Mistress Of The Groom

He set the tea before her and poured a sugarless cup for himself as he sat down opposite. ‘She said you were more like sisters than friends, and sisters stick together even through the bad times—that once she knew the truth she accepted that you believed you were protecting her. Quite from what, she didn’t explain, but then she wasn’t very coherent...’

Jane’s hand fell to the base of her throat in a classic gesture of shocked dismay. Poor Ava, she must have nearly had heart failure when she picked up the phone! And no wonder, if Ryan had wrapped his questions in those dark tones of silken suspicion.

‘What did you say to her?’ she asked hoarsely.

‘You hadn’t told her very much in that one phone call, had you, Jane?’ he said with an infuriatingly unrevealing smile. ‘Rather ironic, isn’t it? First you lie to her about us being lovers when we’re not, and then you lie to her by not telling her we’re lovers when we are. Who were you supposed to be protecting this time?’

‘She wouldn’t have just told you where I was—’choked Jane, fighting a sense of betrayal. She had impressed on Ava that no one was to know her whereabouts, just in case Ryan had been lying about calling off the dogs. Maybe she should have told her friend more, but she hadn’t really expected Ryan to personally hunt her down, not after she had scrawled that brief message to him on hotel notepaper, posting it on her way back to her flat in a taxi for which he himself had prepaid.

‘Not during our first conversation, no. But I can be irritatingly persistent, and extremely persuasive...’

Jane had a sudden mental image of some of the more erotic methods of persuasion he had used on her in that hotel room and scowled.

‘Fortunately you don’t have a phone down here,’ he added purringly. ‘Otherwise I’m sure she’d have rung to warn you she’d let the cat out of the bag.’

More likely it had been scared out! ‘If you bullied or threatened her—’ she began shakily.

‘What?’ Ryan put his cup down, leaning his forearms on the table. ‘What will you do about it if I did? What can you do?’

Exactly nothing and they both knew it. ‘I’d think of something,’ she said darkly.

‘You could try,’ he said amicably. ‘But you needn’t worry. Ava’s a lot less fragile than she used to be. As it happened we ended up having a full and frank discussion that proved enlightening on both sides...’

Jane’s heartbeat accelerated. ‘How full and frank? Did she tell you about Conrad?’

She knew immediately that she had made a mistake. His eyes narrowed. ‘How frank do you think she should have been? And what about Conrad?’

‘I mean...that it was—well, it was sort of Conrad’s idea to let me have a go at doing this place up for them to sell while I was here,’ she improvised hurriedly.

It had been foolish to think that after all this time Ava might have felt impelled into a spur-of-the-moment confession that she and Conrad had fallen in love during the last few months of her engagement to Ryan. That was why Ava had pleaded so hard for Jane’s help the day before the wedding.

Ava and Conrad, her parents’ former chauffeur, had finally stopped fighting their feelings and admitted their love for each other. If Jane hadn’t found a way to stop the wedding then Conrad would have stepped in and done so, but, having met the quiet, lanky young man with his shy smile, gentle way of talking and fear that he wasn’t good enough for the girl he loved, Jane had known that Ava was right when she’d sobbed that her parents and Ryan would make mincemeat out of him.

Jane would have had to be iron-hearted to resist the appeal of the star-crossed lovers, though if truth be told, she had also been angry with them for the hurt they were about to inflict in grabbing at their own happiness at the expense of others’, a resentment that had been inextricably mixed up with her angry defiance of her own emotions.

‘Oh, really?’

She realised that while she had been brooding Ryan had been feeding his suspicion by watching the rapidly changing expressions on her face.

‘Why did you come?’ she asked abruptly.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe to find out what you did with my ten grand—the cheque hasn’t been cashed yet.’

Trust him to have found out!

‘Only because I haven’t been able to get to a bank,’ lied Jane, her blue eyes stormy. ‘I told you you weren’t going to get it back. As you were so kind to point out at the time, I earned every cent of that money.’

She had intended to hold a ceremonial burning, but somehow she hadn’t been able to bring herself to destroy what was the only physical evidence of their explosive night of passion. The cheque lay carefully folded in her otherwise almost empty wallet, a tribute to the triumph of pride over practicality. It also served as a concrete reminder of the futility of the treacherous, happy-ever-after fantasies that lurked deep in her soul.

‘So you did,’ he admitted blandly. ‘I just thought you might have since misplaced it, that’s all.’

He knew she had no intention of cashing it! Immediately Jane decided to do so at the first opportunity. But she wouldn’t do anything selfishly sensible with it, like reduce some of her debts. No, she would take his damned money and secretly donate the whole lot to a charity devoted to fighting the oppression of women! Let him stew over what she had done with it!

‘Because if you have I could always write you another.’

Realising that he was winding her up, Jane turned her attention belatedly to her cooling tea, only to discover that she had trouble picking it up. The taped fingers of her left hand hurt when she tried to lift the cup by the handle, and if she cradled it in both hands her burned right palm was seared by the heated china in spite of the thick cotton wool padding. With some juggling she managed to balance the bottom of the cup in her left palm, keeping it straight with the guidance of her bandaged hand while she lifted it to her mouth.

‘Going to be difficult, isn’t it?’