The Morning After

‘Still—’ another shrug ‘—perhaps that was the price he had to pay for being such a callous, devious swine. I don’t regret his going, and I can’t say I have any regrets now that he never acknowledged me for what I was to him. He was just a man—’ again that contempt for men in general slithered into her tone ‘—like all the rest of them—vulnerable to his sexual urges but unwilling to accept the consequences of his weakness.’

‘So you paid him back for his rejection of you by becoming someone he could never acknowledge even if he did change his mind.’

‘The notorious Annie Lacey, you mean?’ A soft laugh that fell nowhere near humour left her dry lips. ‘Oh, no,’ she denied. ‘That honour goes to someone much closer to your home, Mr DeSanquez.’ She turned her cheek on her arms to look directly at him. ‘Luis Alvarez did that.’

He flinched but did not protest, and for a moment she studied the tight line of his profile, wondering how far ahead of her his mind had already taken him. It had to have skipped some way ahead on the simple knowledge that last night had given him. But how far he was willing to use his intelligence to work out the rest, she didn’t know.

He was proud—too proud for his own good, probably. That pride might not be willing to take the full brunt of all of this without him at least putting up a token objection—like that of sacrificing her feelings for that of his family.

She knew all about that kind of thing, had experienced it before. She turned away, deciding that it was up to him to indicate whether or not she continued this. The trouble was, she accepted as she launched another stone into the clear blue sea, that what she said was going to make him appear as gullible as a babe in arms, and she had a feeling he knew that too.

‘Please continue.’

He was going to take it all on board. Annie smiled grimly to herself.

‘I was nineteen years old,’ she reminded him, with the first hint of a wobble in her voice. ‘And until my aunt—stroke mother,’ she added deridingly, ‘died I had been kept pretty much to heel by her overprotection and the kind of job I did alongside normal schoolwork.’

Her hands wrapped themselves around her legs again, shoulders hunching in as if to protect her from some unseen evil. ‘And, as I told you, discovering all that dirt about myself sent me a little crazy for a time—discos, parties, anything to keep the bitterness away. Then I went to your party. It was your party, wasn’t it?’ She partly asked him, partly accused him.

He sighed heavily in answer, a nerve clenching at the side of his jaw. ‘I was in London on business,’ he explained. ‘I happened to see you on television—playing a cameo role in a big period drama…’

Annie nodded, knowing exactly what drama he was referring to. It had been the first real acting role she’d been offered—and it had turned out to be the last, because her life had blown apart not long after that drama had been shown on TV.

‘You were so beautiful,’ he murmured gruffly, ‘that I wanted to meet you. I knew the director. He promised to bring you to a party I was giving at my apartment.’

‘You weren’t there,’ Annie stated with an absolute certainty. She would have known, she was sure of it. She would know if this man was in the same hemisphere as herself.

‘I was called away on urgent business,’ he said, confirming his absence. ‘My sister and her husband were staying with me at the apartment. They offered to play host to my guests in my place, but Cristina was taken ill early on and apparently took to her bed, leaving Luis to play host alone.’

‘Which is why I met him there instead of you.’ She swallowed thickly, and lowered her face to watch her hand grind tiny pebbles in her palm again.

‘You were starving for affection.’ He turned his head to look at her with dark and sombre eyes. ‘He offered it. You grabbed at it desperately with both hands.’

About to throw her fistful of stones, Annie paused to stare at him. ‘You are joking, of course,’ she gasped. ‘He was old enough to be my father!’

César nodded. ‘The father-figure you had been deprived of all your life.’

That made her laugh, not humorously but with a wincing mockery. ‘He was a dissolute slob,’ she derided with contempt, ‘who tricked me into that bedroom then proceeded to attack me!’

She was on her feet suddenly, wiping her damp palms down her thighs in a tense, agitated kind of way that said she was reliving that dreadful moment in her life.

‘He would have succeeded in raping me too,’ she added thickly, ‘if his wife hadn’t walked in the room!’

And suddenly she was shaking, white-faced, the whole length of her slender frame from the top of her head to her curled toes trembling with a painful mixture of anger and sickening repugnance.

‘But if this is true—why did you not tell someone?’ He made a sharp, uncontrolled gesture of pained disgust that brought him jerkily to his feet. ‘Call in the police?’

For that Annie turned a withering look of contempt on him. ‘Are you really that naïve about your family?’ she cried. ‘Your sister was there, for goodness’ sake!’ She angrily drove home the point that he seemed to have ignored completely. ‘But did she care about me and

what I was being subjected to? Did she hell!’ The words scored across his steadily greying face. ‘She was too busy screaming in hysterics while the rest of your damned guests were falling over each other to get into the room to see what was going on!’

He muttered something beneath his tight breath, but Annie didn’t hear it; she was reliving her worst nightmare and it held her stiff and shaking.

‘I was labelled a cheap little tramp before I left your apartment.’ Her breasts heaved up and down on a forced breath. ‘No one bothered asking me for my side of the story. They just saw what they wanted to see,’ she said bitingly. ‘A nice juicy scandal where supposedly sweet Angel Lacey of all people was caught red-handed with another woman’s husband!’ She shuddered, feeling sick. ‘They saw what they wanted to see,’ she repeated thickly.

‘I’m—sorry,’ César dropped grimly into the throbbing silence.

She didn’t acknowledge him. ‘All I wanted to do was try to forget the whole ugly episode,’ she went on after a while. ‘Then the next thing I know I’m being cited as the other woman in your sister’s divorce and my name is being splattered all over the place! Who was going to believe my side of the story then, Mr DeSanquez?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘Two months after the event, who was going to believe that I was near-as-damn-it raped?’