Loving

If Joel hadn’t been looking after the children that weekend; they too would have been killed. Lissa shuddered deeply again. Even now she could barely take it in. She had had no idea until the solicitors told her that Amanda had appointed her joint guardian of the girls, along with John’s brother, but it was not a responsibility she had any intention of shirking, no matter what the solicitors might think. Her mouth tightened slightly as she remembered the carefully worded comments of the solicitor, and his cool surprise that she should not want to extricate herself immediately from any responsibility towards the children. When she had taxed him about it he had coughed in vague embarrassment and then said half apologetically that Mr Hargreaves … Mr Joel Hargreaves, that was, had given him to understand that she would not wish to accept any responsibility for her nieces.

Lissa, who suspected she knew Joel Hargreaves and the way his mind worked far better than Mr Lawson, had seethed inwardly, knowing that what Joel had been intimating was not so much that she should not wish to take on the children, but that he considered her an unfit person to do so.

But she did wish to take on her share of the responsibility. She owed it to her sister and her parents—not to mention little Emma and Louise—but it was not just that, she admitted to herself. There still burned inside a deep seated sense of injustice, an intense need to show Joel Hargreaves just how wrong all his assessments of her were. To prove that the great Joel Hargreaves was not as infallible as he and apparently everyone else liked to believe. And that was why she had had the nightmare … That was why she had dreamed so painfully of events which had happened more than six years ago. That was why she could not forget the humiliation she had suffered at his hands.

She sipped her coffee, refusing to allow her thoughts to slide backwards into the past. She had taught herself now to ignore the past … All right so she could not erase it … could not entirely put it behind her and close a door on it, but she could refuse to allow herself to dwell obsessively on it.

When she had come to London she had vowed to put the past behind her. She had fought valiantly against her own inner sense of inadequacy. She had found herself a good job, which she thoroughly enjoyed, working as a secretary cum P.A. to an up-and-coming young architect, Simon Greaves. She had bought her small one bedroomed flat, albeit with the aid of what sometimes seemed to be an extremely onerous mortgage. She owned a little car … took regular holidays. Had a pleasant circle of friends … never lacked dates. All in all, to the casual observer, her life was a very comfortable and modestly successful one. She had come out from behind the shadow of her elder sister, or so she had told herself … but did one ever wholly recover from the traumas of childhood. Wasn’t it true that somewhere deep inside herself she still considered herself unworthy; inferior; judging herself as her parents had judged her, simply because she was not a carbon copy of Amanda.

Stop that! She abjured herself, pushing aside the duvet and padding towards the bathroom. She was wide-awake now and might as well get up. She had a very busy morning ahead of her, with a meeting with her parents’ solicitors sandwiched in at lunchtime. She had already seen them twice and not been wholly surprised to discover that despite her parents, pleasant lifestyle they had left behind them few assets. The house had been mortgaged very recently

to provide her parents with an annuity, which of course had ceased with their death, but it was not to discuss her parents’ few assets that Lissa wanted to see their solicitors. It was to discuss her legal position with regard to her nieces. She didn’t need sixth sense to guess that Joel Hargreaves would do everything in his power to have her guardianship of the girls set aside, but Amanda had stipulated that she wanted her as guardian to her daughters, and it was an act of faith and love that Lissa wasn’t going to turn her back on.

Despite the fact that Amanda had always been their parents’ favourite she and Lissa had always got on reasonably well. They had never been close, but they had always loved one another. In fact Lissa could only remember her sister being angry with her on one occasion. Stop it, she cautioned herself again. Stop thinking about that.

But it was easier said than done, which accounted for the fact that the past still haunted her in the shape of tormenting nightmares, even after all this time. At seventeen she had been so innocent … so naive and trusting, but she had been judged as being wanton and wild, and the scars of that judgment still haunted her.

After she had showered, she rubbed herself dry briskly, grimacing ruefully at her mane of red-brown hair and her tall, slender body. Amanda had been small and cuddly, entrancingly feminine, whereas she as a teenager had been gawky and awkward to the point of being plain. Now when Simon called her elegant and classy, she was tempted to deny his compliments, to make him see that whatever elegance she now had was simply a disguise; armour behind which she could hide all her deficiencies. She herself saw very little to admire in her height, or in the classic bone structure of her face. Her hair which she wore long was probably her best feature, if one overlooked the fact that it was not blonde, just as her eyes were a cool hazel green and not blue. But then hadn’t she realised long ago that she was not and never could be another Amanda. She was herself, warts and all. Sighing faintly she made up her face with practiced skill. The grooming course she had invested in when she first came to London at the suggestion of her first employer had taught her to re-assess herself as the person she was, not as a shadow of her sister, but she had stood in Amanda’s shadow for too long to be able to wholly accept that she was capable of taking the limelight in her own right. The classic coolness of her demeanour was in direct contrast to her own inner insecurity, but few people guessed that. Not even Simon who was her boyfriend as well as her employer really knew what she hid away from public view.

Simon! Unwittingly Lissa bit her lower lip, marring its fullness with the sharp bite of her teeth. She had worked for him for eighteen months and for the last six they had been dating. She liked and admired Simon; physically he was a very attractive male, tall and blond with a ready smile and easy charm, but when it came to the crunch; when it came to the point of giving herself to him as a woman … of taking him as her lover, she held back. She knew that he found her sexual coldness towards him hurtful, but how could she explain to him that every time she came close to allowing a man to touch her … any man … she was instantly confronted by a mental image of Joel Hargreaves’ darkly contemptuous features; and that the image was powerful enough to instantly quench whatever desire she might previously have felt. Joel as the mental guardian of her morals exerted a far more powerful veto on her ability to respond sexually to anyone than the most vigilant of parents. And it was all so ridiculous and unnecessary. The real Joel didn’t give a damn what she did with her life; and anyway she was way, way past the age of consent at twenty-three. It was stupid and unnecessary that she was still a virgin. She heartily wished herself rid of the burden of her unwanted innocence, but every time she met a man she felt she could respond to, Joel came between them. She knew quite well why of course. But it was one thing to know, it was another to overcome the mental barriers created by the past.

‘Stop thinking about that now,’ she ordered herself. She would need all her powers of concentration today when she saw her parents’ solicitors. She knew quite well that Joel would try to take the children away from her, to stop her from taking up her role as co-guardian. He had already flown out to Miami to arrange the funerals of Amanda and John and both sets of parents and he had taken the children back with him, all before Lissa had even been informed of the accident. The children were now living with him, and Lissa knew she would have to fight to preserve her own rights towards them. Quite why she was so determined to take up those rights, she found it difficult to say. It was true that she was fond of both her nieces; they were her sister’s children of course, but she loved them in their own right. However, if Joel had not been her co-guardian … If John’s brother had been a different man … a married man perhaps whom she liked and approved of, wouldn’t she have been quite happy to hand the children into the care of he and his wife? Wasn’t it partially because it was Joel who was her co-guardian; Joel her bitter enemy that she was summoning all her forces, all her rights under the law to oppose his high-handed decision to make himself solely responsible for the girls, by the simple expedient of arrogantly ignoring her co-guardianship?

What if it was? Legally she had every right to share his guardianship. Amanda must have wanted her to do so otherwise she would never have appointed her in the first place. But then Amanda would never have expected to die at twenty-seven. Neither would John, Lissa argued mentally with herself. No … she had every right to take legal advice and discover what steps she could take in the law to force Joel to recognise her rights.

What about the children? an inner voice argued. Was it fair on them to subject them to legal quarrels between their guardians so shortly after they had lost their parents? But if she didn’t do so she would be cut completely out of their lives. Joel was ruthless enough to do that, she knew it. He was not married either, so there would be no feminine influence in their lives, if one discounted the string of glamorous girlfriends who seemed to slip in and out of his life, not to say his bed. No, the girls needed her, she was convinced of it … just as they needed Joel. Unlike him she didn’t deny that he had his rights.

Simon knew all about her hopes and fears in connection with her nieces and had generously told her to take off all the time she needed to visit her solicitors. This morning she had managed to arrange an early appointment, which meant that she should not arrive at the office too much later than Simon himself, who didn’t normally put in an appearance until ten.

The night before last Simon had taken her out for dinner and they had spent most of the evening talking about the children. Sighing faintly, Lissa finished her coffee and collected her outdoor things. Simon was intrigued by her she knew; he found her sexual coldness a challenge he was not used to facing; he couldn’t see that her refusal to go to bed with him wasn’t just a manoeuvre in a clever game, but a genuine abhorrence of the sexual act. She had tried to tell him … to explain to him why it was she found it so difficult to let him touch her even in the most general way, but as always, guided by some inner caution she had withheld the real truth. That was something she found it impossible to talk to anyone about, and a thin film of sweat broke out on her skin as her mind kaleidoscoped back and she was fifteen again. Clenching her hands together Lissa willed the memories away, but they refused to listen. How ungainly and insecure she had been at fifteen; how conscious of being the family’s ugly duckling; of being unloved in the way that Amanda was loved. Her father had wanted a son and not a second daughter; she knew that, but even so, if she had been another blonde moppet like her elder sister she felt reasonably sure that he would have come to terms with his disappointment. As it was her dark red hair and tall uncoordinated frame were so much the antithesis of what her father thought was feminine that he had never been able to reconcile himself to his disappointment. Her mother, like Amanda, was a delicate, fluffy blonde, and Lissa had lost count of the number of times she had heard her mother explaining half apologetically to her friends that she had no idea where her second daughter got her plainness from. ‘Not from my side of the family, I’m sure …’

Lissa’s mouth tightened, and she counselled herself sternly not to blame her parents. A more self-reliant and less intensely emotional child would soon have learned to come to terms with being second best. Her parents were not responsible for the flaws in her personality, any more than she was herself. Over the years she had taught herself to accept that and to make the best of what Nature had given her. There had been many men who if asked would have quite openly chosen her tall, red-headed elegance over her sister’s blonde prettiness, but she had never allowed them to do so. Picking up her bag and keys, Lissa made for her front door.

Three quarters of an hour later she was seated in her solicitor’s office, listening to his careful, judicial speech.

The question she had asked him was whether Joel Hargreaves could legally deny her access to her nieces.

‘Not legally,’ her solicitor told her, frowning slightly as he leaned his elbows on his desk and studied her. Her parents had been clients of his for many years, and he felt intensely sympathetic to this quite, beautiful girl who he remembered as a rather plain and very frightened teenager. ‘But of course, we can’t overlook the fact that materially he can give them much more than you can. He owns a large house in the country, unless I’m mistaken?’

Lissa nodded. ‘Yes, and he’s rich enough to be able to afford a nanny for them … something I couldn’t possibly manage … I know I can’t have them to live with me on a permanent basis—at least not yet, but visiting rights … weekends.’

Her solicitor pursed his lips. ‘Yes … yes … After all it was your sister’s wish that you be appointed co-guardian of the girls. You’re their godmother as well, aren’t you?’

Lissa confirmed that this was so.

‘It’s just a pity that you aren’t married, or at least engaged,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Judges are often a trifle old-fashioned in their attitude towards minors. If they can see a ready-made family unit they look upon it very favourably.’

Lissa wanted to point out that Joel wasn’t married either, but she did not. After all, unlike her, Joel could afford to buy all the help needed. Joel and John had both received all the benefits of being rich man’s sons. Both had gone to a famous public school; Joel had taken over running the family estate when his father retired, while John had run the components factory from which they derived their wealth. The estate was a large one, encompassing several farms, woods, a shoot in Scotland, and Winterly House itself, a Queen Anne gem of a building which Lissa had only visited twice, but had fallen instantly in love with. She had never been able to understand how John and Amanda could prefer to live in the extremely modern house John had had built for them, but then Amanda, unlike herself, had been a thoroughly modern young woman. Painfully, Lissa dragged her thoughts back to the present, in time to hear her solicitor saying that while there was no doubt about her legal rights to the children, he suspected that Joel Hargreaves intended to make it extremely hard for her to take them up.

He frowned slightly as he studied the papers in front of him, a faint tinge of embarrassed colour darkening his skin as he said hesitantly, ‘And then of course there is the matter of … well, reputation … from the court’s point of view …’

He got no further, because Lissa had stood up, pushing her chair back unsteadily, her eyes darkening to brilliant emerald as she interrupted bitterly. ‘Are you trying to say that a court might not consider me a fit person to have charge of the girls? And how will they prove that I wonder?’ Temper had her in its coils now, burning fever bright, pushing through the barriers of pride and reserve, words boiling up inside her and spilling volcanic-like from the place deep inside her where all her pain was buried. ‘By checking through my life? By questioning my friends? By delving into my private life, searching diligently for every little grub of dirt they can find?’ Two angry spots of colour burned high on her cheeks as she added finally, ‘Perhaps they might even want to subject me to a physical examination … just to find out how promiscuous I am … What a pity they can’t apply the same rules and standards to Mr Hargreaves … but then of course, his lifestyle isn’t important is it? After all he’s rich and important, and I’m neither … Isn’t that what you’re trying to tell me.’

‘My dear …’ The solicitor looked and felt embarrassed. What she had said held a faint shadow of truth, although of course there could be no question of any examination of her … physical or otherwise … In the face of her bitter anger he felt unable to defend or even explain the workings of the law … nor could he entirely refute her allegations concerning the court’s possible view of Joel Hargreaves. It was wrong and unfair he knew that.

‘I won’t give them up … I won’t …’

Lissa turned round and almost ran from his office, still so angry that she never even noticed the speculative stares of his secretary who had caught her raised voice from inside her boss’s office. No wonder she had lost her temper, with a mane of hair like that, she reflected half enviously. Her own hair was a soft mousy brown, and in her fantasy daydreams she had often imagined herself as a passionate redhead.

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