The images he was conjuring up shocked her. She felt tongue-tied with a mixture of embarrassment and fury, and although she was unaware of it her eyes had darkened as they always did when she was either disturbed or afraid.
‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t come here to talk about my private life, Kyle…’
‘As I understand it, there isn’t much to talk about.’
He straightened up and carried on before she could digest the full import of his words. ‘I will go and see your father, Heather. When I’ve seen him, you and I will probably need to talk again. Are you free to lunch with me tomorrow? I have to fly to the States the day after to see a potential client.’
What could she say? She had to agree, and she was half-way back to the van before she realised exactly what Kyle had said to her before making that lunch appointment. She stopped dead in her tracks, aware of the black looks her unexpected action was earning her from people forced to avoid colliding with her.
How could Kyle know anything about her personal life? It had been six years since they had last met, and yet he had spoken with such authority, such confidence—almost as though he knew all there was to know about her. But how could that be? Unless…unless he had been keeping tabs on them. She frowned. But if that had been the case he would already have known about her father. Frowning now, she tried to recall if he had shown any reaction to her announcement, but Kyle had always been good at keeping his feelings to himself. Besides, she had been far too tense and wrought up to pay much attention to how he was looking.
She had achieved what she had hoped for, or at least the first part of it. She ought to be feeling triumphant and relieved, but she wasn’t. She didn’t want Kyle Bennet back in their lives, not in any capacity; and yet, for her parents’ sake, she knew she would have to endure him. If he allowed himself to become a part of their lives. There was always the chance that he would go back on his word, or perhaps just visit her father, and leave it at that.
Whatever happened, her parents must never know that she had prompted his visit. They would hate that. No, that must remain her secret, hers and Kyle’s. It gave her an odd feeling to know that she shared something with him from which her parents were excluded.
CHAPTER THREE
THE snow, which had not lain particularly deeply on the road in Bath itself, thickened once Heather was clear of the city, although fortunately it had stopped falling. The van was old and inclined to be temperamental, and by the time she got home Heather was suffering from the most excruciating tension headache.
She knew that she ought to have something to eat, but the thought of food was totally nauseating. Instead, she made herself a strong cup of coffee and sat down in the old kitchen chair that the cats thought of as their special preserve. Hilda, the oldest of them, a farm tabby of immense dignity, glared balefully at her and then vented her ire on Meg, spitting at the dog as she sat down at Heather’s side.
Was she cushioned from reality living here with her parents? It was an almost idyllic existence for anyone who felt the way she did about the countryside; her work was not particularly arduous, and certainly could never be compared with the rat-race suffered by those who had to commute every day to cities like London. Without putting his scorn into words, Kyle had still managed to imply that he found her contemptible; or was it just her own intense sensitivity where he was concerned that made her question herself like this? Kyle had remarked that the business was barely able to support her parents, never mind providing a salary for her as well. That had been quite true, but what he could not know was that recently she had found herself shouldering more and more of the responsibility for the company. Her father had complained of feeling tired, and now she berated herself for not questioning him more deeply, for not seeing that his lack of enthusiasm was a pointer to his physical vulnerability.
She wasn’t a complete fool. She knew that the business was slowly going downhill, that the work was going to be too much for her father, and yet, without the business, how could her parents possibly survive?
Her anxiety drove her to abandon her comfortable chair in the kitchen and go instead to the small, cold backroom they used as an office. Once there, she opened the desk drawer that held the company’s books.
It took the lack of light in the small room to make her realise how long she had spent there. Raising her head, she massaged the back of her neck tiredly. It made no difference which way she did the calculations; they were still perilously close to the edge of bankruptcy. Why had her father never told her about the mortgage he had taken out on the house? She closed her eyes, alarmingly near to tears, longing for someone to confide in and hand her worries over to, and yet at the same time knowing that there was nothing anyone could do to help.
It was almost four o’clock. Soon her mother would be ringing, and she had promised that she would go round to the village hall tonight and help to put up the decorations.
Almost on cue, the phone rang, but to her shock it wasn’t her mother on the other end of the line, but Kyle Bennett. She was so stunned that it was several seconds before she could speak.
‘Not still sulking with me because I told you a few home truths, are you?’ Kyle asked her dulcetly, and instantly her fatigue vanished and anger burned through her.
‘You’ve got the wrong woman, Kyle,’ she told him crisply. ‘I don’t sulk. What do you want?’
‘I’ve got a couple of tickets for the Phantom. I thought you might like to see it.’
The total unexpectedness of his invitation took her breath away. She remembered reading somewhere that tickets for the fantastic Phantom of the Opera show were impossible to find and, if she was honest with herself, she would have loved to go, but not with Kyle.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she told him, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. ‘I’ve got something else on tonight.’
There was a long pause, during which Heather had time to ask herself why Kyle should want to take her out and to wonder exactly what sort of macabre game he was playing with her. Then he said, sardonically, ‘I see…where will you finish your evening off, I wonder, his place or yours? It must cramp your style, surely, living at home. Or do you make sure that all your lovers…’
She had slammed down the receiver before she had thought about what she was doing. She was literally shaking with rage and chagrin. How dared Kyle infer that she was making use of her father’s illness to bring a man home? How dared he imply…
Shakily she sat down, trying to calm herself. He was not deliberately trying to taunt her, she told herself, he was simply assuming that she lived her life in the same way that he lived his.
Not even the peacefulness of her tea-time walk with Meg had the power to fully restore her to normal.
Her mother rang when she got back to say that her father was making slow progress. They chatted for a while and then she rang off. As she replaced the receiver, Heather frowned. There was a note of constraint in her mother’s voice, almost as though she was concealing something from her. Her heartbeat increased in tempo, her skin chilling with fear. Could her father be worse than she thought? She looked at the phone, longing to pick it up and call her mother back, and yet knowing she couldn’t.
Despite her concern the evening passed quickly. Mrs Anstey had a nephew staying with her who came down to the hall to help them. He was in the army and on leave from Germany, a very pleasant man in his late twenties, with a slightly old-fashioned, rather courtly manner that was undeniably attractive. He was nothing like as physically attractive as Kyle, and yet there was something about him that made her feel protected and safe, Heather decided, warming more and more to him as the evening went by.
She had walked down to the village, and when he offered to drive her back she accepted with alacrity.
It was only a short drive, and she felt obliged to invite him in for a cup of coffee. While she was in the kitchen making it, she heard the phone ring.