Lifelong Affair

Lifelong
Affair

Carole
Mortimer

A dying sister's wish
made Morgan a
prisoner!

The television report said no one—including
Morgan's
sister and brother-in-law—had
survived the plane crash
But in fact there had
been one survivor, Morgan's baby nephew, and
now
Morgan was little Courtney's guardian

However, Alex Hammond had also been made a
guardian
for Courtney The battle lines were drawn—the handsome aloof Alex and his
bitter
vengeful family againsta lone woman with lots of
love to give....

Even Alex couldn't take that away from her!

Carole Mortimer is a popular writer in the Harlequin
Presents series The quality of her
writing and the
fascinating personalities
she portrays will appeal to a wide
audience.

The most popular romance fiction
all over the world...

Harlequin Books

...because no one touches the heart
of
a woman quite like Harlequin!

ISBN
  
D--b-D

For
John and Matthew

Harlequin Presents first edition September
 
ISBN ---

Original hardcover edition published in
 
by Mills A Boon Limited

Copyright  
t>y Carole Mortimer AH rights
reserved
Philippine
copyright S. Australian copyright . Cover
illustration copyright ©
 
by William Biddle Illustration Limrted-
Excepl
tor use in any review, the reproduction or utilization ot this work in whole or
in part in any lorm by any electronic,
mechanical or other
means, now known or hereafter invented,
including xerography, photocopying and
recorrSng. or in any
 
intormatlon storage or retrieval system, is
forbidden without Die penMtston Of the publisher, Hartequin Enterprises
Limited.
 
Duncan Mill Road. Don Mils, Ontario, Canada MBK.

AH the characters in this book have no existence outside
the
imagination of the author and have no relation
whatsoever to
anyone bearing the same name or names They
are not even
distantly inspired by any individual known or
unknown to me
author, and all the incidents are pure
invention

The Harlequin trademarks, consisting of the words
HARLEQUIN PRESENTS and the portrayal of a Hartequm.
art
trademarks of Hariequri Enterprises Lvntted end ere
registered
in the Canada Trade Maries Office:
t
portiayaf
of a Hartequin is
registered in fhe United
i
and!

CHAPTER
ONE

'I
KNOW you've been having an affair with my husband! I've known about it for
weeks now. And if you want him you can have him. I don't even like him any
more!'

Morgan
watched in horror as the bitterly angry woman let loose that tirade, her mouth
twisting in derisive humour as the words became ones of bravado, laughing
openly as the woman took off her wedding ring and threw it at her.

'Okay,
cut—that's a take. Morgan, you're becoming so convincing as the
supcrbitch that I'm beginning to wonder about you,' Jerry, the director,
drawled dryly.

Morgan's
laughter had faded at the word 'cut'. She had played this scene half a dozen
times today already, and each time she became more disgusted with the way her
character in this weekly soap-opera was developing.

Originally
she had been signed for a three-month contract only, but the character of
Mary-Beth Barker had become so popular with the public that she had signed a
contract for another season. The character of Mary-Beth was so against her own
nature that she wasn't sure she wanted to negotiate another one. She had
certainly had plenty of other offers the last six months!

'Don't
wonder, Jerry,' she advised wearily. Tt will be for nothing.' She came off the
set, her hair long and gleaming, the colour of copper, a dark shadow over her
sparkling green eyes, her lashes long and silky, her nose small and pert, her
mouth wide and inviting, coloured with a brighter lip-gloss than she usually
wore, the blusher on her creamy cheeks darker too, for the cameras. Her green
dress was thin and silky, very provocatively styled, part of Mary-Bcth's
wardrobe; her own taste tended to run to the casual and comfortable rather than
fashionable. 'I'm nothing like Mary-Beth.' She stood next to him, a frown
marring her smooth brow. 'In fact, I don't like where she's going at all. So
far I've—
she's—
blackmailed her stepfather for his attraction
to her, told her mother about it anyway, almost wrecked her sister's marriage,
and now she's had an affair with a married man simply because his wife once
slighted her at a party. What sort of woman is she!' she grimaced, running a
hand through her perfecdy smooth and shining hair, instantly ruffling it into
disorder.

'Beautiful,'
Jerry leered lasciviously.

'And
evil,' she said disgustedly.

'You
bet,' he nodded with a grin.

'You
wouldn't sound so happy about it if she'd decided to get her claws into you!'
Morgan raised copper-brown brows at him.

The
director shrugged. 'The excitement might be worth it. When you've been married
to the same woman for fifteen years that's a quality that seems to be missing.'

Morgan
smiled, her own naturally bright and friendly smile, the character of Mary-Beth
discarded as soon as the scene ended. 'I'll mention that to Alyson when I see
her next,' she teased, knowing Jerry had been happily married from the moment
he and Alyson had been pronounced husband and wife,

'She'd
kill me,' he grimaced. 'And you're supposed to like Mary-Beth if no one else
does. After all, she pays your rent.'

She
knew that, but it didn't make the public reaction to her personally any easier
to accept. Soap-operas were entertaining, and there were half a dozen of them
made at this Los Angeles studio alone, but until she actually appeared in
Power
Trap
herself
she hadn't realised that the viewing public really believed the characters
existed. A lot of men admired the character of Mary-Beth, liked the danger she
emitted, but normally women reacted in a hostile manner, treating her like an
adversary, watching their husbands closely whenever she was about. Even some of
her so-called friends had become a little wary of her, sure that she couldn't
have developed the character of Mary-Beth the way she had if there weren't some
of tic man-eating bitch really inside the straight-speaking Morgan McKay.

Over
the months she had hardened herself against the insulting comments she received
whenever she went out, although it didn't stop it hurting any less. When the
new scries came out in the fall her reputation—or rather, Mary-Beth's—would
be damaged irrevocably.

She
went back to her dressing-room, switching on the television for relaxation as
she changed into her own denims and orange silk blouse, tall and slender,
dulling the make-up down to be less dramatic, brushing her hair free of lacquer
and feeling it swing easily past her shoulders in its normal copper
straightness.

'You
were great today!' Sam Walters came into the room after a brief knock, and
kissed her lingeringly on the mouth.

Morgan
returned his kiss, glad to see him. Sam played her brother-in-law in
Power
Trap,
and
the two of them had been seeing each other out of work for the last four
months. Tall and blond, with the body of an ex-footballer, Sam had to be every
woman's ideal, his easygoing nature and strong sense of humour merely a bonus.

'Thanks,
she smiled up at him, her arms about his neck as he held her close. 'How about
going to your beach-house tonight?'

'Sounds
good,' he nodded. 'Barbecue dinner?'

'Lovely,
she agreed, turning to pick up her purse.

—and
it's now known that Glenna McKay and her husband Mark Hammond were on the
aircraft that crashed late last night on its way from London to Los Angeles.
There are thought to be no survivors from the crash, now believed to have been
caused by engine failure. The television newsreader then went on to another
topic of news.

But for Morgan the world seemed to have
stopped. Glenna and Mark .. .! It couldn't be, there must have
been some
mistake. And yet Glenna had insisted she wanted the baby born in the States,
and she was in her
seventh
month now. God, the baby too . .. No
  
!

'Steady,
honey!' she didn't realise she had spoken out loud until Sam answered her,
sitting her down in one of the plush armchairs in the room.

'Sam, did you hear—Did she say
        
'

Tes,'
he confirmed heavily, frowning his concern of her paper-white face. 'I heard it
too, Morgan.

'My God—Glennal she choked, too shocked
to cry yet, too numbed by the horror of hearing on the television of her own
sister's possible death.
Possible
.. .! Who was she kidding, there were hardly ever survivors from those sort of
disasters. Her parents! They would have to be told
     

'We'll
call them in a minute,' Sam soothed as she once again spoke out loud without
being aware of it, kneeling beside her to comfort her in her distress.

Glenna.
Her elder by two years, her fiery hair matching her equally fiery nature—she
couldn't possibly be dead! Air crashes happened on television, to other people,
other families, they didn't happen to young fun-loving couples like Glenna and
Mark, certainly not to
unborn
babies!

She
couldn't believe this was happening, that her sister could actually have been
on the plane that had crashed late last night. She had heard the first reports
of it early this morning, had felt saddened for the families of the people on
the plane, never dreaming that she would be one of them!

Glenna
had been a successful actress herself until two years ago she had married Mark
Hammond, an English businessman she had met and fallen in love with in Florida.
The marriage had been far from idyllic—had been? Heavens, already she was
talking in the past tense, as if she accepted that Glenna and Mark were dead.

She
and Glenna had been born and brought up in the States, had always lived here
apart from a few holidays abroad, and having to give up her career as a
successful actress to go and live in England with her husband had not been
something Glenna accepted without a fight. And she had continued to fight, had
hated living with her in-laws at the Hammond house in southern England. The
Hammonds were almost part of the aristocracy, something Glenna's mother-in-law
had taken great pains to point out to Glenna any opportunity she could. Morgan
could just imagine how her sister had reacted to that! In fact, she knew how
Glenna had reacted to it; she had spent hours talking to her sister
long-distance—calls her sister had made, claiming the Hammonds could more
than afford the telephone bill. She knew from those calls that Glenna had been
far from happy, had longed for her career and the physical, if not emotional,
freedom she had always had in the States. The Hammonds had put restrictions on
her behaviour and her social life, restrictions Mark had seemed happy to accept
for his wife.

The
one stipulation Glenna had made when she had had her pregnancy confirmed five
months ago had been that the baby be born at her home and not Mark's. In the
face of strong family opposition, mainly Rita Hammond's, Mark had finally
agreed, and the two of them had flown to their deaths.

'I
have to call my parents,' said Morgan in short jerky gasps. 'If they should
hear the news in the same way.. .I'

They
probably already have, Sam soothed.

Oh
God, this was a nightmare! Her mother had probably collapsed, her father would
be bottling his emotions inside him as usual. He wasn't a man who found it easy
to show his love, although she and Glenna had never doubted his love for his
family. But this was something no one had expected in their wildest nightmares!

'I have to get home
'

'I'll
drive you,' Sam instantly offered as she stood up agitatedly.

'My
parents' home,' she pointed out. 'They're going to need me.'

'I'll
still drive you,' he insisted.

'You
still have a scene to shoot this evening,' she reminded him calmly, thinking
logically despite the panicked racing of her brain. 'Jerry was only complaining
yesterday that we're behind schedule.'

Sam
shrugged. 'So we finish shooting mid-September instead of the end of August,'
he dismissed. 'The network can't complain, not with the ratings we're getting.
I hear we're very popular with the English audience. Hell, what am I going on
like this for?' he muttered. 'What do you care about the reaction of the
English audience at a time like this! I'll just go and tell Jerry we're
leaving.' He gently touched her cheek before going to talk to their director.

Morgan
stood in numbed silence waiting for him to return. Sam was wrong about her not
caring about what the English audience thought of the show. A couple of months
ago Glenna had telephoned her in a great state of agitation, crying and
muttering what a bitch her mother-in-law was. Apparently Rita Hammond had taken
great delight in the fact that Glenna's sister should be appearing in something
so lowly as a soap-opera, had taken every opportunity she could to be
derogative about
Power Trap
and Morgan's part in it. Normally Glenna would
have been unmoved by such taunts, but her pregnancy had made her more
susceptible to showing emotion, and she had been very distraught.

Jerry
himself came into the room just then, his weather beatcn face creased into
lines of sadness. 'Hell, Morgan, Sam just told me.' He grasped her forearms,
frowning down at her. 'That's a hell of a thing to hear on the television,' he
growled.

'Yes.'
She was still too numb to respond to the sincerity of his regret.

'I
was fond of Glenna,' he continued softly. 'She and I worked together a couple
of years ago, before she married her stuffed shirt,' he grimaced. 'We're all
going to miss her.'

Morgan
swallowed hard, as nausea started to rise within her, the numbness leaving her
at Jerry's way of talking about her sister as if she no longer existed. 'Excuse
me,' she muttered, pushing past him to run into the wash-room, waves of nausea
racking her body as the full horror of her beautiful and fiery sister dying in
such a horrendous way struck her. Glenna had always been too busy in her life
to think of death, and Morgan certainly doubted she ever expected it to happen
in such a violent way. None of them had.

'All
right?' Jerry was helping her wash her face in cold water when Sam came back
into the room.

'Better,'
she nodded, swallowing the nausea down. She had to pull herself together, had
to be strong for her
 
parents'
 
sake,
 
her
 
strong
 
attorney
 
father,
  
her homemaking mother. They were going to be devas
tated. 'I'll have to pick up some things from
my apartment,' she told Sam as he drove her.

'Sure,'
he agreed easily, not intruding on her private thoughts as she lapsed into
silence.

Strangely
her apartment still looked the same as when she had left it early this morning,
the same casual untidiness that she liked, the galley kitchen, scatter cushions
placed on her corner unit in the lounge, a cup still standing on the
dining-room table from where she had had breakfast, plants arranged about the
whole apartment, one of her weaknesses, her other one being the Walt Disney
posters in her bedroom. She knew that the general public, after her portrayal
of Mary-Beth, would never believe her liking for all things Disney, but it had
remained with her from a trip to Disneyland when she was a child. A trip both
she and Glenna had loved. Oh God, Glenna . . .!