but one of the staff from the palácio drove her back there. It would have been nice to go straight to her room and bed, but Elaine went first to Calum’s office to see if there were any messages for her; taking on a week’s celebrations like this was lucrative but it was difficult to run her own office in London from such a distance.
Several messages had come through to the house on the fax machine, and some by telephone. Only two of them were for her, one acknowledging receipt of the faxed estimate she had sent earlier, the other from her mother-in-law inviting her to a family birthday party, and adding, ‘And perhaps you might like to arrange it.’
She wouldn’t go, of course; her mother-in-law should have realised that by now. But perhaps the older woman thought it her duty to ask her and had added that last sentence to nag Elaine’s conscience, to make her think of the duty she was supposed to owe Neil’s family. But Elaine was quite sure that she owed them nothing whatsoever—not duty, and certainly not affection or love. Her face grim, she crumpled the paper into a tight ball. As she did so, the door opened and Calum came in.
He paused when he saw her. ‘I saw the light was on and wondered who was here,’ he explained. He gave her a guarded look, evidently remembering the way she’d snubbed him earlier.
‘I came to see if there were any messages for me.’
Calum gave a rueful sigh, impatient with himself. ‘I’m sorry, I said I’d look earlier today, didn’t I? I’m afraid—something happened and it went out of my mind.’ He frowned. ‘But surely you were in here this afternoon?’
‘Yes, I received that message. I wanted to see if there was any problem with my answer to it.’ She flicked the ball of paper neatly into a waste-paper basket. ‘Goodnight.’ She went to leave.
‘One moment.’ He lifted a hand to stop her.
Elaine hesitated, then turned to face him. ‘Yes? You have some instructions for me?’ she asked in her most businesslike manner.
‘No. I merely wished to say.’ His eyes, grey and quizzical, met hers. ‘Well, that I hope I didn’t offend you when I asked you to dance this evening.’
‘Offend me? No, of course not,’ she lied.
He was watching her and she was uncomfortably aware that he didn’t believe her, and he proved it by saying, ‘I don’t usually get that reaction when I ask someone to dance.’
‘I was busy,’ she prevaricated.
‘You were furious,’ he countered. ‘Now, why, I wonder?’
‘Not at all,’ she said dismissively, and turned to the door.
But Calum was standing in the way and didn’t move. ‘Have you never danced?’
She thought of refusing to answer, but then said stiffly, ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then I must have seriously offended you—and I’m extremely sorry. I didn’t mean to—awaken old memories.’
Elaine stared at him speechlessly, realising he was referring to supposed memories of her dead husband that dancing might have evoked. Realised, too, that he was watching her keenly to see if he was right. She suddenly found his presence, his overbearing masculinity, too much, and said shortly, ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Brodey, I think I’ll go to my room. I’m very tired.’
A frown flickered in his brows, but he murmured, ‘Of course,’ and moved out of the doorway. But as she went to pass him he put a hand on her arm and said, ‘I thought we’d agreed that you’d call me Calum.’
She found, unnervingly, that his touch sent a tremor of awareness sighing through her veins. But somehow she managed to control it and her voice was light, casual, as she said, ‘So we did. Goodnight, then, Calum.’
‘Goodnight, Elaine. I hope you sleep well.’
But when Elaine got into bed she lay awake for some time. Trying to ignore her stupid reaction to his touch, she went over that conversation in his study, wondering why Calum had bothered with her at all. Was it that he was piqued because she’d refused to dance with him? Did he expect all women to fall for his charm and good looks? Which they probably did, she thought cynically. Well, that made him a male chauvinist of the first order, as far as Elaine was concerned. She had seen too much of that type, lived with one for too long, and now had no time for it. In her case, it was once bitten forever shy.
Inevitably, her thoughts drifted back to the time when she had met Neil, nearly ten years ago. She had been so young then, only eighteen, innocent, impressionable. But Neil had been over thirty, a success in his chosen career, fully adult in every sense of the word. He had literally swept her off her feet, knocking into her one day at the tennis club, when he had run from his court into the next to hit a lob, and cannoned into her. She had fallen, and Neil, she remembered, had hit the lob back and scored the point before he’d turned to help her up. An action that was typical of him, although she hadn’t realised it for quite some time.
He had been staying with friends while on leave, but spent the rest of the time pursuing her—there was no other word for it—determined to capture Elaine’s heart as quickly as possible. He had done so quite easily; she had been overwhelmed by him, had never before met anyone with his masterful assertiveness, his clean-cut good looks, his easy charm. They had been married only a few months after they met, and it had been quite a lot later before she’d found out that his masterfulness hid an iron determination always to have his own way. His good looks attracted other women of whom he took full advantage, and his charm was used to make the lies he told acceptable, even believable.
Since then she had become extremely wary of any man who had any one of those qualities—and Calum Brodey had all three, in abundance. Which gave her every reason to steer well clear of him, even if all he felt towards her was a sort of conscience-pricked pity.
Elaine turned restlessly on her pillow, cross with herself for having even thought of Calum. It was, she realised, going to be one of those nights. Switching on the bedside lamp, she sat up and leaned against a pillow, picked up a novel which she kept for nights like these. But tonight reading didn’t work, didn’t leave her with buzzing eyes and a mind so tired that nothing would keep her awake. Her mind drifted from the book to that almost peremptory invitation from her mother-in-law. Again resentment filled her. Neil’s mother had always known he was a womaniser. She might have expected, if not hoped, that marriage to an innocent teenager would change him, but hadn’t cared in the least when it hadn’t. Neil might have been faithful for a year or so, but Elaine strongly doubted if it had been more than that.
She hadn’t known at the time, of course; Neil had been away a lot, taking courses and things, and he had been so ardent when he came home that she had been completely fooled. It had only been towards the end, when he’d had a post near home but was forever making excuses to be away, that she had begun to suspect. She had been pregnant at the time.
Lonely one weekend, because Neil was away—at a conference, he’d said—she’d thought she would please him by taking a couple of his suits to the cleaners. Going through his pockets, she’d found a hotel bill made out to Mr and Mrs Beresford. A hotel in a well-known chain, situated in a suburban town not too far away; a hotel at which she had never stayed, the bill dated at a time when Neil was supposed to have been on a course nowhere near that town. The kind of outdoor training course for new recruits where he was never near a phone, definitely not available, so she had never tried to contact him.
Trying to convince
