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‘What was he like?’ he said.
She continued to arrange the jacket to her satisfaction, keeping her back to him as she grimaced and made an effort to sound enthusiastic. ‘Nice. He was very nice.’
‘That sounds rather bland.’
Harriet shut the closet door rather more firmly than was necessary and turned around, hands on hips. ‘Well, it wasn’t. Greg and I had a very nice evening!’
She winced as she saw the corner of his mouth flicker. She had used that wretched word again. Nice. The trouble was that it described Greg perfectly. He had brimmed over with such niceness that she couldn’t view him in a sexual context. As a candidate for a wild sexual fling, when it came to the crunch he had turned out to be even less appealing than Michael Fleet!
‘Where did you go?’
‘Just to dinner and a movie.’
‘How nice.’
Harriet scowled at his innocent expression. ‘It was even nicer when we went back to his flat and made mad, passionate love for the rest of the night!’ she declared rashly.
He pursed his lips. ‘No wonder you’re looking a little washed out today.’ It was evident that he didn’t believe her, damn him! ‘Perhaps you should save your stormy nights of unbridled lust for the weekends…if you can find time between hikes, that is. I understand that you corrupted several Scouts with an orgy of marshmalloweating on your weekend away.’
She wished that she hadn’t tried to give Nicola fits of appreciative giggles with stories of her trip—particularly the distressing fact that most of the hikers had been women.
‘The Scout-leader wa
s there too,’ Harriet informed him sweetly, crossing her fingers in the folds of her T-shirt in the hope that Nicola hadn’t gone into specifics. ‘Hunky, hairy outdoor types really turn me on.’
He stretched his arms behind his head and rolled his shoulders slowly, easing out the tensions of the long day.
‘If your taste runs to butch females no wonder poor Pollard bored you to tears last night.’
Harriet flushed at the lazy amusement in his voice. So Nicola had even mentioned that the scouts had been led by a woman. ‘Don’t you and your daughter have anything more interesting to do than discuss every minute detail of my activities?’ she gritted.
He dropped his arms, smiling at her chagrin. ‘Not at the moment, no. Nicola talks about you a lot. I think she’s rather fascinated by your colourful activities and awed by your appetite for life…not to mention your glorious disrespect for my dignity,’ he added wryly.
‘My activities would be a lot more colourful if she wasn’t shadowing me like a conscience every day,’ Harriet said darkly. Actually it was fun to have someone to show off to—someone who hadn’t known the old Harriet, who didn’t poke and probe and ask awkward questions but accepted her as the person she was now.
‘Your restraint is duly noted,’ he said gravely. ‘Nicola doesn’t make friends easily but she seems to respond naturally to you, perhaps because you haven’t tried to pressure her into liking you. She says you treat her as an equal and she likes that. Her grandmother has a tendency to be domineering, and her schoolteachers are the only other adult women with whom she’s had close contact. As an only child she’s been a bit lonely, I’m afraid.’
There was an odd note in his voice that made her ask, ‘Haven’t you ever been tempted to marry again?’
‘For Nicola’s sake? No,’ he said discouragingly.
But he didn’t tell her that it was none of her business so she murmured recklessly, ‘Is that because you’re still in love with your wife or because you enjoy your personal freedom too much?’
Instead of being embarrassed, as she had intended, he looked amused at the thrust. ‘What ever makes you think I’m pining for Serena?’
She stepped behind one of the dining chairs, subconsciously putting a barrier between them.
‘I don’t know…perhaps the way that Nicola talks so freely about her. About how beautiful she was and how happy you were together…’
‘Nicola doesn’t even remember her mother. Most of her memories have been implanted by Susan, so naturally they’re flattering ones, although I will admit that Serena was extremely beautiful.’
‘She was blonde, wasn’t she?’
‘Courtesy of her hairdresser, yes. A genuine, platinum-plated bitch.’ He smiled cynically at Harriet’s heightened colour. ‘That was what you wanted to know, wasn’t it? And yes, I thought both of us were in love when I married her. I was too naïve at the time to realise that what Serena loved wasn’t me specifically but male admiration in general, and that one man would never be able to provide enough to satisfy her craving. Her favourite game was to play her courtiers off against each other. Nothing pleased Serena more than being able to provoke an admirer into a fit of jealousy.’
Harriet tried, and failed, to imagine Marcus Fox in the grip of a jealous rage.
Her expression must have given her away because he said wryly, ‘I was only twenty, and far too arrogant to accept my mistake gracefully. I persisted in believing we could make the marriage work. We had some monstrous rows before I realised that Serena was using my pride and my temper to keep me out of her bed so that she had some self-justification for her behaviour.
