I wasn’t looking...’
‘Ditto,’ Violet muttered in feeble response because what else could she do, short of launching into a scathing attack on everything she had decided was awful about him?
‘So true.’ Damien allowed himself the luxury of looking at her with lazy, speculative eyes. ‘And how could I ever have guessed that underneath your shapeless clothes was the figure of a sex goddess...?’
Violet went bright red. Was he joking? Continuing with their subtle duel of words which carried an undertone that his mother would not have clocked? Was he laughing at her? What else? she wondered, hot and flustered under the scrutiny of his deep blue eyes. She kept her gaze pointedly averted, looking at his mother with a smile that was beginning to make her jaws ache, but every inch of her was tuned in to Damien’s attention, which was focused all on her. One hundred per cent of it. She could feel it as powerfully as if a branding iron had been held to her bare skin.
‘Hardly a sex goddess... There’s no need to tell lies...’ she mumbled with an embarrassed laugh, while trying to play half of the loving couple by awkwardly leaning towards him and at the same time taking the opportunity to snap her legs firmly shut on a hand that was getting a little too inquisitive for her liking.
‘You’re just what my son needs, Violet,’ Eleanor confided with satisfaction. ‘All those girls he’s spent years going out with... I expect you have a potted history of Damien’s past...?’
‘Mother, please. There’s no need to go down that road. Violet is very much in the loop when it comes to knowing exactly the sort of women I’ve dated in the past...aren’t you, darling...?’
‘And I find it as strange as you do, Mrs Carver, that someone as intelligent as your son could have been attracted to girls with nothing between their ears. Because that’s what you’ve said, haven’t you, dearest? I’m sure they were very pretty but I’ve never understood how you could ever have found it a challenge to go out with a mannequin...?’
Damien smiled slowly and appreciatively at her. Touché, he thought. She had been gauche and awkward when she had come to him with her begging bowl on her desperate mission to save her sister’s skin but he was realising that this was not the woman she was at all. Warm and empathetic, yes—that much was evident from the way she interacted with his mother. She had also been prepared for him to walk all over her if she thought it would help her sister’s cause. However, freed from the constraints of having to yield to him in the presence of his mother, her true colours were emerging. She was quick-tongued, intelligent and not above taking pot shots at him under cover of a smiling façade and the occasional glance that tried to pass itself off as loving.
He found that he liked that. It made a change from vacuous supermodels. Certainly, a charade he had been quietly dreading now at least offered the prospect of not being as bad as he had originally imagined and, ever creative when it came to dealing with the unexpected, he had no misgivings about making the most of a bad deal. So she thought that she’d get a little of her own back by having fun with double entendres and thinly cloaked pointed remarks? Well, two could play at that game and it would certainly add a little spice to the proceedings.
‘You’re so right, my dear...’ Eleanor’s shrewd eyes swung between the pair of them. Their body language...their interaction...her son was set in his ways...so where did Violet Drew fit in...? How had the inveterate womaniser become domesticated by the delightful schoolteacher who seemed willing to trade punches...? And where were the airheads who simpered around him and clung like leeches? Sudden changes in appetite were always a cause for concern, as her consultant had unhelpfully pointed out. So what was behind her son’s sudden change in appetite? For the first time Eleanor Carver was distracted from her anxiety about her cancer. She enjoyed crosswords and sudoku. She would certainly enjoy unravelling this little enigma.
‘Of course...’ she glanced down at the wedding ring she still wore on her finger and thoughtfully twisted it ‘...there was Annalise...but I expect you know all about her...?’ She yawned delicately and offered them an apologetic exhausted smile. ‘Perhaps you could come back tomorrow? My dear...it’s been such a pleasure meeting you.’ She warmly patted Violet’s outstretched hand. ‘I very much look forward to getting to know you much, much better...I want to find out every little thing about the wonderful girl my son has fallen in love with.’
SO WHO WAS ANNALISE?
Violet was pleased that she had not been tempted to ask the second they had left his mother’s room. She didn’t know, didn’t care and was only going to be in his company for a short while longer in any case.
Infuriatingly, however, the name bounced around in her head over the next week and a half, as their visits to the hospital settled into a routine. They met at a predetermined time in the same place, exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries on the way up in the lift and then played a game for the next hour and a half. It was a game she found a lot less strenuous than she had feared. Eleanor Carver made conversation very easy. Little by little, Violet pieced together the life of a girl who had grown up in Devon, daughter of minor aristocratic parents. Childhood had been horses and acres of land as a back garden. There had been no boarding school as her parents had doted on their only child and refused to send her away and so she had remained in Devon until, at the age of seventeen and on the threshold of university, she had met, fallen head over heels in love with and married Damien’s father, an impossibly dashing half Italian immigrant who had wandered down from London with very little to offer except ambition, excitement and love. Eleanor had decided in seconds that all three were a better bet than a degree in History. She had battled through her parents’ alarm, refused to cave in and moved out of the family mansion to set up house in a little cottage not a million miles away. In due course, her parents had come round. Rodrigo Carver might not have been their first choice but he had quickly grown on them. He offered business advice on the family estate when fortunes started turning sour and his advice had come good. He had a street smart head for investment and passed on tips to Matthew Carrington that saw profits swell. In return, Matthew Carrington took a punt on his rough-diamond son-in-law and loaned him a sum of money to start up a haulage business. From that point, there had been no turning back and the half Italian immigrant had eventually become as close to his parents-in-law as their own daughter.
Violet thought that Eleanor Carver probably believed in fairy tale endings because of her own personal experience. Whirlwind romance with someone from a different place and a different background...a battle against the odds... Was that why she had accepted her son’s sudden love affair with a woman who could have been from a different planet?
She had posed that question to Damien only the day before and he had shrugged and said that he had never considered it but it made sense; then he had swiftly punctured that brief bubble of unexpected pleasure by adding that it was probably mingled with intense relief that she had been introduced to a woman who wouldn’t run screaming in horror at the thought of wellies, mud and the great outdoors.
For once, Violet arrived at the hospital shop ahead of schedule and was glancing through the rack of magazines when she heard him say behind her shoulder, ‘I didn’t get the impression that you were all that interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous...’
She spun round, heart beating fast, and in that split second, realised that the hostility and resentment she had had for him had turned into something else somewhere along the line. She wasn’t sure what, but the sudden flare of excitement brought a tinge of high colour to her cheeks. When had she started looking forward to these hospital visits? What had been the thin dividing line between not caring what she wore because why did it matter anyway, and taking time out to choose something with him in mind? She had
