A Daughter For Christmas

His hair was dark, almost black, as were his lashes, and contrasted disconcertingly with the inscrutable seagreen of his eyes.

‘Do you intend to sit down, Miss Walker?’ he asked unsmilingly, ‘or do you intend to remain clutching the back of the chair and staring at me?’

His words snapped her back to her senses and she sat in a rush of embarrassed confusion. She could feel her heart pounding under her ribcage, and the sheer enormity of trying to sift out what she was going to say left her tongue-tied

It didn’t help that he offered no encouragement whatsoever. He may well have agreed to meet her—a brief interlude between meetings, judging from his impeccably tailored grey suit—but he wasn’t going to make her task easy.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began, ‘to have sprung myself on you like this.’ She laughed nervously and fiddled with the stem of her empty wine glass. He neither smiled nor did his expression relax. He merely folded his arms and waited for her to carry on. Leigh felt as though she finally knew what it must have felt like, trying to plead your case before the Spanish Inquisition. She didn’t dare meet his eyes.

‘I guess you must be a little curious as to why I made contact with you...?’ She left that as an unspoken question, hovering in the air between them.

‘A little...yes,’ he drawled.

Their drinks were brought to them, and Leigh gulped a mouthful of mineral water. Anything to steady her nerves. She wished she had ordered a double whisky on the rocks. She could have bolted it back in one swallow and that would have loosened her up, if nothing else.

There were no menus. George, who looked much more human now that she had proved herself to be no intruder, informed them that there was a choice of roast beef, with all the trimmings, roast lamb, with all the trimmings, or poached salmon.

They both ordered the same thing—the salmon—and as George left them she looked at Nicholas’s hard, immutable face with helpless foreboding.

‘So,’ he said finally, ‘are you going to tell me why you contacted me? I’m intrigued, but not so intrigued that I intend to waste my time, trying to drag it out of you bit by reluctant bit.’ He swallowed some of his whisky and tonic and surveyed her dispassionately over the rim of the glass.

Leigh wondered what her sister could have seen in this man. Sure, he had a certain style, but he was hardly full of warmth and gaiety, was he? Or maybe, she thought, in the right circumstances he was a bundle of laughs. Then, again, her sister had probably not seen him at all. He had simply been the recipient of her own personal, distressing frame of mind at the time.

‘I’m not sure where to start,’ Leigh said honestly. She wished that she had never arranged to meet him. She wished, frantically, that she had never found herself in the situation that she had, torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, assured of disaster whatever course she chose to take. In a way she almost wished that her sister had never burdened her with this terrible confidence, although she could understand why she had done it. She had wanted to go with a clear conscience.

‘Try the beginning

’ he told her abruptly.

‘Right In that case, I have to start around eight years ago.’ She lowered her eyes, as though not seeing him might dull the impact of what she had to say. She could feel his attention on her, though, wrapped around her like something tangible and forbidding.

‘Majorca, nearly eight years ago. A large, expensive, secluded hotel on the coast.’

Business had been booming then. Order books had been full. She could remember it clearly. Jenny had been married a year at the most and she should have been in the throes of newly wedded bliss, but she had been depressed.

At the time Leigh had questioned her but she hadn’t persisted. She had only been a teenager then and her sister’s problems had hardly been able to dent the youthful bubble around her. Besides, she’d naively assumed that nothing could really be amiss with Jenny—Jenny, who had always been there for her, always looked out for her, the prop which had never wavered ever since their parents had died, leaving them with only each other to turn to.

‘Majorca.’ Nicholas frowned, and she could see him trying to dredge up memories from years back. ‘I could have been there.’ He shrugged noncommittally. ‘What’s the relevance? If you’re going to try and convince me that I met you there, you’d better try again. I’ve never seen you in my life before, and I never forget a face.’

No, he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who ever forgot a face. Who ever forgot anything, come to that.

Their food was served. It was a reprieve from trying to figure out just how she was going to tell her little tale, and Leigh gazed at it, weak with relief for the temporary distraction.

Nicholas Kendall had a strong effect on her, though she didn’t quite know what it was. She assumed it was because he represented a type she had never encountered in her life before. Certainly, he was as far removed from her sister’s husband as to make you wonder whether they even belonged to the same species.

Roy had been a simple, cheerful man, with the rounded frame of someone who enjoyed his food and drink a bit too much. She had always wondered, in fact, what her sister had ever seen in him. Physically, that was, because Jenny was everything to look at that she, Leigh, had never been. They had been the same height, but there the similarity had ended.

Blonde as opposed to Titian, long, wavy hair as opposed to short and straight, a voluptuous body as opposed to the boyishly slender build which Leigh had long ago discovered did very little to bolster her attractiveness to the opposite sex. In the end she had simply accepted the truth that opposites attract.

Now, though, it was something of a shock to be confronted by the man with whom her sister had had her fated one-night stand.

‘I’m still waiting to hear what you have to say, Miss Walker.’

Leigh looked at him and eventually said in a low voice, ‘You’re quite right, Mr Kendall. We’ve never met before. But you did meet my sister.’ She paused in the face of the difficult task of persuading him of the veracity of the claim. Someone more ordinary might well have remembered the isolated incident with Jenny. This man was not ordinary, however. Would he remember one face, one night, eight years ago amid a sea of doubtless willing women?

The eyes, focused on her, were sharper now, picking up clues and trying to fit the pieces together.

‘Jennifer Stewart,’ Leigh said in a low voice. ‘She looked nothing like me. She was blonde, very extrovert. She was in Majorca for a week, mixing business and pleasure. She had a contract to do the design work for a part of the hotel they were in the process of extending.’

‘I had to get out of England, away from Roy. I felt awful, but I just had to think... I was mad, griefstricken

’ she had told Leigh in the hospital, her voice barely audible.

Nicholas Kendall recognised her. Leigh could see it in his eyes. She didn’t know whether it had been the description or whether he remembered Jennifer because she had been there on business, but remember her he did. He stiffened very slightly. His eyes, which had been uninviting to begin with, now regarded her coldly, as though suspicious of whatever motive had brought her to this encounter. He was, she thought, waiting to shoot her down in flames.

‘Quite an eye-stopper

’ he said, looking at her and making comparisons.

‘Yes, she was.’ She looked him fully in the face. ‘Unlike me.’

He didn’t deny it. ‘I remember her because she seemed driven at the time. A little too full of it. Too much laughter, too much chatter, too much drink. How is she?’

It was a polite question. Jennifer had meant nothing to him. She was a quick gallop down memory lane. How ironic that a passing memory would now rise up from nowhere to alter everything in his life, whatever his reaction to her news might be.

‘She died in an automobile accident sixteen months ago,’ Leigh said abruptly. She toyed with the food in front of her, eating it half-heartedly and shoving the remainder around her plate the way Amy did with her vegetables.

‘You have my sympathy.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I still don’t understand what all this has to do with me, however.’

‘Mr Kendall,’ Leigh said slowly, putting down her knife and fork and looking ruefully at the half-finished plate of food. It was delicious food but her appetite had deserted her, if it had ever been there in the first place. ‘Are you married?’ Magazine and newspaper articles had made no mention of a wife, but who knew how these people operated? Fast-lane lives with open marriages.

Thickly fringed green eyes narrowed on her. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Are you?’

‘I am not.’

Leigh released her breath. Well, that was one less issue that would have to be navigated. The Lord knew, there were enough obstacles, without that being one of them.

‘Just say what you have to say, Miss Walker. I’m getting very tired of playing these word games with you. I have no idea why you’re here and, frankly I’m beginning to regret my decision to meet you in the first place. You said in the letter that you had something to tell me. Well, tell me.’ He took another glance at his watch. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

‘You slept with my sister, Mr Kendall. One night...’

He leaned forward and the black threat on his face made her draw back sharply. ‘Yes, I did, Miss Walker. Two consenting adults. If you’re going to try and blackmail me in any way whatsoever you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

‘I have no intention of blackmailing you, Mr Kendall.’ She stared at him with loathing. Just what sort of world did this man move in where blackmail was something that featured on the menu? ‘I’ve come here to break some rather...unexpeeted news. I’ve come to tell you that you’re a father. You have a seven-year-old daughter. Her name is Amy.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT!’ The colour had drained from Nicholas Kendall’s face and his body was rigid.

‘I know that this must come as a shock to you—’ Leigh began, and he cut in swiftly, leaning forward, with his elbows on the table.

‘What the hell are you playing at? You breeze in here and have the bare-faced nerve to present me with the most deranged story I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and then you talk to me about shock. I have no idea what’s going on in that head of yours, but you must be certifiable if you think that you can try and hold a virtual stranger to ransom over some fabricated piece of nonsense.’

Leigh couldn’t recall ever having felt so intimidated in her life before. His expression conveyed shock, disbelief and, now that his colour had returned, a terrible calm. She was reminded of the calm before a storm.

‘It’s not fabricated, Mr Kendall.’ She leaned forward and her voice was urgent. ‘Why should I waste my time, fabricating something like this? Do you think that I haven’t got better things to do with my time? I’m not playing at anything. Believe me when I tell you that the very last place I want to be right now is here, breaking this news to you.’

‘But you felt that you had to...’ His mouth twisted cynically and she flinched ‘You must have taken leave of your senses if you think that I’m going to fall for the oldest con trick in the world.’ He sat back, but there was nothing relaxed about his posture. Even though he had drawn away from her she still felt as intimidated as when his body had been thrust forward, menacing her.

‘Con trick...?’ She looked at him in bewilderment

‘And don’t play the innocent with me. I’m not sure what you and your sister have cooked up between you, but you’re crazy to think that I’m idiot enough to believe a word of what you’re saying. You must have thought you’d hit jackpot when I agreed to having remembered your sister. What I don’t understand is why she sent you on her behalf. Did she think that your fresh-faced, onlyjust-out-of-high-school look might have had a bit more sway?’

‘I told you, Mr Kendall, my sister was killed in a car accident almost a year and a half ago. And this isn’t some kind of con trick. You think that I want to be here? What kind of person do you imagine that I am?’

‘Presumably one like your sister, Miss Walker.’

‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’

‘Why don’t you try working it out for yourself?’ he answered in a smooth, soft, menacing voice.

‘Nothing you’re saying makes any sense. I came here—’

‘Having cooked up a plot with your sister—’

‘Having done nothing of the sort!’ Every instinct in Leigh urged her to get up and leave, but however angry and insulted she was she knew that she could obey none of those instincts. She was utterly trapped—condemned, at least, to conclude what she had begun.

‘Get it through your head, Mr Kendall...’ she glared at him with loathing ‘...that egotistical, arrogant head of yours, that I’m not here on some harebrained scheme dreamt up by anyone...’

‘Just a courtesy call to let me know that I’m a father...’ His eyes narrowed to slits, and she half expected him to stand up and inform her that he had had enough of her time-wasting. She knew that if he did that, if he walked out on her now, then her audience with him was gone for ever.

‘No, of course this isn’t a courtesy call!’ She felt a sense of hopeless misery, welling up inside her. Her hands were clenched into tight fists.

‘Which really only leaves us one other possibility—wouldn’t you agree, Miss Walker?’

She looked at him and felt once more at the mercy of an overwhelming personality. This, she reckoned, was the last place in the world she would choose to be. Shark-infested waters would be preferable.

‘I’m not trying to con you, Mr Kendall,’ she said stubbornly, miserably.

‘I dislike stupidity, Miss Walker. I dislike it even more when people try and camouflage it with guile.’ He regarded her coldly and she met his wintry eyes with a sudden rush of hot, giddy anger.

‘This was a mistake,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to come here.’ She stood up, realising that her legs were unsteady.

‘Sit down!’

‘Go to hell!’ She began to walk away. Her whole body was hot and trembling. She needed to get some cool air on her face. In a minute she would combust—at least, that was how she felt She was hardly aware of him behind her until she felt his fingers around her arm, slowing her down.

‘Take your hands off me,’ she snarled through gritted teeth, ‘or I’ll scream my head off loud enough to have all these stuffed people in here running for cover.’

Something flickered in his eyes—she couldn’t tell what—and he removed his hand.

‘I’m not through with you yet, Miss Walker. Your little plan may have backfired and you may well want to beat a tactical retreat now but you can forget it. You started this and you’ll damn well finish it, and I may as well warn you that blackmail is a crime.’

‘Don’t you threaten me!’ She stared at him in wide-eyed horror. Crime? What was he talking about? She hadn’t done anything wrong but she felt like a criminal.

‘Oh, dear, losing your grip on the proceedings?’ He gave a short, acid laugh.

‘You’re mad,’ she said flatly. ‘Completely mad. You can believe what you like about my motives for being here, but if you have no intention of hearing me out I certainly don’t intend to stay here while you have fun, pulling me to shreds.’ She met his eyes, without blinking.

He didn’t answer. He stared back at her in silence and she knew that he was working out whether to give her a chance to say what she had come to say, even if it confirmed every accusation he had levelled against her, or whether to have her thrown out and put the whole thing down to an unpleasant episode with a crackpot.

‘We’ll talk in one of the sitting rooms,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m prepared to listen to what you have to say but, so help me, if this is a ploy to get money out of me I’ll personally see to it that you regret the day you—’

‘Are you accusing me of gold-digging?’ Leigh whispered, trying hard to feel relief and gratitude instead of sheer fury at his assaults.

They were walking through another part of the building, towards what she now saw was yet another sitting area, though not one of those she had passed on the way in. Its only occupant was a man who was well into his seventies and was fast asleep with a newspaper open on his lap. The room was furnished in dark reds, heavy colours that brought to mind images of clarets and ports and the savouring of fine wines. There was a very masculine feel to it which was daunting though not entirely unpleasant.

They sat in chairs furthest away from the sleeping man, facing one another like combatants. Which, she considered bleakly, was what they were.

‘I’m an extremely wealthy man, Miss Walker. It does tend to instil a certain amount of cynicism.’

Leigh didn’t say anything. She was here, she knew, for help. True, she had not come voluntarily, but because she had found herself in a corner from which all other routes seemed barred. But wasn’t she appealing for some kind of financial assistance when all was said and done? It was a humiliating situation in which to find herself, particularly because Nicholas Kendall had no intention of letting her off the hook with pleasantries. He was accommodating her now, but only because he was curious.

‘I suppose so,’ she admitted reluctantly, linking her fingers together on her lap.

‘You suppose so?’

‘Yes. well, I really have no experience of... I’ve never mixed in circles...’ She had no real idea what he’d meant when he’d said that he was extremely wealthy but she was beginning to get an idea. It was there in the deference of George, in his self-assurance, which spoke of someone accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed, and in the cut of his clothes.

It was stamped on him so clearly that he might just as well have been carrying a sign on his forehead. A ready target for gold-diggers, she assumed. More so because of his compelling good looks.

Not many men had such a combination. The thought of anyone cultivating someone else because of the size of their bank balance was something she found so distasteful, however, that she could barely get her mind around it.

Another elderly man, who bore a striking resemblance to George and treated Nicholas in the same deferential manner, took an order for two coffees. As soon as he had left, Nicholas leaned forward and said bluntly, ‘So you’re telling me that I went to Majorca eight years ago, spent one night with your sister and I am the father of a seven-year-old child as a result.’

Leigh nodded.

‘And if all that is true, which I don’t for a minute concede it is, why have you only now come to me with this information? Why didn’t your sister tell me about the pregnancy? She knew my name, she could have tracked me down without a great deal of difficulty. I’m well known in financial circles.’

‘It’s a long story,’ Leigh replied nervously.

‘I’m all ears.’ He sat back, crossed his legs and regarded her with those bottomless green eyes. ‘I’m eager to know why you would suddenly decide that my paternal rights might count for something.’

He might be sitting here, she thought, he might have told her that he was prepared to hear what she had to say, but she could tell from the look on his face that he was less prepared to believe what he might hear.

‘My sister was married at the time you met her,’ Leigh began slowly, and his eyebrows shot up.

‘Really? Well, she certainly kept quiet about that.’

‘She would have been wearing a wedding ring,’ Leigh pointed out, and he shrugged.

‘I don’t automatically look at a woman’s finger when she’s in the process of throwing herself at me.’

‘Oh, I see. You just take what’s on offer.’

‘Before you start questioning my morals, I’d advise you to look a little more closely at your sister’s, Miss Walker.’

He made it sound as though Jenny had been nothing more than a common tramp, and Leigh clamped down on the temptation to launch into a vitriolic defence of her sister’s state of mind at the time.

Jenny had been no tramp, she knew that She had thrown herself into her night of insanity with the abandon of someone trying to forget the present, drowning her sorrow in a single act whose repercussions she could never have foreseen.

‘Jenny had her reasons for her behaviour, Mr Kendall,’ she said coldly. ‘What were yours?’

He didn’t like that His face darkened. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come here to debate my morals, Miss Walker, but if it’s of any interest to you I tried to get in touch with her the following morning, only to find that she had checked out.’

‘And what a blow that must have been to you.’

‘No one speaks to me like that!’

‘I can speak to you any way I please.’ She couldn’t, she knew, but wisdom was trailing very far behind a reckless desire to speak her mind, whatever the consequences. She refused to be cowed by his money and power.

‘I don’t fool around with married women.’

Leigh shrugged, abandoning the impulse to give him a lecture on Men Of His Type. What was the point? He said that he didn’t fool around with married women. What was to be gained by debating the issue? Besides, maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he was loaded with moral virtue, maybe principles were coming out of his ears. If that were the case, then it was unfortunate for him that his looks seemed to tell a different story.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘whatever. Your principles are your business and they have nothing to do with why I’m here.’ He looked as though he wanted to shake her into agreeing with him, and she ignored the look on his face. ‘Jenny was married at the time and...’ she scoured her brain for the right way of saying what she was about to say ’...things weren’t going too well. Or, rather, they were going very well, but—’

‘Perhaps you could get your facts straight...’

‘I would if you’d give me half a chance!’ She glared at him, pausing while George’s clone sidled towards their table and deposited a tray with percolated coffee, cups, saucers, sugar and milk.

‘She had just had some bad news,’ Leigh hissed, leaning forward and sloshing coffee and milk into her cup. Let him pour his own. If he found it so difficult to be civil to her she was damned if she was going to make an effort to show any civility towards him. This whole meeting was turning out to be a full-blown disaster, anyway.

‘Odd way to react to bad news, don’t you think?’ He poured his coffee—no milk—and sat back in the chair and regarded her coldly. ‘Leaving the country for a jaunt in a foreign hotel away from hearth and home and, now you tell me, husband.’

‘You don’t understand...’

‘If she was that blissfully married why didn’t she talk out with her husband whatever problems she was having? You haven’t exactly thought out this story logically, have you, Miss Walker? Or did you think that I’d fall for whatever you said to me, hook, line and sinker, with no questions asked?’

Two bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks, and Leigh swallowed back the renewed temptation to storm out of the club.

‘Look, Mr Kendall,’ she said evenly, ‘I realise that you think yourself the world’s most eligible bachelor. You seem to think that no woman could possibly approach you unless her intentions were devious, which, incidentally, is a very sad state of affairs, but I assure you that I haven’t lain in bed, plotting and planning this meeting. I’m here because I’ve found myself in the position of having no other option.’

‘World’s most eligible bachelor...’ He linked his fingers together and a half-smile crossed his darkly cynical face, though not quite reaching his eyes which remained cool and shrewd. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ His eyes caught hers and held them fractionally too long for Leigh’s comfort.