the reference to her mother, her slight shoulders reared back up, her hair whipping back from her damp cheeks, over-bright eyes raw with pain and condemnation.
‘I liked your mother,’ Blaze said evenly.
‘In so far as you ever noticed her!’ Her clogged lashes dropped on her aching eyes. The silence went on and on and on and then she cleared her throat gruffly. ‘She’s dead.’ It was bald, bitter.
‘When?’
‘Last year.’
‘How did it happen?’
She tautened. ‘Pneumonia,’ she conceded.
‘I’m sorry. That must have hurt. You were very close,’ he responded with an amount of apparent sincerity that astonished her.
But Chrissy almost laughed out loud. How close had she really been to her mother? Belle Hamilton had fled her husband and family without a word of advance warning. Chrissy had once found her chatting cosily in the kitchen over a cup of coffee with Dennis Carruthers but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Belle had always happily offered hospitality to workmen, tradesmen—indeed virtually anyone ordinary who entered the house. She had been far happier entertaining them than she had ever been trying to entertain their grandiose neighbours. Nobody had known about Dennis until it was too late. Her mother had burnt her boats with a vengeance.
‘Why didn’t you go home again?’
Chrissy turned even paler. ‘I couldn’t.’ And then she regretted even saying that much. But there was something so dangerously unreal about being in Blaze Kenyon’s company, something so disturbingly hypnotic about receiving his full attention.
‘Where do you live?’
Still in a daze, she told him and then suggested he drop her at a bus-stop. His mouth hardening, he ignored the invitation. From below feathery lashes, she stole a glance at him. He really was quite spectacular. Even immune as she was to his physical allure, she could not resist the urge to look again. Every chiselled line of that strong bone-structure spoke of bred-in-the-bone self-assurance. What could he possibly know about the traumas that had finally torn her family apart when she was sixteen?
Chrissy had stood on the sidelines of her parents’ crumbling marriage, helpless to do anything more than offer her unhappy mother sympathy. Her father had been the reasonably contented owner of a hamburger takeaway when he won the pools. Overnight their lives had changed out of all recognition. And not for the better. Initially her father’s ambitions had been sensible, even modest. He had expanded in the catering trade. But, in the grip of entrepreneurial fever, his ambitions had grown as fast as his bank balance.
When the thrill of flaunting his riches before relatives and friends had worn off, he had bought a fancy house in Berkshire without even consulting her mother. Divided from lifelong friends, her mother had been lost. Worse, Jim Hamilton, always a domineering, short-tempered man, had become more and more aggressive as his wealth and importance grew. When their new and more far-flung neighbours had demonstrated a dismaying reluctance to welcome the Hamiltons into their select social circles, Belle had received the blame.
Even when the locals had finally drifted in to gape, if not to admire, the gulf between her parents had been insurmountable. The damage had been done. Treated with complete contempt by her husband and two eldest children, Belle had been an easy mark for a smooth-tongued younger man. In striking out to find happiness with Dennis, her mother had made an appalling error of judgement. But Chrissy believed that Belle had been driven, not least by her husband’s blatant infidelity, into making that final choice.
‘I thought most of this area was up for redevelopment,’ Blaze mused. ‘The demolition squad is practically parked on your doorstep.’
It was a dirty little street of narrow terraces, set on the edge of a gigantic building site. Some of the houses were already boarded up.
‘Not quite Buck House, is it?’ Chrissy snapped in an artificially correct voice, calculated to annoy.
Blaze filtered the car to a smooth halt, carefully avoiding the spill of rubbish from a tumbled dustbin. ‘What a little snob you are,’ he murmured drily. ‘I was only initiating conversation.’
Opening the door with desperate fingers, Chrissy flung him a look of incredulity. ‘N-no, you weren’t. You can’t open your mouth without being superior!’
Without a further word, she skidded out on to the pavement. Rifling in her bag for her key, she hurried down the street to an end terrace and unlocked the door.
‘Is that you, Miss Hamilton?’
Swallowing convulsively, Chrissy stilled in the act of closing the door. Her landlady was barring her passage to the stairs. ‘You’re back early.’
‘If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Davis—’
‘What about the rent? You got it yet?’ the older woman interrupted bluntly. ‘Because if you haven’t you can get out of here today. Give me that key!’
‘Mrs Davis, you will get—’
‘Nothing ever seems to come of your promises, luv. I must’ve been mad to take you in. Girls with kiddies in tow aren’t reliable. I should have known better,’ Mrs Davis fumed. ‘But I felt sorry for you, didn’t I? Well, I’ve got my own bills to think about and—’
A crisp, cool voice intervened. ‘How much does Miss Hamilton owe you?’
Her landlady spun in amazement. Chalk-pale with mortification and shock, Chrissy’s head twisted on her shoulders. Blaze stood in the doorway, not one whit perturbed by the scene he had interrupted. He was pulling a wallet from his jacket.
‘Three weeks, she owes,’ Mrs Davis retorted truculently, and added the amount.
A handful of notes changed hands faster than Chrissy could part her lips. ‘You can’t take his m-money!’ she protested.
‘Oh, can’t I? I don’t care who pays as long as it’s paid.’ Mrs Davis directed a grim smile of approval at Blaze. ‘And don’t you forget that you’re to be out of here by Saturday. I’ve got a removal van booked for the morning.’
Chrissy was so profoundly embarrassed as her landlady disappeared back into her ground-floor flat that she couldn’t bring herself even to look at Blaze. ‘I’ll post it to you,’ she promised shakily. ‘W-when I can,’ honesty bade her admit.
‘No hurry.’
She was quite nauseated by the knowledge that she was now in his debt. But she could do nothing but accept his charity. Mrs Davis wouldn’t give up the money and Chrissy was in no position to offer repayment. On the other hand, it was thanks to Blaze that she was not now being thrown out on the street. It took immense courage to rise above her sense of humiliation. Raising her bowed head, Chrissy collided with impenetrable sapphire eyes in one brief, stricken connection. ‘Thanks,’ she forced out with difficulty. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around some time,’ she concluded with awkward finality.
Without awaiting any further response, she started up the stairs, fast. On the first landing, she pressed open the door of her bed-sit with raw relief. She simply couldn’t have borne another second of his company.
‘What
