The Perfect Match Read online

  Such as? the more cynical side of his nature demanded harshly.

  A simple case of forgetfulness. Oh, by the way, I forgot. Charlie Platt was actually my uncle.

  He shook his head, mentally deriding himself and in the fashion of his teenage nieces and nephews adding a sardonic Not.

  By the time he had returned to his house, the shock of Jenny's unintentional revelation was beginning to subside enough for him to pause and respond politely to Ruth's comments about the attractive display of flowers in his small front garden.

  Ruth lived a few doors away from him and he knew her both via her charity work and through her relationship with Jenny.

  She was an elegantly attractive woman who still bloomed with the joy of rediscovering and marrying the man she had originally fallen in love with as a young girl. And if these days her life and her world was a rather more cosmopolitan one than that of a small Cheshire country town, with six months of the year spent in America with her new husband and their daughter and family and six months back home in Haslewich, she was still very much the extraordinarily warm and perceptive person she had always been.

  'I can't take any credit for them,' Guy admitted in response to her comment about his garden. 'Unlike you, I'm afraid my fingers are not particularly green and I have to rely on Bernard to ensure my garden doesn't let the close down.'

  Bernard Philips was yet another member of the extended Cooke clan, a second cousin of Guy's, who together with his two sons and his daughter had built up a local garden centre business—a business that Guy, in true entrepreneurial fashion, had yet another small investment in.

  It was not for nothing that certain members of his family teasingly nicknamed him 'The Banker'.

  He had a reputation amongst his family and friends, he knew, as a shrewd and astute businessman, and it had only been the previous Christmas that his sisters had been teasing him about the fact that he was too logical, too keen to weigh up the pros and cons to ever allow himself to fall deeply in love. And until he had met Chrissie, he had been inclined to share that belief.

  Chrissie... Perhaps it would have been better if he had never met her, he decided savagely after he'd said goodbye to Ruth and let himself into his house.

  Which was she really? The open, warm soul mate he had believed he had found, or someone very different?

  Was she at fault for deceiving him or was he simply a fool for having deceived himself, for having credited her with virtues and attributes she simply didn't possess?

  Had he imposed on her his own idealised version of her, lifting what was really merely an earthy lust into the realm of something more spiritual and divine?

  Half an hour later, having abandoned his half-hearted preparations for their supper, he acknowledged that the only way he was going to discover the truth was by asking Chrissie outright why she had not told him about her relationship with Charlie Platt.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DESPITE the thorough cleaning she had given it, her late uncle's house still had that faintly musty smell she associated with neglect and decay, Chrissie acknowledged, wrinkling her nose slightly.

  The old sheet she had thrown over the desk to protect it had slipped off, and as she went to replace it, she paused, studying the desk affectionately. She could well understand why her mother wanted to buy it from the estate.

  It possessed a warmth and sturdiness that encouraged one to reach out and stroke the wood and Chrissie smiled a little to herself as she did so.

  She was no expert but she doubted that the desk would prove to be very expensive. It would be her mother's birthday in two months' time and she was tempted to buy it herself and give it to her mother as a birthday present.

  She was still smiling at the thought of her mother's pleasure when Guy knocked on the front door.

  Quickly she went to let him in and was taken aback when she saw that he was frowning and that instead of moving to take her in his arms as she had been expecting, he actually seemed to move away from her as though he wanted to put some distance between them.

  Natalie's contemptuous earlier comments ran through her brain and she hesitated uncertainly. Outside, the temperature had dropped and Chrissie felt a chill in the air inside the cottage. Shivering slightly, she turned to get her coat. The door to the small front sitting room was still open, and as she retrieved her coat from the hall chair where she had left it, she saw Guy freeze as he looked into the room.

  'What is it...what's wrong?' she asked him anxiously.

  'What's that desk doing here?' Guy demanded harshly.

  Chrissie frowned as she heard the sharp accusatory note in his voice, her heart sinking.

  'I'm waiting to get it valued. It belonged to...' She stopped and bit her lip. Guy was looking at her in a most peculiar way.

  'Do go on,' he told her mock-gently. 'Or shall /

  say it for you? It belonged to Charlie Platt, better known locally as, at best, a con man and, at worst, a thief. A man who by no stretch of the imagination could ever legally or rightfully be the owner of that particular piece of furniture.'

  'A con man!'

  Chrissie went pale as she heard the pent-up fury in Guy's voice. She had known all along that he hadn't liked her uncle, had guessed it, sensed it, from all that he had not said about him rather than from what she'd heard, but the venom and bitterness she could now hear—see—in him seemed so totally out of character, so much the complete opposite from the tender, ador-ing lover who had left her only hours before that she could only stare at him in shocked bewilderment.

  'But then, you probably know all this already, don't you, Chrissie? Which is why you've taken such good care to conceal this desk from me...just as you've also concealed from me the fact that Charlie Platt was your uncle.'

  'No!' Chrissie protested.

  'No? No what?' Guy demanded savagely. 'No, he wasn't your uncle?'

  Chrissie bit her lip. She was in too much of a state of shock to speak or defend herself.

  She had known, of course, that sooner or later she was going to have to tell Guy who she was. And if she was honest, she had perhaps put off telling him longer than she ought, but she had never dreamt he would react like this, accuse her like this. Look at her as though...as though he found her utterly and completely beneath his contempt, a creature so, so far beneath him that he could hardly even bear to look at her.

  'I...I was going to tell you...I wanted to tell you,'

  she protested huskily, 'but—'

  'Of course you did,' Guy interrupted with silky-smooth dislike.

  'There hasn't been time... everything happened so quickly,' Chrissie told him doggedly, still trying to make him understand, to stop him before he ruined, destroyed, everything between them.

  'Yes...too quickly for you to have time to get rid of this, I assume you mean,' Guy accused her grittily, giving a brief nod in the direction of the desk. 'I always knew Charlie wasn't too fussy about how he earned his drinking money, but I never realised he'd turned to fencing stolen property—'

  'Stolen!' Chrissie exploded indignantly. 'That desk wasn't stolen. It belonged to my great-grandmother, my—'

  'That desk,' Guy cut across her curtly, his mouth compressing as he carefully spaced out every word,

  'was stolen less than a fortnight ago from Queensmead. I'd know it anywhere, even without having seen the description the police have circulated.

  I appraised it for Ben Crighton—not that it has much commercial value. It's a copy of the French original,'

  he told her coldly, 'and as a copy isn't worth a tenth of the original.'

  'You're lying,' Chrissie declared, her own shock and anguish giving way to an anger intense enough to match his own.

  Just what was he trying to accuse her of doing?

  Just what was he trying to imply? She had her mother's word that the desk had belonged to her grandmother and she would take her mother's word against anyone's— anyone's—any day of the week.

  I'm lying...?' For a moment,
the rage she could see in Guy's taut face and clenched fists was such that Chrissie automatically took a step back from him, her face going scarlet with mortification as he told her icily, 'I don't hit women. Not even a woman like you.'

  A woman like her!

  'How much more stolen stuff did he have stashed here, I wonder, and where is it now? I'm sure that's a question the police would be very interested in hearing the answer to.'

  The police! Chrissie's heart gave a frightened bound but she wasn't going to let him panic or ter-rorise her. Why should she? She had done nothing wrong and neither, in this instance, had her late uncle.

  The desk belonged to their family and Guy had simply mistaken it for the one stolen from Queensmead. He had to have done.

  As they confronted one another across the narrow width of the small hallway, Chrissie found it hard to believe that just a matter of hours ago they had been lying in one another's arms promising eternal fidelity and love, discussing the future they hoped to share together.

  She wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.

  Possibly both. How could she have been such a fool?

  It was obvious to her now that Guy was dangerously volatile and untrustworthy where his relationships were concerned. How many other women had he treated...deceived...the way he had done her? Had he come here this evening looking for an excuse to quarrel with her, blame her for the fact that he had fallen out of love with her?

  Love! He didn't begin to know the meaning of the word. But she did. Oh yes, she did, because, despite the pain he was now causing her, she knew perfectly well that if he was to turn to her, take her in his arms, beg her forgiveness, say it was all a mistake and it was just the shock of discovering she was Charlie's niece that had made him behave so cruelly, react so badly, she would want to accept his apology.

  But one look at his face told her that he was going to do no such thing and rather than risk losing face by allowing him to see how much he was hurting her, how difficult she was finding it to distance and detach herself from him and all that they had shared, she drew herself up to her full height and told him quietly,

  'I think, in the circumstances, you had better leave.'

  'Do you know something?' Guy responded sarcas-tically. I think you could be right. My God,' he added, shaking his head as he turned back towards the front door, 'you really had me fooled, do you know that? If Jenny hadn't let it slip that you were Charlie's niece—'

  'I would have told you about that,' Chrissie said proudly. 'In fact, it was only because you were so antagonistic towards him that I—'

  'You lied to me,' Guy interrupted coldly.

  'Just as you lied to me when I asked you about Jenny,' Chrissie challenged him.

  She wasn't going to let him have things all his own way, she decided. Why should she?

  'I met your sister in town this afternoon. She had one of your relatives with her. It seems that you've got rather a reputation as an unreliable and fickle lover,' she told him with a bitter little smile. 'Pity I didn't hear about it before we met.'

  He looked so angry that Chrissie's courage almost failed her. But why should she let him be the one making all the accusations?

  Yes, she had been wrong not to tell him about Uncle Charles but at least she had not concealed important facts about her sexual and emotional history from him.

  No wonder he had been such... such an experienced lover, she decided, summoning all the mental cynicism and self-protection she could whilst fighting to suppress the aching weight of her inner anguish and heartbreak.

  'I don't know what you've heard or from whom,'

  Guy returned bleakly, 'nor do I really care. What I felt for Jenny was a private and personal thing and at no time did Jenny reciprocate my feelings or waver from her love for Jon.'

  'Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?' Chrissie sneered with deliberately calculated nastiness.

  'You bitch!' Guy snarled as he wrenched open the front door and stormed through it.

  The cottage was already more than damp enough without her adding to its mildewy atmosphere with her tears, Chrissie remonstrated with herself well over an hour later when the now-silent tears of loss and pain were still trickling hopelessly down her face to betray her each time she thought she had them under control.

  Instead, to keep her hands if not her mind occupied, she had spent the evening rescrubbing every inch of the small, old-fashioned kitchen and so much so that her hands now felt as raw and tender as her emotions.

  How could she ever have been such a fool as to believe Guy when he told her that he loved her? She must have been bemused, bedevilled, besotted. There was no other logical explanation for what had happened—no logical explanation at all.

  Of course, he hadn't loved her. How could he? He didn't know her. He had probably just been using her to ease the pain of his—according to him, she decided darkly—unrequited love for Jenny. No, of course he hadn't loved her. Just as she hadn't loved him. So then, if she hadn't loved him, why on earth was she behaving like a tragedy queen, wringing her hands and crying, yes, crying foolish tears into a silent house? She ought to be feeling grateful that she had discovered so quickly just what he was.

  All those unbelievable lies he had told her about wanting to take her to Amsterdam to buy her an engagement ring. Yes, she was far, far better off without him, she decided.

  After he left Chrissie, Guy didn't go straight home.

  How could he? For the first time since he had left his young manhood behind him, he knew what it was to feel the need to expel his pent-up emotions via some act of physical violence, albeit not against another human being and not even against himself. However, he admitted grimly, right now he could see a lot of virtue in being able to hit some inanimate object very hard.

  Very, very hard.

  He frowned as he suddenly realised that his fast-paced walk through the town had inadvertently brought him to his old junior school—the scene of his long-ago childhood fear of Charlie Platt and the bullying and attempted blackmail Charlie had inflicted on him there.

  'I was going to tell you,' Chrissie had cried defensively when he had confronted her with the truth. But why should he believe her, how could he believe her, especially after he had seen that damned desk? And she had had the effrontery to pretend that it belonged to her family.

  There had been a moment when he had seen the look in her eyes, that had made him doubt...

  wonder...but then she had thrown that accusation at him about his supposed reputation and followed it up with that even more contemptuous comment about Jenny.

  He stared across the empty playground, mentally reliving their quarrel. His anger had gone now, leaving him feeling flat and drained, empty and disillu-sioned.

  He should have listened to that small warning voice that had urged him to be more cautious instead of...

  But the damage was done now. His love for Jenny had been a slow-growing, gentle emotion that he had lived with for a long time and one that he had come to realise was undoubtedly the result of being too much alone and of recognising in Jenny the type of woman who couldn't help but nurture and support others.

  His love for Chrissie had hit him like a bolt out of the blue. It had been an overwhelming force. It had possessed a passion, an intensity, a recklessness that had made him step so far outside his normal character, that at times, when he was with her, he had barely recognised himself. His love for her had...

  Had? His mouth twisted with cynical self-mockery as he turned away from the school and started to walk home.

  Just who did he think he was kidding? Love... The kind of emotion he had for Chrissie couldn't be wiped out by a mere act of will, no matter how much his pride and self-respect might demand that it was.

  Half an hour later when he walked into his comfortable kitchen, the first thing he saw was the supper he had prepared for Chrissie. Grimly he picked up the dishes of mouth-wateringly delicious epicurean deli-cacies and thrust the whole lot into the garbage.
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br />   The vintage bottle of wine he had bought to go with their meal was still on the table. He picked it up, glanced at the garbage and then looked ruefully at the bottle. He couldn't do it. It was too sacrilegious. He had opened the bottle and left the wine to breathe before going out. Absently he poured himself a glass.

  It was good, but not even its warm mellowness could ease the harsh, gritty pain he was feeling. He emptied the glass and poured himself another. He had always prided himself on being a good judge of character but tonight he had had proof of just how poor his judgement actually was. He had been utterly and completely taken in by Chrissie.

  His wineglass was empty. He frowned as he refilled it. It was pointless now to curse the fate that had brought them together. Better to curse his own folly in being deceived by it and by her. He looked blearily at the wine bottle, now three-quarters empty. There was no point in wasting what was left. Picking up the bottle and his glass, he headed for the stairs.

  Guy was dreaming, drawing Chrissie closer to him as he savoured the familiar warmth of her body, frowning as he felt her tense and look back over her shoulder to where another man was watching them.

  'Why are you looking at him?' he demanded jealously as he watched Charlie Platt smirking at him from the shadow of the school gates. 'You know who he is, don't you?'

  'I have to go to him,' Chrissie was protesting as she pulled away from his embrace. Then somehow Charlie was standing next to them, towering over him as he had done when Guy was a little boy, grinning tauntingly at Guy as he took hold of Chrissie's arm.

  'You didn't really think it was you she wanted, did you?' Charlie challenged, then he and Chrissie were walking away from him and he heard Charlie laughing and saying gloatingly to her, 'Look what I've got for you,' as he showed her the desk that for some reason had manifested itself on the pavement.

  'No. You mustn't touch it,' Guy heard himself protest, but Chrissie only laughed.

  'Of course I can touch it,' she told Guy. 'It's mine.

  Charlie gave it to me.'

  'No,' Guy denied, the sound of his own raw denial bringing him abruptly out of his dream to sit bolt up-right in bed, blinking in the darkness as he tried to shake away the disturbing emotions aroused by his dream.