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Katie’s colouring, like her height, came from her father, but they shared the same fine bone-structure, the same delicacy of wrist and ankle. One thing she did envy Katie, though, was her height. Hazel hated being so small, barely five feet two, and so slender with it that there were still occasions when people called at the house and found her dressed in jeans and a T-shirt working in the garden and, seeing her from the back, made the mistake of assuming that she was still a child.
Perhaps if she wore her hair in a different style, but it was so curly and untameable that there was little she could do with it other than to have it go its own wayward way.
The front door of the house was wooden and solid. She could see nothing through it as she unbolted and then opened it, but already in her mind’s eye she could see her daughter: laughing, exuberant, flinging herself into her arms, and almost knocking her over as she did so—only when she did open the door, there was no sign of Katie.
Instead a man was climbing out of the car parked on her drive, smiling slightly at her as he acknowledged her presence.
Disappointment mingled with relief. Whoever this man was, he could not be Katie’s precious Silas. He was too old, for one thing, closer to forty-five than twenty-five.
He was probably a stranger who had lost his way. Certainly he wasn’t anyone she knew she had ever met. Had she done so she would have been bound to remember him. He was far too attractive, far too male for any woman to be able to forget. Her heart gave a tiny unsteady thump as her brain acknowledged what her senses had already registered; namely that this stranger walking towards her was an extremely virile and masculine man, whose casual attire of well-worn jeans and soft denim shirt revealed a body packed hard with muscle and male strength.
Hazel could feel the most odd sensation burgeoning into life in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself as though doing so would control this strange, unnerving feeling.
‘Miss Partington?’ he queried, coming towards her.
His voice was deep and pleasant. The way he spoke her name made Hazel feel faintly dizzy. Her name. How had he known her name?
‘Er—yes. I’m afraid I don’t know…’
He was extending his hand towards her, so that she automatically reciprocated the gesture, her eyes registering the shock caused by the brief physical contact between them. What was the matter with her? She had shaken a man’s hand before, for heaven’s sake.
Feeling thoroughly flustered, she looked uncertainly at him.
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m Silas Jardine. I dropped Katie off in the village. She said something about wanting to buy something. She told me not to wait, said she might be a little while, and told me to come and introduce myself. She said something about wanting to catch up on some gossip. It really is kind of you to put me up like this.’
Hazel wasn’t listening any longer. She was staring at him in shocked disbelief.
This man could not be Katie’s Silas. This man could not be Katie’s boyfriend. Boyfriend! This was no boy. Outrage mingled with her shock. How could he stand there, glibly carrying on a conversation with her, when all the time he must know how shocked she was, how stunned, how…yes, how disbelieving that he could…? That he could what? Love her daughter? She caught herself up on the thought. What was that feeling beginning, like a cold, sharp dagger in her middle? That wasn’t maternal protectiveness, was it? That was… That was…
It was nothing, she told herself quickly. It was nothing at all, and it certainly wasn’t an uncomfortable and impossible stab of something almost approaching betrayal.
Her smile had turned to a frown now, as her shock registered all too plainly on her face. She could almost feel him withdrawing from her, distancing himself from her with cool reserve. Panic clawed at her. This was a situation she simply could not deal with, did not know how to deal with. When she had envisaged Katie’s Silas, she had envisaged a younger man—a much younger man. This man was far too old for Katie. Far, far too old.
She started to tremble, suddenly feeling incredibly weak and sick. Tears of shock blurred her eyes, causing her to clench her jaw and hurriedly blink them away.
‘I’m sorry. I seem to have given you something of a shock.’
He was too astute, saw too much, and suddenly she was desperately frightened of him. What if he should sense her anger, her shock, her disgust, her outrage, and punish her for them by trying to turn Katie against her? Once she would have said that could never happen but then once she would have said that Katie would never have any need in her life that would lead her to imagine herself in love with a man old enough to be her father.
‘Look, I think we’d better get you inside. Katie warned me that you hate people saying you look fragile, but…’
Katie had told him that. What else had she told him? Hazel wondered achingly as she stepped back into the hall, fighting to get her shock under control.
She hated him, she decided fiercely as he followed her inside. She hated him already. How could she not do when she looked at him and saw in his face, in his eyes, all his years of living, and then compared those years, that maturity with Katie’s youth?
She knew all about men like him. Men who were too insecure to love women who could match them in terms of age and experience. Their vanity led them to feed off youth, like leeches. Oh, yes, she knew the type all right and she despised it, but she had never, ever envisaged that Katie would fall prey to such a man, no matter how good-looking he might be—and this man was certainly that, she acknowledged grudgingly, trying to ignore the frisson of sensation that danced over her skin as she looked up and discovered that she was being studied with gravely thoughtful interest by Silas Jardine’s disturbingly perceptive cool grey eyes.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asked her quietly. ‘Katie—’
Whatever he had been about to say was forgotten as the front door was flung open, and Hazel heard her daughter calling out cheerfully, ‘Ma, Ma…where are you?’
‘Noisy lot, aren’t they, the young?’ Silas Jardine remarked easily as she hurried towards the door. His comment made her check and turn to give him an indignant look. What on earth was he trying to do, aligning himself with her? Did he honestly think that she was stupid enough to fall for such a ploy or that it would endear him to her, or incline her to accept him as her daughter’s lover?
The sickening sour scald of revulsion that burned through her at the thought turned her indignation to self-disgust, and she turned away from him quickly before her face could betray her.
She was becoming frighteningly aware that if he chose to do so this man could drive a wedge between her and her beloved daughter that might never be removed.
Hopefully, please God, there would come a time when Katie would open her eyes and see him for what he undoubtedly was; a forty-odd-year-old man who was bolstering his ego, his machismo by feeding off her youth. And when that time came he would no longer have a place nor a role in her life, but by then Hazel suspected that it would be too late to heal the rift which he could cause between them.
