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‘A…’
‘Our local Lothario,’ Kyle interrupted before she could explain. ‘I made the mistake of warning Heather against him. I should have remembered that any advice from me was likely to have the opposite effect to that intended.’
‘Oh, Heather, do you think you’re being wise?’ her mother reproached her anxiously. ‘If Kyle is right about this young man…’
‘I’m meeting him for a drink, Mum, that’s all.’ Over her mother’s head, Heather glowered at her persecutor. Kyle was enjoying this, damn him! Just for a moment she longed to rip the mask of illusion from her mother’s eyes and tell her exactly how Kyle himself had treated her, but the temptation faded just as quickly as it had come, leaving her feeling weak and shaky. Why was it that Kyle had this ability to push her far, far beyond the limits of sanity and into a dangerous mood of reckless intensity?
‘David seemed a perfectly respectable young man to me,’ she challenged, glaring at Kyle. ‘His mother is rather overpowering, mind you.’
‘His mother? You’ve met her?’
‘Yes, she came round the other morning. They’re farmers, and Kyle’s closest neighbours.’
‘And Mama Hartley is as protective of her one and only as a ewe with one lamb,’ Kyle interrupted derisively. ‘His wife, when he’s allowed to marry, will be hand-picked by Mama, but in the mean time she turns a blind eye while he amuses himself with anyone stupid or innocent enough not to see through him.’
A sharp cough from her father brought Heather back to reality. She bit her lip, resenting Kyle for pushing her into such an argumentative frame of mind. Her father should be her main concern at the moment, and not her relationship with Kyle.
They left half an hour later. The next time she saw her parents would be when she and Kyle collected them to drive them to the airport. She and Kyle had seen her father’s specialist before leaving the hospital, and he had assured them that her father was perfectly able to undergo the flight.
‘A few weeks relaxing in a pleasant climate will do far more to help him recuperate than being cooped up in a hospital room. You’ve taken the sensible precaution of hiring a nurse to travel with him, and she’ll see him safely installed in your villa. We’ve made arrangements with the local hospital, and a local doctor will call and check on him every day.
Until that moment, Heather hadn’t known that Kyle had hired a nurse to accompany her parents on the flight.
She looked up at him now, as he drove the Jaguar back towards his home.
Her words of thanks sounded stilted even to her own ears, her throat felt sore and rough, taut with resentment because yet again he had done something selfless and thoughtful, and in doing so had destroyed the image of him she was trying so hard to build up. She wanted to view him in the worst possible light. She needed to because that was the only way…
Her thoughts skidded to a standstill as she refused to contemplate where they were leading.
‘Heather, cancel your date with Hartley tonight.’
The abrupt request, coming so close on the heels of a realisation she wasn’t yet ready to accept, made her tense and reject his suggestion without even considering it.
‘I don’t interfere in your personal life, Kyle,’ she snapped acidly. ‘I’m not seventeen any more, you know. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with any unwanted advances.’
‘Are you?’
She opened her mouth, a vigorous confirmation already on her lips and then closed it again. If she answered him as she wished to, mightn’t he then assume that she had actually wanted him to make love to her?
The frustration of her dilemma showed in her eyes, and Kyle, who was watching her, suppressed the bitter words clamouring for utterance. He had forgotten how stubborn she could be, how stubborn and how proud. It was useless to wish that time could roll back and that one could re-live the past in order to wipe out its mistakes.
Heather hated and resented him. He should be able to accept that by now. Instead he… Impatient with both himself and the irony of his feelings, he compressed his mouth, and Heather, catching sight of that hardening of his facial bones, told herself fiercely that she was glad that she hadn’t betrayed herself to him; glad that they were still enemies.
It was only later, when she was getting ready for her date with David, that she questioned what it was she feared she might betray, but she brushed to one side the encroaching little voice that asked the question, dismissing it as too intrusive and demanding.
David arrived just as she went downstairs. She had dressed casually for their date, in a softly gathered russet-coloured wool skirt with a toning sweater worn over a cream silk blouse.
‘Very country,’ Kyle drawled when he saw her. ‘Who is it you’re hoping to impress, David or his mother?’
His derision stung, and she hurried past him, not trusting herself to make any response. No doubt he preferred women dressed in designer silks and lace, in clothes that emphasised the perfection of bodies honed by hours of pampering. She wasn’t that sort of woman, and she never would be.
The pleased glance of approval that David gave her soothed her lacerated senses. His solicitous care as he helped her into his Land Rover made her think that Kyle must have been exaggerating in describing his attitude towards the female sex.
The pub was several miles away, isolated and exposed to the worst of the winter weather, but nevertheless it seemed well patronized, to judge from the full car park.
Several people greeted David as they walked in, most of the greetings coming from a group by the bar.
As David introduced her, Heather was conscious of several overt smirks from one or two of the other men present. Instinctively, she disliked this male gathering and its almost schoolboy humour, although she tried to temper her rejection of it by reminding herself that her upbringing and life had been such that she wasn’t used to this particular aspect of the male psyche. Her father and mother rarely went out socially without one another, and not having had any siblings, and being rather a quiet and withdrawn sort of child, she had never been drawn into the sort of environment where she might have witnessed this type of male ‘ganging up’.
