Flowers for My Love (14 page)

Davina teetered between throwing herself into his arms and standing her ground.

‘But why didn’t you tell me about the shop?’

‘I didn’t know about it. Besides, it has to go.’

She flicked an angry finger. ‘Just like that?’

‘Why make a song about it? You’re making it too important,’ he said firmly. ‘You know very well you couldn’t possibly carry on with the shop When once we are married. We shall be looking around for a house.’

‘But if we live in your flat in the meantime I shall have heaps of time to go to the flower shop. Look at the times you have to go abroad when I shall be left on my own.’

‘So you had it all worked out. You were going to go working in the shop on a long engagement. My setting the date of our marriage brought you down to earth.’

‘You seem to forget that we haven’t known each other five minutes.’

Nick said bluntly, ‘I knew within the first few seconds of seeing you that I loved you. It’s plain to see that you didn’t feel the same.

I can see now that by proposing an early marriage I was destroying the cosy little world you’d created. You imagined us going on for a year or so being engaged.’

Davina twisted her hands. ‘What if I did? Is it any worse than you demanding that we marry right away? The trouble with you is you want everything your way!’

‘That makes two of us.’ His eyes hardened. ‘What do you want, some weak idiot who’ll bow to all your wishes? Heaven knows why you thought I would stand for any of your nonsense.’

Her face was pale, her eyes dark with unhappiness. ‘I explained why I wanted us to wait before getting married. But that isn’t what we’re quarrelling about, actually. It’s this Birgit person who’s determined to buy the shop. Juleen said negotiations have been going on for six months.’

His mouth thinned. ‘And I told you I didn’t know anything about it then. However, you seem to want to make me out a liar and several other things beside.’ He was suddenly very angry. ‘I wonder you dare trust yourself here alone with me in the flat, thinking what you do. Or is this a way of getting out of our marriage? Well, aren’t you afraid?’

He hauled her into his arms. ‘God, woman! Don’t you know that I love you?’ His arms were like steel closing in on her. ‘Isn’t it time you and I understood each other?’

Davina strained against his hold, but all to no avail. Then his lips were on hers. The world tilted as he spoke her name and she was conscious only of his strength and his kisses that were taking her very soul from her body. She held on as he whispered between kisses with a thickness in his voice.

‘Darling Davina, you know you belong to me. You’re mine now and for ever. You can’t deny it.’

It was the sheer masculine arrogance in his words that stung her out of her stupor, deafened her to everything except the present.

Everything was coming back to her, why she was here at the flat, all that he had done behind her back. And he had not explained Birgit.

He had manipulated her as he had his business associates. She was to be another of his easy conquests. But she would show him.

She fought him blindly to free herself.

‘Let me go!’ she cried, striking him furiously, then recoiling at the red angry mark on his cheek where her fingers had been.

Her rage died as if blown out by an east wind. She shivered, suddenly ashamed of herself. There was only one thing for it. With trembling fingers she tore off her engagement ring and held it out to him.

Nick’s eyes were grey steel as he ignored her action.

He said coldly, ‘I’ll take you home. You’re overtired and I am too.’

He strode to the door and held it open for her. For a moment she stood gazing at him, then dropping the ring on the low table beside his glass, she walked towards him.

The speed he set up as he drove back to her flat forced her to cling to her seat. Neither of them spoke, her brain reeled, with the slap she had given him echoing in her distraught mind. When Nick braked at her door Davina was out of the car in a trice. Then he had gone.

The flat was quiet when she opened the door with her key. She listened for several moments with bated breath before making her way to the kitchen. It was empty of Cheryl and Rex who were evidently in the lounge. Hastily searching for a scrap of paper and a pen, Davina scribbled a few words to the effect that she was feeling tired and had gone to bed.

But in her room that tiredness did not induce sleep. She lay for a long time going over the evening again and again. One thing she had learned was that she loved Nick whatever he had done. Their engagement was not over. He would telephone in the morning.

They would go shopping and he would replace the ring on her finger.

As for Darren, she could talk to him, make him understand how important it was for her to marry the man she loved.

In her worried state Davina slept little that night and was hard put to it to rise at four-thirty in the morning in order to go to the Tuesday early morning market for her flowers.

Early morning market days were Tuesdays and Thursdays and it was unknown for the men at the market to see her without her usual sunny smile. This morning, though, Davina was finding it difficult to put on a bright face. She was teased about it and took it in good part.

Strange that it had not occurred to her until now how she would miss the friendly banter from the men of all ages who found her a doll. There had been no message for her from Nick, Cheryl told her on her arrival back at the shop. Davina had decided not to tell Cheryl about their quarrel, it was too painful at the moment even to think about.

By the afternoon it became almost certain that Nick had no intention of getting in touch with her. Slackly she went about her work in the shop, and around four o’clock Juleen came in.

She said, ‘I was surprised you didn’t lunch with us today. I know it’s your market day, but I thought you would have managed it, seeing that Birgit was there.’

Davina felt her heart slip painfully. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Juleen was taken aback. ‘But surely you said you and Nick had a date today? Or is it this evening? Come to think of it, when I remarked on your absence he pretended he didn’t hear.’

‘You mean Nick had lunch with you and Birgit?’

‘My husband as well, of course.’

Davina said quietly, ‘I know Nick was seeing Birgit on Wednesday—he arranged a meeting while I was there last evening in his flat early on. I had no idea he was seeing her today. Have you heard anything more of the sale of this shop?’

‘No, but then Nick will keep you posted.’ Juleen’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Is there anything wrong between you and Nick? You seem a little odd.’

Cheryl looked up from putting some very pretty plant pots on display on a shelf and glanced curiously at her sister.

‘Davina always looks tired after going to the early market,’ she stated. ‘Rather her than me. I’d hate to get up so early.’

‘I shall have to use more make-up if it’s so obvious,’ Davina cut in, anxious to prevent Juleen from probing further. Juleen’s remarks grated.

Whereas before she was always a welcome customer now her presence brought Nick intolerably near.

Juleen said sweetly, ‘I should go out with Nick tomorrow when he sees Birgit if I were you. She’s very much like him, in fact you could almost say she’s the female equivalent of Nick—blonde, beautiful, and out to get what she wants regardless. I should be on my toes if I were you as long as she’s in town.’

Davina moved a few blooms from an almost empty vase to a partly filled one and picked up the empty one to wash it out.

‘Nick can’t bear clever women. He told me so, even if they do have a very attractive accent.’

She was unprepared for Juleen’s angry flush. Good heavens, she thought, Juleen really does think she’s clever herself and has taken umbrage.

She smiled to take away the sting she had not intended.

‘That’s why he’s so fond of me,’ she said sweetly.

But Juleen was not amused. She said stiffly, ‘I invited Nick to bring you to dinner this evening, but he wouldn’t commit himself.

What about you?’

Davina walked slowly to the beaded curtain with the vase. Her smile was disarming.

‘You’d better leave it to Nick,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what he has in mind for tonight.’

Juleen had gone when Davina finally emerged into the shop after washing the vase.

‘What was the matter with her?’ Cheryl asked at the till. ‘And what’s this about the shop being for sale?’

‘Just something I heard. I don’t know any more than that. Do you think I bought enough tulips?’

Cheryl gave the flower display a cursory glance. She was not to be sidetracked.

‘And didn’t Juleen say something about you going out with Nick today?’ she probed.

‘Yes,’ Davina answered reluctantly, not feeling up to discussing him. ‘You know how Nick is. He has these important unexpected assignments.’

‘And he must meet a lot of women in the length of the day.’

Davina laughed. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Only that Juleen could be right. You ought to grab the man while you can.’

Davina almost said she was already engaged, then remembered that she was not. And Nick had not made any attempt to get in touch with her. Come to think of it, perhaps everything had happened for the best and she was better remaining her own mistress doing her own thing.

Darren would be happy, and Cheryl. In time she might even be happy herself. Since knowing Nick she had been on a kind of see-saw, first up, then down. Davina had almost convinced herself when the telephone rang just before five and Cheryl took the call.

‘It’s Nick,’ she whispered urgently.

Davina’s heart beat like a sledgehammer as she picked up the phone.

‘Davina?’ The deep voice ran along her nerves like a flash of lightning running along an electric cable. ‘I came for you this morning as arranged to find that you weren’t at the flat or the shop.

I let it rest there thinking you would have cooled down by now. Can we meet this evening, or shall I come to the flat?’

‘Neither,’ she told him. ‘Our engagement was a mistake. I happened to be at the early morning market and didn’t return until after ten.’

‘But you knew we were going out?’

‘It was you who changed the day to Tuesday.’

‘So it was.’ A pause. ‘And you did say our engagement was a mistake? Are you playing chicken?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘But you can’t leave it at that!’ he protested. ‘I’m coming round now—we have to talk about it.’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve no time—besides, I need an early night.

Goodbye, Nick.’

No time for him: that was it. But Davina’s thoughts were in a turmoil. She had made up her mind she was going to forget him. She was never going to think about him at all. She was trembling as she put down the telephone. It was awful how the decision hurt, made her feel so desolate. The bleakness of the sudden ending to her engagement, the finality of it, weighed heavily upon her. Cheryl did not help things. Davina had never seen her so shocked.

‘You must be barmy to give a man like Nick up! What got into you?’

To put herself on a more even keel, Davina asked, ‘What time did you open the shop this morning?’

Cheryl went a dull red. ‘Just before you came from the market. You know I sleep like a log and I rely upon you waking me.’

‘Then Nick must have found the shop closed and gone on to the flat and failed to make you hear.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Cheryl mumbled.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Davina wearily. ‘What will be will be.

At least I don’t have to explain to Darren about getting married.’

Cheryl said eagerly, ‘If there’s anything I can do like explaining to Nick, I’ll do it willingly.’

‘Let’s leave it, shall we? How are you going on with Rex?

You’ve been very quiet about him lately.’

‘All right,’ laconically.

Davina sighed inwardly. Aloud, she said, ‘I’m going out with the orders, so if Nick calls you don’t know where I am.’

Davina knew she would miss Nick, but she had never imagined how dreadful life would be without him. On the Wednesday at lunch time she had tortured herself imagining him having lunch with Birgit. He did not come to the shop or the flat again and she heard no more about him for a few days.

Then one day she ran into Juleen after delivering an order to Belcourt Mansions. Juleen was about to go in as she came out.

‘Hello, Davina,’ she smiled. ‘What have you been doing with yourself? Now that Nick’s away we should have got together, but I’m awfully busy at the moment.’

‘So are we. Have you heard from Nick?’

‘No. I suppose you have. How is he?’ Juleen eyed her curiously as she asked the question, and Davina wondered if Nick had told her that they had split up.

She decided to play it slowly until she was sure because Nick was not the kind of person who would discuss his personal life with anyone.

‘He’s well as far as I know. How’s your husband?’

‘He’s doing a series of lectures at local hospitals. We must have lunch together one day.’

‘That would be nice.’

Davina smiled warmly, knowing that Juleen did not intend going further with the suggestion. For some reason or other Juleen had become distant and cool. At times, as now, she appeared almost as an enemy.

She said on parting, ‘Did Nick tell you that he travelled to Sweden with Birgit? That man certainly does live it up! First class travel to far away places with glamorous companions thrown in.’