The Grace Girls (56 page)

‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, in as bright a tone as she could muster at this hour of the morning.

Kirsty went across the hallway deep in thought. This had been a strange, strange night. She had heard things s
he did not want to hear and she had stifled all her instinct
s and feelings. And although she knew that Larry Delaney saw her as little more than a younger sister, this strange night had probably been the best night of her life.

After she had been down to the bathroom at the end of the corridor to brush her teeth and wash her face, and after seeing the bottles of bath foam and dish of white bath-cubes Kirsty decided she would run herself a nice hot bath. It just might help her to relax and sleep better in a strange place. She turned the taps on and poured some of the rose-scented bubble bath into the steaming water.

She came padding back up the corridor to the bedroom in her bare feet to collect her things. When she got into the room she shook Larry’s plaid shirt out of its careful folds then undid all the pearly-white buttons. Then, she slipped the straps of the evening dress down, unzipped it and let it fall to the ground.

She took off her matching white satin bra and cami-knickers and pulled on the plaid shirt, wishing she had a fresh change of underwear for the morning. She took a few kirby grips from her make-up bag and quickly pinned her hair up so that it wouldn’t get wet in the bath.

Then, as she looked at the carefully folded underwear for a few moments, an idea came into her mind. She went over to feel the long, thick radiator under the window. It was boiling hot. So hot she couldn’t hold her hand on it. She smiled to herself, deciding that she would soak and rinse out her little things in the bubble-bath and have them clean and dry and smelling lovely for the morning.

Then, like somebody from the comedy films she had seen in the pictures, she stuck her head out of the bedroom door, looked either way to check there was no one around, and scurried along the corridor to have her bath and carry out her illicit laundry. The bath was lovely, hot and relaxing, and Kirsty lay back and pondered over all the things that Larry Delaney had told her, wishing that she was older and more sophisticated.

She came back into the bedroom a short while later with the knickers and bra rubbed into dampness by a large bath towel, then she went over to the radiator and spread them out. She was just turning back the covers on her luxurious bed when a small knock came on the door.

Kirsty’s hands flew to her throat. ‘Who is it?’ she called in a short sharp whisper – trying not to sound as startled and frightened as she felt.

‘It’s me,’ the unmistakable rich Dublin voice came from the corridor. ‘I could hear you going in and out and I just wanted a little word with you before you went to sleep.’

S
he flew across the room to the door, her heart thuddin
g. ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked, opening the door to him.

He stood there looking down at her, his face white and serious. He was also in his bare feet, his white shirt loose over his dark trousers with only a couple of the buttons done.

‘Yes,’ he said in a low whisper, ‘there is something very wrong . . .’

And before Kirsty knew what had happened, Larry Delaney had swept her up in his arms and his warm mouth was crushing hers in exactly the same way it had happened in her dreams.

When that first breathless kiss eventually came to an end, Larry tilted Kirsty’s chin up to look into her eyes, then he led her by the hand across the floor to the bed.

Chapter 55

Larry threw the covers back on the bed and then quickly and easily lifted Kirsty off her feet and laid her on it. He stretched a hand to switch off the bedside lamp, and then he lay down beside her and kissed her once again. A kiss that lasted a long, breathless time. A kiss that Kirsty had been waiting for for months.

When the kissing finally stopped, she moved back on the pillow to look at him. Her heart was still racing and she had the funniest warm feeling down low in the pit of her stom
ach that made her want to reach out for him to kiss her again. To kiss her all over in places she’d never dreamed she’d want a man to kiss. Places she hardly knew about.

But she didn’t reach out to him. She wasn’t ready to go beyond this stage yet. There were things she needed to know first.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked him. ‘What’s made you change your mind? That night in the Trocadero –’

‘You mean the night you frightened the life out of me?’

‘I don’t understand . . .’ she said, propping herself up on one elbow. ‘And I think I need to . . . to know where this is all leading.’

Larry bent down now and lifted her free hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers one by one. ‘I thought it was going to be another terrible mistake,’ he told her, his voice weary. ‘I thought I might be heading down the same path I went down with David’s mother . . . but then I realised tonight when we were talking, that it was completely different. I suddenly realised that I was actually on the verge of making the biggest mistake of my life. A
monumental mistake I might never be able to put right . . .’

Kirsty waited, her breath coming in short bursts, terrified he might stop and not tell her all the things she so desperately wanted to hear. She closed her eyes, trying to still her rapid breathing, then she felt his warm breath on her face and then she felt his wonderfully soft lips kiss one of her eyelids and then the other.

‘Oh, Kirsty . . .’ he whispered, his voice ragged and heavy with feeling. ‘I love you with every single bone and breath in my body. And if it’s a huge, terrible mistake telling you this, then I’m afraid I’ve already gone and done it.’ He stopped. ‘That first night I saw you on the stage, something happened to me, and things have never been the same since. I know you’re younger than me, and that will probably cause us big problems, and I’m also very aware of all this trail of trouble behind me. But I really feel that I’m going to be in much, much bigger trouble if we don’t at least give it a chance.’

Kirsty opened her eyes and looked up into his. ‘I don’t know
what’s going to happen either,’ she said in a low, fearful voice, ‘and there’s a lot of things I’m frighteneD about. But I know one thing for sure – I love you too, Larry . . .
I love you with all my heart. I think I’ve loved you since the second we met.’

And then without the slightest warning, a huge sob suddenly rose up in Kirsty’s throat and salty tears started to spill down her face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her damp mascara-streaked face in Larry’s perfectly white shirt and she cried and cried as she clung to him.

Eventually, the crying quietened down and Kirsty came to rest her cheek against Larry’s slightly rough, stubbly unshaved cheek. Then they stayed like that in the dark silence of the hotel bedroom for what seemed like a long, long time.

Larry kissed the side of her head. ‘I want to talk to you about something, Kirsty,’ he said, ‘if you’re up to it . . . if you’re awake enough to take it in.’ He tightened his arms around her. ‘I’d feel better about everything if I could explain this one last bit.’

‘I am wide awake,’ Kirsty said, cuddling into him. ‘Tell me . . .’ She wanted him to talk and talk for as long as he liked, just as long as they could stay wrapped around each other. It was the best feeling she had ever had in her life. None of the boyfriends she had danced with and even canoodled with over the years had prepared her for what it would feel like to lie in the arms of a real mature man. For all Kirsty Grace’s confidence and sharp tongue with males, she had very little physical knowledge of them, simply because the real attraction had never been there before.

But now – with Larry Delaney – a whole new exciting world had suddenly spread itself out at her feet.

‘It’s all this business about David,’ he said, ‘why it made me wary of getting involved with another woman. That whole episode of my life was the one thing I’d been trying to avoid.’

‘Well, I can assure you I’d never do that!’ Kirsty cut in, her voice high and indignant. She struggled to sit up so she could look at him properly. ‘That’s one thing you’ll never need to worry about,’ she said earnestly. ‘I would never, ever get pregnant before I was married and ready to start a family. Even if I’d never met you, I would never want that to happen – I’m not like Liz Mullen. I want more out of life than to be running after a man. I have a career and I have ambitions . . . and I’ve more pride in myself than to let that happen to me.’

Larry smiled down at her – the ‘trying hard not to let her see he was amused’ smile – then he kissed her again. ‘I know that about you already, Kirsty, and it’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you. I love the fact you have such pride in yourself and such high principles.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But there’s a few things I need to put you straight about – I’m a bit worried that you have the wrong impression of me. I’m not this middle-class, well-heeled businessman cum playboy that you seem to think I am.’

Kirsty waited, intensely curious now.

‘I have worked very hard and I admit I’ve done well enough financially – beyond what I’d ever hoped or expected.’ He was struggling now. ‘But I got a very bad start in life. My mother wasn’t married and she left me in one of the children’s homes in Dublin . . . I was brought up early on with the nuns and then I was fostered out to various places.’ He shook his head. ‘I never knew what it was like to grow up in a real family until I was finally fostered at eleven years of age by a nice, decent family – the family whose name I took, and who now live in Man­chester.’

‘Oh, Larry . . .’ Kirsty said, her arms tightening around him. ‘That must have been terrible for you.’

‘It’s all I knew,’ he told her. ‘And you just get on with it. The nuns were nice enough, I didn’t have any major problems, and I was good at school – I learned easily, which helped.’

‘How did you come to be fostered by the family?’

‘It was an older couple who were too late to adopt a baby,’ he explained. ‘They were visiting the home and I was asked to show them around. They started visiting me and taking me for days out – that kind of thing . . . and gradually they asked if I’d like to go and live with them.’

‘Was it OK?’ Kirsty asked curiously.

Larry nodded. ‘They were great, they gave me a whole new start. If it wasn’t for Tommy and Nora Delaney I would not be in the position I’m in now. Tommy was a building engineer and Nora had been a teacher before she got married. Tommy used to take me fishing and golfing and he often took me out to work with him on the building sites when I was a teenager. I suppose that’s how I got interested in the property business myself.’ He sighed. ‘Tommy died about five years ago, and Nora moved over to Manchester to be beside her sister and her nieces. I still visit them all regularly and I always will – they were very good to me. They were the nearest I’ve ever had to a real family and I’m grateful to them.’

‘You would never believe that you had that kind of back­ground,’ Kirsty said. ‘You come across as a really confident person . . .’

‘I’ve always worked hard to be like that,’ he told her. ‘But I failed badly getting into that situation over David. It was the one thing I’d always vowed I’d never let happen – that I’d never be responsible for bringing a child into an unpredictable situation. I’d always hoped I’d be married a
nd settled and give the kid everything I never had mysel
f.’ His voice dropped. ‘I wish to God I’d never met Helen McCluskey . . . she was my biggest nightmare come true. I’d decided I’d never get tied down until I was totally secure in jobs and money, and that I’d be really picky and choosy about the woman I got serious about.’ He halted. ‘I don’t want to get embarrassingly personal here . . . but I was sure we’d been careful – that there was no way a child could
have been conceived.’

‘Do you honestly think that David is your son?’

Larry shrugged and gave a tired-sounding sigh. ‘I just don’t know . . . there’s every chance he’s the other fellow’s. And because of that, I think I’m going to have to give up and let him settle into the real family his mother wants now. I’ve got to give him the chance that I never had, to have a proper family life.’

Kirsty had a sudden uncomfortable thought. ‘Did Helen McCluskey know all that about your background? Did you tell her all about it?’

‘No,’ Larry said, shaking his head. ‘Not at all. She thought Nora was my real mother, and anyway, she had no great interest in things like that. She was only interested in having nice clothes and a nice place to live.’ He squeezed her tightly. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told that to. In all the years since I left Ireland, I never trusted anyone enough to tell them the truth. I always felt it was a . . . I suppose a vulnerable part of me. A part that I didn’t want people have access to. I wanted them to just see the confident, capable Larry Delaney that you first met.’

Kirsty’s heart soared. Larry Delaney loved her and trusted her enough to bare his soul to her in a way he had never done with one other person.

At this very moment in time the whole world was suddenly perfect.

Kirsty woke up in the silent white January morning, still wrapped in the warmth and security of Larry Delaney’s arms – exactly the same way she had fallen into a deep sleep around four o’clock. She looked at his peaceful sleeping face, trying to resist the urge to kiss his lovely full lips or to trace a finger over his eyes and mouth.