A Woman Of Passion

‘So long as he has his damn horses to care about, no one else seems to matter,’ she declared bitterly, as Matthew joined the stream of vehicles leaving the airport, and he gave her a brief, scornful glance. They both knew that wasn’t true. Ben Aitken had loved his eldest son dearly, and he’d been shattered when he was killed. What she really meant was that the older man had little time for her, and he didn’t have to pretend any more now that Chase was dead.

‘But he’s well?’ Matthew persisted, suddenly recognising the vehicle ahead of them. Andrew Sheridan was driving now, but there was no mistaking the young woman seated in the back. He’d have recognised that accusing profile anywhere. She was staring out of the rear window, and he was sure she was looking at him.

‘He was. When I left.’ Fleur pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her bag and put one between her teeth. ‘I spent a couple of days in New York before coming here.’ She scanned the dashboard for the automatic lighter. ‘Dammit, where is it?’

Matthew didn’t reply, and as if becoming aware that his attention had been distracted, Fleur followed the direction of his gaze. ‘Oh, God,’ she said disgustedly, ‘it’s the girl again, isn’t it? Whatever is she staring at? Someone should teach her some manners.’

‘Her husband, perhaps?’ suggested Matthew, determinedly avoiding that cool grey gaze.

‘Her husband?’ Fleur was disbelieving. ‘You’re not telling me she’s married?’

‘With two children,’ Matthew conceded tersely. Then, to Lucas, ‘They’re staying at Dragon Point.’

Lucas frowned. ‘At the Parrish place?’ he asked, and Matthew’s brows drew together.

‘Yeah, right,’ he said thoughtfully, taking advantage of an open piece of road to pass the other vehicle. Then, with his nemesis safely behind him, he felt free to make the connection. ‘I thought the place was occupied when I walked past there this morning.’

Fleur gave him a calculating look as she lit her cigarette. ‘That man—the man who was driving the car-he was on the flight from New York.’

Matthew cast her a careless glance. ‘So?’

‘So—one wonders what she’s been getting up to, while her husband’s been away.’ She inhaled, and then blew smoke deliberately into his face. ‘Have you been—comforting her in his absence, I wonder?’

Matthew’s jaw hardened. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he countered, refusing to rise to her bait. ‘What I do is my business, Fleur,’ he added, meeting her angry gaze. ‘And if you must smoke, do it in your own car. I can’t stand the smell of stale tobacco.’

‘You’re a prig, do you know that?’

But Fleur stubbed out her cigarette before giving him the benefit of her scowl. Matthew didn’t answer. It would have been far too easy to tell her what he thought she was. Besides, she already knew it. Which begged the question of why she was here…

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_992ca930-c9d4-5095-a0b9-e44f2d5b9a6f)

IT WAS a good hour’s drive back to the villa.

It shouldn’t have taken so long. For most of the way the new highway meant that the road was extremely good. But Helen had already learned to her cost that traffic moved much less frenetically in Barbados than it did in London. Yet she was glad of the prolonged length of the journey to try to get herself under control. The shock she had had at the airport had left her palms moist, her knees shaking and her heart beating uncomfortably fast. Dear God, had she really seen her mother? Or was it all some incredible coincidence?

Of course, Andrew thought she was sulking because he had let the Aitken man think she was his wife. She still didn’t know why he’d done it, but that embarrassment had been quickly superseded by other events. That man’s name—Aitken—had been familiar, but she’d never dreamed that that was who he was. Until Fleur—if it was Fleur—had come sauntering out of the airport. Then the connection had been too much to ignore.

She expelled her breath with a shiver. Had it really been Fleur? Had it really been Chase Aitken? It had looked like Fleur—or, at least, like the pictures she had once unearthed in the attic at Conyers. James Gregory had seldom mentioned her, and he had certainly never encouraged Helen to ask questions. But the woman had been her mother, after all, and she hadn’t been able to help her curiosity.

Yet, if the woman had been her mother, then Chase Aitken was evidently much younger than she’d imagined. Was that what had hurt her father so badly? The fact that his wife had left him for a man almost young enough to be his son?

‘There’s no point in sitting there brooding,’ Andrew remarked suddenly, arousing her from her uneasy speculations, and Helen met his accusing gaze with some frustration. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about, without Tricia’s husband playing some stupid game of his own.

‘I’m not brooding,’ she replied, which was true. Her thoughts were far less pretty. If her mother was here on the island, what was she going to do about it? Did Fleur know her father was dead, for instance? And if she did, did she care?

‘Yes, you are,’ Andrew contradicted her flatly. ‘What’s the matter, Helen? Can’t you take a joke?’

‘Was that what it was?’

Helen refused to be treated like a fool, and Henry gave his father a doubtful look. ‘Why did that man think you and Helen were married?’ he piped up curiously, and Helen heard Andrew give an irritated snort.

‘How should I know?’ he exclaimed, proving he was not as indifferent to his wife’s possible reaction as he’d been to Helen’s. If the children accused him of perpetuating the mistake, Tricia wouldn’t be at all pleased. Particularly as the Aitkens were exactly the kind of people she liked to mix with.

‘Well, perhaps you should have corrected him,’ Helen observed now, aware that if she wasn’t careful she’d be the one blamed for assuming Tricia’s identity, and Andrew scowled.

‘How was I to know what you’d told him?’ he demanded, refusing to let her off the hook. ‘I didn’t want to embarrass you, that’s all. The man might have been a nuisance.’

Helen was always amazed at the lengths some people would go to protect their own positions, and she gazed at the back of Andrew’s head now with undisguised contempt. What had she expected, after all? She was only the nursemaid. She just hoped Tricia wouldn’t imagine she’d done something to warrant the misunderstanding.

‘He was nice,’ asserted Sophie, apparently deciding she had been quiet long enough. Happily, she was looking better now that she had something else to think about.

‘How would you know?’ asked Henry at once, seldom allowing his sister to get away with anything. ‘He hurt my arm, and he called me a rude name. I’m going to tell Mummy that Helen didn’t stop him.’

‘You’re not going to tell your mother anything,’ cut in his father sharply, evidently deciding that it wasn’t in his best interests to let Henry carry tales. ‘Or I might just have to tell her that without Mr Aitken’s intervention you’d have been minced meat.’

Henry hunched his shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he muttered.

‘You would,’ said Sophie triumphantly. ‘Anyway, I liked him. And I think Helen liked him, too.’

‘Heavens, I don’t even know the man,’ Helen demurred, annoyed to find that the child had achieved what her father couldn’t. Hot colour was pouring into her cheeks, and Andrew’s expression revealed that he knew it.

‘Who is he, anyway?’ he asked. ‘You never did tell me. What did you find out about him? You seemed to be having quite a conversation as I walked out of the airport buildings.’

‘I don’t know anything more than you do,’ Helen declared, not altogether truthfully, glad that she was flushed now, and therefore in no danger of revealing herself again. ‘I didn’t even know his name until you asked him.’ Which was true. ‘He’s probably another tourist. The island’s full of them.’

‘Hmm.’ Andrew was thoughtful. ‘He didn’t look like a tourist to me. Unless he’s been here since Christmas. You don’t get a tan like that in a couple of weeks.’

‘Does it matter?’

Helen didn’t particularly want to talk about it, or think about it, for that matter. The image she had, of a tall dark man with the lean muscled body of an athlete, was not one she wanted to cherish. Chase Aitken, she thought scornfully, polo-player, playboy, and jock. Not to mention adulterer, she added bitterly. She hoped she’d never see him again.

Tricia was up and dressed when they arrived back at the villa. She had shed her trailing wrap in favour of a loose-fitting tunic, and her auburn-tinted hair had been brushed to frame her face. She looked much different from the languid female who had waved them goodbye, and she greeted her husband more warmly than she’d been known to do before.

‘Sorry I couldn’t meet you, darling,’ she said, getting up from the cushioned lounge chair she had been occupying on the terrace. Set in the shade of a huge flame tree, it was an oasis of shadow in the late afternoon heat that still drenched the villa. Only the breeze from the ocean provided a warm draught of air to dry moist skin, but Tricia looked cool and comfortable, and totally relaxed.

‘No problem,’ said Andrew easily, bending to bestow a kiss on his wife’s upturned lips. But his eyes sought Helen’s as he offered the salutation, and she had the uneasy feeling that their relationship would never be the same again.

‘Can we have some juice?’ Henry cried plaintively, bored by his parents’ demonstration of marital felicity, and his mother turned to look at him with some impatience.

‘You can’t be thirsty,’ she said. ‘I told Helen to get you both a drink at the airport. Heaven knows, you had enough time.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I expected you back half an hour ago. The plane was obviously late.’

‘She didn’t get me a drink—’ Henry was beginning

indignantly, when his father chose to intervene.

‘Actually the plane was on time,’ he said, earning a raised eyebrow from his wife. ‘But there was some holdup with the luggage. And Helen had her hands full, because Sophie had been sick.’

‘Oh.’ Tricia looked somewhat distastefully at her daughter. ‘Not again.’