A Little Seduction Omnibus (21 page)

‘My father is
dead
, Hugo,’ she cried out passionately. ‘All he ever wanted to do was to help other people. That was
all
he ever wanted. He never...’

She stopped, unable to go on.

And then she took a deep breath, straightening her spine, forcing herself to look Hugo in the eye as she demanded huskily, ‘What did Peter tell you?’

‘He said that he was concerned about your plans to alter the focus of your father’s charity. He told me that he was afraid that you were allowing yourself to be swayed by your emotion, and he said, as well, that he was afraid that you would try to pressure him into supporting you.’

Dee stared at him uncomprehendingly. Peter had talked to Hugo about her father’s charity and
not
about his death. He had confided to him his fear of her desire to change things, his fear that...

The relief made her feel weakly light-headed. So much so that she actually started to laugh a little shakily.

‘It’s all very well for you to laugh, Dee,’ Hugo chided her. ‘It’s obvious to me what you’re trying to do. You want to steamroller Peter into supporting these changes you want to make, even if that means forcing him to act against his conscience.’

Dee fought to gather her thoughts. In the initial relief of discovering that Peter had not discussed her father’s death with Hugo she had overlooked the gravity of what he was telling her. Now she was becoming sharply aware of it.

‘Peter had no right to discuss the charity’s business with you,’ she reprimanded sharply. ‘The charity is a private organisation run by the main committee of which
I
am the Chairperson. How that committee operates is the business of ourselves and ourselves alone—’

‘Not quite,’ Hugo interrupted her quietly, ‘as I’m sure the Charity Commissioners would be the first to remind you...’

At this mention of the government body responsible for overseeing the proper management and control of charities Dee’s eyes widened in indignation.

‘We have no call to fear the Charity Commissioners,’ she told Hugo firmly. ‘Far from it.’

‘I wasn’t suggesting that you might,’ Hugo responded coolly. ‘However, this might be a good point at which to remind you that all your father’s charities are overseen by that committee, and that whilst you
may
be the Chairperson of it, or them, you do
not
have the right to steamroller through whatever changes you wish to make.’

‘To steamroller through...’ Dee gasped in fresh indignation. ‘How dare you? What exactly are you trying to suggest?’ she demanded. ‘My father’s wishes are and always have been paramount to me when it comes to my role as—’

‘Are they?’ Hugo interrupted her. ‘Peter doesn’t think so.’

Dee sighed and took a deep breath, swinging round. ‘My father wanted his own charity to benefit his fellow citizens. When he initially established it there was a need in the town to help the elderly, and that is exactly what we have done, but now... Things change...and I believe that our help is needed now far more by our young people.

‘But none of this has any relevance to you, nor can it be of any interest to you,’ she told Hugo firmly. ‘I realise that to someone like you, who is used to dealing with the needs of people and situations a world away from what we are experiencing in Rye—people to whom the meagrest ration of food makes the difference between living and dying...’

She stopped, and then told him fiercely, ‘The elderly in Rye are more than adequately provided for, but our teenagers...there’s nothing for them to do, nothing to occupy or interest them. Ward says...’

‘Ward?’ Hugo interrupted her sharply.

‘Yes, Ward Hunter,’ Dee replied briefly. ‘Ward has already put into operation—and very successfully—the kind of scheme
I
want to help establish in Rye.’

‘Peter said that he felt that you were being influenced to break away from your father’s ideas,’ Hugo told her critically. ‘And that’s why—’

‘Hugo, Peter means well, but he’s old-fashioned. He can’t see.’ Dee paused and frowned. ‘I really do need to talk with him to make him understand...’

‘You mean to put pressure on him to go against his own beliefs,’ Hugo told her caustically. ‘Well, I’m afraid that just isn’t going to be possible, Dee.’

‘What? Why? What’s happened?’ Dee demanded, her heart immediately filled with fear for her father’s old friend. Was there something about his health that Hugo was concealing from her?

‘Why? Because this morning Peter asked
me
to act for him as his representative on the committee, and—’

‘No...’ Dee denied, grabbing hold of the edge of the table as she tried to control the shock that was making her body tremble. ‘No, he
can’t
possibly have done that.’

‘If you wish to see the formal papers then I’m sure his solicitor will be happy to send you copies.’

‘His solicitor?’ Dee’s voice faltered. ‘But...’

‘How does it make you feel, Dee, to realise that Peter felt concerned enough, distressed enough, to tell me that he wanted to sign a Power of Attorney in
my
favour so that I could deal with all his affairs because he was afraid that you might pressure him into doing something he didn’t feel was right?’

Dee’s face drained of blood.

It wasn’t just the shock of hearing that Hugo would be taking Peter’s place on her committee that was making her feel so sick with despair, it was also the heart-aching knowledge that Peter had felt that he couldn’t trust her. Fiercely she blinked back the shocked, shamed tears she could feel burning the back of her eyes.

‘Peter has given you Power of Attorney?’ Dee asked weakly. She felt very much as though she would like to sit down, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to betray that kind of weakness in front of Hugo of all people. She turned away from him and faced the window whilst she fought for self-control.

It seemed doubly ironic now, in view of what Hugo had just said, that she had actually entertained the thought of asking for his help in persuading Peter to give to her the very authority he had actually given to Hugo.

‘Yes, he has,’ Hugo confirmed. ‘And you may be very sure, Dee,’ he continued sternly, ‘that I shall ensure his wishes are respected and that you do not ride roughshod over them. I dare say that you and this...this Ward Hunter believe that you have the power to bring the other members of the committee round to your way of thinking, but I can promise you—’

‘The decisions of the committee have nothing to do with Ward,’ Dee protested defensively. ‘And in fact...’

‘Exactly.’ Hugo pounced triumphantly, overruling her. ‘I’m pleased to see that you recognise that fact, even if that recognition is somewhat belated. From what Peter has been telling me it seems to me that you’ve been managing your father’s charity very much as though it’s your own personal bank account and that you—’

‘That’s not true,’ Dee gasped angrily. ‘Even if I wanted to do that—’ She stopped and swallowed hard. ‘What you’re suggesting is... All I’m trying to do is to help those who need it most.’

‘In your judgement,’ Hugo pointed out.

‘Hugo, Peter means well, but he’s...’

‘He’s what? Not capable of making his own informed decisions any more?’

‘No, of course not,’ Dee protested.

‘I’m glad. “No, of course not,” indeed,’ Hugo agreed. ‘He tells me that the committee are due to meet soon to discuss their plans for the next twelve months. As his legal representative I shall, of course, attend the meeting on his behalf.’

Dee gulped.

‘But you
can’t
.’

‘Why not?’ Hugo challenged her coolly.

‘Well, you might not be here. You must have business to attend to...’

‘I shan’t be going away—at least not in the foreseeable future. As I was just confirming to Peter’s bank manager on the phone, I am free to work wherever I choose, and, since Peter needs to have someone close at hand to keep an eye on him right now, it makes sense for me to move in here with him.’

Dee felt cold all over, and tired, very tired. It appalled her that she, whom everyone considered to be so strong, could feel like this.

‘You don’t understand;
Peter
doesn’t understand,’ she started to protest.

‘On the contrary, I think you’ll find that I understand very well,’ Hugo contradicted her flatly. ‘Your father might have set up and funded his charity originally, Dee, but it is
not
your plaything. You do not have sole control over it; you and your boyfriend cannot simply—’

‘Ward is
not
my boyfriend,’ Dee was stung into replying, her face flushing with resentment at the way Hugo was talking to her.

‘No? Well, whatever his relationship with you, Peter is very concerned about the influence he seems to have over you.’

‘Peter is old-fashioned, set in his ways. He is wonderful, and I love him dearly, but he can be very stubborn, very blinkered.’

‘He’s only one member of a committee of seven people, Dee, and if he is the only one who does not share your point of view then I cannot understand why you should be concerned...’

Dee closed her eyes.

The fact of the matter was that Peter was
not
the only one likely to express doubts about what she wanted to do.

‘Look, I’ve got an appointment in half an hour,’ Hugo told her as he glanced at his watch.

As he spoke he was holding the door open for her, as though she were some candidate for a job and he had just finished interviewing her, Dee reflected angrily. She contemplated telling him that she was not going until she had spoken to Peter, and then acknowledged that there was little point in putting herself in an even more vulnerable position than she already was.

Head held high, she marched towards the open door.

‘I shall see you on Monday,’ Hugo told her cordially as she stalked past him. ‘I understand that the committee meeting is set for eleven a.m.?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Dee agreed distantly, trying not to grind her teeth with vexation as he escorted her to the front door. How could Peter have done this to her? Put her in this position?

She could feel her fury and her frustration causing a tight ball of emotion deep inside her chest. As she passed him Hugo touched her briefly on her bare arm. Immediately Dee drew back from him, as though he had branded her.

‘Dee, Peter is only acting out of concern—for you and for your father. He looks upon his role on the committee as an almost sacred trust, and he—’

‘And you think that
I
don’t?’ Dee almost spat at him, her eyes burning with the intensity of what she was feeling as her gaze locked with his.

‘Dee, your father set up this charity for a specific purpose, and I feel—’

‘I don’t care what you feel.’ Dee cut across him furiously. ‘You know nothing about my father, what he wanted, what he believed. You despised him because he was wealthy and you resented him because he was my father and I loved him.’

Dee stopped, unable to go on, her voice choked with emotion.

‘You’re being unfair,’ Hugo told her sharply. ‘I certainly never despised your father.’

‘You said that in your view it was impossible for someone with my father’s business interests and love of making money to be truly altruistic.’

‘You’re taking things out of context,’ Hugo said curtly. ‘What I actually said was that it was impossible for anyone to be as
saintly
as you insisted your father was. You put him up on a pedestal, Dee, and I—’

‘You were determined to pull him down off it,’ Dee reminded him fiercely. ‘You’re the last person who should be on his committee, Hugo,’ she told him starkly, ‘and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Peter for what he’s done. You have no right...’

She stopped as she felt her emotions threaten to overwhelm her.

How many times in the past had they argued like this? How many times had Hugo forced her into a corner from which she had had to defend her father to him?

As she started to turn away, out of the corner of her eye Dee saw a car pulling up next to her own, and the doctor getting out. Ignoring Hugo’s sharply authoritative, ‘Dee, wait,’ Dee walked quickly to her own car. She was literally trembling with angry emotion. She felt sick with the force of it. Shakily she set her car in motion.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HREE
HOURS
LATER
, when she walked into her office in Rye-on-Averton, the first thing that Dee saw lying on her desk was the file she had so carefully and optimistically prepared with Ward’s help, outlining her proposals for the way the charity could help the town’s young people.

Her heart was still pumping fast with adrenalin. The drive home had done nothing to reduce her sense of injustice—or her anger against Hugo. She wasn’t used to having her plans thwarted, to not being in total control of her life or her own decisions. But anger alone wasn’t responsible for the tension that had her pacing the floor of her office with all the pent-up energy of a caged tigress.

How dared Hugo interfere in her life, her plans? How dared he tell her what she could and could not do?

Hugo knew nothing about the problems of small-town living; how could he? How would
he
feel were she to try to tell him his business? If she were to claim that...?

‘Oooohhh,’ Dee made an angry growl of female protest as she paced her office floor with renewed fury.

There was no point in blaming Peter; he was ill...getting old... She could just imagine how Hugo must have coaxed him to give him that Power of Attorney, Dee reflected darkly.

Perhaps it wasn’t just the
university’s
money Hugo was after for the United Nations aid programme. Dee smiled grimly to herself as she gave in to the temptation to give full rein to her ignoble thoughts.

Peter was unmarried, with no family, and had a very healthy portfolio of investments—she should know; she was the one who had advised him on them. There had always been a tacit understanding between them that his money would be willed to her father’s charity, but perhaps Hugo had other ideas.

Even though she knew she was allowing her anger to drive her thoughts and suspicions down extremely illogical routes, Dee refused to let go of them. Common sense told her that Hugo, even if he wasn’t the scrupulously honest person she thought him to be, would not risk his reputation by doing something so potentially dangerous. Peter’s money would be the merest drop in the ocean compared with the millions that Hugo would have under his control.

She looked at her desk. She was supposed to be seeing Ward this weekend, so that they could go over her proposals together for one final time.

To her consternation Dee felt the hot, painful tears of anger and disappointment filling her eyes.

Still prowling the room, she stopped her restless progression to study the large photograph of her father which she had had blown up and framed and which hung above the room’s fireplace.

It was one of her favourite ones of him. In it he was just starting to smile, so that one could see the warmth in his eyes. He had been looking directly at her when the photograph had been taken—coincidentally, as it happened, by Peter—and whenever she felt really low Dee always drew strength from standing in front of it, right in his line of vision, so that she would feel again the warmth of his smile and his love.

This time, though, it wasn’t totally effective. This time, knowing...remembering...how much her father had loved her could not totally ease the pain from her heart or the discord from her mind.

‘You know nothing about my father...you despised him...’ she had accused Hugo. It wasn’t strictly true. What Hugo despised was the world he considered her father had represented: the world of money and prestige, of placing more importance on possessions than people. But her father hadn’t been like that. He had been good with money, yes, and proud, very proud, but he had also been compassionate and caring, and it had hurt her more than she had ever been able to say to either of them that he and Hugo had not got on better together.

‘But, Daddy, I love him,’ she had told her father helplessly when he had questioned the amount of time she was spending with Hugo.

‘You don’t know what love is,’ her father had objected. ‘You’re a girl still...a child...’

‘That’s not true. I know I love you,’ Dee had defended herself firmly. ‘And I’m not a child, nor even a girl now. I’m over eighteen...an adult...’

‘An adult? You’re a baby still,’ her father had scoffed, and then added gruffly, ‘
My
baby...’

‘Oh, Dad,’ Dee whispered now, her eyes refilling with tears. She had tried so hard to bring Hugo and her father closer. Too hard, perhaps. Certainly the harder she had tried, the more both of them had become entrenched in their suspicions of one another.

‘How can he claim that he loves you?’ her father had demanded once. ‘What plans has he made for your future? The last time I spoke to him he told me that as soon as he’d finished his Ph.D. he was planning to take himself off to some desert or other.’

‘Dad, he isn’t so very different from you,’ she coaxed her father. ‘You both have very philanthropic natures and—’

‘Maybe, but I would never have left your mother or you to go traipsing off all over the world,’ her father interrupted her sharply.

Dee took a deep breath, knowing that the moment she had been putting off for so long could not be put off any longer.

‘Dad, Hugo won’t be leaving me,’ she told her father quietly.

‘Not leaving you? You mean he’s changed his mind...seen sense?’ her father demanded.

‘No. Hugo hasn’t changed his mind,’ Dee answered him steadily. ‘He still plans to go, but...’ She paused, and then looked lovingly at her father. ‘I’m going to go with him, Dad...’

‘You’re
what
?’

She had known he wouldn’t be pleased, of course. Although no firm plans had been made she knew that he had hoped she would move back home after university, and until she had met Hugo she too had assumed that that was what she would eventually do.

Her father had never tried to hold her back, nor to impose his views on her. He had been the one to encourage her to leave home and go to university, but...but he wasn’t really ready, deep down in his heart, to let her go completely yet.

‘This is what Hugo wants. What do you want, Dee?’

I want you and Hugo to like each other. I want to be happy. I want Hugo, she could have said, but she knew that in his present frame of mind her father’s heart was closed to the needs of her own. ‘This is something I want to do for myself,’ she told him quietly. ‘I
have
to go, Dad. I love him!’

‘Well, you’re over-age, and I can’t stop you,’ he responded curtly.

Hugo loved her, too, she knew that, but he was fiercely, passionately determined to carry out the plans he had discussed with her. If she didn’t go with him Dee knew he would go on his own. That didn’t mean he would stop loving her—she knew he wouldn’t—but it
would
mean that there would be a large slice of his life which she could not share.

Hugo was a crusader, a man who needed to live life on a grand scale, a young man full of the passionate intensity of his youth, and if Dee felt in her heart that her own inclinations lay closer to those of her father, if she felt that she could do just as much good working to help those in need at home as she could helping those who lived in such tragically difficult circumstances, if her dreams were smaller and gentler than those of the man she loved, then she felt that they were perhaps best kept to herself.

Hugo’s family had already thrown enough cold water on his dream. Hugo needed her support and her love, and
she
needed to be with him.

In years to come the time they would spend together would be something they would remember, a memory that would help to bond them together, something to tell their children.

A small smile curled Dee’s mouth.

Hugo might be all crusading male eagerness where his own life was concerned, but she knew instinctively that when it came to his children, to
their
children, he would want to protect them just as fiercely as her father did her.

In many ways they were so alike, so alike and so fiercely jealous of one another. Sometimes she felt like a bone they were both determined to possess.

In another few weeks she would sit her finals. Hugo had already completed his work, and their plan was that just as soon as they could they would leave together. Hugo had already approached one of the main aid agencies, and both of them had been provisionally accepted onto a scheme they were operating in Ethiopia.

Dee had suggested that before they left they should both spend time with their respective families, but Hugo was impatient to leave just as soon as possible.

Although officially they still had separate homes, Dee now spent most of her time at Hugo’s and she had her own key. Her father might logically guess that she and Hugo were lovers, but Dee was sensitive enough to know that he would not want to have such suspicions confirmed. He came from a generation when a couple’s sexual life was something strictly private, and really only acceptable inside the respectable confines of a marriage. Dee knew that it was different for her and Hugo, of course. The thought of how it would feel not to have the freedom to reach out into the night and touch Hugo’s naked body, not to know the special pleasure of knowing that body so well that it was almost as though, in some way, it had become hers, was simply unbearable, and not just because of the sexual frustration she would suffer. She loved Hugo so much that she wanted to be close to him in every way there was.

Emotionally, mentally, physically and of course sexually, they had no secrets from one another, no prohibited areas. Dee loved lying in bed and watching as Hugo padded around the bedroom, his naked body as splendidly magnificent as that of a male cheetah in his prime. Everything about him sang with energy and health, from the silky, sleek gleam of his skin to the thick, shiny glossiness of his hair.

It still amused—and amazed—her to see the way he could respond physically to her just because she was looking at him.

‘
You’re
the one who’s caused it,’ he would tease her as his busy perambulations about the flat became halted by the demanding urgency of his arousal. ‘So now it’s up to you to do something about it.’

‘Such as what?’ she would ask, mock innocently, all the while her fingers delicately caressing him.

‘Mmm...well, that will do for a start,’ he would murmur to her as he covered her mouth with his own, his weight pushing her back against the pillows.

They had been together for over two years, but the intensity of their physical desire for one another still had the power to awe and excite Dee. She only had to run her fingers teasingly along the length of Hugo’s erection, or just merely circle its head and caress it playfully, for him to immediately be so responsive to her that her own body flowered into delirious response. Sometimes, in the middle of a serious discussion, she would reach across and touch him temptingly, laughing as he tried to hold on to the thread of his argument, her eyes betraying the wonderment and awe she still felt that he should love and want her so much.

They had their quarrels, of course. Both of them were strong-willed and passionate, both of them felt things very deeply, and both of them were very vocal in stating those beliefs, but the only real issue of contention which existed between them was that of Dee’s father. She had introduced them to one another with loving pride—and anxiety—and soon discovered that she had been right to be anxious.

The evening had ended with her father and Hugo arguing passionately about the morality of the government in power; her father had been pro-government and Hugo anti. Torn between both of them, she had tried to placate her father, knowing how it would hurt his pride to have to acknowledge the strength of Hugo’s arguments. But then later, when they had returned to Hugo’s flat, Hugo had claimed that she had supported her father against him, and not just that but, even worse, she had denied her own beliefs as well.

‘You know as well as I do that I was right,’ Hugo had told her fiercely, for once refusing to respond to the loving little kisses she’d been pressing placatingly along his jaw. ‘You’ve agreed with me that—’

‘Dad’s old-fashioned and set in his ways,’ she had told Hugo. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him...’

‘But you don’t mind hurting me,’ Hugo had challenged her grimly.

She had sighed and wrapped her arms lovingly around his neck.

‘Does it matter which of you won the argument?’

‘Yes,’ Hugo had told her simply, before pointing out more acerbically, ‘If it didn’t you wouldn’t have found it necessary to side with your father, would you?’

‘I meant, does it matter to you?’ Dee had countered placatingly. ‘It isn’t easy for Dad, you know Hugo, having to accept you into my life.’

‘It isn’t easy for me having to accept him into ours,’ Hugo had retorted. ‘One day you’re going to have to choose which of us your loyalty really lies with,’ he had warned her.

But Dee had crossed her fingers behind her back, telling herself that, given time, the pair of them would become better friends. And perhaps they might have done if Hugo had been more willing to give ground to her father and listen to his advice, even if he didn’t act on it, or if her father had been able to accept that Hugo needed to be allowed to feel that her father respected his viewpoint even if he couldn’t agree with it.

As it was, with neither of them prepared to give ground, Dee had eventually resorted to keeping the peace between them by keeping them apart.

Later on, when she was sitting with her father, all too conscious of the growing male antagonism between him and Hugo, and just about to have a final attempt at bringing her father round to the idea of her working abroad with him, the doorbell rang. Whilst he went to open the door Dee acknowledged that if she had to choose between them, then she would choose Hugo. Her father was her past...Hugo was her man, her lover, her present and her future. Her heart sank as her father walked back into the room accompanied by his visitor.

Her father had first introduced her to Julian Cox just after Christmas. Although he was no more than five or six years older than Dee, Julian dressed and behaved more like a man of her father’s age, and Dee particularly disliked the patronising way that Julian behaved towards her, and the disparaging references made to her status as a student. Her father, though, refused to acknowledge any fault or flaw in him, and constantly sang his praises to Dee, drawing Dee’s attention to his politeness and good manners, his smart way of dressing.