Passionate Possession

She decided to take a short cut through the new business park.

The mayor had opened it less than a year ago, and she had to admit that it was well designed and laid out, or at least it would be once the newly planted trees started to mature.

Now, on a Saturday afternoon, it was relatively quiet. Most of the units were quite small; this was not a big industrial area, after all, and none of them was above three storeys in height.

One of the largest units was the complex taken up by Niall Cameron for his software company.

She had been a little surprised when Don had first told her about Niall Cameron. ‘Why on earth is he relocating down here?’ she had asked him.

‘Personal reasons,’ Don had told her. She presumed now, after listening to Verity, that those personal reasons must in some way concern the woman with whom he was living. Perhaps, since she was presently working in New York, her work took her abroad a good deal and they were reasonably close to the airport here, and Manchester Airport was expanding rapidly to provide most international flights.

Without being aware of what she was doing, she had slowed down slightly as she had approached the Cameron complex. A brand-new Discovery was parked outside it. Lucy grimaced to herself as she surveyed its gleaming paintwork.

It wouldn’t stay like that for very long if he actually moved into the farm. The lane to the farm was rutted and invariably muddy whenever they had any rain.

She stiffened as she saw a man emerge from the building and walk towards the Discovery. He was tall, bare-headed and in his mid-thirties, his dark hair lifting in the breeze. Those immaculately polished shoes wouldn’t last very long in that state either, she decided sardonically as she watched him. He was dressed in city-smart ‘casual’ clothes—a leather blouson jacket, immaculately pressed trousers, a fine-checked wool shirt—all very smart and all very expensive. Her top lip curled a little.

The right clothes, the right accent…Oh, yes, she could see why Verity was so impressed by him. He had stopped moving and he was, she realised with a small stab of disquiet, watching her. There was no reason why she should not be where she was, but for some reason she immediately panicked, putting the car into gear and almost stalling it as she did so, her face suddenly hot and flushed, her breath coming far too quickly.

She didn’t like him, she decided as she drove jerkily away.

She did not like him one tiny, little bit.

CHAPTER TWO

LATER on that evening as she sat beside Tom, halfheartedly paying attention to the play being unfolded below them on the stage, Lucy allowed herself to admit that her judgement of Niall Cameron was perhaps illogical.

After all, he was not the only man to drive an expensive vehicle, to wear expensive clothes. Nor had she any reason to dislike him simply because he had moved to the area. Was it perhaps Verity’s breathless admiration for him that had jarred against her? It certainly couldn’t be his wealth; despite her own position, Lucy had no desire to be wealthy. Not to have to worry so much about money perhaps, but the luxuries money could buy…no, she had no envy of those.

So why, then? Why had the man aroused such antagonism in her, both before and after she had seen him?

‘Not still worrying about the cottage, are you?’ Tom asked her during the interval.

‘Not really,’ Lucy fibbed. ‘Why?’

‘You just seem rather preoccupied, that’s all.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Lucy assured him, asking, ‘Isn’t it your Sunday for the children tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’ Tom frowned. ‘Josy claims that seeing me upsets them too much. God, hasn’t she made me feel guilty enough already? It was her decision to go for a divorce, not mine.’

Lucy said nothing. She had heard the gossip about the brief illicit affair which had been the forerunner to Tom’s divorce. He was nice enough, but inclined to be rather self-indulgent and a little weak. At the moment he was too full of self-pity to be ready to admit that it was his own adultery which had led to Josy’s decision to divorce him, although Lucy suspected that there had been other problems in the marriage. She was not the kind of person who liked prying into the private lives of her friends.

‘God knows what I’m going to do with them. The kids, I mean. That damned flat is so small.’

Lucy watched him gravely. She suspected that Tom was already getting bored with playing the doting, misunderstood daddy. How long would it be before he found excuses for not seeing his children every week? How long would it be before he lost contact with them altogether? Lucy felt a small spurt of anger against him. His children loved him…needed him, and she did not doubt that he loved them, but she suspected that he loved himself more. She chastised herself for her thoughts. What right did she have to criticise? She had no children…no partner…she knew nothing of the stresses the break-up of a marriage could bring.

Even so, without intending to, she heard herself asking quietly, ‘Is it really too late, Tom, for you and Josy?’

They had been so very much in love when they had married, Tom twenty-six, the same age as she was now, Josy just twenty. Now, five years later, they were divorced, claiming that they no longer loved one another. But they had two small children, whom they both did love. What was wrong with society, Lucy wondered bleakly, that there should be so much confusion and suffering? She remembered clearly the love she had received from her parents, from both of them, and how she had felt when she had lost that love, and she had almost been adult.

‘You don’t approve, do you?’ Tom accused her suddenly, surprising her with his unexpected astuteness.

‘It has nothing to do with me, Tom,’ she told him mildly.

‘No,’ he agreed wryly. ‘But you haven’t answered my question, have you? You know what your trouble is, don’t you, Lucy? You’re out of touch with reality. You live in this rarefied world where everyone does the right thing, where everyone is perfect and behaves properly. My God, is it any wonder that you live there alone?’ he added, savagely shocking her with the vehemence of his words. Words that hurt her, even though she didn’t show it.

‘Wonderful, wonderful Lucy,’ he derided. ‘You’ve never put a foot wrong, have you? You’ll never make a mistake, will you…you’ll never fall in love with a married man…break your marriage vows…? You’d never do anything that isn’t perfectly correct, would you?’

Lucy fought not to show how much his anger had shocked her. Raw emotion of this kind frightened her, making her remember how she had felt when she had first learned of her parents’ death. Since then she had learned to control her emotions, not to show them, and somehow being in the presence of someone who didn’t share that kind of control made her feel nervous and vulnerable.

‘I hope I would never do anything that might hurt someone else,’ she told him gravely.

The look he gave her was bitter.

‘You don’t even begin to know what life’s about, do you?’ he challenged savagely. ‘Do you think I wanted to have an affair? Do you think I planned it?’

He was, Lucy recognised, under enormous emotional strain. She sincerely pitied him, but there was nothing she could do to help him. He might not have planned to be unfaithful, but surely there had been a point when he had known what was going to happen…a stage at which he could have chosen to draw back?

‘What happens if you fall in love with the wrong man, Lucy…a man who loves you in return but who’s committed to someone else…or do you simply think that that would never happen?’ he jeered.

Thankfully the bell for the second half rang before she needed to make any response, but Tom’s words stayed with her, challenging her. She would never allow herself to fall in love with a man who was committed to someone else. It simply could not happen, she knew that, but somehow Tom’s words, his anger, had unsettled her. He had made her sound so…so cold and emotionless, which she wasn’t. Why should she be made to feel like that? To love a man who was hurting someone else, cheating on someone else, a someone else who had every right to his love and his loyalty, to be with her—no, she could never do that. To rob another woman of her lover, children of their father. She knew too well how it felt to suffer that kind of loss.

They were both very quiet as Tom drove her home. When he parked outside the block of flats he apologised abruptly, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just…Well, it’s been one hell of a week. I wanted to see Josy…to talk to her, but she…’ He shrugged, and in the darkness Lucy could see the pain in his eyes. ‘I’m afraid I just took my frustration out on you.’

‘What else are friends for?’ Lucy asked him lightly.

He made no attempt to touch or kiss her, but then she had not expected that he would. They did not have that kind of relationship. Lucy had never encouraged her male friends and acquaintances to be physically affectionate towards her.

Even with her first lover she had remained slightly aloof and distant in public.

She smiled a little as she let herself into her flat.

She had been almost twenty-one when she had rather gravely decided that she could hardly remain a virgin forever. She and Harris had worked together. He had been five years her senior, a rather studious and quiet biochemist. They had got on well together and she had persuaded herself that she was in love with him. They had planned to get engaged, but almost immediately that they became lovers Lucy had realised that what she had mistaken for love was in actual fact merely affection and liking.

He had been a considerate lover, careful and gentle, but she had certainly not experienced with him anything intense enough to make her feel the way she knew other people felt about their men.

They had parted amicably and as friends. He had moved away from the area now and they had not remained in contact. She had no regrets about knowing him and even less about not marrying him.

Was Tom right? Was she over-controlled? She looked at her reflection gravely as she cleaned off her make-up. What was she supposed to do? Give in to every tiny emotion she felt, abandon herself to them, embellish and exaggerate them? No. That was not her way.

She told herself that she was being silly, that Tom had not meant to be deliberately hurtful, but somehow that made it worse.

Beyond her bedroom window was the familiar outline of the trees ringing the grounds surrounding the flats. The developer had been forced to keep those trees; she was lucky, living here. Maybe her neighbours were all elderly…maybe the flat was small, but at least it was hers. Her haven…her security.

She shivered a little. How much longer would she be able to keep it if Eric Barnes continued to press her to repair the cottage?

Beside her bed there was a photograph of her parents.

Her father had always wanted to be a painter. It was the one disappointment of his life that he was, as he had put it, good enough to know he was just not good enough. Lucy knew that sometimes it had frustrated him that he could only have as a hobby something he would have liked to have made his whole life.

The trip to Provence had been a special treat her parents had given themselves. A twenty-fifth wedding-anniversary present. Lucy wasn’t able to go with them because they had to take advantage of a cheaper out-of-school-holiday-time offer.

It had been a hot, dry summer, and when first she had heard of the fires sweeping France she had had no intimation, no intuitive sense of what was to come.

Her parents hadn’t been the only ones to lose their lives in those fires. There had been so many other deaths that perhaps it was understandable that the authorities had only been able to send that brusque telegram.

She had been alone when it had arrived, and at first she had not been able to take in what had happened.

She sat down on her bed, blinking rapidly, fiercely refusing to allow herself to cry. It was almost ten years ago now, but she still missed them…still missed their love.

She did not, as she knew some of his friends had, blame her father for not taking more financial precautions…for not at least insuring his life, so that there would be something for her. After all, how could he have known, any more than she had, what was to come? And her parents had given her one priceless, precious gift: they had given her love. The kind of love that Tom’s two small children did not have.

Was that part of the reason why she knew she could never do as so many others did and allow herself to become involved with someone who had commitments elsewhere? Or was she, as Tom had implied, simply too cold and prudish to ever experience the intense, heady physical desire that drove everything else out, including honour and self-respect?

Tiredly she climbed into bed. Rather than philosophising over something that was never likely to happen, she ought to be directing her thoughts to more important things. Like what she was going to do about the cottage and about its tenant.

Perhaps if she tried again to reason with Eric Barnes, to explain her situation…

A DINNER PARTY was the very last thing she felt like tonight, Lucy acknowledged as she stood under the shower, but Verity would never forgive her if she didn’t turn up. Her non-appearance would put out Verity’s numbers.

Perhaps because she had very little else to occupy her time Verity was almost obsessional about such things.

To Lucy’s knowledge, she had rung Don at least four times during the week to consult him about proposed changes in her planned menu.

Lucy had winced a little at the irritation she could hear in Don’s voice on the final occasion, but she had tactfully said nothing, and now here she was, getting ready to play the role Verity had set for her.

‘Of course, I’m partnering you with Niall Cameron,’ Verity had told her. ‘After all, you’re both single.’

‘Single? I thought you said he was living with someone,’ Lucy had reminded her.

‘Yes, he is, but you know what I mean. I meant that he’ll be coming alone, and so will you.’

‘I hope you aren’t thinking of doing any matchmaking,’ Lucy had told her drily.

‘Certainly not,’ Verity had assured her.

But she hadn’t been able to resist asking, ‘Have you met him yet? He really is—’

‘I haven’t met him, but I have seen him,’ Lucy had interrupted her, guessing what she was going to say. ‘He definitely isn’t my type.’

Verity’s eyes had rounded.

‘Lucy, he’s every woman’s type,’ she had told her fatuously.

‘I don’t like arrogant men,’ Lucy had overruled her, and for once Verity had seemed to have nothing to say.

No, it wasn’t going to be a particularly congenial evening, but she was too fond of Verity to upset her by refusing her invitation, and Don had been a good and generous boss to her. And, after all, what would she have to do, other than be polite to the man…a man who was one of their clients?

She gave a tiny shrug and then grimaced as she realised that she had soaped the same leg twice.

Lucy was as careful in buying her clothes as she was about everything else. Her job was such that she was often required to mix socially with Don’s clients, as indeed she was doing tonight and as she had done while in France, and, apart from her very casual clothes—the jeans she kept for the long country tramps she enjoyed, her tennis kit, her comfortable loose sweaters—most of her wardrobe was geared to her working life.

Tonight she was wearing a very simple dark blue creˆpe wool dress with a round neckline and a dropped waist. The skirt was gently gathered on the dropped waistline and narrowed elegantly towards the hem. It had long sleeves and fastened up the back with pearl buttons.

It was Italian, like a good many of her clothes, because the Italians seemed to specialise in clothes for women of her height.

With it she wore sheer tights and plain navy suede pumps. Her only jewellery was the things she had inherited from her mother. Three strands of good cultured pearls, her rings, a pair of pearl earrings and a very heavy red-gold bracelet.

The neckline of her dress wasn’t suitable for the pearls, so she wore the bracelet. Not for anything would she have ever admitted to anyone that she wore these things not just as a memento, but as a kind of safeguard…a security blanket for when she was feeling vulnerable.

As she brushed her hair she paused, wondering what she had to feel vulnerable about tonight. She knew everyone who was going to be there, everyone except Niall Cameron, and even he wasn’t a complete stranger to her. She had seen him; she knew a good deal about his business; she even knew that he had purchased the farm in his own name rather than in the joint names of himself and his lover. She smiled cynically to herself. That showed the kind of man he was, didn’t it? Not a man who believed in sharing, obviously.

She wondered briefly what the woman was like. Confident of herself and him, evidently; certainly confident enough to leave him for so many months while she was in New York.

She amused herself by building a mental picture of her. She would be tall and elegant, blonde, perhaps, with patrician features. Certainly not a pouty bimbo type. He would want a woman who could match him in style and looks, a woman who dressed as elegantly and expensively as he did himself; a woman who would look equally as at home in the sophisticated cities of the world as she would standing beside that immaculately polished Discovery, her hair just slightly touched by the breeze, a couple of gun dogs at her side…chocolate-brown ones, of course. An unkind smile touched Lucy’s mouth. She was being bitchy and probably very unfair, she told herself, but she just couldn’t help it; there was something about the man, something about the way he had looked at her…virtually as though she had been an interloper, which had grated on her.

Was that how she felt, secretly? Did she feel she was an outsider…that she was alone? A tiny tremulous sensation fluttered inside her.

Of course not. Now she was being silly. She had good friends…close friends…and, if she didn’t get a move on, one of those friends was going to be extremely irritated with her, she reminded herself.

Verity hated people being late. Surprisingly, perhaps, she was an excellent cook, and if nothing else Lucy knew that she would enjoy her dinner.

There were several other cars in the drive when Lucy arrived, including the Discovery. It was, Lucy was amused to note, not quite as immaculate as it had been when she had first seen it. There were distinct signs of mud-splashes on its shiny paintwork, and in the light from the powerful security lights around the house she could see how that same mud was clinging to the vehicle’s tyres.

She wondered mischievously if his highly polished shoes had suffered the same fate. From what she remembered, the farm’s cobbled yard was every bit as dirty as the lane.

Once that farm had been owned by her family, and let to tenants, but that had been before she was born.

She realised when Don let her in that she was the last to arrive. The others were gathered in the drawing-room, exchanging chit-chat over their pre-dinner drinks.

Don, knowing that she didn’t drink, immediately poured her a glass of mineral water.

She had seen Niall Cameron the moment she had walked into the room. He was standing by the fireplace and was deep in conversation with Bill Broughton, a local builder. His wife was also with them, gazing very attentively at Niall Cameron. Bill had been a widower for eight years when he had married Amanda. She was fifteen years younger than him, thirty-five to his fifty, which must have made her around the same age as Niall Cameron, Lucy guessed.

She didn’t know why, because she certainly wasn’t staring at them, but for some reason something must have alerted Niall Cameron to her observation, because he turned his head and then moved so that he had an unobstructed view of her.

Did he recognise her? Had he really seen her in her car, or was he simply trying to place her? Her heart was beating a little bit too fast. She was suddenly sharply conscious of the sounds all around her, people’s voices, the chink of glasses, hyper-sensitively aware, hyper-conscious that Niall Cameron was watching her.

‘I think I’ll go and see if Verity wants a hand in the kitchen,’ she told Don huskily.

She had seen Niall Cameron start to move. It was ridiculous to imagine that he was intending to seek her out…absurd for her to feel that she must escape, especially when she was going to be seated with him at dinner, but for once her physical reactions were outside her mental control.

‘Verity has Mary to help her,’ Don was telling her, obviously puzzled, but Lucy ignored him, heading for the kitchen, where she found Verity instructing Mary Lewis. Mary was a widow and lived alone. As she had once told Lucy, she enjoyed helping out at dinner parties and functions because it allowed her to add to her income without tying her down too much. Lucy smiled at her as she entered the kitchen.

Verity, as always, looked immaculate, her nails lacquered, her silk dress free of any kind of crease.

‘Mm…watercress soup,’ Lucy enthused as she saw their first course.

‘Yes, and salmon to follow.’ Verity made a face. ‘Rather dull, really, but Don loves it. I don’t think I’ve got any veggies. I didn’t check with Niall Cameron, although he doesn’t look…’

‘No, definitely a blood-red-meat man,’ Lucy agreed sardonically.

Verity gave her a confused look. ‘I thought you hadn’t met him yet.’

Lucy sighed. Much as she liked Verity, she had to admit that they weren’t always on the same wavelength.

‘Shall I help?’ she offered, but Verity immediately shook her head.

‘No, no. Everything’s under control.’ She turned to Mary. ‘You’ll bring the soup through in five minutes, won’t you, Mary?’ she checked as she shooed Lucy out of the kitchen and then followed her, saying, ‘Where’s Don? I want him to get everyone into the dining-room.’

As she took her seat Lucy was amused to note the tiny silver apples holding name-place cards. Trust Verity.

She was just about to sit down when she heard someone saying, ‘Allow me.’

It had to be Niall Cameron, of course. She tensed as he pulled out the chair for her, and then turned to thank him.

He was taller close to than she had expected. Six feet plus. He was also extremely broad-shouldered, more so than she would have imagined, and, although his suit fitted him perfectly, she had an uneasy feeling that the body beneath it was somehow very primitive and male. It was an odd feeling for her to have. She didn’t normally entertain any kind of thoughts about men’s bodies, primitive or otherwise.

‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

His voice was deep, its tone measured and polite, but certainly not effusive. He was being courteous, but not making any kind of attempt to impress her.

‘No, not yet…not officially,’ she agreed. ‘I’m Lucy Howard.’

‘Yes.’

He didn’t smile at her, and a tiny trickle of nervous awareness touched her skin. It seemed that her prejudices against him were matched, if not surpassed, by his against her. Certainly there was no warmth in his eyes when he looked at her. Rather the opposite. He was openly studying her, assessing her, and not in the way that she was used to being assessed by the male sex.

‘I…I work for Don,’ she added quickly, and then wondered why on earth she had felt it necessary to add that explanation…that apology almost.

‘Yes,’ he agreed again.

They were both sitting down now. Mary was serving the soup and, since the man seated on her left was busily engaged in conversation with the woman to his left, Lucy had no option but at least make some attempt to converse with Niall Cameron.

‘You’re a newcomer to the area,’ she began.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Unlike you. Your family are very well known locally. Large landowners.’