‘No. Drew had no idea, but I think your father suspected something,’ Caroline admitted ruefully. ‘You asked me why I didn’t tell you. You were crazy about my brother and he was offering you what you appeared to want. I thought you’d be good for him and give him a chance of happiness. I honestly believed that he would make you happy as well.’
‘I suppose I’d never have got him any other way,’ Abbey muttered heavily, thinking of the gauche teenager she had been, easily impressed and duped by a male of Jeffrey’s intelligence and sophistication.
‘Stay here with us tonight,’ Caroline pleaded. ‘You’re devastated by all this. Nikolai Arlov is a total bastard for giving you this file!’
‘I don’t think so. Whatever Nikolai’s motives, it was past time that I knew the truth and I wish you had at least had the courage to tell me after Jeffrey died.’ Averting her gaze from Caroline’s discomfited face, Abbey stood up. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I want to go home and come to terms with this in private.’
Abbey started trembling violently when she got back into the limo. She was hanging on to her composure by a slender thread. Tears were clogging her throat. The man she had loved had not returned her love. Jeffrey had lied to her and cheated on her and had played her for a fool. Their relationship had been an unpleasant charade that a more experienced woman might have questioned. Jeffrey had had no desire to sleep with Abbey while he still had Jane in his life. She remembered the day he had touched her red hair and asked her if she had ever thought of tinting it blond. Anguish exploded inside her like a grenade going off in a confined space. Guess who had blond hair? She remembered Lady Jane on her husband’s arm at Jeffrey’s funeral, long golden blond hair streaming across the shoulders of her elegant black coat, her beautiful face frozen as ice.
Abbey pressed clammy hands to her quivering cheeks. Her best friend had stood by and watched her marry a man who was besotted with another man’s wife. That awareness had ensured that Abbey had felt unable to share her innermost feelings with Caroline as she once would have done. She felt utterly betrayed. The passenger door beside her opened and only then did she realise that the journey was over and she was home.
She saw her face in her hall mirror and it scared her. Tears had smeared her eye shadow and mascara and she bore a close resemblance to a corpse in the horror film she had watched earlier. Her attention fell on the photo of her and Jeffrey on that long-ago wedding day and she snatched the frame from the wall and smashed it down on the tiled hall floor. That surge of violence shocked her to the core and she was staring down in surprise at the broken glass when the doorbell sounded.
Nikolai hammered the knocker when Abbey didn’t immediately answer the bell. Relief swept him when the door finally opened and she peered out.
‘I was worried about you,’ he confessed in a driven undertone. ‘How are you?’
‘How did you think I would be?’ Abbey demanded, animation and energy entering her again when she saw him. He might be the author of her evening of disillusionment, but at least she didn’t have to watch her words with him. ‘Happy?’
Nikolai pressed the door back and strode in, his feet crunching across broken glass. Even though the photo frame was lying face down, he recognised it and felt almost jubilant at such a demonstration of disrespect. His ambivalence towards her gnawed at him. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘I’m not hurt,’ Abbey proclaimed.
But Nikolai could see the shock still etched in her dilated pupils and rigid bone structure. ‘You need a shot of vodka.’
‘No. I’m fine.’ A discordant laugh fell from her lips to punctuate the strained silence. ‘It’ll just be a long time before I play the grieving widow again!’
Nikolai reached out in a sudden movement and gathered her into his arms.
‘The bastard!’ she sobbed suddenly. ‘I really, really loved him. I thought he was the most wonderful guy in the world!’
‘He didn’t deserve your love.’
‘He didn’t want or need it!’ Abbey gasped in stricken disagreement. ‘He didn’t even really want or need me! I was just a substitute for the woman he loved and couldn’t have.’
Nikolai, who avoided emotional scenes with women like the plague, could not believe that he had got himself into such a situation. But he had found it impossible to stay away from her when he was concerned about her state of mind. Once it had entered his thoughts that she might do something foolish in her distress, he had had to seek her out and he had no intention of leaving her until he was convinced that she was all right. Right now, she was very far from being all right. She was sobbing into his chest with the abandon of a distraught child, her slim body shaking and shuddering with emotion. He smoothed her tumbled curls back from her damp brow and dug out his mobile to make a call with one hand.