LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      IT WAS a good hour’s drive back to the villa.

      It shouldn’t have taken so long. For most of the way the new highway meant that the road was extremely good. But Helen had already learned to her cost that traffic moved much less frenetically in Barbados than it did in London. Yet she was glad of the prolonged length of the journey to try to get herself under control. The shock she had had at the airport had left her palms moist, her knees shaking and her heart beating uncomfortably fast. Dear God, had she really seen her mother? Or was it all some incredible coincidence?

      Of course, Andrew thought she was sulking because he had let the Aitken man think she was his wife. She still didn’t know why he’d done it, but that embarrassment had been quickly superseded by other events. That man’s name—Aitken—had been familiar, but she’d never dreamed that that was who he was. Until Fleur—if it was Fleur—had come sauntering out of the airport. Then the connection had been too much to ignore.

      She expelled her breath with a shiver. Had it really been Fleur? Had it really been Chase Aitken? It had looked like Fleur—or, at least, like the pictures she had once unearthed in the attic at Conyers. James Gregory had seldom mentioned her, and he had certainly never encouraged Helen to ask questions. But the woman had been her mother, after all, and she hadn’t been able to help her curiosity.

      Yet, if the woman had been her mother, then Chase Aitken was evidently much younger than she’d imagined. Was that what had hurt her father so badly? The fact that his wife had left him for a man almost young enough to be his son?

      ‘There’s no point in sitting there brooding,’ Andrew remarked suddenly, arousing her from her uneasy speculations, and Helen met his accusing gaze with some frustration. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about, without Tricia’s husband playing some stupid game of his own.

      ‘I’m not brooding,’ she replied, which was true. Her thoughts were far less pretty. If her mother was here on the island, what was she going to do about it? Did Fleur know her father was dead, for instance? And if she did, did she care?

      ‘Yes, you are,’ Andrew contradicted her flatly. ‘What’s the matter, Helen? Can’t you take a joke?’

      ‘Was that what it was?’

      Helen refused to be treated like a fool, and Henry gave his father a doubtful look. ‘Why did that man think you and Helen were married?’ he piped up curiously, and Helen heard Andrew give an irritated snort.

      ‘How should I know?’ he exclaimed, proving he was not as indifferent to his wife’s possible reaction as he’d been to Helen’s. If the children accused him of perpetuating the mistake, Tricia wouldn’t be at all pleased. Particularly as the Aitkens were exactly the kind of people she liked to mix with.

      ‘Well, perhaps you should have corrected him,’ Helen observed now, aware that if she wasn’t careful she’d be the one blamed for assuming Tricia’s identity, and Andrew scowled.

      ‘How was I to know what you’d told him?’ he demanded, refusing to let her off the hook. ‘I didn’t want to embarrass you, that’s all. The man might have been a nuisance.’

      Helen was always amazed at the lengths some people would go to protect their own positions, and she gazed at the back of Andrew’s head now with undisguised contempt. What had she expected, after all? She was only the nursemaid. She just hoped Tricia wouldn’t imagine she’d done something to warrant the misunderstanding.

      ‘He was nice,’ asserted Sophie, apparently deciding she had been quiet long enough. Happily, she was looking better now that she had something else to think about.

      ‘How would you know?’ asked Henry at once, seldom allowing his sister to get away with anything. ‘He hurt my arm, and he called me a rude name. I’m going to tell Mummy that Helen didn’t stop him.’

      ‘You’re not going to tell your mother anything,’ cut in his father sharply, evidently deciding that it wasn’t in his best interests to let Henry carry tales. ‘Or I might just have to tell her that without Mr Aitken’s intervention you’d have been minced meat.’

      Henry hunched his shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he muttered.

      ‘You would,’ said Sophie triumphantly. ‘Anyway, I liked him. And I think Helen liked him, too.’

      ‘Heavens, I don’t even know the man,’ Helen demurred, annoyed to find that the child had achieved what her father couldn’t. Hot colour was pouring into her cheeks, and Andrew’s expression revealed that he knew it.

      ‘Who is he, anyway?’ he asked. ‘You never did tell me. What did you find out about him? You seemed to be having quite a conversation as I walked out of the airport buildings.’

      ‘I don’t know anything more than you do,’ Helen declared, not altogether truthfully, glad that she was flushed now, and therefore in no danger of revealing herself again. ‘I didn’t even know his name until you asked him.’ Which was true. ‘He’s probably another tourist. The island’s full of them.’

      ‘Hmm.’ Andrew was thoughtful. ‘He didn’t look like a tourist to me. Unless he’s been here since Christmas. You don’t get a tan like that in a couple of weeks.’

      ‘Does it matter?’

      Helen didn’t particularly want to talk about it, or think about it, for that matter. The image she had, of a tall dark man with the lean muscled body of an athlete, was not one she wanted to cherish. Chase Aitken, she thought scornfully, polo-player, playboy, and jock. Not to mention adulterer,

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