Blinded by a sudden deluge of tears, she stumbled from the room, her arms crossed tightly across her breasts in a vain and belated attempt to hide as much of herself and her stupid red underwear as she could from Jason’s bleak, contemptuous eyes.
He made no move to stop her, or to follow her, and the last tiny flicker of hope snuffed out and died. And as she scrabbled around in her bedroom, snatching up the jeans and sweater she’d discarded earlier, her shoes and handbag, she could hear the low, harsh sound of his voice, her mother’s shrill tirade, Harold’s low, placating mutters.
They would be discussing her gross behaviour, she decided hysterically, heading for the door. Deciding how to get her contaminating presence out of their lives.
She fled down the corridor until she could no longer hear their voices, pulled her clothes on, walked into her shoes and clattered down the stairs.
As she reversed the small car she had been given the use of out of the garage, with more speed than precision, she knew exactly where she would go. To Sue.
Mercifully, she’d been too busy wandering round the shops planning her future with Jason to even think about contacting her friend to tell her what had happened and that she’d changed her mind about going with them to New York after all.
Kate and Robin Ansley, Sue’s parents, wouldn’t turn their backs on her, she knew that. Though at the moment they were both in New York. Robin had been there for weeks, setting up the American branch of his London-based advertising agency, and now Kate had flown out for a couple of weeks to make the final decision about where the family should live.
They had always welcomed her into their close and loving family, and would do everything they could to support her through this; she knew that. And Sue would fight her corner to the bitter end.
CHAPTER THREE
GEORGIA came back to the present with a jolt. She felt numb all over, the rapid playback of the past stunning her brain. And the way Jason was looking at her now, with contempt and scarcely veiled hostility, told her that Harold had never owned up to the truth of what had happened that evening all those years ago.
Maybe he’d meant to, but had never raked up enough courage. Jason could be frighteningly forbidding when he wanted to be.
But she’d made her peace with her mother’s husband a long time ago. He’d flown out to New York to break the news of her mother’s death in a car accident the day after her funeral. She hadn’t wanted to see him, not after what he’d done, but his altered appearance had shocked her so much she had listened to what he’d had to say.
His wife’s death, and the manner of it, had made him take a long, hard look at himself, and he’d hated what he’d seen. He hadn’t been able to apologise enough for the lies he’d told on that traumatic evening, the damage he’d done to her, and ultimately to his wife.
It had been hard to forgive him, but, faced with someone as obviously tormented by guilt as he was, she’d had no option but to try. On his return to England he’d written often, and occasionally she had replied, and when she’d returned to the UK he’d travelled to Birmingham once a month to give her lunch.
She’d cancelled their last date, though. She’d been so busy with her presentation. Now she wished she’d made time. He’d always seemed so lonely, pathetically pleased to have her company. He’d never known about her pregnancy, and that had made things easier because not knowing, he couldn’t mention it.
Jason was tall, over six feet, and she had to tilt her chin up to look him in the face. There was nothing there to see but naked dislike. Did he ever wonder what had happened to their baby? Did he even care? Had Vivienne told him about the miscarriage, or had neither of them bothered to mention the subject?
He’d made no attempt to contact her in all these years. He’d washed his hands of her, and the child she’d been carrying.
She never allowed herself to think about the miscarriage, the lost baby; it hurt too much. She closed her eyes briefly, to hide the pain, and felt his gaze on her like a brand, burning through her eyelids. She snapped them open again, and stared into the hard, hostile eyes, pushing the past firmly away. She didn’t know this man who had ignored her existence, the fate of their child. And didn’t want to.
The change in her stunned him. He was staring, he knew he was, but could do nothing about it.
This new version of the plump teenager he remembered was stylishly slender, yet perfectly formed, wearing an elegantly simple cream-coloured sweater, which almost certainly carried an Italian label, over narrow-fitting designer jeans. The woman she had become was light years away from the dumpy, frumpy fifteen-year-old he had first met at Harold and Vivienne’s wedding ten years ago.
The first real and deep compassion he’d felt in all of his twenty-three years of living had twisted sharply inside his guts as he’d looked at her then, wearing an awful blue satin dress that had emphasised every bulge, a fluffy confection of blue flowers set incongruously and precariously on her mouse-brown cropped head, and carrying her mother’s bouquet of white lilies in hands that visibly shook.
There’d been a look of bewilderment in her huge eyes that had made him want to take care of her, shelter her from life’s knocks. Especially when Vivienne, elegant in a darker blue silk, had raised a perfectly arched, perfectly derisive eyebrow whenever her hapless daughter made a gauche remark or clumsy movement.
Vivienne had had no time for her daughter, he had sensed that from the start, and later he had learned why.
But Georgia’s uncomfortably awkward smile—when he had eventually persuaded her to give one—had been beautiful, trusting and innocent, her eyes clinging to his as if he’d been a rock in a raging sea.
Now there was no compassion in him, not for her. She had killed any care he had had for her as surely as she had killed their child. He’d felt sick to his soul when Vivienne had told him of the abortion.
Besides, from the look of her, she needed none. And her smile—should she ever decide to thaw that haughty expression—might still be as beautiful as sunrise, but it would leave him cold.
/> She broke the long silence. ‘I need the remote control thingy to open the garages.’ Car keys dangled from one slim finger. She’d done something to her hair. Long now, cascading to her shoulders, it shimmered and gleamed in the overhead lights. It looked as soft as the costliest of silks.
Hooding his eyes, he strode towards her, held out a hand. ‘I’ll garage it for you and bring in your luggage.’
‘No.’ Instinctively she enclosed the keys in the palm of her hand. ‘No one touches that car but me.’
So there was an area where she was vulnerable. He shrugged. What did he care? He followed her out, and the vehicle in front of the closed garage area did raise an eyebrow. No wonder she was possessive.