Flora's Defiance (6 page)

Flora was stunned by his optimistic outlook, for she was much more prone to worrying that any moral mistake automatically attracted a punishment.

‘As it’s obvious that you don’t want me to stay,’ Angelo remarked silkily, one lean brown hand resting on the door, ‘I’ll leave you here to sort through those boxes.’

Flora had dug her hands into her pockets. ‘Right. Okay,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I’d like to see Mariska again before I leave Amsterdam.’

Cool blue eyes rested on her anxious face. ‘You’re welcome to visit her whenever you like.’ He reached into his pocket to withdraw a pen and write on the back of a business card. ‘This is my home telephone number if you want to make arrangements with Anke.’

Flora studied the card he handed her with fixed attention, reluctant to look at him again. The atmosphere was so raw with unspoken tension that it squeezed at her nerves and her ability to breathe normally.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Angelo drawled.

Immediately, Flora braved her demons to glance up at him. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she told him woodenly.

‘We need to stay in contact for Mariska’s sake,’ Angelo contradicted. ‘I will also seek reassurance that you are not pregnant. When will you know? ‘

Flora reddened at that very personal question. ‘Mind your own business! ‘

Angelo dealt her a stony look shot through with reinforced steel. ‘If you conceive my child, it will be very much my business,
querida.’

As soon as he was gone, having told her where to leave the key when she was finished, Flora shed her coat again and embarked on the first box. Mariska in mind, she set Julie’s diaries and photographs to one side along with a rather battered teddy that her sister had once kept on her bed. There was not much else to be conserved aside from a few cards exchanged between Willem and Julie and some inexpensive costume jewellery that she thought her niece might one day like to look at. She studied the photo of Willem and Julie on their wedding day, so young, so happy and full of innocent hope, and a flood of tears overwhelmed her. She wept until she was empty, and although her throat was sore afterwards, she felt much better for having vented her emotions. She then made use of the phone number that Angelo had given her and organised a time to visit that afternoon and see Mariska.

In the little bathroom she splashed her swollen eyes with cold water and thought she looked an absolute sight. She still could barely credit that she had had sex with Angelo van Zaal. Were there more of her sexually adventurous father’s genes in her than she had ever realised? She would not let herself use the euphemism ‘making love’, for she was still hard pressed to explain
exactly how she had ended up on that bed with Angelo, engaging in the intimacies she had avoided sharing with other men. While she had always experienced a strong buzz of attraction in Angelo’s radius, it had never occurred to her that it might have the power to get so out of hand. Evidently all it had taken was for her emotions to get equally out of kilter for the proverbial weak moment to have made nonsense of her moral outlook on life.

She had dropped her guard while she had sought forgetfulness from the unhappy present. Even worse, she had become intimate with a man she didn’t even like, a man who had always held her at arm’s length and treated her with cool indifference. No matter how she looked at what had happened she felt that she had let herself down badly and could not imagine ever meeting Angelo van Zaal again without suffering severe embarrassment.

Clutching a laden bag of keepsakes, she climbed on board a tram and found a seat. The busy streets whirred past while she tried not to think about how different Angelo had seemed once he brought the barriers crashing down by kissing her. So open, so apparently honest.
So, you’re really beautiful, are you?
an unimpressed little voice jeered in her head and she went pink and laced her fingers defensively together. It would be much wiser just to put all those inappropriate memories in a mental box and put them firmly away, she decided with a hearty sense of relief at having seen that obvious solution to her mental discomfiture.

How great a risk was there, though, that she might fall pregnant? Flora did the little sums with the menstrual dates that she had refused to share with Angelo and suppressed a troubled sigh of concern, for there was no
comfort to be found in those figures. Their accident, if accident it could be called, had occurred squarely in the middle of her most fertile phase. She could only pray that she would not conceive, although even that thought felt strange to a woman already engaged in an application to adopt her baby niece.

But what were her chances of success on that score? Her reddened mouth curved down. She had embarked on her adoption plans with high hopes, secure in the knowledge that she was Mariska’s only surviving relative and ignorant of the fact that Angelo might also cherish a desire to adopt Willem and Julie’s daughter. And Angelo, she reckoned unhappily, was going to be much stiffer competition in the adoption stakes than she had ever dreamt, because he had been engaged in looking out for Mariska ever since she was born and had already established a record of consistent care where the little girl was concerned. Nobody seemed the least bit worried that he was an unmarried single man, which she supposed was only fair considering that she was an unmarried single woman with only her time as a qualified childminder to back her application.

Furthermore it would take months for her adoption application to be properly checked out and considered and, in the meantime, Angelo had custody of her niece. Mariska would naturally become more settled in his home and more attached to him. Flora did not think her chances of winning custody of the tot from Angelo were good and the acknowledgement filled her with deep sadness. Unaware of Angelo’s claim previously, she had naively believed that there would be no barrier to her
bringing little Mariska straight back home to Charlbury St Helens with her.

Mariska greeted her aunt with smiles and chuckles and lifted her mood. What remained of the afternoon passed away and Anke suggested that Flora join them for their evening meal and remain until the little girl’s bedtime. Once she realised that she would not be eating with Angelo as well, Flora was grateful for the invitation to extend her stay. They had a light meal in the nursery and Flora had a lot of fun helping to bath her niece and prepare her for bed. At one stage as she towelled Mariska dry and the little girl succumbed to helpless giggles she looked down into her little face and saw her sister’s delicate blonde, blue-eyed prettiness replicated there. For an instant her eyes filled with tears again and as she carefully got her emotions back under control she finally appreciated how terribly tired she was. Once the little girl was tucked up in her cot, Flora put her coat on and headed for the stairs.

‘Good evening, Flora. I didn’t realise that you were still in the house,’ Angelo imparted, emerging from a door off the imposing landing and taking her uncomfortably by surprise. Garbed in an elegant dinner jacket, black hair spiky and damp above his lean, darkly handsome face, he looked stunningly handsome and well groomed.

Hugely disturbed by the unexpected encounter, Flora met his brilliant blue dark-lashed eyes and felt as though she had fallen on an electric fence to be fried. Disquiet ricocheted through her slim length, her cheeks hollowing, her soft full lips compressing with tension. ‘I’m afraid I stayed as long as I could with Mariska
because I’m leaving tomorrow, but now I’m absolutely bushed.’

‘My driver will take you back to your hotel,’ Angelo cut in smoothly.

‘But I don’t need …’

‘I
insist,
Angelo incised without hesitation. ‘You look exhausted.’

Flora was not best pleased to be told that she looked less than her best. It did not have quite the same flattering ring as the ‘beautiful’ compliment had had, she reflected wryly. Nor did she like Angelo insisting anything in that dominant tone of voice that seemed to come so naturally to him. But as she parted her lips to argue the point, she belatedly realised that they were not alone.

A platinum-blonde dark-eyed woman in a very smart sleeveless white cocktail frock with a glittering diamond pendant at her throat was standing in the hall and clearly waiting on Angelo. He introduced Flora to the other woman with effortless courtesy, and Flora wondered what it would actually take to embarrass him for as far as she could see he was not even slightly ruffled by the need to make that introduction. Was Bregitta Etten his current girlfriend? When Angelo had slept with Flora earlier that day had he been unfaithful to this other woman? Or was Bregitta merely one of the endless parade of eager females in Angelo’s life whom Julie had scornfully mentioned? Her sister had made it clear that Angelo was an unabashed womaniser who made the most of his freedom and Flora could only wish now that she had paid more heed to the warning and learned to be more cautious around him.

While Angelo organised Flora’s lift back to the hotel,
the very beautiful blonde rested possessive stroking fingers on his arm. Flora discovered that she would very much have liked to slap that hand away from him and was horribly shocked by that instant in which she reacted like a jealous cat who wanted to scratch. Frozen several feet away from the couple, she avoided making eye contact and left the house at speed when a sleek four-wheel-drive car drew up at the front steps and the driver climbed out to open the passenger door.

‘I’ll phone you,’ Angelo informed her calmly.

Flora turned mutinous eyes to his lean strong face and the challenge she saw there, but she was all too conscious of Bregitta’s curious gaze and she forced a casual smile and a nod before climbing into the waiting car …

F
LORA
arrived home the following afternoon and barely paused for breath before she headed round to Charlbury St Helens’ veterinary surgery, which also accommodated a small boarding kennels, to pick up her pets.

Jess Martin, the youngest and newest vet to join the practice, who also lived on the premises, greeted her in the reception area. A small curvaceous brunette, Jess organised Flora’s bill while the nurse went to fetch the animals from the kennels at the back. Skipper, a tiny black and white Jack Russell with more personality than size, raced out, his lead trailing, and hurled his stocky little body frantically at Flora’s legs. Mango the cat, a magnificent black tom of imposing size, was in his box and steadfastly ignoring his mistress. He always sulked when she returned after leaving him.

‘All present and correct,’ Jess remarked, and then with a concerned look in her unusually light grey eyes, for she knew why Flora had had to board her pets at such short notice, she added, ‘How are you? How was it over there?’

Flora grimaced and for a moment in receipt of that sympathetic look she did not trust herself to speak. ‘I managed.’

‘And your niece? ‘ Jess asked eagerly. ‘Have you got her out in the car?’

‘I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple. There are quite a few legal formalities to be got through first,’ Flora confided ruefully.
‘And
Willem’s brother, Angelo, has custody of Mariska at the minute and he’s applying to adopt her as well …’

Jess looked surprised. ‘But isn’t he single?’

‘So am I,’ Flora pointed out wryly. ‘And he’s had a lot more contact with my niece than I’ve had.’

‘But you’d make a terrific mother.’ Jess chose to concentrate on the most positive angle. ‘I’ve been told you were sadly missed locally when you stopped child-minding and went into the bed-and-breakfast business instead.’

Her detached house, which Flora had inherited from the great-aunt she had been named after, was set back well from the road and was sheltered from the pretty village green by mature trees. Tourists loved the village of Charlbury St Helens and Flora’s guest-house business kept her very busy indeed. When her rooms were fully booked she often employed Jess Martin’s mother, Sharon, to help her out. As Skipper raced down the back garden to acquaint himself with all his favourite places and Mango the cat stalked out to settle on the patio to sunbathe, Flora tried not to think about whether or not she was ever going to get the chance to bring Mariska home to England with her.

And what if you have fallen pregnant?
an anxious little voice whispered at the back of her mind and all the worry that she had tried to suppress shot through her taut length like a gunshot piercing tender flesh. It
would be ten days at least before she would know either way, so there was no point working herself up into a state over the issue, she told herself firmly. But Flora was still so angry with herself about what had happened in Amsterdam that she was unable to shake free of her inner turmoil.

Once she had believed that sex should be very much part of love and that it should never be separate from it; that conviction had happily guided her through the five years she had spent dating Peter, whom she had met at university and planned to marry. When Peter had dumped her after the employment tribunal, without ever having slept with her, everything that Flora had once believed in had begun to fall apart. She had wanted to believe that she and Peter were the perfect couple but had learnt the hard way that they were not. Over time, his indisputable lack of sexual interest had battered her self-esteem almost beyond hope of recall and she had switched off as far as men were concerned, too scared of being hurt and humiliated again to take a second chance on finding love.

But, in many ways, Flora had been scarred almost as much by her own childhood as by Peter, for she had never been able to forget her mother’s heartbreak or her father’s constant self-serving lies and deceptions. Love had almost destroyed her mother, who had suffered several episodes of serious depression before she could finally work up the strength to build a new life without her unfaithful husband. And sadly, Flora recalled wistfully, her loving mother had only lived eighteen short months after embarking on that valiant fresh start.

Yet her mother had never stopped believing in true
love and commitment. So,
how,
Flora asked herself painfully, could she have contrived to have lost her virginity to Angelo van Zaal? He hadn’t even realised he was her first lover either. She had nothing in common with him. He was a man who had yet to take any woman seriously and he had offered her no promises or reassurances. Yet neither of those very sensible points had mattered once he kissed her. His kisses had burned through her like a forest fire, reducing her long-cherished convictions to ashes.