The Final Seduction Read online

  ‘Just the once?’

  ‘That’s right. I was three weeks old.’

  ‘And didn’t he want to see you again?’

  Shelley blinked furiously as she ticked off another black car in her column. ‘That’s seven black,’ she gulped.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said instantly. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s all right for you!’ she said, her voice wobbling. ‘You’ve got a mother and a father, and two sisters!’

  He laughed cynically. ‘Oh, yeah—it’s all right for me! When there are five of us crammed into a house you can’t swing a cat in. And my parents are always arguing. So are my sisters! I’ll tell you something, Shelley—sometimes I just want to smash my way out of there and never come back!’ His blue gaze was piercing. ‘Do you really think that everyone’s life is so perfect except your own?’

  Shelley shook her head in amazement. Drew felt like that inside? ‘Of course I don’t!’

  ‘I won’t ask you about your father again,’ he told her gently. ‘It isn’t important.’

  But it was important. He had taken her into his confidence and she wanted to tell him. Secrets could become unbearable burdens if you didn’t share them.

  ‘My father was…is a dentist. My mother used to work for him—she was his nurse. They had, like, a big romance. Well, my mum thought it was a big romance,’ Shelley shrugged. ‘She’d come down from Scotland and she didn’t know very much about men.’

  Drew nodded thoughtfully, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Then she found out she was pregnant with me, so she told him…she told him…and he got really mad with her. Said that it had all been a big mistake. And that there was no point in her trying to trap him into marriage—because he already had a wife and children, and they were his “real” children—’

  Drew scowled. ‘And your mother didn’t know that?’

  Shelley rounded on him. ‘Of course she didn’t know that! If she had done she would never have got involved with him in the first place! What sort of woman do you think she is?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to insult your mother, Shelley,’ he told her, with dignity. ‘It just makes me mad when men treat women that way.’ He brushed dark, untidy hair back from his face. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Oh, he went back to America with his wife and “real” children and Mum brought me here to live. That was the last she ever saw of him.’

  ‘And why Milmouth?’ he asked, with interest.

  She was grateful for the fact that her instinct had been correct—that Drew wasn’t judging her or her mother and finding them wanting.

  ‘She wanted somewhere cheap to live, and couldn’t face going back to Scotland with a baby and no father. And she loves the sea.’

  He smiled. ‘So do I, as a matter of fact. I never want to be away from the sea.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she said shyly, smiling back, realising that she had found her true-life hero.

  But after that she rarely saw him—their lives diverged and the age-gap was all wrong. Seven years could seem like a generation gap. She knew that he had done well in his school exams, and knew that his teachers had been disappointed when he became an apprentice carpenter. Everyone thought that he’d go away to college.

  ‘It’s because he’s good at making things,’ his mother explained to Shelley on the way back from the shops one day. ‘Good with his hands. And he likes the open air—says he doesn’t want to be cooped up inside in an office all day. Good luck to him, I say!’

  Shelley saw him on the day he left school, with the best grades of his year, and it took every bit of courage she possessed to go up to him and congratulate him. ‘I hear you’re going to be a carpenter?’

  He narrowed his blue eyes at her assessingly. ‘What’s the matter, Shelley—don’t you think I’m aiming high enough?’

  She shrugged her shoulders awkwardly. She was only eleven—so what did she know? ‘It’s not that,’ she lied.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No. I just thought that you’d be—’

  ‘A pilot?’ he grinned. ‘Or a doctor?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It’s an insecure world, kitten—and people always need houses.’

  ‘I guess they do.’ And she blushed with pleasure to hear him call her ‘kitten’.

  Sometimes, when Shelley was up in her bedroom reading, she used to glimpse him wandering home, stripped to the waist, all honed muscle and bronzed perfection. And the words used to dance like hieroglyphics on the page in front of her.

  She was seventeen when he went travelling, originally for a year, but the wanderlust caught him and he was gone for much longer.

  She remembered one of the last times she had seen him before he’d left. She’d gone sunbathing further up the bay with a couple of schoolfriends—hidden, they thought, by a large screen of rocks. Feeling liberated and daring, they had removed their bikini tops. But Drew had been out running along the beach, and had seen them. He had gone absolutely ballistic, with Shelley in particular, and her friends had teased her afterwards and said that must mean that he fancied her. And she’d told them that of course he didn’t fancy her, because he had barely spoken to her again after that.

  And suddenly he had gone.

  Shelley had missed him. Missed him like mad. Sometimes she used to go out with his sister Jennie, on Saturday nights. They would go to the Smugglers pub or occasionally to one of the dances at the village hall, or get the bus into Southchester. She’d look at every man and find him wanting, by simple virtue of the fact that he wasn’t Drew.

  ‘Has your brother mentioned anything about coming home?’ she asked Jennie casually one evening.

  Jennie grinned. She was used to women asking her questions about her handsome big brother.

  ‘Nope. Shall I write and say you were asking?’

  ‘Just you dare!’

  He came back three years later, just before Christmas—when the fairy lights in the pubs twinkled like rainbow drops, reminding him of everything he had missed about England.

  Shelley was on her way home from her job as receptionist in Milmouth’s upmarket car showroom when she saw him, and had to bite back her pleasure, because she didn’t want to gush all over him like a silly little girl.

  ‘Hello, Drew,’ she said softly. ‘Jennie said you were coming home.’

  ‘Is that really you, Shelley Turner?’ he enquired, almost groaning when he realised that this tousled-haired stunner from next door was even more gorgeous than when he’d left. He hadn’t thought that was possible. But some time in the last three years she had developed the kind of figure that drove men to sin, and her hair was a glossy sheet—the colour of caramel. And he’d forgotten how delicate her skin was and how pale the aquamarine of her eyes.

  ‘Of course it’s me!’ she giggled. ‘Who else did you think it was?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he answered slowly, his blue eyes looking dazzling in his tanned face. ‘Are you going out tonight?’

  ‘Just try and stop me! It’s my birthday tomorrow,’ she confided. ‘And a whole gang of us are meeting up in the Smugglers.’

  ‘Your birthday?’ He frowned as alarm bells rang loudly in his brain. ‘How old are you?’

  She was slightly disappointed that he couldn’t remember, but clever enough not to show it. ‘I’ll be twenty.’

  ‘Wow! You’ll be twenty? Well, isn’t that just dandy!’ His grin showed his relief. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  Mind? She would have spent all her birthday money on a red carpet if it hadn’t looked so obvious! ‘No, I don’t mind at all,’ she answered coolly.

  He gave her a boab nut he’d picked up on his travels, with a piece of glittery tinsel tied round it, and sat beside her in the pub, and Shelley didn’t want to talk to anyone else but him.

  ‘So did you miss me, little girl?’ he quizzed.

  She had not yet learnt guile. ‘Yes.’ But something told her not to let him know how much. ‘
And I’m a big girl now.’

  ‘So I see.’ A pulse began to work in his temple. ‘So I see.’ To her surprise, he trailed a finger along her cheek and gently tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, then frowned. ‘Since when did you start wearing mascara?’

  She blinked at him, perplexed. ‘But I’m not.’

  ‘You mean your lashes have always been that long?’ he teased. ‘And that dark?’

  She laughed. ‘I think so! Have you only just noticed, Drew?’

  ‘Mmm. Right this very moment.’ He looked terribly thoughtful, and suddenly leaned across and kissed her softly on the lips, in front of the whole pub—and that was that. They became an overnight item. Drew and Shelley. Shelley and Drew. As inseparable as eggs and bacon or peaches and cream.

  Drew worked hard for his money. He took a regular job at the boatyard and any other job which came his way—and plenty did. Craftsmen of his calibre were rare enough but coupled with youthful vigour and dedication—well, it seemed that everyone wanted a piece of him. Once a week he went on day release to college and night-times he studied for higher certificates in construction and building.

  And the only person who seemed to be missing out was his girlfriend…

  ‘Oh, Drew!’ Shelley sighed, one day, when he’d snatched a moment to eat his lunchtime sandwiches with her, sitting side by side on the sea wall. ‘You’re always working!’

  ‘Listen, kitten, the money’s good and it’s money we need if we want any kind of future together.’

  ‘But I never see you any more!’

  ‘You’ll see as much of me as you like once we have a place of our own,’ he promised, and kissed the tips of her fingers, one by one. ‘And guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The coastguard’s cottage is still on the market!’ He could barely contain his excitement.

  ‘What, that old place?’ Shelley elongated her mouth into a grimace. ‘I’m not surprised! They probably can’t give it away. You’d need to virtually knock it down and start again to make it habitable!’

  ‘But I can do that,’ he shrugged modestly. ‘That’s what I’m training for. That and making you happy.’

  ‘You do,’ she pouted, so that he would kiss her.

  And when he’d kissed her so that she could barely catch her breath he grinned and said, ‘Want to get married?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please!’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘Very soon!’ he groaned.

  He even asked her mother’s permission, and Shelley couldn’t ever remember seeing her mother look so happy and relieved. Glad that Shelley would have the emotional security she had always longed for.

  He bought her a tiny diamond ring which twinkled discreetly on her finger when she held it up to the light.

  ‘It’s very small,’ someone remarked nastily.

  ‘No, it’s perfect,’ she disagreed fiercely. ‘And you’re just jealous!’

  They decided that they would get married just as soon as they had saved up enough money to buy the coastguard’s cottage and everything was nearly perfect.

  But they never made love. Not all the way.

  Behind the wooden huts on the windswept beach, their kisses grew wilder, their caresses more frantic—but Drew always calmed things down, made them stop. Shelley felt churned up and bewildered.

  She knew that there had been women on his travels. Nothing he’d said, but little things he’d let slip. Sometimes a letter would arrive from some far-off destination and he would scour the envelope and toss it into the bin unread. Once, she saw a postcard from a woman called Angie, the contents of which were graphic enough to make her feel sick.

  ‘And who the hell is Angie?’ she demanded.

  ‘She was just a girl I knew,’ he answered quietly, ripping the card into tiny little pieces and tossing them into the bin.

  She felt sick with jealousy at the thought of what he might have done with Angie and others like her, and she couldn’t understand his reluctance to do the same with her.

  ‘You’re different,’ he told her softly.

  She was still smarting over Angie’s postcard. ‘You’ll have to come up with something better than that!’

  ‘Okay. Let me put it this way, then. I don’t want you to get pregnant before we’re married. It would totally freak your mother out. Shelley, she made me promise to take care of you—and I gave her my word that I would.’

  ‘There are such things as precautions, Drew. We both know that.’

  ‘And they all have risks. We both know that, too. And I want to do things properly with you. You’re different,’ he said again. ‘I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And the best things in life are always worth waiting for. Trust me.’

  But they argued and Shelley ended up feeling head-achy and out of sorts and the very next day Marco walked into the showroom to buy a car. He had come all the way from Italy looking for a certain model, and they just happened to have the model he wanted in Milmouth…

  Shelley was sitting at her desk, listlessly sorting out some paperwork, when he walked in, looking as if he should be auditioning for the romantic lead in an art film with subtitles.

  His physical impact was outstanding—she couldn’t deny that, not even to herself. That luminous skin, that crisp black hair. His dark eyes flicked over her casually, like a man used to looking at women. And women not minding a bit.

  ‘Well, hel-lo,’ he murmured.

  She was furious with her heart for beating so fast—furious with herself for reacting. She was an engaged woman—she wasn’t supposed to find other men attractive. She put on her most repressive expression. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked him primly.

  ‘Well, that rather depends, doesn’t it?’ He smiled appreciatively and Shelley was dazzled, flattered. She blushed and his smile curved.

  She had never met anyone like him in her life. There was something frighteningly potent about his lazy Latin allure. His was an instinctive sensuality, sweet and seductive as sugar. He was the apple in her Garden of Eden.

  He pointed to a long, low silver model—the most expensive in the showroom. ‘Will you take me for a drive in that, cara?’

  ‘Me?’ Shelley shook her head. ‘Oh, no—I can’t do that. I’ll have to get Geoff for you. I’m afraid I don’t drive.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ He smiled again. ‘You must drive men crazy all the time—with those aquamarine eyes, set in skin the colour of alabaster.’

  She couldn’t help blushing again at the outrageous compliment. Afterwards she wondered why he had been attracted enough to flirt with her. Her hair had been scraped back into a simple chignon and she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up. Later still she realised that it had been her innocence which had ensnared him, just as it had ensnared Drew.

  Unusually, he persuaded Geoff to let him take Shelley for a drive in the car, but then Shelley thought that he probably could have persuaded the tide to turn back, if he’d wanted it to. He was an art dealer—he had his own gallery in Milan. He used extravagant words to describe the paintings he bought and Shelley was fascinated. He told her she was as pretty as a picture, and he would give her a job any time she wanted one.

  He bought the car—in cash—to Geoff’s delight, and the following day sent flowers to thank her for her help. A subtle, fragrant mass of sweet peas, and she guiltily buried her nose in the bunched pink and mauve blooms and breathed in their scent. But she left the flowers on her office desk—she didn’t dare take them home in case her mother quizzed her about them—and by the next day they had wilted.

  She was edgy. Drew had been working so hard that she had hardly seen him. She was getting on for twenty-one and life seemed to stretch out in front of her like a flat, straight road. So when Marco casually offered to take her for a drink after work she found herself wavering. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You have a boyfriend?’

  She held her left hand up. ‘Fiancé,’ she said pointed
ly.

  ‘Maybe I should ask his permission?’

  ‘Oh, no—don’t do that!’ said Shelley hastily.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m going back to Italy next week,’ he explained. ‘Maybe I’ll call you next time I’m over. Can you get up to London easily?’

  It would be easier to get to Mars! She would never see him again. And he was exciting, different, Italian. Drew had travelled the world and met lots of interesting people like Marco. What, then—what harm could come of a simple drink?

  She had never drunk in the Westward Hotel before. It was on the other side of the village and only the richer tourists could afford to go there, even though the splendour of the place was gradually becoming faded with time.

  He led her to a table with a breathtaking view of the sea, and the smell of old leather and the dazzling views and the iced champagne went to her head and made her dizzy.

  When Marco drove her home, he stopped a little way from her house and it was like watching a film of someone else’s life when he leaned over to kiss her. Shelley told herself it was nothing more than curiosity which made her open her lips beneath his. She’d only ever been kissed by Drew before.

  But the kiss was like chocolate; she couldn’t stop at one. And it took every bit of will-power she possessed to tear herself out of his arms and run towards the house—with the sound of Fletcher barking madly in her ears and guilt staining her cheeks.

  And she hadn’t seen the dark figure who stood watching from the shadows of the trees…

  The memories dissolved like a dream, and Shelley glanced down at her watch to see that she had been standing gazing at the empty beach for almost an hour. So did that mean Drew really had been here, or had she dreamed that up, too?

  Slowly she made her way back along the sea-road to where she had left her car, feeling as flat as last night’s champagne.

  It was ironic, really. She had been thinking how much she had changed and matured. But if that were the case, then how could she so badly have underestimated the impact of seeing him again?

  Had she thought she would be immune to him after all this time? Or—worse—imagined that he would pull her into his arms and tell her that he’d never forgotten her?