A Reason For Marriage. PENNY JORDAN

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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘JAMIE, it’s great to have you here. We were so pleased that you could come. I hardly ever get to see you these days. You’re looking tired though, Uncle Mark says you work very hard.’

      A brief smile curled Jamie’s lip-glossed mouth as her cousin mentioned her stepfather. She had been lucky there, she acknowledged mentally; more than lucky when she listened to other people’s stories of their parents’ second marriages.

      Of course the fact that her own father had died before she was two probably had something to do with the fact that she had accepted Mark so readily; that and the fact that he had been as ready to love her as his daughter as she had him as her father.

      ‘He exaggerates, Beth,’ Jamie told her cousin, lifting her eyes from the second coat of lacquer she was applying to her nails.

      Her cousin’s invitation to spend the weekend with her and her husband in their Bristol home had coincided with a gap in her work schedules. But now that she was here… She stifled the sense of unease that had been growing in her ever since her arrival just after lunch.

      ‘Tell me about my goddaughter,’ she instructed her cousin. ‘It’s been almost six months since I last saw her.’

      ‘And whose fault is that?’ Beth challenged indignantly ‘We went to Queensmeade for Christmas. Why weren’t you there, Jamie? Your mother was bitterly disappointed.’

      Guilt momentarily chased the warning coolness from her eyes as Jamie raised her head to look at her cousin.

      ‘Business, I’m afraid. I had hoped to be there, but I was offered a contract in New York I just couldn’t pass up.’

      Listening to the sound of her own voice, distant and faintly aloof, Jamie had a momentary desire to break into hysterical laughter at the falsity of the image she was deliberately projecting, but she had hidden behind it for so long now that it was almost part of her.

      There wasn’t one member of the family now who didn’t look at her and see the successful polished businesswoman she had made herself become. Glancing down at her long lacquered nails, she checked a faint sigh as she looked back to the tomboy she had once been, running wild in the large grounds of Queensmeade. But it was over ten years now since she had been that girl, and between her and the woman she now was there was a chasm that nothing could bridge—and that was the way she wanted it.

      ‘You can become re-acquainted with my daughter tomorrow,’ Beth told her firmly, refusing to be sidetracked. ‘I want to hear about you. Uncle Mark is terribly proud of you, Jamie; more proud than he is of Jake, I sometimes think. I read that article about you in Homes and Gardens the other week, the photographs of the rooms you’d done were fantastic.’

      The feature in question had been a good one and had resulted in a small avalanche of extra business for her small decorating business, Jamie reflected.

      The old paint finishes and manner of decorating were becoming more and more popular, and she had never been sorry that she had decided to switch from the more traditional interior-designer career she had planned for herself to what she considered the exciting challenge of learning and improving on the traditional techniques of marbling, graining, dragging and all the other styles of paint decor which were now so fashionable.

      ‘Whilst you’re here I think I shall have to pick your brains about this place,’ Beth continued wryly. ‘We were full of plans when we moved in, but Richard’s been so busy that we haven’t been able to do so much as buy a roll of wallpaper.’

      Richard, Beth’s solidly placid husband, had recently decided to break from his company and set up in business on his own, and knowing the problems that could be involved Jamie could well understand that decorating would be the last item on his list of priorities.

      ‘We’ll go through the house together tomorrow,’ she promised her cousin, smiling when she saw her pleased expression.

      ‘I envy you,’ the younger girl said with a faint sigh. ‘You always look so glamorous.’

      Shrugging fine-boned shoulders Jamie told her carelessly, ‘It’s just a façade, Beth, that’s all; a necessary part of my business to project a glossy, expensive image, but I haven’t changed, you know.’

      Lifting blue eyes to her cousin’s darker, almost violet ones, Beth said seriously,

      ‘No, I know you haven’t, Jamie. It’s a long time since you’ve been to Queensmeade, isn’t it?’

      Catching the faint note of censure in her cousin’s voice, Jamie carefully blanked out every emotion from her voice.

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