'What? Oh, no, about eighteen months ago,' Katy replied, flustered by his steady gaze and the incongruity of the question. She had been busily thinking of his earlier statement that he would have her tonight. She had thought it was the kind of sophisticated teasing she had encountered dozens of times before in the modelling world, where every man seemed to consider fashion models easy game... But now, with his changed attitude, she was not so sure, and yes, she was panicking...
'You do know Monica and David are divorced, or does your family interest you so little now you are a celebrity?' The last comment was a sneer.
Katy sat up straighter in her chair, the mention of Monica enough to stiffen her spine. 'Yes. I may not see Father very often, but there is such a thing as a telephone,' she informed him sarcastically. 'Not that my communications with my father are any of your business.'
CHAPTER TWO
On Sunday Katy was lunching with her father; they had never been particularly close—she had always considered him a womaniser—but as the years had passed she had come to accept he was no worse than most men.
Tomorrow she was going to tell him she was joining the family business, Meldenton China, makers of fine china. A frown marred her smooth brow as she recalled her conversation the previous day with Mr Jeffries, the family solicitor, and the other trustee, along with her father, of the inheritance her grandmother had left her— a thirty per cent share in the family firm.
She had a troubled feeling there was something the elderly man was not telling her. She gave a dismissive shrug of her elegant shoulders. She was twenty-two now, and the trusteeship was at an end. She had planned for this day for a long time...
Circumstances had led her into a different career from the one she had intended. There was no point in denying she had enjoyed her success as a model, and now it was over she felt a tinge of sadness. She had made some good friends in the fashion business, and she had travelled all over the world, but she knew deep down that she had always been acting a part. It had been a game she'd played, albeit very successfully.
She conceded it had taught her a lot. Claude had encouraged her to keep up her interest in design and on numerous occasions used some of her work for ornamentation. She had enjoyed the experience, but now she was happily anticipating a new job as a designer of fine china with the family firm—the career she had originally trained for at art college.
Katy jumped and spilled a little of the champagne as Jake reached across the table and caught her free hand. Lost in thought, she had almost forgotten his stinging comment accusing her of ignoring her father.
'It was not my intention to argue with you tonight, Katy,' brown eyes clashed and mingled with green, 'but your father is an old friend.'
The use of her given name lent sincerity to his words. Obviously he had taken her early remonstration to heart, and the thought pleased her.. .until she heard 'old friend'. Oh, no! She wasn't falling for his easy charm, his lies...
"Then mind your own business,' she snapped back, pulling her hand away. With a friend like Jake, who needed enemies? she thought venomously.
'As a friend of the family I think I am entitled to interfere. Your father is getting old, you have barely seen him in four years, and now he is on his own he's bound to be lonely. If you weren't so wrapped up in your career, so damn selfish, you might have noticed.' Jake's scathing tone made her hackles rise. He had a damn nerve, she thought furiously as she listened to him berating her.
'My God! Your father's house is not ten minutes away from the hotel you are staying in. Hardly the caring daughter, are you?'
'Such regard for my father I find rather hypocritical, coming from you,' Katy shot back angrily. How dared he pretend concern for the man, when she knew to her cost Jake had been Monica's lover long before her father had married the woman, and probably still was? For her London home one could read menage a trois—her father, Monica and Jake. Katy herself had had a lucky escape from the machinations of Jake once before and there was no way she was going to sit here and listen to his hypocritical cant.
'Just what do you mean by that?' Jake demanded, and as she would have risen from the table his large hand caught her wrist and forced her to sit down.
She pulled her wrist free, but only because he allowed her to, and quite deliberately she refilled her glass and, raising it to her lips, drained the sparkling liquid. How dared he question her, the swine? And without thinking she refilled her glass again.
'I asked you a question. I have been called many names in my time, but never a hypocrite; what exactly are you implying?' he demanded hardily.
'Nothing,' she muttered, and, picking up her glass, she drained the sparkling contents thirstily. She did not like to remember that particular painful episode in her life. 'You need not worry about my father. I'm going to see him tomorrow.'
'You've been in London days already. How gracious of you, sparing an hour or two for him before jetting off again with your French friend. But then, beneath the sophisticated image you are still a spoilt, selfish little girl,' Jake intoned furiously. 'I had hoped you might have changed...'
Katy carefully refilled her glass, and drained it yet again. Her hand shook with the force of the rage boiling inside her. She had changed; she was no more the dumb girl he could manipulate. His sneering superiority was the last straw. For years she had avoided having a showdown with this man, preferring to hide her hurt under various excuses, but not any more; she was going to tell him just what a rat fink... No. Katy took a deep calming breath: she was a so
phisticated lady; she would not give him the satisfaction of losing her temper. Instead she answered coolly, 'I am not jetting off anywhere. I am going to my father's house tomorrow and I expect to stay. I am joining the family firm—something I have always wanted to do.'
'You, Lena Lawrence, working nine to five, pushing paper? Don't make me laugh,' he mocked cynically, but his dark eyes were fixed with a strange intensity upon her beautiful flushed face.
His mockery broke the slender thread of her self-control. 'No, not Lena Lawrence, but Katy Lawrence Meldenton. You were instrumental in stopping me once before, but not this time, buster. I know you for the rat you are. "Hypocrite" doesn't begin to describe you.'
'I think you'd better explain that remark. I always treated you with the utmost care and consideration; I offered you my name, everything. Nothing would have pleased me more than having you stay in London. I did not chase you away, you ran... You wanted to see the world,' he said harshly, his mouth twisting cynically. 'Or so you said.'
She had told him that, and now she had almost admitted she had lied. She reached for her glass; she needed to regain her self-control before she gave away more than she wanted him to know.
'Why do you dislike me so much? Do I prick your conscience?' Jake continued seriously. His long fingers curved around her hand on the stem of the glass. 'No more drink,' he warned hardily.
She looked down at his tanned fingers, then up into his black eyes; he was leaning over the table towards her, his face expressionless; only the glitter in the depths of his dark eyes betrayed his tightly controlled anger. 'I've put up with a lot from you over the years, Katy, because I valued our,' he hesitated, 'relationship, for want of a better word, but no one talks to me the way you have tonight and gets away with it. I want the truth and now.'
What truth? Katy thought. If she told him she knew of his infidelity all those years ago, with her own stepmother, what would it prove? Only how deeply he had hurt her. He was an astute man. He would realise just how much she had loved him... No, it was much better to let him think she had had a change of heart. Her young emotions were fickle. She would rather have him believe she was a flighty, promiscuous lady than let him know how vulnerable she really was. Pride was all she'd had left her when she'd walked out on him at eighteen. It would be foolish to surrender it now in the heat of anger.