Kitabı oxu: «A Woman To Remember»

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU’LL have to go to the dentist.’

Luke popped the two painkillers into his mouth and swigged them back with a large glass of water.

‘I’ll go when I get back to Los Angeles,’ he said, turning from the kitchen sink to smile at his still frowning mother. ‘It’s not that bad.’

Grace wasn’t about to be distracted from her maternal mission, although she recognised that her son’s smile would have distracted most of the female gender. Distract, disarm and downright disorientate.

At thirty-two, Luke had become a lethal weapon where his looks were concerned. Age and life had finally put some interesting lines on his once too smoothly handsome face, especially around his eyes and mouth, giving him more sex appeal than ever.

His two elder brothers were good-looking men, but Luke was matinee idol material, having inherited the best of his parents’ genes—his father’s tall, well-proportioned body, clear olive skin and flashing dark eyes, and his mother’s symmetrical features, high cheekbones and sensually carved mouth. All in all, a potent mix.

As a teenage boy Grace’s youngest son had been a big hit with girls. No doubt nowadays he was an equally big hit with women. Pity he couldn’t find one to settle down with, Grace thought wryly.

Not that he mixed with the type of woman she would have chosen as a daughter-in-law. Luke’s life as private and personal photographer to the stars in Hollywood meant that his immediate circle of acquaintance was the entertainment and movie-world crowd. Hardly the sort of people renowned for long-term commitment and traditional values.

Motherly concern had Grace wishing that one of these days Luke would come home to Australia to live permanently, not just pop home to Sydney for the odd week every year or so. He was an Aussie at heart, and she felt sure he’d be happier at home.

He never looked very happy these days. There were always dark smudges under his eyes, and his mouth had taken on a cynical twist which made her feel quite sad. The young man who’d flown off to see the world and make his fortune ten years ago had not been a cynic.

The man who’d flown in yesterday definitely was, and had been for quite some time. He also hadn’t been too happy for quite some time.

Not that it was easy to be bright and bushy-tailed with jet-lag and a nagging tooth. Knowing how difficult men could be when something physical was wrong with them, Grace had no intention of letting Luke procrastinate over getting his tooth fixed.

‘You don’t fly back to LA till Sunday week,’ she pointed out firmly. ‘That’s two whole weeks away. You can’t put up with a toothache for that long. Now, don’t be such a baby, Luke. Lord, I know you hated the dentist when you were a boy, but you’re a grown man now.

‘Fancy!’ She tut-tutted, well aware that nothing prodded a man into action more quickly than a jab at his male ego. ‘Thirty-two and still scared of the dentist.’

‘I’m not scared of the dentist,’ he shot back testily, all smiles abandoned. ‘I simply don’t like being in that damned chair. I detest how it makes you feel, sitting there. Totally out of control and at someone else’s mercy!’

Grace glanced at the stubborn set of her youngest son’s jaw and thought, Yes, you’d hate that, wouldn’t you? You’ve always wanted to run your own race—always resented being pushed into corners. No one could ever make you do something you didn’t want to do, or dissuade you from doing something you did want to do.

Still, Grace had to admit that she admired Luke’s tunnel vision and tenacity. He’d dared to do what others had only dreamt about. He’d followed his dreams and made them come true. At least professionally speaking. Privately, his life hadn’t been so successful. She wondered what had happened to that young actress he’d been living with a couple of years back. Luke’s letters had indicated that marriage was imminent, but then suddenly nothing.

Grace would never forget how grim he had looked when he’d flown home a couple of months later. And how bitter he’d become about women. He hadn’t confided in her, of course. Boys gave up confiding in their mothers at around the same time they discovered the opposite sex. With Luke that had been a good twenty years ago.

But his being his own man didn’t stop her being his mother, and wanting to do mother-type things for him.

‘Going to the dentist is not as bad as it used to be,’ she argued reasonably. ‘The new drills are practically painfree, and they have that gas which helps a lot if you’re the tense type.’

‘They still stuff sixty million wads of cotton wool in your mouth so that you can’t speak properly,’ Luke returned irritably. ‘Then there’s that damned hook thing, which makes the most appalling sucking noises—not to mention the way it drags the corner of your mouth down so that you look like some mutant from Mars.’

Grace chuckled. ‘So that’s the root of the problem. You simply don’t want to look less than your gorgeous best for Dr Evans’s pretty little dental nurse.’

Luke’s left eyebrow lifted with a mildly sardonic interest. ‘Does Dr Evans have a pretty little dental nurse?’

‘He did the last time I went. Goodness, if I’d known I’d have mentioned her earlier. So you’ve still got a weakness for pretty women, have you?’

His glance was sharp, confirming Grace’s opinion that some pretty woman had hurt her son once—hurt him badly. She wondered if it had been the actress.

‘I’ve moved on from pretty to gorgeous these days,’ he said drily.

‘And is there one particular gorgeous girl in your life I should know about?’ Grace asked.

‘Nope.’

It was a bit like pulling teeth, Grace thought, trying to get information out of Luke. ‘What happened to that Tracy girl you used to write me about?’ she persisted. ‘It sounded like you were going to marry her at one stage.’

‘I was. But in the end she decided to embrace her acting career rather than yours truly,’ came his coldly caustic remark.

‘Why did she have to make a choice? I thought American girls tried to have it all. Marriage and children, and a career.’

Luke’s laugh was hard. ‘Don’t go believing those sitcoms you see on television, Mum. That’s fantasy-land. Tracy didn’t mind the marriage bit. She quite fancied being Mrs Luke St Clair. But she drew the line at babies, and at least she was honest enough to say so up front. I didn’t see the point in marriage without children, so we called it quits.’

‘And rightly so. Marriage without children for you would be a disaster. You’d make a great father.’

He seemed taken aback, throwing her a surprised look. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Oh, Luke, don’t be silly. I’m your mother. I know these things.’

‘Aah. Feminine instinct, is it?’

‘Maternal instinct. And paternal example. Your father was a great father. His sons take after him in that regard.’

‘Well, that’s too bad, because I’m afraid I don’t see myself marrying now, let alone having kiddies.’

‘You really loved Tracy that much?’

‘Good God, no! I’m well and truly over that ambitious little bitch.’

‘Then what is it, Luke?’ she asked, genuinely confused. ‘You’re only thirty-two. You’ve still plenty of time to get married and have a family.’

An awkward silence descended on the kitchen while Luke rubbed his jaw and frowned darkly.

‘Who is she?’ Grace said abruptly. ‘Another actress?’

Exasperation sent dangerous lights glittering in his deeply set black eyes. ‘This is exactly why I don’t tell you anything, Mum,’ he bit out. ‘Before I know it, I’m getting the third degree. Let’s drop the subject of women all round, shall we? I’ve come home for a nice, relaxing holiday—not to face a modern version of the Spanish Inquisition!’

‘I only have your best interests at heart,’ Grace defended herself. ‘I only want you to be happy—like Mark and Andy.’

Luke glared at her for a moment longer, before a rueful smile smoothed the frustration from his face. Walking over, he took his mother into his arms and gave her a big hug.

‘I am not unhappy, Mum,’ he said. ‘Hell, what have I got to be unhappy about? Other than this damned tooth, of course,’ he added, grimacing.

Grace could see that she wasn’t going to get any more out of him about his love life. But she wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily where the dentist was concerned.

‘In that case I’m not going to take any more nonsense from you,’ she said staunchly. ‘I’m going to ring up and make you an appointment at the dentist. If I say it’s an emergency they’re sure to fit you in some time this morning. I’ll drive you down to the surgery myself. I’ve got some shopping to do and I can do it while you’re in there.’

‘Oh, all right,’ Luke grumbled. ‘I can see you’re determined, and if there’s one thing I know about my mother it’s that she can’t be swayed once she sets her mind on something. You’re as stubborn as a mule!’

Takes one to know one, Grace thought wryly as she left the room and made her way to the telephone.

Ten o’clock found Luke in the passenger side of his mother’s battered old blue sedan, feeling rather ambivalent about where they were going. He’d lied to his mother when he’d said that he wasn’t afraid of the dentist. He was.

But thirty-two-year-old men couldn’t admit to such failings. They couldn’t admit to anything which other people might jump on and make fun of, which men might use against them or—worse—which women might look down upon.

Being a real man was a bloody lonely business sometimes, Luke conceded drily to himself. Real men didn’t moan or groan. Or enter therapy. They certainly didn’t cry on their mother’s shoulders.

Hell, no! A real man looked life straight in the eye and didn’t blink an eyelid in the face of adversity. No matter what, he forged on—strong and silent and self-sufficient!

Damn, but he hated being a real man sometimes—especially when going to the rotten dentist!

‘I have no idea why you won’t let me buy you a new car,’ he grumped as his mother backed out of the garage. ‘Or a new house,’ he added, scowling up into the sky as a jumbo jet roared overhead, the noise deafening.

‘I like living in Monterey,’ his mother returned, exasperation in her voice. ‘I’ve lived here all my married life. Your father and I were very happy living in this house. I raised you and your two brothers in this house. Most of my friends live round here. Not only that, your father’s buried not two miles down the road, and I—’

‘All right, all right. I get the point,’ Luke broke in frustratedly. ‘I just wanted to do something for you, Mum, that’s all.’ He adored his mother. And admired her enormously.

She hadn’t gone to pieces when a heart attack had left her a widow five years ago after nearly forty years of happy marriage—hadn’t asked any of her sons to let her live with them. She’d picked herself up and gone on with her life, filling the lonely hours with lots of volunteer work and generally being a fantastic person.

But she could be a bit of a pain once she got her teeth into something.

‘You can do something for me, Luke,’ she piped up suddenly, and Luke shot her a wary glance.

‘What?’

‘Come back to Australia to live. I’m sure once you get home you’ll find a nice girl who’ll be more than happy to marry you and have all the children you want.’

Luke felt a deep, dark emotion well up inside him, but he dampened it down, hiding his feelings as best he could. Impossible to tell her that he had found a girl, here in Sydney, the last time he’d been home.

Unfortunately she hadn’t been at all nice. Neither had she been the type to settle down and have children.

But, for all that, Luke had not been able to forget her afterwards. Not for a minute. She obsessed him every waking moment, haunted his dreams and was slowly destroying his peace of mind.

His mother talked of his seeming unhappy. How could he be happy when he didn’t know who he was any more, or where he was going with his life? He’d been lost since he’d woken that morning eighteen months ago to find her gone. He’d searched and searched, but could find no trace. It was almost as though she’d never existed.

But she had existed. He only had to close his eyes and the memories would sweep in. Her face. Her passion. The all-consuming heat of her beautiful body.

God, if only she would let him go! If only he could stop remembering!

‘Luke?’ his mother prompted. ‘Don’t go giving me the silent treatment. I can’t stand it when one of my boys goes all quiet and brooding on me.’

Luke pulled himself together, finding a cool mask from somewhere to turn towards his far too intuitive mother.

‘I would have thought Andy and Mark had more than adequately fulfilled your grandmothering needs, Mum,’ he pointed out drily. ‘They have five very nice children between them—three boys and two girls—plus two perfect daughters-in-law for wives. You really don’t need me to add to the St Clair brood, or the St Clair wives. Two out of three ain’t bad, you know. Don’t become one of those meddling matchmaking mums, or I might be forced to stay in LA in future.’

Her hurt look made him feel instantly guilty, and he sighed his regret. ‘Just kidding, Mum. You know you’re my best girl. I could never stay away from you for too long.’

‘Flatterer,’ she said, but he could see that she was pleased.

His mother mollified, Luke sat back silently and tried to distract his wretched mind by focusing on the familiar but still beautiful surroundings. He stared out at the blue waters of Botany Bay on their right, then up at the clear blue sky. Nowhere in the world had he ever found skies such as in Australia. Their clearness and brightness was unique, but it made for harsh light—not the easiest background for good photography.

It took special skills and equipment to photograph Australian scenery really well—unless one captured the shots at dawn or dusk—skills which he had never honed, but which could present an interesting challenge, Luke decided unexpectedly.

His passion had always been photographing people, right from his boyhood days. He’d perfected portraiture, especially in black and white, and had made a small fortune out of it.

There’d been a time when he’d got a kick out of surprising people with his flattering photographs of them. Models and actresses with a portfolio by Luke St Clair had a definite edge in the cut-throat world of auditions in the US. He was sought-after and paid handsomely for his work. He could command huge fees.

But, quite frankly, it had all become somewhat of a bore.

Besides, he no longer needed to do things for money. An inspired investment in a small independent movie which had taken the world by storm a couple of years back had ensured he never had to work again if he didn’t want to. So perhaps it was time to spread his photographic wings, so to speak. To find a new direction to satisfy his creative eye.

Maybe his mother was right, he began to muse. Maybe it was time to come home—if not to marry then to find a new life-path. He could not go on as he had this past year. It was slowly destroying him.

‘I’ll let you out here,’ his mother suggested, pulling over to the kerb. ‘The dentist is just in that small arcade over there. There’s a narrow staircase which leads up to a corridor, and his surgery is the second door on the left upstairs. I’ll meet you in that coffee-shop on the corner. Whichever one of us gets there first can wait for the other.’

Butterflies gathered in the pit of his stomach as he mounted the stairs and pushed open the glass door. A very attractive brunette looked up from behind the reception desk, saw the cut of the man standing there and smiled a smile as old as time itself.

‘Yes, can I help you?’ she asked hopefully.

Luke did his best to ignore the silent invitation in her pretty blue eyes, despite his own gaze automatically shifting to her left hand. He was almost relieved to see a diamond engagement ring twinkling there, for in all truth he’d become horribly addicted to picking up pretty women during the last year or so, taking them out, then home to bed, then never contacting them again.

He wasn’t proud of his behaviour, but he understood it. He was punishing them for her.

He excused himself by saying that he only picked up the really eager ones—the ones who made it perfectly obvious what they wanted from him. Like she had. He always hoped to gain some darkly twisted satisfaction from being the one who did the seducing and the dumping. Instead he always felt like a rat in the morning, hating himself more and more with each episode.

The women involved didn’t know it, but they were better off without him. He’d become a right bastard—sexually speaking—since that night, his only concession to his conscience being that he steered clear of married and engaged women. He took some small comfort from that, soothing his escalating qualms with the thought that he hadn’t descended to being a complete scoundrel yet.

‘My name’s St Clair,’ he announced, deliberately leaving off the Luke. ‘I have an appointment for ten-thirty.’

‘Oh, yes, Mr St Clair. I’m afraid Dr Evans is running a little late. Maybe fifteen minutes or so. Would you like some tea or coffee while you wait?’

Tea or coffee on his churning stomach? A whisky, perhaps, but he didn’t think she’d offer him that. ‘No thanks,’ came his brusque reply. ‘I’ll just wait.’

‘There are plenty of magazines,’ she told him as he walked over to settle himself into one of the black leather two-seaters which lined the starkly white walls.

Luke did his best to relax, resting his right ankle on his left knee and spreading his arms along the back of the seat. But he soon found his fingers tapping impatiently on the leather. In the end he picked up one of the dog-eared women’s weeklies lying on the table next to him, smiling wryly when he saw that it was dated four years previously.

He began idly flicking through it, just to pass the time, and might have missed her picture altogether if his attention hadn’t been attracted by the headline above it: MODEL GIVES UP BLOSSOMING CAREER TO MARRY NOTED SCIENTIST.

It had been years since Luke had made his living doing fashion magazine layouts, but during that time many of his friends had been models—and some had been more than friends—so curiosity had him open the double page in his lap and look to see if this particular model was anyone he knew.

His eyes skimmed the kissing couple to see if he recognised them, but it was impossible with their faces obscured—though he noted that the bridegroom had greying hair. So he scanned the words beneath, looking for names.

No bells rang in his brain when he read that a twenty-two-year-old model named Rachel Manning had married noted geneticist Patrick Cleary at St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, that Saturday afternoon four years previously. It was only when his gaze dropped further, to another smaller photograph of the bride alone, that he recognised her.

Had he gone as white as a sheet?

Luke fancied that he had.

His knuckles certainly went white as his fingers tightened around the pages, his eyes wide upon the photograph of the smiling bride—the gloriously golden-haired and exquisitely beautiful bride.

How innocent she looked in her white bridal gown, he thought savagely. The picture of perfect purity. The very essence of untouched womanhood.

A rage began to grow inside him as his shock gave way to anger. She’d been married! The bitch had been married!

My God, it explained so much. So damned much!

There had been so many elements of that night which had stayed to haunt him. So many unanswered questions.

Now he had the answers.

Or did he?

Just because she’d been married four years ago it didn’t mean that she’d still been married eighteen months ago. There was such a thing as divorce, wasn’t there? Maybe she wasn’t an adulterous little tramp. Maybe there were other reasons why she’d acted the way she had that night—why she’d chosen to disappear while he was asleep, without leaving a trace of her true identity.

And maybe pigs might fly, came the blackly cynical thought.

‘Dr Evans is ready for you now, Mr St Clair.’

Luke schooled his face into what he hoped was a normal expression, snapped the magazine shut and placed it back on the pile in the corner.

Forget her, common sense whispered. She’s bad news.

He stood up and walked over to where the dental nurse was waiting for him in the now open doorway. Her petite prettiness didn’t even register. He no longer felt nervous either. She dominated his mind again, turning his thoughts from the present.

Luke distractedly settled in the dental chair and closed his eyes, his mind whirling with memories. But how could he forget her now? Now that she had a name.

Rachel.

He hadn’t known her name when she’d picked him up at the exhibition that night eighteen months ago. Hadn’t known it the next morning, when he’d woken to find her gone.

Rachel...

It didn’t suit her, he decided viciously.

Oh, it suited the bride in the photograph, but not the sultry feline creature who had undulated into his sight that night. Rachel sounded like a lady—but it had been no lady who’d boldly approached him within seconds of spotting him leaning against a pillar, who’d stolen his drink from his hands and taken a deep swallow, who’d smiled seductively at him over the rim before uttering the most astonishingly forthright proposal he’d ever heard from a woman.

And he’d heard a good few in his time.

The dentist was talking to him as he worked, but Luke didn’t hear a word. He was back at that exhibition, hearing her say those astonishing words again, reliving every moment of that unforgettable but ultimately soul-destroying night.