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done to her through Ben. Clea must never know it, but she had ruined
Joanne's life as well as Ben's.
Jeb she was fond of, she admired and liked him. He had learnt a poker face.
He was adept at concealing his emotions. His passion for Clea apart, she
suspected, he was a hard businessman, determined to get his own way, as
arrogant and self-assertive as his son, but more human, a man of humour
even if it was irony, a man with a vein of warmth running through the cold
granite of his nature. Ben was all granite. There was no human weakness in
him.
At the reception after the wedding, Joanne hovered in the background well
out of sight, watching the guests greeting Clea and Jeb, admiring her
mother's radiant beauty with rueful eyes.
She saw Ben suddenly and the shock rocked her where she stood. She went
white and for a moment she was unguarded, her eyes agonised. Jeb
happened to be looking at her and his eyes narrowed in his hard face.
Then he looked round and he saw Ben, too, and glanced back quickly at
Joanne, but she was already pulling a mask over her face, assuming a calm
she did not feel.
Ben walked towards them with a lovely blonde girl hanging on his arm. She
was a typical model, long- legged, swaying, her mouth wearing a plastic
smile.
Joanne walked away and pretended to get herself a glass of champagne.
From a distance she saw Ben lightly brush Clea's flushed cheek, saw him
shake hands with his father, a cool smile on his face. He looked at ease and
unconcerned and the buzzing whispers did not seem to reach him.
Photographers snapped around them, flashbulbs exploding like lightning,
and Ben's face remained smilingly cool.
Ben's pride had brought him here today, Joanne guessed now. He would not
allow anyone to believe that Clea had hurt him, that he was jealous or angry.
He had come, to make a public declaration of acceptance to dispel the
scandal which had gathered around the marriage.
Sam Ransom made his way through the crowd towards Joanne, his eyes
curious. She smiled at him as he joined her and he said, 'Who would have
expected that? Did you know he was coming?'
'Of course,' she lied, smiling sweetly. 'Why not? He brought them back
together, didn't he?'
'He did?' Sam stared at her incredulously. 'Are you saying that Ben
engineered it all? That he came to smooth Jeb's way for him?'
Joanne didn't answer, just smiled and smiled, and Sam was not sure what to
believe. Famous people did the craziest things and Sam did not find it easy
to believe that someone of his own age, like Ben Norris, would fall for Clea
Thorpe, despite her fame. Sam never had. She was outside his age group and
Sam, as Ben had said, liked his women younger than himself.
Ben had certainly vanished once Jeb appeared on the scene, so Sam
shrugged and filed the interpretation away for future reference. Next day his
column was headed JEB'S SON PLAYS CUPID, and the other reporters
read it and cursed because it was exclusive and their editors wanted to know
why he had it and they didn't.
Ben stayed for an hour. Joanne kept well away from him, watching him from
a safe distance whenever his head was turned away from her. He flirted with
the blonde lightly, a glass in his hand, a charming smile on that hard mouth.
Joanne allowed Sam to stay glued to her side. She smiled at him and joked
with him, and Sam's eyes were curious and wry as he talked to her. He had
not forgotten her behaviour the night he kissed her in the garden, but Joanne
was hiding any emotion from him now and he was not certain what was in
her mind.
Ben moved to the door after saying goodbye to Clea and Jeb and Joanne
turned to watch him for the last time. She wondered if she would ever see
him again, and hoped she wouldn't, because the pain she was feeling now
was enough to last a lifetime.
He turned at the door and his eyes moved across the room; she knew he was
looking for her, that he had known where she was all the time he was in the
room, although they had never once looked at each other.
Across the chattering, crowded room their eyes met as if across a chasm.
Joanne drank in the arrogant tilt of his black head, the hard bones of the face,
the cool dark eyes set under those thin, ironic brows. Her face was distant,
withdrawn to a safe place where he could not reach her. She stood there, her
glass in her hand, a slender, graceful girl in a chic blue dress, her black hair
shining under the lights, and her eyes gave nothing away.
Ben turned away and went out. The noise, the light, seemed to fade and she
was alone in blackness for a moment. Then her eyes blinked once and she
lifted her glass to her lips and drank thirstily, rapidly, letting the race of the
champagne in her blood lift her spirits from the misery in which they were
sunk.
When Clea and Jeb had flown off on their honeymoon she said goodbye to
Milly with real regret and sadness, packed and flew to England, feeling as if
she left behind her old life as the plane lifted up into the cloudless blue sky.
CHAPTER FIVE
HER father was oddly unsurprised to see her. She had cabled her arrival in
advance, of course, but when she was shown into his office at the hotel, he
merely smiled and came to kiss her, asking her no questions. Only later did
she realise that he took her arrival so soon after Clea's second marriage to
mean that Jeb had not wanted her around. She did not disillusion him since
for the moment she was unwilling to discuss the subject with anyone. Her
best hope for recovery from the wounds inflicted by Ben was, she had
decided, total silence, in the hope that her feelings towards him would be
swallowed in the oblivion of forgetfulness.
'So you're planning a secretarial career?' her father asked her with an
approving smile. He had aged far more than either Clea or Jeb, Joanne
realised, surveying him with a measuring eye. His hair was thinning and
receding from his placid temples, his eyes were heavily fined, his figure
heavy and stooping.
They might have been total strangers as they sat drinking coffee together in
the quiet backwater of the office, among the grey steel filing cabinets and the
wide leather-topped desk. They spoke to each other courteously, carefully.
'I need a job,' she said. 'That seems the best. I have no talents or leaning in
any other direction.'
'Why not start here in the hotel?' he asked, without pressing her. 'We run a
good secretarial agency for our guests. It's small but very efficient. You
could do a secretarial course part-time while working here to get
experience.'
It was a splendid idea and she was delighted. He looked pleased and amused
when she broke into smiles, her eyes Shining. 'Could I really?' She had not
really looked forward to going back to school full-time. Being at work some
of the time would make the learning part of it easier. She could feel she was
an adult, useful, someone who had a proper job to do. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]