To Tell the Truth (9 page)

"I'm sorry." Her mouth moved into a faint, nervous smile of apology. "Sometimes I lose my thick skin and become slightly paranoid."

"Well, hold your head up. There's nothing to be ashamed of."

His gentle, bolstering words were just what she needed as he released her arm and reached around to open the front door. John was in the foyer greeting his guests, the Irish setter grinning happily at his side.

Chapter Five

ARMORED WITH PRIDE, Andrea walked directly to the wheelchair, taking a position at John's side. She was, after all, his wife and therefore the hostess. Her place was beside him greeting their guests. That one of them was the man she loved couldn't be considered at this time.

"There you are, Andie," John smiled up at her. "Out picking flowers, I see."

"Yes." Her side vision caught Tell's twisted, sardonic look that said it wasn't all she had been doing. Her fragile composure nearly dissolved, her smile cracking for an instant as she turned it toward the two women. She deliberately ignored Tell while she rebuilt her defenses. "I wanted to have some spring bouquets set around the house as a way of saying welcome."

"That is thoughtful, Andrea, and the flowers look very beautiful," Mrs. Collins replied.

"You remember Rosemary, don't you, Andie?" John inserted, introducing the woman who had just spoken.

"Of course, I do. It's good to see you again, Mrs. Collins," Andrea acknowledged, switching the flower basket to the other side in order to shake hands.

Rosemary Collins was the same age as John, in her fifties. She had retained her youthful beauty. Her hair was still a dark brown, although a close inspection might detect a few gray hairs. Her eyes were a soft brown and her face relatively unlined and wearing a smile with easy grace. The years had added a few pounds, but she was still matronly slim.

"Please, call me Rosemary," she corrected with friendly warmth, then slipped a hand on the young woman's elbow standing at her side and drew her forward. "This is my daughter, Nancy."

Large, expressive blue eyes studied Andrea curiously from a slender oval face framed by silky fine brown hair. Andrea's smile stiffened slightly as she accepted the girl's hand. She doubted that she could shrug off as paranoia the sensation that Nancy Collins was wondering why she had married a man as old as John.

"Your mother has told me about you. I'm glad I'm finally getting to meet you," was Andrea's polite greeting.

"I've been looking forward to it, too," the girl replied, smiling naturally and with the same kindness as her mother.

As the handclasp of greeting ended, Andrea caught the flash of a diamond solitaire on Nancy's left hand, poignantly reminding her of the one hidden in her dresser drawer. She couldn't say why she had kept it. Perhaps to remind herself of what she had lost—as if she needed any reminder.

John's hand touched her arm and Andrea braced herself for the introduction to Tell. She knew she would never be able to offer sincere congratulations to him on his engagement to Nancy. Wildly she searched her mind for some ambiguous remark that would not make her look like a fool.

"Tell, I don't believe you've met Andrea, either," John began.

But his introduction was abruptly halted by Tell's slicing response. "Yes, I have."

Andrea had been carefully avoiding looking directly at him until it was absolutely necessary, but his words shocked her into staring. Her heart stopped as his piercing gaze slashed her to ribbons.

His hard mouth was lifted at one corner in a mocking curl, deriding the pleading look in her eyes. "Actually," he said lazily, "I saw her when we drove in, picking flowers." He placed cutting emphasis on the last words, before he glanced at John. The sardonic expression was replaced by impassive courtesy. "But we haven't been formally introduced. She is your wife?"

John took hold of her hand. It was a touch of warmth that she desperately needed as cold fear raced through her veins. She looked down with gratitude at his reassurance that she was not alone.

"More than that, Tell. She's my secretary, my companion, my supporter and—"

"Your youth?" Tell's quiet insertion held no sarcasm of mockery, but Andrea knew it was there. Concealed from John, but it was there.

Swallowing nervously, Andrea watched the slight narrowing of John's gray eyes as he silently studied Tell. "That, too, I suppose," he admitted after a long moment. "But let me formally introduce you. Andrea, this is Tell Stafford, Rosemary's son. My wife, Andrea."

Her son? Not Nancy's fiancé? Her knees nearly buckled at the announcement. The different surnames had thrown her. In the unexpectedness of seeing him again, Andrea had forgotten that Tell had told her his mother had married again when he was a child. She hadn't realized the additional agony she had felt picturing him in the young woman's arms until it was suddenly cast away.

The discovery made the beautiful smile she gave him blissfully warm and natural. If anything, his expression hardened under the glow of her look. Her hand had been automatically extended in greeting. He glanced at it pointedly. Instantly, her joyous relief dissipated as she thought for one humiliating moment that he was going to rudely ignore her outstretched hand. Then his lean brown fingers closed over it, releasing her hand almost immediately, almost as if there were contamination in her touch.

"And of course all of you remember Adam Fitzgerald," John continued, allowing a slight pause for Andrea and Tell to acknowledge their introduction before drawing the group's attention to the man standing just inside the door, "my manager and my legs."

As everyone turned to greet Adam, Andrea slipped back to take a less obtrusive position behind John's chair and escape their notice for as long as possible. But Tell noticed her attempt to fade into the background, sarcastically raising one dark brow in mockery. Andrea's gaze fell away from his arrogant contempt.

The respite was brief. Much too soon Andrea was pushed to the foreground when John suggested that she show their guests to their rooms, while he quickly went over the timber leases with Adam before lunch. Hotly aware of Tell's dark eyes boring into her back, she led them up the stairs, wasting little time directing them to their respective rooms.

"How thoughtful of John to give me my old room!" Rosemary exclaimed as Andrea opened the door to the damask bedroom, a name she had attached to the room because of the beautiful, old damask bedspread that covered the antique four-poster bed. "He must have remembered how fond I was of the spectacular view of the mountains from this window." She smiled over her shoulder at Andrea. "And Nancy has her same room, too. It's like coming home."

"We expected your husband might accompany you. That's why the adjoining bedroom is prepared for—" Andrea stumbled, unable to speak Tell's name "—your son. I'm sure Mrs. Davison and I could quickly enough get his old room ready. I'm afraid I don't know which one it is."

It was still difficult for her to accept that Tell had spent any time in the house that was her home.

"He used to have the room on the right where the mock tower is." There was a faraway look in Rosemary Collins's eyes as if she were silently reminiscing about a bygone time. "It's a bit separated from the other bedrooms and he always used to like that. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'm sure he would like to stay in it."

Andrea's breathing became shallow and uneven as a warm pink flowed into her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Collins," she murmured self-consciously. "That's…in use. It's, er, my room."

"Your room? I…" The startled voice stopped, but Andrea completed the thought to herself. Rosemary Collins had probably thought that she shared the master bedroom suite downstairs with John. "It doesn't matter," the woman said and shrugged quickly. "Men are seldom as sentimental about such things as women are."

"So you have the tower room?" Tell's voice came mockingly from the connecting door between the two bedrooms.

"Yes," Andrea breathed, her gaze bouncing away from his. "If you'll excuse me—" the request was made to his mother "—I'll have to get these flowers in some water. Lunch will be in about an hour. Please make yourself at home."

Her dignified retreat carried her to the kitchen. There, her legs nearly dissolved as a long-postponed reaction set in, but she wasn't allowed time to adjust to Tell's arrival and whatever implications it might contain or the unforeseen difficulties that might accompany it.

Mrs. Davison's magic wand required a helping hand, and she deputized Andrea to supply it as she bustled about the kitchen to come up with the last-minute items to supplement the original menu for three to extend it to seven—since Adam had received his hoped-for invitation to join them. When the task was successfully accomplished, Andrea barely had time to slip upstairs to her room and change before lunch was served.

John supervised the seating arrangements, placing his two female guests on either side of him at the head of the table. That left Tell and Adam to sit at Andrea's end of the table. Mrs. Davison chose not to eat with them, insisting that she would rather have her meal by herself after they had lunched when she could eat in peace.

Andrea wished she could have had the same alternative. She would rather have eaten alone than endure Tell's cold indifference to her presence. He pointedly avoided addressing any comment directly to her, cutting her out of his conversation with Adam as if she weren't there. To try to carry on polite conversation with the women at the other end of the table was impossible, so Andrea sat through the meal in uncomfortable silence. It was a silence that no one seemed to notice, except perhaps Tell, who cuttingly enforced it.

Gladly, she insisted at the end of the meal that the others take their coffee on the cobblestoned veranda while she helped Mrs. Davison clear the lunch dishes. She dallied in the kitchen until the housekeeper finally shooed her out. There weren't any more excuses for not joining the others.

But how could she treat Tell as a stranger when her every nerve end screamed with the knowledge of his touch, his kiss, his embrace and the love they had shared so briefly? When Andrea thought of the way it had been, and that they might never kiss again, it seemed like a cruel game of pretense.

For a numbed moment she stood in the corridor, dredging her inner resources for some reserve of
courage and stamina. Then she heard male footsteps descending the stairs—firm deliberate movements that had to belong to Tell. A fleeting second later she knew she had to speak to him alone and this was her prime opportunity.

As she reached the end of the corridor, Tell was at the bottom of the open staircase turning toward the continuing hallway that would lead him to the rear of the house and the veranda entrance.

"Tell?" Her unconsciously pleading call halted him and he slowly turned around to face her, his leanly chiseled face aristocratically cold and arrogantly hard.

Now that Andrea had his attention without anyone listening, she didn't know what to say. She searched his uncompromising expression for some sign that the months apart might have tempered his attitude with compassion. Nothing indicated that he had yielded any measure of his contempt for her as he nonchalantly placed a cigarette between the sardonic line of his lips and snapped a lighter to it. Still she couldn't speak.

"Did you arrange this little rendezvous, Andrea?" His low-pitched voice was ominously soft.

"I had to talk to you alone," she murmured, trying to accept that this man of stone was the same one who had loved her so passionately. "I heard you coming down the stairs and—"

"Don't pretend naïveté that you don't possess!" he snapped viciously. "You know very well that I'm referring to the invitation that was issued to my mother and the postscript to remind me how long it had been since I accompanied her."

Andrea breathed in sharply at his attack. "Tell, I swear I didn't know who you were. I admit that I knew John had invited your mother, but I didn't know she was your mother. That's the truth."

A cloud of smoke was exhaled between them. "The problem with people who don't make a habit of telling the truth, Andrea, is that others seldom believe them when they do."

"It is true!" she repeated forcefully. "I even thought you were Nancy's fiancé until Mrs. Collins said you were her son."

"I see," Tell mocked. "John knew very well who I was."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about." Andrea stared at her tightly clasped hands. "I didn't tell him about you."

"John must be more gullible than I thought. How did you explain what I was doing in your room?" he jeered. "Fixing a leaking tap?"

"No, of course not," she sighed heavily. "He knows I met someone, but I never told him your name."

"Naturally, he was very understanding and forgave you for straying. What else can a wealthy, old man do when he's confined to a wheelchair?"

"There was nothing to forgive." Her chin lifted proudly as she met the obsidian glitter of his gaze.

"Wasn't there?" A brow arched. "We have two completely and totally different opinions of fidelity."

"You won't even try to understand." Her shoulders sagged with the hopelessness of trying to explain.

"What happened between us is not something I'm liable to brag about, especially to John. Your secret is safe with me." His mouth thinned grimly. "As for you and Adam, I sincerely hope that John finds out what a two-timing tramp he has for a wife."