The Perfect Match (11 page)

But one look at his face told her that he was going to do no such thing and rather than risk losing face by allowing him to see how much he was hurting her, how difficult she was finding it to distance and detach herself from him and all that they had shared, she drew herself up to her full height and told him quietly,

'I think, in the circumstances, you had better leave.'

'Do you know something?' Guy responded sarcas-tically. I think you could be right. My God,' he added, shaking his head as he turned back towards the front door, 'you really had me fooled, do you know that? If Jenny hadn't let it slip that you were Charlie's niece—'

'I would have told you about that,' Chrissie said proudly. 'In fact, it was only because you were so antagonistic towards him that I—'

'You
lied
to me,' Guy interrupted coldly.

'Just as
you
lied to me when I asked you about Jenny,' Chrissie challenged him.

She wasn't going to let him have things all his own way, she decided. Why should she?

'I met your sister in town this afternoon. She had one of your relatives with her. It seems that you've got rather a reputation as an unreliable and fickle lover,' she told him with a bitter little smile. 'Pity I didn't hear about it
before
we met.'

He looked so angry that Chrissie's courage almost failed her. But why
should
she let him be the one making all the accusations?

Yes, she had been wrong not to tell him about Uncle Charles but at least she had not concealed important facts about her sexual and emotional history from him.

No wonder he had been such... such an experienced lover, she decided, summoning all the mental cynicism and self-protection she could whilst fighting to suppress the aching weight of her inner anguish and heartbreak.

'I don't know what you've heard or from whom,'

Guy returned bleakly, 'nor do I really care. What I felt for Jenny was a private and personal thing and at no time did Jenny reciprocate my feelings or waver from her love for Jon.'

'Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?' Chrissie sneered with deliberately calculated nastiness.

'You bitch!' Guy snarled as he wrenched open the front door and stormed through it.

The cottage was already more than damp enough without her adding to its mildewy atmosphere with her tears, Chrissie remonstrated with herself well over an hour later when the now-silent tears of loss and pain were still trickling hopelessly down her face to betray her each time she thought she had them under control.

Instead, to keep her hands if not her mind occupied, she had spent the evening rescrubbing every inch of the small, old-fashioned kitchen and so much so that her hands now felt as raw and tender as her emotions.

How
could
she ever have been such a fool as to believe Guy when he told her that he loved her? She must have been bemused, bedevilled, besotted. There was no other logical explanation for what had happened—no
logical
explanation at all.

Of course, he hadn't loved her. How could he? He didn't know her. He had probably just been using her to ease the pain of his—according to him, she decided darkly—unrequited love for Jenny. No, of course he hadn't loved her. Just as
she
hadn't loved him. So then, if she hadn't loved him, why on earth was she behaving like a tragedy queen, wringing her hands and crying, yes,
crying
foolish tears into a silent house? She ought to be feeling grateful that she had discovered so quickly just what he was.

All those unbelievable lies he had told her about wanting to take her to Amsterdam to buy her an engagement ring. Yes, she was far, far better off without him, she decided.

After he left Chrissie, Guy didn't go straight home.

How could he? For the first time since he had left his young manhood behind him, he knew what it was to feel the need to expel his pent-up emotions via some act of physical violence, albeit not against another human being and not even against himself. However, he admitted grimly, right now he could see a lot of virtue in being able to hit some inanimate object very hard.

Very, very hard.

He frowned as he suddenly realised that his fast-paced walk through the town had inadvertently brought him to his old junior school—the scene of his long-ago childhood fear of Charlie Platt and the bullying and attempted blackmail Charlie had inflicted on him there.

'I
was
going to tell you,' Chrissie had cried defensively when he had confronted her with the truth. But why should he believe her, how could he believe her, especially after he had seen that damned desk? And
she
had had the effrontery to pretend that it belonged to her family.

There had been a moment when he had seen the look in her eyes, that had made him doubt...

wonder...but then she had thrown that accusation at him about his supposed reputation and followed it up with that even more contemptuous comment about Jenny.

He stared across the empty playground, mentally reliving their quarrel. His anger had gone now, leaving him feeling flat and drained, empty and disillu-sioned.

He should have listened to that small warning voice that had urged him to be more cautious instead of...

But the damage was done now. His love for Jenny had been a slow-growing, gentle emotion that he had lived with for a long time and one that he had come to realise was undoubtedly the result of being too much alone and of recognising in Jenny the type of woman who couldn't help but nurture and support others.

His love for Chrissie had hit him like a bolt out of the blue. It had been an overwhelming force. It had possessed a passion, an intensity, a recklessness that had made him step so far outside his normal character, that at times, when he was with her, he had barely recognised himself. His love for her had...

Had
? His mouth twisted with cynical self-mockery as he turned away from the school and started to walk home.

Just who did he think he was kidding? Love... The kind of emotion he had for Chrissie couldn't be wiped out by a mere act of will, no matter how much his pride and self-respect might demand that it was.

Half an hour later when he walked into his comfortable kitchen, the first thing he saw was the supper he had prepared for Chrissie. Grimly he picked up the dishes of mouth-wateringly delicious epicurean deli-cacies and thrust the whole lot into the garbage.

The vintage bottle of wine he had bought to go with their meal was still on the table. He picked it up, glanced at the garbage and then looked ruefully at the bottle. He couldn't do it. It was too sacrilegious. He had opened the bottle and left the wine to breathe before going out. Absently he poured himself a glass.

It was good, but not even its warm mellowness could ease the harsh, gritty pain he was feeling. He emptied the glass and poured himself another. He had always prided himself on being a good judge of character but tonight he had had proof of just how poor his judgement actually was. He had been utterly and completely taken in by Chrissie.

His wineglass was empty. He frowned as he refilled it. It was pointless now to curse the fate that had brought them together. Better to curse his own folly in being deceived by it and by her. He looked blearily at the wine bottle, now three-quarters empty. There was no point in wasting what was left. Picking up the bottle and his glass, he headed for the stairs.

Guy was dreaming, drawing Chrissie closer to him as he savoured the familiar warmth of her body, frowning as he felt her tense and look back over her shoulder to where another man was watching them.

'Why are you looking at
him?'
he demanded jealously as he watched Charlie Platt smirking at him from the shadow of the school gates. 'You know who he is, don't you?'

'I have to go to him,' Chrissie was protesting as she pulled away from his embrace. Then somehow Charlie was standing next to them, towering over him as he had done when Guy was a little boy, grinning tauntingly at Guy as he took hold of Chrissie's arm.

'You didn't really think it was
you
she wanted, did you?' Charlie challenged, then he and Chrissie were walking away from him and he heard Charlie laughing and saying gloatingly to her, 'Look what I've got for you,' as he showed her the desk that for some reason had manifested itself on the pavement.

'No. You mustn't touch it,' Guy heard himself protest, but Chrissie only laughed.

'Of course I can touch it,' she told Guy. 'It's mine.

Charlie gave it to me.'

'No,' Guy denied, the sound of his own raw denial bringing him abruptly out of his dream to sit bolt up-right in bed, blinking in the darkness as he tried to shake away the disturbing emotions aroused by his dream.

'Chrissie feels a little bit wary about going public with the fact that Charlie was her uncle,' Jenny had informed him innocently.

'That desk wasn't stolen. It belonged to my great-grandmother,' Chrissie had told him boldly.

'The police suspect that there may be a woman involved with the gang,' Jenny had said.

Guy groaned and rolled over in bed, punching his pillow. Of course Chrissie couldn't be connected with the gang who had broken into Queensmead. He was convinced of it. But twenty-four hours ago he had been equally convinced that she was incapable of any kind of deception or deceit, hadn't he?

Wide awake now, he lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. Ridiculously, given what he now knew about her, his body, and not just his body but his emotions, too, literally ached with yearning for her.

He had
never
felt like this about a woman before, no, not even about Jenny. He had been right, then, about one thing: Chrissie was destined to be the one woman he would love. But he had sadly deluded himself about so many others, such as the fact that she shared his feelings.

What was still a mystery to him was the way she had allowed a relationship to develop between them in the first place. Out of boredom? Simply as a means of passing the time whilst she was in Haslewich?

He would have staked his life on the slight hesitation and sexual inexperience she had revealed being genuine and on the belief that she simply wasn't the type to play sexual games.

His head ached from the wine he had drunk and his heart and his body ached even more from the bitter brew Chrissie had given him.

Grimly he closed his eyes, reminding himself that he was not a teenager and that he had responsibilities and duties. Savagely he asked himself if he wanted the whole county to know what a fool he had been.

Guy was just replacing the telephone receiver when he heard his front doorbell ring. Despite the paraceta-mol he had taken when he woke up, his head still ached appallingly, but that didn't stop his heart giving a short, savage jerk of expectation as he got up and went to open the door. Only, of course, it wasn't Chrissie standing on the other side of it. How could it have been? That was over and if he had any sense at all he would be thankful that it had ended before he had had the chance to make even more of a fool of himself than he already had.

'Guy, are you all right?' Jenny asked in concern as he waved her in. 'You look dreadful.'

As he stood wincing in the bright sunlight, Guy suspected his expression gave her the answer.

'We've got a bit of a problem with one of the caterers for the fair,' Jenny explained as she followed him into the kitchen. 'I didn't want to disturb you too early. Is Chrissie...?'

'She's not here,' Guy told her abruptly, adding curtly as he kept his back to her, 'It's over between us.'

'Guy.' He could hear the shocked disbelief in Jenny's voice. 'Everyone quarrels,' she sympathized gently, 'and I'm sure—'

'This wasn't a lovers' spat, Jen,' he countered grimly. He turned round. 'Until you mentioned it yesterday, I had no idea that Chrissie was related to Charlie Platt. She'd led me to believe that she was simply acting for the family.'

Jenny frowned. 'Oh, Guy, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I never meant...I just assumed you knew.'

'No. I
didn 't
know,' Guy contradicted her heavily.

'She lied to me,' he burst out as he started to pace the kitchen, 'and she—'

'Guy, I can understand how shocked you must be...how hurt you must feel,' Jenny told him gently.

'I
know
you never particularly liked Charlie, but have you thought maybe that's
why
Chrissie felt that she couldn't tell you about the relationship?' she coun-selled him.

Guy looked out of the window. Would Jenny feel as charitably inclined towards Chrissie when she knew about the desk? Somehow he doubted it.

'It isn't just the fact that she kept me in the dark about her connection to Charlie,' he said stiffly.

'There's...there's something else....'

He paused whilst Jenny waited, obviously puzzled.

'Ben's desk is there,' he told Jenny, adding harshly,

'I saw it with my own eyes, Jen. There was no mistaking it. I valued the damn thing for Ben, for God's sake, and I told her so but she still kept claiming that it belonged to
her
family. She obviously knew it didn't belong to Charlie. She had to. For one thing...if you'd seen the rest of the junk he had and for another...'

'Perhaps she does genuinely believe it belonged to Charlie,' Jenny suggested uncertainly.

'Wry...why
should
she think such a thing when I've already told her that it didn't! I've
told
her, more-over, just who it does belong to.'

'Oh dear,' Jenny commiserated. 'I'm so sorry, Guy.

I just don't know what to say. She seemed so nice, so genuine. You two seemed so right for one another.

Perhaps if you were to try to talk to her again?'

'What for?' Guy demanded harshly. 'So she could lie to me a
second
time.' He shook his head. 'Anyway, it's too late. I've rung the police to inform them about the desk. I had to, Jenny,' he added quietly when she said nothing. '
You
know that.'

'Yes. I know that,' Jenny agreed unhappily.

'They're calling round for me in half an hour. They want me to go with them to identify the desk.'