The Final Seduction Read online

  ‘But I can’t do that!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s written “G” at the top—see?’

  ‘And “G” stands for?’

  ‘Gratis!’ said Moira helpfully.

  Free! Shelley felt so incensed that she had to clench her fists by her sides to stop herself from howling with rage. ‘Just work out what I owe, will you, Moira?’ she said quietly.

  She was back in minutes, having thrown everything she’d unpacked into the overnight bag, and she wrote a cheque for the amount she owed, resisting the desire to deface it with insults.

  She left the bill on the reception desk, and was almost at the door when she saw Moira waving it in the air. ‘Don’t you want your copy, Miss Turner?’ she enquired anxiously.

  Temptation lifted its provocative neck and Shelley succumbed to it. ‘Give it to Mr Glover, will you?’ she said. ‘Tell him that I would suggest a use for it, but I’m sure he can work out for himself what that is!’

  She drove like the clappers back to the house and was getting out of the car when Jennie came outside, as though she had been watching for her. Shelley’s first thought was that she really shouldn’t wear those yellow checked trousers. They did her bottom no favours whatsoever. Next time Jennie went shopping, maybe she would ask if she could tag along.

  ‘How was the Westward?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Shelley shortly.

  ‘You look all strung out,’ Jennie observed. ‘What’s the matter—didn’t you sleep?’

  ‘On the contrary. I slept like a log—’

  ‘So I suppose it’s safe to suppose that my brother wasn’t with you?’

  ‘Just what is it with your brother?’ Shelley exploded. ‘Is he such a stud that when any woman with a pulse walks into his life the whole world thinks he’s sleeping with her?’

  ‘You were engaged to be married, Shelley, remember?’ Jennie reminded her gently. ‘And I came knocking on your door yesterday, remember that? The sparks between you two were flying so hard that I was half afraid I was going to combust when I walked in!’ She frowned. ‘Well, if Drew isn’t responsible for those tight lips—what’s the matter?’

  Shelley considered her options. She was planning to have a very serious word with Drew. If she asked Jennie about his connections with the Westward, then she might very well report back to her brother. Which would spoil the element of surprise. What did they say? Forewarned is forearmed. And she certainly wasn’t going to do him any favours like that.

  ‘Oh, I’ve decided that I can’t keep swanning around the place as though I’m on holiday,’ Shelley told her blithely. ‘So I’ve come back here to get things kick-started.’

  Jennie grinned. ‘Good! I’ve been without a neighbour for too long!’

  ‘Could I use your phone to get on to the water and electricity people?’

  Jennie waved her arm in the direction of her front door. ‘It’s all yours! And it’s past mid-day. Why don’t you stay and have some lunch with me, or did you have a late breakfast?’

  ‘I’d love lunch—I’m absolutely starving!’ said Shelley smoothly, neatly avoiding the reason why.

  She followed Jennie into the house on exaggerated tiptoe. ‘Should I whisper?’ she asked, doing just that. ‘Is the baby asleep?’

  Jennie shook her head and smiled. ‘No. Drew has taken her out to the beach.’

  Some invisible force whacked her hard in the stomach. ‘Drew has?’

  Jennie’s smile widened. ‘Well, don’t sound so surprised! He dotes on her! He’s wonderful with her, too—and Ellie thinks that he is the most fantastic person in the entire history of the world!’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘I’ll go and make some lunch. The phone’s over there. Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Putting annoyingly persistent thoughts of Drew being wonderful with babies right out of her head, Shelley flicked through the directory until she found numbers for the electricity and water boards. Then spent a frustrating ten minutes on the phone to each of them before replacing the receiver and collapsing on the sofa with a yelp of exasperation.

  ‘Trouble?’ asked Jennie mildly, coming into the room carrying a tray which held a plate heaped high with sandwiches, and a bottle of wine.

  ‘Bureaucracy,’ Shelley scowled. ‘Need I say more? Apparently, they can’t get either of the services connected until the end of the week because of some stupid system of priority! The end of the week—I ask you!’

  ‘Oh, dear. Here—’ Jennie handed her a glass and filled it ‘—drink this, it’ll make you feel better.’

  Shelley groaned as she took a mouthful. ‘Mmm. It does.’ She sat upright and assumed an expression of horror. ‘What’s happening to me, Jennie? Last night I went to bed still wearing my make-up and now I’m drinking wine at lunchtime!’

  ‘It’s a long, slippery slope!’ Jennie agreed gravely. ‘And do you know what I’d do in your situation?’

  ‘You’d leave town, or crawl under the bedclothes and pretend none of it was happening?’

  ‘Nope. I’d get Drew onto the case.’

  ‘Drew?’ questioned Shelley darkly. The secretive, controlling Drew, she wanted to add, but resisted. Even if a brother and sister fought like cat and dog, there was still such a thing as sibling loyalty. And she couldn’t really remark to Jennie that Drew was the person she was least likely to ask for help about anything. Not until she knew what reasons lay behind him taking her to his hotel, and pretending he was just Joe Ordinary. And oh, hadn’t she fallen for it—hook, line and sinker?

  ‘Mmm. He works miracles with stodgy officials—has them eating out of his hand!’

  Enough was enough! ‘Oh, stop making him out to be such a saint!’ said Shelley crossly. ‘I thought he was stopping you from being together with Jamie! What about his dark, controlling side—why don’t we talk about that?’

  Jennie looked down at her untouched sandwich. ‘He says he only wants the best for me.’

  ‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘He…’

  Shelley stared at Jennie’s anxious face. ‘Tell me,’ she urged gently. ‘Go on—you’re bursting to get it off your chest, aren’t you?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Jennie sighed. ‘Well, when Jamie and I…’ She bit her lip as the words trailed off.

  ‘When you and Jamie what?’ Shelley prompted softly. ‘Is it that you’ve split up but can’t bring yourself to say the words out loud? Because saying them only rubs in that they’re true?’

  Jennie looked at her in surprise. ‘Why, yes—that’s exactly it. How did you guess?’

  Shelley pulled a face. ‘How do you think, Jennie? And it wasn’t a guess—I know—I’ve been there! People may have me down for Little Miss No-Heart, but I can assure you that I was…’ She remembered just who she was talking to and amended the sentence ‘…sad.’ Yes, sad was a good word—it implied calm, measured emotion, which had certainly not been the case at the time. A feeling that the most vital part of her had been torn out of her body without anaesthetic was closer to the mark. ‘I was very sad—when my relationship finished.’

  ‘You must have loved him very much?’

  ‘I…yes, of course I loved him. I loved him—’ her voice began to falter and she realised that in a minute she would blurt out her fear that she still did ‘—very much.’

  ‘Your face went all soft and dreamy then.’ Jennie’s voice was wistful. ‘I suppose there’s no chance that the two of you could get back together?’

  Shelley shook her head. ‘No. None whatsoever. If he wants me at all now, it’s just for sex—’

  ‘And that doesn’t interest you?’

  ‘Well, I’m only human. Of course it interests me! It just won’t lead anywhere—so it would be sensible to avoid it, wouldn’t it?’ She wriggled her shoulders a little bit and gave a polite smile, the way people did when they wanted to close a subject. It didn’t really seem appropriate talking about Drew this way. Not to his sister. ‘Now tell me all about Jamie.�
��

  Jennie refilled their glasses. ‘The pregnancy wasn’t planned—’ She looked up and met Shelley’s searching gaze. ‘Well, that’s not strictly true.’ She blushed.

  ‘You were careless?’

  ‘I loved him,’ Jennie explained simply. ‘And I just couldn’t get worked up about using contraception. Next thing you know, there’s a baby on the way.’ She sighed. ‘Jamie didn’t find me very attractive when I was pregnant, and then couldn’t cope with the baby crying all the time when she was born. He’s not much older than me, you see,’ she added, as if that explained everything. ‘We were living in Jamie’s tiny bedsit, and I seemed to be crying all the time, too—’

  ‘I’m not surprised!’ Shelley pulled a wry face. ‘Stress and wildly fluctuating hormones do not make a harmonious combination.’

  Jennie stared down at her wine glass. ‘That’s when we split up. I didn’t really want to leave, but I could tell that me staying was just making things worse for everyone.’

  ‘And how old was Ellie at the time?’

  ‘Five weeks.’

  ‘Five weeks? He let you go when you had a baby of five weeks to look after? What kind of man would do that?’

  ‘Funny.’ Jennie locked and then unlocked her fingers distractedly. ‘That’s exactly what Drew said.’

  ‘I’m not surprised! I’m not your brother’s greatest buddy, but I have to say that I think his character assessment was spot-on there.’

  Jennie shook her head. ‘It isn’t like that! And Jamie isn’t like that! Things have been much better between us since I left!’

  ‘Well, of course they’ve been better!’ Shelley scoffed. ‘For him! He gets all the best bits of having a girlfriend and a baby, with none of the noisy, tiring, smelly bits! It’s known,’ she added gently, ‘as having your cake and eating it.’ She saw Jennie’s stubborn expression, and sighed. She had it bad. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Drew persuaded me to move in here. The house was empty and he owns it now. He bought it off my folks so that they could buy somewhere on the Isle of Wight—though I was surprised he kept it on. I mean, it’s hardly a palace!’ She looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Maybe it was just sentimental of him, but it’s lucky for me he did. Anyway, he had it all decorated and made it cosy for me, but—’

  Shelley swirled the wine around in her glass. Italian wine. ‘But?’

  ‘He won’t let Jamie move in here with me. He says that it’s time Jamie stopped being spoon-fed.’

  ‘And does Jamie want to move in here?’

  ‘Oh, Drew’s been so difficult about it that he says he doesn’t know what he wants any more, apart from his boat.’

  ‘So let me get this straight…’ Shelley frowned. ‘Jamie has a child he doesn’t support and a boat he does?’

  ‘No!’ Jennie shook her head. ‘It isn’t like that! He does support Ellie—and he has to work very hard in order to do that.’

  ‘Well, that’s what most of the people on this planet do,’ Shelley pointed out gently.

  ‘But Jamie’s brilliant with boats! He’s a natural—everyone says so. And there’s a beauty for sale down at Milmouth waters—only she’s been terribly neglected. Jamie’s dying to work on her and the owner’s given him first refusal. And it’s such a wonderful opportunity!’ For a moment her face screwed up with enthusiasm, like a child’s. ‘If he could just buy this boat and do it up, the profit we’d make selling it would set the three of us up. It would!’ she added fiercely. ‘We could buy this house from Drew. Or buy another instead.’

  ‘But Jamie doesn’t have the money to go it alone, and Drew won’t help him?’ Even though it now transpired that Drew had become Mr Money-Bags. Control freak, thought Shelley brutally.

  ‘That’s it in a nutshell, yes.’

  ‘So you’ve reached a kind of stalemate?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Let me give it some thought,’ said Shelley. ‘Though I’m not really qualified to advise other people how to run their lives.’

  ‘Yes, you are!’ said Jennie fiercely. ‘At least you’ve seen something of the world! And lived in Italy! I’ve never set foot outside Milmouth—unless you count a fortnight’s holiday in Spain when I was fifteen!’

  Shelley laughed and drained her glass, realising that it was her second. Which might explain the sudden flushing heat to her cheeks. The whoozy feeling in her stomach. ‘Wow!’ she puffed. ‘I’m not used to drinking at lunchtime—it’s gone straight to my head!’

  ‘Have one of these sandwiches.’ Jennie passed the plate. ‘I know they look like doorstops, but they make great blotting paper!’

  Shelley was just demolishing her second when the doorbell rang, and Jennie got to her feet. ‘That’ll be Drew and Ellie—so bye-bye peace and quiet!’ she sighed. ‘Because much as I love my daughter to pieces it’s wonderful to be able to sit and have this slightly decadent lunch without having to leap to my feet every five seconds!’

  ‘I can always babysit—if you want to get out with Jamie one night. Or afternoon. Name your day!’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  Shelley laughed. ‘Of course I do! Listen, if Drew’s here I’d better go.’

  ‘No, don’t go, Shelley—he’ll be pleased to see you.’

  Shelley smiled, but didn’t argue, and as soon as Jennie had left the room the smile vanished from her face and she sat upright, hearing the deep voice in the small hallway, and straining her ears to hear what they were saying.

  Jennie must have told him she was there, because his face was dark and watchful when he walked in. The chubby baby was clinging onto him like a baby chimpanzee, with her soft, dark head snuggled close to his neck, and Shelley felt a sudden pang, and if she had analysed it and described it to another woman they would immediately have come up with the correct diagnosis.

  Broodiness.

  She stared at him. Oh, but he looked good holding a baby!

  Drew slanted her a look as he saw her sitting bolt upright on the edge of the sofa, the dark lashes veiling the brilliant sapphire glitter of his eyes. He took in the hectic flush of her cheeks and her over-bright expression. ‘Been drinking?’

  Her cutesy image of him dissolved like sugar. ‘Well, what do you know—Detective Glover has arrived! Have I been drinking? he asks. What does it look like? Oh! It’s all gone! So no, Drew—I’m not drinking at the moment, but that’s easily remedied!’ Shelley held up her empty glass and rather defiantly refilled it. ‘And before you say anything—I’m not drunk!’

  ‘Just a little merry?’ he queried as he began to unzip Ellie’s play-suit. ‘With the intention of getting completely legless before the afternoon is out?’

  ‘I’m not even merry!’ she defended, sagging back against the sofa. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact!’

  ‘Well, you soon will be if you carry on knocking it back like that.’

  ‘Da-da!’ squealed Ellie, and tugged at a stray lock of dark hair.

  ‘Ouch!’ he protested, unlocking the plump little fingers from their vice-like grip. ‘And I’m not your daddy, kitten!’

  ‘It’s just a thing they say,’ said Jennie, coming into the room and holding her arms wide open to her daughter. ‘Just a sound they make—it doesn’t mean anything!’ She held her nose closer to Ellie’s posterior. ‘Think I might have to go and freshen this child up! Help yourself to wine and sandwiches, Drew!’ She spotted the empty bottle and grinned over her shoulder as she carried Ellie out. ‘Open some more, if you like!’

  ‘No, thanks,’ he drawled. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘Like spinning another elaborate pretence, I suppose?’ questioned Shelley maliciously. ‘Like making out you’re still a simple jobbing carpenter when you’ve obviously joined the ranks of the super-rich?’

  ‘I’m not quite in that league yet,’ he offered drily. ‘I meant like getting your electricity and water connected, actually. Jennie said that you’re going to have to wait until the end of the week.’
>
  ‘That’s what they said.’ She glared at him suspiciously. ‘And I don’t see how you’re going to change their minds when they told me most definitely that it was non-negotiable.’

  ‘Well, why don’t I give it a go?’ he queried calmly. ‘Come on—let’s walk next door and we can tell them what it says on the meters.’

  ‘But I haven’t got a phone connected next door,’ she said in an irritated voice. In fact she felt very irritated indeed—surely far more than was reasonable? ‘Remember?’

  ‘Well, it’s your lucky day, Shelley—because I’ve got one right here.’

  With a lazy smile he inched his hand slowly down from the waistband of his jeans and Shelley’s eyes widened with horrified anticipation as she wondered just what he was going to do next.

  Until she suddenly realised that he was sliding his fingers deep down into the front pocket of his jeans to extract a slim mobile phone.

  He held it up like a trophy. ‘See?’ He plucked the wine glass from her hand and deposited it on the table. ‘Leave that. You don’t need any more.’

  Infuriatingly, he was right. Not only didn’t she need any more—she didn’t want any more, either. In fact, she was beginning to feel quite sick.

  Determined not to betray even the slightest wooziness, Shelley rose to her feet, as upright as a toy soldier.

  ‘Shelley and I are just going next door!’ he called upstairs to Jennie.

  Outside, the sky was a clear bright blue, the air all crisp and fresh—while the sun gilded the small suburban houses into doll’s-house palaces. Once they used to have the run of each other’s houses—and Shelley found it achingly evocative as she remembered how their twin lives used to merge into one.

  ‘Key!’ He held his hand out like a surgeon and Shelley found herself obediently handing it over, and he unlocked the house.

  He held the door open for her, and she had to pass with breathtaking closeness to him. She found that she couldn’t look him in the face. The house screamed out its silence, and its emptiness made Shelley gulpingly aware that they were all alone…

  She dared to raise her eyes at last, to discover that he wasn’t watching her at all, but was already poking around in the hall cupboard to find the meter and was punching out numbers on his mobile phone.