A Daughter For Christmas. CATHY WILLIAMS

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СКАЧАТЬ to try and convince me that I met you there, you’d better try again. I’ve never seen you in my life before, and I never forget a face.’

      No, he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who ever forgot a face. Who ever forgot anything, come to that.

      Their food was served. It was a reprieve from trying to figure out just how she was going to tell her little tale, and Leigh gazed at it, weak with relief for the temporary distraction.

      Nicholas Kendall had a strong effect on her, though she didn’t quite know what it was. She assumed it was because he represented a type she had never encountered in her life before. Certainly, he was as far removed from her sister’s husband as to make you wonder whether they even belonged to the same species.

      Roy had been a simple, cheerful man, with the rounded frame of someone who enjoyed his food and drink a bit too much. She had always wondered, in fact, what her sister had ever seen in him. Physically, that was, because Jenny was everything to look at that she, Leigh, had never been. They had been the same height, but there the similarity had ended.

      Blonde as opposed to Titian, long, wavy hair as opposed to short and straight, a voluptuous body as opposed to the boyishly slender build which Leigh had long ago discovered did very little to bolster her attractiveness to the opposite sex. In the end she had simply accepted the truth that opposites attract.

      Now, though, it was something of a shock to be confronted by the man with whom her sister had had her fated one-night stand.

      ‘I’m still waiting to hear what you have to say, Miss Walker.’

      Leigh looked at him and eventually said in a low voice, ‘You’re quite right, Mr Kendall. We’ve never met before. But you did meet my sister.’ She paused in the face of the difficult task of persuading him of the veracity of the claim. Someone more ordinary might well have remembered the isolated incident with Jenny. This man was not ordinary, however. Would he remember one face, one night, eight years ago amid a sea of doubtless willing women?

      The eyes, focused on her, were sharper now, picking up clues and trying to fit the pieces together.

      ‘Jennifer Stewart,’ Leigh said in a low voice. ‘She looked nothing like me. She was blonde, very extrovert. She was in Majorca for a week, mixing business and pleasure. She had a contract to do the design work for a part of the hotel they were in the process of extending.’

      ‘I had to get out of England, away from Roy. I felt awful, but I just had to think... I was mad, griefstricken

’ she had told Leigh in the hospital, her voice barely audible.

      Nicholas Kendall recognised her. Leigh could see it in his eyes. She didn’t know whether it had been the description or whether he remembered Jennifer because she had been there on business, but remember her he did. He stiffened very slightly. His eyes, which had been uninviting to begin with, now regarded her coldly, as though suspicious of whatever motive had brought her to this encounter. He was, she thought, waiting to shoot her down in flames.

      ‘Quite an eye-stopper

’ he said, looking at her and making comparisons.

      ‘Yes, she was.’ She looked him fully in the face. ‘Unlike me.’

      He didn’t deny it. ‘I remember her because she seemed driven at the time. A little too full of it. Too much laughter, too much chatter, too much drink. How is she?’

      It was a polite question. Jennifer had meant nothing to him. She was a quick gallop down memory lane. How ironic that a passing memory would now rise up from nowhere to alter everything in his life, whatever his reaction to her news might be.

      ‘She died in an automobile accident sixteen months ago,’ Leigh said abruptly. She toyed with the food in front of her, eating it half-heartedly and shoving the remainder around her plate the way Amy did with her vegetables.

      ‘You have my sympathy.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I still don’t understand what all this has to do with me, however.’

      ‘Mr Kendall,’ Leigh said slowly, putting down her knife and fork and looking ruefully at the half-finished plate of food. It was delicious food but her appetite had deserted her, if it had ever been there in the first place. ‘Are you married?’ Magazine and newspaper articles had made no mention of a wife, but who knew how these people operated? Fast-lane lives with open marriages.

      Thickly fringed green eyes narrowed on her. ‘Why do you ask?’

      ‘Are you?’

      ‘I am not.’

      Leigh released her breath. Well, that was one less issue that would have to be navigated. The Lord knew, there were enough obstacles, without that being one of them.

      ‘Just say what you have to say, Miss Walker. I’m getting very tired of playing these word games with you. I have no idea why you’re here and, frankly I’m beginning to regret my decision to meet you in the first place. You said in the letter that you had something to tell me. Well, tell me.’ He took another glance at his watch. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

      ‘You slept with my sister, Mr Kendall. One night...’

      He leaned forward and the black threat on his face made her draw back sharply. ‘Yes, I did, Miss Walker. Two consenting adults. If you’re going to try and blackmail me in any way whatsoever you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

      ‘I have no intention of blackmailing you, Mr Kendall.’ She stared at him with loathing. Just what sort of world did this man move in where blackmail was something that featured on the menu? ‘I’ve come here to break some rather...unexpeeted news. I’ve come to tell you that you’re a father. You have a seven-year-old daughter. Her name is Amy.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      ‘WHAT!’ The colour had drained from Nicholas Kendall’s face and his body was rigid.

      ‘I know that this must come as a shock to you—’ Leigh began, and he cut in swiftly, leaning forward, with his elbows on the table.

      ‘What the hell are you playing at? You breeze in here and have the bare-faced nerve to present me with the most deranged story I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and then you talk to me about shock. I have no idea what’s going on in that head of yours, but you must be certifiable if you think that you can try and hold a virtual stranger to ransom over some fabricated piece of nonsense.’

      Leigh couldn’t recall ever having felt so intimidated in her life before. His expression conveyed shock, disbelief and, now that his colour had returned, a terrible calm. She was reminded of the calm before a storm.

      ‘It’s not fabricated, Mr Kendall.’ She leaned forward and her voice was urgent. ‘Why should I waste my time, fabricating something like this? Do you think that I haven’t got better things to do with my time? I’m not playing at anything. Believe me when I tell you that the very last place I want to be right now is here, breaking this news to you.’

      ‘But you felt that you had to...’ His mouth twisted cynically and she flinched ‘You must have taken leave of your senses if you think that I’m going to fall for the oldest con trick СКАЧАТЬ