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‘David, I came here this afternoon because I wanted to talk to you,’ she said quietly. ‘Jago told me yesterday that you’d tried to prevent us from getting the Harmer contract.’
‘And you believed him, of course,’ David said bitterly. ‘Has he managed to get you into his bed yet?’ The crudity of his words held Storm silent with shock, and her face drained of colour.
‘No, of course he hasn’t,’ she told him angrily. ‘Surely you don’t think I would do something like that?’
‘He’s made it pretty clear hat he wants from you,’ David told her sulkily, ‘and what he wants he usually gets.’
David was jealous of Jago, Storm admitted uneasily, but the jealousy had nothing to do with her. It went far deeper than that, and a fear that could not be reasoned away rose up inside her.
‘David, you didn’t do all those things, did you?’ she asked shakily. ‘You didn’t tell Mr Harmer that we were going bankrupt, or.…’
‘What does it matter if I did?’ David asked bitterly. ‘It’s no more than Marsh deserves. The station was mine until he came along. The I.B.A. had no right to put him in over my head, and—yes, all right,’ he said fiercely, ‘I wanted to make things difficult for him, to give him a taste of the problems I’d had to face. When you told me about the Harmer campaign it seemed the ideal starting point…’
She must not be sick, Storm thought, oppressed by the atmosphere of the small room and the man seated opposite her, who had suddenly become a stranger.
‘And the bookshop?’ she asked him faintly.
He had the grace to look faintly ashamed. ‘There isn’t one, but I had to have some reason for leaving.’
‘So that you and Sam Townley could make a bid to take over the franchise when it comes up next year?’
‘Why the hell shouldn’t we?’ David asked defiantly, shattering Storm’s frail hope that there could still be some reasonable explanation of what had happened.
‘Oh, David!’ she exclaimed unhappily. ‘Sam Townley, of all people…’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Sam,’ David said defensively. ‘Angie’s sure she can persuade him…’
‘Angie?’ Storm stared at him. Had Jago been doing more than just baiting her when he said that David would prefer to take Angie to bed than her? One look at his face told her all she needed to know. Pain twisted inside her like a knife.
‘So even that wasn’t real,’ she said bitterly. ‘You never actually wanted me, did you, David? You didn’t love me as I thought…’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m fond of you, Storm, and always have been, but you can’t pretend we ever set the world alight.’ His mouth twisted wryly. ‘I’ll admit when we first met I used to wonder what you’d be like in bed, but when I got to know you I realised it just wasn’t on.’
‘And does Angie set the world alight for you?’ Storm asked savagely, biting her lip when she saw the colour filling his thin face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I must go…’
‘You do understand, don’t you, Storm?’ he pleaded with her at the door. ‘I had no choice, I had to make Marsh see that he couldn’t walk all over me, and as for the rest—well, it’s not my fault if I can’t get excited about you. You never gave me any encouragement, and…’
‘It isn’t your fault, David,’ Storm said quietly as she stepped outside.
She was grateful for the fact that she had parked the car down a side street from David’s house, because that gave her the opportunity to sit quietly in it until the shaking had gone.
She couldn’t cry, it hurt too much for that. Even now she could hardly believe it. And the thing that hurt most, she acknowledged, was not that David didn’t love her—deep inside she had known that all along—but that he liked her so little that he could willingly have used her as a dupe. And a dupe was what she had been, there could be no mistake about that.
She didn’t go straight home. The empty house was something she felt unable to face in her present mood, and instead she drove for a while, letting her thoughts drift and her mind exhaust itself as she tried to rationalise what she had learned.
David had not deliberately tried to hurt her, she told herself, but the way he had talked about her had stripped away her defences.
He might not actually have accused her of being cold and unfeminine, she thought wryly, but he had left her in no doubt that that was what he considered she was. And yet she had responded readily enough to Jago. Too readily, she thought sombrely as she drove home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE evening stretched emptily ahead of her. She had intended to wash her hair and have a leisurely
bath before David picked her up, but now there seemed little point in going to all that trouble just to sit in front of the fire and watch television.
She found a book that her mother had been reading, but it failed to hold her attention and after a while she went upstairs to wash her hair, thinking that the occupation would keep her hands busy if not her mind.
Even now she was finding it hard to take it in. She had just finished rinsing her hair when she heard the doorbell, and thinking it must be David come to explain that it was all a misunderstanding she flew downstairs and opened the door.
