A Wife on Paper

Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a writing competition at school. After that early success there was quite a gap—during which she was busy working in Africa and the Middle East, getting married and having children—before her first book was published in 1992. Now readers worldwide fall in love with her irresistible heroes, and adore her independent-minded heroines. Visit Liz’s Web site for news and extracts of upcoming books at www.lizfielding.com

A Wife on Paper

Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

HIS brother was late, the restaurant was crowded, noisy, the kind of fashionable look-at-me-I’ve-arrived place he loathed, and Guy wished he’d made an excuse, stuck to his original plan to have a sandwich at his desk as he worked through the evening.

A rush of cold air as the door opened behind him gave him hope that his ordeal would soon be over, but as he turned he saw that it wasn’t Steve but a young woman rushing to get in out of the rain.

She paused momentarily, framed in the entrance, spotlit by the bright lights of the cocktail bar against the darkness outside.

Time stretched like elastic. The earth stopped turning. Everything slowed down. He felt as if he could count every one of the raindrops sparkling in her corn gold hair.

It was tousled, as if it had been caught by the gusting wind that she seemed to have brought into the restaurant with her, stirring everyone so that they turned to look. Kept on looking. Maybe it was because she was laughing, as if running through the rain was something she did for fun. Because she was a breath of fresh air…

She lifted her arms to comb her fingers through her hair, shake it back into place, and the dress she was wearing rode up to expose half a yard of thigh. When she dropped her hands and the hem descended, the scooped neckline of her dress fell too, offering a glimpse of what the clinging fabric so enticingly suggested.

Nothing about her was flat; everything about her seemed an open invitation to his hands to describe her, to stroke the sinuous lines of her body. She wasn’t beautiful exactly. Her nose lacked classical perfection. Her mouth was too big, but her silver-fox eyes sparkled as if she was lit up from within and the glow that emanated from her eclipsed every other woman in the room.

And, as time caught up with them, his body reacted as if she’d touched his personal blue touch-paper.

Pulse, heart rate, all the physical responses leapt into overdrive, but it was more than a lustful response to the kind of stimuli that probably had half the men in the room in the same condition.

It was like coming face to face with destiny. Coming face to face with the reason for your existence.

As he rose slowly to his feet she saw him, their gazes locked, and for a split second the laughter froze on her lips, and he thought that she felt it too. Then his brother was there, closing the door, cutting off the rush of cold air, breaking the connection between them as he put his arm around the girl’s waist, pulled her close against him.

Something hot, possessive, swept through him and he wanted to grab Steve, pull him away, demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing. Except, of course, it was obvious. He was saying to the world—saying to him—this woman is mine. And, as if the gesture wasn’t enough, he grinned and said, ‘Guy, I’m glad you could make it. I really want you to meet Francesca.’ He looked down at her with the look of a man who’d won the Lottery. ‘She’s moving in with me. She’s having my baby…’ Make that a man who’d won the Lottery twice.

‘Mr Dymoke…’ He started at a touch to his shoulder, opened his eyes to see the stewardess smiling down at him. ‘We’re about to land.’

He dragged his hands over his face in an effort to dispel the lingering wisps of a dream that, even after three years, continued to haunt him.

He straightened his chair, fastened his seat belt, checked the time. He should just make it.

Guy Dymoke was the first person she saw as she stepped from the car. That wasn’t what surprised her. He was the kind of man who would stand out in any crowd. Tall, broad-shouldered, deeply tanned, his thick dark hair lightened by the sun, he made everyone else look as if they were two-dimensional figures in a black and white photograph.

The effect was mesmerising. She saw it in the effect he had on the people around him. Had to steel herself against it, even now.

She wasn’t even surprised that he had taken the time from his busy life to fly in from whatever distant part of the world he currently called home to attend his half-brother’s funeral.

He was a man who took the formalities very seriously. He believed that every t should be properly crossed, every i firmly dotted. He’d made no secret of his disapproval of her and Steven’s decision not to do the ‘decent’ thing and get married. Demonstrated it by his absence from their lives.

As if it was any of his business.

No, what truly astonished her was that he had the nerve to show up at all after three years in which they hadn’t seen or heard from him. She hadn’t cared for herself, but for Steven…

Poor Steven…

Thankfully, she didn’t have to make an effort to hide her feelings as their gazes briefly met over the heads of the gathered mourners. Her face was frozen into a white mask. Nothing showed. There was nothing to show. Just a gaping hollow, an emptiness yawning in front of her. She knew if she allowed herself to think, to feel, she’d never get through this, but as she walked past him, looking neither to left nor right, he said her name, very softly.

‘Francesca…’

Softly. Almost tenderly. As if he cared. And the ache in her throat intensified. The mask threatened to crack…

Anger saved her. Hot, shocking, like a charge of lightning.

How dared he come here today? How dared he make a show of offering her sympathy when he hadn’t bothered to so much as lift a telephone when Steven was alive and it would have actually meant something?

Did he expect her to stop? Listen to his empty condolences? Allow him to take her arm, sit beside her in church as if he gave a damn…?

Just for appearances.

‘Hypocrite,’ she replied as, looking neither to left nor right, she swept past him.

She looked brittle. Insubstantial. Like spun glass. Altered out of all recognition from the vital young woman who’d changed his life in a moment with just one look.

Thin watery sunlight filtered through the October sky to light up her pale hair, emphasise the translucence of her skin, as she stood by the church doorway, shaking hands with those who’d taken the time to come and pay their respects. Inviting them back to the house. Cool, composed, apparently in control. The only moment when she’d seemed real, herself, had been that quick angry flush to her cheeks when he’d spoken her name. The rest was all just a role she was playing, he thought, a performance to get her through the nightmare.

One tap and she’d shatter…

He hung back, waiting until the others had moved off, before he stepped out of the shadows of the porch. She knew he was there, but he’d given her the chance to walk away, ignore him. But she was waiting for him to say his piece. Maybe she hoped he’d explain, but what could he say?

The words for what he was feeling hadn’t yet been invented. The loss, the pain, the regret that the last time he’d seen his brother, Steve had been at his worst. It had been deliberate, of course. A ploy to make him angry. And he’d risen self-righteously to the bait…

Neither of them had come out of it with any glory.

But she’d lost the man she loved. The father of her child. How much worse must it be for her…

He stepped forward. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, Francesca.’

‘Ten days. Time enough to have got from almost anywhere, I would have thought.’

He wanted to ask her why she’d left it so late. Too late.

‘I wish I could have relieved you of the burden of organising this.’ His voice seemed to belong to someone else. Someone cold, distant…

‘Oh, please. Don’t apologise. Your secretary rang, offering to help— I imagine Steven’s lawyer must have called your office—but a funeral is a family thing. Not something for strangers.’

He wasn’t talking about the funeral, but the months before that, when Steve had been dying and he’d been on the other side of the world, unaware of the tragedy about to overtake them all. By the time the message that his brother was running out of time had reached him, it was too late.

‘It took me days to get to any kind of landing strip when the message came through about Steve.’ He sounded, even to himself, as if he were making excuses. ‘I’ve come straight from the airport.’

Finally she turned to look at him. Acknowledge him.

‘You really needn’t have bothered. We’ve managed perfectly well without you for the last three years. The last six months changed nothing.’

Her voice was cold, too. Every word an ice dagger striking at his heart. But this wasn’t about him. His feelings.

Right now all he cared about was her. He wanted to say that she was all he’d cared about for the last three years. Instead he said, ‘Are you going to be all right?’

‘All right?’ She repeated the words carefully, as if testing them. Trying to divine his meaning. ‘In what way could I possibly be “all right”? Steven is dead. Toby’s daddy is dead…’

‘Financially,’ he said, pressing on, even though he knew that he was making things immeasurably worse. Or perhaps not. How could they possibly be worse?

Her silver-grey eyes regarded him with utter disdain. ‘I should have known your only concern would be for the practicalities. Ensuring that I did it by the book. It isn’t feelings that matter with you, is it, Guy? It’s appearances.’

Which answered that question.

Smothering the pain, he pressed on. ‘Practicalities have to be addressed, Francesca.’

Listen to him! He should be putting his arms around her, offering her comfort, taking a little for himself, but since that was denied him he was talking like a lawyer. If he’d been a lawyer there would be some excuse…

‘Please don’t concern yourself about us, Guy. By your standards I’m about as “all right” as it’s possible to be. The house. Life insurance… That is what you mean, isn’t it?’ With that, she turned and crossed to the waiting limousine. The driver held the door for her, but she didn’t get in, just stood there for a moment, head bowed, as if gathering herself for the ordeal ahead. After a moment or two she straightened, glanced back at him, then with a lift of her shoulders she said, ‘I suppose you’d better come back to the house. For appearances.’

Then she climbed into the car and waited for him to follow her.

He didn’t mistake her invitation for a thaw but he abandoned the car that had been waiting for him at the airport without hesitation.

‘Thank you,’ he said as he joined her.

‘I don’t want your thanks. He was your brother. I haven’t forgotten that, even if you did.’ And she shifted to the farthest end of the seat, putting the maximum distance between them, not that he had any intention of crowding her. Offering comfort that she clearly didn’t want—at least, not from him. But he had to say something.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here.’

That earned him another look to freeze his heart. ‘That’s just guilt talking, Guy. If you’d cared about him you wouldn’t have stayed away. Why did you do that?’ For a long moment she challenged him. Then, in the shadowy interior of the limousine, he saw a faint colour smudge her pale cheeks before, with the smallest lift of her shoulders, she let it go. ‘The cancer was virulent. Faster than anyone anticipated. I asked him if he wanted me to call you, but he said there was plenty of time.’

Instinctively he reached to hold her, comfort her as he’d hold anyone in distress, but her eyes flashed a warning. It was like hitting a force field at speed. Shocking. Painful.

He’d intended only to reassure her but realised that anything he did or said would simply fuel her resentment that he was alive, while the man she loved was dead. She clearly thought him capable of feeling nothing but guilt. And that only at a stretch.

‘He was so sure that you’d come,’ she said.

‘I’m not clairvoyant.’

‘No. Just absent.’

He bit back the need to defend himself. She needed to strike out at someone and he was a handy target. If he could do nothing else for her, he could take the blame.

When he didn’t say anything—and he didn’t believe she expected or wanted him to respond—she looked away, staring out of the windows at the passing urban landscape as if anything was better than looking at him. Talking to him. Only a tiny betraying sigh escaped her lips as they turned into the elegant city street with its tall white stuccoed houses, where she and Steve had made their home.

The sound cut deeper than any words—no matter how much they were intended to wound.

The car drew up at the kerb and he climbed out, hesitating between offering his hand and the certainty that she would ignore it. But as she stepped on to the pavement her legs buckled momentarily beneath her and neither of them had much choice in the matter. He caught her elbow beneath his hand. She felt insubstantial, fragile, weightless as, briefly, she allowed him to support her.

‘Why don’t you give this a miss?’ he said. ‘I can handle it.’

Maybe, if he had been someone else, she might have surrendered control, leaned against him, allowed him to take the strain. But she gathered herself, shook off his support and said, ‘Steven managed without you, so can I.’ Then she walked quickly up the steps to her front door to join the subdued gathering.

Francesca paused on the threshold of her drawing room to catch her breath. She had never felt so alone in her life and, unable to help herself, she glanced back to where Guy was shedding his coat. For a moment their eyes met and she glimpsed his pain. But she buried her guilt. She’d meant to hurt him, wound him for staying away, and not just for Steven. Then someone said her name, put an arm around her, and she allowed herself to be wrapped up in this show of care from virtual strangers, no matter how shallow their sentiments, how empty their words of support.

But the imprint of his fingers still burned into her and she rubbed at her arm, shook her head as if to loosen the image. Forced herself to concentrate. This wasn’t just her tragedy. There were other people here, people who needed reassurance about their jobs, the future of Steven’s business. She’d left it to tick over in the hands of the staff for the last few months. Now she would have to take control, make decisions. But not today.

Today she had to lay Steven to rest in style, ensure that everyone had something to drink. Something to eat. Give his friends time to talk about him.

And avoid Guy Dymoke.

‘Fran?’

She jumped as a voice at her elbow brought her back to the present. This minute. This dreadful hour that she had to get through.

‘Did everything go smoothly?’

She looked down, made an effort to pull herself together. Put on a reassuring smile for her cousin. ‘Yes. It was a beautiful service. Thank you, Matty.’

‘You should have let me come with you.’

‘No. No, really, I needed to know that Toby was with someone he loves and I didn’t want Connie distracted while she was making sandwiches.’ Then, with a little jab of panic, ‘Where is Toby? Is he okay?’

‘He was a bit fractious so Connie took him upstairs and put him down for a nap. With a bit of luck he’ll sleep through this.’

‘I hope so.’ Another hour and it would be over. Just one more hour. She could do it. She’d held herself together for so long. She could manage one more hour. She wasn’t going to break down now. Not in front of Guy Dymoke.

Guy watched her as she took on the role of comforter, taking the hand of a thin young woman confined to a wheelchair as they exchanged a few words, hugging people, allowing them to grieve. She was the perfect hostess, ensuring that everyone had something to eat and drink, all the while managing to keep her distance from him without so much as a glance in his direction. As if she had some sixth sense that warned her when he was getting too close.

He decided to make it easy for her, seeking out those friends of his brother’s that he remembered, catching up with their news. Introducing himself to those he did not. Checking the arrangements for the reading of the will with Tom Palmer, the family lawyer. As executor he would have to be there, welcome or not. More than that, he wanted reassurance that Francesca and her son were indeed ‘all right’.

‘You’re not eating.’

He turned around and found himself confronted by the woman in the wheelchair, offering him a plate of sandwiches.

‘Thank you, but I’m not hungry.’

‘That’s no excuse. It’s part of the ritual,’ she said. ‘Man’s natural reaction to his own mortality. An affirmation that life goes on. You know…eat, drink and be grateful it was someone else who fell under the bus. Metaphorically speaking.’

‘In my case,’ he replied, ‘I suspect it would have caused a great deal less bother all round if it had been me. Falling under the metaphorical bus.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Her eyebrows rose to match her interest. ‘Then you must be Guy Dymoke, the rich, successful older brother who no one ever talks about. You don’t look like Steven,’ she added, without waiting for confirmation.

‘We’re half-brothers. Same father, different mothers. Steve favours—favoured—his. Mother.’

‘Should one speak ill of the dead at his own funeral?’ she enquired, with a refreshing lack of sentimentality. Then, clearly not expecting an answer, ‘I’m Matty Lang,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Francesca’s cousin. So what’s the mystery? Why haven’t we met?’

‘There’s no mystery. I’m a geologist. I spend a lot of time overseas in remote places.’ Then, because he didn’t want to elaborate on why he didn’t include family visits when he was in London, he said, ‘Francesca must be glad to have you here. Her parents live overseas, I understand.’

‘They do. In separate hemispheres to avoid bloodshed. As for the rest of them, they’re all too busy to waste time at a funeral that won’t benefit them in any way.’ She looked around, rather pointedly, then at him and said, ‘It was one of the things Fran and Steven had in common, apparently.’

‘I’m surprised his mother isn’t here.’ A B-list actress who had been through half a dozen husbands and lovers since his father had paid through the nose to be rid of her, she rarely missed a photo opportunity. ‘She looks good in black.’

‘She sent flowers and her excuses. Apparently she’s filming some lust-in-the-dust mini-series in North Africa. She was sure Fran would understand. Call me cynical, but with Francesca getting top billing I suspect she decided there wasn’t any PR mileage in admitting to having a son old enough to have made her a grandmother.’

‘Not good for the image,’ he agreed, doing his best to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘She was never cut out for grandmotherhood. Or motherhood, come to that.’ Every time that Steve had got himself into trouble, every time he had sworn that this was the last time he’d dig him out, he had found himself rerunning a long distant memory of his stepmother screaming at his father, furious that she’d had to surrender some film part because she was pregnant. Had found himself remembering the miserable little boy sobbing his heart out when he had finally realised his mother wasn’t coming back.

And he was no better. He’d walked away, too. He’d told himself that Steve didn’t need him any more now he had a family of his own. But that had just been an excuse.

‘I’m glad Francesca had you to give her some support today,’ he said.

‘She was there for me when I had my own close call with death-by-transport.’ Her smile was slightly wry. ‘Not a bus, in my case, but a combination of speed, black ice and a close encounter with a brick wall.’ The sympathetic response that came to his lips on automatic was neatly deflected as she went on, ‘Of course, since I live in the basement I didn’t have to make much of an effort to be here.’

‘The basement?’

She clearly misread his expression. ‘I believe that Lower Ground Floor is the correct “estate agent” term. It’s not as bad as it sounds, I promise you. It’s a basement at the front, where I have my kitchen and bedroom and a front door for visitors who can handle steps, but the land slopes away at the rear. My sitting room and studio is on ground level so that I have direct access to the rear garden, the garage and my car. I can’t walk now, but I can still drive.’

‘I’m familiar with the layout,’ he said, although her reference to a studio puzzled him. ‘My maternal grandmother used to live here,’ he explained when she looked surprised.

‘Did she? I didn’t know that it was a family house. I thought Steven had paid…’ She clearly decided that she was getting into something that was none of her business. ‘What I meant to say is that I’m not dependent. I’m totally self-contained and go for days without seeing either of them.’ She stopped, clearly realising that ‘either’ was no longer a possibility. ‘Fran managed to convince Steven that the conversion was a good idea. That a self-contained granny-stroke-staff flat would increase the value of the house.’

‘I’m sure she’s right.’

‘She’s more than just a pretty face. Of course I paid for the extension work.’

‘Of course.’

‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you to one of Connie’s sandwich surprises?’

‘Who is Connie?’

‘Another of Fran’s lame ducks. She has a bit of trouble with English and can’t seem to tell her lemon curd from her mayonnaise, which tends to make her cooking a bit of a gamble.’

‘In that case I’m quite sure,’ he replied.

Matty grinned. ‘Where’s your spirit of adventure?’

‘I left it behind in a steaming swamp. It needs a rest.’

‘Fair enough.’ Then, looking at the crowded room, ‘Oh, good grief, this lot look as if they’ve taken root. I’d better go and circulate. There’s nothing like a wheelchair to make people thoroughly uncomfortable, make them remember that they have to be somewhere else. And, if that doesn’t shift them, I’ll fall back on my pathetic-relative-from-the-basement act and dribble a little. I don’t think Fran can take much more of this.’