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For some reason his startled tone made her feel defensive. She ran a careless hand through her platinum waves. ‘Why shouldn’t I? It’s my house. It’s such a waste in an area like this to have such a small house on a big section. It makes much more sense to pull it down and build several town houses on the same site—’
‘Is that what you’re going to do?’ He interrupted her paean to modern town planning.
‘Not me personally. A developer. He’s had an offer in at the local real-estate office for ages and this weekend I finally decided to accept it. Would you like some coffee?’
He ignored her desperate offer of a social diversion. ‘And what about your parents—what do they think about the idea?’
Harriet’s polite smile held. ‘I told you, the house is mine. I can do what I like with it. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of coffee?’
He stood there quietly, just looking at her with a patient, serious gaze that whi
ttled away at her nerve. He would stand there like that all night if she didn’t give him some sort of satisfaction.
‘Look, I inherited it, if you must know,’ she said. ‘When my father died the house came to me.’
‘Not your mother?’ His thick brows drew together.
‘My mother died quite some time ago…a stroke,’ she said with deliberate vagueness, her voice devoid of emotion. ‘After that Dad’s health deteriorated and he was ill for a long while before his death.’
‘But nobody altered the next-of-kin listing on your personnel file?’
She shrugged as if it had been an oversight rather than a subconscious act of denial. ‘I didn’t think of it and I don’t suppose anyone else at work realised…I didn’t need to ask for any compassionate leave because I was on holiday on both occasions.’ She didn’t say that she had requested holiday leave the second time because she’d known that her father was dying. No, more than that, he was wanting to die…to join the wife who had abandoned him to a downward spiral of depression and ill health.
‘You preferred your bereavement to remain private; I can understand that.’ For a grateful moment she thought that he was going to act on his respect for her feelings and drop the subject. ‘But all the files were updated two years ago—this must all have been fairly recent…?’
‘Not really. My father died—oh, last year some time,’ she said, as if the exact date were not engraved deep on her heart. She looked down at her slender wrist before remembering that she wasn’t wearing a watch. Time was another tyranny she had desired to escape. She twisted her hands behind her back and took a deep breath. ‘Look, Mr—Marcus, it’s very late and I’m tired—’
‘You don’t look it. You look restless and on edge, as if you’re going to burst out of your skin.’
It was exactly how she felt. ‘Do you blame me? I didn’t expect to come home to an interrogation!’ she said angrily.
‘No, you’re responsible only for yourself these days,’ he said gently. ‘No one wanting to know where you’ve been and with whom and what you did. Is this the first time you’ve lived alone, Harriet?’
‘Yes. And I happen to like it!’ she flared.
‘Did I sound patronising?’ he said quizzically. ‘I didn’t intend to. There’s a first time for everyone and often the first time has a sweetness that’s never matched. I envy you…it’s a long time since I thrilled to the matchless enchantment of experiencing a simple new pleasure.’
She wondered what complicated pleasures it took to thrill him now. He hadn’t been talking about sex but inevitably it was the most obvious experience that occurred to Harriet’s over-stimulated imagination.
‘So you feel that you’ve already tasted everything life has to offer?’ she sniped sceptically, hoping that he would attribute her flustered reaction to annoyance.
‘Not quite everything,’ he murmured. ‘Life does still manage to surprise me now and then. You certainly have.’ He gave her one of his rare smiles. ‘Did you say you were going to make some coffee?’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said mistrustfully, and, to make certain he got the message, added, ‘Besides, I think I’ve run out. Sorry.’
To her dismay he threw her insincere apology back in her teeth. ‘Shall we have a look?’
Before she could stop him he was walking through the house, swiftly finding the disordered dining-room-cumkitchen and, to her disbelief, starting to poke in various cupboards.
‘It looks as if you’ve run out of most things,’ he said, commenting on the lack of groceries in her pantry. ‘Have you been eating properly? A lot of people who live alone find it a chore to cook for themselves.’
‘I prefer to keep my food fresh in the fridge,’ she said quickly, sensing another lecture, then blushed as he immediately turned, opened it, and surveyed the freakish results of her whirlwind visit to the supermarket the previous evening. She had jars of caviare and bars of chocolate, stuffed olives and plump Danish pastries, smoked salmon and Chinese pickles, and a dozen expensive cheeses all crammed in around bottles of cheap bubbly. She had shopped on the theory that if a little bit of what you fancied was good for you then a whole lot more must be even better.
‘Do you mind? You’re letting the cold air out.’ She pushed the door shut with the flat of her hand, almost taking off the tip of his arrogant nose.
‘A woman with eclectic tastes in food,’ he merely remarked, turning to the bench, where he opened a canister to find the tea. ‘Ah, just what we’re looking for! I think tea is a better idea than coffee for anyone in your hyped-up state. It’s an old wives’ tale, you know, that coffee counteracts the effects of alcohol—’
‘I’m not drunk,’ she insisted for the second time that evening.
