Expectant Mistress

‘I’m a little late with the introductions, but as you gathered, Louise—’ he said easily ‘—this is Trish. Trish, Louise, my fiancée.’

‘Welcome to our Engagement Party.’

Louise made sure Trish knew that the occasion merited capital letters. A little tenser than before, the woman leant forward and kissed Trish coolly, as if embracing a stranger’s child With the emphasis firmly on child.

Trish kept her carefree smile pinned in place. Louise was far more gorgeous than she’d imagined, even if she didn’t know the difference between the Scilly Isles and the island of Sicily But then, brainy people often lacked common sense and everyday knowledge.

‘I’m still puzzled,’ Louise cooed, detached from Adam suddenly as four worshipping blondes surrounded him with cries of adoration.

Casting a furtive glance at him, Trish saw them cover him in lipstick in seconds. Surprisingly, Louise seemed impervious to this. Trish itched to drag the women off and berate him for smiling at them. Instead, she made herself pay attention to Louise, suppressing the brief impression she’d had of Adam. He hadn’t changed one iota. Still very dark, very handsome, fiercely male. Damn.

‘Why are you puzzled?’ she asked Louise, trying to care.

‘A tan! In England, in early April?’ She peered at Trish’s skin ‘Sunlamp or fake tan?’ she suggested with suspicious innocence.

‘Neither! Just sun and wind and rain. Adam said the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles are all children of Nature, remember?’ she said, smarting a little from the description. It had taken her an hour to get ready—longer than she’d ever spent on herself before! ‘I lead an outdoor life—’

‘You run a guesthouse! That’s indoors!’ Louise stated knowledgeably.

Lord! thought Trish. What had Adam told her? ‘Yes, but on my island we don’t have transport—there aren’t any made-up roads,’ she explained patiently. ‘We travel by boat. Bryher is only a mile wide and a mile and a half long—’

‘Good grief! Some people have gardens larger than that! And did you say no roads?’ Louise shuddered elegantly and waved her left hand about, so that Trish could be dazzled by the flashing diamond the size of an elderly broad bean on her ring finger. ‘Sounds hell! Don’t you get horribly muddy going out to dinner and the theatre? Or to the shops?’

‘We don’t have restaurants apart from the one in the hotel. There are a couple of cafés.’ She grinned. ‘No theatres at all. We get the odd liner going aground, and container ships flinging their cargo at us when they’re shipwrecked. Other than that there’s no entertainment—unless you count the activities of the seabirds and tourists and the odd sing-song in somebody’s house.’ Apparently Louise didn’t. Trish giggled at the woman’s appalled expression and didn’t spare her. ‘There aren’t any shops, but we have a really nice post office,’ she said in proud yokel style.

‘No...shops!’ gasped Louise, clearly incapable of imagining life without them.

On the periphery of her vision, Trish could see that Adam was looking at her over the heads of the chattering blondes—and that he was vastly amused. It felt like old times for a moment. They’d enjoyed many a laugh together Trish’s heart started an uncomfortable tattoo against her ribs.

Knowing she had to get used to Adam’s future wife, she tried hard to remain just a hick guest who wished them both well. ‘Bryher has no space for that kind of thing, Louise. It can’t even support a doctor or a pub or a school. We grow our own food or get it from the main island—St Mary’s—or have it shipped in from the mainland, so we need to be highly organised. We go in for mail order a lot—’

‘Yes. So I see.’ There was a meaningful pause while Louise scanned Trish’s clearly undesirable dress which shrieked its catalogue origins. ‘It sounds like the back of beyond! Adam and I eat out every night. We’d die of boredom on your island! You’d loathe it, wouldn’t you, darling?’ she said, appealing to the newly released Adam, who was deftly removing lipstick smears with a handkerchief from his hard-cut jaw and, Trish noted indignantly, across his mouth! ‘It’s such a primitive place, where Trish lives!’

Trish felt flattened, her whole way of life summarily dismissed by the woman Adam loved. While Louise began to scrub Adam’s cheeks fussily, Trish struggled with a nagging little voice inside her head which was questioning the wisdom of his choice of partner. He was a sophisticated city man, she reminded herself, a dominant male who was passionately involved in computer technology. He too would hate her simple life.

Miserably, she stared at her crippling shoes, phrases about megabytes and function keys being flung about over her head and adding to her sense of alienation. She should never have come.

‘Island life has its attractions for certain people,’ Adam said, being polite. There was a hard edge of irritation in his voice, though. He was probably longing to chat about gigabytes instead, she thought forlornly.

Louise reclaimed her prize, slipping an elegant, creamy bare arm around Adam’s waist in almost a defensively possessive gesture. As if, mused Trish, she was marking her territory. Trish went pale beneath her tan. Had Adam indulged in pillow confessions with his fiancée, listing all the women who’d made a pass at him?

‘I know so much about you,’ confided Louise in a pussycat purr.

Trish’s eyes were as round as they could be. She felt Adam’s hot-chocolate gaze melting into her flesh. Combined with the guilt, the heat and the noise, it made her head swim

‘Five-nine, eight stone ten, twenty-two, passion for tea bread, chicken-rearing and weepy films?’ she hazarded, playing the careless, guileless cookie.

‘No!’ replied Louise gaily, relaxing as she was meant to. ‘How you two met. Something about your leaving school at sixteen and staying at Adam’s house in Cornwall, because he and his first wife let out rooms to students.’ The silk-tongued Louise looked expectant and Trish realised she ought to say something.

‘I stayed two years,’ was all she could come up with. Then she felt her cheeks go pink because she’d reminded Adam of the reason she’d left. She was aware that he had stiffened and the pall of silence hung between them accusingly.

Louise seemed impervious to the strained atmosphere and was smugly playing with Adam’s signet ring, turning It this way and that to admire the plain gold band and entwined initials. ‘I forget what you were studying,’ she said. ‘Which university did you go to?’

‘I didn’t mention university—’ Adam began irritably, stuffing his hand in his pocket.

‘Nothing so grand!’ Trish could fight her own battles. In her own way. ‘I don’t have your brains.’ She was pleased at Louise’s satisfied little smile.

‘I’m sure I told you. Trish came to the mainland for a hotel and catering course in Truro,’ Adam said curtly.

Louise smiled at Trish, somehow managing not to disturb the serenity of her face. ‘You and Petra must be virtually the same age.’

‘She’s a year older than me,’ Trish agreed. ‘We found we had the same sense of humour and we’ve been friends ever since.’ Trish looked about wildly for Petra to rescue her. A friend in need was a friend right here!

‘That makes you only a teeny bit older than Adam and Christine’s son,’ Louise said meaningfully.

Trish knew what she was doing. The pussycat was unsheathing her claws. Louise suspected a take-over bid and was making sure they all knew the situation Adam’s son Stephen was nineteen. The message was clear: Keep off this man of mine. Adam is almost twice your age

It amazed her that Louise bothered to get her claws out at all A polyester mouse from a remote island with nowhere to buy sushi or Ralph Lauren was hardly going to turn Adam’s head!

Demurely, she nodded. In the absence of such a possibility, she could at least turn the conversation instead. ‘Is Stephen here?’ she asked politely.

Even he, her old adversary and Prince Pain in the Neck, would be a welcome sight at this moment. She needed an excuse to get away from this ego-destroying conversation.

‘Leeds University. Studying medicine,’ said Adam shortly.

‘Brainy.’ Trish looked suitably impressed.

‘You nursed, didn’t you—in the hospice where Adam’s wife was?’ Louise persisted.

Adam’s tension increased but Trish giggled at the unlikely scenario. ‘Me? No! I earned money evenings and weekends working in the kitchens as a skivvy, dropping pans of spaghetti, knocking the chef’s hat into the cream of mushroom soup—’

‘And kept my wife and everyone else in the hospice in gales of laughter, recounting your mishaps,’ Adam said softly. ‘You made the last months of Christine’s life there bearable.’

There was a deep gratitude in his tone. Louise’s green eyes became strangely washed out. Trish realised that Petra was right; Adam’s fiancée had heard too much too often about Trish Pearce

‘Nice to have a cheerful little friend of Petra’s around,’ said Louise patronisingly. Her voice wobbled, reducing the impact of the cutting remark.

Trish shifted uncomfortably, wobbled too, on Petra’s diabolical heels, and found herself lurching sideways. Adam grabbed her. Their eyes met. Blazed. Lit fires.

Glittering ebony. Searing sapphire.

No, she thought desperately, wishing the world would level itself out again. She was reading his message incorrectly. He was probably warning her not to rock any boats, not to mention what had happened between them.

‘Nearly became intimate with the carpet then!’ she cried merrily. ‘I’ve got to take these shoes off before I break an ankle or get a nosebleed from the altitude!’

Reaching down, she yanked off the stilted shoes and straightened up again with them in her hands.

Louise looked startled at such wanton behaviour as Trish waved them in triumph ‘You can’t go barefoot here!’ she cried in horror, as if it were a social sacrilege.