several hours.
‘What is it?’ she demanded, her voice shaky, clutching the arm that was lifted to knock again on the door. ‘The girls—?’
‘No, they’re fine. I came to make sure you were all right.’
Slowly her hands relaxed and fell to her side. ‘Of course I’m all right,’ she said in a voice still husky from weeping.
Someone came to the motel office door and peered out at them. Instantly Luke pushed her inside and followed, looking around the room with something like distaste.
‘No, don’t put the light on,’ he commanded as her hand went towards the switch.
She understood immediately. ‘Guarding your reputation?’ she asked huskily, and went over to the windows to pull the curtains. ‘Won’t they recognise your car?’
He said shortly, ‘I’m sorry, it was a stupid thing to say.’
She knew why he’d said it. Small towns were a hotbed of gossip, especially if you were Luke Dennison, and he hadn’t wanted word to get back to the wife who had been dead for eighteen months. Like Perdita, he suffered from a guilt that could never be absolved because it could never be confessed.
If anything was needed to convince her that his heart was buried with Natalie, it was that swift, unconscious remark.
‘It’s probably wisest,’ she said, trying not to let anything but self-possession appear in her tone. Carefully avoiding his eyes, she flicked the light switch down. “The Manley gossips would have a field day.’
‘What are your plans now?’ he asked. He stood still in the middle of the small, unmemorable room, taking up most of the space.
She looked at him with studied composure. ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. The florist’s remark flashed into her mind, followed by an imp of malice that persuaded her to add, ‘I might decide to settle here.’
Although he was so big, the lean muscle on his frame stopped him from being bulky, so the swift, overwhelming sensation of being loomed over was sharp and intimidating. He wasn’t blocking any light from her, yet the room was suddenly darker and colder.
Then a straight black brow rose and something like derision glinted through his lashes. ‘Here? Out of your milieu, isn’t it? You’re too expensive, too sophisticated to settle in a one-horse town like Manley. There’s no Gerard Defarge, no Kurt Maxwell, no Whoever-he-was Albemarle here, no nightclubs or casinos or chic, expensive fashion boutiques. You’d die of boredom.’
She froze, lifting incredulous eyes to meet his sardonic gaze.
‘Somehow,’ she said, hiding the quick, unbidden flicker of fear with her most dismissive voice, ‘I didn’t see you as an avid reader of gossip columns.’
‘Natalie used to read them out to me,’ he said. ‘She thought I’d be interested.’
Natalie would have been interested. It was part of her charm, that absorption in everyone she met. When Natalie spoke to you, it was as though for her you were the only person in the world at that moment.
‘But you weren’t,’ Perdita said coolly.
His mouth hardened. ‘I wondered whether it was your abrupt introduction to sex that had set you on that path.’
She looked warily at him. For years, until Frank’s revelations of five months ago, she had thought of him as a Sir Galahad, a man who had made a mistake and would spend the rest of his life paying for it, a noble man who loved his wife beyond all reckoning.
Now she didn’t know. The missing files and great gaps in the adoption record had made her suspicious.
That first, keenly anticipated meeting with her daughters over, she could think of other things. Someone had tried to make sure she never found her children. Luke was capable of doing such a thing if he considered that it would protect his children or his wife.
Of course, that would mean that he had known all along that the girls were his. Had the biographical details of the parents made him wonder? Had he lived a lie for ten years?
‘I really don’t remember much of that first time; I was asleep during most of it.’ With the memory of his kiss still imprinted in her cells, she let her anger with herself for falling prey once more to her adolescent desires lead her into continuing acidly, ‘Sorry, I’m sure you’re an expert lover, but you didn’t register. And don’t worry about ruining my young life and directing me onto the primrose path. I didn’t blame you then, and I don’t now. I’m a perfectly normal woman with perfectly normal needs, and I satisfy them in perfectly normal ways.’
And put that in your pipe and smoke it, she thought fiercely, ashamed because she was lying to him. Oh, there had been one other man, but their affair had faded because she couldn’t return his passion.
The skin over Luke’s jaw tightened. Something savage and untamed leapt into his eyes, was almost brought under control.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said brusquely. ‘But you won’t find glamorous, rich men here in Manley.’
‘And you don’t want me anywhere near the children,’ she said, not trying to hide the irony in her smile.
He shrugged. ‘Do you blame me for looking after their interests?’ Astonishingly, he put up a hand and touched the dried tear track on her cheek.
Mesmerised by the gentleness of his touch, Perdita stared at him. His eyes gleamed, slivers of pure colour beneath half-closed lids, and his mouth was set in a thin, straight line. Her heartbeat suddenly increased speed. She had to force herself to step backwards, away from the swift, sharp lance of sensation.
‘Of course I don’t,’ she said, aware that he was manipulating her, yet unable to resent it. She too would protect her children to the utmost of her ability. ‘But I don’t want to hurt them, or upset them, or even make them wonder who I am. I gather that Natalie didn’t mention me to them?’
He didn’t try to spare her feelings. ‘Not that I know of. Why should she?’
Why, indeed? Because Natalie had known of her pregnancy, it didn’t mean that her cousin had even considered the possibility of her being the girls’ mother. Perdita hadn’t told her she was expecting twins. ‘In that case, I can just be their mother’s distant cousin. At least they don’t look like either of us.’
‘Not too obviously, anyway. Just remember the document you signed this afternoon,’ he said with harsh insistence.
She didn’t need to be reminded. ‘Oh, I do,’ she said tonelessly.
‘When are you going?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ she returned, ‘but don’t worry, I’ll keep in contact.’
She knew it sounded like a threat and she was pleased until she saw the expression on his face. Stark and potent, he looked at her with such a formidable impression of force and power that she was almost cowed.
For the first time she realised that her childhood impressions of Luke had not necessarily been correct. She had been infatuated with this man, made love with him, borne
