A Daughter For Christmas. CATHY WILLIAMS

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СКАЧАТЬ if all that is true, which I don’t for a minute concede it is, why have you only now come to me with this information? Why didn’t your sister tell me about the pregnancy? She knew my name, she could have tracked me down without a great deal of difficulty. I’m well known in financial circles.’

      ‘It’s a long story,’ Leigh replied nervously.

      ‘I’m all ears.’ He sat back, crossed his legs and regarded her with those bottomless green eyes. ‘I’m eager to know why you would suddenly decide that my paternal rights might count for something.’

      He might be sitting here, she thought, he might have told her that he was prepared to hear what she had to say, but she could tell from the look on his face that he was less prepared to believe what he might hear.

      ‘My sister was married at the time you met her,’ Leigh began slowly, and his eyebrows shot up.

      ‘Really? Well, she certainly kept quiet about that.’

      ‘She would have been wearing a wedding ring,’ Leigh pointed out, and he shrugged.

      ‘I don’t automatically look at a woman’s finger when she’s in the process of throwing herself at me.’

      ‘Oh, I see. You just take what’s on offer.’

      ‘Before you start questioning my morals, I’d advise you to look a little more closely at your sister’s, Miss Walker.’

      He made it sound as though Jenny had been nothing more than a common tramp, and Leigh clamped down on the temptation to launch into a vitriolic defence of her sister’s state of mind at the time.

      Jenny had been no tramp, she knew that She had thrown herself into her night of insanity with the abandon of someone trying to forget the present, drowning her sorrow in a single act whose repercussions she could never have foreseen.

      ‘Jenny had her reasons for her behaviour, Mr Kendall,’ she said coldly. ‘What were yours?’

      He didn’t like that His face darkened. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come here to debate my morals, Miss Walker, but if it’s of any interest to you I tried to get in touch with her the following morning, only to find that she had checked out.’

      ‘And what a blow that must have been to you.’

      ‘No one speaks to me like that!’

      ‘I can speak to you any way I please.’ She couldn’t, she knew, but wisdom was trailing very far behind a reckless desire to speak her mind, whatever the consequences. She refused to be cowed by his money and power.

      ‘I don’t fool around with married women.’

      Leigh shrugged, abandoning the impulse to give him a lecture on Men Of His Type. What was the point? He said that he didn’t fool around with married women. What was to be gained by debating the issue? Besides, maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he was loaded with moral virtue, maybe principles were coming out of his ears. If that were the case, then it was unfortunate for him that his looks seemed to tell a different story.

      ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘whatever. Your principles are your business and they have nothing to do with why I’m here.’ He looked as though he wanted to shake her into agreeing with him, and she ignored the look on his face. ‘Jenny was married at the time and...’ she scoured her brain for the right way of saying what she was about to say ’...things weren’t going too well. Or, rather, they were going very well, but—’

      ‘Perhaps you could get your facts straight...’

      ‘I would if you’d give me half a chance!’ She glared at him, pausing while George’s clone sidled towards their table and deposited a tray with percolated coffee, cups, saucers, sugar and milk.

      ‘She had just had some bad news,’ Leigh hissed, leaning forward and sloshing coffee and milk into her cup. Let him pour his own. If he found it so difficult to be civil to her she was damned if she was going to make an effort to show any civility towards him. This whole meeting was turning out to be a full-blown disaster, anyway.

      ‘Odd way to react to bad news, don’t you think?’ He poured his coffee—no milk—and sat back in the chair and regarded her coldly. ‘Leaving the country for a jaunt in a foreign hotel away from hearth and home and, now you tell me, husband.’

      ‘You don’t understand...’

      ‘If she was that blissfully married why didn’t she talk out with her husband whatever problems she was having? You haven’t exactly thought out this story logically, have you, Miss Walker? Or did you think that I’d fall for whatever you said to me, hook, line and sinker, with no questions asked?’

      Two bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks, and Leigh swallowed back the renewed temptation to storm out of the club.

      ‘Look, Mr Kendall,’ she said evenly, ‘I realise that you think yourself the world’s most eligible bachelor. You seem to think that no woman could possibly approach you unless her intentions were devious, which, incidentally, is a very sad state of affairs, but I assure you that I haven’t lain in bed, plotting and planning this meeting. I’m here because I’ve found myself in the position of having no other option.’

      ‘World’s most eligible bachelor...’ He linked his fingers together and a half-smile crossed his darkly cynical face, though not quite reaching his eyes which remained cool and shrewd. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ His eyes caught hers and held them fractionally too long for Leigh’s comfort.

      ‘No,’ she said politely, ‘I don’t think so either. Anyway, if I might be allowed to continue?’

      ‘Carry on.’

      ‘You have to understand that all of this...everything that I’m telling you now... I knew nothing about all this at the time. I only found out...’ She hated talking about Jenny, about the accident. At the time she had had to be brave for Amy’s sake, but the awful reality of it had been only a heartbeat away. Time made it easier to accept

but right now she felt that if she dwelt too hard on her sister’s death she would find herself giving in to the temptation to bawl her eyes out.

      She didn’t imagine that the man sitting opposite her would appreciate the outburst of emotion.

      ‘She and Roy—that was her husband—’

      ‘Who was also involved in this so-called accident—’

      ‘That’s right, and there’s nothing “so-called” about it.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘Does it matter?’

      ‘Was she your only sibling?’

      Leigh looked at him with frustration. Why wouldn’t he just let her finish her piece? Having jumped down her throat, why was he now dragging this information out of her? She didn’t like talking about it. In fact, she seldom did. She had wept at the funeral, but her thoughts she preferred to keep to herself. Circumstances had hardened her, forced her to become self-reliant.

      ‘Yes,’ СКАЧАТЬ