Natalie, perhaps not. She couldn’t release his fingers. She would have to wake him up. Inwardly fuming, outwardly composed, she leaned over him, trying not to admit her awareness of the smooth firmness of his flesh beneath his shirt-sleeve as she touched his arm.
The moment she shook him his eyes flew open. She had forgotten how mesmeric they could be, topaz one moment, gold the next. They stared straight into hers.
“Chrissie…” He started to smile, the fingers of his free hand sliding into her hair and cupping the back of her head. Too startled to resist, Chris felt him propel her towards him. Her eyes closed automatically, her lips parting in anticipation of his kiss. She might almost never have been away. His kiss was tender and powerful; she was nineteen again quivering on the brink of womanhood, wanted him and yet frightened of that wanting and his kiss told her that he knew all this and understood it.
She barely had time to register these facts before his hold suddenly tightened, his eyes blazing burnt gold into hers as he withdrew from her. Chris blinked, slower than he was to make the transition from past to present, until she saw the biting contempt in his eyes and recognised that when he had kissed her he had not been fully awake; not fully aware of what he was doing.
“So you finally came.” He released her and was on his feet, whilst she still knelt numbly on the floor. “I suppose we ought to be honoured, but I’m sure you’ll forgive us if we don’t bring out the fatted calf. What brought you back, Chrissie? Guilt? Curiosity?”
Just about to tell him that she had only just learned of Natalie’s death, Chris stumbled to her feet as she heard sounds outside. The sitting-room door opened and a smiling plump woman in her fifties walked in holding the hand of a small child.
Chris breathed in sharply. So this was her niece…Natalie’s child. Slater’s child. She couldn’t endure to look at him as she studied the little girl, and knew instinctively why Natalie had named her as guardian, just as she knew that her cousin’s decision had not been motivated by any of the gentler emotions. Natalie had not changed, she decided helplessly, studying the small face so like her own; the untidy honey-blonde hair, and the general air of dismal hopelessness about the child. By some unkind quirk of fate Sophie could more easily have passed for her daughter than Natalie’s although unlike Chris she had brown eyes.
Chris frowned. Natalie had had blue eyes, and Slater’s were amber-gold. No one as far as she knew in either family had possessed that striking combination of blonde hair and velvet-brown eyes, and yet it was familiar to her, so much so that it tugged elusively at her memory.
“There you are, Sophie,” her companion said brightly, “I told you you were going to have a visitor didn’t I?”
The child made no response, not even to the extent of looking at her, Chris realised sadly.
“I have to go and get some shopping now Mr James,” she added to Slater.
“That’s fine, Mrs Lancaster. You’ve made up a room for our visitor, I take it?”
“The large guest room,” Mrs Lancaster told Chris with a smile, adding reassuringly to Sophie. “I’ll be back in time for tea, Sophie, and then perhaps tonight your aunt will read your story to you.”
Once again there was no response. Chris ached to pick the child up and hug her. She looked so pitifully vulnerable, so lost, and hurt somehow, and yet she sensed that it would be best not to approach her. She frowned as she remembered what Slater had said about a room for her. She must tell him that she would be staying at the cottage. She glanced at her watch, remembering that she still had to collect the keys.
“Bored with us already?” Slater drawled sardonically.
Chris saw Sophie conceal a betraying wince at her father’s tone and she frowned, wondering what had caused the child’s reaction. Had Slater perhaps often spoken to Natalie in that sarcastic voice? Children saw and felt more than their parents gave them credit for, but she could hardly question Slater on his relationship with her cousin. Did he know why Natalie had appointed her as Sophie’s co-guardian?
She glanced at him bitterly. Perhaps he had shared Natalie’s resentment that their child should so much favour her. She shuddered to think of the small unkindnesses Sophie could have suffered at Natalie’s hands; torments remembered from her own childhood, and then reminded herself that Sophie was Natalie’s child, and that as usual she was letting her imagination run away with her.
Chris looked up to find Sophie studying her warily, as she crept closer to her father. His hand reached out to enfold her smaller one, the smile he gave her was reassuring. A huge lump closed off Chris’s throat. She had been wrong about one thing at last. Patently Slater did love his small daughter—very much. There was pain as well as love in the gold eyes as they studied the small pale face.
“I can’t think why Natalie specified that I was to be her guardian,” Chris murmured unguardedly.
Almost at once Slater’s expression hardened. “Can’t you?” he said curtly. Sophie tensed, and as though he sensed her distress, he stopped speaking, smiling warmly at the child before continuing, “I’d better show you to your room.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Chris was cool and very much in control now. She gave him the same cold brief smile she reserved for too-eager males. It normally had an extremely dampening effect, but Slater seemed quite unimpressed. “I’ll be staying at the cottage,” she continued. “In fact I’d better get round to Reads and collect the keys. They’ve been keeping the place aired and cleaned for me.”
“Chris!” There was anger and bitterness reverberating in his voice, and Chris saw Sophie tauten again. Slater must have been aware of her tension too, because he broke off to say soothingly, “It’s all right Sophie, I’m not cross. We have to talk,” he told Chris levelly, “and it would be much easier to do so if you stayed here, but I remember enough about you to realise that you’ll go your own way now, just as you did in the past. I’ll walk out to your car with you.”
No doubt so that he could say the things to her he wanted to without upsetting Sophie. It was strange, Chris reflected painfully. All these years she had deliberately refused to think about Slater’s child, and yet now that she had seen her, she felt none of the resentment or pain she had expected. Sophie was simply a very unhappy, vulnerable child whom she ached to comfort and help, but she was sensible enough to know that the first approach would have to come from Sophie herself.
“I don’t have a car,” she told Slater coolly. “If I can leave my case here for an hour I’ll come back and collect it once I’ve got the keys for the cottage. I can use my aunt’s Mini to drive back in.”
Slater’s smile was derisive. “Please yourself Chris,” he drawled mockingly. “I’d offer to take you, but I can’t leave Sophie, and she isn’t too keen on riding in the car.”
Chris frowned, but Sophie’s face bore out her father’s statement, she looked tense and frightened.
IT TOOK HER longer than she had anticipated to walk to the village—she had forgotten that she was no longer a teenager and accustomed to the almost daily walk. The estate agent expressed concern when she told him her intentions.
“But my dear Chris, the place has been empty for nearly two years…”
“I arranged for it to be kept cleaned and aired,” Chris reminded him frowningly.
“Which we have done, but the roof developed a leak during the winter, it needs completely
