the moment Chrissie had met Jarrad at her own wedding three years ago she had looked up to him with the kind of hero-worship one would expect from a naive teenager—which of course she had been then—and, surprisingly she still displayed it to some degree, despite the brutal way in which he had treated her husband.
’It’s his determination I admire—that scary determination that ensures nobody and nothing gets in his way and makes everybody respect him,’ Chrissie stated almost contentiously. ‘I wish Ralph had had just a quarter of it. Perhaps if he had, we’d still be…’ She shrugged as though she’d learnt from the pains of over a year without the good-looking, quiet-voiced accountant that it was no use wishing.
‘And he’s not a demon—just a man,’ she went on in that same, near-contentious tone, although it took Kendal a second or two to realise that she was still referring to Jarrad. ‘But as I said he’s a very determined one. Determined, tough and a lot more capable of withstanding the sort of emotional pressure that a battle like this is going to put on you. You can’t take him on, Kendal. For heaven’s sake, compromise! Meet him halfway or something.’
Kendal looked at her sister obliquely. ‘You mean give up the chance of this job?’
For a moment something glittered in those dark eyes, and Kendal was struck by Chrissie’s likeness to her father. But then she had inherited his dark hair and complexion too, Kendal thought, remembering the father who had abandoned them without a care. He had left his wife and children for another woman, only to desert again after Jane Harringdale had taken him back—an act, Kendal reflected painfully now, that had proved too much for their mother’s poor health and had ultimately brought on that fatal collapse.
‘Apart from a few months while you were having Matthew, you’ve always been working.’ It was a reproof, and yet it sounded like a complaint, too, from Chrissie.
‘I’ve had to,’ Kendal stressed quietly. When their mother had died eight years ago Chrissie had been just thirteen, and Kendal herself only eighteen, and Robert Harringdale hadn’t wanted to know. It had been a struggle, therefore, bringing up her sister alone, doing office work during the day while studying for her qualifications as an interior designer at night—particularly as Chrissie hadn’t been an easy teenager, always critical of herself as well as others, often questioning her own worth. As one so-called expert had remarked at the time, she had blamed both her parents for leaving her.
Consequently, desperate for love, and despite Kendal’s attempts to be both mother and father to her, Chrissie had married the first man who had come along shortly before her eighteenth birthday. And, with Ralph being ten years older and therefore more mature, it might have worked out, Kendal thought—eventually. If it hadn’t been for that cold, calculated act of Jarrad’s…
‘So what if you win?’ Chrissie was leaning back against the cushions, playing with an overhanging leaf from one of the plants that grew in abundance around the room. ‘You’ll just be a single mum in a strange country. And, looking at it from a rather selfish point of view, when will I ever get to see you?’
Kendal gave her a dry smile. ‘You can come with me,’ she invited gently—tentatively—but Chrissie merely grimaced.
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ she stated in a rather flat tone, and, sadly, Kendal realised that all her sister wanted—hoped for—was a reconciliation with Ralph.
‘You’ll be working flat out. You’ll have to—to keep yourself and Matthew, ’cos I know you’ll never accept a penny from Jarrad. You’ve said so often enough,’ Chrissie expressed. ‘Though I can’t think why! He’s rich enough to keep you, Matthew and half of London besides!’
And clever enough to know that if I take anything from him I’ll be surrendering my independence to him, Kendal thought, which is what he wants. But she didn’t say it.
‘I don’t mind working. I need it,’ she tagged on, unable to add, I need it to help me forget him. To stop driving myself mad with thinking about him. And if I’m abroad he can’t find me so easily. Can’t hurt me any more.
‘It’s not just Matthew. He wants you as well. You know that, don’t you?’ Chrissie interrupted her thoughts as if she had read them. ‘Oh, Kendal, you could have so much if you’d only swallow your pride and give him another chance.’
Her cup suspended in mid-air, Kendal stared at her sister aghast. ‘Go back to him, you mean? Take him back? Like Mum did with Dad!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Jarrad’s nothing like him!’ the younger girl stated adamantly. ‘You could do worse, you know. And it would be a proper family life for Matthew. I don’t suppose you can blame him for wanting that.’
Kendal looked down at her son, who was chewing the cover of his book and gurgling contentedly to himself. Wasn’t that what she wanted for her child? A stable home? She wanted it more than anything. Did her sister imagine that it had been easy these past twelve months? Because it hadn’t been. It had been hell…
‘And what about me? What are you suggesting, Chrissie? That I shouldn’t have left him? That I should have been content to be his housemaid and his dutiful little sex slave while he carried on with that patronising Lauren Westgate behind my back?’
‘Of course I’m not suggesting you should be that,’ Chrissie was quick to respond. ‘Although I don’t think you should pretend you didn’t enjoy the role, or that part of it at any rate—sleeping with him, I mean—because you were besotted with him. Everyone could see it. You worshipped the ground he walked on!’
A flame, which Kendal had thought successfully banked down until she’d faced Jarrad in his office today now leapt to sudden, vibrant life again, way down in her loins.
‘More fool me!’
‘And you were hardly his housemaid.’
No. There had been the long-standing Teeny Roberts to cook and clean. He hadn’t intended her to do all that—even if she had had the time. And perhaps that might have been the problem, in part…
‘As for Lauren, she did rather throw herself at him,’ Chrissie reminded her. ‘And a man with his looks is going to get that every day of the week! It would take a monk to resist that constant barrage from the opposite sex. And I’m not prepared to believe he was even having an affair with her. He’s never actually admitted it, has he?’
No, he hadn’t, Kendal thought. But she had found those receipts in his study from the hotel where they had stayed when he had told her simply that he was away working, had led her to believe he’d gone alone. Oh, they’d been under separate names—and in separate rooms—it was true. But then anything else wouldn’t have looked too good if those receipts had wound up in his accounts office for Ralph to find! Only they hadn’t needed to. Being caught together in Jarrad’s office, as they had been by her brother-in-law that night, was all the evidence that mattered!
‘He’s never actually denied it either.’ How could he? When such a denial would have been a blatant lie! ‘I don’t know how you can defend him, Chrissie! After what he did to Ralph!’
Chrissie lowered her gaze, looking so unhappy suddenly that Kendal wished she hadn’t said anything.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all she could utter, wishing she could wave a magic wand and make everything all right, for her sister at least.
‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m getting used to it
