Kitabı oku: «Woman To Wed?»

CHAPTER ONE

CLAIRE MARSHALL gave a rueful look at the now empty, still confetti-strewn reception area of the hotel.

Was it really less than a couple of hours since her stepdaughter and her new husband had run laughing down those stairs, trying to dodge the happy bombardment of rose petals?

Most of the guests had left now, just a small nucleus remaining in the hotel lounge. She had only come back in here to check that nothing had inadvertently been left behind.

It had been a lovely day, a perfect wedding, marred only by the fact that her husband, Sally’s father, had not been with them.

It was over two years now since his death but she still missed him; he had been a good husband—kind, loving, protective. As she bent to touch the bouquet which Sally had so cleverly tricked the three women into catching, Claire acknowledged that the adjectives she was using to describe her husband were more those that she would use to describe a loving father.

‘You should marry again,’ Sally had urged her more than once recently. Sadness darkened her eyes. She had been lucky to find one loving and understanding man; she doubted that she would ever be lucky enough to find a second. And besides, she didn’t really want to marry a second time—to make explanations, excuses or apologies.

She was distracted from her thoughts as both the adult bridesmaids came to join her. Poppy, the bridegroom’s cousin, glowered angrily at the bridal bouquet and curtly echoed Star’s earlier bitter comment.

‘No one pays any attention to those silly old superstitions these days anyway...’

Claire gave her a gentle smile. Sally had confided to her that it was an open secret in her new husband’s family that his cousin had been hopelessly in love with him for years.

Poor girl, Claire thought compassionately. No wonder she looked so pale and strained; the whole day must have been an unbearable ordeal for her, and the bridegroom’s brother hadn’t made things any easier for her. She had accidentally come across the pair of them deep in the middle of a very angry quarrel earlier and she suspected now that at some point in the day Poppy had been crying.

‘I never want to get married—never!’ Poppy announced savagely now.

‘A statement with which I fully concur,’ the third member of the trio murmured calmly.

Claire turned her head to smile at her stepdaughter’s closest and oldest friend. Claire could remember quite vividly how as a young teenager Star had always insisted that she never intended to marry and that her career was going to be the most important thing in her life.

‘Such a shame that none of us truly appreciated Sally’s gesture,’ Claire commented ruefully as she picked up the bouquet and studied it.

‘Careful,’ Star warned her drily. ‘You don’t know what effect holding it could have...’

Claire laughed but she still replaced the bouquet. ‘It is only a tradition,’ she reminded the other two.

‘Mmm... but perhaps for safety’s sake we ought to do something constructive to ensure that we stick to the vow we made earlier and remain unmarried,’ said Star.

‘Such as what?’ Poppy demanded, adding bitterly, ‘Not that I shall ever change my mind...if I can’t...’ Tears were already filling her eyes. Angrily she blinked them away.

‘Look, why don’t we agree to meet, say, once every three months just to remind each other that we intend to stay husband-free? Then if one of us does start slipping we’ve always got the others to turn to for support,’ Star suggested.

‘I won’t need any support,’ Poppy declared.

But Claire, who could sense already how Sally’s marriage was bound to alter the relationship they each had with her and one another, said firmly, ‘I think that’s a very good idea. Let’s make a date to meet here three months from now. We can have lunch together... my treat.’

‘Great, I’ll put it in my diary,’ Star confirmed.

Claire looked across at Poppy. She didn’t know her as well as she did Star, who had been Sally’s best friend ever since they had started senior school together, but she could sense how unhappy the younger girl was. It must have been hard for her, seeing the man she loved marrying someone else.

Sally had confessed that when she had first heard about Poppy she had been inclined to feel very wary of her but that once she had met her, and knowing how strong Chris’s love was for her, she had simply felt desperately sad for her.

‘It must be so awful loving someone who can’t love you back in the same way,’ Sally had said. ‘Chris likes her, of course—she’s his cousin-but...’

‘But he loves you,’ Claire had agreed.

Sally had come over to her and given her a quick hug. They had always got on well together from the moment John had introduced them. Sally had been a pupil at the huge comprehensive where Claire had done her teacher-training practice.

She had often wondered if one of the reasons why Sally had accepted her so lovingly and so readily as her stepmother had been that she had never known her own mother. Sally’s mother, John’s first wife, had died just after Sally’s birth.

‘Paula will always be part of my...of our lives. I shall always love her,’ John had told her seriously when he had proposed to her.

She had accepted that, felt warmed by it, almost reassured... Knowing how much he had loved his first wife and still loved her made her feel...safe.

Sally had once asked innocently when Claire was going to have children of her own and when she was going to have a little brother or sister. Claire had had to turn away from her, leaving it to John to answer, to defuse the situation.

She sighed faintly now. Of course she would have liked children, if things had been different. As a girl she had always imagined that one day she would have them.

‘I think we ought to be going now,’ she told the two bridesmaids. ‘I don’t think we’ve left anything behind. I can’t see anything, can you, Poppy?’

‘No. There’s nothing left,’ Poppy agreed drearily. ‘Not now.’

Claire gave her a quick look but said nothing. It seemed kinder not to.

‘So now that the wedding is over, what do you intend to do with the rest of your life?’

‘Oh, I don’t plan to make any major changes,’ Claire told her sister-in-law. ‘I’m thinking of putting in a few more hours at the school but apart from that...’

Claire worked part-time as a volunteer at a local school for mentally and physically handicapped children. John had left her very well provided for financially but, as she had explained to his sister, Irene, when she had first started working at the school, she felt that she wanted to put something back into the community, and since she had originally trained as a teacher...

‘Mmm, you wouldn’t be interested in taking a lodger, I suppose?’

‘A lodger?’ Claire stared at her.

‘Mmm... a colleague of Tim’s who wants somewhere “home-like” to stay. A service flat is out of the question. He doesn’t care for that kind of anonymity. He’s an American and from a large family and he doesn’t want to live alone.’

Irene went on to give her details of his background, before concluding, ‘He’s in his late thirties, not a young student, and it simply wouldn’t be appropriate to put him in to just any kind of lodgings. He holds quite a high position in the company,’ Irene said. ‘In fact his family own it.’

‘How high?’ Claire asked her, alarm bells ringing.

‘He’s Tim’s boss,’ Irene told her a little stiffly.

‘Ah, I see.’ Claire grinned. ‘He’s Tim’s boss and it’s down to Tim to come up with somewhere suitable for him to stay, is that it? I can’t see why you don’t move him into your house, Irene,’ Claire told her mockinnocently. ‘After all, you’ve got the room,,with Peter away at university and Louise working in Japan.’

‘No, I don’t think that would be a good idea: Things aren’t going all that well for Tim at the moment—sales have dropped and there have been problems with delivery and installation. I keep telling Tim that he should be tougher, more assertive—’ She broke off, shaking her head.

‘Would you do it, Claire?’ she asked with unfamiliar humility. ‘Tim is getting himself in a dreadful state about the whole thing. Apparently this American, his new boss, is something of an...individual—’

‘An individual...? What does that mean?’ Claire asked her warily.

Irene started to frown. As Claire knew from past experience, likeable though her sister-in-law was, she was inclined to steamroller people in order to get her own way when it suited her, and Claire could tell that she wasn’t particularly pleased at having been interrupted and questioned.

‘I’m sure he’s not an awkward character. Oh, Claire, I wouldn’t ask you,’ Irene pleaded, ‘but Tim is feeling so vulnerable about his job at the moment. He has convinced himself that this American is coming in very much as a new broom; psychologically it will make him feel so much more confident if he feels that he’s done something constructive ahead of his arrival...’

‘“Something constructive”? Are you sure this man is going to want to be my lodger? From the sound of it, it seems to me that he’s used to a far more luxurious lifestyle than I enjoy. You know how quietly I live, Irene. I’ve never been a keen socialiser.’

‘No, maybe not, but people like you, Claire; they feel drawn to you—your house is always full of callers, your phone never stops ringing.’

Claire digested her comment in silence, knowing that it was an argument she could not refute.

John had often remonstrated with her about her tendency to attract people who needed a shoulder to cry on. The only time the big Edwardian house had ever really been quiet had been during those pitifully brief weeks leading up to John’s death, and then only because Claire had specifically asked people not to call. She still missed him dreadfully—his support, his wise counsel, his protection.

His protection.

A tiny tremor shook her body.

‘Irene, I don’t think that it would be a good idea... I—’

‘Oh, Claire, please.’

As Claire looked at her sister-in-law she could see that her anxiety was genuine. She gave a small sigh.

‘Very well, then,’ she agreed. ‘But I doubt that this man, Tim’s new boss, is going to be very thrilled when he discovers—’

‘Nonsense. Your house complies with all his stipulations,’ Irène told her, then proceeded to tick them off on her fingers as she listed them.

‘It’s a proper home right in the centre of the community—well, at least in the best residential part of the town. You’ve got a proper guest suite—or at least you will have now that Sally’s gone. He can have her old room and bathroom and he can use one of the other bedrooms as an office. After all, you have got five of them.

‘There’s a garden with adequate space for his car. He’ll be part of a large family network—’

‘What? There’s only me,’ Claire protested.

‘No, there’s not; there’s Sally and Chris and all his family and us, and you’ve got enough friends to fill a fair-sized church hall twice over. You’re a member at the sports club so you’ll be able to take him there and—’

‘I’ll be able to take him where? Hang on a minute, Irene...’ Claire started to protest, but her sister-in-law wasn’t listening to her any more.

She was standing up, reaching out to hug her affectionately and gratefully as she told her warmly and, Claire was sure, slightly triumphantly, ‘I knew you’d do it... It’s the perfect solution, after all. Tim will be so pleased and relieved. He was terrified that you might not agree, poor dear, especially since...’

‘Especially since what?’ Claire demanded suspiciously.

‘Well, it’s nothing really; it’s just that this man is due to arrive tomorrow and of course he’s going to expect Tim to have worked out his accommodation requirements. We’ve booked him into an hotel for the first couple of days...’

‘He’s arriving tomorrow?’ Claire protested, and demanded, ‘Irene, just how long have you known—?’

‘I must run,’ Irene interrupted her. ‘I’ve promised Mary I’ll give her a hand sorting out the cricket teas and I’m already late.

‘We’re picking Brad up from the airport when he arrives, and naturally we thought we ought to have him for dinner tomorrow evening. You’ll join us, of course. It will be an ideal opportunity for him to meet you and for you to make arrangements to show him the house...’

‘Irene...’ Claire started to remonstrate, but it was too late. Her sister-in-law was already beating a strategic retreat.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

Claire raised her flushed face from her kneeling position in the bathroom adjacent to the spare bedroom and put down her damp cloth.

She hadn’t heard her friend and next-door neighbour Hannah come in.

‘Clearing out this room ready for my new lodger,’ she told Hannah breathlessly, and quickly explained to her what had happened.

‘Oh, trust Irene; she really has pulled a fast one on you this time, hasn’t she?’ Hannah commented wryly. ‘A lodger, and single too, I imagine, otherwise he would be looking for a house to rent. Mmm... that’s going to cause a bit of excitement in the close... Wonder what he looks like...?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Claire told her firmly, standing up and surveying the tiles she had just finished polishing with an abstracted frown, pushing one hand into her hair to lift its heavy weight off the nape of her neck.

Thick and naturally curly, its rich dark exuberance was the bane of her life. Sally often teased her enviously that, with her petite, small-boned frame and her small, heart-shaped face, framed by her glossy chestnut curls, she looked young enough to be her peer rather than almost a decade her senior.

‘You should be being one of my bridesmaids,’ Sally had teased her. ‘You certainly look young enough to get away with it.’

Claire had shaken her head over such foolishness. She was, she had reminded her stepdaughter, a mature woman of thirty-four.

‘A mature woman?’ Sally had scoffed unrepentantly. ‘You look more like a young girl. It’s odd, you know,’ she had added more seriously, ‘but, despite the fact that you’d been married to Dad for over ten years when he died, there’s still something almost...almost—well, virginal about you.’

She had given Claire a wry look as she’d spoken. ‘I know it sounds crazy but it’s true, there is, and I’m not the only one to think so. Chris noticed it as well...’

‘You’re unreal, do you know that?’ Hannah told her fondly now. ‘Here you are, an adult, fully functioning woman in the full power of her womanhood...without a man, and you turn round and tell me...’

As she saw the look Claire was giving her Hannah backed off, apologising.

‘All right, all right... So I know how close you and John were and how much you must still miss him. It just seems such a waste, that’s all. One thing does puzzle me, though; if this guy is Tim’s boss, what on earth is he doing looking for lodgings? Why doesn’t he—?’

‘He wants to live in a family home,’ Claire explained patiently, repeating what Irene had told her.

‘Apparently he’s used to having a large family around him. According to Irene, he and his brothers and sisters were orphaned when his parents were killed in an accident. He was just eighteen at the time and he stepped in as a surrogate parent, put himself and all of them through college, then took a job locally with the family business to keep the family together.’

‘Oh, I see, and I suppose he was too busy taking care of his siblings to have time to marry and have his own family... Mmm... I wonder what he is like? He sounds...’

‘Incredibly dull and worthy,’ Claire supplied wryly for her.

Both of them started to giggle.

‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ Hannah protested. ‘Oh, by the way, what’s all this about you and Sally’s two bridesmaids making a pact to stay single?’

‘What?’

Claire gave her a confused look and then realised what she meant.

‘Oh, that... It wasn’t so much of a pact, rather an act of feminine solidarity,’ she explained ruefully.

‘I felt so sorry for poor Poppy, Hannah. It’s no secret how she feels about Chris. Sally was in two minds about whether or not to ask her to be her bridesmaid, not because she didn’t want her, but because she was worried about the strain it would place her under. But, as she and Poppy agreed, for her not to have done so could have placed Poppy in an even more invidious position.

‘And as for Star—well, you know her background; her mother has been divorced several times and is currently having an affair with a boy who’s younger than Star and her father has, at the last count, nine children from four different relationships, none of whom he seems to have any real time for. It’s no wonder that Star is so anti-marriage...’

‘So it isn’t true, then, that the three of you took a vow to support one another in withstanding the famous power of the bride’s wedding bouquet?’ Hannah teased her archly.

Claire stared at her.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Ah... so it is true... Someone—and I’m afraid I simply cannot reveal my source—happened to be walking past the door and overheard you.

‘I don’t know if it’s true, but I have heard rumours that there are plans to run a book on the odds of the three of you being unattached by the time Sally and Chris celebrate their first anniversary.’

‘Oh, there are, are there?’ Claire retorted fiercely. ‘Well, for your information... I shall never marry again, Hannah she said, more quietly and seriously. The laughter died from her friend’s eyes as she listened to her. ‘John was a wonderful husband and I loved him dearly.’

‘You’ve only been widowed for two years,’ Hannah reminded her gently. ‘One day some man is going to walk into your life, set your heart pounding and make you realize that you’re still very much a woman. Who knows? It could even be this American,’ she teased wickedly.

‘Never,’ Claire declared firmly, and she meant it.

She had her own reasons for knowing that there could never be a second marriage or any other kind of intimate relationship for her, but that was something she could not talk about to Hannah, or to anyone else. That was something she had only been able to share with John, and was just one of the reasons why she still missed him so desperately.

John had known her as no one else, man or woman, had or ever could, especially no other man—most especially another man.

As he boarded his flight for Heathrow Brad Stevenson was frowning. He hadn’t wanted to take up this appointment in Britain; in fact he had done every damn thing he could to try to get out of it, and in the end it had taken the combined appeal of the president of the company himself and the retired chairman to persuade him to change his mind.

As he had faced his two uncles across the boardroom table he had protested that he was quite happy where he was, that the last thing he wanted was to be sent across the Atlantic to sort out the problems they were having with the British-based offshoot of their air-conditioning company, which they had insisted on buying into, against his advise.

‘OK,’ he had said at the time, ‘so right now Britain is sweltering in a heatwave and everyone wants air-conditioning. Next summer could be a different story and you’ll be left with a warehouse full of unwanted conditioners and a long, long haul until the next hot spot.’

It had taken all his powers of persuasion then to get certain British organisations to agree to fit the air-conditioning systems in their business premises, and by doing so he had managed to avert the financial disaster with their British distribution outlet which he had predicted, but enough was enough. The thought of spending God alone knew how much time rescuing the ailing outlet to get it running efficiently and profitably was enough to make him grind his teeth in angry frustration.

How the hell had those two old guys guessed that he had intended to take the easy way out and oh, so slowly ease himself out of the business and out of the task of eventually having to step into their shoes, which he could see looming ominously ahead of him?

He was thirty-eight years old and there were things that he wanted to do, things he needed to do, that did not involve running a transatlantic company.

There was that boat out on the lake that he still had only half built, for instance; that voyage he had been promising himself that he would make ever since his high-school days when he had earnestly traced the voyage of Christopher Columbus through the Indies and the rich, Spanish-owned lands of South America.

Yes, there were things he wanted to do, a life he wanted to live, now that he was finally able to do so—now that the last of his siblings had finally left home and got settled.

‘You watch; you’ll be the next,’ Sheri, the second youngest of the family, had teased him. ‘Now that you’ve not got all of us at home to fuss over you’ll be looking around for a wife...raising a family with her, starting the whole thing over again...’

‘Never,’ he had said firmly. ‘I’ve done all the child-raising I plan to do with you five.’

Sheri had given him a serious look. ‘Has it really been so bad?’ she had asked him quietly, and then, answering her own question, had said softly, ‘Yeah, I guess at times it must have been. Not from our point of view but from yours. We’ve given you a hard time over the years but you’ve always stood by all of us, supported us... loved us... It hasn’t really put you off finding someone of your own, though, has it, Brad? Having your own kids?

‘I mean, look at all of us... All of us married and all of us with kids except for Doug, and he’s only just got married. My bet is, though, that he and Lucille won’t want to wait very long. You’ve been so good to all of us; I hate to think—’

‘Then don’t,’ Brad had advised her firmly, and after one look at him Sheri had acknowledged that there were times when, for all his great love for them, it was best not to push her eldest brother too far.

She didn’t care to think what would have happened to them if Brad hadn’t been there to take charge when Mom and Dad had been killed. There were six years between him and Amy, the next eldest, who had been twelve then, but no more than a year to eighteen months between Amy and the rest of them, going right down to Doug, who had been only just five. The accident had happened twenty years ago.

Brad had tried his best to get out of going to Britain to act as his uncle’s right arm and troubleshooter, even resorting to what he had privately admitted was the unfairly underhanded ploy of laying down a set of criteria on how he wanted to live whilst he was in Britain, which he’d known full well would be virtually impossible to fulfil. Or, rather, which he had assumed would be virtually impossible to fulfil. He had not reckoned with the British distributor having a widowed sister-in-law who could, apparently, provide him with exactly the homely living accommodation he had specified.

Brad was grimacing to himself as he took his seat on the plane, but the stewardess still cast a dazzling and very approving smile in his direction. Unusually for a first-class passenger, he was wearing a pair of soft, well-worn denims and an immaculate white T-shirt that revealed the firm, tanned muscles of his arms—and hid what she suspected would prove to be the equally tanned and certainly equally firm muscles of his torso.