'What about the kiss I saw Stevenson give you?' came the harsh accusation. 'That wasn't my imagination.'
'Neither was it anything for you to worry about,' she replied wearily. 'A goodbye kiss, for pity's sake. The man's been very good to me.'
'But by your own admission, he'd once been your lover,' Alan argued. 'He also asked you to marry him quite recently. And you were going to for a while. Goddamn it, Ebony, I have every reason to be suspicious and jealous. Don't take me for a fool!' And he banged the table with a balled fist, the intimidating and violent action firing an answering fury within her.
'And don't take me for a tramp!' she flung back fiercely, tossing her hair back from her bared shoulders and glaring up at him. 'I'm not. I was a virgin when I went to bed with Gary. I only let him seduce me because I was so lonely and I thought I would never have you. God, I cried and cried afterwards because I'd only ever wanted you, and anything else was second-best. I never loved Gary and I was never going to marry him. I only said that as a desperate escape because I couldn't go on being your mistress. It was killing me, Alan. Really killing me.' Tears flooded her eyes again and this time Alan could not remain unmoved.
Dear God, but all she'd just said had the ring of truth about it. And it stabbed his heart with pain and regret. What if she wasn't lying? He dropped
back down on to the seat, the air rushing from his lungs.
'I'm not like my father,' she sobbed quietly. 'All I ever wanted was for you to love me as I loved you. Oh, I know you think I couldn't have fallen in love with you at fifteen. But I did. I know I did. You meant the world to me, right from the first day you brought me into your home. You were everything my father wasn't. You were hardworking and honest and kind. Your family was everything my family wasn't as well, with your loving concern for each other, your warmth and your generosity.'
'You.. .you didn't seem to like my generosity,' he muttered unhappily, and, picking up a paper serviette, reached over and pressed it into her hand. 'Blow your nose. It's dripping.'
Her smile was softly wry as she did as he told her.
'Most people might conclude I was merely a father-figure to you, Ebony,' he pronounced firmly, trying to keep his head when all he really wanted to do was sweep her up into his arms, to hold her and kiss her and make beautiful love to her. He didn't want to talk about the past any more. He wanted to forget all their misunderstandings and just go forward. But perhaps this was necessary, this purging. He doubted their relationship could survive any more secret revelations.
She was nodding in quiet agreement. 'And they'd probably be right. To begin with. But you soon became much more, Alan. I didn't want you as my father for long. I wanted you as my lover.
'Oh, yes,' she swept on, seeing his knee-jerk reaction to her statement. 'It's true and I'm not ashamed of it. By the time I was seventeen I was wanting you in my bed. I lay awake many a night thinking about it, fantasising about all the things we could do together. Maybe in that I am like my father. I don't think of sex itself as shameful, only how people abuse and misuse it. Sex is a very powerful and natural drive, and, while people seem to accept that young men have it on their minds all the time, so do young women, believe me. I wasn't at all unusual. Most of my girlfriends at school were just as fascinated by the subject.'
'Maybe so, Ebony, but sex is not love. I can understand that I might have been the object of your youthful romantic fantasies. What other man did you have in your life, after all? No one. But you weren't in love with me. Not back then.'
Her laughter surprised him. 'Dear Alan, how naive you are sometimes for
a grown man. Don't you think I met boys down the street, or at the beach or the school discos I went to? I had plenty of opportunity for experimentation, if that was all I wanted. Then after I left your home to live by myself in a flat I had oodles of very attractive men throwing themselves at me, doing everything they could think of to get me into their beds. They didn't succeed because I didn't love them.'
'Stevenson succeeded.'
Ebony closed her eyes. 'Yes...'
'Why was he different?' Alan asked bleakly. 'You said you didn't love him.'
She sighed and opened her eyes. They were still blurred, he saw, and his heart turned over.