You Owe Me

Had he really loved Natalie or had he simply married her because he had had to? She had had a lucky escape Chris told herself. She could have been Natalie, crushed by marriage to a husband who didn’t love her, trapped…She was letting her imagination run away with her, Chris told herself. She had no reason to suppose that Slater did not love Natalie, perhaps it was even wishful thinking! No! Never!

“Well, Chris?”

“I’m coming home.” It wasn’t what she had intended to say at all, but now the words were out they could not be retracted.

“Good girl.” Tom Smith’s voice approved, and Chris shivered wondering what train of events she had set in motion. She didn’t want to go back to Little Martin; she didn’t want to see Slater or his child. The past was another country; and one she had sworn she would never re-visit, but it was too late now, she was already committed; committed to a child she had never seen, and remembering instances of Natalie’s vindictiveness, she wondered momentarily just why her cousin had named her as her child’s guardian. This thought was brushed aside almost instantly by a flood of guilt. If Natalie had been jealous of her, hadn’t she been jealous too in turn? Hadn’t she felt almost ready to kill her cousin when she saw her in Slater’s arms. She sighed. All that was over now, Natalie was dead, and in the end, for whatever reason, her cousin had entrusted to her care her child, and she could not in all honour ignore that charge, if only for her aunt’s sake.

CHAPTER TWO

LESS than thirty-six hours later when she stepped off a ’plane at Heathrow, Chris still wasn’t sure quite how she had got there. A brief call to her agent explaining the situation had resulted in cancellation of several of her assignments and the postponement of others. It was a testimony to her success that this was allowed to happen, her agent told her drily when she rang from London to tell Chris what she had done.

London was much cooler than New York. To save herself the hassle of a complicated train journey Chris had elected to travel to Little Martin by taxi. The cabbie raised his eyebrows a little when she explained where she wanted to go. The fare, would she knew, be astronomical, but that was the least of her worries right now. Had she done the right thing? Time alone could answer that. She had acted impulsively, rare for her these days, listening to the voice of her conscience rather than logic. Sophie did not know her and it was almost criminally stupid to imagine the child would respond to her when she could or would not to her own father.

Closing her eyes Chris leaned back into her seat, unaware of her driver’s appreciative scrutiny of her through his rear view mirror. Her clothes were simple, but undeniably expensive, and the cabbie wondered what it was that took her to such a remote part of the country in such a rush. She wasn’t wearing any rings.

It was three o’clock when the taxi deposited her at Slater’s house. She hadn’t known where else to go, and since Tom Smith had told her that Slater would be expecting her it had seemed the sensible thing to do. She had only brought one case with her. The local estate had the keys to the cottage she had inherited from her aunt and she planned to collect them later on. The cottage would make an ideal base for her whilst she tried to get to know Sophie and decided what to do. It had at one time been let out but the past tenants had left some time ago and now it was empty.

Her ring on the doorbell produced no response and as she waited for someone to appear Chris acknowledged that at least some of the tension infiltrating her body was caused by the thought of meeting Slater.

The house seemed deserted and she rang again, frowning when there was no response. Tom had assured her that Slater would be there. He wanted to see her before she saw Sophie, so Tom had said. Sighing she tried the door handle, half surprised when it turned easily in her hand.

The moment she stepped into the hall memories flooded through her; she had often visited the house with her aunt and uncle who had been friends with Slater’s parents, but most of her memories stemmed from the brief months when she had met Slater here, when merely to cycle down the drive and arrive at the house had sent dizzying excitement spiralling through her veins. It had been in this hall that he had first kissed her the afternoon she had come on some now forgotten mission from her aunt. Slater had taken her by surprise, and she had been too stunned to resist. He had seemed half shocked himself, but he had recovered very quickly, making some teasing remark about her being too pretty to resist. That had been the start of it…

She sighed, glancing anxiously round the panelled room. Where was Slater? She called his name doubtfully, shivering a little in her thin silk dress. What had been warm enough in New York was far from adequate here at home, despite the fact that it was June.

The sitting-room door was half open and drawn by some force greater than her will Chris walked towards it, almost in a trance. It had been here in this room that all her bright, foolish dreams had been destroyed. Like a sleepwalker she walked inside, surprised to find how little had changed. Natalie had loathed the house’s traditional decor and she had half expected to find everything different. The sun shone rosily through the french windows, clearly revealing the features of the man stretched out on the settee and Chris came to an abrupt halt, her breathing unexpectedly constricted, almost unbearably conscious of the air burning her skin, as though someone had ripped off an entire layer and left her exposed to unendurable pain. The shock of seeing Slater was a thousand times worse than she had envisaged, and it mattered little that he was oblivious to her presence, apparently fast asleep. Suddenly the intervening years meant nothing, the sophisticated shell of protection she had grown round her during them dissolving and leaving her acutely vulnerable.

His hair was still unmarked by grey, thickly black and ruffled, his frame still as leanly powerful even in sleep. His eyes were closed, lines she didn’t remember fanning out from them. His mouth curled downwards, a deep cynicism carved into his skin that she didn’t recall, and that shocked her by its unexpectedness. His face was the face of a man who had suffered pain and disillusionment, or so it seemed as she looked at him, and yet where she should have felt glad that this was so, his appearance made her heart ache. Seven years and God alone knew how many thousand miles, they had been apart, and yet as she looked at him Chris found her reaction to him as intense and painful as it had been so long ago.

She couldn’t possibly still love him; that was ridiculous, no, what she was experiencing now was something akin to déjà vu… It was only the shock of seeing him so unexpectedly that caused this reaction… She must remember that he was not and never had been the man she had thought him. She had invested him with qualities, virtues that he had never possessed.

Unaware of what she was doing, she moved closer to him. Tiredness was deeply ingrained in his features. As she moved something clinked against her shoe and she glanced downward to see a half-empty bottle of whisky and a glass. Slater had been drinking? She frowned, and then reminded herself that he was a man whose wife had only recently committed suicide, and that whatever his feelings for Natalie, there must be some feelings of pain and guilt inside him. He moved, frowning in his sleep and the cushion on which he was resting his head slipped on to the floor.

Chris bent automatically to retrieve it, balancing herself against the edge of the settee. Her fingers brushed accidentally against Slater’s wrist and he jerked away as though the light contact stung. His shirt was open at the throat, and she could see the dark hair shadowing his skin, thicker now than she remembered, or was it simply that at nineteen she had been less attuned to sheer masculine sexuality than she was now.

Her heart started to jump heavily and she began to draw away, grasping with shock as Slater’s fingers suddenly closed round her wrist. His eyes were still closed, a deep frown scoring his forehead. His thumb stroked urgently over the pulse in her wrist, and Chris didn’t know what shocked her the most; his caress or her response to it. He was still deeply asleep and she dropped to her knees at his side, gently trying to prise his fingers away without waking him. Anger and tension brought a hectic flush of colour to her skin. Seven years when she had learned to defend herself against every awkward situation there was, and yet here she was reduced to the status of an embarrassed adolescent, simply because a man held her wrist in his sleep.

But Slater wasn’t simply any man, she acknowledged bitterly and her combined embarrassment and pain sprang not so much from the fact that he was touching her, startling though her reaction to that touch was, as from the knowledge that he undoubtedly believed she was someone else; perhaps Natalie, perhaps not. She couldn’t release his fingers. She would have to wake him up. Inwardly fuming, outwardly composed, she leaned over him, trying not to admit her awareness of the smooth firmness of his flesh beneath his shirt-sleeve as she touched his arm.

The moment she shook him his eyes flew open. She had forgotten how mesmeric they could be, topaz one moment, gold the next. They stared straight into hers.

“Chrissie…” He started to smile, the fingers of his free hand sliding into her hair and cupping the back of her head. Too startled to resist, Chris felt him propel her towards him. Her eyes closed automatically, her lips parting in anticipation of his kiss. She might almost never have been away. His kiss was tender and powerful; she was nineteen again quivering on the brink of womanhood, wanted him and yet frightened of that wanting and his kiss told her that he knew all this and understood it.

She barely had time to register these facts before his hold suddenly tightened, his eyes blazing burnt gold into hers as he withdrew from her. Chris blinked, slower than he was to make the transition from past to present, until she saw the biting contempt in his eyes and recognised that when he had kissed her he had not been fully awake; not fully aware of what he was doing.

“So you finally came.” He released her and was on his feet, whilst she still knelt numbly on the floor. “I suppose we ought to be honoured, but I’m sure you’ll forgive us if we don’t bring out the fatted calf. What brought you back, Chrissie? Guilt? Curiosity?”

Just about to tell him that she had only just learned of Natalie’s death, Chris stumbled to her feet as she heard sounds outside. The sitting-room door opened and a smiling plump woman in her fifties walked in holding the hand of a small child.

Chris breathed in sharply. So this was her niece…Natalie’s child. Slater’s child. She couldn’t endure to look at him as she studied the little girl, and knew instinctively why Natalie had named her as guardian, just as she knew that her cousin’s decision had not been motivated by any of the gentler emotions. Natalie had not changed, she decided helplessly, studying the small face so like her own; the untidy honey-blonde hair, and the general air of dismal hopelessness about the child. By some unkind quirk of fate Sophie could more easily have passed for her daughter than Natalie’s although unlike Chris she had brown eyes.

Chris frowned. Natalie had had blue eyes, and Slater’s were amber-gold. No one as far as she knew in either family had possessed that striking combination of blonde hair and velvet-brown eyes, and yet it was familiar to her, so much so that it tugged elusively at her memory.

“There you are, Sophie,” her companion said brightly, “I told you you were going to have a visitor didn’t I?”

The child made no response, not even to the extent of looking at her, Chris realised sadly.

“I have to go and get some shopping now Mr James,” she added to Slater.

“That’s fine, Mrs Lancaster. You’ve made up a room for our visitor, I take it?”

“The large guest room,” Mrs Lancaster told Chris with a smile, adding reassuringly to Sophie. “I’ll be back in time for tea, Sophie, and then perhaps tonight your aunt will read your story to you.”

Once again there was no response. Chris ached to pick the child up and hug her. She looked so pitifully vulnerable, so lost, and hurt somehow, and yet she sensed that it would be best not to approach her. She frowned as she remembered what Slater had said about a room for her. She must tell him that she would be staying at the cottage. She glanced at her watch, remembering that she still had to collect the keys.

“Bored with us already?” Slater drawled sardonically.

Chris saw Sophie conceal a betraying wince at her father’s tone and she frowned, wondering what had caused the child’s reaction. Had Slater perhaps often spoken to Natalie in that sarcastic voice? Children saw and felt more than their parents gave them credit for, but she could hardly question Slater on his relationship with her cousin. Did he know why Natalie had appointed her as Sophie’s co-guardian?

She glanced at him bitterly. Perhaps he had shared Natalie’s resentment that their child should so much favour her. She shuddered to think of the small unkindnesses Sophie could have suffered at Natalie’s hands; torments remembered from her own childhood, and then reminded herself that Sophie was Natalie’s child, and that as usual she was letting her imagination run away with her.

Chris looked up to find Sophie studying her warily, as she crept closer to her father. His hand reached out to enfold her smaller one, the smile he gave her was reassuring. A huge lump closed off Chris’s throat. She had been wrong about one thing at last. Patently Slater did love his small daughter—very much. There was pain as well as love in the gold eyes as they studied the small pale face.

“I can’t think why Natalie specified that I was to be her guardian,” Chris murmured unguardedly.

Almost at once Slater’s expression hardened. “Can’t you?” he said curtly. Sophie tensed, and as though he sensed her distress, he stopped speaking, smiling warmly at the child before continuing, “I’d better show you to your room.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Chris was cool and very much in control now. She gave him the same cold brief smile she reserved for too-eager males. It normally had an extremely dampening effect, but Slater seemed quite unimpressed. “I’ll be staying at the cottage,” she continued. “In fact I’d better get round to Reads and collect the keys. They’ve been keeping the place aired and cleaned for me.”

“Chris!” There was anger and bitterness reverberating in his voice, and Chris saw Sophie tauten again. Slater must have been aware of her tension too, because he broke off to say soothingly, “It’s all right Sophie, I’m not cross. We have to talk,” he told Chris levelly, “and it would be much easier to do so if you stayed here, but I remember enough about you to realise that you’ll go your own way now, just as you did in the past. I’ll walk out to your car with you.”

No doubt so that he could say the things to her he wanted to without upsetting Sophie. It was strange, Chris reflected painfully. All these years she had deliberately refused to think about Slater’s child, and yet now that she had seen her, she felt none of the resentment or pain she had expected. Sophie was simply a very unhappy, vulnerable child whom she ached to comfort and help, but she was sensible enough to know that the first approach would have to come from Sophie herself.

“I don’t have a car,” she told Slater coolly. “If I can leave my case here for an hour I’ll come back and collect it once I’ve got the keys for the cottage. I can use my aunt’s Mini to drive back in.”

Slater’s smile was derisive. “Please yourself Chris,” he drawled mockingly. “I’d offer to take you, but I can’t leave Sophie, and she isn’t too keen on riding in the car.”

Chris frowned, but Sophie’s face bore out her father’s statement, she looked tense and frightened.

IT TOOK HER longer than she had anticipated to walk to the village—she had forgotten that she was no longer a teenager and accustomed to the almost daily walk. The estate agent expressed concern when she told him her intentions.

“But my dear Chris, the place has been empty for nearly two years…”

“I arranged for it to be kept cleaned and aired,” Chris reminded him frowningly.

“Which we have done, but the roof developed a leak during the winter, it needs completely rethatching. I have written to tell you,” he told her half apologetically, and Chris sighed, hearing the faintly accusatory note in his voice. “Using your aunt’s Mini is completely out of the question. I doubt you could even get it started. I’ve got a better idea. My sister has a small car which I know she won’t mind you borrowing. She’s in Greece at the moment on holiday, and won’t be back for several weeks. How long are you intending to stay in Little Martin?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Chris told him accepting his offer of the loan of a car, but refusing to allow him to book a room at the village inn for her. However bad the cottage was, she could stay there one night, surely? She was already befuddled with all the decisions she had had to make recently. Tomorrow she could decide where she was going to stay. It would have to be somewhere close to Sophie otherwise there would be no point in her visit.