Winner Takes It All (21 page)

Pulling away, she
composed herself, breathing deeply.

‘
That
shouldn’t have happened,’ she said quietly.

‘
You know how
I feel about you Alex,’ he pleaded.

‘
I also know
you’re married.’

‘
Lisa and me
are barely ever together. We’re business partners more than
anything. Her auld fella’s invested in some of my property, that’s
all.’

‘
That doesn’t
matter. You loved her enough once upon a time to marry her. Now can
you call me a taxi to take me back to Layton House? I’ll come down
and pick my car up tomorrow.’

‘
Alex,
I…’

‘
No Jack. We
should never have kissed. We’ll part now, I’ll see you on Monday in
Earls Court and we’ll pretend this never happened.’

***

High on top of a hill,
Layton House was so dark at night, Alex felt as though she was the
only person in the world, lying alone in her single bed. She never
drew the curtains so she could look out the window up at the stars
and she wondered if thirty miles away in Hove, Jack was looking out
the window at the same stars, thinking of her. She kept reliving
the kiss and how right it had felt to be with him. Her feelings for
him had gone beyond lust; there was more to it now. Jack was like
all those old fashioned heroes from romantic novels – strong,
handsome; he knew how to take charge of a situation and even though
Alex was every inch the modern woman who liked to make her own
decisions, it was nice to have a strong pair of arms to wrap around
her when the going got tough.

She wondered if she
should put her morals aside and go for it. Maybe a part of him
would be better than nothing at all. She’d never felt this way
about anyone before. She’d never wanted someone just for themselves
– Robin had been to make her parents happy; all the guys in between
had been an act of rebellion and Tim was to prove a point that a
Cusack could pull one of the intelligentsia. Alex wanted Jack
because she felt right with him. She faced a difficult future. Even
if she didn’t get to take over Sheridans, she would be expected to
run the hotels division and she knew that after a day of mixing
with difficult men who refused to take a pretty young girl
seriously, Jack was exactly the sort of person she’d love to come
home to. He was so strong and dependable he’d calm her head and
make her see sense.

But she knew as things
were, that couldn’t happen. They couldn’t live together. Not
properly. She’d just have to settle for stolen moments when he
could offer them and Alex wasn’t prepared to accept that. She’d
rather go without him completely than have a taste of what could be
only to sit back and watch Lisa have the full package.

She met Robin in Abbott’s
Leigh High Street and suggested they went for a walk together
rather than a meal. Robin accepted and they headed over the
Summerset hills to the village. A bus to Hove ran once a day, the
next one at three p.m., Alex could go and collect her car and drive
back to London. She hoped she didn’t bump into Jack – she was doing
all she could do put last night to the back of her mind and focus
on her future.

It was a suitably cloudy
day and the hills that separated Abbott’s Leigh and Summerset were
misty and depressing, matching Alex’s mood. Robin on the other hand
seemed delighted to be in her company. Just as he always had when
they were children. She wondered what she’d done to make him love
her so. She’d always been such a bitch to him.

‘
Pooky
Wetherall’s getting married next month,’ he said, rubbing his hands
up and down his cold arms. ‘I was wondering if you’d like to come
with me.’

‘
Whereabouts
is it?’

‘
Her dad’s
place in the real Somerset.’

‘
Yes okay,’
Alex replied quietly, feeling her throat constrict and her heart
sink further into her chest. She knew where this acceptance would
lead.

‘
Would you
really!’ he gasped. ‘Oh Alex that’s fantastic.’

‘
If we do see
each other we’ve got to take it slowly,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just
split with Tim.’

‘
I know that,’
he answered. ‘I promise to go as slowly as you want me to. Oh Alex,
you don’t know how long I’ve waited for you to say you’ll go out
with me again.’

‘
I think I
do,’ she replied quietly.

Twelve

Tom didn’t see Tara again
until the Monday after the incident with Polly. She’d texted him
the following day to say she was going to work from home for the
rest of the week and whenever he tried to contact her after that,
her phone went straight to voicemail. But he had to stop his
natural curiosity getting the better of him, trying to find out
what had spooked her so. Tom had other fish to fry – namely the
revelations revealed to him by Michael Cusack regarding his aunt
Paula’s parentage. This couldn’t have happened at a better time,
Jackson was visiting at the weekend and Tom relished the thought of
actually being able to give him some information for a
change.

Part of his duties as
estate manager was to visit properties belonging to Sheridans and
today he was going to The Cherry Tree to talk with the landlord and
make sure everything was running smoothly. If there were any
problems, it was expected of him to let Alex Cusack know, but he
was tempted to let them go unchecked – all the more ammunition to
discredit her.

The Cherry Tree was the
last building in Summerset, or the first depending on what
direction you were coming from. In a strange way, it made him kind
of horny to imagine the teenage Lou O’Connell living here long
before she married into money and made something of herself. From
the pictures he’d seen she was an absolute fox when she was young
and it was no wonder Andrew McDonald fancied her, especially
considering his own wife resembled a small boy!

Today the landlord of the
pub was a man called Darren. He was one of those men who had
reached middle-age at thirty and now he was around forty, he bore
the expression of someone who didn’t expect life to provide him
with any more joys. He stood behind the counter of the relatively
empty pub polishing a glass, while a plump blonde in her late
twenties served a couple of old men with pints of beer.

Darren nodded to Tom as
he came in and asked what he was drinking. Tom stuck to coke as he
was driving. He asked the monosyllabic landlord how things were
going and if he had any issues and this was met with a reply that
everything was okay and then the conversation went dead. Tom was
quite glad when an elderly man sidled up alongside him. He was big
and tall like Ben Cusack, but maybe not as old. He wore a scruffy
donkey jacket and a flat cap and had that air of someone who had
lived in the village forever.

‘
Is it true
you’re Sorcha Sheridan’s grandson?’ he suddenly asked in that local
burr.

‘
Yes, that’s
right,’ Tom replied.

‘
What you
doing working for those Cusacks? I thought they were the
enemy.’

‘
It’s a long
story. Do you know them then?’

‘
All me life.
I could tell you a few stories.’

Realising this was an
opportunity too good to miss. Tom got out his wallet.

‘
Thanks….’

‘
Fred. Fred
Brown.’

‘
Tom Montague.
What are you drinking Fred?’

‘
I’ll have a
pint of Sheridans.’

‘
Coming
up.’

The two men found a table
quite close to the door, away from the jukebox. Tom estimated Fred
to be in his late seventies - close to Sorcha’s age; so he could
probably remember a lot.

‘
So have you
lived in the village all your life Fred?’ Tom asked.

‘
I have. I was
caretaker at Summerset School until five years ago. When I started
there, your great-grandfather ruled his village with a rod of iron.
Then those O’Connells came here and slowly everything
changed.’

‘
In what
way?’

‘
Well the
majority of the Paddies who lived in this village were Protestant
and if they were Catholic they didn’t advertise it and went to
church over in Abbott’s Leigh. Then Mick O’Connell moves in; turns
out he’d been a member of the Fenians and had fought against the
English in the Troubles. One night he draped the Republican flag
over the bar and your grandmother came in and she and Lou had the
most terrible fight over it. Suddenly people weren’t so afraid to
display their religion and that was the beginning of the end of the
Sheridans as we knew it. Then of course it all comes out that Lou
and Mick were related to them anyway!’ He shook his head. ‘Who’d
have thought it?’

‘
What was Lou
O’Connell like before she married Ben Cusack?’

Fred got that same
reminiscent twinkle in his eye as Andrew.

‘
She was a
handful. I was the first boy to ever kiss her and she punched me in
the face! She was a beauty alright, but it was obvious Mick weren’t
going to allow her to marry a lowly villager. It was prince
charming over the hills or no one.’

‘
So it wasn’t
a love match with Ben then?’

‘
Who can say?
But it didn’t go un-noticed that their Paula was born eight months
after the wedding.’

‘
So you’re
saying Lou got pregnant to trap Ben?’

‘
Could have
done.’

‘
Did she have
any other boyfriends?’

‘
Rodney
Talbot, the farmer’s son got a bit further than me, but not a
lot.’

‘
What about my
grandmother? What was she like?’

‘
Do you want
the truth?’

‘
Absolutely.’

‘
A complete
nightmare. No one in the village liked her. She’d stomp around
throwing her authority about, making everyone feel about two inches
tall. Is she still alive?’

‘
As far as I
know. She disowned my mother before I was born.’

‘
Those
Sheridans liked disowning people. They were rotten to the core Tom,
sorry to say that about your family but we weren’t sorry to see
them go.’

‘
But there
still are Sheridans running the village.’

‘
Yeah but
they’re basically Cusacks aren’t they? Old Sorcha would go crazy if
she could see that drip Tara running her old home. Tara must get
frightened by her own shadow.’

Tom didn’t like this man
speaking of Tara in such a way. She obviously had problems that
caused her to behave the way she did and he had no right to judge
her. Besides, just two seconds ago he’d been slagging Sorcha off
for being a bully!

‘
So are you
friends with Andrew McDonald?’ Tom asked, changing the
subject.

‘
Not friends,
acquaintances. Occasionally his housekeeper’ll bring him in here
and we’ll have a chat. He was a Sheridan by marriage and I never
mixed with him when he was young.’

‘
What was his
wife like?’

‘
Briggy? She
was the nicest of the three sisters. She was the only one who had
any time for the villagers and her and Andrew really took Lou under
their wing. I’ll never know why she buggered off to Donegal when
she sold Sheridans. I’m sure Lou wouldn’t have minded her staying
in her old house.’

‘
I’m so glad I
bumped into you Fred,’ Tom said sincerely. ‘I’ve been wanting to
find out more about the past, but I don’t like to ask the Cusacks
because I don’t think they trust me - given my grandmother’s
reputation.’

‘
This village
is full of old folk who remember the bad old days Tom,’ Fred said,
sipping his pint. ‘I think someone did you a favour. At least by
your mum being disowned, you never got to be tainted by the
Sheridans.’

Tom headed back to
Claremont Hall wracked with confusion. During his time in Summerset
he’d heard so many contrasting stories about his own family and the
Cusacks he didn’t know what to believe. The one thing that was
common was that no-one had a good word to say about Sorcha. Indeed,
if he was honest with himself, he preferred the company of the
Cusacks than his own family, and Sorcha had come across as a very
bitter old woman. But Tom knew he couldn’t let his reservations
cloud his judgement; he owed Jackson a lot of money and had to see
this through. He just wished he had some way of protecting Tara
from it.

Tara was in her office
and it was nice to see her out and about again. Tom wondered if he
should mention the incident the other day and thought better of it.
Tara was like a timid animal and if he probed, he was likely to
send her scuttling back into her shell.

‘
Is everything
okay?’ she asked, not taking her eyes off her computer.

‘
Yes. I was
chatting with a man who knew both our grandmothers when they were
kids. Sounds as though they had some right scraps.’

‘
Was it all
that religious rubbish?’

‘
Yes. Were you
brought up a Catholic?’

‘
I was
christened Catholic but I’ve never practiced my faith. I think it’s
all mumbo jumbo.’

Tom wondered if it was
the right time to broach the subject that had been playing on his
mind. He wasn’t sure if it was even the right thing to do as it was
technically helping the Cusacks but then again, it would benefit
Jackson when he took over the estate.