Substitute Bride. Angela Devine
that the marriage was definitely over. And then she saw the grim twist to his lips, the harsh etching of the lines around his mouth—was it over for him?
‘Are you divorced? Why?’
‘That’s none of your damned business! It’s irrelevant anyway, and I don’t know why I even mentioned it. It happened years ago and I’ll never be fool enough to get married again. I was simply making the point that—’
‘Oh, I see!’ she interrupted. ‘You’re disillusioned with marriage, so you have to try and turn everyone else off it too. What right do you have to tell me that I’m frivolous and selfish and that I’ll skip out at the first sign of difficulty? You know nothing about me!’
His face darkened.
‘I know you’re planning to marry Sam for financial security and I know there’s a hell of a lot more to marriage than that. If you think a big house in Sandy Bay is going to make you happy, little girl, you’ve got a lot of growing up to do!’
‘Don’t you “little girl” me!’ shouted Laura. ‘If you think that because you’ve bought us a house you can be the power broker in our marriage, well, you can forget it! We don’t need your house and we won’t take it. I’ll tell Sam to refuse it. We’ll buy our own damned house.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous! It’s nothing to do with my trying to be a “power broker” in your marriage, as you put it. You’ve got a perfect right to own that house, you and Sam.’
Laura was momentarily sidetracked. As an accountant she sensed an interesting complication. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
‘What do you mean? You’re the one paying for it, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ growled James. ‘But only because of the way my father’s will was left. You see, Sam’s father has never had any sense handling money, it runs through his fingers like water, so my father left his share of the estate to me, as well as my own. He knew if my brother Adrian got hold of it he’d squander it before his kids ever saw it.’
‘Whereas you—’ prompted Laura.
James heaved an exasperated sigh and ran his fingers through his black hair so that it stood up in wild disorder.
‘Whereas I’m the sensible, responsible one,’ he said bitterly. ‘The one that pays off mortgages and tends the stock and budgets for the taxes and gets the rest of the family out of trouble when they blunder into it. Somebody has to be reliable or they would all come adrift. My father knew I’d take care of Sam and the others, so he left everything in my hands.’
That sounds just like me, thought Laura with an unwilling twinge of sympathy. She remembered how earnestly she had argued with the welfare worker when she was twenty-one to convince her that she could provide a home for Bea on her salary as a first-year accountant. And how much she had sacrificed to keep her promise to her dying mother that she would take care of her sister. All those lost opportunities for dates and parties and good times flashed before her eyes, but she felt not so much virtuous as utterly fed up. If James had gone through the same thing with his family, she pitied him! Even if he was a callous, manipulative womaniser, nobody deserved to be Mr Fixit all the time.
‘Don’t you ever get sick of being the sensible one?’ she burst out.
‘Yes,’ said James grimly.
‘What would you have liked to do if you hadn’t had to be the person that everybody else relied on?’ she asked curiously.
His eyes narrowed and he seemed to be looking at something far away.
‘I would have gone up to the Great Barrier Reef for at least a year and been a beachcomber,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘It would have been great to go surfing or riding horses along those long white beaches and lie around under the palm trees for a year or so. Mind you, I probably would have got sick of it after that. I suspect I’m the hard-working, ambitious type deep down. Still, it would have been fun.’
‘It’s not very different from what I would have done,’ murmured Laura half to herself. ‘I would have loved to go off to Queensland and spend months hiking through the rainforests and collecting wildflowers without ever having to worry about going to work and being responsible.’
James cast her a frowning, baffled look.
‘Then why didn’t you just do it?’ he asked. ‘You studied horticulture, didn’t you, at least for a while? And from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound as if there was any strongly developed work ethic standing in your way.’
Laura felt as if a chill had invaded the room. Why did she keep forgetting who she was supposed to be? Of course, James was right. If her sister had wanted to travel around and hike through rainforests, she would simply have done it. Whereas good, old, boring, sensible Laura wouldn’t dream of doing anything so rash. Just as she wouldn’t dream of flinging aside caution and plunging headlong into a torrid affair with James.
A sudden blaze of rebellion ignited inside her. If only I thought it was me personally that he wanted, instead of any woman who comes near him! she thought despairingly. Or if only Bea and I hadn’t deceived him like this and he didn’t think I was a scheming gold-digger! I wish, I wish…Then she caught the implacable glint of hostility in his tawny eyes and she heaved a faint, defeated sigh. What was the point of wishing? It was all useless. The best thing she could do was to avoid him as much as possible and pray for a miracle to get her out of this mess.
‘Well, we’re very different people, aren’t we?’ she said coolly. ‘I don’t suppose I can expect you to understand anything I do. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed now.’
As she moved towards the door he put out his hand to stop her. To her surprise, the antagonism in his voice was suddenly softened by something else. A glimmer of respect, perhaps? Or even a wary friendliness. Laura had the impression that he was struggling to be fair.
‘Listen,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not necessarily opposed to you, Beatrice. You’ve obviously got a lot more character and intelligence than I was led to expect. But there are two things in life I hate. One is deceit, the other is disloyalty. At least you seem to be honest and genuine, but I can’t help worrying about whether you’ll be loyal to Sam in the long run. So I’m warning you, think again about whether you want to go through with this marriage.’
Laura woke the next morning with a feeling of intense misgiving, mingled with a ridiculous fluttery sense of excitement. As she showered and dressed she tried to focus her thoughts. There was no doubt that she had landed herself in serious trouble. In one way she was tempted to phone for a hire car and flee northwards to the ferry, but a few moments’ reflection convinced her that she couldn’t leave without an explanation.
James still believed that she was Bea and he would be expecting her to stay, so it would be the height of rudeness to vanish without telling him why. He might be opposed to Bea’s forthcoming marriage, but he didn’t deserve anything as dreadful as that! Besides, there were practical difficulties—he might call the police and put out a missing person’s report on her if she simply left without a word. Yet she shrank from trying to explain their idiotic masquerade to him. Let Bea do that when she arrived!
The trouble was that with every extra minute she spent in his company, she felt as if she were sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand. Even though they had quarrelled last night, she still couldn’t deny the treacherous attraction she felt towards him. But there could be no future for them. Not when she suspected him of trying to seduce her simply for entertainment. And not when he found out about all the lies she had told him…
Well, he would have to know before the wedding, and her stomach contracted in morbid dread at the thought of the scene that would ensue when he did find out. Had she really been crazy enough to think that it would be quite exciting to have James shouting and storming at her? The truth was likely to be utterly different! She could just picture the cold look of contempt that would come over his face when he discovered