Kitabı oku: «Something Borrowed»

CHAPTER ONE

‘JAMES hasn’t seen your dress, has he?’ Kate asked, glancing at the magnificent satin and lace bridal gown hanging on the wardrobe door. ‘You know that’s considered unlucky.’

Ashleigh put down her mascara and smiled at her chief bridesmaid in the dressing-table mirror. ‘No, Miss Tradition. He hasn’t. Not that it would worry me if he had,’ she added with a light laugh. ‘You know I don’t believe in superstitions. Or fate. Or luck. People make their own luck in life.’

Kate rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve become annoyingly pragmatic over the years, do you know that? Where’s your sense of romance gone?’

It was killed, came the unwanted and bitter thought. A lifetime ago...

Ashleigh felt a deep tremor of old pain, but hid it well, keeping her mascara wand steady with an iron will as she went on with her make-up.

‘Just look at you,’ Kate accused. ‘It’s your wedding-day and you’re not even nervous. If I were the bride my hand would be shaking like a leaf.’

‘What is there to be nervous about? Everything is going to go off like clockwork. You know how organised James’s mother is.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the wedding. Or the reception. I was talking about afterwards... You know...’

‘For heaven’s sake, Kate,’ Ashleigh said quite sharply. ‘It’s not as though I’m some trembling young virgin. I’m almost thirty years old, and a qualified doctor to boot. My wedding-night is not looming as some terrifying ordeal.’

Oh, really? an insidious voice whispered at the back of her mind.

Ashleigh stiffened before making a conscious effort to relax, letting out a ragged sigh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.’

‘You are nervous,’ her friend decided smugly. ‘And you know what? I think it’s sweet. James is a real nice man. Much nicer than...’ Kate bit her bottom lip and darted Ashleigh a stricken look. ‘Oh, I...I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...I...’

‘It’s all right,’ Ashleigh soothed. ‘I won’t collapse in a screaming heap if you mention his name.’

‘Do you...ever think of him?’ Kate asked, eyes glittering with curiosity.

Too damned often, came the immediate and possibly crushing thought.

But Ashleigh gathered herself quickly, refusing to allow Jake—even in memory form—to mar her wedding-day.

‘Jake’s as good as dead as far as I’m concerned,’ she stated quite firmly. ‘As far as everyone in Glenbrook is concerned. Even his mother doesn’t speak of him any more.’

‘What about James?’ the other girl asked. ‘I mean...he and Jake are twins. Doesn’t he ever talk about his brother?’

‘Never.”

Kate frowned. ‘I wonder what Jake would think of his quieter half marrying his old girlfriend. Does he know, do you think? They say some twins, especially identical ones, have a sort of telepathy between them.’

Ashleigh’s fine grey eyes did their best to stay calm as she turned to face her old school-friend. ‘Jake and James never did. As far as Jake knowing...’ She gave a seemingly offhand shrug. ‘He might. His mother insisted on sending him a wedding invitation. God knows why, since she doesn’t even know where he’s living now. She posted it to his old solicitor in Thailand, who once promised to pass on any mail. Naturally, she didn’t receive a reply.’

Ashleigh sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, hoping to ease the constriction in her chest. ‘Jake wouldn’t give a damn about my marrying James, anyway,’ she finished. ‘Now...perhaps we’d better get on with my hair. Time’s getting away.’

Kate remained blessedly silent while she brushed then wound Ashleigh’s shoulder-length blonde hair into the style they’d both decided on the previous day. Even though Ashleigh appeared to be watching her hairdresser friend’s efficient fingers, her mind was elsewhere, remembering things she shouldn’t be remembering on the day she was marrying James.

Jake...holding her close, kissing her.

Jake... undressing her slowly.

Jake...his magnificent male body in superb control as he took her with him to a physical ecstasy, the like of which she doubted she would ever experience again.

A shiver reverberated through her.

‘You’re not cold, are you?’ Kate asked, frowning.

Ashleigh tried to smile. ‘No... Someone must have walked over my grave.’

Her friend laughed. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in stuff like that. You know what, Ashleigh? I think you’re a big fibber. I think you believe in fate and superstitions and all those old wives’ tales as much as the next person. And I’ll prove it to you before this day is out. But, for now, sit perfectly still while I get these pins safely in. I don’t want to spear you in the ear.’

Ashleigh was only too happy to sit still, her whole insides in knots as a ghastly suspicion began to take hold. Was she marrying James simply because of his physical likeness to Jake? Could she be indulging some secret hope that, when James took her to bed tonight, her body would automatically respond the same way it had to his brother?

She hadn’t thought so when she’d accepted James’s proposal. Ashleigh believed she was marrying him because he was the only man she’d met in years who seemed genuinely to love her, whom she liked enough to marry, and who wanted what she was suddenly wanting so very badly: a family of her own. Sex had not seemed such an important issue.

Now...with her wedding-night at hand...it had suddenly become one.

Perhaps she should have let James make love to her the night he’d asked her to marry him. At least then she would have known the truth. Looking back to that occasion, she had undoubtedly been stirred by his unexpectedly fierce kisses. Why, then, had she pulled back and asked him to wait? Why? What had she been afraid of? As she’d said to Kate...she was hardly a trembling virgin.

Ashleigh mentally shook her head, swiftly dismissing the possibility that her body—or her subconscious—might find one brother interchangeable with the other. She had never confused James with Jake in the past. Others had, but never herself. The two were totally different in her eyes, regardless of their identical features.

They’d been in the same class at school since kindergarten, she and Jake and James, though the boys were almost a year older than her. The three had been great mates always, spending all their spare time together. It wasn’t till the end of primary school that their relationship had undergone a drastic change. The three of them had seemed to shoot up overnight, Jake and James into lithe, handsome lads, and Ashleigh into a lovely young woman with a figure the envy of every girl in Glenbrook.

By the time they had finished their first year in high school the more extroverted, aggressive Jake had staked a decidedly sexual though still relatively innocent claim on Ashleigh. She’d become his ‘steady’, and from then on James had taken a back seat in her life, even though she had always been subtly aware that he was equally attracted to her, and would have dearly liked to be in his brother’s shoes.

But she’d had eyes only for Jake.

How they had lasted till their graduation from high school before consummating their relationship was a minor miracle. Oh, they’d argued about ‘going all the way’ often enough, with Jake sometimes becoming furious with her adamant refusal to let him. But she had seen the way other teenage boys talked about girls who gave sex freely, and had always been determined not to give in till Jake had proved he wanted her for herself, not her nubile young body.

Ashleigh almost smiled as she remembered the first time Jake had made real love to her, the day after her eighteenth birthday, two weeks after they’d graduated. What an anticlimax their first effort had been. Jake had been furious with himself, knowing he’d been too eager, too anxious.

‘Too damned arrogant and ignorant,’ were his words.

Jake had gone out then and there and bought a very modern and very progressive love-making manual, then quickly became the most breathtakingly skilful lover that any mortal male could become, mastering superb control over his own urgent young body, thrilling to the way he’d eventually learnt to give the girl he loved such incredible . pleasure.

Or so Ashleigh had romantically imagined at the time. She should have known that it was just Jake being his typical obsessive self. She certainly should have begun to doubt the depth of Jake’s love when he announced in the New Year that he was going overseas—alone—for a couple of months. She’d stupidly believed his story about his rich Aunt Aggie’s giving him the holiday as a reward for his great exam results and insisting he go immediately, saying it would broaden his mind for his future writing career. He’d promised Ashleigh faithfully to be back in time to go to university with her in March.

But by March Jake had been in prison in Bangkok, awaiting trial for drug trafficking and possession, after trying to board a plane home with heroin in his luggage. Though greatly distressed, Ashleigh had flown over to support her boyfriend, certain he was innocent. The penny hadn’t dropped till after Jake had been found guilty and given a life sentence. He had looked her straight in the eye from behind those filthy bars and told her quite brutally that of course he was guilty. What in hell did she think he’d really come over for?

But it had been his subsequent personal tirade against her that had shattered Ashleigh completely. His cruelly telling her that he had grown out of their puppy love during his weeks abroad; that he found her blind faith during his trial suffocatingly laughable; that she was boring compared to the real women he’d enjoyed since leaving home and that he didn’t want to see her pathetic face again, let alone receive any more of her drippy, mushy love letters.

Ashleigh had returned home to Australia in a state of deep despair and disillusionment, having had to defer her entry into medical school till the following year due to her emotional state. In truth, she had almost succumbed to a nervous breakdown over Jake. Yet still some mad, futile hope had made her keep on writing to him. Not love letters. Just words of forgiveness and encouragement. Every day she had gone out to the mail box, hoping against hope for a letter back.

It had never come.

In the end, she’d crawled out of her crippling depression and gone on without Jake.

But the scars left behind from her disastrous teenage romance had plagued her personal life, spoiling every relationship she’d tried to have. Always she’d compared the man with Jake. His looks, his personality, his drive, his lovemaking...

They’d all failed to measure up. Which was crazy! For what had Jake done to her? Let her down. Let his family down. Let everyone down.

‘What made you come home to Glenbrook to practise medicine?’ Kate asked all of a sudden, startling Ashleigh from her reverie. ‘From what you’ve told me, you were doing well down in Sydney.’

‘Very well,’ Ashleigh agreed. ‘But the city can be a lonely place, Kate, without your family or someone special to share your life. I remember I spent my twenty-ninth birthday all alone, and suddenly I was homesick. Within a week I was back here in Glenbrook.’

‘And in no time you found James. God, life’s strange. There you were in Sydney for years, where there must be hordes of handsome, eligible men, and what do you do? Come home and find your future hubby in good old Glenbrook.’

‘Yes...’ Ashleigh recalled the night she’d answered an emergency call from the Hargraves home where Mr Hargraves senior had unfortunately suffered a fatal heart attack. It had been James who’d opened the door...

‘I suppose there’s no hope of you-know-who coming back to town, is there?’ Kate probed carefully.

‘I wouldn’t think so. It’s been over three years now.’

Three years since the Thailand government had unexpectedly pardoned a few foreign prisoners during a national celebration—one of them being Jake—and Ashleigh had still foolishly started hoping he’d come home to her.

Well, he had come home all right. For less than a day, apparently, his visit only to ask for money before he went back to the very country that had almost destroyed him! He hadn’t come to see her, even though she’d been home at the time.

One would have thought that such callous indifference should have made it much easier for Ashleigh to see other men in a more favourable light. But somehow...it hadn’t.

A type of guilt assailed Ashleigh. James deserved better than a bride who spent her wedding-day thinking about another man, especially his own brother.

She gave herself another mental shake. She wouldn’t do it any more. Not for a second! And if tonight there were fleeting memories of another time, and another lover, she would steadfastly ignore them.

I will be a good wife, she vowed. The very best. Even if I have to resort to faking things a little...

‘Well, what do you think?’ Kate asked after one last spurt of hair-spray.

Ashleigh swallowed, then glanced in the mirror at the way her wayward blonde hair was now neatly encased in a sleek French roll. ‘That’s great,’ she praised. ‘Oh, you’re so clever!’

‘You’re the clever one, Dr O’Neil,’ came her friend’s laughing reply.

A hurried tap, tap, tap on the bedroom door had both women glancing around. The door opened immediately and Nancy Hargraves, James’s mother, hurried into the room.

‘Goodness, what are you doing here, Nancy?’ Ashleigh exclaimed, getting to her feet. ‘Has something gone wrong? Don’t tell me it’s raining down at the park!’

The actual ceremony was to take place in a picturesque park down by the river, James having vetoed his mother’s suggestion they have the wedding at a church neither of them attended. Ashleigh had happily gone along with his idea of a marriage celebrant and an open-air wedding, choosing the local memorial park as a setting. Nancy, though not pleased, had acquiesced, warning them at the time that if it rained it would be their own stupid fault!

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ she muttered now in an agitated fashion.

Ashleigh was surprised at how upset James’s ultra-cool and composed mother seemed to be. Her hands were twisting nervously together and she could hardly look Ashleigh in the face.

‘Could I speak privately to Ashleigh for a minute or two?’ she asked Kate with a stiff smile.

‘Sure. I’ll go along and check that the others are nearly ready.’ The others being Alison and Suzie, Ashleigh’s cousins—the second bridesmaid and flower girl respectively.

‘Thank you,’ Mrs Hargraves said curtly.

Kate flashed Ashleigh an eyebrow-raised glance before leaving the room, being careful not to catch the voluminous skirt of her burgundy satin bridesmaid’s dress as she closed the door behind her.

Ashleigh eyed her future mother-in-law with both curiosity and concern. It wasn’t like Nancy to be so flustered. When she’d offered to help with the wedding arrangements Ashleigh had very gratefully accepted, her own mother having died several years before. She imagined not many women could have smoothly put together a full-scale wedding in the eight weeks that had elapsed since the night she’d accepted James’s proposal. But Nancy Hargraves had for many years been Glenbrook’s top social hostess, and all had been achieved without a ruffle.

Ashleigh got slowly to her feet, taken aback to detect red-rimmed eyes behind the woman’s glasses.

‘What’s happened?’ she said with a lurch in her stomach.

‘I...I’ve heard from Jake,’ came the blurted-out admission.

Ashleigh felt the blood drain from her face. She clutched her dressing-gown around her chest and sank slowly down on to the stool again. It was several seconds before she looked up and spoke. ‘I presume he rang,’ she said in a hard, tight voice. ‘There’s no mail on a Saturday.’

The other woman shook her head. ‘He sent me a letter through a courier service. It arrived a short while ago.’

‘What...what did he say?’ she asked thickly.

‘Apparently the wedding invitation only just reached him,’ Nancy said with the brusqueness of emotional distress. ‘He...he sends his apologies that he can’t attend. He...he also sent this and specifically asked me to give it back to you today before the wedding.’

Ashleigh stared at the silver locket and chain dangling from the woman’s shaking fingers. Her own hand trembled as she reached out to take it, a vivid memory flashing into her mind.

‘What’s this?’ Jake had asked when she’d held the heart-shaped locket out between the bars of his cell the night before the verdict had come down.

Her smile had been pathetically thin. ‘My heart,’ she’d said. ‘Keep it with you while you’re in here. You can give it back to me when you get out, when you come to claim the real thing.’

‘I could be here for years, Leigh,’ had come his rough warning. Jake always called her Leigh, never Ashleigh.

‘I’ll wait...I’ll wait for you forever.’

‘Forever is a long time,’ he’d bitten out in reply. But he’d taken her offering and shoved it in the breast pocket of the shabby shirt he’d been wearing.

Now she stared down at the heart-shaped locket for a long, long moment, then crushed it in her hand, her eyes closing against the threatened rush of tears.

‘I’m sorry to have upset you, Ashleigh,’ Nancy said in a strained voice. ‘I know what Jake once meant to you. But believe me when I say I wanted nothing more than to see you and James happily married today. I did not want to come here with this. But I had to do what my son asked. I just had to. I...’

She broke off, and Ashleigh’s wet lashes fluttered open to see a Nancy Hargraves she’d never encountered before. The woman looked grey, and ill.

Anger against Jake flooded through her, washing the pain from her heart, leaving a bitter hardness instead. How dared he do this, today, of all days? How dared he?

Ashleigh pulled herself together and stood up, the locket tightly clasped within her right hand. ‘It’s all right, Nancy,’ she stated firmly. ‘I’m all right. I have no intention of letting Jake spoil my wedding-day. Or my marriage. You haven’t told James about the letter, have you?’

Nancy’s blue eyes widened, perhaps at the steel in Ashleigh’s voice. ‘N...no...’

‘Then everything’s all right, isn’t it? I certainly won’t be mentioning it. By tonight, James and I will be driving off on our honeymoon and he’ll be none the wiser.’

She was shocked when her future mother-in-law uttered a choked sob and fled from the room.