Buch lesen: «A Wedding To Remember»
A Wedding To Remember
Emma Darcy
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
AS SHE MADE her first morning cup of coffee, Joanna Harding totted the days up in her mind. Four gone, nine to go. Today was Friday. A week tomorrow was the deadline. Before Brad flew back to Sydney from his conference in Brisbane, she had to decide whether to marry him or not.
Joanna sat down at the table in her mother’s kitchen and hunched over her coffee mug, berating herself for not being clear-minded about the future Brad was offering her. There should be no question about what she wanted. Brad was everything Rory Grayson wasn’t, yet her failed marriage to Rory cast long, haunting shadows that still affected her.
It was not her fault the marriage had failed. The blame lay fairly and squarely on Rory’s head. And another part of his anatomy. It was absurd and self-defeating to let his failure cloud her future.
Three years had passed since she had separated from Rory. She had told her ex-husband on the day of their divorce, two years ago, and she had told herself repeatedly since then, that she would never see him again. She did not want Rory Grayson to take up another second of her life.
Wanting, however, was one thing, reality quite another. It was as though Rory sat on her shoulder, a white angel who dimmed the attraction of any other man she met, or a dark angel who reminded her of the black pits an intimate relationship could lead her into. It did not seem to matter that her love for him had been crushed under the unforgivable weight of what had happened.
The dust of it still clung around her heart, taunting her with the loss of its substance.
“Do you have any plans for today, Joanna?” her mother asked as she carried her habitual boiled egg and toast breakfast to the table.
Today was the day to blow the dust of Rory Grayson away, Joanna decided. She needed to rid herself of it. Rory had to be buried in a final resting place. If she saw him again and felt nothing, if he left her completely cold, then she could go ahead and accept Brad’s proposal, and marry him with a free heart. No hangovers from the past. No regrets. Nothing to spoil her happiness.
“I might give Poppy Dalton a call,” she answered her mother. “See if she wants to take in a movie or look around the shops in the city.”
It was a safe reply, and she might well spend part of the day with her friend and fellow teacher. It also avoided any mention of Rory. There was nothing to be gained in sparking off an unpleasant and totally unnecessary scene with her mother.
As far as Fay Harding was concerned, the worst thing Joanna had ever done was to marry Rory Grayson, and the best thing she had ever done was divorce him, vindicating Fay’s deep and abiding disapproval of him. Right from the start Rory had earned that disapproval by flouting or mocking the rules Fay held dear. Which, of course, had been one of his strong attractions to Joanna, who had bridled against those very same rules all her young life.
Was it rebellion that had drawn her to link her life with Rory’s? A heady sense of freedom from all the constrictions of convention? She had believed she had found her true soul mate in Rory, but it hadn’t turned out that way.
To Joanna’s mind, no matter what the stresses and strains in a marriage, nothing, absolutely nothing, excused adultery. Particularly when that adultery was proven, beyond any possible belief in Rory’s denials, by the other woman’s pregnancy. It made no difference that the pregnancy was eventually terminated by a miscarriage. The betrayal went too deep for Joanna to ever accept Rory back as her husband.
“You must be missing Brad,” her mother remarked, a fondly hopeful note in her voice. As a marriage prospect for her daughter, Brad Latham had Fay Harding’s gold-star approval. “It’s such a pity he has to be away for the whole midyear break.”
“It’s a very important conference, Mum,” Joanna replied with a resigned shrug, defending his decision while ignoring the probe into her private feelings about Brad.
“I thought he might have asked you to go with him,” her mother commented wistfully.
“Not appropriate.”
Unlike Rory, who wouldn’t have given a damn, Brad would never think of behaving in any way that might draw the censure of others. A discreet affair was one thing, advertising it quite another. Brad’s whole life had been governed by a rule book. Ten years in the navy had set a pattern of discipline he had taken straight into the education system. He was totally dependable. And predictable. Important assets in giving her a sense of security, Joanna assured herself.
“Well, you are on his staff,” her mother said, piqued into justifying her personal wishes by the abrupt tone of her daughter’s reply.
“The conference is for the principals of private schools, Mum. Not the teachers. Brad will be busy politicking the whole time. You know they want to press the government for bigger subsidies next year.”
“Yes, but surely they have some time off for socialising,” her mother argued.
“It wouldn’t look good for Brad to have me there,” Joanna explained. “I’m not his wife. And Brad is far too ambitious to put a foot out of line.”
Brad had his eye on the headmastership of a more prestigious private school on the other side of Sydney. Relatively young, at thirty-eight, full of drive and energy, a charismatic leader to both pupils and parents, he had a better than even chance of winning the position when it fell vacant at the end of next year.
“There’s nothing wrong with ambition, Joanna.”
The terse note in her mother’s voice drew her gaze. Their eyes clashed for one unguarded moment, and Joanna knew her mother was thinking of Rory and his grievous lack of what Fay Harding recognised as proper ambition. It was her dogmatic opinion that trying out new ideas had no solid substance and could only be regarded as suspicious business.
Joanna neutralised the dangerous ground with a bland reply. “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with ambition, Mum.”
End of argument, if it could be called an argument. For the sake of peace between them, Rory’s name was never spoken. Joanna had made that rule when she had come back home.
Her widowed mother had needed help at the time. Her recovery after an operation on a faulty heart valve was slow, and her more favoured daughter, Jessica, had had her hands full with a new baby. Since Joanna had parted from Rory, it was easier for her to step in, easy to stay, even after her mother had regained her full strength and was perfectly capable of coping alone.
Moving to a place of her own would have required thought and effort, and Joanna couldn’t summon the interest to bother. Nothing seemed to matter after her break-up with Rory. Apart from which, her mother’s home in Burwood was convenient to the school in Strathfield where Joanna taught.
It was easier to live from day to day in a relatively undemanding routine, easy to sink into an emotional limbo where not even her mother’s narrow attitudes irritated her. On a superficial level they were company for each other. Besides, after the seven-year rift caused by her marriage to Rory, the reconciliation with her mother was comforting, taking the edge off her loneliness.
It was Brad who had lifted her out of the passivity she had fallen into, giving her a more active interest in life. A positive focus. He was good for her. Good to her, as well. They shared the day-to-day happenings at the school, played tennis at weekends, went to concerts and plays together.
He might not be a madly exciting lover, but Brad was offering her the problem-free security she had never had in her first marriage. This looking back to what she had once shared with Rory was stupid, yet she had been doing it continually ever since Brad had left for the conference.
It had to stop.
Her mother rose from the table and took her breakfast things to the sink.
“I’ll do the washing up after I’ve eaten, Mum,” Joanna quickly offered. “It’ll give you a few more minutes with Jessica before she leaves for tennis,” she added with a persuasive smile.
Her mother returned a fond look, not really for Joanna. It was more in thought of her other daughter, who was the light of her life. Jessica had done everything right, especially marrying a dentist who was a professional man. He was also a pillar of rectitude in providing a good home for his wife and being a splendid husband and father.
“I really enjoy my day with the children,” her mother said.
And why not? Joanna thought with dry irony. She had two beautiful granddaughters to spoil while Jessica played tennis, and the little girls were already moulded into the kind of little girls their grandmother approved of. Joanna idly wondered how well her mother would handle a rambunctious little boy.
“Give them my love,” she said, encouraging her mother to be on her way.
She was already dressed to go in a smart forest-green pant-suit. Her pearl brooch was precisely positioned at the throat of her beige blouse, pearl earrings in her lobes. There was not a hair out of place in the short white waves that framed her face. Apart from lipstick, which she would undoubtedly apply at the hall mirror near the front door, her make-up was perfectly in place. Fay Harding judged others on appearance, and never would she drop her own standards, not even to mind children.
How she had hated Rory in his scruffy university clothes! And the unshaven stubble that he hadn’t bothered about before calling by to see Joanna!
“Have a nice day, dear.”
“I will, Mum,” Joanna replied with no inner conviction whatsoever.
As she waited to hear the front door closing behind her mother, Joanna considered various plans of action. The telephone directory would give her the information she needed, but if she called Rory, he would undoubtedly take savage satisfaction in reminding her of her last words to him, that they had nothing more to say to each other.
He would hang up on her with the same relentless decisiveness she had displayed in showing him to the door out of her life after their last bitter showdown before the divorce went through.
Besides, she did not want to talk to him. Seeing him would serve her purpose, and the more impersonally she could achieve that, the better. The best place would definitely be in his office. Surely she could work out some way to finagle a few private minutes with him. She mentally practised some lines to justify such a visit.
No grudges, Rory. I’m getting married again. I hope you’ll find someone you can be happy with, too.
The decisive door click of her mother’s departure spurred Joanna into action. She looked up the market research listings in the telephone directory and had no difficulty in finding the company she was looking for. She circled the number, noted down the new business address in Chatswood and paused to wonder if that was an up-market or down-market move from Rory’s last premises in North Sydney. Had his business grown or slumped since the divorce?
With an impatient shake of the head, Joanna dismissed this irrelevant speculation. She was not interested in what had happened to Rory. Or why. She simply wanted to see him one more time. That was all. The question she needed answered was whether or not he was at his office today.
Having thought her way around the problem for several minutes, Joanna dialled the number, intent on playing whatever response she got by ear.
“Grayson and Associates,” a woman’s voice piped cheerfully. “How can I help you?”
“Is Mr. Grayson in today?” Joanna asked.
“Who’s calling, please?”
That put Joanna on the spot. Giving her name would almost certainly defeat her purpose. A wild invention leapt into her mind.
“I’m calling for Mr. Kawowski of Matchmakers Incorporated,” she rattled out, wondering if it was some kind of Freudian slip to think of a fabricated dating service as a means to get to Rory. “He wants to know if Mr. Grayson would be free to see him later this morning.”
“Mr. Grayson is in a meeting right now. Can I ring back to confirm?”
“Would you hold on a moment?” Joanna counted to ten then said, “Sorry. Mr. Kawowski has decided to use another company. Thank you for your time.”
She put down the receiver and heaved a sigh of relief. Mission accomplished. No more shillyshallying over the past or the future. Her course of action was decided. Rory Grayson was about to receive an unexpected visitor.
CHAPTER TWO
THE ULTRA-MODERN office building in Chatswood was impressive, but Joanna was not certain it was an up-market move for Rory until she arrived on the floor occupied by his company. When they parted three years ago, he was managing everything himself with a casual staff of five. One glance at the layout of his present premises told her that his business had greatly expanded.
From the reception room, a glass-panelled wall revealed a veritable hive of industry. A huge open area was broken into partitioned computer cubicles with people busy in all of those she could see. At the far end was a row of more private offices for executive staff.
Joanna could not help marvelling over the evident success of Rory’s idea to provide qualitative as well as quantitative market research. Statistics, he had been convinced, did not supply an accurate enough picture. The reasons behind the statistics, why people did what they did, had to be known, as well. Apparently his theory had not only found many receptive ears, but had proven more accurate or effective in application than more traditional ways of collecting information.
Somehow that knowledge undermined Joanna’s confidence as she approached the receptionist’s desk. Rory had grown far past the situation they had known and lived together. Not that such a factor should affect her purpose in any way, Joanna sternly told herself. She had simply come to see him. However, it might not be as easy as she had first thought, given this new set-up.
“Good morning.” The receptionist looked at her with bright anticipation. She had the fresh young face of a woman barely out of her teens. Not someone with a lot of experience at fobbing off people, Joanna hoped.
“Good morning,” she returned, projecting a completely at-ease smile to cover her inner tension. It was almost afternoon. It had seemed best to arrive just before twelve o’clock, giving Rory time to finish his meeting but ensuring he had not yet gone out for lunch. Now she had to ascertain if her timing was right. “I’ve come to see Mr. Grayson,” she announced.
“Your name, please?” The receptionist glanced down at an appointment pad.
“I don’t have an appointment. Is he free at the moment? It’s a personal matter that won’t take long.”
This information earned a frown. “If you’ll give me your name, I’ll check with Mr. Grayson.”
And that would be the end of that, Joanna thought grimly. Giving her name was too risky. “I have a better idea,” she said, her eyes flashing with what she hoped looked like flirtatious mischief. “If you’ll lend me your pad and pen, I’ll write him a note and you can take it to him. I’m sure when he reads it he’ll make time to see me.”
The receptionist hesitated, clearly finding the suggestion irregular and the situation suspicious. Joanna confidently reached out for the items she’d asked for. Capitulation came after a few uncertain moments. As Joanna poised the pen to write, she could feel the young woman’s eyes roving over her in intense speculation.
Her mind was rife with questions. What were the best words to provoke Rory’s interest? Was the receptionist comparing her to some other woman in his personal life? Or—her heart clenched—his wife? Rory might have remarried. Why hadn’t she thought of that? And why did she feel such a cramp of revulsion at such an idea? She didn’t care what Rory did. He had killed her caring years ago.
An idea finally came to her, and she quickly wrote the words.
Success must feel sweet. Congratulations, Rory.
It was an objective comment, fair-minded, without rancour, hopefully ego-stroking enough to persuade Rory into seeing her for a moment or two. After all, the most sensible, rational thing to do was to expunge any lingering acrimony between them before moving on with their lives.
She added her signature, tore off the note page, folded it, handed it to the receptionist with a confident smile, put down the pen and turned aside as though considering sitting in one of the leather armchairs to wait.
She heard the receptionist leave the office. Nervous anticipation fluttered through Joanna’s stomach. She forcefully assured herself it had nothing to do with Rory or what he might think of her visit. It was perfectly natural to be on edge. The moment of truth and decision was at hand.
Now that she saw how well he had done for himself without her, Joanna was glad she had taken pains to look her best. Rory might scorn the superficiality of appearances, but Joanna didn’t care about that. Pride demanded that he see she was doing fine by herself. More than that. Another man found her a very desirable asset to his life, and not just any other man, either. A highly eligible and discriminating one.
The sage-green knit suit she wore had border stripes of peach on the sleeves, the tunic and around the hem of the skirt. The effect was soft, feminine and elegant. The colour picked up the grey-green of her eyes, and she had matched the exact shade of sage in her high-heeled pumps and leather handbag.
She had spent an hour washing and blow-drying her long blonde hair so that it fell in soft waves around her shoulders, and her feathery fringe had a sweeping flyaway look on both sides of her face. Her make-up was faultless, a touch of silvery green on her eyelids, a grey pencil line to increase interest in the shape and width of her eyes, a subtle shading of blusher highlighting her cheekbones and a deeper shade of peach emphasising the sensual curves of her full-lipped mouth.
Although she was almost ten years older than when she had first met Rory, Joanna prided herself on having a dignity and sophistication that more than made up for any fresh-faced prettiness she might have lost. She had also regained her best weight. Rory could not fling the accusation of being anorexic at her now. The firm roundness of her curves attested to her good health and well-being.
Not that she had ever been truly anorexic. The emotional stress of the divorce had simply robbed her of any appetite. It was hard to enjoy food or anything else when all one could feel was a soul-tearing sense of failure. But she had survived and risen above all that. If she could finally put Rory behind her today, she could feel whole again, her own person, free to accept Brad as the man to share her future with.
Joanna swung around expectantly as she heard the receptionist entering her office. The young woman stood at her opened door, eyeing Joanna with blatant curiosity as she said, “Mr. Grayson will see you now. I’ll take you to him.”
“Thank you,” Joanna replied, more loudly than she meant to.
The prospect of facing Rory, now that it was upon her, had an appalling effect. Her pulse leapt into a wild beat that throbbed through her temples, making her head feel like a buzz-saw. Her stomach could have been a pancake being flipped over by a deft chef who enjoyed showing off his dexterity. Her legs, as she followed the receptionist, alternated between wooden pegs and quivering jelly. It took a supreme act of will to force her mind into reciting, Rory means nothing to me. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
They walked the whole length of the cubicled area, eyes looking up, assessing Joanna as she passed by. Rory’s office was in the corner at the far end, and it was a relief to Joanna to reach it. The receptionist ushered her inside. Joanna was vaguely aware of the door being closed behind her, ensuring the privacy of the meeting, but the man in front of her claimed her attention with such devastating impact that she knew instantly she had been a fool to come.
“Joanna...” he said softly, as though he took pleasure in the sound of her name, not a trace of surprise in his voice or his eyes.
“Rory...” she managed to reply, her voice a bare, husky whisper.
He made no move towards her, gave no invitation for her to sit down and be at ease. Joanna was not really aware of the omission of standard politeness. She stared at him, and he stared right back at her in a silence that swirled with the painful bitterness of unfulfilled dreams and hopes and desires.
Joanna had never seen Rory like this, so elegantly dressed in a finely tailored three-piece suit, the sheen of some silk mixture in the cloth. Its subtle blue-grey colour and the blue and gold silk tie picked up the intense blueness of his eyes. His thick black hair had been stylishly layered to its natural waves, the riotous curls cut out of existence. It was a tamed image of the young man she had known and married, yet she sensed a self-assurance with it, an aura of control that was more dangerous than any overt rebellion against social standards.
This was a man who knew who he was, who used outer trappings to his advantage because it suited his purpose to be seen as a successful businessman. It had nothing to do with ego or status. The flash of cynicism in his eyes as he noted her surprise told Joanna that. Underneath his suit and haircut, he was still the Rory who thought for himself, disdaining any influence by others.
Even his casual pose reflected that. If he’d wanted to impress her with his new affluence, he probably would have been sitting in the high-backed leather chair behind the expensive executive desk, but he was half sitting on the front edge of the desk, one leg stretched down to the floor, the other hitched up, dangling carelessly.
The hand resting on his raised thigh held her note. He lifted it, drawing her attention to what she had written.
“I can’t believe you care whether or not I find success sweet. What do you want of me, Joanna?”
His mouth curved into a sensual little smile as his gaze dropped to rove down her body, making her uncomfortably aware of his intimate knowledge of it and the pleasure he had once taken in giving her pleasure. Her skin tingled as though he had caressed it, and her lungs stopped breathing as his eyes bored through the figure-hugging knit fabric, remembering the shape of her, the feel of her, all the secrets of her femininity that were no secret to him.
“You’re wrong on both counts,” she said quickly. “I am glad your ideas worked out so well. And I don’t want anything of you, Rory.”
His eyes lingered for a moment on the heave of her breasts before lifting to hers, a direct challenge in their vivid blueness. He raised one of his rakishly arched eyebrows, a mocking invitation for her to explain why she was here.
“I wanted to see you,” she blurted out, her cheeks stinging with a rush of heat she could not control.
His mouth twisted with irony. “You thought the best way was to remind me of what you believed meant more to me than our marriage?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t come to rake over old arguments.”
“Does success make me sweeter for you, Joanna?”
“No.” Her cheeks burnt even more fiercely at his insulting suggestion. “I’m not chasing after you, Rory.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “Of course not. A woman of principle like yourself wouldn’t bend that far. I was the one who did the chasing after you. It was you who showed me to your mother’s door, demanding that I never darken it again.”
He let the memory simmer between them before he added, “I simply find it intriguing that you now darken mine. Do you want the money you so proudly and bitterly refused from me then?”
The sting of this reminder evoked the passionate hatred of him she had felt that night. He had come with a cheque, offering her repayment of all the money it had cost her to support him while he was trying to make a go of his fledgling business. As though money could buy back her love after he had betrayed it with Bernice!
She glared at him with stormy eyes. “I didn’t marry you for money and I didn’t divorce you for money. I came to tell you I’m getting married to someone else.”
She saw his jaw tighten, saw the taunting light fade from his eyes, leaving them empty of all expression. There was a crackle of paper as his fingers crunched her note into a tight ball in his hand. He stood up, tall and straight and suddenly formidable in the clothes of his successful thrust into the world of commerce. He stepped around his desk and pointedly dropped the screwed-up paper into a bin. Then he faced her with a viciously mocking smile.
“So what can I do for you, Joanna? Write you a reference? To whom it may concern? I have known Joanna Harding intimately for a period of...now, how long was it, exactly? As I recall, you were nineteen when I—”
“Stop it, Rory!”
“Something wrong with my memory?”
“I don’t need a reference.” She lifted her chin in disdain of his demeaning summary of their time together. “Brad thinks I’m wonderful as I am.”
“Brad...” He drawled the name as though measuring it for destruction. “Now where have I heard Brad before? Oh, yes! He was the wet-behind-the-ears hero in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, wasn’t he?”
Joanna dragged in a deep breath to calm her churning insides. Her eyes flashed scorn at the cruel injustice of Rory’s attitude. “I thought we could be civilised after all this time apart.”
He laughed at her, his eyes glittering with primitive violence. “I have never felt civilised around you, Joanna.”
“I thought we could let bygones be bygones,” she persisted, clutching at dignity as a defence against the way his eyes were stripping her bare, reminding her of the wildness he had tapped in her sexuality, the mad mating they had once revelled in without any inhibitions.
“Can you forget what we had together?” he taunted.
“I wanted to wish you well, Rory,” she forced out in determination to have done with this chaotically disturbing scene.
“How magnanimous of you! Is it better with Brad?”
The cheap shot goaded her into retaliating. “There’s more to life than sex, Rory Grayson. It’s a pity you haven’t found that out. It means that whatever relationships you have will always fail.”
His expression changed, a bleak fatigue drawing older lines on his face. “Wrong, Joanna,” he said flatly. “I happen to be very good at relationships. Genuine relationships. Not ones that are screwed up by expectations that can’t always be met when you want them met.”
Shock turned into anger as Joanna digested Rory’s perception of what had gone wrong in their marriage. He was blaming her for its failure, as though he hadn’t contributed a hundredfold to the breakdown of any healing communication between them.
“Have you fathered any children I don’t know about?” she fired at him with bitter venom. “Or do all your casual bed mates have convenient miscarriages?”
“Does your mother still ride a broomstick?” he shot back at her. “Force-feed you with poison pellets of hatred for me?”
“Leave my mother out of this!”
“Then leave my alleged affairs out, as well!”
“Right! Pardon me for mentioning them. They have long since ceased to be any of my business.”
“Why don’t you admit your real reason for coming, Joanna? Have a bit of self-honesty for once.”
“I’ve already told you,” she snapped.
He shook his head. “Hypocritical nonsense. You came to see if you were free of me. Because you weren’t sure. And you had to know. A last throw of the dice before you married Brad. So let me clear your mind for you.”
“How?” The word slipped out before she realised it was an admission.
Rory seized the opening, a look of dangerous dev-ilment replacing the derisive challenge of a few moments ago. He started walking towards her, unshakeable purpose in every step. “A kiss for the bride-to-be,” he said with a smile that torpedoed her stand of indifference to him.
“No.” Her hand fluttered up to her throat as she frantically fought a rush of panic.
“A wish-you-well kiss from your ex-husband,” Rory went on. “Make of it what you will, but kissed you certainly shall be.”
She took a defensive step backwards.
“What have you to fear if you’re free of me, Joanna?” he taunted. “Call it a gesture of final release. A graceful goodbye, demonstrating that bygones really are bygones and there’s not a thing left between us. Not a jot. Not a speck. Not a molecule of feeling. Prove it to me that there’s nothing left.”
He was using her own words against her, all so irrefutably reasonable that it robbed her of any grounds to protest. She swallowed hard and came up with a burst of defiance. “I don’t have to prove anything to you!”
“Then prove it to yourself.”
He took the hand at her throat and placed it on his shoulder as he slid his other arm around her waist and scooped her hard against the long, lean power of his body. Joanna was shocked into passivity by a rush of warm feeling, a sense of rightness that seemed so treacherous she trembled in fear of what it meant. Long-standing familiarity, her mind screamed, fiercely rejecting any other cause for the sensation of being where she belonged.
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