His Pretend Wife

CHAPTER TWO

‘ARE you all right, darling?’ Mrs Foster’s face came into focus.

‘Mum? What-?’

Somehow the van had turned into her own bed in her own room. Her head was throbbing and her mother was smiling at her anxiously.

‘How did I-? Oh, goodness!’

She bounded out of bed and just reached the bathroom before the storm broke. When it was over and she was feeling a little better she noticed something for the first time.

She was wearing only a bra and panties. They were peach-coloured, flimsy lace, and might as well not have existed for all they concealed. Her golden dress and her tights had been removed.

When? Where? How?

She made her way carefully back to her room, and mercifully her mother was there with strong tea.

‘Did you have too much to drink last night, dear? Andrew said you’d come over faint and asked him to bring you home, but I couldn’t help wondering-well, not to worry. I could see he’s a really nice young man.’

Oh, sure, he’s a nice young man. He stripped me almost naked while I was unconscious. And he had the unspeakable nerve to hang my dress up neatly on a hanger.

It was there, on the wardrobe, hung and straightened by skilled hands. Its very perfection was an outrage.

‘What did he tell you?’ she mumbled into her tea.

‘He brought you home, and when you got here you went straight to bed, and he sat downstairs waiting for us so that he could explain that you were already here, and we needn’t wait up.’

‘He’s Johnny’s elder brother.’

‘He told us. Apparently he’s a doctor. I always thought you liked young men to be a bit more colourful than that.’

‘He’s not a boyfriend. I only met him last night.’

‘But he’s the one you turned to when you needed help, so he must have made a big impression on you.’

‘He did that, all right,’ she muttered.

‘It’s nice to know that you’re getting so discerning now you’re growing up.’

That was the final insult. ‘Mum!’

‘What, dear?’

‘I’m seventeen. It’ll be years before I’m interested in a boring doctor. He just happened to have a car.’

‘You mean that revolting van? You must be really smitten if you liked him for that.’

‘I’m not feeling well,’ she said hastily. ‘I think I’ll go back to sleep.’

Her mother tactfully left her and Ellie snuggled down, feeling like a wrung-out rag. As she drifted off she remembered the stranger who’d tried to drag her away. She might have passed out with him instead of with Andrew, and instinct told her that he wouldn’t have simply brought her home and put her to bed.

Try as she might she couldn’t recall Andrew removing her clothes and putting her to bed. He was rude and insufferable, but he’d saved her from a nasty fate. What was more, he’d seen her almost naked, which none of her boyfriends had. It was maddening to think that he might have looked at her with admiration, and she hadn’t known.

But as the waves of sleep came over her again, she began to dream. She was in a moving vehicle that stopped suddenly. The door beside her opened and she was pulled out so that she fell against a man who picked her up in his arms as easily as if she’d weighed nothing.

He was carrying her-there was the click of the front door, then the feel of climbing. It felt good to rest against him-safe and warm. Somehow her arm had found its way around his neck, her face was buried against him, and she could hear the soft thunder of his heartbeat.

They were in her room and she was being lowered gently onto the bed. His face swam in and out of her consciousness, lean, serious, the mobile features full of expression-if only she could read it.

But then the darkness obscured everything, and she was sinking down, down into deep sleep, leaving the dream and its mysteries for another time.

Her very first hangover was a grim experience, but by late afternoon she’d rejoined the human race. Soon Andrew would drop by to see how she was. Their eyes would meet, and each would see in the other’s the memory of last night.

She dressed plainly in trousers and top, and applied only the very slightest make-up. This elegant restraint would make him forget the juvenile who’d aroused his scorn. He would be intrigued. They would talk and he would discover that she had a brain and a personality as well as a beautiful shape. He would become her willing slave, and that would serve him right for dismissing her as a kid.

But it wasn’t Andrew who called. Only Johnny.

Rats!

‘Hallo, Johnny,’ she said, trying not to sound as disappointed as she felt.

‘You better now? You were looking pretty green when I last saw you.’

‘I wonder why,’ she said pointedly.

‘Yeah, right,’ he mumbled. ‘It was my fault. No need to keep on. I’ve had it all from Andrew.’

‘Oh?’ she said carelessly. ‘What did he say?’

‘What didn’t he say?’ Johnny struck a declamatory attitude. “‘Pouring cider down the throat of a silly girl who hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together-”’

‘Who’s he calling silly?’ she demanded indignantly. This scene wasn’t going to plan, but how could it when the leading man was missing?

‘Why don’t we go back to your home now?’ she suggested casually. ‘Then I can thank him.’

‘He’s not there. This morning he took off to visit his girlfriend.’

‘What? How long for?’

‘Dunno! Lilian’s studying for medical exams too, so they’ll probably work together. I’ll bet they study far into the night, and then go to bed to sleep. And that’s all he’ll do. He’s got ice water in his veins.’

As in a flash of lightning she saw Andrew’s face leaning over her as he began to remove her clothes. Not ice water.

Then the lightning was gone, and she was here again with Johnny, suddenly realising how young he was. How could she ever have been flattered by the admiration of this boy?

But for the next few days she still hung around with him, had supper at his house, just in case Andrew appeared. But he didn’t, and after four days she gave this up. She told Andrew’s mother that she was so sorry to have missed him, and she would write him a note of thanks. Sitting at the kitchen table, she applied herself.

Dear Andrew,

I shall give this note to your mother, and ask her to make sure that you get it. I owe you my thanks-for the help you gave me at the party the other night.

Good. Dignified and restrained, and giving no clue to her real thoughts: You’re a dirty, rotten so-and-so for not coming to see me.

‘There are two “esses” in passionate,’ said Andrew’s voice over her shoulder.

She jumped with sheer astonishment. ‘What-? I didn’t-’

‘And one “y” in undying, and one “u” in gratitude.’

She leapt up to confront him. ‘What are you on about?’ she demanded. She could have screamed at being caught unawares after all her careful plans. Once again life had handed her the wrong script.

But his face came out of the right script. It was tired and pale, as if he’d studied too long, but his eyes held a glowing light that made her want to smile.

‘I was writing you a note to thank you for your help, but I never said anything about passionate, undying gratitude.’

He took it from her and studied the few words regretfully. ‘You just hadn’t reached that bit yet,’ he suggested.

‘In your dreams! Just because a person is being polite, that doesn’t mean that another person can go creeping up behind them and-and make fun of them-when all a person was doing was-was-’

‘Being polite,’ he supplied helpfully.

‘I’d have thanked you myself if you’d still been around next day.’

‘I thought I’d better not be,’ he said quietly.

Suddenly she was growing warm, as though he’d openly referred to the way he’d undressed her. She turned away so that he shouldn’t see how her cheeks were flaming.

The next moment the rest of the family entered the kitchen. There were greetings, laughter, surprise.

‘I thought you were staying until the end of the week,’ his mother said.

‘Oh, you know me,’ Andrew said carelessly. ‘Always chopping and changing.’

‘You? Once you’ve decided on something it’s like arguing with a rock.’

Andrew merely gave the calm smile that Ellie was to come to know. It meant that other people’s opinions washed off him.

‘I feel sorry for Lilian, if she marries you,’ Grace teased.

‘She won’t,’ Andrew said mildly. ‘Too much good sense.’

‘Sense?’ Grace echoed, aghast. ‘Is that what you say about the love of your life? Don’t you thrill when you see her? Doesn’t your heart beat with anticipation, your pulse-?’

‘Whoever invented kid sisters ought to be shot,’ Andrew observed without heat.

‘Who’s a kid?’ Grace demanded. ‘I’m seventeen.’

‘From where I’m standing that’s a kid,’ Andrew teased.

Grace took hold of Ellie’s arm. ‘Come on, let’s go upstairs and play my new records.’

‘No, let’s help your mother lay the table,’ Ellie said quickly. Anything was better than being bracketed with Andrew’s ‘kid’ sister.

After the meal they all went out into the garden and watched fireflies, talking about nothing in particular. When the rest went in she hung back, touching his arm lightly so that he turned and stayed with her.

‘I didn’t say thank you properly,’ she said.

In the darkness she could just make out his grin. ‘You were saying different at the time. Nothing was bad enough for me.’

‘Well-I wasn’t quite myself.’

‘You were smashed. Not a pretty sight. And very dangerous.’

‘Yes, I might fall into the hands of a man who’d undress me while I was unconscious,’ she pointed out. ‘That could be dangerous too.’

She wasn’t really annoyed with him for undressing her, but for some reason she wanted to talk about it.

‘What are you saying? Are you asking me if I ravished you?’

She smiled at him provocatively. ‘Did you?’

‘Stop playing games with me, Ellie,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re too young and ignorant about men to risk this kind of conversation.’

‘Is it risky?’

‘It would be with some men. It’s not with me because I know how innocent you really are, and I respect it.’

‘You mean I mustn’t ask if you “ravished” me?’

He was angry then. ‘You know damned well I didn’t.’

‘How do I know?’

‘Because you’d know if I had.’

‘So why undress me at all?’

‘If I’d just dumped you into bed fully clothed your mother would have guessed that you were incapable. I was trying to make everything look as normal as possible. But I’m a doctor. I’m used to naked bodies, and yours meant nothing to me.’

She glared. It was maddening not to be able to tell him that this was just what she minded most.

Grace put her head out of the window. ‘Andrew, Lilian’s on the phone.’

She couldn’t help overhearing the first part of the call. ‘Lilian? Hi, honey, yes, I got here OK-it was a wonderful few days, wasn’t it? You know I do-’ He gave a soft laugh that seemed to go through Ellie.

She stood still, filled with sensations that she didn’t understand and couldn’t control. Andrew was a man, not a boy. He excited her and mystified her, and he had all the allure of the unknown. But her chief sensation, although she didn’t understand it then, was childish, hurt pride.

There and then she made up her mind that she was going to make him fall in love with her, and that would show everyone. Above all it would show him that he couldn’t look down on her from lofty heights.

Oh, God, she thought now, looking back down the tunnel of years, I was only seventeen. What did I know?

The house stood well back from the road, almost hidden by trees. It was large and costly, the residence of a wealthy, successful man.

It was dusk as Andrew drove up the winding drive, and there were no lights to greet him. But for himself the house was empty, and even he spent very little time here since his wife and son had departed. He had a bachelor flat near the hospital.

This grandiose place wasn’t a home to him. It never had been. He’d bought it three years ago to satisfy Myra, who’d fallen in love with its size and luxury. She’d been the wife of the youngest top-ranking cardiothoracic surgeon in the country, and she’d expected to live appropriately. Andrew had demurred at the house, which was almost a mansion, with a porticoed door and walls covered with ivy. But Myra had insisted, and he’d yielded, as so often, to conceal the fact that his feeling for her had died. If it had ever lived.

For a while she’d enjoyed playing lady of the manor. She’d named the place ‘Oaks’ after the two magnificent trees in the garden. She’d bought their son, Simon, a pony, and had him taught to ride in the grounds. But by that time their marriage had effectively been over. She hadn’t even wanted Oaks as part of the divorce settlement.

He was pouring himself a drink when his mobile went. It was Myra, which made his head immediately start to ache.

‘You’re no easier to get hold of than you ever were,’ she said wryly. ‘Where are you?’

‘The house.’

‘What are you rattling around in that place for?’

‘I can’t think.’

‘Just checking about the weekend. Simon’s looking forward to seeing you.’

‘Look, I was going to call you about that-’

‘Don’t you dare!’

‘I’ll have to work over the weekend. Can’t you explain to Simon, make him understand?’

‘But he already does understand, Andrew. It’s what he understands that should be worrying you. He understands that he’s always last on your list of priorities.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Damn, it is true! Look, I married you knowing your work always came first. I made that choice. But Simon didn’t. He expects to have a father who loves him-’

‘Don’t dare say I don’t love my son,’ he barked.

‘Do you think I need to say it? Don’t you think he knows it every time you let him down?’

‘Put him on.’

The talk with his son was a disaster. Simon was quiet and polite, saying, ‘Yes, Daddy,’ and ‘It’s all right, Daddy,’ at regular intervals. And it wasn’t all right. It was all dreadfully wrong, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

He was tired to the bone. He microwaved something from the freezer, barely noticing what it was, then settled down in front of his computer. For two hours he worked mechanically and only stopped because his head was aching too badly for him to think. But that was good. He didn’t want to think.

He wondered why he suddenly felt so drained and futile. The demands of work were crushing, but they always were. Pressure, stress, instant decisions, life and death-these were the things he thrived on, without which he wouldn’t exist. Suddenly they weren’t enough. Or rather, they were too much. For the first time in his career-no, his whole life-he wondered if he could cope with everything that was required of him.

It was absurd to connect this sudden loss of confidence with the brief moment in the hospital corridor when he’d been confronted with a past he’d thought safely dead and buried.

Buried. Not dead.

He hunted in the top drawer of his desk until he found a set of keys, selected one, and used it to open the bottom drawer. At the back, buried under a pile of papers, was an envelope, stuffed with photographs. He laid it on the desk, but made no move to open it, as though reluctant to take the final step.

At last he shook out the contents onto the desk, and spread them out with one hand. They were cheap snaps, nothing special, except for the glowing faces of the two young people in them.

The girl’s long blonde hair streamed over her shoulders in glorious profusion, her face was brilliant with life. It was that life, rather than her beauty, that made her striking. All youth and abundance seemed to have gathered in her, as though any man who came near her must be touched by her golden shadow, and be blessed all his days.

Blessed all his days. There was a thought to bring a bitter smile to the face of a man who’d felt that blessing, and seen it die.

He lingered over the girl’s laughing face, trying to reconcile it with the weary look he’d seen on the woman in the corridor. Just once her gaze was turned on the young man, and he studied her expression, trying to detect in it some trace of the love he’d once believed in. In every other picture she was looking directly at the camera.

By contrast, the man had eyes only for her, as though nothing else in the world existed for him. His hands were about her waist or on her shoulder, touching her face, his expression one of tender adoration.

Andrew wanted to seize him, shake him, crying, You fool, don’t be taken in by her. She’s nothing but a cold-hearted little schemer, who’ll break your heart and laugh at you.

She’d been laughing when he’d first seen her at the party, dancing with blissful abandon. With her head thrown back in enjoyment, her eyes sparkling, she’d seemed the very embodiment of everything he’d given up on the day he’d decided to be the greatest doctor in the world. He’d devoted himself to study, ignoring the young, heedless pleasures that other medical students had seemed to find time for. They’d been all right for people who’d been satisfied with being ordinary doctors, but he hadn’t been satisfied, and he hadn’t been going to be ordinary.

Without warning this shimmering pixie had burst on him, and before he’d been able to control the feeling, he’d been filled with fierce regret for the whole side of life he’d rejected. He’d escaped to the kitchen, away from the sight of her.

But then she’d appeared, looking even younger close-up, and he’d known that she’d been dangerous to his peace of mind. He’d assumed an air of lofty indifference, talking to her with one eye still on his book, as though he hadn’t been able to tear himself away, although the truth had been that every fibre of him had been aware of her.

He’d have liked to believe her claim of being nineteen, but her air of bravado had given her away. She’d flirted like a kid, crossing her beautiful legs on the table near him, and saying she liked older men in a ‘come hither’ voice that would have finished him but for his stern resolutions. His advice to ‘go back to your party, pretty little girl’ had been an act of desperation.

He’d promised himself to avoid her, but when he’d seen boys getting her drunk for a laugh he’d had to step in and rescue her.

He’d taken the house key from her purse and carried her up the stairs to what he’d guessed had been her room. He’d removed her clothes because if her mother had found her fully dressed and asleep she might have guessed the truth. He was a doctor, and impersonal, so he’d thought.

But he’d found himself holding a girl wearing a bra and panties so wispy as to have been almost nonexistent. Laying her gently on the bed, he’d been shocked to find how his hands had longed to linger over her silky skin and perfect shape. He’d hung up her dress, using the controlled movements to impose discipline on his mind and, through his mind, his sensations. Discipline, control, order. That was how it had always been with him.

But not this time. Fear had seized him, and he’d got out as fast as he’d been able to.

He’d fled to the imagined safety of Lilian, a girlfriend as sedate and studious as himself. But there had been no safety there, or anywhere. After that it was too late. It had always been too late.