The Hidden Years (52 page)

That had intrigued and puzzled him, especially when it had
been done so quickly and so instinctively that it had been completely
free of any artifice.

She was a bundle of contradictions, a child wearing the
mask of a sophisticate. A wanton who loved sex for sex's sake according
to rumour, and yet at the same time a woman who stepped back out of
reach of a man's touch with the immediacy of a timid virgin. And he
knew she wasn't that. Had she thought of Scott that first time, ached
for Scott with all of that intensely passionate nature of hers? Had she
gone home to her solitary bed and lain there imagining, pretending that
the man who had taken her maidenhead had been her precious and too
dearly loved Scott?

They were interrupted briefly when Jenny came in with the
tea tray, and then quickly withdrew.

Sage poured his tea with the same stylish grace with which
she did everything, and yet there was also a hesitancy about her
movements, a momentary clumsiness almost that made him reach out
instinctively to steady the hand that held the teapot.

The moment his fingers closed on her wrist he felt their
tension. His thumb had accidentally rested against the pulse in her
wrist and now it lingered there, feeling its too fast beat, as she
demanded breathlessly, 'Don't touch me!'

Just for a moment he looked steadily at her and saw in her
eyes what she was too proud to try to conceal-that she remembered as
faultlessly as he did himself a time when she had asked him for just
the opposite.

He released her wrist slowly, knowing that long after he
had left her the scent of her would still be clinging to his skin from
that brief touch.

'What is it you wanted to say to me, Sage?'

'It's this,' she told him, putting down the teapot, not
trusting herself to pick up the cup and hand it to him, but instead
indicating to him which cup was his and forcing herself to try to
appear in control of a situation which was fast escalating into
something way, way beyond that control.

'I happen to have found out that you, in the name of your
company Hever Homes, have bought the Old Hall and its ten acres of
land, no doubt intending to develop that land and turn it into a shoddy
neo-Georgian housing estate, or some such thing,' she told him
scornfully, 'and in the process of so doing making a very substantial
profit for yourself. You bought that land before the news of the
planned route for the new motorway became public knowledge. You
therefore bought it with privileged information, didn't you? I wonder
how it would look in the papers if it became known that a chairman who,
as the Press are so fond of telling us, prides himself on his honesty
and his moral strength should have used such privileged information for
his own gain… and in fact should have bought that land and
the house standing on it almost by fraud—by telling its
previous owner that he would keep the house intact and allow nothing to
destroy it.'

Daniel stared at her, sipped his tea thoughtfully and then
put down his cup and saucer, while Sage held her breath, waiting for
him to retaliate, to lose his temper, to throw her accusations back in
her face.

Instead he simply said calmly, 'You have been busy,
haven't you? And if I don't agree to…? What is it exactly
you want me to do, Sage?'

Now it was her turn to stare. She had expected more from
him. Rage, sarcasm, contempt for the tactics she had used. Anything
other than this cool calm.

It took her several minutes to realise that he was waiting
for her to speak. When she did she discovered that the pitch of her
voice was slightly husky and uncertain… that she sounded
more like someone suing for favours than a victor stating terms to the
vanquished.

'I want you… or rather Cavanagh Construction,
to pull out of the motorway contract.'

Even now he remained calm. 'To what purpose? I mean, is
this a personal vendetta, payment for past mistakes…' he
paused and watched her '… or does it have some other more
altruistic purpose?'

For the first time that evening he saw the scarlet colour
run up under her skin. He almost felt sorry for her as he watched her
and saw her change before his eyes from capable businesswoman to
insecure girl.

She was thirty-four years old and her skin was still as
fine and fair as it had been at nineteen. He badly wanted to reach out
and touch it, to see if it felt as smooth and warm, to see if it
tasted—if she tasted—the way he still imagined she
would. He closed his eyes and immediately wished he hadn't as he was
visited by fifteen-year-old visions of her body unclothed, of her arms
held out towards him.

'How dare you suggest there is anything personal in this?
Do you really think I'm stupid enough to harbour grudges, or even that
what happened between us is so important to me any more? It's the road
I'm concerned with here, Daniel, and it wouldn't matter a damn to me
whether I knew you or not. In fact I'd prefer it if you were a stranger
to me. I may not be my mother—I don't have her skills, her
gifts—but I damn well will do anything I can to carry on her
work.

'When I first came back I told myself it was stupid to
make such a fuss about a road. What did it matter where it went? It had
to go somewhere—someone's back garden had to be a little
spoilt, someone's fields had to be sacrificed. Why not the villagers',
here? But then I saw what it was really going to do, learned how people
really felt about it.

'This isn't a dead dormitory village filled with migrants
from London, weekend country-dwellers… it's a working
village with not just a past but a future as well, a future that the
people here want for their children and their children's children; and
they don't want their lives cut in half by a motorway that could easily
be rerouted to go right round their homes instead of straight through
the middle of them.

'My mother must have had some plan of action in mind. She
was in London the day of the accident. Who knows whom she might have
been going to see? She had many important contacts… I have
to buy time, time for her to get better, to take over.
Time—that's the only thing I can do here for her, and the
only way I can buy that time is through you. It's down to you. Withdraw
from the contract and I'll keep quiet about the land.' Her lips curled.
'Oh, that doesn't mean I approve of what you're doing—I
don't, I think it's despicable.'

She came to a full stop, disgusted to find that her body
was trembling as well as her voice.

During her tirade she had got up and started pacing the
room.

Now Daniel stared at her. She could read nothing in his
face… see nothing but cool indifference in the hard
implacability of his eyes.

'You intend to blackmail me into dropping out of the
contract, is that it?' he asked her coolly.

Blackmail. The sound of the word made her squirm inwardly,
made her feel guilty, unclean somehow.

'
You
can call it blackmail if you
wish,' she told him haughtily. 'I call it using whatever advantages I
can. After all, I'm not the one who promised a sick old lady that I'd
take care of her family home, that I'd restore it and live in it.'

'No… No, you aren't, are you?' Daniel said
heavily, standing up so abruptly that his movement startled her.

He was coming towards her and instinctively she backed
off, until she saw the way he smiled at her reaction.

Damn the man. What did he think he was doing? She was no
frail old lady to be intimidated and bullied.

'Well?' she demanded aggressively.

'I need time to think this over…'

Sage frowned. This was a reaction she hadn't expected. She
had anticipated an immediate yes or no, a fierce rage of temper, some
brutal accusation—perhaps even a moment's physical violence,
or at least the threat of it, but not this cool, unreadable demand for
time, and instinctively she suspected it, watching him warily.

'How long?'

'Two days. I'll give you your answer in two days' time.'

She wanted to argue, to press him for an immediate
decision, but something held her back, an instinct that she held on to,
silently nodding in bitter acceptance of his terms, knowing as she did
so that in some sinister way he had subtly managed to wrench control of
the situation away from her and in to his own hands.

Although she badly longed for the arrogance to summon
Jenny to escort him to the front door, she knew she just could not do
it. For one thing she wouldn't have put it past him to have simply
walked out without waiting for Jenny to appear; for another…
for another it went against everything her mother had taught her, and
even in this instance those were not teachings she could ignore.

And so, feeling foolish and oddly vulnerable, she walked
with him to the front door and then opened it for him, saying curtly,
'Two days, Daniel. That's all. After that I go to the Press.'

'Two days…' As he stood on the steps he was
standing below her, his eyes directly level with hers. Just before he
turned away from her he asked conversationally, 'By the way, do you
ever hear anything from Scott these days? I have to go to Australia on
business later this year—I thought I might look him up. We
still exchange the odd Christmas card… he named his eldest
son after me…'

Sage felt the breath leak from her lungs in small
excruciatingly painful spurts, like blood from a fatal wound.

As he turned and walked away from her into the darkness,
she stood where she was and prayed that he wouldn't turn round and see
the tears burning like acid in her eyes.

Scott… Scott… Even now part of her
still mourned him, still ached for him, still refused to accept that he
was gone from her. She no longer desired him, had stopped desiring him
many, many years ago—that night in Daniel's room, in actual
fact—but she hadn't stopped needing him. Hadn't stopped
feeling that losing him had been like losing part of
herself… that without him in some way she was physically
incomplete.

His loss was an ever-open wound that would never
heal… She had kept that fact a secret from everyone who knew
her, and yet here was a man who didn't know her at all, and yet at the
same time who knew her so well. Who read her so intimately that he had
with a few casual words shown her just how vulnerable she was to him,
just how few her secrets from him were. She trembled as she went
inside, wondering just what else she might have betrayed to him. Just
what other secrets he might have discerned. Just what other
vulnerabilities she might have accidentally and dangerously laid bare
to him.

Sage
woke up abruptly. Traces of her nightmare still clung to her mind like
sticky veilings of mist, darkening her perceptions, even while her
conscious mind acknowledged reality.

She had been dreaming about her childhood; about her
father… about her longing to get close to him, to be
accepted and loved by him in the same way that David was accepted and
loved.

The incoherent, blind jealousy and rage she had felt so
strongly as a child, and which through her mother's strict control of
her she had never been allowed to voice, had known no such barriers in
her sleep, and yet there had been none of the satisfaction, the relief
there should have been in giving vent to it; rather a sickening
awareness as she stood there looking into her father's aloof, withdrawn
face that she had now added contempt to his dislike and disapproval of
her.

Why hadn't he loved her as he had David? Was it because
she was a girl? Once she had thought so, had clung to that belief
because it was far easier to be rejected for her sex than for a
specific lack of something in her personal make up.

She touched her face, not surprised to discover it was wet
with tears, closing her eyes momentarily as she fought to break free of
the weight of the nightmare's misery, as she fought to ignore that
shocking moment of clarity when she had looked into her father's face
and seen all his dislike of her laid bare in it, and then shockingly
his features had melted into the shadows and somehow rearranged
themselves, so that it wasn't her father looking at her with such
resentment and contempt, but Daniel.

Daniel… What was she going to do if he actually
refused her demand? Would she expose him to the Press—could
she? He deserved it for what he was doing. She shivered, hugging her
knees. Even if he did agree, even if he did withdraw from the contract,
he would soon be replaced. She couldn't halt the construction of the
new road for ever. Would the time she was buying be sufficient to allow
her mother to recover and take over?

She pushed her hand into the heavy mass of her hair. Her
body felt drained of all physical energy, while her mind conversely was
almost hyperactive, her thoughts feverishly intense and confused.

She didn't need a psychiatrist to tell her that her
nightmare had been brought on by her own doubts about what she was
doing, her own insecurities, her own fears. What she didn't understand
was why Daniel Cavanagh should have become the focus for those fears.
Or was it more that she didn't want to understand?

He had always been a powerfully male man, the kind of man
she had automatically shunned when she was younger, sensing the danger
within herself of any responsiveness to his brand of sexuality. His was
the kind of maleness which would mean that he would automatically and
instinctively seek to subjugate a woman to his sexual charisma, and for
some reason she had sensed even in those days that she was particularly
vulnerable to that kind of intense relationship, that something within
her almost wanted to be absorbed and swamped by the sexual power she
sensed within him, that some part of her had wanted simply to sink
herself into its potency, to abandon independence, self-will:
everything she had fought all her life to have.