Accidental Mistress. CATHY WILLIAMS
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to you.’
‘Y-you sorted out this room?’ Lisa repeated, stammering.
‘Your stay here will be private.’
‘There was no need.’ She looked at him, aghast. It had crossed her mind that being the sole occupant in a room in a very busy hospital was a bit peculiar, but it had never occurred to her that someone else might have paid for it.
‘It was the least I could do,’ he said, frowning.
‘Well, it’s enough.’ She looked at him firmly. ‘I can’t possibly ask you for any kind of financial compensation for an accident that was partly my fault and partly the fault of the heavens opening up.’ In fact, thinking about it, it was probably more her fault than the fault of the weather because she hadn’t been looking where she was going. She had stepped out from between two parked cars, intent on getting to that terminal before her arms gave out completely.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ he told her, but sounded more perplexed and irritated than angry.
‘I’m not. I don’t want any money from you.’
‘And what about your holiday?’
Lisa shrugged and pictured herself lying by a pool somewhere with a tinge of regret. ‘It was too good to be true anyway,’ she said on a sigh. ‘I won it, you see. I entered a competition in a magazine and won it, so it’s not really as though I’ve lost any money or anything.’
‘You won it?’ He made it sound as though having to enter competitions to get holidays was something utterly unheard of and she said, defensively,
‘I can’t afford one otherwise!’
She looked at him properly, not at his physical appearance, but at his clothes, his shoes, his watch, and she realised that, although she had no idea what he did for a living, whatever it was paid well because he exuded that air of confidence and power that came to people who had a great deal of wealth. Not the sort of man that she would ever have met under normal circumstances, nor the sort that she would have wanted to meet. A man destined to lead women up garden paths. From the pinnacle of inexperience, she felt sure that she had summed him up correctly.
‘Which is all the more reason...’
‘On no condition will I accept money from you! I was in the wrong and I would have a guilty conscience if I felt that I had swindled you out of money.’
‘I can afford it, for heaven’s sake!’ He was beginning to look as though she had taken leave of her senses. ‘You’re not swindling me out of anything!’
‘No.’
‘Are you always so stubborn?’ he asked, with a faintly mystified look. ‘I must say it’s a new experience to want to give money away only to find it flung back in my face.’
He gave her a long, slow smile that was so full of unintentional charm that she felt her head begin to swim a little. Had she ever met a man as potent as this one was? she wondered. Was that why he was having this heady effect on her? Maybe the fact that she was stuffed full of painkillers had something to do with it. All that medication would have thrown her system out of focus, might be making her responses go awry. She blinked and looked at him and still felt as though something tight was gripping her chest.
‘Do you work?’ he asked at last, curiously. ‘Does it not pay enough for you to have a holiday now and again? When was the last time you had a holiday?’
‘I might be stubborn,’ Lisa said tartly, ‘but at least I’m not nosy.’
‘Everyone’s nosy,’ Angus said, looking at her with a mixture of curiosity and amusement.
‘Oh, are they? What a strange world you must live in, where everyone’s nosy and willing to accept money wherever it comes from and whatever the circumstances.’
He looked even more vastly amused by that and she felt the colour crawl up into her face, making her hot and addled. For a second she was the fourteen-year-old girl in her party frock again, anxiously waiting at the front door for her first date to arrive, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the packing cases, still only halfunpacked in the small living room, assured by her parents that she looked lovely, but knowing deep down that she just looked plain and unexciting. She was only ever exciting in her mind. In reality, she knew that she was shy and reserved and that any self-confidence she had acquired over the years was really only a thin veneer.
‘I hope you’re not laughing at me,’ she said now.
‘Laughing at you?’ His dark eyebrows shot up. ‘Someone with such admirable principles?’
He was laughing at her. He was thinking that she was gauche and ingenuous and naïve and heaven only knew what else besides.
‘Well,’ she said, trying to sound composed, ‘in answer to your questions, yes, I have got a job, yes, I suppose I could just afford to go abroad now and again—well, once a year, anyway—but something would suffer, and as a matter of fact I have never been on a holiday.’
‘You have never been on a holiday?’ He sounded incredulous and she glared at him defensively.
‘That’s right,’ she snapped. ‘Is it so unheard of?’
‘Largely speaking, yes,’ he answered bluntly. He was looking at her as though he had come across a strange species of creature, believed extinct, which, against her better judgement, made her stammer out an explanation of sorts.
’M-my parents travelled around the country a lot... My father didn’t...didn’t like to be in one place for too long... nor Mum... They—they liked the feeling of being on the move, you see...’
‘How thoughtful of them, considering they had a child. Are you an only child? Have you any sisters? Brothers?’
‘No. And my parents were wonderful!’ she said hotly. True enough, they had been thoughtless—a conclusion she had arrived at for herself a long time ago—but in a vague, generous way. Was it their fault that she had come along? Out of the blue when her parents were already in their early forties?
‘And now your one opportunity lands you up in hospital.’ He shook his head ruefully, swerving off the subject with such expertise that she was almost taken aback.
‘I think fate is trying to tell me something,’ she conceded with a little laugh.
Outside, night had fallen, black, cold, starless. The bright, fluorescent overhead bulb threw his face into startling contrast, accentuating his perfectly chiselled features. She wondered how she looked. The doctor had said that she had a few bruises, which probably meant that her face was every colour of the rainbow, and her hair, which had dried, would look straggly and unkempt.
For a moment she felt a burning sense of embarrassment. It was a bit like bouncing into your favourite film star on the one day of the year when you hadn’t put on any make-up and were suffering from a bad cold.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had been bothered by her looks—or rather her lack of them. She had stopped looking into mirrors and wistfully longing to see a tall, big-busted blonde looking back at her. She had come through that awkward, insecure adolescence and had emerged a sensible, down-to-earth woman who could handle most situations.
Now, though, lying here on the hospital bed, Lisa felt plain. Too pale, too fine-featured ever to be labelled earthy or voluptuous, hair too brown, without any interesting highlights, breasts too small.
‘Where exactly do you work?’ he asked.
‘Are you really interested? You mustn’t feel that you’ve got to be kind or that you’ve got to stay here with me for an appropriate length of time.’
‘Stubborn,’ he drawled, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands behind his head, ‘and argumentative.’
Argumentative? Her? When was the last time she had argued with anyone? Not for years. She had always been quite happy