Payment In Love

For the first time she contemplated what was likely to happen if her mission failed. The thought made her skin go cold, and she started to shiver.

The commissionaire, walking in and seeing her, frowned and asked anxiously, ‘Are you all right, miss?’

‘Yes, yes … I’m fine.’ Heather gave him a distracted smile. She was so tensed up that her body was aching with the strain she was imposing on it.

‘Mr Bennett said to show you up.’

Was she imagining that new tinge of respect in the man’s voice? Plainly the man thought she had been given something approaching an accolade, but she could not allow herself to relax yet. All she had achieved was one tiny step forward.

The lift was hidden away discreetly, behind another of the doors. As it slid smoothly upwards, Heather pressed a protesting hand to her taut stomach. She was only just beginning to realise the true meaning of the phrase ‘butterflies in the tummy’. The ones in hers seemed to be involved in a mad, frantic dance.

The lift stopped and, following the commissionaire’s directions, she walked down the elegantly decorated corridor to its solitary door.

It was opened before she reached it, and the young woman who motioned her in made Heather all too aware of the shortcomings in her own face and figure. This girl could have posed from the front cover of Vogue and drawn gasps of awe from everyone who saw her.

She was a perfect, frosted Nordic blonde of the type normally found in sophisticated American cities, cool and very sure of herself, her glance sweeping dismissively over Heather’s now tousled curls and clothes.

The simple little outfit she was wearing looked very like a Donna Karan, the silk jersey fluidly tracing every lush curve of her perfect figure. Her nails, medium length and impossibly glossy, reproached the lack of attention Heather paid to hers. It was impossible to keep them immaculate when she was working, and instinctively she tucked them away in her pockets.

‘Kyle said to show you straight in.’

Her smile revealed perfectly capped teeth, her accent pure Sloane Ranger, whose whole manner was designed to intimidate, Heather reflected as she followed her through an anteroom and up to a heavy panelled door.

She tapped on it and then pushed it open, standing aside so that Heather could go in.

It was furnished exactly as she might have expected, all stripped-down panels and a huge status-symbol desk, behind which she expected to find Kyle sitting.

Only he wasn’t. He was standing in front of the fire, engaged in the homely task of putting fresh logs on it.

He turned round as his secretary closed the door, dusting off his hands, his cool eyes taking their time in surveying her.

‘Well, this is a surprise.’

There was nothing in his manner to give her any clue as to how he was going to react to her request. She had half expected a sarcasm that wasn’t there, but the lack of it only made her skin prickle with increased nervousness.

She had forgotten how magnetic he was, how he dominated every situation he was in, simply by the power of his personality. No man who had made of his life what he had, from the very worst of beginnings, could have achieved so much without it, but she had forgotten, or overlooked, how awe-inspiring he could be.

The immaculate dark suit and crisp white shirt added to the image, of course. His tie was discreet, and toned beautifully with his suit. When he shot back his cuff and glanced frowningly at his watch, as though warning her that her time was limited, she caught a flash of gold against the snowy white, and the firelight played momentarily on the sinewy strength of his wrist, his flesh brown and firm, crisscrossed with a dark feathering of hairs. Her stomach somersaulted and she was shaken by a sudden surge of inexplicable reaction. She wanted to turn tail and run, and probably would have done so, if he hadn’t moved, fragmenting the image burned on her brain.

‘Your note said you wanted to see me about your parents.’

His voice hadn’t changed, although now all trace of his accent seemed to have been obliterated. It had almost gone that last time he had come home, she remembered, surprised by the sudden shudder the sound of it sent off deep inside her.

He had moved, so that he was blocking the heat of the fire from her, and suddenly she realised how cold she was. She could feel the shivers building up inside her, her fingers icy-cold, in direct contrast to the heat she could feel filling her cheeks and throat.

It was just tension, she told herself, that was all. And yet, even knowing what was causing her physical symptoms, she still found it very disconcerting to have to acknowledge the physical effect he was having on her.

‘It’s Dad,’ she blurted out, desperate to say what she had come to say and get away. ‘He’s very ill. He’s had a bad heart attack. The specialist says he needs open-heart surgery and a bypass operation.’

She looked directly at him for the first time since she had come into the room, her white pallor broken only by the two over-bright patches of hectic colour in her cheeks.

‘We can’t afford it, and the waiting list on the NHS is so long that Dad could well be dead before he can have the operation.’

‘What are you asking me for, Heather?’ Kyle’s eyebrows rose, his mouth twisting sardonically, and she felt the old familiar flare of dislike rise up inside her. Strange to think of that hard mouth being pressed to a woman’s in passion. She shuddered deeply, stunned by the uncharted direction of her thoughts, the heat in her face increasing. What stupid tricks were her mind playing on her now? Kyle’s sex life was the last thing she could be thinking about.

‘Shall I make a guess?’

The smooth drawl brought her back to reality, her head snapping back as she looked at him.

‘You want me to pay for the operation, is that it? You want money from me, in other words … a cash payment for the years you had to put up with me in your home. What price have you put on that intrusion, Heather, or haven’t you worked it out yet?’

She almost choked in her rage, aching to retaliate and fly at him as she had ached to do so often as a child. Why was it he had the power to rile her like this? Why was it he seemed to know exactly how to find her Achilles’ heel?

‘How much do you want, Heather?’

He had turned away from her, but she could still hear the weary cynicism in his voice, and suddenly she knew that nothing … nothing could make her beg from this man.

‘Nothing,’ she told him bitterly. ‘I don’t want anything from you, Kyle. I thought you cared about my parents. I know they still love you. I know that they still miss you, especially my father … You were the first person he asked for when he finally regained consciousness. He was confused, you see,’ she told him, her throat tight with pain and her own bitter remorse. ‘He had forgotten that you’d left us.’

The tears that filled her eyes flowed on to her face and she dashed them away impatiently, too caught up in her own feelings of inadequacy and pain to care any longer how she might demean herself.

‘They love you, Kyle, and I love them, and when I saw my father lying there in intensive care I wished with all my heart that I could wipe out the past, that I could …’ She broke off, horrified with herself and what she was betraying, but it was too late.

‘Go on,’ Kyle demanded grimly. ‘What did you wish, Heather? That you hadn’t been such a stupid, spoiled little brat? That you hadn’t nearly destroyed your own life out of spite and jealousy?’

Anguish made her veil her eyes from him as the memories she had been fighting to suppress flooded back. It had always been like this between them. The very air in the room seemed fraught with tension and dislike. Why? They were both adults now. She knew that she had been more at fault than Kyle, but surely he could see, just as she had come to see, that each of them had been equally jealous of the other.

‘My parents need you, Kyle,’ she told him quietly, pride strengthening her voice as she added, ‘not because you can pay for Dad’s operation. If either of them knew I was here now, they would be furious. No, they need you because they miss you; because they need someone to lean on.’ She took a deep breath and added shakily, meeting his brooding look head on, ‘They need you because they love you.’

She couldn’t interpret the look he gave her. The silence seemed to last for ever, broken only by the soft hiss of the burning logs. She looked blindly towards the window, sure that she had failed and that he was about to throw her out. Outside, it was still snowing and she shivered. What was the matter with her? She shouldn’t be so cold. She felt hollow and empty inside, and she frowned, trying to remember when she had last had something to eat.

Her muscles ached from the control she was imposing on them; if she relaxed even for a second she would be quivering like a tormented child.

‘I’ll ask you again,’ Kyle said softly. ‘What is it you want from me, Heather?’

He hadn’t thrown her out; she could hardly believe it. Relief made her muscles go weak, the hiss of the logs sank echoingly in her ears, and her own voice seemed to reach her through a vast echoing chamber as she replied huskily, ‘I want you to go and see Dad … You could pretend you’d heard about the heart attack from someone else. Please, Kyle … It would mean so much to him, to both of them. They miss you and I can’t talk to them about it. They … they don’t want to hurt me.’

She made the admission huskily, hating what she must be betraying to him, but although she tensed herself against it, strangely he made no attempt to probe deeper.

‘And you want me to offer to pay for him to have his operation privately?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed baldly, ‘but not because I think you owe them anything, Kyle. What they gave you, they gave freely. If you want to think of it in terms of a payment, then tell yourself it’s payment to me for finally admitting what I’ve known for years, and refused to admit. That my parents love and need you, possibly more than they love and need me.’

There, she had said it. She couldn’t endure any more. She couldn’t wait for his reaction, for his possible cruelty. She turned and headed blindly for the door, desperately trying to blink away her tears.

‘Heather.’

She winced and cried out beneath the fierce pressure of his fingers as they dug into her shoulders.