Phantom Marriage

Tara managed to stammer out a time, too mesmerised by the cobalt depths of his eyes to register anything else. No man had any right to possess such eyes, she thought despairingly; they saw too much, probed too deeply.

The sun suddenly broke through the clouds, dazzling her so much that she swayed. The hard warmth of the arm round her waist, the tangy smell of male aftershave as James steadied her, sent awareness of him rocketing through her, the brush of his jacket against the bare skin of her arm causing her to shiver with a heightened sensitivity that alarmed her.

Sue’s sudden spurt of laughter brought her back to earth. ‘Do look at Simon!’ she urged them. He was studying a small girl on the opposite side of the road, tiny blonde bunches of hair framing a pert little face. ‘Children are the most fantastic mimics,’ she whispered. ‘When he stands like that he’s the image of James. He must have picked it up over the weekend.’

An icy shiver turned Tara cold with fear. She couldn’t look at James; and she didn’t need to look at Simon. She was well aware of how like his father he was.

She must have managed to make an adequate response, because there was no visible reaction from either James or Sue. Calling the children to her, Tara hustled them towards her Mini, Simon still chattering excitedly about the unexpected treat to come. As she unlocked the small car something wholly outside her own control made her turn. Across the few yards that separated them her eyes met James’s hard stare. Shaken, Tara dragged her gaze away, trying not to give in to the waves of anxiety sweeping her.

She must be going mad, she decided as she drove home; she must be to think that there had been something even vaguely threatening in James’s expression. What possible reason could he have to threaten her? If anything the boot should be on the other foot.

The twins’ excitement mounted through the morning to fever pitch, so much so that Tara admitted to a faint feeling of relief when James finally arrived, Piers safely ensconced in the back seat of the Rolls.

She saw him walking up the path through the small front garden; heart thudding heavily against her ribs as she opened the door to him. Dressed in narrow black cord jeans, a matching shirt and a

pale lemon blouson jacket in soft, expensive leather he looked years younger and less austere and yet somehow far more lethally sensual. His smile for the twins was warm and genuine, slashing virilely attractive grooves from nose to mouth. A treacherous weakness invaded her stomach as she watched him. What was the matter with her? Surely she wasn’t regretting refusing to go with them?

‘Ready?’

While the twins clamoured a noisy assent Tara enquired in stilted tones what time she should expect them back.

The look James gave her made her long to hurl something heavy and preferably dangerous at his head. Cynicism burned in the dark blue eyes, disdain etched in the sardonic curl of his mouth. Without a word being spoken he somehow managed to convey the impression that she had some ulterior reason for wanting to know the times of the twins’ return. Seething, she tried to control her anger as he told her coolly that it would be early evening before they returned, his mocking, ‘Long enough for whatever you might have in mind,’ striking sparks of anger in her own eyes.

The twins had been gone half an hour when Tara heard the knock on the door. She had been upstairs cleaning the windows, and groaned at the interruption, suspecting that it was more than likely to be the neighbour who kept an eye on the twins for her and whose husband, she knew, was an avid Saturday armchair sportsman.

Grimacing to herself, she hurried downstairs, flinging open the door, as she apologised for her ancient jeans and tee-shirt, her apologies coming to an abrupt halt as she saw Chas leaning laconically against the door frame, a huge bunch of hothouse roses in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other.

Her feeble, ‘Chas… What on earth…’ was silenced as he pushed her gently inside, following her in and closing the door behind him.

‘Where’s the terrible twosome?’ he enquired mock seriously, depositing the champagne on the hall table and following Tara through into the sitting room, with the roses.

‘Out,’ Tara told him vaguely. ‘But Chas, what on earth are you doing here and…’

‘Call it a small apology,’ he told her wryly. ‘I haven’t been the easiest person in the world to work with recently, and as one of the models commented to me yesterday, it would serve me right if I lost the best assistant I’ve ever had.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Only a tiny little thing as well—remember her, the kid we were using for the shoe shots?’

Tara did. A tiny elfin brunette with huge brown eyes and a pixie hairstyle whose size three feet were ideally suited for shoe modelling.

‘It seems I’m guilty of sexual harassment, among a whole host of other crimes, so I decided to take her advice and come round and offer a small peace-offering.’

Tara laughed, rescuing the roses. ‘If this is what you call a small peace-offering, I’d hate to think what a large one would be!’ she told him.

‘A weekend in Paris at least,’ Chas responded with a wicked grin. ‘Only somehow I don’t think it would have the desired effect.’

Feeling more at ease with him than she had done for some time, Tara laughed again.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Tara,’ he reiterated. ‘I have been giving you a bad time recently, I know. A combination of things if I’m honest—not least of which is your delectably sexy body. Okay, I know it’s a sexist remark,’ he admitted before she could speak, ‘but that’s the way I am. You’re a very desirable woman, and I found it as frustrating as hell having you working so closely with me and yet knowing that you’d turn a freezing look on me the moment I tried to make a pass. It didn’t do a lot for my ego, I can tell you, but I consoled myself with the fact that I probably wasn’t the only man you’d given the “touch me not” treatment. Anyway, what I’ve come round to say is simply that I’ve come to my senses if you like, and from now it will be strictly business between us—okay?’

Tara smiled at him, wondering with a sudden flash of intuition if a certain dainty, dark-haired model had anything to do with his sudden volte-face, but she was too wise to make any comment, and when Chas suggested they toast their new-found friendship in the champagne he had brought she did not demur, even though drinking Moët-Chandon at three o’clock in the afternoon wasn’t one of her normal habits.

It was five before Chas left. They had started to talk about work; and without the sexual innuendo which normally antagonised her so much she had found him such an interesting companion that Tara was barely aware of how much time had passed.

By the time he left she was beginning to feel quite lightheaded—the champagne bottle was two-thirds empty, and a couple of stubs from the thin cigars Chas smoked lay in the ashtray she had had to find for him; the rich smell pervading the room so that Tara was subtly aware of how very rare it was for her to entertain a man even in the most innocent way.

When he had gone she finished cleaning the windows and then decided to have a bath and wash her hair before the twins returned. The arrangement was that Sue would bring them back, so after her bath Tara simply pulled on clean underwear, jeans and a sweat-shirt, leaving her damp hair to dry naturally.

She was just beginning to pick up the threads of a complicated family saga—a book she had received as a Christmas present and which was still unread—when the doorbell rang. Glancing at her watch, Tara frowned. It was barely six o’clock.

She opened the front door expecting to see Sue and the twins outside, but to her dismay only James stood there, still wearing the same clothes she had seen him in earlier in the afternoon, the dark jeans and shirt giving him a faintly dangerous, look in the gathering dusk.