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‘Joshua!’ she gasped in agonised protest, glancing meaningfully at Ryan, who was following the conversation back and forth with a deep, and noticeably unrepentant fascination.
Her concern seemed only to trigger an even greater fury. ‘What? Do you think we might be corrupting his innocence? It’s a little late to worry about that, isn’t it? I think, for his own future protection, it’s about time he learned the difference between an honest woman and a conniving little whore!’
CHAPTER TEN
‘LEAVE? But you don’t have to leave!’
Sir Frank’s bluff response to her miserable confession made Regan feel marginally better. Her coruscating encounter with Joshua had ended shortly after his ugly outburst, when he had seemed to recognise that his inability to control his rising fury at her brave defence of her character rendered him unacceptably vulnerable in his son’s eyes—and his own. He had stormed out of the house leaving a dozen menacing threats hanging in the air, with a stunned Ryan mouthing silent apologies and flapping cryptic hand-signals to Regan that she presumed were meant to be reassuring as he was frog-marched to the door.
It had all happened so fast that Regan had felt as if she had been the victim of a lightning razor attack—there had been no pain, only a numb shock as she’d contemplated her numerous slicing wounds. She had limped back to the dining room and summoned the presence of mind to make a clean breast about Michael’s theft, and her failed efforts to replace the money, to an astonished Sir Frank and Hazel.
She hadn’t mentioned Ryan, merely saying that Joshua had discovered what she was doing, and she had been staggered when, instead of accusing her of aiding and abetting her husband’s crime, or condemning her stupidity, the Harrimans had rallied round with shocked support.
At her implacable insistence, Sir Frank had reluctantly accepted her resignation, but he was baulking at her proposal to immediately return to Auckland.
‘Of course I do,’ she said proudly. ‘You trusted me and I’ve let you down.’
‘Not you—that wretched bounder Michael!’ Sir Frank growled in his quaintly old-fashioned terminology. ‘If it’s a matter of the money, don’t you worry about it, lass. You know I’ll see things right.’
She clung to the wreckage of her pride, devastated by the unexpected expression of faith. ‘No…I have the bank cheque for the full repayment upstairs; I’ll give it to you before I leave—’
‘Now, Regan, you know we won’t turn away from you just because you made a wrong choice under stress,’ said Hazel gently. ‘It’s your intentions that count, and we understand that you were just trying to do what you thought was best. You’ve paid much too dearly for Michael’s sins as it is, so you don’t have to go on covering yourself in shame…’
Regan swallowed hard, overwhelmed by her kindness. She had thought that the Harrimans would be glad to see the back of her. And no doubt they would if they knew the true extent of her shame! As for the wedding—Regan didn’t know what was going to happen on that score and was desperate not to care.
‘I’m sorry…but I know Joshua won’t agree with you. I realise I’m letting you down double-fold, but—’
‘But nothing!’ said Sir Frank. ‘I’m sure Wade will come round once he cools down and hears all the mitigating factors.’
‘He knows them already,’ said Regan tightly, afraid she was going to burst into tears.
‘Well, you’ve admitted everything and done everything in your power to put things right—that puts you on the side of the angels as far as I’m concerned, and I’ll tell him so,’ he gruffed.
‘It’s not just that.’ She knew she was going to have to come up with a definitive argument. ‘I’m afraid I’ve also fallen in love with Joshua,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s very awkward and embarrassing, and I’m sorry to complicate matters, but I really think it would be better all round if I went home…’
Her honesty paid off. Sir Frank continued to bluster in a muted kind of way, but Hazel instantly empathised with the horror of an unrequited love. She hugged Regan, delivering a blizzard of sympathetic assurances that of course she understood her urgent desire to leave, and of course she could manage without her, especially now that she had discarded her crutch and was hobbling about on her rapidly improving ankle.
Regan packed and was gone within the hour, driven back to Auckland by Alice Beatson’s lanky, monosyllabic husband Steve.
Fortunately, Lisa and Saleena were at work when he dropped her off at the flat, for, once inside, her fragile faca de of dignity shattered and Regan indulged herself in a storm of weeping, the bitter culmination of months of pain and strain to which had now been added this wrenching new loss, greater than all the others added together.
When the fit of anguish was over her throat was raw, her face looked like soggy puff pastry and her bones ached as if she had been beaten all over with a baseball bat. Her throat was soothed with lemon and honey, and her face marginally improved with a cool wash, but she knew the ache wasn’t really physical. Until the psychological bruising came out she knew she wouldn’t feel much better, however much she cried, and there was no way that she knew to hurry the healing.
If she could have despised Joshua it would have been so much easier, but she understood him far too well. From his perspective he was perfectly justified in questioning her morals and suspecting her motives, and the fact that her actions had placed his son in jeopardy would be impossible for him to forgive. As he had once told her so forcefully, no one got a second chance to breach his trust.
The odds had been impossibly stacked against her from the very beginning. She had known that loving him was a one-way ticket to heartbreak…but, oh, the joy that she had experienced along the way was almost worth the price of arrival!
The next few days were spent compulsively trying not to think about anything or anyone connected with Palm Cove, which was next to impossible when she half expected a policeman to come knocking at the door…or for Joshua to come bursting in, a one-man posse on a quest for the modern version of frontier justice. He hadn’t exactly ordered her not to leave town, but that had been the gist of his final threat as he had left the house. And when she had arrived home she had been horrified to realise that she was still wearing his expensive platinum watch—another crime for him to lay at her door! And this time he would be right, for she had deliberately done nothing about returning it. By now Sir Frank would have arranged for her cheque to be repaid into the company accounts, but she was afraid to hope that that would be the end of it, not if Joshua felt it incumbent on his honour to exact personal retribution.
Desperate to avoid having to deal with reality, she impressed on Lisa and Saleena she wasn’t in to phone calls—from anyone—and whenever they went out she switched off the answer-machine and took the phone off the hook. She did, however, make one stilted call to Cindy, to tell her that the money had been repaid, and that whatever repercussions there might be from now on would stop with Regan. She had hung up on Cindy’s hysterical thanks in the certain knowledge that she had finally closed the book on her failed marriage.
The following afternoon, on the fourth day of her emotional exile, her brittle shell was cracked by the last person she would have expected to bother to seek her out—Carolyn Harriman, floating on air after her final wedding gown fitting.
‘Hi—you don’t mind I got your address from Granny, do you?’ she chirped to Regan, who did mind. She had refused to wonder if Carolyn had yet plucked up the courage to break the news of her phantom pregna
ncy, guiltily aware that she had fled without even saying goodbye—unwilling to risk any additional emotional trauma.
‘I couldn’t get through on the phone, but I figured you wouldn’t have another job yet and thought you could probably do with some cheering up,’ breezed Carolyn. ‘Look—I bought Danish pastries to go with our afternoon coffee! Granny told me why you left—about the rotten thing your husband did to you. God, men can be utter pigs, can’t they?’
