‘And I pay for it!’ she yelled at him.
‘Someone has to,’ he suggested mildly. ‘It’s a fundamental law of nature.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because you are sensitive and care deeply about the things you care about. Because you have a lot of love bottled up inside you trying to get out. Because you want your father and mother to be happy. Because...’
‘Does it have to be this way?’ Caitlin groaned.
‘It is a solution, isn’t it? They’ll be reunited with a common purpose.’ He grinned at her. ‘Me!’
‘Did you have to do it like that?’ she wailed.
‘Blood is thicker than water.’ The grin grew wider. ‘You asked me to be spontaneous. I was being spontaneous.’
Before Caitlin could think of a suitable reply, she was in his arms, his mouth had found hers, and the piercing ache of desire she always felt with him had descended upon her. His tongue found hers to incite and inflame and arouse. She moaned and responded, helplessly, hopelessly, cravenly wanting to blot out everything else that had happened today.
His head lifted away from hers. His fingers stroked down her hair and cheek. She could see the passion in his eyes.
‘It’s best when it’s spontaneous.’
It left Caitlin speechless.
The big man climbed into her little bubble car. ‘Don’t worry about a thing, Caitlin. I’ll be back.’
She watched him drive away. There was only one thing she was sure of. She hadn’t got rid of David Hartley. Not from her head. Not from her heart. Not from her life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHERE were they?
Caitlin tried to crush the rising tide of panic that threatened to overwhelm her. Hours had passed. The first guests were due to arrive soon. David and her father should have been back long ago. Neither had arrived!
She had everything on track as far as the party was concerned. It had been action stations the moment she had come inside after seeing David off on his mission. She had rung Michelle to let her know that everything was going ahead. She had whisked her mother off to the hairdresser, insisting that she deserved to be pampered. She had made trays of hors d’oeuvres. Everything else for the sit-down celebratory dinner had been prepared beforehand.
Caitlin had expected her father and David to be home before her mother returned from the hairdresser. They weren’t. She had bustled her mother into the bedroom to get dressed, doing her utmost to ignore a twinge of alarm. They couldn’t possibly have had an accident. There had to be another explanation.
Michelle turned up with the pumpkin soup in a crock-pot, and all the ingredients for the smoked salmon and salad entrée in plastic containers. She wore a smile of supreme satisfaction that ordin
arily would have made Caitlin very suspicious. In latter years, Michelle had begun to remind Caitlin of a Siamese cat. She was tall, slender, and moved with a slow, supple, feline grace. The blue eyes she had inherited from their mother and her short, sleek, ash-blonde hairstyle seemed to add to the effect.
Caitlin, however, had no time for suspicion at the present moment. The meat had to be put in the ovens, vegetables for the main course designated to various pots and pans, and plates stacked in the handiest places for serving. Above and beyond her concentration on practicalities, was a cloud of simmering apprehension.
The impulse to telephone The Last Retreat to garner what information she could was almost becoming an obsessive need. Had David arrived at the lodge? If not, what had happened to her beautiful little bubble car? She did not wish to dwell on what might have happened to David.
Yet if her mother discovered her making enquiries as to her father’s whereabouts, everything could blow apart again. The newly found need for her father to deal with problems her mother couldn’t deal with herself, so strongly evoked by Caitlin’s fall from grace, could easily flounder.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Michelle asked casually, apparently without a care in the world.
‘Busy,’ Caitlin replied abruptly, attempting to put an end to this line of questioning as quickly as possible.
‘I’ll bet he doesn’t turn up,’ Michelle said. ‘He’ll leave Mummy to fend for herself and be humiliated in front of everyone.’
‘No, he won’t,’ Caitlin insisted. ‘He’s not like that.’
‘At least Mummy had the good sense to keep control of the money.’
‘She’s always done that. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, Michelle.’