They were on the verge of quarrelling and Verity’s eyes filled with hot, hurt tears. Couldn’t Silas understand how difficult things were for her? Of course she wanted to be with him. How could she not do?
‘Please, don’t let’s spoil things by fighting,’ she begged him. Although she sensed that he wanted to continue their discussion, instead he gave a small sigh and said, ‘No, you’re right. This isn’t the time…nor the place…’
‘Make love to me again, Silas,’ she urged him, and it wasn’t until many, many months later that she was mature enough to recognise how dangerously she had begun the habit then—a way of avoiding the issue and sidelining it, and Silas, by distracting his attention away from the future through lovemaking. In fact, it wasn’t until Silas himself accused her of it that she was forced to recognise just what she was doing and by then…
‘I’ll love you for ever. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I will ever want,’ Silas promised her the following morning as they lay entwined with one another in bed, her body still sleek and damp from the passion of their recent lovemaking.
Only it hadn’t been a promise which he had kept. It had been a promise he had broken, just as he had broken her heart and almost broken her.
CHAPTER FOUR
HER first impression that the town hadn’t changed had been an erroneous one, Verity acknowledged as she dumped the supermarket carrier bags on the kitchen table.
She had spent the afternoon exploring her old environment before calling in at an out-of-town supermarket to fill her car with petrol and buy some food.
The layout of the town centre might essentially be the same but many of the small shops she remembered from her girlhood had gone, to be replaced with what she privately considered to be an over-representation of building society and estate agents offices. The pedestrianisation of the town centre itself, though, she had to admit, was an improvement, and she had particularly liked the way shady trees had been planted and huge tubs of brightly coloured tumbling summer bedding plants grouped artistically around them. Along with the strategically placed benches, they had created a relaxed, informal, almost continental air to the town centre, which today had been heightened by the fact that the warm summer weather had meant that people had been able to eat outside the square’s several restaurants and cafés under the umbrellas decorating the tables and chairs on the pavement. It had been disconcerting, though, to read from a small plaque that the square had been re-designed by Silas as a gift to the town.
If the town centre itself had looked disconcertingly unfamiliar, then so had the faces of the people she had seen around her. She had never made any really close friends during her schooldays. The regime imposed by her uncle had prevented that, but there had been girls whose company she could have enjoyed.
Tonight she would ring Charlotte, she promised herself as she started to unpack her provisions. It would be good to hear a friendly voice. She didn’t want to think about the consequences of the fact that one of the few adult voices she had heard since her return had been that of her ex-lover and that it had been far from friendly.
A ‘friend’ had told him about the accident, he had told her tersely. What exactly did that mean? The term ‘friend’ applied to a member of the opposite sex could cover so many possibilities. Anyway, why should she care who or what this woman was to Silas?
Removing the jacket of the Gucci trouser suit she was wearing, she opened the fridge door.
Wearing Gucci to do the supermarket shopping was perhaps a trifle over the top, especially outside Knightsbridge, and even more especially when the suit in question was white and had featured extremely prominently in all the glossies early on in the season, but having given into Charlotte’s pleas and bought the dratted thing she could hardly leave it hanging in her wardrobe…Even so…She had fully registered the several double takes she had received from other shoppers, women clad in the main in the busy suburban women’s uniform of immaculate neat jeans, white shirt and navy blazer.
She supposed her hair didn’t help either, she acknowledged, flipping it back over her shoulder, then taking a clip from her pocket and pinning it up. She had worn it long ever since she could remember. As a teenager she had wanted to have it cut but for once her uncle and Silas had been unanimous in their veto—albeit for very different reasons. Her uncle had always insisted that her hair was neatly tucked into an old-fashioned bun—the kind he remembered his mother wearing—whilst Silas… Silas had whispered to her that first night they had shared together that he had fantasised about taking her hair and wrapping it around his body, feeling its supple silkiness caressing his skin.
She had made that fantasy come true for him, even if she had blushed a little to do so that very first time.
In the years that had passed since then, she had still not had her hair cut—trimmed occasionally, yes, but cut, never—and, until she had sold the company, in obedience to her uncle’s wishes she had always worn it rolled into an elegant knot.
She had lost count of the times Charlotte had tried to persuade her to wear it down.
‘I’m too old for long, loose hair,’ she had protested determinedly.
‘Are you crazy?’ Charlotte had argued back, adding, ‘Have you seen the latest round of jeans ads—the one featuring the back view of a woman with hair down to her waist? She’s seventy and she’s making one hell of a positive statement about the way women have the right to view ourselves, besides which she looks absolutely stunning. If I had hair like yours—thick, wavy—there’s no way you’d ever get me to hide it away.’
‘In business, big business, men view long hair on a woman as a sign of weakness. It’s probably some kind of Narcissus complex,’ Verity had remarked wryly. ‘They see long hair and immediately they think, Ah ha…gotcha…she’s going to be spending more time in front of the mirror than in front of any sales figures, and then they start rubbing their hands together in glee because they think they’re going to put one over on you.’
‘Oh, yeah. Let me tell you something, lady,’ Charlotte had corrected her after she had finished laughing. ‘The reason they’re rubbing their hands together in glee is because they’re thinking, Wow, that’s some woman, I want to take her to bed…’
‘In other words to them long hair equals bimbo, victim…weakness.’
‘Why do I get the distinct impression that somewhere, some time, some man has hurt you very badly?’ Charlotte had asked intuitively. But Verity had simply shaken her head. The past, her past, was simply something she was not prepared to talk about—not even to her closest friend.
One thing Verity had noticed, though, when she had been out, and it was something that had caught painfully at her unguarded, vulnerable emotions, had been the number of couples shopping together—and not all of them young. Seeing the loving, tenderly amused looks one couple had exchanged, as the man had reached up to a higher shelf for something the woman had wanted and she had surreptitiously stroked his thigh whilst he did so, had made Verity look away in hot-cheeked sharp awareness of the emotional emptiness of her own life. It didn’t have to be that way. Once she had had time to think, to assess and to plan; once she became fully involved in the charities she intended to set up with her uncle’s money, then there would be no time for painful regrets about what might have been.
It was seeing Silas that had unsettled her so distressingly, she told herself angrily. Seeing him and listening to him making those outrageous accusations against her.
She stiffened as she heard th
e doorbell ring. There was no reason for her to think that it might be Silas, of course, but just in case…Forcing her face to assume the expression she normally reserved for the boardroom—the one that said ‘Don’t even think about trying to mess with me’—she headed determinedly for the front door and yanked it open.
‘Honor,’ she squeaked in startled surprise. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I got my pocket money today and I’ve come to pay the first instalment of the money I owe you for the damage to your car,’ Honor told her sturdily, adding before Verity could say anything, ‘May I come in? It’s so hot…’