Helen Lacey – Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere (страница 2)

CHAPTER ONE

‘DO come in, Mrs Diamond.’

Salome gave the man still seated behind the desk a cool look.

‘You’re very punctual,’ he added with a cursory glance at his watch.

‘Ralph was not one of those men who liked to be kept waiting,’ she said, before realising that she was talking about her husband in the past tense.

But then came the bitter reminder that, for her, Ralph Diamond was past. Otherwise Charles Smeaton, Ralph’s long-time legal adviser, would have been on his feet, extending a polite hand and showing a wide smile beneath his pencil-thin moustache. Instead, he waved curtly towards the vacant chair in front of the desk.

Salome closed the door of the office far more politely than her inner turmoil warranted. She walked across the plushly carpeted floor, well aware that Charles’s beady eyes were running over her eye-catching figure with an insolence he would never have dared display in front of Ralph.

But she sat down and crossed her long, shapely legs without batting an eyelid. If there was one thing her husband had taught her, it was to show apparent indifference to what others did or said.

‘You will have to learn to ignore the gossip, Salome,’ Ralph had warned her right from the start. ‘There’s bound to be plenty, with your being only nineteen to my forty-nine. People who don’t know you will think you’re marrying me for my money, in exchange for which I get to bed the most beautiful girl God ever put breath into. There’s no point in telling the world the truth, my dear. No one will believe you. You’ll just have to learn to live with the slurs. But don’t worry, I’ll teach you how to distance yourself from malicious tongues, how to hold yourself above them.’

Ralph had been right, of course. People had thought the worst of her. Not that they had ever shown their true faces in front of her husband. He was too rich and powerful to offend directly. But there’d been looks and sniggers behind his back. Once, shortly after their marriage, Charles had cornered her at a party and told her to make hay while the sun shone, since dear old Ralph had a habit of discarding his material possessions with regular monotony.

For ages afterwards Salome had been plagued with doubts about the sincerity of Ralph’s love. But as the months passed—very happy months—she had gained more and more confidence in herself and her unusual marriage. The doubts were firmly buried, and remained so for over four years, only to resurface with a vengeance one day in May last year—the day Ralph had told her their marriage was over.

‘Well, Charles?’ she asked, setting cool green eyes upon his smarmy-looking expression. ‘Why did you want to see me? I received the final divorce papers in the mail last week. What more is there to be said?’

‘You’re looking as ravishing as ever, Mrs Diamond,’ he drawled, leaning his fleshy frame back into the swivel-chair and giving her the benefit of a further scrutiny, this time letting his eyes linger more insultingly on the thrust of her high, well-rounded breasts.

Salome didn’t flinch an inch.

‘It’s Miss Twynan now, Charles,’ she said with silky smoothness. ‘Or Salome, if you prefer.’ The sudden thought that her ex-husband would have been proud of her unruffled demeanour only brought pain. Oh, Ralph...why did you do it? Why marry me, make my whole life revolve around you, then toss me out like a worn-out shoe? Why?

An ugly smile twisted the lawyer’s thick lips. ‘Salome. Such an...interesting name.’

‘Molly liked it.’

‘Molly?’

‘My mother.’

‘Ah, yes...your mother.’ His derisive tone suggested that just mentioning her mother was distasteful.

‘Couldn’t we get to the point, Charles?’ she asked icily.

He snapped forward on the chair, reefed open a drawer on his left, and extracted a set of keys. ‘Ralph has decided to add another item to your settlement,’ he announced, tossing the keys forward to land on the edge of the desk nearest Salome. ‘A penthouse unit at McMahon’s Point. And you’ll find the white Ferrari he gave you for your twenty-first birthday in the basement car park.’ He leaned back again and gave her another one of those smirky smiles. ‘Why you left it behind in the first place, I have no idea. It wasn’t as though you didn’t earn everything Ralph gave you. He always seemed very satisfied with you during your—er—marriage.’

Salome’s chest squeezed so tight with the effort to remain composed that she could scarcely breathe.

‘I don’t want them,’ she managed to get out.

‘Too bad. The unit has already been transferred into your name by deed gift, and the car was always legally yours. It’s registered in your name.’

Salome took a deep breath. No way did she want to stay here arguing with this ghastly man. She would just take the unit and the car, sell them, then give the money to charity, as she had all the other money Ralph had settled on her. For how could she ever keep any of it? To do so would vindicate all the implied insults she’d endured over the years.

Not that any of her slanderers knew about her Grand Gesture. Nor Charles for that matter. She saw little point in telling people like him about something they couldn’t possibly understand. They wouldn’t appreciate her motives. They would think her crazy. Her own mother had thought her crazy!

‘Why is he giving me this penthouse now?’ she asked. ‘Do you know? Did he say?’

Charles shrugged. ‘You know Ralph. He never explains his actions. He just gives orders.’

Yes, she thought ruefully. That was Ralph all over.

‘We’ll go here tonight, Salome,’ he would say. ‘Order the prawn dish, Salome’ or ‘Wear the green dress, Salome.’

Most women would have hated his autocratic, bossy nature. But, for reasons which she had not explored deeply enough at the time, Salome had loved it. She had had many long, lonely nights since then to work out why she had acted so submissively. And, while she could appreciate the reasons behind her behaviour, she still wasn’t all that comfortable with it.

‘I see,’ she said tautly. ‘Have you got an address for this unit? McMahon’s Point is just north of the Harbour Bridge, on the Luna Park side, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Yours is penthouse two, in a multi-storeyed circular block called Harbourside Towers, right on the water at the end of Harbour Road. You can’t miss it. I—er—presume you’ll be moving in right away? After all, you can’t really be liking living with your mother.’

Salome picked up the keys and slipped them into her handbag. ‘You’re quite wrong, Charles,’ she said coolly. ‘I won’t be moving in, and I quite like living with my mother.’ But only since Molly seemed finally to have got over the urge to ask every man she dated to move in with her, Salome thought wearily.

She stood up, automatically smoothing down the emerald-green wool sheath over her slender thighs, then, with her free hand, flicking the long mass of tight coppery curls back from her face and shoulders.

A dry-mouthed shock took hold of her when she became aware of how openly lustful Charles’s gaze had grown as it followed each of these movements. Her eyes locked on to his with a sickening jolt inside, but she glared back at him quite boldly, till he was forced to drop his eyes.

Creep! she thought savagely.

‘Please don’t bother to show me out,’ she said, making no attempt to hide her sarcasm. And with that she turned on her black high heels and strode from the office.

It wasn’t till she was alone in the elevator that she realised she was shaking with fury.

* * *

Salome walked slowly through the penthouse, her emotions no more settled than when she had left Charles’s office. Her troubled gaze travelled around the enormous living-room she was standing in, taking in the no-expense-spared décor: the classically neutral colour scheme, the ultra-modern imported furniture, the huge, semicircular plate-glass windows that she’d discovered slid back electronically to allow access to the equally huge balcony.

She wandered out to lean on the high cylindrical railing, and frowned at the view, which stretched across to Darling Harbour on her right, Milson’s Point on her left, and the Bridge straight ahead. The blue waters were cold-looking but beautiful beneath the clear winter sky. A crisp breeze ruffled Salome’s hair, making her realise how cool and refreshing this balcony would be in the summer.

How much was this place worth? she wondered. A million dollars? More?

She sighed. Molly was going to go off her brain when she told her she was going to give it all away too. Just as well Ralph had seen fit to give his young bride’s not-so-suitable mother a house and income of her own when they got married, or she’d never hear the end of it. As it was, Molly often brought up the matter of money and how stupid Salome had been to give it all away, then have to go and work in a dress shop to earn her own living.

Which reminded her. She had still not told Molly that it looked as if she was going to be laid off soon. Sales at the boutique were slumping, along with the economy, the manager not minding at all that Salome had asked for the afternoon off. She’d been looking around for a better job but had found she wasn’t qualified for anything that paid well. To go back to waitressing was too depressing a thought to consider, but she might have to do just that while going to tech and getting herself some marketable skills. Perhaps a typing and word-processing course. That seemed very much in demand.