Wife in the Making. Lindsay Armstrong

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СКАЧАТЬ in his hands, and carefully put it down on her bedside table. And he strolled over to the only chair and sank down into it.

      ‘The thing is,’ he said, picking up his own glass and gazing at it reflectively, ‘one of the problems I have is that you remind me of someone I don’t particularly want to be reminded of. But…’

      He paused and looked up at last. ‘The far greater part of it is—you’re too good to be true, Fleur. The most human thing I’ve seen you do is pour food and drink all over me. It’s,’ his lips twisted ruefully, ‘unnerving to witness such a gorgeous twenty-three-year-old girl who is also so reserved and contained and buttoned up and—solitary.’

      He looked around and continued, ‘There’s nothing here, no photos, mementoes, nothing—apart from some books. By the way, I have quite a library in my bungalow. Please feel free to help yourself.’

      Fleur shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Am I buttoned up with Tom?’ she protested after a moment.

      ‘No. But that’s different—kids are easier to relate to.’

      She was silent for a long time, then she said composedly, ‘OK, I’m trying out a new kind of life. I woke up one day and discovered I was going down a road I didn’t like, so,’ she shrugged, ‘I opted out. Would I be right in thinking you yourself might have opted out, Bryn?’

      He smiled faintly. ‘Touché. On the other hand, has that steel-trap mind of yours perceived a difference between us? For example, I may have opted out of the rat race but I haven’t cut myself off from people.’

      Fleur raised her eyebrows. ‘I had noticed that—I’m not blind,’ she said wryly. ‘A mind like a steel trap, though? Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?’

      ‘No,’ he replied flatly. ‘Otherwise I’d have broken you down a lot sooner, Ms Millar. Three and a half weeks of putting up with me at my worst, with such composure, definitely denotes a steely mind.’

      Fleur’s lips parted and her eyes widened.

      ‘Which is not to say,’ he mused, ‘that I did actually break you down, not in the way I anticipated anyway. No one,’ he emphasized, ‘has ever thrown a drink in my face let alone poured raspberries and cream all over me. In fact,’ he looked briefly gloomy, ‘the honours go to you, Fleur, which is a little demoralizing, to be honest.’

      Fleur struggled through several emotions then started to smile reluctantly.

      ‘That’s better,’ he murmured and sipped his coffee.

      ‘It’s not really,’ she denied. ‘I only found it amusing that you’ve managed to escape that fate for so long, to be honest. Otherwise, you’ve admitted to being highly manipulative if nothing else.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘What I don’t understand is why you care one way or the other?’

      He took another sip and said at length, ‘In another life I was a journalist. Old habits, such as digging out the truth of things, die hard, I guess. So, going to tell me why you’ve decided there should be no more men in your life, Fleur?’

      Fortunately Fleur had put her coffee glass down on the bedside table, otherwise the sheer accuracy of this observation might have seen her spill it. Even so, her restless movement didn’t escape him.

      ‘You don’t need to be a genius to see that,’ he said. ‘Julene is of the opinion you got your heart broken and Eric thinks it might have happened a couple of times. Mind you, while they needed a couple of weeks to work it out, I did spot it straight away,’ he said modestly.

      Fleur sat up straighter and said in a strangled voice, ‘You…you’ve all discussed it? Behind my back!’

      He shrugged. ‘Human nature.’

      ‘No…I… Darn it, it’s unforgivable…and you…’ She could only glare at him.

      He shrugged again. ‘You think that because of how much you have cut yourself off from the rest of the world. But nothing on earth would have stopped Julene having a good gossip about you, me included.’

      ‘You didn’t have to participate, though,’ she said through her teeth.

      He smiled crookedly. ‘I didn’t contribute that much. In fact it came up when Eric told me I was being extremely unkind to you.’

      ‘What a pity you don’t take more notice of Eric,’ she shot back.

      Bryn lay back in his chair. ‘I do. Well, sometimes. Eric and I go way back and, on the whole, I’ve found his advice to be wise—I just wasn’t in the mood to take it this time.’

      Fleur stared at him incredulously, trying to sort through it all, then she closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘It’s like being in a madhouse,’ she said.

      ‘On the other hand, we just might be able to help.’

      Her lashes lifted and a sudden thought came to her. ‘Who do I remind you of? What part does that play in it all?’ she asked slowly.

      He finished his coffee and stood up. ‘Oh, that was only fleeting and not really important. What is important, Fleur,’ he paused and looked at her with a mixture of sympathy and seriousness—with absolutely no hint of that electric tension that had flowed between them before—and went on, ‘is that you can talk to us. You really don’t have to soldier on alone. But that’s enough for one night—I’ll leave you to finish your coffee in peace. Goodnight!’

      Fleur listened to him walking down the veranda steps, then there was silence as the beach swallowed up his footsteps. She blinked several times, lay flat then sat up, shaking her head, and reached for her coffee with her mind in turmoil. How had she not realized that she came across as so obviously isolated and damaged? To the extent that people would gossip about it behind her back? Apart from Bryn’s hostility to cope with, she’d thought she’d appeared tranquil and even enjoying her sojourn at Clam Cove—apart from him, she had been, damn it!

      So was it another frustrating example of give a girl a pretty face and figure—and you only acquired those because of your genes—and, without a constant supply of men dancing attendance, people immediately assumed there was some trauma?

      Well, there was, she thought ruefully, but whose business was it but her own?

      She drained her glass and stood up to pace around her bungalow for a while. On the other hand, could she have landed amongst a bunch of fruit loops? And why did she have this conviction, despite Bryn’s disclaimer about her reminding him of someone not being important, it was much more of a key to things than he’d been prepared to admit?

      She stopped abruptly in the middle of the cabin as her conversation with Julene just that morning came back to her. What was it Julene had said—‘You could have knocked us over with a feather when he produced you…’ Yes, her exact words. Did this mean Julene and Eric knew who she reminded Bryn of? And to produce such a hostile reaction in him from the first moment they met—it had to be another woman in his life, she reasoned, a woman who had left her mark most unhappily on him…

      Right on cue Tom’s little face floated into her mind. Tom, whose mother was never mentioned, which in itself meant there had to be trauma, for whatever reason, associated with her memory. Was that what she’d walked into? Reminding a man of the mother of his child when he’d much prefer to СКАЧАТЬ