

She gulped, then raced on, her voice a few decibels higher. ‘Well, let’s just say neither of you noticed me standing in the doorway of the living room. I left again in a hurry. I also overheard part of the argument you had with Mum the next day after she told you she loved you. No, please don’t say anything. I don’t wish to discuss the past or to apportion blame or pass judgements. But you must appreciate that I don’t want you seeing my mother again, under any circumstances. I want your word that when Julian and my mother come back from their trip in two months’ time you’ll avoid meeting her at all costs, because I——’

‘Oh don’t be so bloody melodramatic!’ he cut in forcibly. ‘This all happened ten years ago, for God’s sake. An eternity! I’m not going to do any such thing as run and hide from Isabel. OK, so I agree our first meeting might be a little embarrassing, but let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.’

Carolyn could only sit and stare at him.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘Is there something here I don’t know?’

It finally dawned on her that he just didn’t feel any guilt at all over her mother. To him, having love affairs was as natural as breathing. Women came and women went. Clearly he never lost a night’s sleep over their demise and he expected them to be the same. Vaughan Slater was on a different moral wavelength from her and nothing would ever change that.

But she had to try to make him see her point of view.

‘My mother loved you,’ she said shakily.

‘No,’ he denied. ‘She didn’t.’

Carolyn’s frustration was acute. ‘How can you say that?’ Good God, she had heard her mother quite clearly, telling the wretched creature, begging him not to leave her. Her broken voice had torn Carolyn so much that she had run away and hidden in her bedroom, not coming out till she’d heard Vaughan leave a couple of hours later.

‘Because it’s true,’ he insisted harshly. ‘And your mother damn well knew it too. She wanted sex, that’s all, then afterwards she tried calling it love to soothe her conscience.’

‘Her conscience!’

‘That’s right. If you think it was me who was doing the seducing, then think again, my girl.’

‘But...but...’ Her confusion was total, her shock shattering. For there was an undeniable ring of truth in this callous man’s hard voice. Besides, why should he lie? What reason could he have?

Her distressed eyes dropped to the floor and she shook her head in anguished bewilderment.

‘Carolyn, look at me...’

His voice was so unexpectedly gentle that she was impelled to look up, only to be lanced by a look of such incredible warmth and apology that she was stunned. His regretful gaze washed over her, totally defusing her anger, making her melt inside.

Panic clutched at her stomach. Dear heaven... she would have to be very very careful with this man.

‘I shouldn’t have said that quite so bluntly,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry. Look, your mother was a lovely woman. Very lovely. But very, very lonely. She needed a man in her life. I was just... there. I never led her on and I never told her I loved her. She came to me, not the other way around. I don’t blame her and neither should you.’

‘I don’t,’ she bit out, shaking inside with indignation. ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not about who started what, but you’re lying about not having told Mum you loved her. You did. I know that for a fact!’

An electric silence descended on the pair of them with her vehement accusation.

‘Then I suggest you check your facts,’ he said at last in a low, tightly controlled voice. ‘If your mother thought I loved her then it was all in her mind, certainly not because of anything I ever said or did. I would quite willingly swear to that on a stack of bibles!’

Her belief in his treachery wavered under this intense denial. Could he be telling the truth about everything? Had her mother’s mind already been affected so much that she’d started imagining he’d said words he hadn’t? Carolyn supposed it was possible, given the obsessive nature of her mother’s feelings for him.

What was the truth? she agonised. He claimed Isabel had been lonely... frustrated...

Carolyn supposed that could have been true. For not in all her growing-up years could she recall her mother going out with a man, or having a man in the house. Isabel had always insisted she’d loved Carolyn’s father far too much to ever look at another man. As an innocent child, she had accepted this as a wonderful, romantic concept. Now she could see that such loyalty to a dead man must have been hard on a normal healthy woman in the prime of her life.

But none of that changed the fact that her mother had believed Vaughan loved her. No one could doubt that if they’d heard her piteous ravings that day. Besides, it was the only reason that made sense of her breakdown. Isabel had been a strong woman, not a dreamer. So why had she believed Vaughan loved her if he’d not actually said so?

Carolyn lifted her pale face to stare at him across the desk. The answers had to lie in this man’s sexual power and prowess, in his ability to bewitch women and make them mad for him without having to say the words women always wanted to hear.