touches to the raspberry trifle Jennie had designated for dessert. As she did so, Zac appeared in the doorway.
‘You needn’t have left,’ he said quietly. ‘It was only my secretary reporting on things at the office.’
His secretary? Things had sounded mighty cosy; perhaps he mixed business and pleasure? ‘I needed to see to the dinner,’ she said as she gave herself a mental slap. What business was it of hers if Zac was sleeping with his secretary? Giles had been sleeping with his too but the irony there was that she was his wife—a little fact he’d omitted to mention when he’d met her. And when he’d proposed. She’d only found out he was married when his wife had turned up on her doorstep one evening, having learnt of their relationship through a friend of a friend of a friend.
She didn’t know if it made it better or worse that she wasn’t the only woman he’d fooled about with since his marriage eight years before, but she had believed his wife absolutely when she’d told her the cold facts. She was just amazed Melanie had stuck with him so long. Giles’s wife had been nice, the sort of woman she could have been friends with in different circumstances. Much too nice for a rat like Giles.
‘You OK?’ Zac shifted in the doorway.
Too late she realised her always too-expressive face had given her away. ‘Fine,’ she said with a careless shrug, hoping he’d take himself back to the sitting room. ‘I’ll come and join you in a minute,’ she added pointedly, turning to the dirty breakfast dishes in the sink and filling the washing-up bowl with hot, soapy water. ‘The others should be back soon.’
To her horror he had joined her in the next moment, tea towel in hand. The kitchen wasn’t large as it was, but with his height and breadth dwarfing her it had suddenly got a whole lot smaller. ‘No.’ It came out too sharply, and she modified her tone when she said, ‘You’re a guest. I wouldn’t dream of letting you dry up,’ hoping she didn’t sound as flustered as she felt, although she knew it was a vain hope.
Looking relaxed and slightly amused, he murmured, ‘I’ve no problem with working for my supper.’
‘No, really, I mean it.’ She stood guard over the dishes.
‘So do I.’ He smiled easily but his tone was cooler.
Rachel jutted out her chin like a teenager. This was ridiculous. It was her kitchen. ‘This is too small a room, only one person at a time works in here. We’ve got a rota…’ That sounded silly. ‘And,’ she said truculently, ‘I’ve got my own way of doing things.’
‘How difficult is it to get it wrong when you dry dishes?’
‘I’ll bring you a glass of wine through in a minute,’ she said, purposely not answering him, ‘and Jennie will be home any moment. She’ll expect you to be sitting watching TV.’
‘I think she’d survive the shock nonetheless.’
It was useless arguing with him but neither was she going to give in. She was blowed if she was going to let another Giles tell her what to do. She stood, straight and stiff and without glancing at him until she heard him leave the kitchen. Then she let her body sag. Damn, damn, damn. Now she felt awful. She was never intentionally rude and he was Jennie’s cousin after all, but why couldn’t he take a hint? Irritating, awkward man.
Without considering what she was going to say, she marched through to the sitting room. He was standing with his back to the room looking out of the window into the dark, stormy night.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said without any preamble. ‘I sounded rude and I didn’t mean to be. It’s just that—’
‘You don’t like me for some reason,’ he finished for her, turning round and pinning her with the golden gaze. ‘Right?’
Lost for words, Rachel shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know you,’ she prevaricated at last.
‘No, you’re right, you don’t,’ he said softly, but with an iron edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before. ‘If you did know me and you’d still come to that conclusion, it wouldn’t matter.’ He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘As it is, I guess it still doesn’t matter, but I’d appreciate you trying to be civil this evening for Jennie’s sake, if nothing else.’
Her temper rising, she stared at him. ‘Of course I’ll be civil. I told you, I didn’t mean to be rude.’ Her words were clipped, frosty. How dared he tell her what to do in her own home?
She thought she saw the hard mouth twitch for a moment. ‘That’s very reassuring.’
He was laughing at her again. How dared he? But the hot words quivering on her tongue fortunately never got said. Jennie chose that moment to open the front door of the flat, calling out, ‘Zac? Are you here?’ as she entered the hall.
Rachel saw her friend’s eyes widen when they took in the tall handsome man her cousin had become, and then, in true Jennie style, she’d flung herself into Zac’s arms and planted a smacking kiss on his mouth before he had a chance to object.
Not that he would have objected, Rachel told herself as she left them to it, murmuring something about opening a bottle of wine. Jennie was gorgeous with her black hair and dark brown eyes and the sort of Marilyn Monroe figure that turned men on from schoolboys to geriatrics. And she was between men at the moment, having just dumped her latest boyfriend. They never lasted long with Jennie, she bored easily.
When she re-entered the sitting room Jennie had drawn Zac down beside her on the sofa and was asking about the family, one hand resting on his arm as she gazed up into his face. Rachel knew that look. And when Jennie set her sights on a man they didn’t stand a chance. It normally amused her when Jennie went into her femme fatale role. Tonight, though, she felt rattled and disturbed. She was careful to give no sign of her feelings when she poured the wine, filling the fourth glass on the tray when Susan’s key sounded in the lock.
Susan joined them, slender, beautiful Susan with her white blonde hair and the face of an angel, smiling charmingly and saying all the right things as Jennie introduced her to Zac. And Zac was as charming back. He’d stood up when Susan had entered the room and now displayed the most perfect manners, his conversation witty and amusing as they sipped at their wine.
Rachel sat watching the other three and said little, she didn’t need to. Jennie and Susan and Zac were getting on like a house on fire. She felt a growing sense of déjà vu but she didn’t have to search her mind long for the cause. How often in the past, before she’d escaped the family home for university, had she sat and watched her two older sisters be the life and soul of the proceedings while she’d sat dumbly by? Dozens of times. Hundreds probably. And yet every time had hurt just as much.
After two sweet, girly, blonde little girls, her mother had decided her third child would be a boy to complete their perfect family, and her mother always got what she wanted. Except she’d had another girl. And this girl had been long and skinny with straight brown hair when she’d finally grown hair at the embarrassingly late age of eighteen months. Embarrassing for her mother, that was, Rachel thought grimly. She had been brought up on stories of how mortified her mother had been in producing such an ugly duckling. Or perhaps cuckoo in the nest was a better description. Lisa and Claire, her sisters, with only fifteen months between them, had always been inseparable, and she’d grown up feeling the odd one out in more ways than one. It wasn’t until she’d met Jennie and Susan in the first week of university that she’d come to understand the meaning of true friendship
