Mistress for a Night

‘I should have made contact,’ he acknowledged darkly. He levered his long body away from the windowframe and began to pace the room, his hands bunched in his pockets, his shoulders tense. ‘I might have prevented it, reassured you. I should have said to hell with my job; someone else can do it. But I didn’t. I thought you were safe.’

‘You’re not making any sense,’ she said, tight-lipped, keeping her jaw clamped to stop her teeth from rattling with tension. She didn’t want to relive those dark days. Ever since she’d pulled herself up out of that pit of depression she’d done everything she could to forget. She never talked about it.

‘No.’ Suddenly the tension ebbed out of him. ‘Perhaps I’m not.’ He stopped pacing, sat on the opposite end of the sofa, angled towards her, his hands hanging loosely between his knees. ‘I’ll try to be coherent. That day—after I’d finished with Harold—I went to find you. Your car had gone. I hung around, waiting for you to come back. Then I phoned your friend’s number. I’d guessed right. You were there. Sue’s brother answered. He said you’d gone to bed; you were upset. I told him not to disturb you, asked him to tell you I’d phoned and would be in touch in a couple of days, to stay

where you were and I’d come to pick you up and take you back to my apartment.

‘I’d only intended to stay at Lytham long enough to tell you of the arrangements I’d made for us, and to break the news of our imminent marriage over dinner. I had to get back to London. I was briefing a barrister on behalf of a client in an important and complicated case of alleged fraud. I was working round the clock. Every evening I phoned Sue’s number and got no reply. It didn’t worry me too much at first; I knew you’d be OK with them. Finally, I phoned Lytham, thinking you might have gone back for some reason—to collect clothes—whatever.

‘I told Vivienne I couldn’t reach you at Sue’s and she said she wasn’t surprised. Apparently, later on the night you’d left Lytham, you’d phoned her, told her you were pregnant, asked where I was.’

‘She said you’d already left, would have bought a ticket to the other side of the world—if you’d got any sense,’ Georgia interjected miserably, painful memories bludgeoning her brain. ‘She advised me to have an abortion and told me I would never be welcome at Lytham again. I’d always known she resented me, didn’t like me. I hadn’t known until then that she actually hated me.’

‘Dear God!’ Jason said thickly. ‘And I wasn’t there to help you.’ He angled his head up, and there was deep regret in the eyes that held hers so steadily. ‘Yes, she told me that she’d advised you to go for a termination, and that the problem was now sorted. Sue and her brother had picked you up from a private clinic that morning and taken you to their holiday home on the coast to recuperate.’

Georgia pushed her hair back off her face. Her hand was shaking. Jason reached out and covered it with his own. ‘At least you now know how much she regretted her treatment of you. Had she lived, the two of you could have tried to build a good relationship.’

The comfort of his hand on hers was something she truly needed. Her fingers twined around his, clinging. Breathing shakily, she moistened her dry lips and told him what she had figured out a long time ago.

‘Vivienne had to take Harold’s side and believe implicitly in what he said. If she hadn’t the marriage would have started to break down. It would have been the last thing she wanted at that time. She was in love with the lifestyle being married to a wealthy man gave her.’

His thumb was stroking the inside of her wrist now, and the inner yearning began to overwhelm her. Somehow she had to fight it, or she would shame herself by throwing herself at him again. And fighting him was easy when she dredged up the bitterness.

‘So Vivienne told you what had happened about the baby and you heaved a sigh of relief and got on with your busy life.’ Her voice tightened with remembered anguish, shook with it. ‘A bunch of flowers and a card would have been a more civilised way of drawing a final line under the sorry episode. At least it would have shown you gave me a fleeting thought!’

She dragged her hand from his and he didn’t try to recapture it. He went very still. Pain was etched in every line of his face. He said, ‘I think we could both use another drink, don’t you?’ and pushed himself to his feet. His broad back was to her, shutting her out, as he refilled their glasses.

Georgia wiped the back of her hand across her brow. It was dark now, the storm abating, the air steamy with humidity. And what had been started, this long trawl through the past, had, of necessity, to be finished.

He turned and looked at her, a glass in each hand. ‘That week—while I was back in London making arrangements for the wedding, all that stuff, putting my name on estate agents’ mailing lists so that we could look for a suitable place to live—I learned a surprising thing about myself. I was totally, completely happy.’

He raised one brow sardonically, as if mocking that long-ago folly. ‘I knew I wanted to be married. To you. You were sweet, loving—well, I’d always known that. What I hadn’t realised was how much I’d grown to love you. I wanted you, and our child, and when I learned of the abortion I was too damned angry to trust myself to pick up a phone and speak to you, let alone go anywhere near you.’

He put the glasses on the table in front of her, looking down at her. She lowered her eyes, tightening her mouth. She couldn’t bear it. He was all she had ever wanted and he had wanted her, too. There was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice. But it had all gone wrong.

Yet suddenly, gloriously, hope blossomed. The anger that had shattered everything for them had been misplaced. Vivienne hadn’t told him everything. When he learned the truth, accepted it, then everything might come right for them.

She clutched the hope closely to her heart as he said, ‘By the time I’d got myself into a calmer state of mind it was too late. You’d already left for America. You’d made no attempt to contact me. I knew then that our child and I had meant nothing to you. I set about wiping you out of my mind.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘I’m telling you how it was. I’m not trying to make excuses, just giving you reasons.’

About to tell her that the mission to forget her had been pretty successful, until she’d got herself back in Harold’s life, he changed his mind. They both had enough to contend with right now without opening up that particular can of worms.

He flopped down on the sofa facing the one she was using, energy draining out of him, sweat glistening along his hairline. It was so damned hot.

Georgia got to her feet and came to stand over him, and he closed his eyes because the seductive sway of her body, the sticky heat making the thin fabric cling to every inch of her, threatened to be a temptation too far.

‘Jason.’ She said his name softly, verbally reaching out to him with all the love in her heart, all the passion, all the need. ‘I can’t give you excuses, either. Just reasons. Everything happened so quickly. After I’d phoned Vivienne from Sue’s I was frantic. You’d found me and Harold together and were too disgusted to want anything more to do with me, or so I thought. I went to my room and cried my eyes out for days, and Sue’s brother never did give me that message. I guess he was in too much of a panic to remember.’

She took in a ragged breath as, for the first time, she talked about the loss of her baby, a loss she had never come to terms with. ‘It was Sue who took charge when the pains started, called out their doctor—who took me to that clinic. Sue who stayed with me while I miscarried our child, who suggested they took me to the coast to recuperate and then to New York—very much earlier than we’d originally intended.’

She saw his eyes bat open, the sharp glitter in the smoky grey depths, heard the inward tug of breath into his lungs and knew that she had reached him, that at last he had listened to her, believed her. ‘I went because I hadn’t heard from you, and because I no longer cared what happened to me,’ she told him quietly. ‘I wanted to contact you but wouldn’t let myself. I was eighteen years old, totally insecure, deeply unhappy—because I’d lost what I most wanted in the world, both you and our child, and I couldn’t bear to hear you tell me to get lost.’

‘A miscarriage?’ He was struggling to come to terms with the sudden reversal of all his opinions. ‘Vivienne told me you’d—’

‘No,’ she interrupted gently, resisting the impulse to reach out physically, touch the side of his face with her hand. ‘Think about it. From what you said, she told you the problem was “sorted”. Sue had given her the news, and, yes, Vivienne had advised an abortion, but I never for one moment considered that as an option.’

She held her breath. Waiting. Deep in her bones she knew that everything hinged on whether he really believed her or not. True, there were medical records that could be checked, and Sue and her family would be only too happy to verify her story. But she needed him to believe her. Implicitly.

Briefly, he struggled with shock. The anger that had consumed every rational instinct in its wild flames, turning to the cold ashes of hatred, had been for nothing. He dragged in a harsh breath. Appalled.