The Forbidden Mistress Page 16

  ‘Oh, I think I do.’ Sophie glanced around, saw the leather chair that stood in the window embrasure and perched uninvited on the arm. Then, crossing one slim leg over the other, she said, ‘I told you Tom was besotted with Grace. I didn’t say Grace was besotted with Tom.’

  Oliver stiffened. ‘That’s not what you said before.’

  ‘No, well…’ Sophie lifted her shoulders in a careless gesture. ‘We all have our weaknesses. But Tom did let you think she was his mistress, didn’t he?’ She bent her head. ‘Perhaps I believed it, too.’

  Oliver uttered an oath. ‘Are you saying it wasn’t true?’

  Sophie shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ she said cautiously, noticing his darkening expression and responding to it.

  ‘Are you or aren’t you?’

  Oliver was in no mood to suffer her prevarications and Sophie made a defensive little gesture. ‘All right,’ she admitted in a small voice. ‘For what it’s worth, I think I was wrong.’

  Oliver took an angry step towards her and then controlled himself. ‘So why the hell didn’t you say anything? Why did you walk out, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Oh, well, if you think I’d want to stay with a man who couldn’t take his eyes off another woman, you’re very much mistaken,’ exclaimed Sophie, looking a little indignant now. ‘He made a fool of me, Oliver, and no man does something like that and gets away with it.’

  Oliver made a choked sound. ‘Is that why you insisted that you wanted to take your money out of the centre?’ he exclaimed, beginning to understand. ‘Because you knew that was the one way you could get back at him!’

  Sophie neither admitted nor denied it, and Oliver stared at her with incredulity in his eyes. ‘But why?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Why are you telling me this? You’ve got your money, or you’re getting it, at any rate. Why tell me this now?’

  ‘Because you bailed him out,’ said Sophie shortly. ‘I wanted him to suffer, but you made it easy for him.’ She grimaced. ‘It was the only thing I could do.’

  Oliver was stunned. ‘My God, you meant what you said, didn’t you, Sophie? No one makes a fool of you without reaping the punishment.’

  ‘What goes around comes around,’ said Sophie carelessly. ‘Besides, maybe I’m feeling generous. I heard you’d finished with Ms Sawyer and I wondered if the reason you hadn’t seen Grace since you got back from Spain was because you were reluctant to do something your brother didn’t think twice about.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Seducing your wife?’ suggested Sophie drily. ‘Whatever he may have told you, Oliver, I was not to blame for what happened. All right, I may not have put up much resistance. I was tired of being a corporate widow, of you working every hour God sent—as you still appear to do, by the way. But make no mistake, your brother has no scruples, none whatsoever, and it’s about time someone gave him a taste of his own medicine.’

  ‘That would be me, right?’ Oliver shook his head. ‘Well, don’t hold your breath. Grace isn’t coming back to the garden centre. According to Tom, she’s going to stay in London.’

  ‘And you believed that?’ Sophie was aghast. ‘Oh, Oliver, didn’t you know? Tom never gives up. He still wants Grace. You know he does. And he’s prepared to do just about anything to get her. Including—and particularly—keeping you two apart.’

  It was after midnight by the time Oliver got to the bed and breakfast in Ponteland. But he wasn’t tired any more. He was invigorated. Not least because he’d hauled his brother’s ass out of bed and threatened to beat him to within an inch of his life if he didn’t give him Grace’s address pronto.

  Tom had tried to bluff it out, of course. He’d attempted to convince his brother that Grace had said she wasn’t coming back, and that when she’d turned up a few days ago, he’d been as surprised as anyone.

  But it was all lies, and Oliver knew it. Sophie had told him that Grace had returned to the garden centre the day after his visit, and eventually Tom had had to give in.

  All the same, Oliver couldn’t help feeling a twinge of apprehension as he stood outside the neat little terrace house where Grace was staying. He knew he’d acted impulsively in coming here tonight, and the resolution that had carried him this far was suddenly losing its impetus.

  What if she refused to see him? What if she didn’t believe him when he told her how he felt about her? She had no reason to trust him. He’d let her down before. And with Tom spreading his lies about him, she was bound to think the worst.

  God! Oliver raked back his hair with an unsteady hand. He should have waited until the morning to come here. Things always looked better in daylight. Turning up on someone’s doorstep in the dead of night was just asking for trouble. What if her landlady called the police? What if she had him arrested? What explanation was he going to give for being here? That he was a lovesick imbecile? Yeah, Andy would love that!

  But something, some compulsion that was stronger than his inhibitions, had him laying a hand on the gate, lifting the latch, pushing it open. The path was short, just a couple of flagstones with a square of lawn on one side and a privet hedge on the other. He reached the door, saw there was no bell, and rapped the knocker.

  The sound was absurdly loud in the stillness of the lamplit street and he glanced about him, convinced he must have awakened half the neighbourhood. But nothing stirred, not even the cat blinking at him from its place on next-door’s step. There wasn’t a soul about, not outside or inside apparently. He would have to knock again and risk disturbing all the occupants of the house, or give up.

  The latter seemed the more sensible option. He stepped back to give the place one final once-over and suddenly saw a movement at an upstairs window. A curtain had been drawn aside and someone was peering down at him. A woman.

  Grace!

  It was her, and as he stared up at her he felt a rekindling of the exhilaration he had felt earlier. Gesturing frantically, he tried to convey the fact that he wanted her to come down and speak to him, but before she had a chance to respond the door in front of him opened. A woman of perhaps fifty confronted him, henna-coloured hair confined in a hairnet, a towelling dressing gown wrapped tightly about her well-endowed figure.

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’ she demanded, as if finding a strange man on her doorstep at one o’clock in the morning was her only objection. ‘What do you want?’ She looked towards the gate and saw the Porsche parked at the kerb, and her expression changed. ‘I’ve got no vacancies. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I haven’t come to ask for a room,’ said Oliver, with a smile, realising he mustn’t alienate the woman. ‘Actually, a friend of mine is staying here and I wondered if I could have a word with her.’

  A frown pulled the woman’s plucked brows together. ‘A friend of yours?’ she echoed. ‘A woman friend?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t allow callers of the opposite sex in rooms after ten o’clock.’

  As if time mattered, thought Oliver impatiently. If one of her boarders wanted to commit an offence they could do so equally well before ten as after.

  ‘Then perhaps you have a sitting room, or a lounge, somewhere where we could talk.’

  ‘At this time of night?’ The woman gave him a pained look. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Please…’ Oliver was trying desperately to control the urge he had to push past the woman and charge up the stairs to Grace’s room. ‘It’s very important.’

  ‘As I say—’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Lawson, I’ll speak to him at the door.’ To Oliver’s relief, Grace appeared behind the woman, but her expression was not encouraging. ‘What do you want, Oliver? Is it the garden centre? Has there been some trouble?’

  ‘No.’ Oliver spoke harshly, but he couldn’t help it. If she thought they were going to conduct a conversation with her landlady looking on, she was very much mistaken. ‘Grace, I need to talk to you.’

  Grace regarded him with hostile eyes. ‘Then I’m sure it
can wait till morning,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ll be at work at eight o’clock—’

  ‘To hell with work!’ Oliver realised he was hardly helping his cause by losing his temper, but he couldn’t seem to help it. ‘Grace, I want to speak to you. I have to speak to you. Goddammit, I didn’t even know you were back until a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘And that matters why?’

  Oliver made a strangled sound. ‘Are you kidding me?’ He cast a fulminating look at Mrs Lawson. ‘Grace, don’t do this to me. Do you think I’d have come here at this time of night if it wasn’t urgent?’

  ‘I don’t know what you might do,’ she replied coldly. ‘I still don’t know why you’ve come at all.’ Her lips tightened. ‘Unless this is the only time you can speak to me without your girlfriend finding out.’

  ‘Dammit, I don’t have a girlfriend,’ snapped Oliver angrily. ‘And if Tom told you I have, he’s wrong.’ He gave Mrs Lawson another killing glance and then added grimly, ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t slept with Miranda since I realised how I felt about you.’

  He saw Grace’s cheeks deepen with becoming colour. And although he resented having to speak of his feelings in front of the landlady, he felt a glimmer of hope stir inside him at this evidence of her response.

  ‘Tom let me think you weren’t coming back,’ he added, pushing his advantage. ‘He wants to keep us apart.’

  ‘I—I don’t know…’ She sounded doubtful. Then, ‘How did you find out I was back?’

  Oliver sighed, knowing this wasn’t going to please her. ‘Sophie told me,’ he said flatly. ‘She came to see me tonight.’

  ‘Sophie?’ As he’d expected, Grace became wary. ‘Why would Sophie tell you something like that?’

  But Oliver had had enough of his uninvited audience. ‘Come with me and I’ll tell you,’ he said, looking challengingly at the landlady. ‘If your watchdog will let you.’

  ‘Now look here—’ began Mrs Lawson indignantly, but Grace interrupted her.

  ‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said, surprising them both. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Lawson. I’ll be okay.’ Her eyes moved to Oliver again. ‘Will you wait?’

  Oliver’s lips twisted. ‘For ever, if necessary,’ he said drily. ‘I’ll be in the car.’

  Five minutes later, Grace opened the passenger door and slid in beside him. She had shed the quilted dressing gown she’d been wearing earlier in favour of jeans and a chunky purple sweater. And although she’d attempted to comb the front of her hair, her braid looked just as wispy as it had done when she’d joined them at the door.

  ‘Okay,’ she said a little breathlessly. ‘Tell me about Sophie. Why did she come to see you?’

  Oliver took a deep breath. ‘Not here, hmm? Will you come back to my apartment?’

  ‘Your apartment?’ Grace swallowed. ‘Can’t we talk here?’

  ‘Did you expect we would?’

  Grace gave him a reluctant look. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘So?’

  She regarded him for another long moment and he wondered if she could see his heart in his eyes. Then she said softly, ‘Okay. But will you bring me back here afterwards?’

  ‘If you want to come,’ said Oliver, not trusting himself to touch her, even though he badly wanted to. He flicked the ignition. ‘Thanks.’

  Grace frowned as he pulled away. ‘What are you thanking me for?’

  ‘For believing me,’ he said simply. ‘You do believe me, don’t you? About Miranda, I mean.’

  Grace was silent for a long minute. Then, as they pulled out onto the main road south she said, ‘You have seen her since you got back from Spain.’ It was a statement, not a question, and Oliver sighed.

  ‘You mean the charity dinner?’ And at her silent acknowledgement, ‘That was a mistake. I realised it as soon as I picked her up.’

  ‘Then why did you invite her?’

  ‘Oh—’ Oliver shook his head ‘—I knew I had to talk to her. I knew I had to tell her that we couldn’t go on seeing one another, and when Andy dropped the dinner invitation in my lap, so to speak, that seemed as good a time as any.’

  ‘But it wasn’t?’

  ‘No.’ Oliver’s tone was flat. ‘I thought I could handle it delicately, but I couldn’t. Being with her felt wrong, and I was trying to get away from her when I ran into Tom and Gina in the foyer.’ He paused. ‘Tom told you he’d seen us, didn’t he?’ He made a bitter sound. ‘That was manna from heaven for him.’

  Grace frowned. ‘Never mind Tom. Tell me about Miranda. What did she say?’

  Oliver sighed again. ‘Well, she was hurt, naturally. She realised I’d just used her.’ He grimaced. ‘I wasn’t very proud of myself, I can tell you.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  ‘Regret what?’ He gave her a startled look.

  ‘Breaking up with Miranda.’

  ‘Hell, no.’ Oliver was fervent. ‘I’ve known for weeks that it wasn’t working any more.’

  ‘Because of me?’

  Grace said the words tentatively, and Oliver took his eyes from the road to stare at her shadowy profile. ‘Do you doubt it?’ he demanded. ‘Dammit, Grace, don’t you know how I feel about you by now?’

  He was forced to look back at the road then, and he sensed rather than saw the way her hands clenched together in her lap. ‘In—in Spain, you said you weren’t free,’ she said huskily.

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘I know. But you didn’t say anything about finishing with her.’

  ‘No.’ Oliver was honest. ‘I didn’t do that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I was a fool.’ Oliver groaned. ‘Look, I thought you and Tom—well, you know what I thought. That day I came to the house and you were there.’ He shook his head. ‘What else was I supposed to think? Tom practically naked and you flushed as if you’d just come out of the shower.’ He lifted his shoulders in a weary gesture. ‘I wanted to kill you both.’

  Grace bent her head. ‘Tom wanted you to think that.’

  ‘I know. I’ve got the picture now. Yet, even then, I couldn’t keep away from you. But by the time we got together in Spain, I was afraid I was getting in too deep. I still believed you and Tom were together, and I was determined not to let him make a fool of me again.’

  Grace was silent for a moment. Then she said quietly, ‘Why didn’t you ask me?’

  Oliver’s fingers tightened on the wheel. ‘I suppose I was afraid to.’ He stared at the road ahead. ‘I’ll be honest. After the divorce, I swore I’d never trust another woman again. I didn’t want to get involved with you. I knew from the start that you could hurt me far more than Sophie ever could. So I used Miranda. As a barrier. I let you think I cared about her. But I never did. Not in this way.’

  Grace wet her lips. ‘What way?’

  Oliver gave her a disbelieving look. ‘You know,’ he said roughly. ‘As soon as you’d left San Luis, I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. Believe it or not, I didn’t care whether you and Tom had ever been together any more. I wanted you, I needed you. Goddammit, I loved you— love you. Everything else is just so much hot air.’

  ‘Oliver—’

  ‘Don’t say anything, please,’ he begged her desperately, hearing what he was very much afraid was regret in her voice. ‘Can we wait until we get there to continue this? I don’t think I can take any more disappointments, not behind the wheel of a car, anyway. I promised myself I wouldn’t say anything until we got there. Hearing you, seeing you, and not being able to touch you is driving me insane.’

  He heard the uneven catch in her breathing, sensed that she was as eager to reach their destination as he was. But all she said was, ‘Just tell me why Sophie came to see you. I didn’t know you and she were on visiting terms.’

  ‘We’re not.’ Oliver’s voice was harsh. He sighed again. ‘All right, she has a grudge against Tom, and she thought I was staying away from you out of some crazy notion of loyalty.’

  ‘But you weren’t.’
<
br />   ‘Hell, no.’ Oliver was vehement about that. ‘I came to see you at the garden centre the day after the charity dinner, but you were not there. That was when Tom told me you’d decided not to come back—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you were going to find another job in London.’

  Grace gasped. ‘But that’s not true.’

  ‘No. That was what Sophie told me.’ He hesitated. ‘She also told me she’d been jealous of you, and that that was why she’d demanded her money back.’

  ‘But she’s got her money back now.’

  ‘Yeah, but she thinks it was too easy for him. She knew I’d guaranteed his loan, and—’

  ‘ You guaranteed the loan?’

  Oliver glanced sideways at her. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘No.’ Grace shook her head.

  For a moment, Oliver didn’t know what to say. ‘I was sure he would.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be sure of anything where Tom is concerned,’ said Grace quietly, and Oliver nodded.

  ‘Ain’t that the truth?’ he muttered. ‘Dammit, why do we have to have traffic lights every hundred yards at this time of night?’

  ‘They’re not every hundred yards,’ Grace protested, and he was reassured to hear a trace of humour in her voice. ‘Is it much farther?’

  ‘Not far,’ he promised, taking the road down to the quayside. ‘We’re almost there.’

  He parked the car outside the warehouse. At any other time, he’d have stowed it in the adjoining garage, but right now even his beloved Porsche couldn’t take precedence over his need to be with Grace. Unlocking the warehouse, he led her across the concrete floor to the lift and then pushed the button for the first floor.

  There was a light in the lift, but it was dull and muted, and he didn’t intend to touch her until he could see what was in her eyes.

  ‘Cool,’ she said, when she stepped out of the lift into his loft apartment. She moved to the windows, looking out at the lights of the city across the water. ‘What a view!’

  ‘It’s better in daylight,’ said Oliver, securing the lock and shedding the leather jacket he’d been wearing. He dropped it onto a teak chest and then walked across the floor to turn on a pair of lamps. He was feeling as nervous as a schoolboy. ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’