Acapulco Moonlight Page 16

  The talk was all of the new Clark's Components. 'I had a long letter from Japan this morning, from Saul,' Ben said, 'sending me on a copy of a report he has been working on while he's been out there. He's full of ideas for us, and it's all pretty thrilling. Can you believe, Karen, I'll have my own research lab, all properly fitted out. And I'll have a capable assistant ready to hand.' He grinned at Jean and she suddenly looked flustered and said she'd go and make some tea.

  When they were alone, Karen said quietly, 'It's all coming good for you, isn't it Ben? I'm so glad.'

  For a moment, looking into her eyes, his own eyes were clouded. Then he smiled. 'It'll take a little time, Karen, but—yes—it'll work out in the end. But what about your plans—have you made any? Saul mentioned something tentative about your going to London. Have you considered that?'

  Karen shook her head. 'No, that's definitely out, it doesn't appeal in the least. I shall stay at home for a short time and help my father, and then I think I'd like to take some further training—in something—I haven't really thought much about it yet. I'll be packing up my things at the office on Friday, there's really nothing for me to do there now. I've told Mr Ward.'

  Ben nodded, his forehead creasing in a troubled frown. 'I suppose that's best. But you know, Karen, I feel that somehow or other you're the one who's lost out on all that's happened. I feel bad about it.'

  'You mustn't,' she said. 'I'll be O.K. I'm pretty good at bouncing back.'

  'You're a wonderful girl, as I've always known,' Ben said softly. 'I wish ‑'

  But Karen wasn't to know what he wished, for Jean came back with the tea then. And very soon afterwards Karen left. She had a feeling that next time she visited the little house Ben and Jean would be married. She sat in her car for a moment in the dark road looking back at the windows of the house, the lights shining from inside through the flowery curtains. It looked cosy and homelike and the heavy lump inside Karen's chest suddenly became an unbearable aching pain. She started the Mini's engine with a roar and drove for miles away from the town, until she was sure that both her parents would be occupied—her mother with her evening clinic at the hospital, her father with his surgery. Only then did she turn the car and drive back, to crawl up unnoticed to her room and lie dry-eyed and heavy-limbed on her bed.

  It'll take a little time—that's what Ben had said. What Karen was afraid of was that it would take the rest of her life.

  Friday was a dismal day. A thaw had set in and everywhere was grey and slushy. Even the usually cheerful spirits of the girls in the workroom seemed to be dampened by the weather. Karen spent the day sorting and packing things in the office, cleaning out drawers and cupboards, going over a few final points with James Ward. Then she did a tour of the workroom, saying goodbye to everyone. By now the staff knew more or less what was going to happen and they had been reassured that their jobs were safe. But they were unsettled, by the idea of change, and dismayed that Karen would be leaving. One Or two of the older ones voiced their indignation to her.

  'I think it's a proper shame,' said Mrs Grayson, and the two girls at the adjoining work-benches nodded vehemently. 'You oughtn't to be losing your job, Miss Lane, just because we're being took over by some high and mighty big-wig.'

  'It isn't like that really,' Karen told her, but Mrs Grayson looked sceptically at Karen's pale cheeks and heavy eyes and drew her own conclusions, which, as it happened, weren't far off the mark.

  Karen had tea with Charlie and Jean at the afternoon tea-break, promised to look in and see them when everything was going full steam ahead once more, and took her coat down from the rack in the outside office for the last time. The funereal feeling had really struck now; she felt cold and numb as she shook hands with James Ward and went out to the car-park.

  The sky had been getting darker all day, and now a curtain of cold rain met her as she opened the door. She lowered her head and groped her way towards her Mini.

  A large form was approaching her, indistinct in the bad light. As she reached forward to put her key in the lock her hand was grabbed, held. She gave a gasp, peered upwards, and then her heart nearly stopped.

  'Saul,' she croaked, 'what are you doing here?' And that was silly, because the whole place belonged to him now. 'I thought you were in Japan,' she added weakly.

  'I was,' said Saul, and the sound of his voice cracked the ice inside her, moving through her veins like potent wine. 'And now I'm here, and so are you. I've been waiting for hours for you to appear. Come along, I want to talk to you.'

  She saw the Rolls then, pulled up at the far end of the car-park. His arm was round her, urging her towards it and her feet followed helplessly where he led. In a kind of dream she found herself sitting in the passenger seat with Saul beside her, driving out of the town. She ceased to think or wonder, just sat there while weak fat tears ran slowly down her cheeks.

  Once outside the town Saul pulled the car into a field-gate gap and switched off the engine. Outside the rain was heavier, beating against the windscreen. For a moment neither of them said a word, then Karen gave a great sob and thrust her fist against her mouth.

  Saul's arms were round her and he was kissing her urgently, almost angrily, and she could taste the salt of her tears as the old magic took hold and she began to kiss him back in a frenzied passion of love and longing.

  'Let's get in the back,' he muttered, and before she knew what was happening he was pushing the door open. There was a moment's shock of cold as the rain struck, and then they were both sinking deep into cushiony comfort, arms entwined, their hearts beating against each other in a frenzy of desire.

  'God, I've been crazy for you,' Saul muttered as he pulled off her jacket. His hands moved over her beneath the soft mohair of her top, moulding her breasts while his mouth fastened on hers, his lips, his tongue, probing, demanding. Then he moved away, wrenching at his own clothing until somehow, at last, they were locked together, flesh on flesh, hungry for each other, both of them satisfying their need greedily, with a compulsion that drove them with an urge that was as old as life itself.

  At last it was over and they were still, the wild throb of their hearts quietening. Gently, Saul disentangled himself. 'You mustn't get cold, my darling.' He reached behind him to the parcel-shelf for a soft rug.

  'Cold!' She giggled feebly. 'You're joking.'

  'I refuse to let you die of pneumonia before I have a chance of showing you how much better it will be in proper surroundings. I just couldn't wait, that's my excuse.'

  'Neither could I,' Karen said, very low. 'You make me shameless.'

  His laugh had a note of triumph. 'That was the idea—a surprise attack before you had the chance to think up some act to put me off.'

  'Now look ‑' She began to sit up but he pushed her back.

  'Later,' he said in his old peremptory tone. 'Just now we need civilisation and warmth, where do you suggest we go? Where were you off to when I kidnapped you?'

  'I was going home,' she said.

  'Home. Now that's a good word. May I come too?'

  Karen began to pull down her mohair top and fasten up her jacket. One of the buttons was hanging off. She pushed back her tangle of hair, and said, 'I'll have to creep in the back way if we do.' She leaned forward and peered at the illuminated clock on the dashboard. 'Wait a minute though—with any luck my parents will both still be out, we might just manage to tidy ourselves up before we're discovered.'

  'Good, we'll risk it then. I'm tired of hotels. You stay where you are and keep warm. I'll drive to your home if you'll direct me. He got back into the front seat. 'Are your parents broadminded?' he enquired.

  'Tolerably,' she told him as he started the engine and turned the car round. 'But they might draw the line at their only daughter behaving disgracefully with a man they've never seen before.'

  Saul applied the brakes momentarily and said over his shoulder. 'Not even if they were destined to see a great deal of him in the future? Not even if he was the man that the said only
daughter was going to marry?'

  Karen flopped back speechless as he drove the big car into the town at an alarming rate.

  'Of course we can put you up, Saul. We wouldn't hear of your going to a hotel.' Karen's mother turned a smile of approval and satisfaction upon her prospective son-in-law. 'The bed in the spare room is made up already, Karen. Run up and put a couple of hot-water bottles in.'

  ' Karen flew upstairs. Her feet, which had been so leaden, now seemed to have wings—like Puck—or was it Ariel?—who put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.

  She turned on the hot tap in the bathroom. Daddy and Mother really were rather marvellous. If they had been surprised, when they walked in, to find their daughter in the arms of a perfect stranger on the living-room sofa, they had taken it all in their stride. They had shown their customary calm, and Saul had behaved beautifully. As she tucked the hot-water bottles into the spare room bed she gave the duvet a little pat. I'll be with you again soon, my love, she whispered. But not tonight.

  By the time supper was over Saul might have been an old friend of the family. And when, finally, the doctor and his wife retired tactfully to the study to hold what Doctor Lane smilingly called a 'medical conference' Saul pulled Karen down beside him on to the sofa, in front of a crackling log fire, and wrapped his arms round her, saying, 'I like your parents.'

  'I'm glad,' she said. 'They like you.'

  He looked genuinely pleased. 'Do they? How can you be sure?'

  'Oh, I can be sure,' she said. 'You've no idea how politely crushing they could have been if they hadn't.'

  'Well, certainly your father didn't demur too much when I asked him for his daughter's hand in marriage, when you and your mother were out preparing the supper,' he smiled. 'How delightfully old-fashioned that sounds.'

  'And Mummy is already planning the wedding reception,' Karen said. 'She says she can take a fortnight's holiday from her clinic in July.'

  'July?' Saul broke in, horrified. 'I can't wait that long. Only long enough for you to meet my folk and break the good news to them.'

  'I hope they like me.' She was suddenly nervous of meeting the people who had given so much to Saul, who loved him so deeply.

  'They will,' he said confidently. 'They'll be delighted with you. As I am.' He bent his head and began to nuzzle her neck gently.

  She pulled away. 'Behave yourself, Mr Marston,' she said primly. 'Or you know what's likely to happen.'

  He sighed. 'You're right. I mustn't take advantage of your parents' enlightened good nature.' He sat up and moved away along the sofa. 'O.K. we'll talk instead. I want an explanation from you, woman.'

  'Explanation?' she murmured dreamily.

  'Yes indeed. What was the idea of that big act you put on after the dinner on our last night in Acapulco? It had me fooled for a while, I must admit, I really believed that you were going to marry Ben Clark—that you'd been rooting for him all the time, even when you were in my bed. I went through the blackest of black hells that night, and the whole time I was in Japan, trying to persuade myself that I could get used to seeing you married to Ben. When I got back from Tokyo yesterday I came straight up here and went to Ben's home address, but he wasn't there. I found out from a neighbour that he was staying with his fiancée and she gave me the address. It took every bit of my courage to ring that bell, expecting that you would answer the door. When some other girl did I nearly burst into tears and kissed her, because it wasn't you.'

  'It was Jean,' Karen said. 'Jean McBride. I think they're going to get married.'

  'Well, good luck to them. But you still haven't come up with the explanation.'

  Karen looked away, biting her lip. Everything was so perfect now, she didn't want to explain, to seem to accuse. She wanted to forget the whole episode, to wipe it out as if it had never happened.

  But he was waiting and there was no getting out of it.

  'I suppose it was my sticky pride,' she said at last. 'But it hurt when I knew you had been—been using me.'

  He sat up. 'You knew what? Good God, girl, you'll have to control that imagination of yours.'

  She glared at him. 'Imagination? It wasn't imagination. What was I supposed to think when I met Liz Walker going into your bedroom—dressed in nothing but a nylon wrap—and that was hanging open! When she was kind enough to inform me that you were expecting her and that my services as a smoke-screen wouldn't be required any longer? When she went into your room and shut the door in my face? Oh no . . .' her voice rose three tones '. .. imagination didn't come into it.'

  Saul was looking sterner than she had ever seen him look. 'You believed her? You believed that I was the kind of man who could behave like that—after what you and I had had together the night before?' His voice was icy cold, he was miles away from her.

  Karen's world began to rock horribly. He was looking at her as if—as if he hated her. She had lost him. Oh, why couldn't she have just shut up and said nothing?

  Desolately she lifted swimming eyes to his. 'How could I not believe? I went back into my bedroom and—and I heard you laughing together. And I guessed you must be laughing at me. And then ‑' she bit her lip hard '—then the laughing stopped and there was just—silence. I knew what was happening and—and I couldn't take it. I ran away down the stairs—out into the fresh air ‑'

  She sat shivering, waiting for him to say something, waiting for him to say that he'd made a mistake when he asked her to marry him, that he didn't want a suspicious wife who spied on him and listened through bedroom walls.

  'It doesn't matter now ‑' she whispered through her tears.

  'Of course it matters,' he burst out angrily. Then, to her amazement, he reached out and gathered her into his arms with great tenderness. 'Oh, my little love,' he said. 'I wouldn't have hurt you for the world. That bloody wench, Liz Walker—I'd like to wring her lovely white neck for her.'

  'Then—then you weren't expecting her?'

  'Of course I wasn't. What there was between us had finished months ago—before she married Harry. But she wouldn't give up, she wouldn't let herself believe it was over, in spite of some straight talking on my part. I was furious when she walked into my room that afternoon—especially so since I'd escaped early to be with you. I wanted to get rid of her quickly but it wasn't so easy. I tried laughing her out of it but that didn't work, so I shut up. The silence you heard must have been when she went into her seduction routine— and I'll leave you to guess how that went. I had to take evasive action and in the end I pushed her out bodily. If you'd hung around a bit longer you might have witnessed the eviction,' he finished grimly.

  Karen thought for a time in silence. Then she said, 'So you did really want me to come with you to Acapulco?'

  He looked puzzled for a moment, then he said, 'Now look, let's get this straight now and then we needn't think about it again. What, exactly, did that busy little imagination of yours work out when you put on that great hard-boiled act for me on the night of the dinner?'

  Karen twisted her hands together in silence, trying to get her thoughts straight, which wasn't easy when Saul's arm was holding her close and his head was pressed against her hair.

  At last she said slowly, 'After what Liz Walker told me—after I'd had time to think about it—I remembered how you'd made such a point of my coming to Mexico with Ben, and that you seemed to be going out of your way to demonstrate to everyone— including Harry Walker—that I was your current girlfriend. I thought you looked on me as simple and unsophisticated and believed I would be easy to manipulate. It all seemed to hang together.'

  'Even that night you spent in my arms?' he said quietly. 'Even when I told you I loved you? You thought that was all a put-up job?'

  She hung her head. 'I decided that it probably hadn't meant very much to you. You must have had lots of girls.'

  'Lots,' he agreed. 'I've forgotten most of their names. Now, if you've finished your little scenario I'll tell you exactly what actually did happen. Let's go back to that first day w
hen I walked into Clark's office and saw you there, looking so cool and tempting in your white blouse and your red skirt, with your hair all neat and silky and your beautiful eyes weighing me up so coolly.'

  'You remember what I was wearing?'

  'Down to the toes of your boots,' he smiled, and went on, 'I suppose what's given me some success in business is a certain flair for recognising what I want when I see it, and making decisions promptly. Well, I wanted you that morning, and I determined to get you. Oh, I fancied you, of course I did, you're a beautiful girl, Karen. But there was something more than that— something that was new to me. Call it love at first sight if you like. Everything slotted into place and I knew you were the girl I wanted for good—the problem was how I was going to go about getting you. I'd have liked to take you in my arms then and there. What would you have said if I had?' He pushed her hair aside and kissed her softly behind her ear.

  She .snuggled closer. 'I'd have thought you were bonkers and asked Charlie to see you out.'

  'Precisely. So I had to proceed with caution—which is what I thought I'd been doing. Why do you think I insisted on your coming with Ben to Mexico? Why did I ask you straight away if you were going to marry him? Why did I spend every spare minute I had with you? I was doing my damnest to make you want me. I thought if we fancied each other then you might really fall in love with me afterwards. I was so sure of success, I nearly messed up everything with my bloody self-confidence. Many years ago I talked myself into believing I couldn't fail in anything—but there's always a first time, and until yesterday I thought failure had hit me at last.'