Payment In Love Part 4

'I've managed to convince him otherwise,' Kyle told her coolly, 'And in point of fact it could be worth something to me eventually, if only from the point of view of its excellent reputation.'

'But we're window-dressers... you don't own any shops.'

'Not at the moment, but I am building, or rather developing, a small and very exclusive arcade of boutiques in Bath which will be let out under an umbrella scheme to ensure that anyone who rents one will conform to the very high standards we intend to set. The service we will provide as management could well benefit from the inclusion of a specialist window-dressing service.'

It all sounded so plausible, and yet Heather knew that her father's business was virtually worthless.

'How much did you pay him?' she asked hesitantly, her mouth dry.

Immediately his face closed up against her, his mouth thin and harsh.

'I can't tell you that. It's something between your father and myself.'

Instantly she felt as though a door had been slammed in her face; she felt shut out and rejected, a feeling she was intensely familiar with from her childhood and, as she had done then, she retreated now behind a protective barrier of sarcasm.

'Nothing's changed, has it, Kyle? You still resent me just as much as I resent you. You're just smarter at hiding it, that's all.'

'That's certainly one way of looking at it, I suppose,' he agreed after a long silence. He was looking at her in an odd and unfamiliar way; as though something about her... hurt him.

Shrugging off the thought, Heather glared belligerently at him. 'I'm not going to let you provoke me into a row, Kyle. I can't pretend to see what it is my parents see in you, other than the fact that you're male,' she told him bitterly, unwittingly betraying her own carefully hidden insecurity. 'But for their sakes-'

'Is that really it?' Kyle asked her softly, not allowing her to finish. 'Is it my masculinity you're envious of, Heather?'

'No!' Her exclamation was an instant and vehement denial of the cynical implication she could read in the bitter twist of his mouth. She was more than happy with her femininity, and the implication behind Kyle's soft words brought a furious scorch of colour to her face.

'No, nothing like that.' She swallowed hard, knowing that she had unwittingly allowed herself to stray on to very dangerous ground.

Kyle was watching her like a cat at a mousehole, and he wasn't going to let her escape without at least a token explanation.

Remembering the advice of her counsellor, she forced herself to swallow down her pride, and to ignore her natural inclination to keep her most intimate and personal thoughts hidden. Instead, she said huskily, 'Once... before you came to live with us, my mother lost a baby. It... he would have been a boy. I once overheard someone talking about it. She... they implied... or at least I interpreted their conversation to mean that my parents considered a daughter very much second-best.'

She waited in horror for him to taunt her with her revelation, but instead he said nothing.

She had delivered her husky, proud admission to the fireplace, not daring to look straight at him, and now as she caught his movement on the periphery of her vision she automatically flinched, as though waiting for a blow.

'I was wrong,' she heard him saying in a harsh voice. 'You have grown up.'

'You don't sound very pleased about it.'

How idiotic to sound so peevish! But she needed to scuttle back into the safety of their normal acid exchanges to be able to cope with the emotional intensity of what had gone before.

'Perhaps I'm not,' he agreed, and then, before she could speak he added quietly, 'Since it seems to be confession time, I might as well admit that I resented you as well. It wasn't easy for the child that I was to accept that your parents loved me simply for myself. It wasn't something I'd experienced before, you see. You know that my father deserted my mother-he's dead now, by the way-and that my mother died. It took me a long time to accept that your parents loved me for myself and not because they simply wanted to be seen to be doing "the right thing" in giving a home to someone like me.'

'But you walked out and turned your back on them.'

There was a long silence. She could feel the tense thud of her heart. They were on the verge of a new beginning, of a new relationship; so much depended on him being honest with her now.

'I left because I thought I was doing the right thing for them,' he told her flatly. 'You were their natural child, it was plain that the two of us could never live in harmony. After you... after your accident, I knew it couldn't go on any longer. So I left.'

'For their sakes?'

He made no response, but Heather knew it was the truth. It was what she had known all along, and she felt the tension ease out of her in the knowledge that he now respected her enough to feel that he could speak the truth. They could never be close in a fraternal way, but for the sake of two people whom they both loved perhaps it would be possible for them to make a new beginning, Heather thought, exploring the idea cautiously.

And then he went and spoiled it all by saying carelessly, 'Oh, and if you're worrying about your own job, you needn't. You'll be taking charge of the new Bennett Enterprises window-dressing operation.'

Heather opened her mouth and found that her voice had completely deserted her. When it came, it sounded harsh and hurt her throat. 'I don't want or need your charity, Kyle,' she stormed at him. 'I can find my own job.'

'Can you?' His cynical disbelief hurt her almost as much as it infuriated her.

'I'm fully qualified, I have my degree...'

His mouth was still twisted in that bitterly cynical way that always sparked off her temper, implying as it did that he had a greater and more powerful knowledge of something to which she was excluded.

'I'm not questioning your qualifications, or your skill. But jobs of the type you're qualified for aren't exactly thick on the ground round here, are they? Think about it, Heather, what are you trying to say? That you want to leave here and go and try your luck in London? Perhaps if you're lucky, landing yourself a job as the most junior member of a store window-dressing team, forced to carry out the instructions and ideas of others, always competing with younger and more enthusiastic graduates than yourself.'

The picture he was painting was grim enough to make her close her eyes and shudder. She hated the thought of working and living in London; she always had. She was not ambitious as such, but she loved her work; he was right, she would hate working under someone else's direction. She was used to her father giving her a completely free hand and, if she was honest with herself, she enjoyed the responsibility.

A sudden thought struck her, the words almost sticking in her throat as she demanded huskily, 'This is my father's idea, isn't it? He made you offer me this job... he asked you...'

'Think what you like, Heather. I'm not prepared to discuss the whys and wherefores of a job offer with a potential employee. It isn't my normal practice.'

Only just in time she stopped herself from bursting into a furious tirade. She looked suspiciously at him, wondering if he was trying deliberately to goad her into taking a stand.

'I don't want the job,' she told him flatly.

'You don't? You're a very lucky woman to be able to make such a decision,' he marvelled cynically. 'How are you going to support yourself without a job, Heather, or are you going to leave that small matter to your parents?'

And indirectly to him, Heather realised on a sudden mortified flood of realisation. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. Pride had forced her to reject his job offer because she suspected he was simply making a position for her because of her father, and yet if she didn't take it, if she had no job at all...

'Poor Heather. Caught up in a no-win situation, aren't you?'

'And how you're enjoying it!' she retaliated sharply, her eyes narrowing as she glared at him.

To her chagrin, he laughed. 'You remind me of a spitting wildcat when you narrow your eyes like that. You look for all the world as though there's nothing you'd like more than to pounce on me and claw the flesh from my throat.'

To her horror, Heather felt a betraying heat spread through her body, not at the violence of his suggestion, but at the s.e.xuality he had so cleverly cloaked beneath it.

She stared at him, nonplussed by her own reaction. His face was unreadable, so unreadable, in fact, that she had trouble in deciding whether or not she had actually heard that s.e.xuality or imagined it.

'If you don't take the job I'll have to find someone else to fill it. From what I've seen of your work, you've got the skills the operation will need.'

He was beginning to sound bored, and Heather caught the indifference edging up under his voice.

'I don't want charity, Kyle,' she told him fiercely.

He looked at her. 'You won't be getting it. Now, do you want the job or not?'

She wavered between refusing it as her pride demanded and a far more commonsense approach. Her parents would be pleased and relieved if she accepted it; they would see it not as just a job, but as a sign that she had finally accepted Kyle.

'I... I want it,' she said huskily, bending her head so that he wouldn't see the defeat in her eyes.

'Good... I'll see that you get an employment contract as soon as I get back from the States.'

It confused her to see him like this, very much in control, and all brisk and businesslike. It was hard to accept that this was the same person she had traded insults with for most of her growing years. The same teenager she had bitten in the leg in a fit of fury because he wouldn't let her ride his bicycle! A rogue smile tugged at the corners of her mouth at that memory.

'Why the smile? Not planning my early demise, I hope?'

She frowned. 'What makes you think that?'

'I don't know... possibly something to do with a painting I once saw of Lucretia Borgia,' Kyle told her drily.

'Well, you're quite wrong. I was just thinking about that time I bit you in the leg because you wouldn't let me ride your bike.'

His eyebrows shot up, and for a moment Heather thought he didn't remember. And then he smiled, and there was something in the mocking smile that turned her insides upside-down.

'Oh, yes... I ought to thank you for that.' He saw her wary expression and laughed. 'You see, it left a scar.' He touched his thigh reflectively. 'Most interestingly positioned, and the cause of much feminine speculation and-er-concern.'

Heather glared at him, hating him for deliberately making her so aware of his s.e.xuality.

'I told them I had been bitten by a rabid dog,' he added reflectively, another smile tugging at his mouth.

'Of the female variety, of course,' Heather responded.

He caught her drift and his eyebrows lifted.

'You're underestimating yourself,' he told her mockingly. 'If I had to compare you to any member of the animal kingdom it would be to a wild she-cat: all claws, snarls and lashing tail.'

His eyes dropped to her hands, and to her consternation Heather discovered, as she followed his gaze downwards, that her fingers were curled as though ready to strike out at her prey.

He laughed, a soft, satisfied sound that made her skin tingle and raised a rash of goose-b.u.mps under it. 'I've often wondered if you've ever fulfilled that promise of pa.s.sion that was so much a part of those early teenage years.'

'That's something you're never going to know.'

The hoa.r.s.e intensity of her voice shocked her. What was she doing, allowing him to inveigle her into this kind of confrontation; a type of confrontation she could only retreat from in disorder?

She knew nothing of the s.e.xual pleasure he was hinting at, and as for pa.s.sion...!

'Don't tell me you really prefer your lovers tame and timid, like the poor specimen you had with you the other night? Or was it a case of needs must?'

He showed her his teeth in a savage grin. Her breath seemed to have leaked away somewhere deep inside her chest, and her lungs heaved as she tried desperately to breathe.

What was happening to her? What was he doing to her? Certainly he was showing her a side of himself he had always previously kept discreetly camouflaged. But she had always known it was there, had always known that he was an intensely sensual human being. How had she known that? She shivered again, tormented by the shocking intimacy of her thoughts.

A thousand excuses for her immediate departure clamoured for utterance, but to give voice to them would be cowardly, and more, it would betray to him just how disturbing she found their conversation. She had to play him at his own game, to show him how adult she was. He was just trying to get under her skin, he was tormenting her as he had tormented her so often in the past, but now he was using far more sophisticated weapons. He couldn't know that her total s.e.xual experience was limited to a few fumbled caresses and unedifying kisses. He couldn't know how weak and shivery he made her feel, just by talking to her the way he was.

'I think it's time we had lunch.'

The abrupt return to normality overwhelmed her. She suspected that he was doing everything he could to keep her on edge, and she was determined that she wouldn't let him see that he had got through to her. She had always known how clever he was; how cunning and determined to have his own way. He might profess to want a better relationship between them, but she was under no illusions; deep down inside, he still resented her, just as she still resented him.

All right, in her case that resentment was tinged with guilt and touched by a compa.s.sion she could not help feeling for the child he had once been, rejected and unloved. She was mature enough, yes, and woman enough to feel that, but he still made her feel as p.r.i.c.kly and defensive as a threatened animal; he still made her walk warily and watch carefully.

'Everything's ready. We'll be eating in the dining-room. 'It's this way.'

The dining-room was furnished with the same simplicity as the rooms Heather had already seen, very much in keeping with the age of the house, the dark-panelled walls glistening softly in the firelight.

'You realise, don't you, that there are going to have to be some changes?' Kyle told her abruptly, once he had served their meal.

She should not have been surprised at his skill, her mother had, after all, insisted on teaching both of them how to look after themselves, just as her father had taught them both to drive and to carry out small household maintenance tasks. There was no s.e.xual bigotry in her parents' household, apart, of course, from the fact that they had always wanted a son.

She put down her knife and fork, ignoring the delicious chicken ca.s.serole, her thoughts winging back to the past.

'Heather, did you hear me?'

She frowned and looked down the length of the polished oak table. 'Yes, you said something about things changing.'

'Mmm... the house, for instance. After his operation, those stairs will be too much for your father. Your mother was talking about buying a small villa in Portugal. Apparently they've always liked the country. Then they could spend their winters there.'

He was going too fast for her, covering ground she had not even yet had time to consider. She knew what he said was correct, but the thought of losing the house that had been home to her for so long, the thought of her parents actually taking the decision to sell...

'With a bit of luck, your father should be out of hospital before Christmas, and then he and your mother will fly straight to my villa in Portugal and stay there until he's fully recovered. Have you made any plans for Christmas?' he asked her, apparently unaware of her sudden lack of appet.i.te, as he ate his own meal with gusto.

Christmas! She had not even got as far as thinking about how she would spend it. Normally, it was a big event, with her parents' friends descending on the house. Her mother loved it, and so had her father. But this year...

'A few,' she lied carelessly, not wanting him to know that, with her parents away, her Christmas would be very bleak indeed. She didn't want him to accuse her of being selfish again, of putting her own feelings before those of her mother and father.

'A pity. You'll have to cancel them.'

'Cancel?' Heather stared at him. 'What are you talking about?'

'I've promised your parents that I'll make sure that you spend Christmas here with me. Apparently they're concerned about you staying in the house on your own, and I must say I can see why.'

'For goodness' sake, I'm twenty-three years old, and perfectly capable of taking care of myself! I'm not likely to try and commit suicide just because I'm spending Christmas alone,' she threw at him bitterly.

'No one suggested that you might, but that house is rather remote, and your father says the central heating's on the blink. He's also concerned about the van. He says it isn't very reliable or safe. OK, so you and I know you'd be perfectly safe and certainly much happier on your own than you're likely to be here, but for their sake can I suggest that you give in quietly?'

'Is that what you did?'

The silence stretched for too long for her to deceive herself that she was wrong. Kyle wanted her staying with him as little as she wanted to be there.

'All right,' she gave in wearily. 'And I promise I'll do my best to keep out of your way.'

'I'll give you a spare key before you go. You could move your stuff in while I'm away in the States. There's a guest suite upstairs, you can use that. When I get back I'll show you the plans for the new shopping arcade, and you can tell me what you think.'

He tossed the comment to her as casually as an adult throwing a child a sweet, and without her being aware of it her eyes flashed dangerously.

'All that wasted pa.s.sion,' he mocked her. 'There's only one way you're ever going to get to dig those sharp claws of yours into my skin, and it's not by losing your temper with me.' He laughed at her flushed, shocked face. 'Perish the thought, eh?' he taunted softly. 'Don't worry. I doubt I'll ever be that desperate.'

'It wouldn't matter if you were,' Heather retaliated when she had got her breath back. 'There's no way I'd ever let you-'