‘Are you awake?’ Honor asked her.
Forcing a smile, Verity nodded.
‘I wanted you to sleep with me last night,’ Honor told her reproachfully as she ran across the room and scrambled up onto the bed next to Verity, snuggling up to her.
Automatically Verity reached out her arm to draw her close and hold her. Her body, which such a short space of time ago had felt so good, so female, so loved, now felt cold and empty, her muscles aching and tense. But it wasn’t Honor’s fault that she wasn’t her father.
Verity could hear fresh footsteps on the stairs but, unlike Honor’s, these stopped halfway and she heard Silas call out, ‘Honor…Breakfast…’
‘Coming, Dad,’ Honor called back, scrambling off the bed and starting to head for the door, and then unexpectedly turning round and rushing back to fling her arms around Verity’s neck and give her a brief little girl kiss.
Blinking fiercely, Verity watched her leave. The fact that Silas had not chosen to come into her room had told her everything she needed to know about how he felt about last night, as though she needed any extra underlining of the fact that it had meant so little to him.
Fresh tears welled and once again she forced them back, but these had nothing to do with the tenderness she had felt at Honor’s kiss.
She might only have the haziest memory of how she and Silas had come to be making love last night—she could remember waking up to the touch of his fingers on her face, the warmth of his body next to hers. Presumably he must have had some reason to come up to her room.
She might not know what that was, but she certainly knew why he had made love to her—made love! Had sex, she told herself brutally. She might not be able to remember what had brought him to her bed, but she could certainly remember what had kept him there. She couldn’t have made her feelings, her need of him, more plain if she’d written them on a ten-foot banner, she told herself bitterly. He’d have to be made of granite not to have taken what she had so stupidly put on offer for him.
Sexual desire, sexual frustration, could do all manner of things to a man—even make him feel the need for a woman he did not like, never mind love, and that was quite plainly what had happened last night. Silas had used her to vent his sexual frustration. No wonder he hadn’t stayed with her. No wonder he was keeping his distance from her this morning.
The plain, ugly truth was that he had used her and she had let him—and not merely let him but positively encouraged him. And to think that when she’d woken up she had thought…felt…believed…
Would she never learn? She had believed once before that he had loved her, cared for her, about her, and she had been wrong. Now, here she was, eleven years down the line, still hoping, still feeling…still loving.
Verity closed her eyes. No. She did not still love him. She could not still love him. She would not still love him. She opened them again and stared dully at the wall. Just who did she think she was kidding? She loved him all right!
Drearily she got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Coming back to town had been a total mistake. And she was not even convinced any more about her real motives in having done so.
Or perhaps she was. Had it been at the back of her mind all the time that she would see Silas? Even though she knew he was married to someone else?
She gave a small, hollow groan. She had come back because this was her home, the place where she had grown up.
Once she had dressed, reluctantly she made her way downstairs.
When she pushed open the kitchen door, Honor was seated at the table eating her cereal whilst Silas stood at the counter making coffee.
As she walked in he turned and looked at her and then looked quickly away again.
‘I’ve just checked with the garage. They’re going to make picking up your car a priority,’ he told her, his attention on the kettle he was refilling, asking her briefly, ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please,’ Verity responded. Did he really need to ask? Had he really forgotten how he had teased her in the past about her urgent need for her morning caffeine, or was he underlining the fact that, although her preferences mattered, they were of as little importance to him as she was herself.
‘I’ll drop you off at your place when I take Honor to school,’ he told her as he made her coffee.
‘Toast…cereal?’
‘No, nothing, thanks,’ Verity told him coolly.
As he brought the coffee to her she deliberately turned away from him. He smelled of soap and coffee and her stomach muscles churned frantically as he stood next to her. Inside she was trembling and she had to wrap both her hands around the mug of coffee he had brought her, just in case he might see how much he was affecting her.
’When are we going to do the shopping for the dinner party?’ Honor was keen to know.
They were in Silas’ car on the way to Honor’s school, Verity seated in the front passenger seat next to Silas, at Honor’s insistence and very much against her own inclinations. The dinner party! Verity had forgotten all about that.
‘That’s enough, Honor,’ Silas told her crisply as he pulled up at the school gate.
As she hopped out of the car Honor said, ‘Look, there’s my friend Catherine. I want her to meet you,’ and then she was tugging open Verity’s door and leaving Verity with no alternative other than to unfasten her seat belt and go with her to where the young girl was standing watching.