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him, she would grow out of it, the way she’d grown out of having puppy fat. ‘Nothing,’ he admitted. ‘I just acted exactly the same as I always had towards her.’
‘And how was that?’
‘Big-brotherly, I suppose.’
‘So there was no attraction between you at all?’
Dan shook his dark head. ‘Not on my part, certainly! The age difference between us is too great for us to have anything in common—apart from geographical proximity, of course.’
Megan nodded, looking closely at the cool, clever face. ‘And what is the age difference, exactly?’
‘Thirteen years.’
She expelled a long breath. ‘It is a big gap, but it’s not unheard of,’ offered Megan, thinking of Hollywood stars and minor royals.
‘Neither is slave labour, but that doesn’t make it all right!’ Dan threw her an impatient look. ‘Think about it! When she was a chubby five-year-old, I was just setting off for university. So do you really think that we bonded? Maybe you imagine that every time I came home we sat down and discussed which brand of chocolate bar we liked best!’
Megan opened her mouth to say that she didn’t know why he seemed to be taking it out on her. But she shut it again. Dan McKnight was usually so elusive about his personal life. Getting information was often like prising a clam out of its shell. So if he was now choosing to open up to her, then she should be flattered as well as intrigued. ‘Of course I don’t think that,’ she said calmly.
Her composure seemed to take the heat out of some of his anger, and he put the paperweight down on top of a sheaf of papers. ‘Anyway,’ he shrugged. ‘By the time she’d reached fifteen, I was twenty-eight—’
‘And I suppose the age difference became far less significant as you both got older,’ suggested Megan reflectively.
Dan gave her another thoughtful look. ‘That’s certainly what Katrina thought.’
‘So did…?’ Megan chose her words carefully. ‘Did she just suddenly decide that she was in love with you—or did something happen?’
His eyelashes brushed together, obscuring and shadowing his eyes. ‘Like what?’
‘Well—’
‘You think I made a pass at her?’
‘No, of course I don’t.’ She tried to be diplomatic. ‘Well, not intentionally, maybe…’
Dan felt the ticking of a slow rage as he met the mild suggestion in her eyes. Until he realised that maybe he wasn’t as blameless as he’d imagined. It couldn’t have all come out of nothing, could it? So had he—maybe subliminally—been sending out the wrong sort of message to Katrina for years? He thought back and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I never did anything which could have been taken the wrong way.’
‘So can you remember exactly when it started to get more serious?’
He tried to pinpoint the moment when a schoolgirl crush had begun to escalate out of control. ‘I gave her a necklace on her eighteenth birthday,’ he realised. ‘It started soon afterwards.’
‘And how long ago was that?’
‘Almost two years.’
So Katrina was persistent. Two years of unrequited love was certainly dedication. ‘What kind of necklace?’ she asked.
‘Seed-pearls,’ he answered slowly, remembering that he’d bought them on his mother’s recommendation, and that they had cost rather more than he had intended to pay. He remembered the way Katrina had looked at him when he had handed the slim package over. The stunned expression followed by the shining gratitude in her eyes. The way she had flung her arms so tightly around his neck, until he had eventually had to disentangle them. ‘They were rather nice pearls, actually.’
‘Well, then—that’s why!’ said Megan. ‘You sent out the wrong message.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘How?’
‘Women look at jewellery in a rather different way to men,’ she explained. ‘I mean—you probably thought that you were just helping commemorate a big birthday, with a pretty keepsake, from a friend—’
‘Precisely!’
‘Whereas women view certain pieces of jewellery as actually meaning something.’ She looked at him. Even she knew that—why, she still felt positively misty-eyed when she put her own string of pearls on—though that might be because they had belonged to her mother. ‘What made you buy them in the first place?’
Dan shifted in his seat, beginning to feel as though something had been going on that he hadn’t really been aware of. As though, in some very discreet way, he’d been cleverly manipulated. Why had he never seen the obvious link before? ‘My mother suggested it.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She looked at him with a question in her eyes. ‘Your mother obviously likes her.’
‘She approves of her, yes,’ answered Dan thoughtfully as he reflected on Megan’s words. ‘So Katrina thinks she’s in love with me because I bought her a piece of fairly expensive jewellery for her eighteenth birthday?’
Megan faced him. ‘You’re the only one who can answer that.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘You make her stop loving you.’
‘How?’ he demanded.
Megan was tempted to suggest that he spend longer in the girl’s company—that would be bound to make the dream evaporate in an instant!
‘What have you done so far?’ she questioned. ‘To put her off?’
‘Last time I saw her, I gently explained that the age difference between us is too great.’
Megan shook her head. ‘Oh, dear! Big mistake!’
He looked at her sharply. ‘Oh?’
‘Saying that makes it sound as though it’s only convention standing in your way! True love thwarted by an inflexible world! The Romeo and Juliet syndrome,’ she added helpfully. ‘What else have you done?’
‘I don’t take her phone calls any more—and I haven’t returned any of the more recent e-mails. Or answered any of the letters.’ He stared at the paperweight and when he looked up the grey eyes were troubled. ‘Because I can’t think what to say—and because the letters are becoming slightly more—’ he seemed to have difficulty choosing the right word ‘—graphic,’ he finished reluctantly.
‘Ignoring her will only make her more desperate,’ Megan mused aloud, deciding that there was absolutely no need for her to know just how graphic. ‘And she’ll be worried that she’ll lose your friendship altogether. No, ignoring her won’t help.’
‘Well, then, just what do you suggest I do?’ he demanded.
Megan stared at him, her lips twitching with the temptation to tell him that it wasn’t really her place to suggest anything at all.
But then she thought of Katrina’s crestfallen voice and tried putting herself in the girl’s shoes and felt an enormous wave of sympathy for her. Because hadn’t she read somewhere that obsessional love could gnaw away at you and dominate your whole life?
She frowned with concentration. ‘There is one way of getting her off your back.’ She saw him wince at the way she had phrased it. ‘But you might think it’s rather cruel.’
His eyes grew suspicious. ‘What did you have in mind?’
Megan smiled. Her brothers were the same. Couldn’t see a simple solution even if it was staring them in the face!
‘You just convince her that you’re in love with someone else. Simple.’