Bittersweet Yesterdays. Kate Proctor
my entire meal. I’ve no intention of risking an ulcer by subjecting myself to your petulant outbursts while I’m eating.’
There was something different about him, thought Lucy nervously, feeling like a severely reprimanded child. It was around two years since she had spent any time in his company, she mused, and also since his father had handed the entire business empire over to him. And before that there had been a similar gap between their meetings.
She picked at her food half-heartedly, startled to realise how long those gaps had been—not that time had ever lessened the intensity of the all-out war that had always existed between them. She frowned, giving an imperceptible shake of her head as she remembered that it hadn’t always been total war between them. From around the time she was seventeen and well into her eighteenth year, they had almost got on well, she realised with a sharp pang of nostalgia—admittedly they had still argued, but not with the venom of the earlier years and certainly not as they were to in the years that followed. And that strange period, almost of truce, had taken place during the time when his father had been reassessing the London offices and when he and her mother had, for the first time since their marriage, actually lived for a while in London.
Mark had still been a student, and younger than she was now, when he had been forced into the role of virtual guardian to a stroppy fifteen-year-old, and how bitterly he had resented it, she thought with a curiously tender pang of understanding. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that the only time they had almost got on was when her mother and his father had been around to relieve him of that onerous burden they themselves had placed on him. It was definitely when James and her mother left England again that hostilities had flared up between them with renewed intensity...even though she was old enough to stand on her own two feet—well, almost—by then.
Her mind still wrestling with such thoughts, she gazed furtively across the table at her silent companion and in that instant her mind blanked, only to be filled by sudden, searing memories of his lips on hers.
For heaven’s sake, all he’d done was kiss her, she remonstrated frantically with herself—except that it was so out of character that it had obviously thrown even him. But one thing she could be sure of—if ever he got any inkling of the effect that kiss had had on her, he would use it as a weapon against her without the slightest compunction!
‘Would you like coffee?’ he asked, finally breaking the silence.
Lucy nodded, her mind still resisting her efforts to clear it of the memories it seemed determined to dwell on.
He summoned a waiter, then didn’t speak again until the table was cleared and the coffee served.
‘About two and a half years ago, my father underwent major surgery for a stomach disorder,’ he then stated quietly.
Lucy looked at him in shocked disbelief.
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’ she asked hoarsely.
‘Probably because they felt you had enough to contend with at the time—that is, being plastered all over the Press as a gangster’s moll.’
‘Mark, you know you’re not being fair.’ As she was still stunned by his disclosure, her protest was mild. ‘I hardly knew the man—I just happened to be having lunch with him when he was arrested. And as for it being plastered all over the—’
‘Perhaps not here; but it was in the States, where the man was wanted on several charges,’ he muttered. ‘And you can imagine how it must have speeded my father’s recovery once the American Press dug up your link with him and brought his name into it all.’
He wasn’t being in the least fair, but Lucy was still too preoccupied by thoughts of her stepfather, of whom she had gradually grown very fond, to react.
‘Lucy, you’re right—I wasn’t being fair,’ he sighed. ‘But to get back to Dad’s operation; by all medical expectations it should have returned him to his old self—but unfortunately it didn’t.’
Lucy gazed at him aghast. ‘That rumpus I was involved in...are you saying it affected him that badly?’
‘Of course I’m not,’ he exclaimed, then startled her by giving her a wry grin. ‘Though I’d be lying if I said the thought never entered my mind.’ His expression reverted to one of seriousness. ‘Lucy, don’t tell me you didn’t find it odd that he should hand over the company to me, and opt out of all involvement with it, so early. It was something he had always intended doing eventually, but certainly not in his early fifties!’
Lucy hoped her expression wasn’t betraying her thoughts. She had had one or two thoughts on the subject of James handing over his empire lock, stock and barrel to his son—and none of them in the least charitable towards Mark—but the idea of poor health having any bearing on it simply hadn’t entered her head.
‘He did it because he realised he lacked the physical stamina to continue. It got so that a full round of golf was more than he could handle—and you know how he is about his golf.’
‘This is dreadful,’ whispered Lucy, feeling suddenly limp and trembly. ‘If only someone had had the sense to tell me. The things I’ve said to them! I virtually accused them of acting like a couple of couch potatoes! I spent last Christmas with them—at that place they suddenly bought in the Seychelles. I just couldn’t understand how they could sit around all day playing cards when there was so much to do there...I feel terrible!’
He gave a small shrug. ‘You weren’t to know—and anyway, it doesn’t matter. Give him a while and he’ll be back to his old energetic self.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘One of the reasons he bought that place in the Seychelles was that he’d had enough of being treated like some sort of medical specimen by the team that had originally operated on him. I suppose you couldn’t blame them really. When such relatively routine surgery produces unheard-of results like that, they’re bound to want to know why. But after the last extensive going-over they gave him, he’d had enough.’
‘Has the climate there cured him or something?’ asked Lucy tentatively.
He laughed as he shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. But with what they had from the last batch of tests, his doctors have finally cracked it—and it took some doing. I’ve no idea what the medical jargon is, but it appears Dad’s innards aren’t quite as they should be according to the textbooks. It’s a minor deviation which, ironically, wouldn’t have affected him a jot had he not had to have precisely the surgery he did have a couple of years ago.’
‘But they can cure it now they know?’
He nodded. ‘Unfortunately it involves another hefty bout of surgery. But once he’s over that, he really will be back to normal this time.’
‘When will he have the operation?’
‘In the New Year. In fact, they’re flying back to the States the day after New Year and he’ll be operated on a day or two later.’
‘Mark...I’m so glad,’ whispered Lucy almost shyly. ‘I know I used to say how much I hated him when they were first married...I suppose it was a confused sort of loyalty to my own father. But over the years I’ve grown very fond of him.’
‘Loyalty such as that is perfectly understandable,’ he muttered. ‘It took a long time for me to admit it even to myself, but your mother’s the best thing that could have happened to him. After my mother died, he just went to pieces.’ He broke off and shifted slightly in his chair, the movement uncharacteristically tense and awkward. ‘It was in that state that he ended up married—briefly, thank God—to an archetypal gold-digger. It was unfortunate but inevitable that I should regard your mother as being a similar type.’
It was only when he glanced around and motioned to a waiter to bring more coffee that Lucy realised he had said all he intended. No apology; no admission of any feelings even approaching warmth for the woman who had borne his open hostility with such fortitude—only that grudging statement.