The Price of Deceit Read online

  She couldn’t even work out what she felt for him any longer. It wasn’t indifference, but it wasn’t love either. Love didn’t make you jumpy and nervous. Once, she had been wildly passionate about him, but she had also been blissfully serene in his presence, not constantly trying to fight down panic attacks.

  She began telling a story to Claire, making it up as she went along. She was good at story-telling. At school, she sometimes played a game of invention with the children. She would start a story, then call on one of them to add a bit, working her way around the class until they arrived at a conclusion.

  Every so often, now, she asked Claire to contribute a bit, and after a while she realised that the child had fallen asleep, her arms and legs spread across the bed with childish abandon, her mouth half-open.

  She went downstairs, and was making herself a cup of coffee when she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel and then the key in the lock of the side door by the kitchen.

  ‘How is Claire?’ was the first thing Dominic asked as he walked into the kitchen.

  Wasn’t it funny, she thought, how his presence could permeate the atmosphere and alter it? She could never talk to him the way she talked to other people—sensibly, calmly, rationally. She always planned to, but somewhere along the way, between her brain relaying the message and the words coming out, something happened and she reverted to a level of emotional incoherence which was normally alien to her.

  ‘Good,’ she now said, looking at him, and even from the opposite end of the table having to ward off that disturbing dynamism he radiated. ‘I’m not terribly popular at the moment, though,’ she continued, sipping the hot coffee and trying hard to sound casual and adult, and like the schoolteacher that she was. ‘I’ve only allowed her a piece of toast for her supper and a little diluted apple juice. I don’t think she minded the toast, but she was most put out when I told her that there was no pudding. It took fifteen minutes of persuasion and I had to resort to a biological explanation of the stomach. She only gave in because she got bored with my monologue.’

  Dominic looked amused at that. ‘So, she should be well enough to go to her child-minder in the morning.’ It was more a statement than a question.

  ‘She should be, yes,’ Katherine said, ‘but it would be nice for her if you could take the day off, or maybe half a day.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It would cheer her up.’

  ‘I can’t afford the time off,’ he said flatly, and he turned away from her to pour himself some coffee.

  ‘You own the company,’ she pointed out to his back, thinking that he could at least have the decency to look at her when she was talking. ‘Surely you can decide what time you have off and what time you don’t?’

  ‘That’s not how big business is run,’ he said, turning round to face her. ‘If I’m not at the helm, the ship goes down.’

  ‘Not for one day!’

  They stared at each other, and she refused to lower her eyes first.

  ‘Dammit,’ he muttered finally, scowling at her, ‘and what am I supposed to do with a five-year-old child for a day? Bake bread together? Play dolls?’

  Katherine didn’t say anything, but she realised that she must have looked aghast because he continued, with a certain amount of harsh defiance in his voice.

  ‘I’m sure that entertaining children is easy for you, but I have no experience of doing that. And you don’t have to give me that kind of look!’ he suddenly roared, which made her jump.

  ‘What kind of look?’

  ‘The look that says that I’m a rotten father.’ He strode across the kitchen and sat down at the table next to her. ‘Claire has everything she wants or needs! More! She just has to say what she wants, and she gets it!’

  ‘There’s no need to justify yourself to me!’ Katherine snapped. ‘I was only making a suggestion.’ She stared into the mesmerising sea-green eyes and had a sensation of drowning, which she hurriedly covered up by saying, ‘I must be getting off now.’ She stood up and wondered where she’d left her jacket. She didn’t relish having to go through the bowels of the house looking.

  ‘Sit down,’ he commanded brusquely, and she hesitated, then sat down again.

  This wasn’t because she felt intimidated, she told herself, it was a matter of diplomacy. He was, after all, the fee-paying parent of one of her pupils, and for that reason she was obliged to listen to what he had to say. Telling herself that made her feel much better, and she looked at him with polite equanimity.

  ‘Why the hell don’t you just come right out with it? I can’t stand these muted, accusing looks.’

  ‘All right, then. Claire needs a father, not just someone who pays the bills and makes sure that her every wish is fulfilled, materially speaking. Children are very sensitive to things like that. A child who is showered with everything that money can buy but denied the one thing that it can’t grows up into a very rebellious, very unfulfilled adult.’

  ‘So now I’m potentially responsible for bringing a juvenile delinquent into the world, is that it?’

  ‘Oh, forget it,’ she sighed. ‘There’s no getting through to you, is there?’

  ‘I haven’t had a great deal of experience with Claire,’ he admitted, with visible reluctance. He looked at her from under his thick, dark lashes. ‘Her mother used her against me as revenge for the divorce. I was allowed to see her, but at times that suited her, and sometimes in situations that made it impossible for me to be relaxed with my daughter.’

  ‘Why?’ Katherine looked at him, astonished, and his lips twisted.

  ‘Because that’s the way of women, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not all women!’ she protested.

  ‘And you speak from the pinnacle of all that’s good and saintly, do you?’ There was sarcasm in his voice and she reddened.

  ‘Don’t drag me into your argument. If you want to send her off to the child-minder to get her out of your hair, then by all means go right ahead and do so.’ She stood up and walked towards the sink with her cup. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I really must get home.’

  ‘Why? Is David waiting there for you?’ He turned in his chair to look at her.

  ‘No one is waiting there for me,’ she answered coolly. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I plan on staying here and being insulted. Believe it or not, I would rather sit at home in my empty house and count cracks on the ceiling than do that.’

  He got up and moved over to her swiftly, with feline grace.

  ‘I’ll just get my jacket,’ she said warily.

  ‘Oh, I’ll get it for you.’ He left the kitchen and returned a couple of minutes later with her jacket, which he held out for her. She would rather have shrugged it on herself, but she allowed him to help her with it, her body keenly aware of his.

  He swivelled her round to face him and kept his hands on the collar of the jacket.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to stay and have something to eat?’ he asked, and she shook her head. That, she could have told him, without thinking too hard about it, was the last thing in the world she wanted. In fact, it probably ranked, alongside falling in a snake-pit, as one of the experiences she least needed in her life.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, and there was a cruel smile on his mouth when he looked at her.

  ‘I have food at home,’ she said, a little unevenly.

  ‘Sure that’s the reason?’

  ‘What other reason could there be?’ There was sharp alarm in her voice, but she still did her best to keep her calm, to ignore the suffocating sensation that being so close to him evoked.

  ‘Running scared, maybe?’ He laughed. ‘When you stormed round here to tell me how indifferent to me you were, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a bit of an over-reaction.’

  She should never have done that, she realised with a sinking feeling. She had forgotten how minutely sensitive Dominic Duvall was to the shades and nuances of people’s behaviour.

  ‘You flatter yourself,’ she mumbled, and his hands moved f
rom the collar of her jacket to the sides of her face, scorching through her skin, igniting a flame inside her which she knew would flicker out if only she could ignore it.

  ‘Do I? Or maybe you are afraid that if you get too close to me, you might find your body doing things that your mind would much rather it didn’t.’

  ‘This is ludicrous. Please let me go.’

  ‘Or else what?’

  ‘Or else I shall kick you on the shin as hard as I can, and you’ll be forced to stay at home then, with a heavily bandaged foot.’

  ‘All that fire,’ he murmured, ‘underneath the prim clothes and the prim expression. Have you spent six years pouring water on it, hoping that it would go out?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, nor do I care.’ Brave words, she thought. Shame that the incoherent confusion inside her gave the game away. At least to herself.

  She cold feel herself trembling, a mixture of anger and terrible awareness of him, of that dark sexuality.

  ‘You know,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a schoolteacher, Mr Duvall,’ she began, and he laughed again, as though he found her protests very amusing indeed. ‘I am not a fiery person!’

  ‘Shall we put that to the test?’ His mouth crushed hers, sending her head back, forcing her lips apart so that he could invade her with his tongue.

  Katherine struggled against him and he kissed her harder, pinning her against the kitchen counter, devouring her.

  She heard herself groan, a husky, shameful sound, and his hands left her face and sought the warmth of her body, pushing under her jumper, moving upwards until she felt them slide beneath the lacy cups of her bra, finding her breasts, releasing them from captivity.

  They swelled into his hands, aching, throbbing, and he buried his mouth against her neck, so that her head fell back and her body arched in response to his searching fingers.

  She was barely thinking as he lifted her jumper, exposing her breasts, playing with them, then finally bending his head and flicking his tongue against the hard, raised nipples. Then he sucked harder, drawing first one nipple then the other into his mouth, while she lay back against the counter in an attitude of what was, even through her haze of blurred thinking, shocking abandon.

  Her whole body hurt with the intensity of what was going through her, and she could feel the dampness between her legs, her wet arousal, with despair and mortification.

  She pushed him away, but she was still shaking like a leaf as he drew back.

  ‘No fire, Katherine?’ he taunted, and she raised angry eyes to his.

  ‘What satisfaction have you derived from this?’ she asked.

  ‘The satisfaction of knowing that I could take you if I wanted to. You walked away once, but now you could be my captive if I wanted. Don’t you think that that’s satisfaction enough?’

  ‘I may be attracted to you still,’ she whispered, horrified at that, ‘but I could never be yours!’

  ‘Never?’ he smiled coolly. ‘Be careful, little schoolteacher, you may find that the past has claws that could reach out and grab you, even now.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE Nativity play was going well. Rehearsals had been the usual joyous affair of dozens of young children engagingly trying their best to learn lines and remember words to songs.

  With two weeks before the big day, and only three weeks to Christmas, the atmosphere was alight with excitement.

  Normally, Katherine derived a great deal of pleasure from all this. She could remember as yesterday how lacking in sparkle Christmas had always been for her. She had always played her part in nativity plays as well, but her driving, childish desire to do it to perfection, so very well that perhaps this time her mother might unbend a little and cheer and smile from the audience, just like the other parents, had always made it a tense occasion for her. She would frown with concentration and try so hard that, in the end, the gay spontaneity would be lost and she would know, from her mother’s expression, that she had failed yet again.

  Now, as a teacher, she always found herself looking carefully at the faces, making sure that they were having fun, because having fun was what it was all about. It was rewarding, feeling their excitement, watching them in their red tights and amateurishly concocted elfin hats.

  She looked around her now, but her thoughts were miles away.

  Dominic Duvall had kissed her. That had been weeks ago, but she couldn’t seem to dislodge the episode from her mind. It hovered there, only a memory, but still as capable of damage as a high-explosive bomb.

  Six years of rebuilding her life, and all for nothing. He had taken her in his arms and, even though the crushing force of his mouth had been lacking all tenderness or affection, it had been enough to send her hurtling back through time, back to when she had shed her inhibitions, back to when she had been a vulnerable, yearning pupil in his hands.

  The rehearsal was coming to a close. A chaotic gathering of fifty or so pupils, ranging from under four to slightly over six, was lustily singing to the determined thumping of the music teacher on the piano.

  The acoustics in the small hall were appalling. Even a choir of angels would find it hard going, and the unsynchronised children’s voices were rendered completely tiny, but the teachers all clapped with great fervour afterwards, including Katherine, who had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she only surfaced when the crashing finale from the piano woke her up. Mrs Hale was a great believer in enthusiastic piano-playing. Her finales could have roused the dead.

  Katherine spent the remainder of the day doing what she normally did, but without energy. Fortunately the children, without exception, failed to notice anything amiss. She wondered whether it was a great fallacy that young children were sensitive to atmosphere. Perhaps they really only tuned in to open displays of weeping and gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands.

  She tried to imagine what it must be like to be absolutely carefree, and found that she couldn’t. She couldn’t even really imagine what it must be like to be marginally carefree. No problems except petty ones, like when to get the turkey, and whether Great-Aunt Dorothy’s presence at the Christmas dinner was worth the glow of self-righteousness afterwards.

  She herself viewed the swiftly approaching Christmas holidays with trepidation.

  Usually she would make sure that she put up a tree, a real one, with all the trimmings, and she also made sure that she filled her time as much as she could with visiting friends.

  But friends, at the moment, held no appeal, and she had no idea what she would do with herself on Christmas Day. Lunch with David and his mother, which had become something of a pleasant routine, looked doubtful.

  He had told her, rather hesitantly and with some embarrassment, that he and Jack were trying to work out how they could spend the time together. He wanted her, he said, to meet his mother, but apparently that entailed staying in the area, and if they stayed in the area Dominic would expect her to join him. This appeared to be a consuming problem for him, far more consuming than all the work problems which had plagued his life in the past and about which he had told her in exhaustive detail. Now, whenever she spoke to him, which was infrequently, he brushed aside her questions about his job with the casual nonchalance of someone flapping away a fly.

  Her mind changed gear, divided between the problem of Dominic and the problem of Christmas.

  She was frowning as she left the school just after six-thirty, pulling her coat around her, head bent as she hurried towards her car.

  The weather was, as usual, living down to most people’s expectations, with bleak, leaden skies and freezing rain, and without even the erratic bursts of cold sunshine which only seemed to be glimpsed on Christmas cards.

  She crashed into him so hard that she staggered back, with an automatic apology on her lips, before she looked up and saw who it was.

  ‘Oh.’ That was the only thing that she could find to say. In the wintry dark, Dominic was just a towering form, in his black overcoat, open at the
front so that she could glimpse the dark suit underneath.

  ‘I want to have a word with you,’ he said, and she blinked.

  ‘It’s more orthodox to arrange a meeting at the school,’ Katherine said, shifting her eyes to the less disturbing vista of her car, one of the last in the car park.

  ‘This isn’t about Claire.’

  ‘I see.’ She cleared her throat and looked longingly at the car.

  ‘Perhaps we could have a meal somewhere.’

  ‘A meal?’ She hoped that the inky blackness was hiding the look of horror on her face.

  She had had weeks to put things in perspective, weeks to realise that she was still as attracted to him as she had ever been, weeks to come to terms with the fact that her attraction was forbidden, a dangerous seed which could not be allowed to grow because it would take over her life like ivy climbing up a wall.

  ‘Where can we go to eat around here?’ he asked impatiently. ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Over there.’ She pointed vaguely at the car park and side-stepped him. Her black patent shoes, with their sensible heels, clicked on the path. He walked beside her, softly, like a shadow.

  ‘I’m afraid—’ she began, slipping the key into the lock and not looking at him.

  ‘I’ll follow you back to your house and wait for you there.’

  ‘My house?’

  ‘No need to panic,’ he said with the same impatient drawl, ‘you’ll be quite safe. I won’t jump on you from behind the curtains.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Katherine muttered tightly.

  ‘Let’s get moving.’

  ‘I’m busy tonight,’ she said rudely.

  ‘Not now, you’re not. I’ll be behind you.’

  He walked off to his car, started the engine and waited while she clambered into hers and drove out of the car park with her mind in utter disarray.

  What did he want to talk about? If not his daughter, then what? Surely not about them. That subject had now been resoundingly closed.

  She glanced in the mirror and saw his car, long and powerful, silently following, and tried to stanch the sudden dreadful anticipation gnawing away at her.