you know what was said?” she pressed anxiously. Her father was a warm and kindly man, but her divorce had shocked him to the core. Her refusal to discuss her failed marriage had created a constraint between them which had not lessened over the years.
“Alex didn’t drop you in it, obviously.” Vickie made no bones about what Kerry feared. “They’d have been in need of resuscitation when I got there if he had! Stop fussing, Kerry. Their fond hopes aren’t likely to be realised. Do you know why they’re not here now? They knew Alex was coming so they decided to stay home. But he’ll hardly be visiting again, will he?”
So relieved was she by her sister’s assurance that Alex had not reviled her in any way that Kerry barely heard what followed. She slid her feet over the edge of the bed and breathed in. “Will you give me a lift home?”
“Sure. I brought your handbag and your clothes. They gave them to Alex. I’ll go out to the car and collect them. I wasn’t sure you would be fit enough to leave.” Vickie eyed her pallor consideringly. “You don’t look too hot.”
“I’ll be fine after a night’s sleep. Anyway, I’ve got that American buyer coming tomorrow. I can’t afford not to be there for him.”
Vickie made no comment. She had never shown much interest in her sister’s business. It was in no way as successful as her own modelling agency. But the dealer, Willard Evans, who regularly bought at Antiques Fayre, was a very important customer to Kerry. It might irritate Steven that Willard probably made a three hundred per cent profit on their finds back home in the States, but Kerry never looked a gift horse in the mouth. Since the building of the new bypass they had considerably less passing trade, and she was equally aware that, talented restorer or not, Steven was no businessman.
They were generally overstocked. Steven bought what he fancied at auctions, rather than what was likely to sell. Without the dealer’s visits she believed they would have run into trouble over the poorest months of trading, although she had to admit that their bank manager had always been very reasonable when they had exceeded their overdraft facility.
She thought longingly of home, and wished she could go there, instead of back to the empty cottage. Unfortunately there would be too many questions after Alex’s visit. She couldn’t face those at a moment when she was wretchedly conscious of the mess she had made of her life. Confession might be good for the soul, but it would create great unhappiness for her parents. She seriously doubted that they would find it possible to forgive her. How could they understand what she could not understand herself?
She had been brought up strictly. Her mother had met John Taylor when she was already well into her thirties. He had been a widower with a three-year-old daughter and a busy parish to maintain. Many had saluted his second marriage as one of extreme good sense. Kerry had never been in any doubt, however, that her parents were quietly devoted to each other. Within a year of their wedding Kerry had been born. Her childhood might reasonably have been described as having been idyllic. Unlike Vickie, she had had few stormy encounters with their parents during the teenage years.
Vickie had left home to become a model. In no time at all her true English rose beauty had ferried her up to the top of the ladder. By the time she was twenty-two, Vickie was a success story, renting a small apartment off Grosvenor Place. The summer that Kerry finished school, Vickie had suggested that Kerry use her apartment while she was abroad.
“It’s lying empty, and to tell the truth I’d prefer it occupied,” she had admitted. “You’ll look after my things. Isn’t it about time you cut loose from the nest? If you don’t watch out, they’ll stifle you.”
The Taylors had approved neither of Kerry’s delight nor Vickie’s generosity. But Kerry had been obstinate in her desire to spend some time in London. She had even managed to find herself a temporary job in a nearby travel agency.
“Just wait until you see the guy who uses the penthouse on the top floor,” Vickie had murmured before she left, giving Kerry the lowdown on her neighbours. “He’s devastating, but I’m never here long enough to make an impression. Anyhow,” she had laughed, “I guess he’s not really my type. He’s as conservative as hell. I stuck my neck out once and invited him to a party. He passed, giving me the hint that I shouldn’t have asked in the first place. Watch you don’t make a lot of noise. He also happens to own this building.”
Kerry had almost sent Alex flying on the day she moved in. She had come rushing full-tilt out of the lift as he was trying to enter it, and they had collided, sending the file in his hand skimming over the floor. With her usual sunny cheer she had scrabbled about picking up scattered papers and chattering about the amount of work he brought home with him. She had received the most glacial smile.
It had had no effect on her at all. She had taken her first proper look at him and her knees had gone wobbly. Devastating, Vickie had said rather scornfully. That combination of black hair and golden eyes had more than devastated Kerry. “Gosh, you’d make a marvellous portrait study,” she had said crassly, getting abstractedly back into the lift with him.
“I assumed you were going out,” he had drawled flatteningly. “Do you normally speak to strangers like this?”
“Oh, I’m Kerry Taylor, Vickie’s kid sister…you must know Vickie. Tall, blonde; she’s a model. She lives on the fourth floor.”
“I do not,” he had interposed drily.
She had reddened. “Well, I’m staying here this summer. I thought you might be wondering who I was. That’s why I explained.”
“Your floor,” Alex had slotted into the nervous flood, stopping the lift on the correct level and making it impossible for her to do anything but remove herself.
His unfriendliness had been an unpleasant surprise. Kerry had been born and brought up in a small community where she knew everybody. The anonymity of city life had been a shock to her system. But in her inimitable way she had made friends wherever she could. The security men in the foyer had quickly got on to first-name terms with her as she flashed in and out, generally late wherever she was going or rushing back for something she had forgotten.
Alex had only used his apartment when he was at his London office. She hadn’t known that then. Nor had she even begun to realise how wealthy he was. She had seen him regularly, stepping in and out of his chauffeur-driven car. And the women…Vickie had not warned her about the women.
She came in late one night from a party, and ended up sharing the lift with Alex and a svelte brunette. It had hit her that night that she was always looking out for Alex, and that the days she didn’t see him were distinctly empty ones. Meeting him with the sort of mature woman she naturally could not compete with had turned her stomach over sickly. She hadn’t been that na;auive. She had known very well that he wasn’t bringing a woman home in the early hours to play Scrabble. And it had hurt her. She could still remember standing in that lift, mutinously not speaking as she usually did, and feeling hatefully, agonisingly young.
“Goodnight, Kerry,” Alex had murmured silkily, almost as if he knew what was on her mind.
She hadn’t slept that night. She had paced the lounge, asking herself what kind of baby she was to let herself become obsessed by a male who didn’t know she was alive.
A week later she had accidentally locked herself out of the apartment. The caretaker had been out, the security guard sympathetic but unable to help beyond offering to force the door for her. In her innocence she had imagined that Alex might have keys and, screwing up her courage, she had gone upstairs. His manservant had only allowed her as far as the hall.
