Charade Of The Heart

Charade Of The Heart

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

CHAPTER ONE

BETH LOOKED CAREFULLY at her sister and counted to ten. It was difficult, but she wanted to find exactly the right words to explain, without resorting to downright exasperation, that there was absolutely no way she was even going to contemplate taking part in this juvenile scheme.

They had reached an age when these sorts of escapades should long have been left behind. When on earth was Laura ever going to grow up? It was tiring always being the one to frown and nod sagely and act reasonable.

‘Well?’ Laura prompted. ‘What do you think?’

Have you got a few days to spare? Beth asked herself. She looked at her sister’s flushed face, framed by the tangle of long auburn hair, and sighed.

‘It’s the craziest idea you’ve ever come up with,’ she said, with what she considered a huge amount of restraint, ‘and there’s no chance that you’re going to get me involved with it. I would rather spend the rest of my life in a snake pit. So you can wipe that grin off your face and leave my lunch alone.’

They were sitting in her kitchen, a cosy yellow room with pale, speckled wallpaper and matching curtains which had taken Beth ages to make. She tapped her sister’s hand, which had been making surreptitious inroads into her plate of salad, and considered the matter resolutely closed.

‘Oh, Beth.’ Laura slipped out of her chair and went around to her sister, folding her arms around her neck. ‘It’s not that crazy, really it isn’t, not when you think about it. And it’s the only thing I can think of.’ Beth could hear the tears in her sister’s voice and hardened her heart. Laura had the knack of turning the tears on with alarming ease and she wasn’t going to fall for it. Not this time.

She bit into a lettuce leaf liberally soaked with salad cream and didn’t say a word.

‘You’re mad,’ she muttered finally, disengaging herself from her sister’s stranglehold and clearing away the table.

Laura followed her to the kitchen sink and dipped her finger into the basin of soapy water, trailing it into circular patterns, her long hair hanging forward and hiding her face.

‘You’re so unsympathetic,’ she muttered. ‘Here I am, in the worst fix in my life, and you’re not prepared to do anything at all to help. I was counting on you, Beth. Why do you think I drove all the way up here in this weather? If I had known that you wouldn’t give me the time of day, then I’d have stayed at home and…and…’ Her voice trembled, and Beth sighed again.

‘I’m not unsympathetic,’ she said gently. ‘Stunned perhaps, but not unsympathetic. I mean, how on earth could you have let yourself become pregnant? Don’t tell me that it just slipped your mind that there are about a million types of contraceptives available.’

She eyed the half-completed washing-up with resignation and led her sister into the lounge.

Like the kitchen, it was small, but imaginatively furnished. Beth’s job as secretary-cum-bookkeeper in a small electronics company didn’t pay that much. It was all she could do to meet the mortgage on her tiny two-bedroomed flat. But it was hers and she had decorated it as tastefully as she could on a minuscule budget.

Whenever she felt like giving up, she told herself that things would improve as soon as she had completed her accountancy course and could find herself a better job. All that studying she had to do in her free time would pay dividends.

By nature she was an optimist. Didn’t they say that every cloud had a silver lining?

Laura had collapsed on to one of the chairs and was hugging a cushion. A picture of misery. Beth looked at her doubtfully. This didn’t seem like any act, although it was hard to tell. Laura had the ability to look woebegone if the weather report began with showers and light snow.

‘Look,’ Beth said calmly, ‘there’s no point weeping and wailing. You’re pregnant, with no chance of marrying the father of the child. You’ll just have to do what anyone else in your situation would do. Work for as long as you can and then leave. You’ve said that you can’t go back to the job as you haven’t been there long enough to qualify for maternity leave. So what? It’s hardly the end of the world.’

She bit back the temptation to lecture on the sheer insanity of becoming involved with a married man, not to mention becoming pregnant by him. Her sister had enough problems on her plate without that.

From the sound of it, though, Beth could think of a thousand better places to put her loyalty than with a creep who had knowingly involved himself with Laura when his responsibilities lay elsewhere. He didn’t know about the pregnancy but she seriously doubted that that would have influenced his actions. He had left her sister high and dry after a three-month fling. A baby on the way was hardly likely to have changed that.

Couldn’t Laura have suspected the sort of man he was?

‘It’s the end of the world for me,’ Laura said, in between sobs. Beth handed her a box of tissues. ‘Jobs like mine don’t grow on trees, you know. I love it there. It pays more than I could ever hope to get in a lifetime of doing secretarial work.’

‘Then you should have thought about all that before you got yourself into this situation.’

‘How was I to know that David…’ there was another onslaught of weeping and she blew her nose noisily into a tissue ‘…that David was married? He didn’t tell me until he decided to walk out. And by then it was too late. I was already pregnant. And I’m still in love with him,’ she finished miserably.

‘Surely not,’ Beth said, aghast.

‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’ There was an edge of accusation in Laura’s voice now. ‘You’ve never been in love. Not even with Craig. It’s easy for you to sit there and sound horrified just because I haven’t had the common sense to have acted the way you would have done! You don’t know what it’s like! You’ve always been so sensible. When Dad died, you were the one who was strong enough to support Mum, and when she remarried you were the one who told me not to cry because that would only make her unhappy, and, when they both went to Australia to live last year, you were the one who waved them off at the airport and told me that life had to go on!’

Beth felt the prick of tears behind her eyes. Laura had managed to make her sound like a monster, but she was practical, that was all. Was that some sort of crime? As for Craig…she preferred not to dwell on that and pushed it to the back of her mind. Easy enough to do. Laura was right about that, at any rate. She hadn’t been in love with him, had felt no fireworks. When he had broken off their relationship she had been upset, but not distraught, had picked up the pieces and carried on. It was the only way, wasn’t it?

Now her sister had sprung this latest escapade on her, and had expected…what?

She had spent a lifetime reacting in the only way she had known how to her sister’s recklessness. Now that control, that inability to become involved, had become as much part of her as the colour of her hair or the shape of her nose.

‘You’re being unfair!’ she protested uncomfortably.

‘No, I’m not. You don’t want to understand. In a minute you’ll start telling me to pull myself together.’

‘I just don’t know what to do,’ Beth objected. ‘I’m not some sort of miracle-worker. I understand, honestly, and I’ll help in whatever way I can, you know that. I’ll baby-sit, I’ll buy things for it, as much as I can afford, I’ll even sell my flat and move up to London to be closer to you. What more do you want me to say?’

Silly question. Beth waited for the inevitable response.

‘You know how you can help me, if you really want to,’ Laura insisted stubbornly. There were smudges on her face from where the tears had dried, giving her a fragile, pathetic appearance.

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Beth said helplessly, but there was less determination in her voice now, and Laura sensed it, moving in like a shark that had scented blood and was homing in for the kill.

‘It could work,’ she said earnestly, moving forward closer, impatiently sweeping her hair away from her face. ‘Come with me, I’ll show you.’

She stood up and held out her hand. Beth reluctantly took it, allowing herself to be led into the bedroom. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

Laura guided her to the tall mirror that stood next to the dressing-table in the bedroom.

Outside the wind was fierce and relentless, rattling the window-panes ever so slightly. It was a perfectly dark night, the moon obscured by the dense layers of cloud that had hung over the country for the past few days.

Inside, the bedside lamps threw patterns of light and shadow across the room and the overhead light with its pretty apricot shade picked out the figures of the sisters, illuminating them.

Beth looked silently at their reflections, seeing them through Laura’s eyes and reluctantly understanding what had inspired her sister’s hare-brained plan.

Two women, both the same height, both the same shape, both with the same oval faces and luminous green eyes. Identical twins.

She was the first to look away, throwing herself on to the bed and staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

Trading places. It had been a ridiculous game when they were children, but they weren’t children now. They were women in their early twenties, and surely the time for ridiculous games was over?

Laura sat on the bed, her knees pulled up to her chin.

‘Please, Beth, do it for me. It can work. I’m sure of it. Would I jeopardise my whole life if I didn’t believe that?’

You’re mad enough, Beth felt tempted to say.

‘My boss would never notice,’ she continued persuasively. ‘He’s hardly ever there. He owns a string of hotels worldwide, not to mention enough other business interests that keep him out of the country for weeks on end. My orders tend to come by phone or fax. And when he is around he’s always far too busy to notice me other than in the capacity of the secretary who follows his dictates.’

‘Sounds a treasure,’ Beth said drily.

‘You know what I mean. He breathes, eats and sleeps work. No, maybe not sleeps. He had enough women around to fulfil him on that score.’

‘Charming.’

‘But what I’m saying to you is this: we don’t have the sort of close working relationship that would make him notice any difference if you replaced me. He probably wouldn’t even see that our hairstyles were different and, if he did, you could tell him that you had had your hair cut.’

‘And you like working for this man?’ Beth sat up, propping her head on her elbow and staring curiously at her sister. The man hardly sounded like a comfortable type to be around.

‘I love it. I’ve never had so much responsibility in a job in my life before. That’s why I’m so desperate to hang on to it. As far as I’m concerned, working for Marcos Adrino is the best thing that ever happened to me. That—’ she patted her stomach ‘—and the baby. It’s all I have left of David, and I’m happy with that.’

‘Oh, yes, the baby. So I’m to cunningly replace you at the Adrino corporation, not arousing so much as a whisker of suspicion, while you move into my flat and temp until the baby’s born, and then what?’

‘And then,’ Laura elaborated, her eyes positively gleaming now that victory was tantalisingly within reach, ‘and then I move back up to London and take up where you left off. My friend Katie is a professional child-minder. She’s already promised to look after it.’

‘Convenient.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Laura agreed, unaware of the oblique sarcasm in her sister’s voice.

‘And how do I cope with all those little details like knowing the layout of the office? The filing system?’ Why, Beth wondered, am I actually allowing my curiosity to encourage Laura in her mad ideas?

‘I’ll fill you in on that. It all runs remarkably smoothly. Marcos told me when I first applied for the job that the secret of a successful office lay in its simplicity. Everything documented and on computer so that no one was indispensable to the company.’

‘Except him, of course.’

‘Right.’ Laura’s voice was full of awe.

The man obviously had something, Beth thought, although from where she was sitting that something sounded very much like a healthy dose of arrogance.

‘And don’t you think that other people might notice our little swap?’

‘Not likely. Marcos’s office occupies the top floor of the building, and there are only a handful of people there. The two vice-presidents who work for him, and their secretaries, whom I have very little to do with.’

She rattled off their names and Beth held up her hand to staunch the flow of information.

‘And what about my job?’ she asked. ‘Do I just tell them that I’m taking seven months’ leave to help my sister out in a scheme that could have come straight out of a third-rate movie, but to hang on, I’ll be back?’

‘You quit.’

‘I quit.’

‘Sure. Why not? You know that you’re only there because it’s convenient and because it helps pay the mortgage. I can get a temp job somewhere and pay your mortgage, and you can use my huge salary for the next seven months to build up that little nest-egg you’re always telling me you wish you had.’

‘I see.’

Beth could hardly credit her sister with the forethought she had taken in preparing the ground plan of all this. For every question, she had an answer, and all of the answers were logical in a bizarre way.

‘Besides,’ Laura continued, ‘you told me how much you’d like to get out of here for a bit, to put a little distance between you and Craig. Here’s your chance.’

‘It was wishful thinking!’ Beth objected weakly. ‘Besides, I’ve got over all that.’

‘Have you?’

Beth looked at her sister and sighed. She knew what lay behind this piercing concern for her emotional well-being. It had little to do with the state of her heart and much more to do with the fact that it would fit in very nicely with her plans, thank you very much.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘I have. I don’t look like someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown, do I? I’m quite grateful to him in a way; he taught me a valuable lesson about the male species. They’re best left alone.’

She had enjoyed an undemanding relationship with Craig for seven months before he’d left her for someone else. Men like that, she had decided, instilled caution when it came to the rest of their sex. She wouldn’t be getting involved with another man for a very long time indeed, and she could have told her sister that dragging up that unfortunate episode and tacking it on to her arguments was useless.

She didn’t, though. Talking about Craig still made her feel vaguely disillusioned, and Beth preferred not to dwell on anything that served no purpose other than to depress her.

Instead she offered her own counter-argument. ‘And Mum? Do you think that Mum will give this little venture her blessing?’

Laura sat upright and adopted a complacent expression which sent chills down Beth’s spine. It was the same expression she had seen whenever her sister was about to confront a problem with an irrefutably foolproof answer.

‘That’s the beauty of it,’ she said smugly. ‘You know how Mum’s always spent her life tearing her hair over me. In fact, she still does that now, even if it is only by letter. Well, I won’t tell her about the pregnancy just yet. I’ll fill her in just before the baby’s due, and by the time she arrives the swap will be accomplished, and I’ll be back in my job. Easy.’

Beth shook her head wonderingly. ‘Is it all worth it?’ she asked.

‘For me, yes. I know you’re content to stay in the hicks here, studying by night, working by day to pay the bills, but it’s not for me. I love London. I love my job. I don’t want to own a cosy little place. Not yet.’

Beth groaned.

‘And when the baby arrives?’ she asked. ‘You’re going to have to settle down, Laura. Babies and the wild single life don’t exactly go hand in hand.’

Laura’s eyes shifted away from her sister’s face. ‘Time enough to think about that.’

What other answer had she seriously expected? Beth thought. Laura had always lived on the premise that the future was a bridge to be crossed when you came to it. While she had worked hard towards building something for herself, Laura had run through a series of unsatisfactory jobs, never thinking of tomorrow.

‘The wonderful thing is,’ Laura was saying, her voice low and urgent, ‘I’ve been at the Adrino corporation for six months now. Long enough to know that it’s the only job for me, but not so long that I know too much for you to catch up on. Right now, I’m doing pretty routine work, even if I do have the freedom to prioritise it the way I want, and you would be able to slot in with no trouble at all. And if you don’t understand anything, no one will be too surprised if you ask questions.’

‘Including your boss?’

‘Just so long as you only ask the question once,’ Laura replied truthfully. ‘He has the sort of brilliant mind that grasps things immediately, and he expects everyone who works for him to do the same.’

This sounded worse and worse. The man was an ogre. Beth could picture him without too much trouble. An arrogant tycoon, someone with a receding hairline and a bit of a paunch, testimony to stress and business lunches, but with enough money to attract whatever bimbo his heart desired.

‘Please,’ Laura wheedled, creeping up the bed to hold her sister’s hand. ‘If you hate it there, I promise I’ll do what you want. I’ll admit that I’m pregnant and I’ll work my notice and then leave. What have you got to lose?’

Beth hesitated, and Laura immediately seized the opportunity.

‘And the rest up here will do me good,’ she said fervently. ‘I’ll be able to do some thinking, and I’ll get away from London for a while. There are too many memories for me in London. We could both do with swapping places for our health.’

‘That’s emotional blackmail,’ Beth pointed out wearily.

But the battle was over, and by the time they finally switched off the lights she was already coming to terms with the fact that she was either as crazy as her sister or else so lacking in will-power that she had allowed herself to agree with something which bore all the resemblance of a jaunt in a minefield.

Laura had taken a week off work, and they spent the time laboriously going over the routines in the Adrino corporation. She had brought one of the company magazines with her, and she pointed out all the faces of the people Beth would meet and would have to recognise.

They weren’t that many, mostly the people who worked in the higher echelons of the company. It was a fortunate coincidence that her sister had not been in London long enough to acquire her usual following of male admirers. Her closest friend was Katie, who was aware of the plan.

David, she assured Beth with a note of bitterness, although he worked in the company, which was where she had met him, had applied and got a transfer abroad.

‘Running as far away as he could from me,’ she said with an attempt at bravado.

‘Isn’t that easier than if he had been around?’ Beth enquired mildly, and her sister shrugged agreement.

By the end of the week, Laura had managed to find herself a temp job, but her work at the Adrino corporation had obviously spoiled her. She rattled off what she would have to do now and was clearly appalled by the prospect.

Beth tactfully refrained from another lecture on it all being her fault, and that as she had made her bed, so would she have to lie on it.

She herself had successfully managed to resign from her job without having to give the obligatory one-month notice. She had pleaded an unfortunate family matter and tactfully left it to her boss to decipher whatever he wanted from that obscure statement.

It had hurt a lot less than she had expected. Had she really spent so much time in a job that she had shed without too many tears? Or maybe it was the stirrings of what was awaiting her.

Laura had made the whole scheme sound like a marvellous adventure, but the following Monday morning, as Beth stood outside the impressive Adrino building, she felt far from adventurous.

She felt an impostor, dressed in her sister’s jade-green suit. Was there a law against this sort of thing? she wondered.

She smoothed her hair back nervously and chewed on her lip. All around her people rushed past, lots of little soldier ants hurrying to their jobs.

A dull sun was attempting to break the stranglehold of grey clouds but it was easy to see that it was a losing battle.

She felt a light spitting of rain and merged into the line of soldier ants, finding herself swept into the massive building.

If I don’t look at anyone, she thought, then I won’t risk ignoring any recognisable faces.

But she was perspiring with nerves as the lift whooshed up to the top floor, disgorging her into the plushest set of offices she had ever seen in her life before.

The carpet was of muted grey-blue and thick enough to make footsteps soundless. The offices lay behind smoke-coloured glass.

One of the secretaries looked up as she walked past and waved, and Beth waved back. Marian, secretary to Ron Wood, the financial director.

‘Nice week off?’ Marian asked, stopping her in her tracks, and Beth smiled and nodded.

‘A little eventful,’ she said, inwardly grinning at the accuracy of the description, ‘but relaxing on the whole.’

‘Good. I wish I had a week off coming up. I’m up to my ears in it. You’ve had your hair cut?’

Beth ran her fingers self-consciously through her bob. ‘Spur-of-the-moment,’ she said vaguely.

‘Suits you. Makes you look more businesslike. Not,’ Marian continued hurriedly, ‘that you didn’t look great with long hair.’

Beth accepted the compliment with a smile. She liked Marian straight away. She was in her middle thirties, tending towards plumpness and quite plain to look at with her short wavy brown hair and spectacles, until she smiled. Then her face lit up and was really very attractive.

‘See you later, anyway,’ she said with another wave, and Beth nodded, walking confidently towards her office which she knew was at the end of the corridor.

First hurdle, she thought, successfully manoeuvred and out of the way. It surely couldn’t be as simple as this. Life was never that simple. It always insisted on throwing in a few complications to making the going more interesting.

But right now her self-confidence was a notch higher.

There would be a stack of typing awaiting her—she knew that from what Laura had explained—but that would be no problem. She had spent a long time working with the same computer system.

She pushed open the door to her office and gasped.

It was a large room, carpeted in the same shade of muted grey, but the walls were covered by an elegant dove-grey wallpaper. Her desk was an impressive mahogany affair, and the filing cabinets, also in mahogany, were stacked neatly against the wall.

Opposite, a large abstract painting dominated the wall. It wasn’t the sort of thing she would have chosen herself, but she decided that she rather liked it. It was soothing.

Marcos Adrino had probably hand-picked it. She had had to revise some of her ideas on his appearance. From the picture in the company magazine, he was younger than she had originally thought, but she had no doubt that the paunch was still there. The handful of wealthy men she had met had all seemed to be slightly over-weight. Products of too much access to rich food.