Buch lesen: «A Suitable Husband»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS not unusual for Jermaine to work late. She was part of the sales support staff at a busy plant and machinery manufacturers and was used to working under pressure. Her work was varied, but mainly she dealt with reports from Masters and Company’s top-notch sales executives when they either rang in or visited head office in London.

This week she had nothing in particular to rush home for. It didn’t matter that it was going on for eight o’clock when she let herself into her small flat.

She had been going out with Ash Tavinor for three months now, only for the last two weeks Ash had been working away from home in Scotland, too far away for him to return to London, or for them to spend any time together. He could have flown down, of course, but he preferred to work at the weekends, the sooner to get his business done.

Jermaine smiled as she thought of him. She had missed seeing his happy sunny face. She would be glad to see him again. He was tall, good-looking and—her smile dipped a little—had broached the subject a month ago of some kind of ‘commitment’ from her. In fact Ash had called her old-fashioned in the extreme, because she was not prepared for them to become lovers in the true sense of the word.

She had wondered herself, since knowing him, if it was time to yield her stand. The stand she had taken six years ago when her beautiful sister, Edwina, had clapped her eyes on Pip Robinson, Jermaine’s first boyfriend, and decided that she’d like him for herself.

Jermaine recalled again the hurt she’d experienced then. She supposed she couldn’t have been all that fond of Pip because it hadn’t been his defection that had hurt so much. She had been more bruised by the fact that her sister—whom, it had very soon became apparent, had had no particular interest in Pip other than as another conquest—didn’t care that he was Jermaine’s boyfriend.

Suddenly Jermaine didn’t feel at all like smiling. Pip hadn’t been the only boyfriend Edwina had clapped eyes on and taken from her.

Jermaine made some coffee, musing that it wasn’t any wonder that, over the years, her decision not to make the sort of commitment Ash wanted her to make had become deeper and deeper entrenched.

But her smile came out again; all that had been before Ash. Ash was different. When she had been going out with him for about a month, she had grown to like him so much that she had begun to ponder occasionally about introducing him to her sister and taking the risk of everything falling apart.

She had pondered needlessly. Ash had met Edwina and—nothing. Not that Jermaine had ever come to any decision about introducing him to Edwina. Neither of the Hargreaves daughters lived with their parents any longer. But Jermaine and Ash had been driving through the Oxfordshire countryside one early September afternoon when she had happened to mention that her parents lived close by.

‘Don’t you think it’s time I met them?’ he had teased, as ever smiling. She had smiled back—most men ran a mile at the thought of meeting a girl’s parents.

She had tensed up, however, when, turning into her parents’ drive, she’d seen that she and Ash were not the only visitors that Sunday afternoon. Edwina’s sports car had been parked outside.

‘My sister’s here,’ she’d informed Ash, and had hidden her reluctance to go into the large old house she had been born in.

She need not have been concerned. Ash had been pleasant and courteous to her parents, and had smiled and been polite to Edwina, and that was all. Jermaine hadn’t missed the way her sister had gone into action—the smile, the breathless laugh, the big blue eyes attentive, absorbed in every syllable Ash uttered.

Ash had been unmoved as Edwina had flattered his choice of car and enquired—after an interval—what sort of profession he was in. ‘I’m in computer software,’ he had answered, and, probably because he was proud of his elder brother, ‘I work for my brother’s company, International Systems—I don’t know if you’ve heard of them?’

Edwina hadn’t, but Jermaine hadn’t doubted as her sister’s glance had taken in Ash’s discreetly expensive shoes and clothes, that she would soon be finding out all about the forward looking company—and its wealthy chairman—not to mention Ash, the chairman’s far from impoverished brother. Edwina liked money. Regretfully, Jermaine realised, that had been one of the chief reasons for Edwina calling on their parents that afternoon: because her bank account could do with topping up. Their father thought the world of Edwina and, although Edwin Hargreaves’s income had greatly reduced when the stock market had received something of a massive hiccup, Jermaine guessed that her father’s cheque was already residing in her sister’s purse.

Jermaine made herself some cheese on toast to go with her coffee, reflecting how more than two months had passed since that Sunday. It was now the beginning of December and, although she had since paid quite a few more visits to her family home—especially when her mother had gone down with flu—she had not again met Edwina there.

Jermaine’s thoughts drifted to her parents for a moment or two. She was aware that she was not her father’s favourite, but her mother had always sought to be scrupulously fair to both her children. Though, thinking back, Jermaine realised her pain over the Pip Robinson business had caused her mother pain too. Even then, though, when annoyed at her twenty-year-old daughter’s heartlessness, she had not remonstrated with her beautiful blonde off-spring but had striven instead to bolster up the shattered confidence of her younger platinum-haired daughter.

‘She doesn’t want him!’ Jermaine recalled complaining, vulnerable, shaken by Pip’s behaviour and hardly able to believe her sister could have acted in the way she had. ‘Just because she’s beautiful…’

‘You’re beautiful too,’ he mother had cut in gently, much to Jermaine’s astoundment.

‘Me?’ she’d gasped, conscious only that she was thin and seemed to be all arms and legs.

Grace Hargreaves had given her sixteen-year-old a hug. ‘You,’ she’d smiled, and, at Jermaine’s look of surprise, ‘You’re losing that gangly look, filling out in all the right places. Give yourself another year and you’ll see.’ And when Jermaine hadn’t looked convinced she’d added, ‘Your complexion is flawless, match that with your lovely violet eyes and you’re going to be outstanding.’

Jermaine had never known her mother tell her a lie, but wasn’t very sure about ‘outstanding’. ‘You don’t think the colour of my hair’s a little bit weird?’

‘Not in the slightest. Learn to love it,’ her mother had urged. ‘You really are a sight for sore eyes, sweetheart.’

Over the next couple of years, when her burgeoning curves had fulfilled their promise, Jermaine had come to accept and quite like her white-blonde hair. By that time, however, Edwina had used her wiles on any male friend her sister brought home, and it had soon become clear to Jermaine that, while there might be only four years’ difference between their ages, there was a vast difference between their natures. She would never, and could not ever, behave in the way Edwina did.

Edwina had not been at all happy when her father’s finances suffered a reversal—though not unhappy so much for him as for herself. Jermaine had been sixteen then, and had left school at once and got herself a job, but Edwina had no intention of working for a living. Her father had indulged her—she regarded it as her right.

Edwina was greedy but, when in sight of men, could be most generous if, by being so, it would get her what she wanted.

After another couple of boyfriends had succumbed to Edwina’s charms, Jermaine had known that she was never going to commit herself to any man unless she was certain that he wanted her and nobody else. There was no way she was going to give herself or go to bed with any man until she was two hundred per cent positive that it was her, and her alone, that he wanted. She was just not interested in any fickle affair where her sister could waltz in, bat her big blue eyes, smile that particular smile kept for such occasions—and take over. Good grief! Jermaine came to with a start, realised she had finished her light meal without being conscious of having eaten—and wondered what on earth had sent her off into reflective mode of things past.

Ash and the commitment he wanted from her, very probably, she realised. But Ash was different. True, her own tastes had changed. She had moved on from the lightweight males she had been drawn to up until a couple of years ago.

She supposed it was all part and parcel of growing up. Two years ago the company she worked for had invited her to transfer from their Oxford branch to their head office in London. It had been a very flattering offer. To go had not been a difficult decision to make. Edwina, while returning home when it suited her, had already moved out several times. She had then, however, been back again, and was lazy, untidy and given to treating Jermaine’s wardrobe as her own. Edwina was, in fact, generally a pain to live with, and at that time had shown no sign of moving out again.

‘Will you mind very much if I go?’ Jermaine had asked her mother—her one regret about leaving.

‘It’s not as if you’re going to Timbuktu,’ her mother had smiled—and with her blessing Jermaine had left Oxfordshire for London, and had taken residence in the small flat that Masters and Company had found for her.

Two years on, Jermaine was an established member of the sales support team. She worked with, and liaised with, the best field people in the business. Hard-working family men in the main. Sophisticated executives who had come to rely on her input, trusting her to follow up anything they initiated. She was good at her job, and loved it, and enjoyed the maturity of the men she worked with.

Three months ago she had been at a party with Stuart Evans—a man she shared an office with—when she had met Ash Tavinor. They had immediately got on well, and Jermaine hadn’t been totally surprised when a few days later Ash had phoned her at her office and enquired would he be stepping on anybody’s toes if he asked her out?

She’d liked him, and dined with him the very next evening. In no time she’d learned that he had just sold his apartment, more quickly than he had anticipated, and had not as yet found anything that had everything he wanted. He was still looking. In the meantime his brother had said he could move into his place and was welcome to stay as long as he liked.

‘That’s very good of him and his wife,’ Jermaine had remarked, only to learn that Ash’s brother, Lukas, was not married.

‘Lukas is away more often than he’s at home so we’re unlikely to see each other all that often,’ Ash had smiled.

A month later Ash had met her parents and—her sister. He had been totally impervious to Edwina’s charms, and from then on Jermaine had allowed herself to grow fond of Ash.

But now Ash had grown weary of her backing off every time the amorous side of his nature reared its head. He wanted that commitment from her. And she—wasn’t she being just a tiny bit stubborn? Hadn’t Ash proved himself? He was sincere. It was her and her alone that he wanted. Wasn’t she, as he’d said, being just a little bit old-fashioned? Wasn’t it time she…? The phone rang. Ash!

It must be him. He had been away two whole weeks now and she had thought every day that he might think to give her a call, but he hadn’t. True, he had told her he was going to be extremely busy…

She hurried to answer it. ‘Hello?’ she enquired brightly. It was Ash.

‘Jermaine—um…’ he began, though not cheerfully, not in his usual sunny tone. She was eager to talk to him, to ask how he’d been, how was work—she thought they knew each other well enough by now for her to ask when was she going to see him again. But—something wasn’t right! Instead of sounding eager to talk to her, Ash was sounding reluctant to talk to her at all and had said nothing after that ‘Jermaine—um…’

‘What’s wrong?’ she enquired, ready to help, wanting to help if he had a problem—or so she thought then!

‘I’ve—er—I’ve been putting off making this call,’ he confessed, and sounded so much as if he would by far prefer to be talking to anybody else but her that, as shaken as she was suddenly feeling, Jermaine felt her mammoth pride spring urgently into life.

She and Ash had spent some very good times together, but if his silence this past fortnight—no matter how busy he had been—meant he had gone off the idea of her and commitment, then she wasn’t about to let him think she’d be broken-hearted if he’d rung to say that this was ‘byebye’ time.

‘Let me make it easy for you,’ she answered lightly. ‘While I’ve truly enjoyed the good times we’ve shared, your absence this—er—past couple of weeks has shown me that, well, to be blunt, I’m not ready to make the commitment you spoke of. In actual fact,’ she hurried on, pride to the fore, ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be better if we didn’t see each other again.’

‘Um…’ Ash still seemed stuck for words. ‘Actually, Jermaine, I wasn’t calling to—er—um…’ She waited. She still liked Ash, was still fond of him, but if he wasn’t phoning to say ‘It’s been nice knowing you’, then she hadn’t the first idea what his fourteen days of silence, or his stated, ‘I’ve been putting off making this call’ was all about. ‘The thing is…’ he seemed to gather himself together to begin to explain ‘…Lukas came home unexpectedly on Saturday.’

Two days ago. ‘You’re phoning from home? Your brother’s place?’ Jermaine questioned. Ash was still looking for the right property to purchase. ‘You’re back from Scotland?’

There was a tense silence from the other end. Then, to her surprise, Ash confessed, ‘I didn’t go to Scotland.’

He’d been away two weeks but hadn’t been where he had told her he was going? ‘Your plans changed?’ She concentrated on keeping her tone light. She still had no clue as to why Ash, if he hadn’t called to say goodbye, had put off making this call. But she was more astonished than surprised when at last he answered.

‘I never intended to go to Scotland,’ he confessed.

‘You never…? You lied to me?’ The lightness had gone from her tone.

‘I—couldn’t help it,’ Ash admitted. Jermaine’s feeling of astonishment went up tenfold and, at his next three words, it mingled with a sudden familiar sickness in the pit of her stomach. ‘Edwina and I…’

‘Edwina?’ Her voice had risen in her shock. ‘Edwina, my sister?’

‘We couldn’t help it. We fell in love, and…’

‘You’ve been seeing Edwina?’ Jermaine couldn’t take it in. ‘All the time you’ve been ringing me, dating me, you’ve been…’

‘It didn’t start out like that,’ Ash jumped in quickly.

Jermaine was reeling, but holding on—just. ‘I’m sure it didn’t!’ Oh, weren’t we on familiar territory! ‘It started out with me introducing her to you at my parents’ home over two months ago—have you been dating Edwina since then?’ Jermaine questioned sharply.

‘No!’ he protested. ‘And it didn’t start out as a “date”.’ Tell me about it! ‘Edwina was near my home, Highfield, Lukas’s place, when she had a puncture. You must have given her my phone number because, poor darling…’ Poor darling! I’m just loving this! ‘…she rang me with no idea what to do.’

Jermaine knew for a fact, since she had seen nor heard nothing from her sister this past couple of months, that by no chance had she passed on the telephone number of Highfield. ‘You had, of course?’

‘Yes,’ Ash answered.

‘You never mentioned Edwina’s “puncture” to me.’

‘She asked me not to.’ I’ll bet she did! ‘She thought you might be upset that she’d bothered me. I said you wouldn’t be but Edwina said she’d feel better if it was our little secret.’

How sweet! ‘So you asked her out and…?’

‘I didn’t. We—er—that is, Edwina found a glove in her car—it was your fathers, but she didn’t know that then. Not until after she’d called in at my office one day when she was passing. And, since it was close to lunch time, suggested that the least she could do after the inconvenience she’d put me to was to take me to lunch.’ Hook on to my line and let me pull you in! Edwina obviously hadn’t lost her touch. ‘Then you couldn’t see me—that weekend you went home to look after your mother when she had flu—and…’

‘Thank you for at last having the decency to tell me!’ Jermaine chopped him off. She didn’t want to hear any more; she could guess the rest. ‘Goodbye, Ash,’ she added with quiet dignity.

‘That wasn’t why I phoned!’ Ash cried in panic before she could put the phone down.

She hesitated. She needed time, space to lick her wounds. Edwina had done it again! ‘It wasn’t?’

‘Edwina’s had an accident!’

Fear struck her. She did not particularly like her sister—but that didn’t stop her from loving her. ‘What sort of an accident? Is she badly hurt? Where is she? Which hospit—?’

‘She isn’t in hospital. It isn’t as serious as that. She’s here—at Highfield.’

Highfield! ‘Your brother’s place? Edwina’s at your brother’s home?’

‘We’ve—er—had a little holiday here,’ Ash owned reluctantly. ‘She intended to go back to her place yesterday, but…’

Edwina had been holidaying with Ash! A two-week holiday! Jermaine was shaken anew. She supposed she shouldn’t really be shaken by anything Edwina did, so perhaps it was the fact it was Ash—her own boyfriend—correction, ex- boyfriend—who was her sister’s holiday boyfriend that was the real shaker. All this while Jermaine had thought him too up to his ears in work in Scotland to get near a phone—and he had been holiday all the while with her sister at his brother’s home in Hertfordshire!

But—Edwina was hurt in some way. ‘What’s wrong with her—what sort of an accident?’

‘As I said, Lukas came home unexpectedly on Saturday. He’s been away for about a month and was pretty shattered. So, to give him a chance to unwind a bit, I took Edwina down to the local riding stables and we hired a couple of horses. Only Edwina’s mount was a bit more spirited than we were told, and galloped off with her. When I caught up with them, Edwina was lying on the ground, stunned. She’d taken a dreadful tumble and hurt her back.’

‘What does the doctor say?’ Jermaine asked urgently.

‘Poor darling, she’s so brave—she’s refused point-blank to see a doctor.’

‘She’s refused…? Can she walk?’

‘Oh, yes. But with great difficulty. Between us, Mrs Dobson and I—she’s Lukas’s housekeeper—’ he explained, ‘got Edwina upstairs and into bed. She’s there now. She tried to insist on getting up, but when she fainted I made her stay exactly where she was.’

Fainted! Suspicions which she did not want began to stir in Jermaine’s mind. How well she remembered how conveniently Edwina would limp with some knee injury or other should she be called upon to do some errand she wasn’t keen on. Jermaine clearly recalled when she had been thirteen, Edwina seventeen, and Edwina, who had had her own small car, had been in a fury because her mother wouldn’t allow her to borrow her much larger and zippier car. There had been a fearful screaming match, Jermaine remembered. It had ended with Edwina flouncing out of the drawing room. Her mother had gone after her a minute later—and had found Edwina in a dead ‘faint’. Only Jermaine, who had rushed out at her mother’s call, had seen the way Edwina had surreptitiously peeped beneath her lashes to see how her ‘faint’ was going down. Not many weeks afterwards Edwina’s car had been changed for her first sports car.

‘So you see, Mrs Dobson has looked after Edwina, but now she’s busy with her other duties,’ Ash was going on. ‘And although I know I’ve got a colossal neck to ask it of you, I just had to ring to ask if you’ll come down to Highfield and look after your sister?’

‘Colossal neck’ was putting it mildly. ‘I’d better have a word with her,’ Jermaine answered coolly, feeling mean for her suspicions, but years of living with her sister had left few blindfolds.

‘She doesn’t know I’m ringing!’ Ash exclaimed. ‘She’d have a fit if she did. I didn’t want to ring at all, which is why I’m ringing so late after her accident. But Lukas has just asked what family Edwina has and seems to think that you, as her only sister, would be sure to want to come down to Highfield to look after her, so…’

‘Now wait a minute!’ Go down to Highfield? Go to look after her back-stabbing, excellent horse-woman sister who, more than probably—if past knowledge of her was anything to go by—had not hurt her back as badly as she was making out? ‘I’ve a job to go to. I can’t drop everything and come dashing down to Hertfordshire just because…’

‘Just because?’ He sounded horrified. ‘Edwina’s your sister…’ he began to remonstrate.

‘And she’s your girlfriend!’ Guilt at the small percentage of doubt that remained, because maybe Edwina had seriously injured her back, made Jermaine’s voice sharp. ‘You look after her!’ she told Ash, and discontinued the call.

She couldn’t rest, of course. Jermaine paced her small flat, furious with Ash, angry with Edwina—but plagued by conscience. Drat, and double drat. Then she remembered the mobile phone from which Edwina was never parted. In seconds Jermaine had dialled the number.

‘Hello?’ enquired a sweet, totally feminine voice.

‘Thanks for pinching Ash. How’s your back?’ Jermaine opened with sisterly candour.

‘He rang you?’ Edwina was clearly outraged, her sweet tone swiftly departing, sounding not the slightest abashed that Jermaine knew about her and Ash. ‘He had no right…’

Edwina could talk of right! ‘Why wouldn’t he ring—with you “suffering” the way you are.’

‘Stuff that—you should see his brother!’

Click. In that one sentence Jermaine, who knew her sister so well, had it all worked out. The wealthy elder brother, bachelor brother, had returned home unexpectedly and Edwina—never one to miss a chance and already established at Highfield—had no intention of removing herself from his orbit. Due to leave Highfield the next day, Edwina must have had her greedy little brain working furiously in her endeavour to find some way of lingering on at Highfield. Jermaine saw it all. Lukas Tavinor would be a much better catch than his brother. Poor Ash; like the proverbial hot coal, he would be dropped.

‘You’re a better rider than Ash?’

‘He’d barely settled in his saddle when I took off,’ Edwina boasted.

‘He wants me to come down and “look after” you.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Edwina shrieked.

‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to,’ Jermaine retorted, and hung up.

Well, she had no need to feel guilty any more, Jermaine fumed. All too plainly there was nothing wrong with Edwina’s back. Her ‘accident’ had merely been a means to an end. By the sound of it, the globe-trotting Lukas Tavinor was back in England for a short while—Edwina wanted to be ‘on the spot’ while he was still around, and before he went away again. And what Edwina wanted, she invariably got.

Jermaine was familiar with her sister’s tactics, yet even so it still shook her that there had not been a scrap of remorse from Edwina, or apology, for ‘holidaying’ with her younger sister’s boyfriend. Edwina had cared not a bit, nor felt any need to pretend when they’d been on the phone just now. She had not hurt her back, but took Jermaine’s loyalty for granted, assuming without question that she would not tell anyone what a humbug Edwina really was.

And the devil of it was, Jermaine fumed, Edwina was right. Edwina had done nothing to earn her loyalty, but she had it. She knew Jermaine wouldn’t be telling Ash what a fraud she was. But he had enough to learn. Jermaine went to bed wondering if he knew yet that he and Edwina were history.

By morning Jermaine was coming to terms with her ex-boyfriend’s duplicity and was starting to feel a little incredulous that she had ever given more than a passing thought to the sort of commitment Ash had wanted. Good grief, he was as fickle as the rest of them! She had been so sure about him too. So sure that he wasn’t remotely interested in Edwina.

Well, it was doubly certain now that the next man who dated Jermaine Hargreaves had better not try the ‘commitment’ angle. She positively was not interested. Come to that, she wasn’t interested in dating again either. She had a good job; she’d concentrate on that.

Thinking of which, Jermaine left her flat and drove to her place of work, aware as ever that something seemed to cut off in her when her boyfriends strayed in her sister’s direction—Jermaine was no longer attracted to them and Edwina was welcome to the spoils. One or two had come back, pleading for a second chance, but Jermaine just hadn’t wanted to know.

It was the same with Ash—she had lost interest in him. She had enjoyed his company but should he ever again ask her to go out with him then she would tell him, quite truthfully, thanks, but no thanks.

And, having moved on, Ash Tavinor would become someone she once knew, and would be no more than that—Jermaine got on with her work.

‘Coming for a swift half?’ Stuart Evans invited when they were clearing their desks for the day.

She had nothing else pressing, and Stuart was more a friend than anything else. No way could his invitation be construed as a date. ‘Since you ask,’ she accepted, and the ‘swift half’ turned out to be a bar meal. Jermaine arrived home around nine to hear her phone ringing.

‘It’s Ash,’ he said as soon as she answered.

Ash who? or Hi? Since she knew full well that there was nothing whatsoever the matter with Edwina, Jermaine simply couldn’t bring herself to enquire how she was. ‘How’s Ash?’ she enquired instead.

‘Look, Jermaine, couldn’t you come and look after Edwina? Not that there’s a lot to do,’ he added quickly. ‘The poor darling’s talking of going back to her place—she doesn’t want to be a nuisance. But I can’t let her do that and…’

‘In case you didn’t hear me last night—I have a job to go to.’ Jermaine cut him off, with no intention at all of going down to Highfield to hold her sister’s hand.

‘I never knew you were so hard!’ Ash complained.

Hard! ‘Let me put it this way. Edwina’s your holiday companion—take an extended vacation.’ There was a brief silence, but if Ash was drumming up some kind of an argument, Jermaine didn’t want to know. ‘Goodbye, Ash,’ she bade him, and had barely put the phone down before it rang again.

‘Have you no concern at all about your sister?’ enquired a harsh voice she had never heard before—though her mind was working overtime as to whom her caller might be.

Jermaine only just managed to bite back a snappy retort. She swallowed hard. ‘Good evening,’ she managed pleasantly.

‘Your place is here, looking after your sister, not staying out half the night.’

It was only a little after nine o’clock! Which monastery had he sprung from? Jermaine strove hard for control. ‘Have we been introduced?’ she tossed in shortly.

‘Lukas Tavinor!’ he barked—as she’d surmised, Ash’s brother. ‘Ash has an important meeting he can’t miss tomorrow. You’d better come now and…’

At which point Jermaine lost the small control she had over her annoyance with the whole lot of them. ‘ I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow!’ snapped she who hadn’t, not caring at all for his tone, much less his orders. ‘Edwina’s your guest—you look after her.’

A tense silence was her immediate answer. Followed by a clipped, ‘Ash was wrong to suggest I should try ringing you. You are as hard as he said you were.’

Jermaine’s breath caught. She didn’t even know this man, yet here he was ready to brand her—when all she’d done was to go out with his brother. This, and his brother’s duplicity, was what she received for her trouble!