Expectant Mistress

‘So!’ exclaimed the vision. ‘This is Trish, then!’ There was a flash of white as Adam moved to the woman’s side. Trish kept her gaze fixed doggedly ahead, a plastic grin on her face, as the woman added lightly, ‘And all this time I thought she was Italian! You look foreign.’

Louise, for that was clearly who it had to be from the way she hung onto Adam’s tuxedo sleeve, was eyeing Trish’s dark colouring as if it were an inferior brand of face cream. Trish felt crushed by her cool assessment. Clearly Louise had been expecting an Italian temptress on the lines of Sophia Loren, not a badly put-together female with macraméd hair.

Hating the little spurts of jealousy which were shooting up her body, Trish adjusted her smile to a decent wattage and said, ‘I can’t oblige you by producing some Italian genes, but some of the time my Spanish blood comes out. When I’m excited, for instance...’ She went pink and hastened to make her meaning clear. ‘When someone annoys me.’

‘Any other time your Spanish blood comes out?’ enquired Adam in a wickedly teasing drawl

She still wouldn’t look at him. Her heart was pumping too hard and he sounded far too amused by her discomfort. OK, so amuse him Go for humour; prove you don’t give a damn, a little voice was telling her.

‘Yes. If I get careless chopping carrots,’ she said sweetly.

He laughed. It was lovely to hear him—and astonishing to see Louise’s reaction Her eyebrows were disappearing into her hairline.

‘That’s not a sound I’ve heard for a long time,’ Louise said, as if she disapproved of frivolity in a mature man. She pointed a sharp, bare shoulder at Adam in accusation.

‘I’d forgotten how. Life’s been a bit fraught, hasn’t it?’ Adam murmured. ‘Not much time for fun.’ Any fool could have heard the irritation lacing his voice.

Aware of a slight tension building between the two, Trish blundered on. ‘Gran says I have quite a few Spanish smugglers and shipwrecked Spanish seamen lurking in my genes. My female ancestors made the most of their opportunities.’ She wondered if her eye-to-eye stare with Louise was becoming unnatural, bordering on the manic. Nerves made her gibber unthinkingly. ‘When you live on an island the size of a dinner plate, you have to grab all the available talent there is.’

Louise’s eyes narrowed even more. Too late, Trish realised she’d now suggested that she was out hunting a man, any man, to take back to her lair. Damn! She wasn’t any good at this small talk stuff. How crass she was!

‘Hello, Trish,’ Adam said, laughter enriching his voice. ‘Good to see you again.’

With a properly convivial smile, she began to unwind one of her rehearsed greetings, speaking to his shirtfront which was so close it came over as a white blur.

‘Such a long tune, isn’t It? How we’ve aged—!’

‘Age be damned!’ he protested.

Startlingly, she found herself in his masterful arms, the sound of her name filling her head like sweet music, the smell of him heightening her senses and driving the breath from her body. She wanted them to stay like that for ever.

Her eyes closed, all the better to imagine that situation. His lush mouth pressed warmly into each cheek It seemed his lips lingered a fraction longer than was socially acceptable but she’d mislaid her brain cells so she was probably wrong. Because when he released her he was smiling—not at her, but at Louise

Her stomach felt as if it had been subjected to a fast descent in a lift. She decided to be stern with herself. What had she been expecting? A dramatic, ‘My God! Trish! I claim you as the woman of my dreams’ Goodbye, Louise, all is over!’?

It seemed that subconsciously, that was precisely what she had been hoping for. His indifference to their clinch really hurt. And she wondered why she kept on wounding herself with so many impossible and downright immoral desires where he was concerned.

She hadn’t come to snatch him away, but to beat it firmly into her dim brain that Adam was far too handsome and talented for the likes of her. For heaven’s sake, how could she compete with a red-headed goddess who’d been given Adam’s seal of approval?

‘I’m a little late with the introductions, but as you gathered, Louise—’ he said easily ‘—this is Trish. Trish, Louise, my fiancée.’

‘Welcome to our Engagement Party.’

Louise made sure Trish knew that the occasion merited capital letters. A little tenser than before, the woman leant forward and kissed Trish coolly, as if embracing a stranger’s child With the emphasis firmly on child.

Trish kept her carefree smile pinned in place. Louise was far more gorgeous than she’d imagined, even if she didn’t know the difference between the Scilly Isles and the island of Sicily But then, brainy people often lacked common sense and everyday knowledge.

‘I’m still puzzled,’ Louise cooed, detached from Adam suddenly as four worshipping blondes surrounded him with cries of adoration.

Casting a furtive glance at him, Trish saw them cover him in lipstick in seconds. Surprisingly, Louise seemed impervious to this. Trish itched to drag the women off and berate him for smiling at them. Instead, she made herself pay attention to Louise, suppressing the brief impression she’d had of Adam. He hadn’t changed one iota. Still very dark, very handsome, fiercely male. Damn.

‘Why are you puzzled?’ she asked Louise, trying to care.

‘A tan! In England, in early April?’ She peered at Trish’s skin ‘Sunlamp or fake tan?’ she suggested with suspicious innocence.

‘Neither! Just sun and wind and rain. Adam said the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles are all children of Nature, remember?’ she said, smarting a little from the description. It had taken her an hour to get ready—longer than she’d ever spent on herself before! ‘I lead an outdoor life—’

‘You run a guesthouse! That’s indoors!’ Louise stated knowledgeably.

Lord! thought Trish. What had Adam told her? ‘Yes, but on my island we don’t have transport—there aren’t any made-up roads,’ she explained patiently. ‘We travel by boat. Bryher is only a mile wide and a mile and a half long—’

‘Good grief! Some people have gardens larger than that! And did you say no roads?’ Louise shuddered elegantly and waved her left hand about, so that Trish could be dazzled by the flashing diamond the size of an elderly broad bean on her ring finger. ‘Sounds hell! Don’t you get horribly muddy going out to dinner and the theatre? Or to the shops?’

‘We don’t have restaurants apart from the one in the hotel. There are a couple of cafés.’ She grinned. ‘No theatres at all. We get the odd liner going aground, and container ships flinging their cargo at us when they’re shipwrecked. Other than that there’s no entertainment—unless you count the activities of the seabirds and tourists and the odd sing-song in somebody’s house.’ Apparently Louise didn’t. Trish giggled at the woman’s appalled expression and didn’t spare her. ‘There aren’t any shops, but we have a really nice post office,’ she said in proud yokel style.

‘No...shops!’ gasped Louise, clearly incapable of imagining life without them.

On the periphery of her vision, Trish could see that Adam was looking at her over the heads of the chattering blondes—and that he was vastly amused. It felt like old times for a moment. They’d enjoyed many a laugh together Trish’s heart started an uncomfortable tattoo against her ribs.

Knowing she had to get used to Adam’s future wife, she tried hard to remain just a hick guest who wished them both well. ‘Bryher has no space for that kind of thing, Louise. It can’t even support a doctor or a pub or a school. We grow our own food or get it from the main island—St Mary’s—or have it shipped in from the mainland, so we need to be highly organised. We go in for mail order a lot—’

‘Yes. So I see.’ There was a meaningful pause while Louise scanned Trish’s clearly undesirable dress which shrieked its catalogue origins. ‘It sounds like the back of beyond! Adam and I eat out every night. We’d die of boredom on your island! You’d loathe it, wouldn’t you, darling?’ she said, appealing to the newly released Adam, who was deftly removing lipstick smears with a handkerchief from his hard-cut jaw and, Trish noted indignantly, across his mouth! ‘It’s such a primitive place, where Trish lives!’

Trish felt flattened, her whole way of life summarily dismissed by the woman Adam loved. While Louise began to scrub Adam’s cheeks fussily, Trish struggled with a nagging little voice inside her head which was questioning the wisdom of his choice of partner. He was a sophisticated city man, she reminded herself, a dominant male who was passionately involved in computer technology. He too would hate her simple life.

Miserably, she stared at her crippling shoes, phrases about megabytes and function keys being flung about over her head and adding to her sense of alienation. She should never have come.

‘Island life has its attractions for certain people,’ Adam said, being polite. There was a hard edge of irritation in his voice, though. He was probably longing to chat about gigabytes instead, she thought forlornly.

Louise reclaimed her prize, slipping an elegant, creamy bare arm around Adam’s waist in almost a defensively possessive gesture. As if, mused Trish, she was marking her territory. Trish went pale beneath her tan. Had Adam indulged in pillow confessions with his fiancée, listing all the women who’d made a pass at him?

‘I know so much about you,’ confided Louise in a pussycat purr.

Trish’s eyes were as round as they could be. She felt Adam’s hot-chocolate gaze melting into her flesh. Combined with the guilt, the heat and the noise, it made her head swim

‘Five-nine, eight stone ten, twenty-two, passion for tea bread, chicken-rearing and weepy films?’ she hazarded, playing the careless, guileless cookie.

‘No!’ replied Louise gaily, relaxing as she was meant to. ‘How you two met. Something about your leaving school at sixteen and staying at Adam’s house in Cornwall, because he and his first wife let out rooms to students.’ The silk-tongued Louise looked expectant and Trish realised she ought to say something.

‘I stayed two years,’ was all she could come up with. Then she felt her cheeks go pink because she’d reminded Adam of the reason she’d left. She was aware that he had stiffened and the pall of silence hung between them accusingly.

Louise seemed impervious to the strained atmosphere and was smugly playing with Adam’s signet ring, turning It this way and that to admire the plain gold band and entwined initials. ‘I forget what you were studying,’ she said. ‘Which university did you go to?’

‘I didn’t mention university—’ Adam began irritably, stuffing his hand in his pocket.

‘Nothing so grand!’ Trish could fight her own battles. In her own way. ‘I don’t have your brains.’ She was pleased at Louise’s satisfied little smile.

‘I’m sure I told you. Trish came to the mainland for a hotel and catering course in Truro,’ Adam said curtly.

Louise smiled at Trish, somehow managing not to disturb the serenity of her face. ‘You and Petra must be virtually the same age.’

‘She’s a year older than me,’ Trish agreed. ‘We found we had the same sense of humour and we’ve been friends ever since.’ Trish looked about wildly for Petra to rescue her. A friend in need was a friend right here!

‘That makes you only a teeny bit older than Adam and Christine’s son,’ Louise said meaningfully.

Trish knew what she was doing. The pussycat was unsheathing her claws. Louise suspected a take-over bid and was making sure they all knew the situation Adam’s son Stephen was nineteen. The message was clear: Keep off this man of mine. Adam is almost twice your age

It amazed her that Louise bothered to get her claws out at all A polyester mouse from a remote island with nowhere to buy sushi or Ralph Lauren was hardly going to turn Adam’s head!

Demurely, she nodded. In the absence of such a possibility, she could at least turn the conversation instead. ‘Is Stephen here?’ she asked politely.

Even he, her old adversary and Prince Pain in the Neck, would be a welcome sight at this moment. She needed an excuse to get away from this ego-destroying conversation.

‘Leeds University. Studying medicine,’ said Adam shortly.

‘Brainy.’ Trish looked suitably impressed.

‘You nursed, didn’t you—in the hospice where Adam’s wife was?’ Louise persisted.

Adam’s tension increased but Trish giggled at the unlikely scenario. ‘Me? No! I earned money evenings and weekends working in the kitchens as a skivvy, dropping pans of spaghetti, knocking the chef’s hat into the cream of mushroom soup—’

‘And kept my wife and everyone else in the hospice in gales of laughter, recounting your mishaps,’ Adam said softly. ‘You made the last months of Christine’s life there bearable.’

There was a deep gratitude in his tone. Louise’s green eyes became strangely washed out. Trish realised that Petra was right; Adam’s fiancée had heard too much too often about Trish Pearce

‘Nice to have a cheerful little friend of Petra’s around,’ said Louise patronisingly. Her voice wobbled, reducing the impact of the cutting remark.

Trish shifted uncomfortably, wobbled too, on Petra’s diabolical heels, and found herself lurching sideways. Adam grabbed her. Their eyes met. Blazed. Lit fires.

Glittering ebony. Searing sapphire.

No, she thought desperately, wishing the world would level itself out again. She was reading his message incorrectly. He was probably warning her not to rock any boats, not to mention what had happened between them.

‘Nearly became intimate with the carpet then!’ she cried merrily. ‘I’ve got to take these shoes off before I break an ankle or get a nosebleed from the altitude!’

Reaching down, she yanked off the stilted shoes and straightened up again with them in her hands.

Louise looked startled at such wanton behaviour as Trish waved them in triumph ‘You can’t go barefoot here!’ she cried in horror, as if it were a social sacrilege.

‘I can. I am!’ Trish said with a grin. ‘My toes were folded underneath my feet like a Japanese geisha’s. Another ten minutes and I’d have been launching into a chorus of Madame Butterfly’

‘Why?’ Louise was frowning, trying to make the connection. Her tone hardened to an icy slash. ‘You’re not being abandoned by your lover because you’re unsuitable, are you?’

Trish’s mouth dropped open at the bitchy little dig.

‘It was a joke,’ Adam said tightly, his eyes glinting. ‘Trish makes them all the time Don’t read any more into it.’

The two women studied his closed face thoughtfully Then Louise turned back to Trish.

‘Adam thinks a lot of you,’ she said, as if explaining Adam’s rebuke. ‘You.. got him through a bad time.’ She seemed unable to leave the subject and was plainly jealous of Trish’s involvement with Adam.

‘She was incredible,’ he replied, before Trish could speak. ‘She fussed over me when I came out of my study after a fourteen-hour day—that was when I was trying to build up the business—and had me laughing and relaxed before I even had a drink in my hand.’

‘I’m a clown,’ Trish said hastily, wondering how Adam could be so insensitive—and Louise so beautiful yet insecure.

‘Optimist,’ corrected Adam ‘And a wonderful cook. She even coaxed Christine to eat, by presenting food appealingly ’ He smiled. ‘Or in an amusing way. Do you remember those ridiculous hippo-shaped fish steaks?’

Trish laughed. ‘Ridiculous or not, you ate four!’ she teased, jabbing him in the chest. Then she felt the frosts of Alaska descending on her from Louise’s direction and eased off her sudden familiarity with Adam. ‘Sad times bring you together,’ she excused hastily. ‘Don’t imagine I’m Wonder Woman. Far from it! I had more disasters on my catering course than anyone. I’d trot into the ward, tell anyone who’d listen about my latest howler and they’d all laugh. My boyfriend,’ she said, deliberately lowering her voice to a loving husk and looking gooey, as though her knees went weak at the thought of him, ‘says that’s my second-best asset.’

‘The first being?’ clipped out Adam, with a distinct lack of amusement.

‘None of your business,’ she retorted spiritedly, without glancing at him. She gave Louise a conspiratorial grin. ‘That’s between him and me I’ve known Tim since we were knee-high to a pair of sea boots,’ she explained.

‘How quaint. Are you getting married soon?’ asked Louise, warming to Trish by the second.

‘We thought November, when the visitor season is over,’ lied Trish, crossing her bare legs since her fingers were otherwise occupied with Petra’s shoes. ‘And you?’ she managed, determined not to be dog in the manger.

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Oh, you know how it is. Pressure of work and so on. We’ll fix a date when we can,’ Louise said with an unconvincing attempt at being offhand. ‘We’re up over our heads in work. Fall-out from the millennium time bomb, you know. Lord knows when we’ll find a nanosecond to organise the wedding, let alone a honeymoon.’

Bombs? Trish didn’t know what Louise was talking about. ‘It sounds very stressful,’ she said sympathetically, thinking wistfully of her island, the slow pace of life, and the endless skies and dancing turquoise seas, so clear that the seabed could be seen through fathoms of water.

Her face had become dreamy, its lush sensuality knife-jacking Adam back to the past. He had kissed those smoke-dark lids, felt the flicker of her thick black lashes beneath his lips, held that strong and work-lean body in his arms and marvelled at the sexual energy trapped there poised, waiting eagerly for him to unleash it.

A surge of passion ripped through his body, startling him with its intensity. He all but shook from the effort of not grabbing her, throwing her over his shoulder, storming up to his room and making mad, reckless love to her till he’d got her out of his system.

Shocked by the unexpectedness of his arousal, he invented a polite excuse and latched onto the party organiser, close by. It took several minutes of boring chit-chat about canapés and staff problems before his desire receded. Finally he felt able to walk again.

With a practised ease, he ended the chat and strode purposefully away, not stopping until he had left the party and was safe in the cool darkness of the walled Victorian garden. Leaning back against the smooth bark of a plane tree, he lifted his head to the night sky, his eyes dark and brooding as guilt and fury possessed him in equal measures.

Louise had been rude. unnecessarily cutting and superior. It was a side of her he’d never seen before. And Trish had dealt with it in her usual generous, tolerant way. Just as well. He would have sprung to her defence otherwise

So it wasn’t finished, then. He frowned.

There were no stars in the vast, velvet canopy. The city lights cast too strong a glow. But he knew they were up there. Seeing Trish again—radiant and beautiful, with that appealing inner sweetness and the humour which made him glad to be alive—had wiped away the veils which had obscured his vision. She’d sparkled like a star in that room. Unique, dazzling, soul-liftmg.

But he had no business to be thinking of her. This occasion was his public commitment to Louise. He was acting like a barbarian with his brains in his trousers’ Hell, he despised himself!

He needed to take some action. Drag Louise off to bed, maybe? His wry grin eased his tension slightly. Louise would be appalled if she couldn’t take off her make-up beforehand. Whereas Trish...

His eyes narrowed. From the moment he’d woken that terrible morning four years ago, and found she’d gone without saying goodbye, he’d put her out of his mind. It was the way he dealt with strong emotions. In his youth he’d perfected that useful technique. Unknown to him, however, Trish had found a little space in his mind in which to nestle.

And now she was back, filling his every thought with a vengeance because he knew what an incredible woman she was. Adam felt the hunger for her, the admiration, filling every part of his heart.

The hardness of his mouth softened and his whole body stilled. Trish had played a large part in easing Christine’s last moments. Happy, and smiling at something Trish had said, his wife had whispered, ‘My love to Stephen... Goodbye, Petra, sweetheart.’ Then her voice had faded and he’d just caught her final words: ‘Darling!’ and ‘Love’ and ‘Trish’. Then she’d slipped quietly away and he’d known that Christine had found peace at last.

At the time he’d wanted to hold Trish in his arms, to thank her with a heartfelt hug. But he’d never dared. Because he’d known very well that there might be more in his regard for her. He had recognised what she could mean to him one day Besides, she was young, and deserved someone of her own age It wasn’t impossible to keep the lid on his need—or so he’d thought, till that moment when he’d almost made love to her.

Adam scowled, hating himself for his momentary lapse. Turning, he raised his hand to slam it into the tree hard enough to hurt. At the last minute he controlled his anger and placed his palm carefully on the patterned bark, as if testing his ability to override his feelings by sheer willpower.

He’d had no right to paw her. She was naturally kind and compassionate. He’d read more into her actions than he should have done. She had a good and loving heart which encompassed everyone in her path Petra, himself, Christine, all the inhabitants of the hospice—And what had he done? Overstepped the mark and scared her off. Clumsy, arrogant fool!

He leant his, forehead against the trunk, needing to think, to calm his emotions and to regain his equilibrium. But he didn’t have the time. Every second of his life was spoken for. He and Louise had built the company up and now their responsibilities were overwhelming them both. They’d spent so long in the office together that it had made sense to extend their partnership to their non-existent personal lives.

At least with Louise he wouldn’t ever be vulnerable. She would never be able to hurt him and he would never lose control of himself. Without warning, his long-buried teenage memories surfaced and pain tightened his mouth. Ruthlessly he overcame it by crushing his car keys in his hand till he all but cried out. He was damned if he’d let his emotions be tested to destruction again!

A footfall sounded, soft and barely discernible. Looking up, he saw the barefooted Trish making her way thoughtfully down the silvered path between shrubs gleaming in the moonlight. His heart leapt and sank in quick succession. Carefully he commanded his racing pulses to subside. And they did.

‘Escaping my party?’ he accused laconically.

Trish jumped in surprise, looked embarrassed, and then tossed her gloriously shaggy black hair in an appealing gesture of freedom which caught so brutally at his heart.

“Fraid so! They’re all talking a foreign language in there!’ she declared. She remained—to his relief—a safe yard or so from him ‘Cell merge, bullets, and hyper-link... I wanted to scream!’

Adam chuckled. There it was again. Laughter. He felt less hassled already. ‘It’s a narrow little world,’ he admitted, reining himself in ruthlessly.

‘Like mine,’ she conceded, inspecting her perfect honey-coloured toes. ‘We really are living on different planets, aren’t we?’

He thought at first that she didn’t sound too happy about that. But she was smiling brightly, dazzling the darkness with her lovely laughing mouth, so he knew he’d been deluding himself.

Determined, however reckless that might be, to prolong this brief interlude alone with her, he said wryly, ‘My planet’s hurtling into chaos.’

She nodded. ‘That bomb?’ she asked uncertainly, widening her beautiful sapphire eyes. ‘I know you’ll think I’m stupid, but I didn’t understand the reference. You haven’t joined the bomb-disposal squad in your spare time, have you?’

Adam wondered if he could—should—spin out the explanation, or cut it short and get back to the party. No contest. Here there was a peace of sorts. And Trish. What the hell?