Part 4 (1/2)

'I've managed to convince him otherwise,' Kyle told her coolly, 'And in point of fact it could be worth something to me eventually, if only from the point of view of its excellent reputation.'

'But we're window-dressers... you don't own any shops.'

'Not at the moment, but I am building, or rather developing, a small and very exclusive arcade of boutiques in Bath which will be let out under an umbrella scheme to ensure that anyone who rents one will conform to the very high standards we intend to set. The service we will provide as management could well benefit from the inclusion of a specialist window-dressing service.'

It all sounded so plausible, and yet Heather knew that her father's business was virtually worthless.

'How much did you pay him?' she asked hesitantly, her mouth dry.

Immediately his face closed up against her, his mouth thin and harsh.

'I can't tell you that. It's something between your father and myself.'

Instantly she felt as though a door had been slammed in her face; she felt shut out and rejected, a feeling she was intensely familiar with from her childhood and, as she had done then, she retreated now behind a protective barrier of sarcasm.

'Nothing's changed, has it, Kyle? You still resent me just as much as I resent you. You're just smarter at hiding it, that's all.'

'That's certainly one way of looking at it, I suppose,' he agreed after a long silence. He was looking at her in an odd and unfamiliar way; as though something about her... hurt him.

Shrugging off the thought, Heather glared belligerently at him. 'I'm not going to let you provoke me into a row, Kyle. I can't pretend to see what it is my parents see in you, other than the fact that you're male,' she told him bitterly, unwittingly betraying her own carefully hidden insecurity. 'But for their sakes-'

'Is that really it?' Kyle asked her softly, not allowing her to finish. 'Is it my masculinity you're envious of, Heather?'

'No!' Her exclamation was an instant and vehement denial of the cynical implication she could read in the bitter twist of his mouth. She was more than happy with her femininity, and the implication behind Kyle's soft words brought a furious scorch of colour to her face.

'No, nothing like that.' She swallowed hard, knowing that she had unwittingly allowed herself to stray on to very dangerous ground.

Kyle was watching her like a cat at a mousehole, and he wasn't going to let her escape without at least a token explanation.

Remembering the advice of her counsellor, she forced herself to swallow down her pride, and to ignore her natural inclination to keep her most intimate and personal thoughts hidden. Instead, she said huskily, 'Once... before you came to live with us, my mother lost a baby. It... he would have been a boy. I once overheard someone talking about it. She... they implied... or at least I interpreted their conversation to mean that my parents considered a daughter very much second-best.'

She waited in horror for him to taunt her with her revelation, but instead he said nothing.

She had delivered her husky, proud admission to the fireplace, not daring to look straight at him, and now as she caught his movement on the periphery of her vision she automatically flinched, as though waiting for a blow.

'I was wrong,' she heard him saying in a harsh voice. 'You have grown up.'

'You don't sound very pleased about it.'

How idiotic to sound so peevis.h.!.+ But she needed to scuttle back into the safety of their normal acid exchanges to be able to cope with the emotional intensity of what had gone before.

'Perhaps I'm not,' he agreed, and then, before she could speak he added quietly, 'Since it seems to be confession time, I might as well admit that I resented you as well. It wasn't easy for the child that I was to accept that your parents loved me simply for myself. It wasn't something I'd experienced before, you see. You know that my father deserted my mother-he's dead now, by the way-and that my mother died. It took me a long time to accept that your parents loved me for myself and not because they simply wanted to be seen to be doing ”the right thing” in giving a home to someone like me.'

'But you walked out and turned your back on them.'

There was a long silence. She could feel the tense thud of her heart. They were on the verge of a new beginning, of a new relations.h.i.+p; so much depended on him being honest with her now.

'I left because I thought I was doing the right thing for them,' he told her flatly. 'You were their natural child, it was plain that the two of us could never live in harmony. After you... after your accident, I knew it couldn't go on any longer. So I left.'

'For their sakes?'

He made no response, but Heather knew it was the truth. It was what she had known all along, and she felt the tension ease out of her in the knowledge that he now respected her enough to feel that he could speak the truth. They could never be close in a fraternal way, but for the sake of two people whom they both loved perhaps it would be possible for them to make a new beginning, Heather thought, exploring the idea cautiously.

And then he went and spoiled it all by saying carelessly, 'Oh, and if you're worrying about your own job, you needn't. You'll be taking charge of the new Bennett Enterprises window-dressing operation.'

Heather opened her mouth and found that her voice had completely deserted her. When it came, it sounded harsh and hurt her throat. 'I don't want or need your charity, Kyle,' she stormed at him. 'I can find my own job.'

'Can you?' His cynical disbelief hurt her almost as much as it infuriated her.

'I'm fully qualified, I have my degree...'

His mouth was still twisted in that bitterly cynical way that always sparked off her temper, implying as it did that he had a greater and more powerful knowledge of something to which she was excluded.

'I'm not questioning your qualifications, or your skill. But jobs of the type you're qualified for aren't exactly thick on the ground round here, are they? Think about it, Heather, what are you trying to say? That you want to leave here and go and try your luck in London? Perhaps if you're lucky, landing yourself a job as the most junior member of a store window-dressing team, forced to carry out the instructions and ideas of others, always competing with younger and more enthusiastic graduates than yourself.'

The picture he was painting was grim enough to make her close her eyes and shudder. She hated the thought of working and living in London; she always had. She was not ambitious as such, but she loved her work; he was right, she would hate working under someone else's direction. She was used to her father giving her a completely free hand and, if she was honest with herself, she enjoyed the responsibility.

A sudden thought struck her, the words almost sticking in her throat as she demanded huskily, 'This is my father's idea, isn't it? He made you offer me this job... he asked you...'

'Think what you like, Heather. I'm not prepared to discuss the whys and wherefores of a job offer with a potential employee. It isn't my normal practice.'

Only just in time she stopped herself from bursting into a furious tirade. She looked suspiciously at him, wondering if he was trying deliberately to goad her into taking a stand.

'I don't want the job,' she told him flatly.

'You don't? You're a very lucky woman to be able to make such a decision,' he marvelled cynically. 'How are you going to support yourself without a job, Heather, or are you going to leave that small matter to your parents?'

And indirectly to him, Heather realised on a sudden mortified flood of realisation. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. Pride had forced her to reject his job offer because she suspected he was simply making a position for her because of her father, and yet if she didn't take it, if she had no job at all...

'Poor Heather. Caught up in a no-win situation, aren't you?'

'And how you're enjoying it!' she retaliated sharply, her eyes narrowing as she glared at him.

To her chagrin, he laughed. 'You remind me of a spitting wildcat when you narrow your eyes like that. You look for all the world as though there's nothing you'd like more than to pounce on me and claw the flesh from my throat.'

To her horror, Heather felt a betraying heat spread through her body, not at the violence of his suggestion, but at the s.e.xuality he had so cleverly cloaked beneath it.

She stared at him, nonplussed by her own reaction. His face was unreadable, so unreadable, in fact, that she had trouble in deciding whether or not she had actually heard that s.e.xuality or imagined it.

'If you don't take the job I'll have to find someone else to fill it. From what I've seen of your work, you've got the skills the operation will need.'

He was beginning to sound bored, and Heather caught the indifference edging up under his voice.

'I don't want charity, Kyle,' she told him fiercely.

He looked at her. 'You won't be getting it. Now, do you want the job or not?'

She wavered between refusing it as her pride demanded and a far more commonsense approach. Her parents would be pleased and relieved if she accepted it; they would see it not as just a job, but as a sign that she had finally accepted Kyle.

'I... I want it,' she said huskily, bending her head so that he wouldn't see the defeat in her eyes.