LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      LIAM turned and saw Kit a second later. His smile died instantly to be replaced by a frown. She wasn’t surprised—he had been scowling at her for days—but it still saddened her, angered her too—how dared he look at her like that? It wasn’t she who was behaving like a spoilt child, wanting to have everything its own way. But then wasn’t that just like a man?

      She looked at him with love and anger, wanting to smack him hard. His well-brushed black hair showed only fine streaks of silver although he was fifty himself now; it wasn’t fair, thought Kit, wishing she didn’t feel that deep surge of emotion just looking at him. Why did men retain their looks long after women’s had begun to fade? Liam didn’t look fifty. He was still lean and vibrant—a tall man with powerful shoulders, long legs and a lot of energy.

      Paddy whispered to her, ‘Oops! Someone’s in a bad temper again! Whatever is the matter with him these days?’

      Kit didn’t tell her. She couldn’t possibly have confided in Paddy—in anyone. The quarrel between her and Liam was too private to be talked about. It would be humiliating for anyone else to know about it.

      Liam said goodbye to the woman he had been talking to and came over to them, his pale grey eyes glittering with ice as he held up his wrist and pointed to his watch.

      ‘What time do you call this?’

      Kit pondered the question, staring at his gold Cartier watch, which she knew had been a twenty-first birthday present to him from his father thirty years ago. It was still as beautiful as it must have been then, but Gerald Keble had been dead for twenty years. Was that part of the power of antiques—that they outlasted those who had created them or owned them? Or was it more that they somehow carried the patina of the times they had lived through, their surfaces polished by love over generations?

      ‘Are we late?’ she began, pretending not to be sure of it, and Liam’s face tightened. He wasn’t fooled by her wide-open eyes and surprised expression. He knew her too well.

      ‘You know damned well you are! You should have been here half an hour ago! Every other stall was set up and doing business by half eight. Why weren’t you here? I was; I was here by twenty past eight—where were you?’

      She abandoned innocence in favour of defiance. ‘Fred’s van can only do forty miles an hour when it’s loaded down with stuff, you know that! It might break down altogether if he pushed it.’

      Fred and Paddy became very busy, not wishing to get drawn into the battle. They didn’t enjoy confrontation or argument; they liked life to be peaceful, and Kit sympathised—she would rather have had a peaceful life too, but Liam was making that impossible for both of them.

      ‘You should have left earlier!’ he accused.

      ‘We left early enough—but there was a lot of traffic on the road!’

      ‘You should have made allowances for that.’

      It was never easy to argue with Liam; he had an answer for everything. She looked at him furiously, her green eyes glittering. ‘This is just wasting time! I’ve got better things to do than stand here bickering with you!’

      As she turned away Liam tersely demanded, ‘Where were you all last night?’

      She froze, staring up at him. ‘What?’

      ‘Don’t give me that innocent look! I know you weren’t home. I wanted to remind you to get here by half past eight. I kept ringing from six-thirty onwards but just got your answering machine. I left a couple of messages asking you to ring me back, but you never did.’

      Fred and Paddy had discreetly deposited their loads on the empty stall and melted away back to the van to get some more of the items they had brought, hoping no doubt that by the time they got back here she and Liam would have stopped snarling at each other. Some hope!

      Turning her back on him, Kit began to unpack some of the wrapped pieces in one of the boxes, setting them out carefully on the stall. She felt Liam glaring at her as she unwrapped a piece of art nouveau glass—a twisty candlestick in rainbow colours which had been allowed to run like melting wax.

      Casually without looking at him, she said over her shoulder, ‘I went to the cinema club to see Garbo in Camille last night.’

      ‘Was it a midnight performance?’ he bit out.

      ‘Midnight performance?’ she repeated, baffled. ‘Of course not!’ She couldn’t actually remember what time she had got back to her flat, but it hadn’t been that late, surely?

      She went on unwrapping porcelain, talking without looking at him. ‘I was back home by midnight! I didn’t check my answering machine; I forgot it was on so I didn’t think of switching it off, and this morning I was in such a rush, grabbing some coffee and toast, that I still didn’t remember to check to see if there were any messages. I went straight to bed as soon as I got home last night.’

      ‘Did you go alone?’ he asked, his tone as cutting as a knife going through silk.

      Kit gave him an incredulous, angry stare. ‘To bed?’ She couldn’t believe he had asked her that. Hot colour rushed up her face—the scarlet of rage rather than embarrassment.

      ‘No, to the cinema!’ he bit out like someone snapping cotton between their teeth.

      ‘Yes to both, as it happens!’ she snapped back. What was he suggesting—that she had gone out with someone else last night? Was having an affair? He was reacting with possessive jealousy, yet he kept saying that he didn’t want to own her or have her own him. Why didn’t he make up his mind? He was the most contradictory, bewildering man she had ever known.

      ‘Really?’ His mouth twisted cynically, disbelievingly.

      She

Скачать книгу