wrong!
She was halfway to opening her mouth to tell him so when she realised what she was doing. Quarrelling with Gareth, and in public too, was the last thing she needed. Far better to treat his unfounded and ill-judged condemnation of her with the contempt he seemed to think she deserved.
Even so, as she turned away from him she couldn’t resist saying under her breath, ‘Fortunate for me, then, isn’t it, that your opinion of me…or my friends doesn’t rate very highly in my personal scale of life’s vital statistics?’ And then, as she caught sight of the woman she had seen with him earlier in the day coming towards them, she added for good measure, ‘As it happens, I wasn’t too impressed with your friend either. Scarlet nail-polish at nine o’clock in the morning is rather overdoing things a little, isn’t it?’
With that she turned back to Ray and said quickly, ‘I’m rather hungry and short of time. Do you mind if we go straight into the restaurant?’
Before he could object she started to walk towards the restaurant, praying that Ray would follow her.
Of all the people to have run into. And why, oh, why had she allowed herself to be baited into that extraordinary and totally out-of-character bitchiness about his woman friend? It had been completely unnecessary…completely over the top. The smart thing, the sensible thing to do would have been to quietly ignore his gibe and just walk away from him. Instead of which she had had not just to go running headlong into trouble, but to actually verbally invite it. Even in the white heat of her resentment and anger she had been able to see that Gareth hadn’t been too pleased by her attack on his woman friend, and who in his shoes could blame him?
She remembered how overawed and diminished she had felt by the girls he used to bring home, how young and vulnerable she had felt in comparison, and wondered a little grimly if it had been those old memories, memories she ought to have rooted out and destroyed long, long ago, which had been responsible for today’s outburst.
Whatever the cause, it was pointless regretting it now. All she could do was to hope that she and Gareth did not come into contact with one another again.
With a bit of luck they shouldn’t do so. He, after all, couldn’t be staying around for very long. He would doubtless arrange for Thomas’s business to be put up for sale or perhaps even closed down, and he would then return to America, and she doubted that anyone in the town would ever see him again. Over the last few years it had been only his love for his grandfather that had brought him back, and now that Thomas was dead…
Despite the fact that Gareth had refused to join the family business, had wanted to make his own way in life, he and Thomas had always remained close. Always after his visits Thomas was full of what he had done…what he had achieved. Sybilla had nerved herself to listen to Thomas singing his praises because she knew how much he meant to the older man.
After Gareth’s parents had been killed in an accident Thomas had brought him up, and there was a very, very strong bond between them.
Once, naïvely, she had asked Thomas if he had not been upset by Gareth’s decision to branch out on his own, but wisely Thomas had told her that Gareth must have the right to define and shape his own life, and that to try and keep him within the confines of their small town when he wanted to be elsewhere would be to destroy the bonds between them and would eventually destroy their relationship completely.
She hadn’t understood that then, at seventeen, but she did now. She had already heard from those who had been there how grim-faced Gareth had been at the funeral, and how obvious it had been to the onlookers that he was deeply upset by the loss of his grandfather, even though he had kept his emotions under control.
Now she wondered what role his companion played in his life. Over the years Thomas had never talked to her about the women Gareth knew. She knew that Thomas had wanted him to marry…wanted him to have children, but as yet it seemed that he had not found the women with whom he wanted to settle down. Unless…
Gareth’s emotions and future were nothing to do with her, she told herself grimly as the waiter pulled out her chair for her. In fact she had no business thinking about Gareth at all…or admitting him into her mind. By rights she ought to be concentrating on Ray and the new business they hoped to get from him.
That was, after all, why she was here, and the sooner she made that clear to Ray as well as to herself, the better.
Lunch was every bit as difficult as she had envisaged. Several times Ray tried to trick her into accepting a dinner-date with him, but on every occasion she side-stepped the issue, until in the end he was starting to become truculent and angry with her.
Knowing that she was going to have to confront him, Sybilla told him firmly, ‘You’re a married man, Ray, and even if I were attracted to you that fact alone would mean that as far as I’m concerned there could not be any kind of relationship between us.’
‘The old-fashioned sort, are you? Well, marriage isn’t what it used to be, Sybilla. In fact, my marriage—well, let’s just say—’
‘Let’s just not say anything,’ Sybilla interrupted him firmly. ‘We’re here to discuss business, Ray, and nothing more. And now I really do have to leave. I’ve got another appointment this afternoon,’ she fibbed, ‘and I need to get back to the office first.’
She could tell he wasn’t pleased but there was no way she was going to be blackmailed into a relationship with him she did not want. No way at all.
She was still feeling raw and uncomfortable when she neared the office, her discomfort over lunch lying under her skin like an irritating piece of grit, but not so much because of Ray Lewis. No, the cause of her discomfort lay more deeply buried within her psyche than that. It was because of her run-in with Gareth that she felt so at odds with herself, so angry with herself for allowing Gareth to provoke her into that unseemly, almost juvenile, retaliation. To provoke her. She frowned as she worried at the words. Why on earth should Gareth have wanted to provoke her? Surely, like her, the last thing he could want was any kind of communication between them whatsoever?
He had made it plain enough to his grandfather ten years ago how little he’d relished her childish adoration of him.
Had he provoked her or was she looking for excuses for her own behaviour? Was she…? But no. His comment to her had been a definite and deliberate provocation. Stripping the whole affair of all of its emotional camouflage and looking at it calmly and logically, she could see absolutely no reason for Gareth to have made the comment he had unless he had wanted to provoke her. But why? So that he could give vent to his contempt of her. But why should that be necessary?
Unless perhaps he had wanted to underline to her how much he despised her. Was he afraid that she might still harbour that idiotic teenage crush? Her face burned with indignation at the thought. That had been ten years ago. She had changed since then. She was a woman now.
A woman. Was she? She was an adult certainly, but a woman…She tried not to remember the number of times she had backed off from members of his sex, from all the men who had wanted her…desired her…all the men whose sexual advances she had rejected in a flurry of protests and fear.
Fear not of them as men, but of allowing them to get too close to her in case ultimately they hurt her emotionally. As Gareth had hurt her.
But it was ridiculous to remain fixated on something…someone who had played such a relatively small part in her life. Other girls had similar crushes and went on to form other, more mature relationships; why hadn’t she?
Was
