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'Maybe,' he acknowledged tautly, his fingers drumming an angry tattoo on the steering-wheel. 'But I want you, and Norman doesn't—not in the sense I mean. And, like it or not, you want me, so why the Victorian scruples? In any case, all Norman is to you is a father figure. Think about it.'
He started the engine and drew the Ferrari back on the road, seemingly unaware of her now, of her shocked reaction to his declared intent to have an affair with her. And that, more than anything else, ignited an unreasoning anger in her.
How dared he blithely assume she was like all the other women who had been willing to share his bed for brief periods of time! How dared he! He might accuse her of having Victorian morals, and maybe she had, but she just wasn't hard enough, sophisticated enough, to take casual sex in her stride, to shrug and walk away when the footloose loner re-emerged, when he tired of her and moved on to seek fresh challenges, new conquests.
It was fully dark when they reached The Laurels. Luke entered ahead of her, anger riding him still.
'Break with him. Tonight,' he commanded tersely, stalking to his room, leaving those few words hanging in the air like a threat.
A hot denial gathered in her throat and she longed to scramble after his lordly, retreating figure and scream that no way would she do a single thing he commanded her to, because she was her own woman, always would be, and she certainly wasn't his!
But a brawl like that would only alert the others to his outrageous behaviour and make hers sound as bad. Better to swallow her ire, her need to retaliate, and simply ignore him!
Swallowing her rage, she walked slowly to Norman's room. She could hear the unmistakable sounds of a Western clear through the door.
Tonight she would break their engagement, but not because Luke had told her to. She had to do it for her own sake, and for Norman's. Almost regretfully, she recognised the change in herself that made marriage to Norman no longer possible.
Luke had taught her that she was capable of passion. Luke wa
s wrong for her, of course; she had no intention of gratifying his whim for a short-term affair. But one day the right man for her might come along and then, she knew, she would be capable of a deep and enduring love. So she would break their engagement and she knew, without a doubt, that her only emotion in the aftermath would be one of relief. Knew, too, that Norman would not be hurt. Maybe his pride would suffer a little to begin with, but even that might remain untouched because his emotions had never been involved, either.
She pushed open the door, the retort of rifles, the drumming of hoofbeats, which issued from the set drowning out the sound of her entry.
Norman and Joan were absorbed, her armchair pulled up at his bedside, a box of chocolates on the counterpane between them. They looked the archetypal middle-aged couple, contented and comfortable with each other, the knowledge of the other like the knowledge of self. And in that moment, before her presence was noted, Annie prayed that Norman would eventually see where his best hope of companionship and undemanding happiness lay. Joan would make him a far better wife than she could ever have done herself.
She moved, caught their attention, saw Norman register surprise—nothing more—and recognised something hostile in Joan's eyes before she got up and lowered the sound.
'We didn't expect you.' Norman sounded almost annoyed and Annie, smiling politely, perched on the end of his bed.
'I should have phoned, I'm sorry. Anyway, how's the back?'
'Improving slowly.' He smiled at her then.
Joan, though, rushing around collecting their used coffee-cups, put in, 'Have you and Luke eaten? If you'd bothered to let us know when to expect you, I could have had something ready.'
'Not since lunch,' Annie told her. She wasn't particularly hungry herself, but Luke might be, though why that should bother her she didn't stop to analyse. 'I'll fix something for him, you carry on watching your film.'
'Certainly not.' Joan sounded huffy and Annie shrugged. If Joan wanted to play the martyr then there was little she could do about it.
'I'll have a quick wash,' Annie excused herself. 'Then I'd like a word with you, Norman.' Pushing herself off the bed, she made for the door, but Joan's voice stopped her.
'Your mother phoned, by the way.'
'Willa?' Annie went very still, her hand frozen on the doorknob. Was her mother straining at the bit to take a look at the man little Annie had caught herself? If so, she thought drily, she was too late.
In any case, Norman was one of the few men around who would be impervious to Willa's wiles. And was that, she thought with a flash of bitter insight, why she had agreed to marry him in the first place?
The idea shook her, made her look at herself in a new and unfavourable light, even as Joan said, turning Annie's preconceptions upside down, 'She left a message. She wants you to go to her. She's in Capri—at her villa, she said.'
'Did she say why?' Annie's brow furrowed. Her mother had never really wanted her around. From her teens she had been pushed well into the background of the famous star's life because having a grown-up daughter made her less youthful in the eyes of her admirers. There had to be something drastically wrong to make Willa need her.
'No.' Joan was plumping Norman's pillows, smoothing the counterpane. 'No, she didn't. But she sounded distraught. I think you should go.'
Only because it suits you to have me out of the way, Annie decided cynically. But after this evening Joan would no longer see her as a rival.
'I think I should go, too.' She gave Norman an enquiring look. After all, he was still her employer and could claim her time until she'd worked out her notice.
'Yes, you must,' he agreed readily. 'Take all the time you need.' He didn't seem perturbed by the thought of her absence—in her capacity either as his research assistant or as his fiancée. 'I shall be confined to the house for what could conceivably turn out to be weeks, and the new project's postponed, of course. How is the Professor, anyway?'
