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Emily put down her fork, furtive hope creeping back to ease her humiliation. ‘You mean…you don’t think—? They’re not—?’
‘Having an affair?’ Dylan shrugged. ‘They’re adults, both attractive, why wouldn’t they go to bed together?’ His narrow face took on a moody look and his voice hardened as he answered his own question: ‘But, no, I don’t think Carly would take the risk of giving it away for free. She’s using a time-honoured ploy—keep him dangling until he’s so desperate for it, he’ll offer her the brass ring—or in her case it’d have to be platinum. She doesn’t seem to realise that Ethan is the king of self-denial,’ he said with a hint of relish. ‘After the Anna thing he learned to be very wary of women with personal agendas—’
‘The Anna thing?’ Emily grabbed her wine and took a fortifying sip. Did she really want to know?
Who was she kidding? Of course she did! ‘Who’s Anna?’
‘Old news,’ said Dylan. ‘Ethan was engaged when Mum and Dad died. But Anna dumped him when he poured all his money into debt repayments instead of the big wedding and new house they’d planned on buying. He took on a load of unnecessary pain after the crash, working to pay off all Dad’s creditors, especially the employees and Mom and Pop investors, even though legally there was nothing left in the estate. He accepted a little bit of help from Pete
r, but mostly insisted on taking care of it all himself. Wanted me to be able to be proud of our family name. See what I mean by over-responsibility?’
What Emily saw was a similarity between what she had done for her grandfather, and Ethan’s self-sacrificing effort to make good his father’s losses. When he had listened to her explanation, he would have understood exactly what she had been going through. And, like Conrad, his fiancée had also proved to have feet of clay, melting away when the going got tough. He must have been devastated. Perhaps that was why he now preferred his ongoing relationships to be on a less emotional footing. Dylan obviously didn’t like Carly as a wife for his brother, but Ethan himself might be actively seeking a practical arrangement rather than a love match. Family was important to him. Perhaps it was his biological clock that was ticking!
A few glasses of wine were not an ideal preparation for an intensive afternoon’s work so when they got back to the house Emily slipped away to her room with a black coffee and did some reading. She was not hiding, she told herself as she quietly clicked the lock on the door and lay down on the cool coverlet with her notebooks. Protecting oneself from hurt wasn’t hiding, she repeated to herself a little while later when there was a series of soft knocks at the door, and Ethan’s voice called to her through the wood. She watched the handle turn, and fed on the grim frustration she could hear in his voice when he concluded she was in her room, but deliberately ignoring him. She listened to him retreat down the hall, fighting the desire to rip open the door and call him back. She knew what would happen if she let him in…he would touch her and she would be lost to herself again, sucked into the sexual maelstrom where nothing mattered but the next rapturous thrill. There was no shame in admitting his power over her, the shame would be in letting him use it at the expense of her self-respect.
Strangely, she had never been jealous of Conrad, although he had flirted with practically every woman he met, but the idea of Ethan with another woman made her feel sick, and she couldn’t trust herself to discuss the matter rationally. She was afraid what she might betray. She didn’t want to hear that she was just a passing phase in his life, a piece of ‘unfinished business’ that he wanted to finish off so that he could move on to better things.
Neither, knowing what she now did of his background, did she want his pity, compassion or understanding.
What she wanted from him was something that she wasn’t prepared to acknowledge, even to herself. She had enough of an emotional struggle on her hands just to survive from day to day, she couldn’t afford to take on another, unwinnable, battle.
So when, just before dinner, she unexpectedly encountered him on his way to the front door, dressed in the black-tie splendour that gave her a shock of déjà vu, she froze like a doe in a hunter’s sights.
‘I thought you’d already gone,’ she muttered. Apparently the ballet was more than just dance—there was a fundraising champagne dinner beforehand and an after-party backstage.
‘So you thought it was safe to come out?’ He shot his cuff and glanced down at his watch, a muscle clenching in his cheek as he looked back at her with banked anger in the steel-blue eyes. ‘You can’t avoid me forever, Emily.’
‘I don’t ask for forever,’ she said tightly. ‘One day at a time will do.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘None of us get forever. Which is why we have to make every day count.’ He uttered a smothered curse at her frozen expression and swung on his heel.
‘Tomorrow,’ he ground out, a threat and a vow, delivered over his elegantly clad shoulder as he strode away to meet the gorgeous and glamorous Other Woman in his life.
Or perhaps, the thought occurred chillingly in the wake of his words, he intended to make Emily the Other Woman.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘OH, WOW, this looks exactly like me when I was this age!’ Emily exclaimed in laughing surprise as she studied the faded colour photo of a shapely, curly-haired teenager in jeans and a tee shirt, standing awkwardly beside a flowering bush, her arms folded defensively under her plump breasts, a half-smile pinned to her lips. The shape of her face and eyes, and even the tilt of her head, was so similar to her own it was like looking in a mirror.
She glanced at the back of the photograph, but there was nothing to identify it, unlike most of the other old prints, which were labelled with Rose’s distinctive flowing script stating date, place and the names of the people frozen in their timeless poses.
Peter looked at it, but didn’t take it from her, his hands restlessly squaring up the rest of the photos spread out on the dining table. Emily’s encounter with Ethan had taken away her appetite, but she had forced herself to eat a proper dinner to refuel her ebbing supply of energy, and had readily agreed to join Peter in another of his meandering strolls down memory lane when a rather abstracted Dylan had wandered off, presumably to brood on his somewhat astounding lack of a date on a Saturday night—or more likely to plunder his little black book for last-minute opportunities.
Emily was eager for anything to divert her from her own desire to brood. There was no sense in tying herself in knots over what might or might not happen tomorrow. She could have watched television, or a DVD from the extensive collection in the games room, but that would be rude when Peter obviously preferred human conversation to the electronic entertainment that kept him company when he was on his own.
‘This is amazing,’ said Emily, inspecting the girl’s face again, wishing the eye-colour hadn’t faded too badly to determinate. ‘Who is it—do you know?’ she asked.
Peter cleared his throat, fingering the handle of his coffee-cup, but deciding not to drink. ‘My daughter.’
‘Your daughter? But I thought—’ Emily stopped, realising too late what it meant, and stricken by the pain she saw in his face.
‘That Rose and I couldn’t have children? We couldn’t, not together. Rose had a hysterectomy in her early twenties,’ he said stiffly.
Emily struggled to hide her shock. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s none of my—’
‘We went through a pretty bad patch at one stage—’ he laboured on, to her intense embarrassment, his eyes fixed firmly on her flushed face. ‘Rose was obsessed about not being able to give me children, and tossed me out of the house. I was bitter, and—I won’t fancy it up—I had a fling with my secretary. It only lasted a few days, because when Rose changed her mind and asked me back I was there like a shot. I offered Maria a job in another part of the company but she resigned on the spot.’ He hunched his thin shoulders in a regretful shrug. ‘I’m ashamed to say I was glad she was gone…I didn’t want her around reminding me of what I’d done, and I was afraid if Rose found out she’d toss me out for good. Rose was the only woman I ever loved, I ever wanted…’
‘Everyone knows that,’ said Emily, shifting her chair closer and patting his hand uncertainly. ‘You and Rose were married for, how long—?’
