The Final Seduction. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ you?’ He looked at first surprised and then very slightly perplexed, as if she were being hysterical. ‘Hating you would imply that you have some significance in my life, Shelley. And you don’t. None at all. Not any more. Duke!’ The dog came loping over. ‘Come on, time to go.’

      And he strode off without a word, or even a glance of farewell. Just like that.

      She watched him walking away from her across the pebbles and a great tidal wave of sadness rocked her, overwhelming her with its force. Because she had lost everything that once existed between her and Drew, and that was the brutal reality.

      The water on the western side of the shore was a deeper shade of blue than the washed-out sky and in his navy sweater and faded jeans Drew seemed to blur and blend into the landscape itself. Shelley watched him and felt a sudden wrench as she remembered the way he had been able to make her laugh.

      Remembered the way he had always looked at her—as though someone had just given him a wonderful present. Compare that, she thought, as she swallowed back the memories, with the icy disapproval she had seen on his face just now.

      They had been friends, she realised—really good friends. And she had thrown it all away. With one irrevocable gesture she had sacrificed that friendship and everything that went with it.

      She had made her choices willingly—no one had held a gun to her head. But the reality of what those choices had done to her life invaded Shelley’s memory like a dark, stormy cloud.

       CHAPTER THREE

      SHELLEY had known Drew Glover for as long as she remembered, and she must have known him before that as well.

      They had grown up next door to each other in the small, boxy houses which were clustered on the poorer side of Milmouth—a million light years away from the imposing Edwardian villas which overlooked the sea on the western side of the village. She was almost eight years younger than him, and the same age as his youngest sister, Jennie.

      Shelley had been brought to Milmouth as a baby, an unsettled, grizzly child whose nature had been forged by uncertainty and insecurity. According to her mother, Drew would bend and pick up the toys she hurled out of her pram and solemnly hand them back to her. But then he had two younger sisters of his own.

      ‘He was such a sweet-natured boy,’ Veronica Turner had told her daughter with a beaming smile, the day Shelley and Drew decided to get married. ‘And he still is.’

      Shelley remembered his curiosity. His protectiveness. He had been the first person who had ever stood up for her—when he overheard one of the other children taunting her.

      ‘So why haven’t you got a father, Shelley Turner?’

      She had been about seven at the time, an age when she’d desperately wanted to be like everyone else. And Milmouth was so small and provincial. Everyone else had two parents.

      Her face had started working and her mouth had wobbled and she didn’t know what she would have answered when Drew had appeared from out of nowhere—tall and tough and teenaged—and had announced scornfully, ‘Of course she’s got a father! Everyone’s got a father—hers just doesn’t live with her, that’s all.’

      ‘Where does he live, then?’ one of the others had been bold enough to ask.

      Even now Shelley remembered looking into Drew’s eyes—so deep and blue and encouraging—and knowing that she should never be ashamed of the truth. If only she had remembered that…‘He lives in America,’ she’d told the child steadily. ‘He’s a dentist.’

      These two impressive facts had kept the other children quiet for a while, but Shelley had remained an outsider. Veronica Turner had taught her daughter to keep her head down and not make waves. Not to invite people back to the house unless she was really certain that she liked them, and, more importantly, that they liked her. It was better to be considered cold than to risk rejection.

      But then, Shelley’s mother had known all about rejection. It was a force that had shaped her whole life—a dark, shameful secret she’d kept hidden away. Only Drew knew the full story and Shelley still remembered the day she had told him.

      She had been counting cars, sitting on a low wall which separated their little group of houses from the big main road which brought all the holiday-makers into Milmouth during the summer months.

      A red car had whizzed by and Shelley had stuck her tongue out between her lips and wrote it down in her notebook.

      Drew had been on his way home from the boatyard, where he worked after school, drinking from a can of cola. He’d peered over her shoulder as he passed, then paused.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      Shelley shrugged. ‘Counting cars.’

      He grinned. ‘Oh? Make a habit of that, do you?’

      ‘It’s for my maths,’ she explained. ‘Averages and probability.’

      He pulled a face and came to perch beside her. ‘Who’s winning?’

      ‘Blue,’ she said. ‘I’ve counted eleven, so far.’

      ‘Oh.’ He offered her the can. ‘Fancy a slug?’

      Shelley shook her head. Money was tight in the Turner household. Never take what you can’t repay—her mother had drummed that in to her time and time again. ‘No, thanks.’

      He stared at her serious little profile. ‘Why do you never see your father?’ he asked suddenly.

      Shelley shrugged. If it had been anyone other than Drew who had asked it, she might have told them to mind their own business. But Drew was Drew.

      ‘I saw him once,’ she explained. ‘When I was a baby.’

      ‘Just the once?’

      ‘That’s right. I was three weeks old.’

      ‘And didn’t he want to see you again?’

      Shelley blinked furiously as she ticked off another black car in her column. ‘That’s seven black,’ she gulped.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said instantly. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

      She shook her head. ‘It’s all right for you!’ she said, her voice wobbling. ‘You’ve got a mother and a father, and two sisters!’

      He laughed cynically. ‘Oh, yeah—it’s all right for me! When there are five of us crammed into a house you can’t swing a cat in. And my parents are always arguing. So are my sisters! I’ll tell you something, Shelley—sometimes I just want to smash my way out of there and never come back!’ His blue gaze was piercing. ‘Do you really think that everyone’s life is so perfect except your own?’

      Shelley shook her head in amazement. Drew felt like that inside? ‘Of course I don’t!’

      ‘I won’t ask you about your father again,’ he told her gently. ‘It isn’t important.’

      But СКАЧАТЬ