when Lisa arrived. Flowers everywhere, filling the elegant rooms with the perfume of spring. Until her mother’s death her parents had lived in a house similar to this, a scant five-minute walk away. She’d been at boarding school, barely fourteen years old, when the dreadful news had come.
Only after the funeral when her father had coolly informed her that he would be selling the family home, moving into a flat suitable for a man on his own, had the full enormity of her loss hit her. Her mother had loved her and now the sweet, gentle woman, who’d been completely dominated by the much stronger personality of her husband, was gone. Without consciously thinking it out she had naively believed that she and her father would now draw closer together in their mutual grief. But he was distancing himself even further, if that were possible, a fact brought home when he told her, ‘The Claytons suggested you spend your school holidays with them. You’ve always got on well with the twins and Ben and Sophie will be far better company for you than I ever could be.’
Lisa closed her eyes briefly, willing the unwanted sadness of memories to leave her. This was a happy occasion, for pity’s sake! Finding a smile, she handed her wrap to a waiting maid, who must have been hired for the evening, and went to find Ben.
The rooms were just comfortably crowded. Even so, her progress was slow, waylaid as she was by friends, colleagues and perfect strangers—invited by the elder Claytons, she guessed—who offered congratulations.
Items of furniture had been pushed to the edges of the rooms or removed entirely and a sumptuous buffet had been laid out on the long dining room table, attended by smartly uniformed waiters. Ben and his parents were grouped by one of the tall windows, seemingly in private, earnest conversation. A conversation which ended abruptly when Lisa reached Ben and touched the sleeve of his dinner jacket to claim his attention.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, her silky brows drawing together. All three of them looked strangely worried but Honor Clayton denied immediately, ‘Of course not! How nice you look, dear. Doesn’t she, Ben? Is Sophie with you? How like you two girls to be late!’
‘She’s waiting for James. He’s picking her up at the flat and bringing her here. She wanted them to arrive together.’ Lisa tucked her hand beneath Ben’s arm. ‘I gather you’ve heard her news?’ She knew Honor had. She’d been there when Sophie had put the phone down after speaking to her mother, seen the wry twist of her mobile mouth, the slight shrug accompanying the upward roll of her eyes.
Honor lifted her heavy shoulders in a gesture of resignation. ‘Of course. But do I see her as the wife of a humble country GP?’ She did her best to smile. ‘Time will tell, I suppose.’
‘She’s very happy,’ Lisa said gently. Her future mother-in-law was a snob but she meant well. She would never forget the rather self-conscious heartiness with which the older woman had received her on those long ago school holidays after her mother’s death.
Young as she’d been at the time, she had instinctively known that Honor hadn’t the words to console the motherless child of her husband’s business partner and had resorted to booming exhortations: ‘Now twins, find something jolly to do with little Lisa—no slouching about indoors and getting bored and miserable! There are plenty of things to do in London. Cinemas, parks…’
Into the edgy silence that had fallen following her last statement—though why the family should be uneasy about a guy like James being admitted to their ranks, Lisa couldn’t begin to fathom—she asked, ‘Where’s Father?’
Again the odd sensation of unease. Arthur Clayton glanced initially at his son and then his wife. He spoke for the first time since Lisa had joined them. ‘He’s with our top advertiser in the study. He shouldn’t be long. It’s not ideal—a private family celebration and all that. But apparently his time in the UK is extremely limited.’
‘And we’ve been nattering away for far too long,’ Honor said bracingly. ‘Time to circulate. Come, Arthur! You can make your speech as soon as Lisa’s father appears—and I presume he’ll want to say a few words of his own to mark the occasion. Everyone here knows, of course, but we have to make the engagement official.’ Smiling fixedly, she dragged her husband into the main reception rooms and Lisa asked, ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Ben? At first I thought your parents were unhappy about Sophie’s wedding plans. But it’s not that, is it?’
‘Problems over advertising revenue,’ he confessed, keeping his voice down, uneasy about being overheard. ‘But nothing for you to worry about, old thing. Is that dress new? It looks as if it cost a fortune.’ He changed the subject, not wanting to pursue it there, a slight frown pulling his brows together as glanced at the elegant creation she was wearing. A slip dress in pale coffee-tinted layered chiffon decorated with swirling patterns of toning sequins, the bodice held up by narrow sequined straps.
Her fingers slid away from his arm as she waited for the unwarranted spurt of anger to die down. He had always been ultra careful about money, she knew that and, far from irritating her, she had seen the character trait as vaguely amusing. She didn’t expect him to change, of course she didn’t, but it would have been nice if he’d complimented her on her appearance before niggling about how much the dress had cost.
Dismissing her reaction as absurd—they didn’t have the type of relationship that demanded sloppy compliments—she gave him a slight smile of conspiracy. ‘It’s hired for the evening—but don’t tell anyone!’
She accepted the reward of his grin, the warm hand that slid around her tiny waist, with a small curve of her lips, a dimpling cheek. But there was more. ‘Don’t patronise me, Ben. If we have money problems I should know about them.’ Number crunching was his department, not hers; he didn’t interfere with her editorial input, but this was different.
Ben hunched his shoulders uncomfortably and for a moment Lisa believed he wasn’t going to enlighten her. Then he shot her a wry glance. ‘We didn’t want to worry you. After all, your father might talk him round.’
‘Who?’
‘The top guy at Trading International. He’s threatening to withdraw the company’s advertising.’
‘And that’s serious?’
‘You bet your sweet life it is! High fashion leather wear, the Los Clasicos range of jewellery, wine, gourmet cheeses, luxury hotels and apartments worldwide. Withdraw that lot and we’re up the creek without a paddle.’
‘That bad.’ Lisa sucked her lower lip between her teeth. Shouldn’t she have seen this coming? What major advertiser would stick with a magazine with circulation figures in slow and seemingly unalterable decline? ‘What chance is there of Father talking him around?’
Ben shrugged. ‘God knows!’ He drew her away from the window. ‘I shouldn’t have told you—don’t let it spoil our evening, Lise. If everything goes pear-shaped and Lifestyle folds, we’ll be OK. With my qualifications and your experience we’ll find other work. Hold that thought while we mingle.’
Smiling, chatting, doing her best to act as if all was right with her world, Lisa felt hollow inside, her eyes straying continually to the study, where her father was trying to persuade a hard-nosed business mogul not to pull the plug. Many of the guests tonight were on the staff of Lifestyle. By this time next month they could all be out of work, her father and Arthur Clayton looking into the bleak face of failure.
How could Ben possibly expect her to dismiss all that from her mind and console herself with the thought that he and she would be OK?
He couldn’t be that selfish,
