A Daughter's Dilemma

I love you... I love you...

The words seemed to ring aloud inside her head again and again and she wanted to clasp her hands over her ears to stop them. As it was, the blood drained from her face as an appalling thought hit her. What if he bewitches me too? What if...?

‘You look upset, Carolyn,’ he said abruptly, and stood up. ‘I’ll get Nora to make us both a cup of coffee. Then we’ll try to sort this out, come to a compromise that will ease your mind. Perhaps I could telephone your mother when she gets back and——’

‘Don’t you dare!’ she burst out, so savagely that he sat down again, looking stunned.

‘You... you don’t understand,’ she added, her voice trembling. Oh this was dreadful. Simply dreadful. She had to get a hold of herself.

‘Then perhaps you could enlighten me?’ he asked quietly.

‘I... my mother had a nervous breakdown,’ she blurted out. ‘The day after you left. Her doctor put her in a hospital for a while. Even when she was allowed out, she took a long time to get better. In fact she’s still very... fragile.’

Vaughan was looking at her as though she were mad. ‘Isabel had a nervous breakdown? Isabel? Over me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘It’s only too true,’ she insisted wretchedly, thinking that she would never forget the pitiful scene she’d encountered soon after Vaughan had left. She’d found her mother curled up in a little ball in a corner of the kitchen, talking to herself, totally unaware of Carolyn’s presence.

‘He swore he really loved me,’ she’d raved over and over. ‘Why else did he think I started sleeping with him, even though I knew it was wrong? And what did he do in the end? Told me it was only sex, said he was leaving me. All lies... Nothing but lies... Lies, lies, lies! I can’t bear it any more... I can’t!’

And she hadn’t been able to bear it. The rantings had finally dissolved into tears and she hadn’t been able to stop. Uncontrollable hysterical tears. Racking her. Tearing her apart.

In tears herself, Carolyn had rung their local doctor and the nightmare had begun...

Remembering what had really happened brought fresh doubts. Could Vaughan be still lying? Had he, in fact, both seduced Isabel and told her he loved her? She only had his word for it that he hadn’t. Carolyn lifted her eyes to those seemingly sincere brown ones and didn’t know what to believe any more.

‘Perhaps some of it was in her mind,’ she conceded in confusion. ‘The bit about you having said you loved her. But she believed it enough to crack up over your leaving. Ten years ago or not, I don’t intend risking my mother’s mental health by your seeing her again. If you’ve got a shred of decency in you, Vaughan, you’ll keep as far away from her as you can.’

He said nothing for several seconds, his face undeniably disturbed. ‘I can’t say I appreciate the way you put that, but in the circumstances I suppose I’ll have to do as you ask.’

He rubbed his chin again in what was obviously an habitual expression of agitation. ‘Hell... it’s all so damned incredible. I still can’t take it in. Isabel was always such a together lady. I admit I was taken aback when she started saying she loved me that day. But I talked to her about it and she seemed to agree with me in the end that it was only a physical thing that had unfortunately got out of hand. I thought it was a mutual decision that I leave straight away. I would have been leaving in another week or so anyway, since I’d finished my exams the day before. She must have been only pretending she didn’t mind. She was rather unusually quiet...

‘Poor Isabel,’ he sighed, grimacing before looking up again. ‘And poor little Carolyn... I know you didn’t have any family in Sydney. How on earth did you cope?’

‘I managed,’ she said, her susceptibility to this unexpectedly sympathetic Vaughan making her curt. But he’d certainly been very convincing with his version of the story.

‘But where did you go? What did you do?’

‘After Mum came out of hospital a cousin let us live with him for a couple of years on his farm in the country. But he couldn’t let us stay forever. Things were very bad for farmers at the time, what with the recent floods and the economy. When his wife became pregnant with her fourth child, I took Mum back to Sydney to live. She had an invalid pension and I left school and got a job.’

‘But you must have been only about sixteen!’ He seemed appalled. ‘Good God, Carolyn, you were always such a bright kid. You should have finished school and gone to college! Damn it, if only I’d known. Perhaps I could have done something.’

What? she thought bitterly. Paid us back the board money?

‘We managed perfectly well, thank you,’ she retorted, not wanting this man’s pity, or anything else! ‘I have a very good job now. I’ve never regretted not going to college. I’m happy and Mum’s happy. I just want to make sure things stay that way.’

She glared at him, but down deep in her heart Carolyn suspected that already her own happiness was on the line. She’d been attracted to quite a few men since growing up. But never had she experienced the sort of inner upheaval she felt whenever Vaughan looked at her.

‘Have you considered the possibility,’ he said finally, ‘that Julian might mention my name to Isabel?’

Carolyn dragged in a deep steadying breath. ‘He won’t mention you to her till after he’s presented her with the house, since he wants it to be a surprise. I should be able to get him alone before then and make up some plausible story about you without going into too much detail. You leave that up to me.’

‘Very well, though I don’t really agree with you. I think the open and honest approach would be best. Your mother must be well and truly over me by now. After all, she’s just married another man.’

But she doesn’t love him, Carolyn was reminded. If she sees you again, especially as you are today, so handsome, so successful, so damned sexy... all those old futile desires could be revived. It wouldn’t take much to tip the more fragile Isabel over the edge again.

‘Please allow me to be the best judge of that,’ Carolyn said stiffly.

‘Very well,’ he replied just as stiffly. ‘But that particular problem’s two months away. Right now I would like to address a more immediate problem. Julian’s house.’

‘Oh? Is there a problem with it?’

His eyes narrowed as they travelled over her tensely held body. ‘Not unless you give me one. Are you going to?’

He kept watching her almost warily and Carolyn wondered what he was getting at. ‘I have no idea,’ she hedged. ‘I haven’t seen it yet.’

‘I doubt that’ll make a damned bit of difference,’ he muttered, confusing her all the more. ‘Well? When do you want to see it? This afternoon some time?’

A quick glance at her watch showed eleven twenty-eight. ‘I have a half-hour appointment to see Miss Powers at eleven-thirty,’ she stated, hoping a businesslike manner would hide the emotional distress this encounter had evoked. ‘Perhaps the three of us could go and see the house together after that. Do you think that would be possible?’

Vaughan shook his head. ‘Unfortunately Maddie has another client at twelve whom she can’t put off and who’ll take at least an hour. I tell you what. After you’ve finished with her I’ll take you to lunch, then the three of us can meet up at the house around two.’

Carolyn only just managed to control the look of horror that threatened to spread across her face. She didn’t want to do anything as intimate as have lunch with him. Bad enough to have to put up with the occasional conducted tour around the house over the next couple of months.

‘Thank you for the offer,’ she said crisply, ‘but I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.’ She stood up. ‘Perhaps you could drop me off at the house and I can have a look around by myself while you go and have lunch.’

This suggestion brought a sharp glance. Vaughan stood up slowly, his eyes remaining hard as he came round the desk to join her. ‘I couldn’t do that. The place is a bit rough and you might hurt yourself. Look, there’s no point in your avoiding my company, Carolyn. It’s rather silly and schoolgirlish.’

Her blue eyes flashed with automatic pique. If there was anything she wasn’t, it was silly and schoolgirlish. My God, she’d had to assume the mantle of adulthood from a very early age, bypassing the life of a normal teenager, never having the sort of mindless fun adolescent girls indulged in. And all because of this man and his compulsion to bed every woman who came across his path. Her mother... Madeline Powers... Anthea Maxwell... And how many countless others?

Just as well that she had unwittingly taken Justin’s advice and made herself as unattractive as possible, otherwise he might even now be attempting to seduce her! Given this unwanted though undeniable sexual attraction she was feeling for him, who knew what disaster might have come of it?

‘I wasn’t avoiding your company,’ she lied frostily.

His sardonic smile showed he didn’t believe her for a moment. ‘In that case you can come with me and nurse a drink while I eat.’

Before she could stop him he took her elbow and began to usher her from the room. ‘You can tell me all about what you’re doing these days. Oddly enough, I’ve often thought of you over the years,’ came the wry remark. ‘Hard to dismiss the pretty blue-eyed little thing who used to glare at me with such obvious disapproval. Something which hasn’t changed much, has it?’ he added drily when she pulled away from him at the door. ‘You still think I’m some kind of ogre.’

‘Not at all,’ she returned with admirable coolness. ‘I don’t think of you as anything any more. You’re just my stepfather’s architect.’

‘Is that so?’ His gaze turned hard as it locked with hers. ‘And how should I think of you, Carolyn? As my client’s stepdaughter, here to help finish his house to everyone’s satisfaction? Or as a female harbouring an irrational grudge against me and who might be thinking of sabotaging my work out of revenge?’

She gasped with true shock.

‘I think any suspicion on my part is well warranted,’ he went on coldly. ‘After all, you did give a false name to my secretary, then you wangled your way into my office. If I hadn’t come in when I did, you would have been left alone with my plans to do God knows what to them. And just now, you seemed eager to be left alone at the house. I wonder what might have been missing or damaged when I returned?’