Sighing, Emma went to bestow a kiss on his cheek. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she murmured apologetically, ignoring the impulse to defend herself. ‘Gilda had an important meeting this morning, and I had to hold the fort until she got back.’
‘If you ask me, I think that woman detains you deliberately,’ remarked Mrs Ingram, coming out of the living room to stand behind her son. A tall, well-built woman, she tended to overpower any opposition, but Emma had had plenty of experience in defying her.
‘Gilda wouldn’t do that,’ she said now, smiling in the face of hostility, knowing full well that Mrs Ingram would prefer her to argue, thus giving her an opportunity to gain her son’s support.
‘I don’t know why you have to work anyway,’ added her mother-in-law, digging up an old bone of contention. ‘Heaven knows, David spends enough time on his own as it is. I can’t imagine why you persistently follow your own career at the expense of your husband’s happiness.’
Emma’s tongue probed her upper lip. Then she said firmly: ‘David understands. I need an occupation. And so far as being alone is concerned, David wouldn’t want me around all the time. When he’s working—–’
‘When I’m working,’ put in David moodily. ‘A rare and wonderful occurrence these days.’
‘Oh, David …’
Whenever he got on about the shortage of commissions coming his way these days, Emma felt guilty. And yet his work was as good as ever. His artistic talents had not been impaired at all, but his attitude of mind coloured his illustrations, and his London agent had confided that unless David could shed his almost manic preoccupation with misery and suffering he would no longer be able to represent him. It was just an added problem to the already overloaded problem of their lives, and there were times when Emma wished it could have been she who had been crippled in the crash. It was at times like these when she chided herself for insisting on continuing with her job, but most of the time she accepted that without the three days a week she spent at Avery Antiques she would go mad.
Now, leaving David to offer his mother another glass of sherry, she went into the kitchen and turned on the grill. The steaks would not take long, and as she had bought extra to go into the freezer it was no problem to cater for three instead of two. Mrs Ingram was a frequent visitor to the house, and Emma had long abandoned the idea of being mistress in her own home.
Lunch was ready in half an hour, and seated at the square mahogany table in the dining room overlooking the walled garden at the back of the house, Emma relaxed a little. Why not? she asked herself, sipping at the glass of wine David had produced to drink with the meal. It was perfectly natural that hearing from Jordan again after all this time should have disconcerted her, but she was over the worst now and she was glad she had confided in Gilda. She was the only person she could confide in, and telling her had lessened the impact somehow. All the same, there was still the element of unease in not knowing what he had wanted, but that would dissipate with time. He had probably been at a loose end, she thought wryly. He must have been, to ring her when he had made it brutally plain in the past that their relationship had meant nothing serious to him. Did he think perhaps that now she was married she might be more accommodating? What kind of relationship did he think she had with David? Or didn’t he think about David at all?
Yet, if what Gilda said was true, he already had an accommodating girl-friend. Stacey Albert was a very sophisticated young lady, so why was Jordan bothering with the girl he had once known and discarded, the girl he had shed like an unwanted toy when her father sank into debt and finally killed himself? Her lips tightened. Oh, yes, as soon as the firm of Trace and Kyle, known familiarly as Tryle Transmissions, was bought out by the Kyle family, he no longer made any pretence of his feelings towards his father’s partner’s daughter.
‘Do you have to go back to the shop this afternoon?’
Mrs Ingram was speaking to her, and Emma looked up half guiltily, as if afraid her thoughts were visible for everyone to read.
‘I—beg your pardon? What? Oh, yes. Yes. I promised Gilda I’d take her a sandwich. She’s had no lunch.’
‘Can’t she afford to buy her own sandwiches?’ demanded David testily, pouring more wine into his glass. ‘You aren’t paid to feed your employer as well as yourself, are you?’
‘No,’ agreed Emma, biting her tongue on the desire to tell him that without her salary they couldn’t afford to drink wine at lunchtime either, and Mrs Ingram took up the comment.
‘She really is the most objectionable woman,’ she declared, with a sniff. ‘When I asked her to contribute to our charity fund, she had the nerve to tell me that her taxes alone would feed and clothe half the population of Abingford and she didn’t see why she should contribute when the state had millions of pounds just waiting to be applied for.’
Emma hid a smile. ‘Well, that is true,’ she conceded quietly. ‘People simply won’t claim, and Gilda says she doesn’t see why she should give money to organisations who spend half of it to pay the administratory costs.’
Mrs Ingram’s head went up. ‘I hope you’re not implying, Emma, that my colleagues in the Ladies’ Guild and I use the money we collect for any other purpose than that for which it’s intended.’
‘Oh, no.’ Emma shook her head, assuming an innocent expression. ‘I’m only telling you what Gilda thinks.’
‘Huh!’ Mrs Ingram attacked her steak with more vigour. ‘As I said before, she’s an objectionable woman, and I can’t imagine why David permits you to work for her.’
‘Why David permits …’ Emma was almost driven into retaliation, but just in time she bit back the words. ‘I just do a job, Mrs Ingram,’ she declared evenly. ‘Now, do you want cheesecake or crackers, David?’
To her relief, the topic was dropped, but when she left for the shop later she was aware that her mother-in-law had not given up on it. No doubt she would use this time alone with David to pursue her point, and Emma could only hope that, as in the past, Mrs Ingram would over-reach herself. David could be as perverse as his mother, and if he suspected he was being manipulated, he would retaliate in kind. It had happened before, and both Emma and his mother knew what a precarious game they were playing.
Gilda was busy with a customer when Emma re-entered the antique shop a few minutes later. They were studying a catalogue of Italian ceramics, and Emma removed her coat and picked up her duster to complete the tidying of the shelves she had begun before Jordan’s phone call. She was admiring a display of Victorian miniatures when the doorbell chimed once more, and she turned smilingly to deal with the new customer. But the smile was frozen on her face as she recognised the newcomer. It might be some time since she had seen Jordan Kyle in the flesh, but he was sufficiently newsworthy to warrant the occasional write-up in the local press and because of this she had not been allowed to forget his lean features.
Now, coming face to face with him, she was struck anew by the magnetism he exercised, the powerful influence that had once wrought such havoc in her life. Tall, around six feet, she estimated, with a strong if leanly built body, he looked more like an athlete than a businessman. His legs were long and muscular, and he moved with a litheness that belied his thirty-seven years. He was not handsome, but Emma had long since come to the conclusion that handsome men were rarely attractive to women. Jordan Kyle’s harsh, uncompromising features—the deep-set, hooded eyes, the high cheekbones and roughly set nose, the thin line of his mouth—combined to give his face a hard, almost cruel disposition, and yet when he smiled and displayed uneven white teeth,
