A Daughter's Dilemma

Excerpt About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN Copyright

“You still think I’m some kind of ogre.”

“Not at all,” she returned with admirable coolness. “I don’t think of you as anything anymore. You’re just my stepfather’s architect.”

“Is that so?” His gaze turned hard as it locked with hers. “And how should I think of you, Carolyn? As my client’s stepdaughter, here to help finish his house to everyone’s satisfaction? Or as a female harboring an irrational grudge against me and who might be thinking of sabotaging my work out of revenge?”

MIRANDA LEE is Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boardingschool educated and briefly pursued a classicalmusic career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

Miranda Lee has written a sequel to A Daughter’s Dilemma. Look out next month for Maddie’s story in Maddie’s Love-Child (Harlequin Presents #1884). Maddie adores men, and has no intention of marrying one, but she does so want children—especially after she meets Miles MacMillan, a British aristocrat who has all the qualities Maddie wants in the father of her child!

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A Daughter’s Dilemma

Miranda Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘WOULD all visitors please leave the ship immediately,’ came the call along the corridors of the SS Sea Countess. ‘We will be departing in five minutes.’

‘That means me, I guess.’ Carolyn sighed and stood up from where she’d been sitting in one of the cabin’s luxurious armchairs. She walked across the deep-pile blue carpet and bent to kiss the cheek of the very attractive blonde woman sitting on the side of the bed.

‘Have a wonderful honeymoon, Mum,’ she said softly. ‘You deserve it.’

‘Thank you, darling,’ Isabel murmured in return, and cast a shy, almost blushing glance at her husband of three hours.

Carolyn smiled with approval as she turned to face her stepfather, who had also risen from his chair. Fifty-two and going bald, Julian Thornton was not a particularly handsome man. But he had a fine build and intelligent grey eyes, as well as a kind and patient nature. He was, in Carolyn’s opinion, just the sort of man to make her mother happy.

‘As for you, Step-papa,’ she said, giving him a kiss also, ‘I think you’re very naughty depriving me of my mother’s company for two whole months. Just as well you’re leaving me your lovely car to drive around in or I might have been cross.’

He chuckled. ‘Mind you look after it.’

‘Carolyn?’

The plaintive note in her mother’s voice had her swinging sharply around. ‘Yes, Mum?’ Hard to keep the worry out of her voice. Surely nothing was going to go wrong now!

‘Did... did I pack that new hairdryer we had to buy? I just can’t remember...’

Carolyn tried to ignore the instant jab of dismay. She knew her mother’s memory could still be faulty, but she’d been so much better lately and Carolyn had hoped...

Suppressing a sigh, she said brightly, ‘It’s safely packed. We put all your toiletries and accoutrements in here.’ Moving briskly, she picked up the smallest of the green leather suitcases lying against the wall and carried it over to place it gently on the bed beside her mother.

Julian stepped up to the foot of the bed. ‘Why don’t you start unpacking, love,’ he suggested to his bride, ‘while I see my charming stepdaughter off the ship?’

‘All right.’ Isabel’s voice carried that vaguely resigned compliance Carolyn always hated hearing in her once strong-minded mother.

Biting her bottom lip, she was unsure all of a sudden if her mother was in a fit state to be anybody’s wife, even a man as understanding as Julian.

‘Come along, Carolyn.’ His voice was firm. ‘We don’t want you sailing with us, do we? Honeymoons are meant for two, not three.’

She glanced up and saw the bittersweet understanding in his face. ‘Coming. Bye, Mum.’ She gave her mother another parting peck, picked up her bag from the small table near the door and dashed from the room before she did anything stupid like cry.

‘Don’t worry about her so much,’ Julian urged as they walked along the corridor and up the narrow stairway. ‘She’s tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day.’

Carolyn shook her head. ‘You’re so patient with her. So...good.’

‘I love her.’

‘Yes...’ Carolyn swallowed and tried not to think of her mother’s words when Julian had first asked her to marry him six months ago.

‘But I...I don’t love him. I mean, I like him a lot and he’s very kind, but...’

Isabel had turned him down, but Julian was persistent, and Carolyn had to admit that her mother had sincerely warmed to him over the next three months, so much so that, when Julian had asked her again, she had said yes. Nevertheless, Carolyn was sure that their relationship had not yet become a sexual one; a fact which worried her slightly, in the circumstances...

‘Carolyn.’ Julian stopped beside the gangway and turned to take her hands in his. His grey eyes were steely as they peered down into her own frowning blue ones. ‘Let me give you a bit of advice. You’re only twenty-four years old, yet you’ve spent almost ten years being a mother to your own mother. And, while I admire what you’ve done enormously, it’s time you got on with your own life. Your mother’s my responsibility now. You have to let go of the apron strings, cut them or you’ll ruin your own life, as surely as Isabel once almost ruined hers with her exaggerated sense of responsibility.’

Carolyn was taken aback by this last remark till she recalled that Julian believed Isabel’s breakdown had been due to the stress of raising an illegitimate child on her own. Carolyn herself trotted out the same excuse whenever one of her friends questioned her mother’s odd timidity and vagueness.

Julian had eventually been privy to a more detailed version when he’d started taking Isabel out, and he’d been moved by the story of the innocent young Isabel, falling madly in love with her history professor at college—and vice versa; of her becoming pregnant to this much older professor; of his abandoning his childless and unhappy marriage to live with Isabel and await a divorce and his baby; of his dying of a heart attack before either arrived, leaving the devastated nineteen-year-old mother to cope on her own, which she did very bravely and valiantly, till suddenly, when the child was fourteen, she’d unexpectedly cracked up.

It was a touching story. And quite true. Up to a point. Carolyn suspected her mother had by now convinced herself it was the total and real truth. And she’d never contradicted her. How could she? Isabel McKensie had no idea her daughter knew the real reason for her breakdown. And Carolyn had never dared reveal her knowledge for fear of causing a relapse.

‘But she’s fine now,’ Julian was insisting. ‘Much better than you give her credit for. The fact is, you’ve been molly-coddling your mother, Carolyn. Doing far too much, making too many decisions for her.’

Resentment burned inside Carolyn for a moment. ‘How can you say that after what you yourself asked me to do earlier in the week? Doesn’t that entail my making more decisions for her?’

Julian sighed. ‘I agree your mother still has some limitations, but my request was more to keep my project a secret, rather than because Isabel is incapable of making some simple decisions. I want to present a brand new home to her, fully furnished and decorated, as a surprise when we get home. Perhaps I put it badly when I asked you to oversee the finishing touches for me, to veto anything you thought your mother might not like. If I did, I’m sorry. Look, if you feel it’s too much of an imposition on your time—’

‘No, no,’ Carolyn cut in, overwhelmed by guilt that Julian might think her unwilling to help out when he’d been so good to her and her mother. Impossible to explain that it would take more than a few stern words to make her stop worrying about Isabel. He hadn’t been around ten years ago when she’d had her nervous breakdown. He’d never witnessed the sort of woman she’d been beforehand, as compared to afterwards. The difference had been staggering. She shuddered inside at the memory, but kept her face unreadable. No point in worrying Julian at this late stage.

‘I’d like to do it. Really,’ she reassured. Then smiled. ‘And you’re quite right. I’m going to stop fussing over Mum and leave that up to you.’

Julian beamed. ‘Good.’ He fished two business cards out of his jacket pocket and pressed them into her right hand. ‘Now here’s the names, business addresses and phone numbers of the architect and interior decorator I’m using. Both of them are going to be really famous one day, you mark my words. They have adjoining offices in Wollongong and, though they’re not actually partners, there’s an unwritten agreement that, if you hire this architect to design a house, you hire this decorator as well. Having met the man, I can understand why. He’s a fanatic about his houses. Apparently has nightmares over acquiring some scatter-brained client with lots of money and no taste ruining one of his masterpieces with ghastly decor.

‘His words, not mine,’ Julian added with a chuckle. ‘Anyway, since you have excellent taste, Carolyn, you shouldn’t have any trouble with him. But watch yourself. He’s in his early thirties and extremely good-looking, but apparently not into marriage. Or so he implied one day when I was talking about the subject. I wouldn’t like my stepdaughter getting mixed up with an inveterate womaniser. I want her finding herself a husband, not a lover. Why are you looking so surprised? You did tell me you wanted half a dozen children, didn’t you?’

‘Julian,’ she laughed. ‘I said one day I’d like half a dozen children, not this week, or even this year! And let me assure you that, from the sound of him, your architect is certainly not my type, either for a husband or a lover!’

‘Believe me, love,’ Julian said drily, ‘Vaughan’s every woman’s type.’

‘Not mine. I can’t stand men who...’ Carolyn broke off, doing a double take when the architect’s Christian name really sank in.

Vaughan?

She resisted succumbing to an irrational burst of panic. It was an unusual name, but not that unusual, she reasoned. It couldn’t be the same Vaughan. It just couldn’t... could it?

‘Don’t worry, you should be pretty safe,’ Julian prattled on, ‘since I’m fairly sure our architectural Casanova and the interior decorator have a thing going. Miss Powers is very attractive in an offbeat sort of way, and they’re very intimate in their manner towards each other. But better safe than sorry, so make sure you put that gorgeous hair of yours back up into its usual plait thing when you meet him. And dress like you do for the office. That creation you’ve got on today is a definite no-no!’

Carolyn glanced down at the scarlet crepe sheath she’d worn for her mother’s wedding. Isabel’s choice, not hers. As was her wearing her waistlength honey-blonde hair loose.

‘Whatever you say, Julian,’ she agreed lightly, but her right hand was tightly closed around the business cards lying within her palm. One quick look and she’d be absolutely sure if Julian’s Vaughan and her Vaughan were one and the same. One quick look...

Why, then, wasn’t she taking it?

The answer was quite simple. She already knew the ghastly truth.

The picture Julian was painting of this particular Vaughan coincided too well with the picture that was burnt indelibly in her brain. As well as the two men’s both being architects, there could be no mistaking the other similarities. The man’s age... his magnetic sex appeal... his self-centred ambition... his ego...

Carolyn felt all the blood begin to drain from her face.

‘Go looking like the secretary in the Beverly Hillbillies,’ Julian laughed, not noticing her pallor under her make-up. ‘That should do it! Now, you’re to ring Vaughan’s office to make an appointment to see both parties this coming weekend. They’re already au fait with your role in this and my wish to keep the house a secret from Isabel. Here’s my petrol card as well...’

He extended a plastic card from his wallet and handed it over as well. ‘That car of mine is a real gas-guzzler, so don’t hesitate to use this to fill up. No, don’t argue with me. I insist. I’m the one who’s asking you to travel over fifty miles down the south coast every other weekend, so I’m the one who should provide the transport, free of charge. It’s all tax deductible anyway.’ He smiled.

How she managed to smile back remained a mystery to Carolyn. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. God, what was she going to do?

Nothing at the moment, she realised as Julian bent to kiss her goodbye. ‘Thanks again,’ he said. ‘Keep well, and don’t worry about your mother.’

Don’t worry about your mother...

Carolyn was still shaking her head over the irony of those words as she watched the liner pull away from the pier and slowly make its way across Sydney harbour towards the bridge. If the surname on the architect’s card in her hand was the surname she believed it was, she would do nothing else but worry about her mother over the next two months.

Slowly, as though her palm contained a deadly funnel-web spider, Carolyn lifted her hand and opened the fingers. The card in question was the first on the pile. Plain white, with black lettering. Its wording was simple.

Vaughan Slater - Architect.

Nothing too large or too small.

Carolyn didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or be sick.

In the end, she was simply furious at fate, and stuffed the card in her bag with the others before she ripped it into a million pieces.

‘Vaughan Slater,’ she muttered aloud through gritted teeth.

Vaughan Slater, who ten years ago was a student in architecture at Sydney University and living in their home as a boarder during his final year.

Vaughan Slater, nine years younger than her mother back then. Only twenty-four to her thirtythree. But old enough to take advantage of a woman alone. Old enough to seduce her, sleep with her, make her fall in love with him, then tell her it was ‘only sex’ to her face and just walk away.

Vaughan Slater... the single and sole reason for her mother’s breakdown all those years ago.

CHAPTER TWO

CAROLYN glanced at her watch as she drove into Wollongong. Nearly ten-forty. Her appointment with Vaughan wasn’t till eleven, with the interior decorator following at eleven-thirty. Much as she wasn’t looking forward to meeting Vaughan again, she didn’t want to be late.

She hadn’t actually spoken to the man himself when she’d rung his office earlier in the week, his secretary making both appointments for her for this Saturday morning. So he had no idea of her true identity. The secretary had started calling her Miss Thornton straight away and Carolyn hadn’t corrected her mistake. At the time, she wasn’t sure why she’d kept her real name a secret, but she suspected one never gave an enemy any advantage in advance.

For he was an enemy, she accepted, a bitter taste coming into her mouth. An enemy to her mother’s future happiness. Carolyn knew that, when Julian presented his new bride with a designer-built and fully furnished home, Isabel was sure to want to meet and thank the people responsible.

Carolyn grimaced as she tried to picture how her mother would react to meeting Vaughan again, to having the man she’d loved so obsessively come back into her life. She wouldn’t be able to cope. Of that Carolyn was sure.

I can’t let them meet again, she vowed fiercely. I won’t!

The street that housed Vaughan’s office appeared on the right with Carolyn negotiating the turn across the on-coming traffic with great care. The last thing she wanted was to prang Julian’s beautiful blue BMW. Actually, she’d have driven her old bomb of a Datsun if she’d thought it would make the trip. As it was, she sighed with relief once she slid the car safely into a parking spot and turned off the engine.

Her watch showed ten forty-four by the time she alighted and locked the car then set out to find number sixteen. But as she walked swiftly along, the imminence of her encounter with Vaughan began sending a thousand nervous flutterings into her stomach, and her earlier steely resolve threatened to desert her.

Carolyn ground to a halt and scooped in several steadying breaths. Truly, she just had to get a grip on herself or risk making a hash of this meeting. A cool head was required. Vaughan was a successful and professional man now, who wasn’t going to like being put on the spot, or having old skeletons dragged out of the closet. He certainly wasn’t going to appreciate being told he had to avoid meeting a client’s wife, even if it meant lying to that client. For that was the only way Carolyn could think of to tackle the situation, by virtually throwing herself on his mercy. If the devil had any, that was!

At least she had a few weapons to fall back on to persuade Vaughan into compliance. No doubt Julian hadn’t paid him the full balance of his fat architectural fee for designing the house as yet. The Vaughan Slater she knew and despised would not do anything to make waves and lose out on that, Carolyn thought with bitter cynicism.

Money meant a great deal to him. Hadn’t she subsequently found out, when she’d checked the bankbooks after her mother’s breakdown, that he had not paid one cent in board for the last few months he’d stayed in their home? One didn’t have to have too much of an imagination to work out what happened. Once he’d secured his landlady’s love through pretending a return of affection with some very convincing words and lovemaking, he’d simply not paid any more.

Thinking about this little snippet of damning evidence made Carolyn even more determined not to take any nonsense from this man. He’d do what she asked or reap the rewards of his folly. Julian loved Isabel to distraction. He was also a very wealthy and influential businessman around Sydney and the south coast, being the owner and managing director of a large construction company that built shopping centres. Carolyn didn’t think he’d take too kindly to finding out the unabridged and disgusting truth of the way his womanising architect had once treated his wife.

Carolyn’s blue eyes darkened with fury and her teeth clenched down hard in her jaw.

Amazing, she thought. She’d had no idea she possessed such a capacity for hatred and revenge. People always described her as being mild-tempered. She certainly didn’t feel mild-tempered whenever she thought of a certain individual.

Steeling herself again, she walked more confidently along the pavement, looking for the dreaded address.

It wasn’t far, a modern three-storeyed steel and glass building with huge bluish windows facing the ocean, the kind of glass that one could look out of but couldn’t see into from outside.

Carolyn took one last steadying breath and pushed through the revolving glass doors into a grey marbled air-conditioned lobby. There was no reception desk, only a huge noticeboard on the wall which told her her quarry resided on the top floor. So did the interior decorator—Madeline Powers. Suites Three and Four respectively. A flight of stairs and two lifts serviced these upper floors.

Carolyn chose the stairs. She still had a few minutes to kill.

Would he recognise her straight away? she wondered as she made her way slowly up the carpeted staircase.

It was possible, her basic features not having changed much over the years. She still wore her straight hair in a single plait most of the time, though nowadays she wound it round the top of her head in a coronet. She also never wore make-up during the day, her natural peaches and cream complexion and thickly lashed blue eyes holding up quite well au naturel.

He wouldn’t have changed much, she fancied. Men didn’t from their mid-twenties to early thirties. Unless, of course, they put on weight or went bald, which she doubted he had from Julian’s description.

Carolyn still had a rather vivid mental picture of Vaughan at twenty-four, despite the intervening years. A strong angular face with straight brown brows and deeply set brown eyes; thick, wavy chestnut hair that always seemed to need a cut; a sensual-looking mouth that rarely smiled; and a body that had brought her girlfriends running from miles around, especially when he mowed the lawn with his shirt off.

Carolyn cringed as she recalled some of the comments her classmates had made about his various physical attributes. Maybe she’d been a bit of a prude back then, for she certainly hadn’t shared her friends’ preoccupation with sex. Admittedly, she’d been a young fourteen at the time, but even now she wasn’t impressed by the type of man who flaunted his sexual equipment in overtight clothes, any more than she liked girls who went round half-naked!

Maybe I’m still a prude, came the agitated thought. Twenty-four-year-old virgins aren’t exactly thick on the ground these days.

Carolyn became uncomfortably aware that her forehead had broken out in a fine layer of sweat. Extracting a tissue from her bag, she dabbed herself dry, conceding that perhaps she was dressed a little too warmly for a hot February day, Julian’s warning over her dress having induced her to wear a grey suit that the girls at work labelled the most effective in her ‘anti Maurice Jenkins’ armoury.

Carolyn smiled ruefully at the accuracy of this description, since the suit was rather shapeless with a blazer-style jacket and a pleated skirt. It certainly hadn’t caught the eye of the aforementioned Dr Jenkins, an obstetrician at the private hospital where Carolyn worked, who had steadily seduced every attractive nurse in the place and was currently directing his attention towards the administration staff.

Maurice Jenkins might be a handsome and successful man, but no male was welcome in her life on a ‘just sex’ basis; never had been and never would be. Which perhaps was why she hadn’t had a steady boyfriend as yet. All men seemed to want from a girl these days was sex. Carolyn resented being...

Good grief, where was her mind taking her? This was hardly the moment to start analysing and defending her attitude to men and sex. She was here on a mission concerning her mother’s future, not her own.

Carolyn finally reached the top of the stairs where an arrow indicated that Suites Three and Four were along the corridor to the right. Gathering herself, she made sure all the buttons on her jacket were done up before making a right-hand turn on the motley brown carpet.

No sooner had she begun walking down the corridor than a door opened a little way along and a tall, broad-shouldered man strode out, swiftly followed by a flashy-looking brunette dressed in a purple trouser-suit.

‘But Vaughan, darling,’ she was saying, the name bringing Carolyn up with a jerk. Her startled gaze snapped back to the man, who had spun round to be half-turned away from her.

This was the present-day Vaughan Slater? she gaped. This conservative male person with short back and sides and dressed in a crisp pale blue shirt and casual cream tailored trousers? Admittedly, the back of the shirt collar was turned up as though he’d dressed in a hurry, but on the whole he presented a smart, well-groomed image—a far cry from the bronzed, shirtless, bejeaned figure all her girlfriends had drooled over.