LITMIR.BIZ

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groaning and get down to breakfast!

      Her father was already in the sun-room that served as a breakfast-room, devouring his habitual steak and eggs, when she made an appearance. Elsie was standing at his shoulder, refilling his coffee-cup.

      ‘Good morning,’ Audrey said with determined brightness as she pulled out a chair at the circular table. ‘Just coffee and one slice of toast for me, Elsie.’

      ‘Righto, lovie.’ Elsie waddled off. Having been a cook all her life, Elsie had sampled a few too many of her own makings. But she was a sweet old dear, without a mean bone in her body. Audrey was very fond of her.

      Warwick Farnsworth looked up at his daughter with a reproachful frown on his face. ‘You’re not going to become one of those anorexics, are you, Audrey?’

      She glanced across the table at her father and conceded that at fifty he was still a handsome man. Broad-shouldered and fit as a fiddle, he had thick brown hair, elegantly greying at the temples, and sharp blue eyes. For a brief moment, Audrey wished she’d inherited a few of his genes.

      But not his lack of tact.

      He had no idea how to relate to his daughter as a parent. Most of his conversations with her started with an exasperated-sounding question.

      ‘I’m not anorexic, Father. I’m five feet four and weigh eight stone two. That’s exactly what I should be.’

      Audrey had learnt to answer her father with facts. He was a ‘facts’ man.

      ‘Hmph!’ he pronounced and picked up his coffee-cup, turning to flip open the morning paper next to him to the business section.

      Elsie arrived with the toast and coffee, and Audrey settled down to spreading margarine and jam. Once her father had his nose in the newspaper, all conversation ceased. Which meant she was surprised when he suddenly spoke up again.

      ‘You do realise, Audrey, that Lavinia is going to a lot of trouble for your birthday on Friday night?’

      Audrey tried not to have ungrateful thoughts. Shy in any social situation, she had requested no celebration at all, but Lavinia had insisted on a dinner party with some people from work. Audrey had only given in graciously when Russell had liked the idea.

      ‘She’s been a good stepmother to you,’ her father went on. ‘Very good. Even in the beginning, when you were hardly welcoming. She never once lost patience with you, despite your uncooperative, sullen disposition at the time.’

      Sullen?

      Resentment flared within Audrey. Hardly sullen. In pain maybe, from her own injuries from the car accident that had also claimed her mother. Two badly broken legs took a long time to heal. Not to mention her emotional pain of losing a mother she adored. But of course her father wouldn’t understand that. He’d shown how insensitive he was by remarrying within six months of his wife’s death.

      With a clarity that had previously eluded her, Audrey finally accepted the rumours she had heard all her life and had blindly denied to herself. That her father had not loved her mother; that he had married her for the company.

      She glared over at her father, recognising in him a man similar to Russell, a ruthlessly ambitious and mercenary man who had little love to give. He probably didn’t even really love Lavinia. She was merely a decorative hostess, a beautiful and convenient body to have in bed, a possession, much like the paintings and sculpture he’d started collecting recently.

      What annoyed Audrey even more was that, despite finally recognising her father’s failings, she still loved him.

      ‘Lavinia tells me you’ve cancelled your invitation to Russell for the dinner party,’ he rapped out. ‘Is that correct?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Why?’

      Her heart began thudding. ‘We split up.’

      ‘Why?’ he insisted on knowing.

      She was about to make some feeble excuse when something—some indefinably rebellious surge—made her say, ‘I met someone else.’

      Her father’s face showed astonishment. ‘You did? Who?’

      Audrey gulped. Now she had done it. ‘You...you don’t know him.’

      ‘Well, what’s his name? Where did you meet him? What does he do?’

      ‘I—er—his name is Elliot Knight. He lives at Avalon Beach and he’s a man of independent means.’ She wisely decided not to answer the question about where she’d met him. She didn’t think her father would appreciate her saying Elliot had picked her up in a coffee-lounge.

      ‘He’s rich, you mean.’

      ‘Yes, I guess so.’

      ‘And he’s still interested in you.’

      Audrey’s dismay was intense. So her father had known Russell was only interested in her money. And yet he had allowed the liaison to continue, knowing this all the time. Her sense of self-worth began to shrivel again. No man had ever been interested in her for herself alone. The only real emotion she’d managed to inspire in a man was pity. It was pity that had made Elliot come to her rescue, take her home, kiss her. Pity...

      She wanted to cry with despair but her father was staring at her and some new strength—born of her recent bitter experience perhaps—kept her chin up, her eyes steady, forced her to say, ‘He’s very interested.’

      ‘Then why don’t you invite him to your party?’

      ‘Invite who?’ Lavinia asked as she swanned in in her favourite black satin négligé. Tall and voluptuous, with long wavy black hair flowing out over her shoulders, she was a striking and sensuous figure.

      ‘Morning, darling.’ She bent to kiss her husband’s forehead before drifting over to pour herself some coffee from the percolator on the sideboard.

      Audrey stared after her with undeniable envy. Oh, to be so elegant, so sure of oneself, so darned sexy!

      ‘Audrey has a new boyfriend,’ her father announced with a mixture of surprise and fatherly pride. ‘She says he’s very interested in her.’

      Audrey winced. Now she was well and truly in the soup.

      Lavinia whirled to stare disbelievingly at her. ‘Really? Anyone we know?’

      ‘I’ve already asked that. She says not. A wealthy young playboy from the sound of things.’

      ‘But how would Audrey meet someone like that?’ Lavinia scoffed. ‘She never mixes in the social set around Sydney. Not that she shouldn’t. She just never bothers with that scene. Are you sure she’s telling the truth about all this? It all seems very odd.’

      Audrey detested it when her father and Lavinia started talking around her. Normally, she either stayed unhappily silent or drifted away. But not this morning. ‘Why on earth would I lie, Lavinia?’ she challenged.

      ‘Why, indeed?’ the woman murmured.

      ‘I’m only too happy to tell you about Elliot. You only have to ask.’

      Lavinia lifted her finely arched dark brows and walked indolently back to sit down with her coffee. ‘Well?’ she prompted. ‘Tell us, then. Where did you meet?’

      Audrey swallowed, her newly discovered courage faltering. ‘I—er—I...’

      The sardonic light in Lavinia’s black eyes forced Audrey to gather every available resource she owned. ‘We met at a party last Saturday night,’ she said, using Elliot’s own white lie to Russell. ‘Not the one just past. The weekend before.’

      ‘But you didn’t go out that night,’ Lavinia pointed out.

      Audrey’s memory did a frantic data-search. Her father and Lavinia had gone out to a club that night. They hadn’t come home till

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