While Claire continued to grumble, Heather went and made herself a cup of coffee and some toast for her breakfast. That was something else she wasn’t about to start doing. Cooking for her sister, who was faddy in her eating habits and inclined to complain.
No wonder Theo had felt sorry for her, Heather thought sadly. He had sussed Claire out from the word go and presumed that Heather was no match for her.
‘You haven’t made me any breakfast.’ Claire materialised in the doorway of the kitchen and folded her arms. ‘If you’re going to be horrible to me, then I’ll leave right now. I thought you might be happy to see me, but obviously I was wrong.’
‘I am happy to see you, Claire, but I’m not so overjoyed that I’m going to hand over the keys to my flat…’ Not to mention my life. ‘Anyway, where would you go?’ She sighed. ‘I don’t understand why you left America in the first place. I thought you were having a brilliant time there. I thought it was the sort of place where anyone with ambition could strike out. Not like England which was too small and narrow-minded.’
Claire looked uncomfortable, then she shrugged and strolled into the kitchen and began going through the contents of the fridge.
Even from an impersonal point of view, and feeling pretty strong at that moment, Heather could still reluctantly admire her sister’s utter contentment with her body. She doubted she would ever get to that point in life, however mentally strong she became. Having always been conditioned to think of herself in elephantine terms, showing off her body would have been an alien concept.
Claire sat on one of the chairs, bread, butter and honey in front of her, and began preparing a sandwich without the benefit of a plate to catch any falling crumbs. Her silky flaxen hair fell around her face like a curtain, flicking up against her thin tanned shoulders. ‘Anyway,’ she said between mouthfuls, ‘I could always go crawling to your pal Theo for a roof over my head.’ Her face adopted the expression of someone doing a few mental calculations. ‘I mean, I figure he would let me stay, since he knows you and he’d be kind of doing you a favour…’
‘You can’t do that!’ Heather said sharply, her colour rising, and Claire looked at her shrewdly. ‘Ah. Why not? Would that be because you don’t believe in asking for favours unless you’re, like, best friends with someone? Or would it be because you might just be a teensy-weensy bit jealous?’ She grinned and pretended to look innocently surprised at her own processes of deduction while Heather looked at her in silence. ‘I knew it! I just got a feeling. I thought that you two might have had something going on, but of course that would have been ridiculous, which means that you must have had some kind of crush on him!’
Heather could feel her sense of power and control begin to seep away. In an effort to hold on to it, she stuck her chin out and said with bravado, ‘Why do you assume that Theo and I didn’t have something going on, as you put it?’ Phrasing it as a question, Heather didn’t feel so bad about revealing the possibility of the truth just to shut her sister up.
With determination, and a good following wind, Claire could strip her of all her defences just when she thought they were firmly in place. Winning the battle over the tidiness issue was one thing, but going back to that place where she had lacked the strength to believe in herself was quite another matter. Heather wasn’t about to let that happen without a damn good fight.
‘Because I don’t. You wouldn’t be able to keep that kind of thing to yourself, for a start.’
‘I don’t want to be having this conversation.’ Heather stood up abruptly and turned her back on her sister’s amused, taunting face. She felt hot and bothered. In a minute she would have to escape, go out, but she had a sinking feeling that the conversation would resume the minute she was back in her flat. A tide of frustration and anger clawed at her throat. Not only had Theo demolished her life, now here was Claire, picking over the wreckage.
In the midst of her miserable thoughts the doorbell rang, and never had she been more pleased to hear it peal through the flat. She briskly turned around and realised that Claire had similarly risen to her feet. Her privacy was beginning to look like a thing of the past. She didn’t stop to question her sister’s state of dress. She just felt mightily annoyed at the shadow trailing in her wake as she pulled open the door, expecting to find Beth.
Claire skidded to a halt behind her as Heather stared up at Theo. She was wearing a hunted, harassed expression, and in that fleeting instant Theo knew he had done the right thing. He held out the blood-red roses and stepped through the door, past a shell-shocked Heather, to be confronted by her sister, who seemed to be wearing very little and not be much ashamed of it, judging from the broad smile on her face.
‘We were just talking about you,’ Claire announced with satisfaction. She strolled across to the sofa and sat down, drawing her knees up. ‘That’s really sweet of you to bring us some flowers. I love roses. They’re my favourite.’
Theo hid the distaste from his face. He couldn’t imagine what nature of conversation Heather and her sister had been having, but Heather looked fairly distraught. She had managed to scuttle away, and he could glimpse her in the kitchen, doing something industrious with the roses.
Even with her back to him Theo felt as though he could read her mood, see it in the slump of her shoulders.
‘Come sit by me.’ Claire patted a space on the sofa next to her, which Theo ignored. ‘I have a little favour to ask of you,’ she carried on as Heather emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her trousers and then hovering in the background. Claire obliged him with a hundred-watt smile. ‘Heather’s been having fits since I arrived here.’ She pouted attractively. ‘She can’t bear the mess—even though I’ve tidied it all away.’ She coiled one strand of that impossibly silky hair around her finger and wriggled her toes. ‘So here’s my request…is there any chance that I might kip down in your place for a couple of days…?’ She inclined her head teasingly to one side and managed to give a very good impression of a beautiful lost little kitten in dire need of a kindly helping hand.
Heather gritted her teeth together and wondered what was going through Theo’s head. She was only just recovering from the shock of seeing him, and was beginning to wonder about those red roses. He wasn’t a flowers and chocolates kind of man. More the sort to get his secretary to purchase something impossibly expensive as a gift, or to arrange a flight to Paris for lunch for a woman. She had done enough gift-purchasing in her time to know that his gestures were expensive but entailed almost no effort on his behalf. She wondered, jealously, if her feisty self-willed sister had managed to strike some chord in him, and was chewing her lip and pondering the possibility when he turned to look at her.
‘Somehow I don’t think Heather would approve of that arrangement,’ Theo drawled, moving behind Heather and resting his hands on her shoulders.
Heather’s brain went into immediate shutdown. All she was aware of was the feel of his hands through her top, gently massaging her shoulders, and his warm breath against her hair. Her intention to pull away was brutally ambushed by leaden legs that suddenly couldn’t function properly.
Claire’s expression had gone from flirtatious helplessness to frank confusion.
‘I don’t see what Heather has to do with anything,’ Claire eventually said, recovering her aplomb. ‘Actually, you’re wrong about that, anyway. Heather doesn’t want me here.’ Her lip wobbled. ‘She practically told me to leave.’
‘I can understand why, judging from the state of chaos in this place.’
‘It looks worse than it is,’ Claire stammered, backing away at speed from her damsel in distress routine in a scramble to reassure Theo that she would be a very tidy guest. ‘I wouldn’t make a scrap of mess in your apartment. In fact, I’m kind of looking for work at the moment. I could do whatever Heather did when she worked for you. And…’ Claire smiled triumphantly at her sister, unnerved by the way Theo was draped around her protectively ‘…you wouldn’t have to worry that I might embarrass you by developing an unhealthy crush…’
Heather wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. Her face had gone bright red. She knew that without the benefit of any mirror. Telling Theo what she had worked out for herself had been a low trick on her sister’s part—but then Claire had always been full of low tricks, to which she happily resorted if she thought they would help her get what she wanted. Right now she wanted Theo—and his apartment.
Heather felt movement return to her stricken limbs as Theo moved away from her to stand by the window, obliging Claire to twist around to look at him.
‘I don’t think you’re getting the message, Claire,’ he said, his voice dripping cold disdain. ‘You won’t be staying in my apartment.’
Claire’s mouth sagged open in shock, and Heather could see her sister regrouping her ammunition. She almost felt sorry for her. Almost, in fact, waded in with a soothing confirmation of her own offer of free lodging. In the nick of time she bit back the instinctive sympathetic response.