Tall, Dark... Collection

But for some as yet unexplained reason Andrew had lost his Claudia.

Was Nick really going to allow the same thing to happen to him where Hebe was concerned?

‘I’m so sorry,’ Hebe murmured, and she moved forward to put a hand on Andrew Southern’s shaking shoulders.

The artist looked up with a tear-ravaged face. ‘You’re sorry?’ he choked self-derisively. ‘I let this wonderful creature slip through my fingers like molten gold, and you’re sorry?’ He gave a self-disgusted shake of his head. ‘I should have acted sooner than I did. Should never—’ He broke off. ‘I’ve spent the last twenty-six years aching for just another glimpse of her, just to see her smile in that mischievous way of hers, to be able to hold her one more time!’

No! Nick cried inwardly. He was not going to live his own life in that way—give Hebe up without even telling her how he felt about her. And if he tried hard enough he just might—might!—be able to convince her into caring for him with even a little of the deep love he felt for her.

‘Claudia is the reason you stopped appearing in public?’ Hebe prompted softly. ‘The reason you stopped painting portraits, too?’ she realized, with sudden insight.

‘Losing Claudia is the reason I gave up those things, yes,’ Andrew Southern confirmed gruffly. ‘I changed my life completely after what I had done!’

Hebe looked at him quizzically. ‘What did you do?’

He shook his head. ‘Claudia was engaged to marry Jacob Gardner when he commissioned me to paint her portrait, and I was married—if not happily—but it made no difference. We—we took one look at each other and neither Jacob nor my wife seemed to matter any more.’

At last Hebe had a possible explanation as to why Claudia, after breaking off her engagement to Jacob Gardner, had left alone rather than with Andrew Southern. Because he’d already had a wife…

‘But why, if you loved each other, did you let her go off alone like that to have her baby?’ She frowned. ‘Or didn’t you love her enough to leave your wife, is that it?’

All of this was starting to have a familiar ring to it as far as Hebe was concerned. History repeating itself. Well, not quite, she corrected herself. Nick didn’t love her, but he was leaving her to have her baby alone and going back to his ex-wife.

‘Of course I loved her enough to leave my wife!’ His eyes glittered emotionally. ‘But we argued. Claudia—she didn’t believe me when I said I would end my marriage to be with her. But I did end it. And I went to see her the same day to tell her I had, that I only wanted to be with her, wanted her to come and live with me. She didn’t tell me she was pregnant!’Andrew groaned fiercely. ‘She had been there the day before, but when I went back the next day to tell her I couldn’t live without her, that I loved her, she—she had gone. I never saw her again.’ He closed his eyes as if to shut out the pain.

Except Nick knew that the older man couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t either. The image of Andrew’s Claudia, and Hebe for him, couldn’t be shut out. It was etched into the brain for all time.

Claudia and Hebe were women the men in their lives loved for a lifetime.

Jacob Gardner had continued to love Claudia even after she had betrayed and then left him. The portrait in his bedroom after all those years was evidence of that. And Andrew Southern’s pain at losing his Claudia was unmistakable. Nick knew without doubt that he loved Hebe in that same all-consuming way.

‘I—’ Hebe paused, moistening suddenly dry lips. ‘You realise I’m Claudia’s baby?’ she asked Andrew Southern warily.

He gave a choked laugh as he looked at her. ‘You couldn’t be anyone else!’ He reached up a shaking hand to touch her cheek lightly. ‘You are so like her,’ he breathed softly. ‘So very, very like her.’

Hebe shot Nick a rueful glance. ‘Yes.’

A glance he returned with a glittering determination she didn’t understand. But then, she never had understood Nick, so why should that change now, when he was shortly going to go out of her life for good?

She turned back to Andrew Southern. ‘The question is—’ she grimaced ‘—am I your daughter or Jacob Gardner’s?’

‘Mine, of course!’ the artist claimed frowningly. ‘Claudia—your mother—didn’t have that sort of relationship with Jacob Gardner. In fact she had never had that sort of relationship with anyone before me,’ he admitted gruffly.

Hebe blinked. ‘But—’

‘There was no one else before me, Hebe,’ he told her firmly. ‘Claudia liked to give the impression that she was wild and untamed, that she was worldly-wise, even. But in reality she was a sweet, enchanting young woman who had never been with a man before me. I felt a complete heel when I realised that the first time we made love.’ He gave a shaky sigh. ‘I wasn’t happily married, but that was no excuse for seducing an innocent!’

Hebe didn’t really care about that. She just felt happier knowing that her parents’ love and care for Claudia hadn’t been misplaced at all, and that she really had just been the rebellious teenager Hebe had told Nick she’d been.

Andrew Southern’s gaze was pained. ‘I tried to find her. I really tried, Hebe.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘But she had just disappeared.’

Hebe gave a tearful smile. ‘I don’t think she intended you to find her—or anyone else, in fact.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘I didn’t know when I wrote to you on Friday, but—but Claudia’s parents only learnt of her whereabouts when the hospital called them as next of kin. She died giving birth to me,’ she explained as gently as she could. ‘They brought me up, and have been the only parents I’ve never known.’

Andrew gave another choked sob. ‘All these years…I never knew what had happened to her, Hebe. Why she left so suddenly,’ he explained as she looked puzzled. ‘Until I received your letter this morning and saw that photograph of you I never knew that she was expecting my child. And it never—it never even occurred to me that she might have been dead all these years.’ He gave a disbelieving shake of his head, as if he still couldn’t take it all in.

Nick looked at the other man admiringly, not sure he would be staying even this much together if he had just learnt that Hebe was dead.

‘Or that you had a daughter?’ Hebe put in softly.

Andrew Southern’s face lit up as he looked at her, but the sorrow remained etched beside his eyes and mouth. ‘Or that I have the gift of a daughter. A very beautiful daughter,’ he added gruffly.

‘Who, in seven months’ time, is going to make you a grandfather,’ Nick added gently, and he stepped forward to place his arm possessively about Hebe’s shoulders.

She gave him a surprised look. What was Nick doing? Andrew Southern—her father—didn’t need to know about the baby she was expecting. It served no purpose at this moment, and would surely make it more difficult for Nick to just walk away, as he intended doing.

Andrew Southern looked at the younger man with sharply assessing eyes. ‘And am I going to have to get my shotgun oiled and ready…?’he finally murmured derisively.

‘No,’ Nick answered firmly. ‘Hebe and I are getting married. If she’ll have me…?’ He turned to look down at her uncertainly.

She swallowed hard, shaking her head, not understanding this at all.

‘Looks like you have some persuading to do there, Nick.’ Andrew had misinterpreted that dazed shake of her head as a refusal. ‘Feel free to take her off somewhere private. I’m quite happy sitting here looking at Claudia’s portrait for an hour or six—or a lifetime,’ he added, and he sat down in the armchair beside the painting, already seeming to have forgotten their existence as his eyes misted tearfully and the tears began to fall for the woman he had loved and would never see again.

Hebe took Nick into the room that had used to be her bedroom, bare now of everything that marked it as being hers, not understanding what was going on at all.

‘Do you think he’s going to be all right?’ She frowned with concern.

‘I think that he’s probably had twenty-six years to come to terms with losing Claudia, so her death makes it no more final,’ Nick answered carefully. ‘With your agreement, I would like to give him the portrait of Claudia? It belongs with him, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, slightly breathlessly, appreciating his understanding. ‘Oh, yes! But I—I thought we had agreed to cancel the wedding.’ She looked up at him, puzzled. ‘I told you, I’m not going to be difficult—’

‘I am,’ he cut in grimly, his dark blue gaze fixed firmly on hers. ‘Hebe, I don’t intend ending up like Andrew—in love with a woman for the rest of my life but not with her.’

‘I realise that,’ she acknowledged softly. ‘That’s why I agreed to end the engagement, and forget our marriage. I know you and Sally want to be reconciled—’

‘Sally?’ Nick cut in sharply. ‘What the hell does Sally have to do with any of this?’

Hebe looked confused. ‘I didn’t mean to, but I overheard you talking to her on the telephone yesterday evening.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I know she’s the reason you no longer want a marriage of convenience with me—that the two of you want to be together and that you’re going to talk things over when you go back to New York.’

Nick looked at her incredulously. That was why, after the two of them had made love so beautifully, so thoroughly, Hebe had gone to the spare room to sleep last night! The reason she had been so ready to call off the engagement and cancel the wedding. Because she thought he was still in love with Sally!

‘Hebe.’ He breathed deeply. ‘Sally remarried a year ago, very happily. Last night she called to tell me—she was so happy she had to share it with me—that she had just given birth to a little girl.’ He watched Hebe closely for her reaction. ‘I probably should have told you about it, but you had gone from my bedroom when I got back, and in the morning—Well, you know what it was like between us this morning.’

Hebe stared at him incredulously. ‘Sally’s had a baby…?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded, hope starting to blossom and grow.

‘Hebe, I know you might find this hard to believe after the way I’ve behaved—’ he shook his head self-disgustedly ‘—but the only woman I want to be with, the only woman I love, will ever love, is you!’