Seductive Stranger

Her father stared blankly. 'What?'

'That man, Josh—how did he know who I was? I don't remember telling him my name or that I was coming to visit you.'

After a pause, her father said flatly, 'He recognised you.'

'How could he? We hadn't met before.' This time her father didn't answer, his head bent, and Prue stared at him. She was thinking hard.

'Or have we?' she said slowly. 'I don't remember, if we have.' Yet she had had an odd, puzzling sense of familiarity, hadn't she, from the first? It had confused her, disturbed her, because she had mistaken it for something else. A slow, hot flush crawled up her face as she admitted to herself what she had thought was bothering her. Well, at least she had been wrong about that!

'You sent me a photograph,' her father reminded her. 'With your letter saying you were coming back to England. I've got it on my desk and Josh saw it.'

She felt a jolt of surprise, almost of disappointment. 'Oh, I see.' So it was that simple; nothing mysterious or odd or suspicious, after all!

But why, in that case, had her father been so uneasy, so reluctant to talk about it?

'Do you remember my office, at the farm?' James Allardyce had a rueful look-in his eyes. 'Do you remember the farm, come to that? It must all seem very dim and distant to you after ten years.'

'Some of it,' she agreed. 'But I remember a lot, too, although I expect my memory was selective—it usually is, isn't it? I remember my bedroom and the swing under the apple tree, and the hay loft, and the stables . . . the places I liked, in other words.' She smiled at him. 'I hope they aren't going to keep me in here for too long!'

'I talked to the doctor before I came in here—you should be allowed home tomorrow.'

Home, she thought, biting her inner lip. The word had a poignant ring; he used it casually but she couldn't accept it that way—the farm was no longer her home, it hadn't been her home for a great many years.

'Has it changed much?' she asked, and James Allardyce laughed, shaking his head.

'I wouldn't say it had changed at all.' The thought seemed to please him, and Prue felt a stab of satisfaction, too. She wasn't sorry to hear that the places and things she remembered hadn't altered much, and yet shouldn't they have changed in ten years? Everything did; why not the farm?

'You still run sheep?'

'The land's too acid to support anything else. Very thin soil, too; there isn't enough grass for cows. Sheep do pretty well on the hills. Mine are more like goats than sheep; climb anywhere. We don't have the sort of sheep territory they have in Australia, our flocks don't roam so far, and they're smaller.' He hesitated, then wistfully asked, 'I don't suppose you saw anything of sheep farming while you were in Australia?'

She smiled ruefully. 'I worked in an office in Sydney, I'm afraid. All I saw of pasture land was when I once spent a school holiday, visiting a friend whose father was a farmer.'

'Well, farming is a boring subject, I suppose,' her father said on a sigh.

'But I'm very interested!' she protested.

His face brightened. 'Are you? Are you really? You aren't just saying that?'

'Of course not—why shouldn't I be interested? Tell me about your flock—how many sheep have you got?'

Jim Allardyce didn't need a second invitation. Prue settled back on her pillows and listened, watching her father and remembering him as he had been the last time they met. He had changed a great deal; and yet she was recognising more and more the father she had known when she was a child. They had once been very close; she had loved both her parents and it had been a blinding shock to her when her mother had left, taking her too. Prue had realised that her parents were always quarrelling, but she hadn't expected them to separate for good.

Her mother

had blamed her father; she hadn't hidden any secrets from Prue, she had wanted her to know why they were going away, and had talked endlessly, bitterly, about the break-up of the marriage.

Prue had been entering her teens; gawky, shy, unsure of herself. The next couple of years had been miserable for her. She had to cope with a new school, new friends, a new country, new home—and a mother who had nobody else to cling to, needed constant sympathy, and was over-possessive.

Prue had been hurt and angry, too—not because her father had preferred another woman to her mother, but because he hadn't tried to stop her mother taking her away. Then Susan Allardyce met another man, and both their lives changed again, this time for the better. Prue had been very fond of her stepfather, who had been a nice man, but Harry Grant was more than nice—by taking the burden of her mother on his shoulders, he had freed Prue to live her own life. She had settled down at school, made Mends, discovered the freedom of the sun and sea, and pushed all thought of England and her father to the furthest comer of her memory, until the car crash in which Harry and her mother had been killed.

The nurse reappeared, scolding. 'Still here, Mr Allardyce? I told you ten minutes, and you've been here half an hour or more! Off you go, now! You can come and pick your daughter up tomorrow morning at ten.'

'How's her fiancé?' Jim Allardyce asked, getting to his feet.

'He's doing fine,' the nurse said in just the same tone she had used to Prue. 'Now, come along, Mr Allardyce.'

'Anything I can get you, Prue?' he asked, lingering, and Prue shook her head, smiling at him.