Return of the Forbidden Tycoon

Without preamble she said firmly, ‘I’d like to have a word with you.’

At another time she might have been flattered by the amused and warm smile that curved his mouth, instantly transforming him, but on this occasion she had other things on her mind.

‘I don’t know why you seem to have set yourself up as the judge of Kate’s morality, but…’

He cut her off immediately, almost brutally, the smile dying to be placed by a wall of cold disdain as he interrupted,

‘I understand that Kate is your friend, but you must realise that Ricky was mine.’

Sue didn’t let him get any further, her temper overwhelming caution as she exclaimed heatedly,

‘Oh, was he? Was he really? Well, do you know what your friend did to Kate? Do you? Did you know that he married her knowing that he didn’t love her, and with no intention of even trying to love her? Did you know that he deliberately encouraged her to think he was in love with her? He was twenty-seven years old then, she was an immature seventeen-year-old who’d just lost her father and been told by her mother that there was no home for her with her in America. Kate thought Ricky loved her when he married her, but she soon discovered otherwise—and believe me, never once during the farce that her marriage was did she ever so much as say one word against him. It was only when she finally broke down when he was killed—killed while with another woman, I might add—that she finally admitted to me just what her marriage had been.

‘Systematically and vindictively Ricky tried to destroy her as a woman. After the first few weeks of their marriage he never once made love to her… he told her that he had no desire for her, that she was incapable of arousing desire in any man.’ Sue broke off for a moment, seeing the way Dominic’s face paled, but any pity she might have felt was swamped by her burning need to vindicate her friend.

‘And of course Kate believed him, because after all, didn’t she have ample proof that Ricky could be aroused—by almost every other female he saw? He was consistently unfaithful to Kate right from the start of their marriage, sometimes staying away for days at a time. He married her because he wanted the land her father had left her, and because her mother promised him an allowance for as long as the marriage lasted.

‘Kate told me that once she knew the truth, she asked him for a divorce, but he refused to give her one.’ Sue saw Dominic’s mouth open and rushed on hotly, ‘And you needn’t think that by telling me about that weekend when Kate tried to seduce you, you’re going to shock me. I know all about it—Kate told me the other day.’ Her mouth curled, her eyes condemning.

‘Dear God, what kind of man are you that you couldn’t see the truth for yourself? Instead of giving her the comfort and reassurance she so badly needed, you only reinforced all the doubts she had about herself. You made her hate herself, did you know that? She’s lived like a hermit since Ricky died. And don’t start thinking that I’m making any of this up. Ask anyone in the village, they all know what Ricky was like.’

The force of her emotions made tears burn in her eyes, her voice shaking as she flung at him, ‘No doubt you’re very proud of the high moral stand you’ve taken… of the constant taunts you fling at Kate, but I think of you as criminally foolish—and arrogant. Blind as well, for not being able to see the obvious!’

Suddenly and inexplicably she had run out of steam, and even more extraordinarily when she looked into his face and saw the expression there, the anger that had fired her was gone. She started to move away and Dominic reached out to stop her.

‘Please… please tell me all this again. Slowly this time, from the beginning.’

Perhaps he wasn’t quite the villain she had imagined after all, Sue thought, noting the expression in his eyes. After all, what could not be excused as the reaction of an indifferent observer could be viewed in a completely different light as the behaviour of a would-be lover.

She sat down on the grass and patted a spot beside her. Dominic sat down beside her, and starting right from the beginning she told him the history of Kate’s marriage.

* * *

After leaving Sue’s, Kate drove straight home, but once there she could not settle. A restless, yearning energy seemed to possess her, her thoughts constantly circling around Dominic. At last, knowing that only strenuous physical activity could dissipate her tension, she collected some cleaning articles and her keys and drove down to the cottage.

Her first task was to open all the windows and get rid of the stale, cloying atmosphere inside.

Although described as a cottage, in reality it was a small house. Downstairs there was a pleasant sitting-room with windows overlooking both front and back; a hall; a dining-room which her father had used as a study, and a large sunny kitchen.

Upstairs there were three good sized bedrooms, one with its own shower, and a separate bathroom.

The gardens were of a more manageable size than those attached to the house, mostly laid down to lawns attractively

broken up by borders bursting with cottage garden plants, and the odd rockery islands smothered in creeping plants.

While she waited for the immersion to heat enough water for her to start cleaning, Kate went over the house. It was strange how those things which had once been so familiar to her now seemed slightly alien. This had been her home for almost eighteen years; the shabby furniture that she had grown up with. All the rooms needed redecorating, she noticed. If she could spare the time between commissions, she might do it herself. She had helped Sue to do the children’s room the previous winter and had thoroughly enjoyed it. It struck her as she went back to the kitchen that at twenty-seven she had never really had a home of her own. This cottage had belonged to her father; the house she now lived in had been Ricky’s and before him his grandfather’s, and even though she loved it she had never felt moved to stamp her own personality on it.

By the time she had scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom, she felt tired enough to call it a day.

Outside dusk was starting to fall, making her realise that she had been at the cottage far longer than she had anticipated. Stretching her aching back, she packed away her cleaning things, noting ruefully how wet her jeans had become. They clung clammily to her legs, uncomfortably so, as she drove home.

As she walked up to the door the darkness and silence that greeted her suddenly made her feel terribly alone. A dull melancholy feeling, in tune with the growing dusk, enveloped her as she contrasted her lifestyle with Sue’s. She had promised herself long ago that she would never allow herself to be envious of women who had what she did not, but tonight the emptiness of the house depressed her, bringing back bitter-sharp memories of how she had felt on first coming to this house as a bride, and how she had felt such a little time afterwards knowing that her marriage was nothing but an empty mockery.

It was foolish to ask herself what had brought this mood on; she knew only too well. If it was possible to love a man who was virtually a stranger, and in addition to that was also the complete antithesis of all that one had ever wanted in a man, then that was exactly what she had done where Dominic was concerned.

She loved him. She knew it with a conviction that was soul-deep, just as she knew that to allow her love to live was the utmost folly. It was something that should have been destroyed at birth, but now it was too late for that.

Trying to shake off her sombre thoughts, she went inside and made for her bathroom, tugging off the wet jeans and dropping them on to the floor as she ran a hot bath.