LITMIR.BIZ

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father he had known.

      ‘The man was an idiot, getting in over his head,’ her father snarled. ‘Even with help he was in no state to rescue anything. His wife was dying of cancer. Trying to hang on was stupid.’

      A judgement call. Had it been right or a deliberate choice for her father to make a profit out of it, charging huge fees to carry out the liquidation process?

      What was the truth?

      Laura knew she wouldn’t get it from her father. He would serve his own ends. Always had.

      As for Jake, he must have been totally torn up with grief when the seeds of his mission had been sown—his mother dying of cancer, his stepfather driven into bankruptcy and dying of a heart attack. It must have been a terribly traumatic time, having to bury both parents in the midst of everything being sold up around him. She had sensed the darkness in him, seen signs of it, heard it in his voice that first day in the garden when he’d described the terrible downside of bankruptcy, but hadn’t known how deep it went, hadn’t known that she was connected to it by being her father’s daughter.

      The bottle of Scotch took another hit. A furious finger stabbed at her again. ‘Don’t you dare take his side in this bloody whistle-blowing or you are out of this house, Laura! He used you. Used you to show me up as even more of a fool for trusting him with my daughter.’

      Had that been Jake’s intention behind tempting her into an affair? An iron fist squeezed her heart. He’d controlled every aspect of their meetings, kept their involvement limited to Saturday nights. Had he been secretly revelling in having her whenever he called? Because of who she was?

      ‘What there was between us is over,’ she said flatly.

      ‘It had better be, my girl!’ Threat seethed through every word. ‘If he contacts you…’

      ‘He won’t.’ Laura was certain of it. He had been saying goodbye on Sunday morning.

      ‘Don’t bet on it! It would be an extra feather in his cap if he sucked you in again.’

      ‘He won’t,’ she repeated, sick to her soul. She’d loved him, truly deeply loved him, and the thought of having been used to drive a dagger further into her father was devastating.

      ‘You be damned sure of it, Laura, because if I ever find out otherwise, you’ll pay for it!’

      ‘I’m sure.’

      ‘You’re looking sick around the gills. He got to you all right.’

      The savage mutter was followed by another hefty swig of Scotch.

      ‘I’m not feeling well,’ her mother said shakily. ‘Will you help me up to my bedroom, Laura?’

      ‘’Course I will.’ She quickly moved off the arm-rest to give support.

      ‘Running away as usual,’ her father said scathingly. ‘We’ll be living with this hanging over our heads for months, Alicia. No escaping it.’

      ‘It’s just the shock, Dad,’ Laura threw back at him. ‘Mum needs some recovery time.’

      ‘Recovery! I’ll never recover from this! Never! That bastard has me hamstrung!’

      Not for nothing, Laura thought as she helped her mother from the room. Jake must have presented a considerable body of hard evidence against her father for him to be suspended from practice. And had still been gathering it while he was seeing her on the side.

      She needed recovery time, too.

      Her mother felt terribly frail. Laura put her to bed and tucked the doona around her. ‘It’s not your fault, either, Mum,’ she said gently.

      The pale blue eyes were teary and fearful. She grasped Laura’s hand. ‘I don’t think I can bear it if your father is home every day.’

      ‘You don’t have to. Eddie would take you in. You have only to ask.’

      She shook her head fretfully. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on him. You don’t understand, Laura. Your father wouldn’t tolerate my leaving him. He’d…do something.’

      Laura hated the fear but she knew there was no reasoning against it. She and Eddie had tried many times. ‘Well, I don’t think Dad will be at home all the time. He’ll be out networking with people, fighting this situation with everything in his power.’

      ‘Yes. Yes, he will. Thank you, Laura. I’m sorry…sorry that Jake…’

      ‘Let’s not talk about him. You just rest, Mum.’

      She kissed the slightly damp forehead and left the room before her own tears welled up and spilled over—tears of hurt and shock and grief that pride had insisted she hold back in front of her father. And her mother.

      In the safe haven of her bedroom she wept until she was totally drained of tears. Her mind was wiped blank for a long time as she lay in limp misery, but gradually it began to turn over everything that had happened between her and Jake in the light of what she now knew and it kept coming back to the one line that felt critically important—the line he’d spoken after their first kiss in the garden.

      I don’t want to want you.

      But he had.

      He most definitely had wanted her, and quite possibly not because of who she was but in spite of who she was.

      Which made a huge difference to her father’s interpretation of Jake’s conduct where she was concerned.

      It meant she was not part of his vengeance plot.

      She was an innocent connection to the man whom he saw as the prime cause of the darkest time of his life. The words he’d used describing bankruptcy came back to her—lives crumbling, futures shattered, depression so dark there is no light. The emotional intensity that had surprised her in that forceful little speech had obviously erupted from personal experience.

      Looking back, she began to make much more sense of how Jake had run their affair, always keeping the end in sight, ensuring their involvement was limited, not escalating into something too serious. He’d known it was ill-fated from the start, but he’d found her as irresistible as she’d found him and he’d taken the small window of opportunity for them to enjoy each other before circumstances made it impossible.

      It’s been good. Thank you.

      He hadn’t been using her.

      They’d both chosen to give themselves the pleasure of mutual desire and it had been good. The more Laura reasoned it out, the more she believed the journey they’d taken together was completely separate from the road Jake had been travelling to put her father out of business.

      She remembered the intensity of his love-making on Saturday night, the long passionate kiss before they left the hotel room, the flat darkness—no…light—of his eyes as he touched her cheek in the taxi.

      Maybe he hadn’t wanted to say goodbye.

      Maybe he loved her as deeply as she loved him.

      Maybe he just couldn’t see a future for them, given what he was about to do.

      That might be true…or it might not.

      It depended on how much he felt for her.

      She had to see him, talk to him, find out the truth.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      LAURA wished she could have borrowed Eddie’s car to tour the streets of Woollahra, looking for the houses that were being renovated, noting them down for further investigation. It would have been the most time efficient way of searching for Jake’s current home, but she knew her brother would not have been sympathetic to her quest. Better not to ask. Better to go on foot, however long it took.

      When

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