LITMIR.BIZ

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made them all a cup of coffee, giving a barely perceptible shrug of her shoulders to Chris, seeing by the stubborn set of his mouth that he intended staying as long as it took for her father to go to bed. He was determined to have that talk with her tonight.

      Sian felt totally confused as she prepared the coffee. She had no idea why Jarrett should want to talk to her about anything – especially while he was dating her sister! She couldn’t let Bethany be hurt as she had been hurt, she had to protect her sister against herself if it came to it.

      ‘Have a nice evening?’ Her father took the cup of coffee she handed him, oblivious of the strained atmosphere between the engaged couple.

      ‘We went to the Raven.’ Sian avoided giving him a direct answer, the reputation of the restaurant such that he was sure to think they had enjoyed themselves.

      ‘You didn’t happen to see Bethany, did you?’ he enquired casually.

      ‘We—’

      ‘You know the Raven isn’t her sort of place,’ she interrupted Chris’s reply, knowing by his angry scowl that he was about to say more than she wanted him to. But again she had avoided telling a deliberate lie. The Raven wasn’t Bethany’s sort of place.

      ‘No,’ her father chuckled, very comfortable and relaxed in his casual and old trousers and tattered worn cardigan, his usual attire after his formal clothing of the day at his office. ‘She’s more likely to be at the Swan, they have a discothèque there.’

      ‘Not on a Wednesday,’ Sian told him absently, aware of Chris’s glowering impatience.

      ‘Oh well, I suppose she’s just out with one of her friends,’ her father shrugged. ‘She left in such a hurry she didn’t have time to tell me. I doubt she’ll be too late.’

      ‘No,’ again Sian answered, when it became obvious Chris was going to make no effort at conversation.

      ‘There was a good Western on television tonight,’ her father told her happily. ‘I enjoyed that.’

      Sian smiled indulgently, Westerns were her father’s passion. ‘John Wayne?’ she teased, knowing the Duke was her father’s favourite cowboy.

      ‘Randolph Scott,’ he named his second favourite, and put down his empty cup. ‘Well, I’m off to bed now. I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose, Chris?’ he smiled at the other man. Liking and respect existed between the two of them, a deep contrast to what her father had felt for Jarrett; he had never quite trusted him. And that mistrust had been justified!

      ‘I’m sure you will, George.’ Chris roused himself enough to be polite.

      Sian stood up to kiss her father affectionately goodnight, a habit from when she was a child, a pleasant habit. ‘See you in the morning,’ she smiled.

      ‘Mm,’ he touched her cheek. ‘And don’t be too late to bed,’ he frowned. ‘You’re looking a little peaky today.’

      ‘Pre-wedding nerves,’ she joked.

      Her father smiled. ‘Both of you, by the look of it,’ he teased Chris’s tense expression.

      ‘It’s a hectic time,’ Chris mumbled.

      ‘I agree,’ her father laughed. ‘But it will soon be over, and I’m sure the honeymoon will be worth it,’ he added with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

      ‘Dad!’

      He could still be heard chuckling as he went up to his bedroom, having no idea of the fraught tension he had left behind him, sure that they would be in each other’s arms the moment he left the room.

      ‘Is there still going to be a wedding?’ Chris finally rasped. ‘Or a honeymoon, for that matter?’

      Sian gave him a startled look, paling. ‘What do you mean?’

      He stood up forcefully, as if the inactivity of sitting down made him impatient. ‘Don’t try telling me that meeting King again hasn’t unsettled you,’ he scorned.

      ‘I found it a little—strange,’ she chose her words carefully, ‘but that’s all.’

      ‘Is it?’ he derided. ‘Then why didn’t you want your father told that Bethany was out with him?’

      She sighed, chewing on her inner lip. ‘He wouldn’t understand—’

      ‘Neither do I! God, when I think of the way he was touching you! I could have hit him in that moment,’ Chris growled.

      She had known that, but if he had Jarrett would have hit him back, and he wouldn’t have pulled his punches either. Jarrett was a physical man in every way, and he would have derived enjoyment from hitting Chris.

      ‘I didn’t like it either—’

      ‘Didn’t you?’ he ground out. ‘You didn’t exactly look as if you were fighting him off when I came back to see what was delaying you!’

      ‘We were in a public restaurant,’ she flushed. ‘I didn’t want to make a scene. As for my father being told about Bethany—he doesn’t like Jarrett, he never did. It would upset him to know Bethany was out with him.’

      ‘And you think it didn’t upset me to see King touching you?’ Chris asked bitterly.

      ‘I can see it did,’ she soothed, her hand on his arm. ‘But I didn’t choose to have him touch me.’

      ‘What did he want?’

      ‘To talk to me—’

      ‘Talk!’ he derided harshly. ‘It looked to me as if talking were the last thing he had on his mind. The man was eating you with his eyes! Tell me about him, Sian, tell me about the two of you, why you broke up.’

      She turned away. ‘We just weren’t suited.’

      ‘He doesn’t give that impression,’ Chris said dryly. ‘In fact, he seemed to imply you were very suited, in some ways,’ he looked at her searchingly.

      She closed her eyes, flashes of vivid memory going in and out of her mind—she and Jarrett swimming in the river together, making love afterwards on a blanket beneath the willow tree, its weeping branches affording them a privacy that hid them from the outside world. After that first magical time together they had spent a lot of summer afternoons in the same way, never tiring of each other, never quite sated as they longed for the next time they could be alone together to make love.

      ‘You were lovers!’ Chris rasped at her silence.

      She raised her lashes. ‘I told you there’d been someone else—’

      ‘But not him!’ Chris groaned.

      The flecks of green in her hazel eyes were more noticeable as her anger rose at the disgust in his face. ‘Why shouldn’t it have been him? I was going to marry him!’

      ‘Why didn’t you?’

      ‘Circumstances,’ she revealed tautly.

      Chris’s eyes narrowed to stormy blue pools. ‘The woman Nina Marshall,’ he demanded to know.

      Sian moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, looking down at her clasped hands. ‘Yes. He went to America, I decided not to go with him.’

      ‘Tell me about it.’

      ‘Chris—’

      ‘Just tell me, Sian,’ he sighed his impatience. ‘Don’t I have a right to know about you and him?’

      ‘I—I suppose so.’ She swallowed hard, sitting down, knowing it wouldn’t be easy to relive the memories. ‘I was nineteen when I met Jarrett. Oh, I’d seen him about town, but he was a little too old for me, a little out of my league, so we’d never actually spoken. He ran a branch of his uncle’s business here, had a steady girl-friend called—called Nina,’ she revealed painfully. ‘He and I met one day, quite by

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