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; ‘He’s fine,’ she assured him, pushing away from him. ‘How…how was your flight?’
‘Fine.’ He brushed her polite query aside impatiently. ‘Then what the hell is wrong? You looked so white, I thought you were about to pass out.’
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Temper edged up under her voice. ‘I’ve always been pale-skinned.’
She dreaded him pressing her any further. How on earth could she explain to him, or to anyone, in fact, that just for a moment as she’d looked at him, she had seen not the man she disliked and resented but instead a man whom she could very easily have loved? A man who aroused within her sensations she had never experienced for anyone else, sensations that were alien to her, and yet at the same time strangely familiar, as though in some past life she had known such a strength of feeling, and as though, too, Kyle himself was part of that shadowy, dim past.
Sheer imagination, she told herself, scoffing at the fantasy of her thoughts, as she directed Kyle to where she had parked his car.
It was only when his luggage was stowed in the boot and they were both inside it that she realised he expected her to drive. In the soft interior light of the car his face looked shadowed and drawn. Probably the result of too many late nights with the husky-voiced woman she had heard over the phone.
He leaned back in his seat as she started the car, his head turned away from her, as though he wished to ignore her presence, and so, stubbornly, Heather refused to break the silence.
It started to snow again as they reached the motorway, and she automatically dropped her speed. She felt Kyle turn to look at her and shift restlessly in his seat, and half expected him to demand that she stop the car so that he could take over.
Instead, to her shock he said quietly, ‘You’re a good driver.’
‘For a woman, you mean?’ she taunted, trying to subdue the spurt of pleasure his words gave her.
‘No, that was not what I meant,’ he responded tersely. ‘Why is it that whenever I pay you a compliment, Heather, you throw it back in my face? Do you really detest me so much that you can’t even accept a few words of praise from me?’
Was that how she seemed to him? She heard the tiredness in his voice and suppressed a faint sigh. As a child, she had grown up wary of his quick, clever tongue, and so she had taught herself to be mistrustful of everything he said. Now it seemed that she had been wrong.
‘Seen much of Hartley, have you?’
She frowned and glanced at him, looking for signs of contempt, but his eyes were closed, his mouth a hard taut line.
‘No,’ she replied evenly, ‘although his mother did call round this morning.’
‘Ah…warn you off, did she? She’s very protective where her precious son is concerned.’
The bitterness in his voice was understandable, Heather acknowledged, especially in view of his own early childhood.
‘I think it was more a recce than a warning-off exercise,’ she told him good-humouredly. ‘I must admit I don’t envy the poor girl who will eventually become her daughter-in-law.’
‘Does that mean you don’t have any ambitions in that direction yourself?’
‘After one meeting? Come on, Kyle!’
‘And yet you seemed ready enough to leap to his defence,’ he retorted smoothly.
‘He was very kind to me,’ she told him shortly. ‘Kyle, is it true what you said about him having an illegitimate child?’
There was a hard silence and then he said coldly, ‘What are you trying to ask me Heather? If I lied?’
‘No. No, of course not. I know that you wouldn’t. It’s just that, sometimes, gossip can exaggerate.’
‘This wasn’t gossip. I know the girl concerned. She’s the daughter of some friends of mine. Only eighteen and barely out of school. Hartley deliberately encouraged her infatuation with him. The poor little fool thought he was going to marry her. Of course, he denies the whole thing, and she, poor kid, is left with a ruined reputation and a child she can’t bear to give up for adoption, when she’s barely more than a child herself.’
It was a pitiful story, although not particularly uncommon, and Heather’s tender heart ached for the other girl.
‘As she’s so young, perhaps it would be better for her if she moved away…had a fresh start.’
‘That’s what her parents would like her to do. They’ve offered to adopt and bring up her child, but the silly little idiot believes that he’s going to go back to her. She’s infatuated with him, as only an eighteen-year-old can be infatuated.’ He frowned and glanced thoughtfully at her. ‘You must have gone through that stage yourself?’
Had she? She must have done, but she couldn’t remember it. Her hatred of Kyle had taken up so much emotional space in her life that there hadn’t been any room left for anything else…or anyone else.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, frowning to herself. Had it really been like that? Had she really been so obsessed with Kyle that he had occupied all of her mental and emotional energy? Had resenting him really taken over so much of her life?
