‘I—I think so,’ she nodded sleepily.

  Velvet stood up, Vicki still in her arms, and placed the thin little body back into the single bed, sitting down beside her as she clutched at her hand. ‘I’ll stay right here until you’re asleep,’ she assured her. ‘Why don’t you go into the other room?’ she spoke softly to Jerard. ‘There’s no point in both of us sitting here.’ And he looked in need of a drink.

  ‘No,’ he agreed huskily, coming over to kiss his daughter affectionately on the forehead. ’ ‘Night, darling.’

  ‘ ‘Night, Daddy.’ Her arms clung around his throat. ‘I’m sorry if I was a—a nuisance.’

  ‘You’re never a nuisance,’ he told her firmly.

  ‘But I made you get Velvet—and everything.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he kissed her again, infinitely gentle with the person who meant the most to him. ‘Go to sleep now,’ he encouraged.

  She relaxed back on the pillows, asleep even before her arms slipped from around his throat. He tucked the blankets more firmly about her, gazing down at her with a haggard expression.

  ‘Will she be all right now?’ Velvet asked him once they were in the lounge.

  He gave a deep sigh. ‘I hope so.’ He poured himself out some whisky. ‘Would you like one?’ He swallowed all the fiery liquid in one gulp.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she shook her head.

  Jerard slumped down in an armchair. ‘She hasn’t been as bad as that since her mother died. God, that Rogers woman has a lot to answer for!’ His expression was savage.

  ‘She couldn’t help falling,’ Velvet pointed out reasonably.

  He drew a ragged breath. ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘I—Well, I’d better be going now,’ and she turned, graceful even in denims and red cotton sun-top.

  ‘No!’ his protest stopped her, and she turned slowly. ‘Stay for a while,’ he pleaded.

  He looked ill, grey beneath the tan, deep lines of weariness beside his eyes. Velvet’s heart softened towards him. ‘Just for a few minutes,’ she agreed softly, and sat down, sensing his need not to be alone.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?’ he asked after several minutes of companionable silence.

  ‘Very sure,’ she nodded. ‘Although I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee. Still,’ she shrugged, ‘it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But it does matter.’ Jerard stood up, pulling her to her feet and taking her into a kitchen. ‘Help yourself,’ he opened the cupboard containing the makings of a cup of coffee.

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ she put the coffee on to percolate. ‘I thought I’d have to send down for some,’ she explained with a blush.

  His mouth twisted, as he replenished his whisky glass. ‘Something you didn’t intend doing, not when it would mean letting my staff know you’re up here with me at four o’clock in the morning.’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘No.’

  ‘The kitchen is new, Velvet,’ he taunted. ‘You probably remember it as a bedroom.’

  Her head went back in shock. ’I remember it as a bedroom?’

  His mouth set in a thin line. ‘Something else you’ve forgotten?’ he rasped, swallowing the remainder of his whisky.

  She bit her lip, her bottom lip trembling vulnerably. ‘I’ve been here before?’ she asked in distress; she had never felt so lost before, not even when Anthony had died.

  Jerard turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Velvet followed him slowly, the coffee forgotten, looking about the apartment with new eyes. She looked at Jerard, seeing the contempt in his face.

  ‘You’d better go, Velvet,’ he snapped, ‘before I finally lose my temper with you.’

  Finally? What had he been doing since they first met? ‘I want to explain to you—’

  ‘Explain what, for God’s sake?’ he exploded. ‘That you chose to forget me as soon as you had your lawyer’s ring on your finger? I realise now that I was just a last fling for you. After all, every girl likes one lover before she settles down with her husband. I should have realised I was yours,’ he added disgustedly. ‘God, I was thirty-seven then, I should have realised a twenty-year-old girl wouldn’t seriously be interested in me.’

  He had to be joking! He was the sort of man who would have women, of all ages, interested in him when he was seventy. He would never lose his harsh good looks, the muscled straightness of his body. Yes, women would always find him attractive—as she did.

  ‘Mr—Jerard,’ she hastily amended as she remembered his threat of earlier, knowing by the twist of his lips that he too recalled it. She licked her lips, hurriedly stopping that too as she remembered how provocative he found it. She set her mouth in a straight line, her gaze unflinching as she looked at him. ‘I want to tell you why everything you tell me about the past is a mystery to me,’ she said firmly, her tone very positive.

  ‘Strange,’ he taunted. ‘Nothing about you is a mystery to me.’

  Her eyes flashed darkly brown. ‘Will you listen to me!’ she raised her voice, determined he was going to hear her out, even if it took the few brief hours left until morning!

  ‘Go ahead,’ he shrugged uninterestedly, leaning back with his eyes closed.

  Velvet glared at him. If he dared to fall asleep …! ‘Are you listening?’ she demanded angrily.

  ‘Avidly.’ He made himself more comfortable, his eyes still closed.

  She sighed her frustration. How could she talk to a man who to all intents and purposes was fast asleep! ‘Jerard—’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he sighed, sitting up, a bored expression on his face. ‘Go ahead.’

  A bored listener was better than no listener at all, so she began to tell him of that year she had no memory of, haltingly at first, and then in a rush as she knew she had the whole of his attention, and his eyes narrowed as he listened.

  ‘So there you have it,’ she finished with a shrug. ‘The doctors said it could all come back, but then again it may just remain a—a blank.’ She looked at him searchingly.

  Jerard didn’t say anything, as the seconds stretched into minutes, and still he continued to look at her, his eyes becoming colder and colder by the minute. Finally he stood up, his face a harsh mask. ‘Very convenient,’ he drawled insultingly. ‘But if I’d wanted to listen to a fairy story I could have got you to read one out of Vicki’s books. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get a couple of hours’ sleep.’ He turned his back on her.

  It was such a definite snub that it couldn’t be ignored. ‘You don’t believe me,’ Velvet choked. He was the only person outside her family who had ever been told her secret, and he didn’t believe a word of it!

  He turned, his expression contemptuous. ‘Was I supposed to?’ he scorned. ‘Credit me with some sense, Velvet. It’s like something out of a soap-opera,’ he derided.

  Her bottom lip trembled emotionally. ‘But it’s the truth!’

  ‘Maybe the truth as you like to see it. Was your marriage to Anthony Dale such a disaster that you prefer to claim you’ve forgotten it?’ his voice was thick with sarcasm.

  She winced as if he had physically struck her. ‘My marriage to Anthony wasn’t a disaster at all,’ she denied heatedly.

  Jerard’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘I thought you couldn’t remember it,’ he taunted.

  ‘I can’t,’ she flushed deeply.

  ‘Then how do you know it was a success?’

  ‘My brother—’

  ‘Ah yes, Simon.’

  She gasped. ‘You know my brother?’

  Jerard shook his head. ‘Only what you’ve told me about him.’

  ‘I—I talked about Simon?’

  Jerard nodded. ‘And his wife, Janice.’

  It was very disconcerting that this man should know so much about her when she knew next to nothing about him. ‘Well, Simon told me I was happy with Anthony,’ she defended.

  ‘And how would he know that?’

  ‘Well, I—It was obvious!’

  ‘Believe me, nothing is that obvious.’

  ‘But I was happy with him,’ she declared stubbornly. ‘I—We—I have Tony to prove how happy I was with Anthony.’

  ‘And I have Vicki to prove how happy I was with Tina,’ Jerard mocked. ‘And we both know I was never that.’

  ‘You weren’t?’ she blinked, taking Tina to be his wife.

  ‘For God’s sake, Velvet,’ he snapped, ‘you’ve taken this farce far enough. You’ve shown me quite plainly that you aren’t interested in carrying on where we left off two years ago. There’s no need to pretend that either of us loved our spouses.’

  ‘I loved Anthony!’

  ‘Like hell you did!’

  Tears flooded her eyes. ‘But I did.’

  ‘As a child might love a friend maybe, or as a sister might love an adored older brother, but not as anything else, not as a lover, not like you loved me—or like I thought you loved me,’ he amended harshly. ‘But that’s over with now, Velvet, the dream turned out to be just that. You aren’t the girl I fell in love with, that girl would never use such a feeble story to hide from the fact that she loved me enough to spend a stolen week with me, a week when we hardly ventured out of this apartment, a week when we made love until we were dizzy with it, a week when I thought you’d given yourself to me so completely that not even the passage of time could part us. No, you aren’t that girl,’ he added quietly. ‘She had more guts in her little finger than you have in the whole of that beautiful body you take such pride in.’

  His last insults passed over her head. ‘I stayed with you for a whole week?’ she swallowed hard.

  ‘Yes,’ he snapped confirmation.

  Oh heavens, it was worse than she had thought. When Jerard claimed they had been lovers she had imagined it had been an impulsive one night in a stranger’s arms. But a week! God, it was a lifetime—and it could hardly be called impulsive! She wished she knew exactly what had happened that week—beside the fact that they seemed to have made love constantly!

  ‘I—I don’t know what to say,’ she mumbled dazedly, totally confused by what Jerard had just told her.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ he dismissed harshly. ‘Just don’t ever repeat that drivel to me again. If you would rather forget the time we shared together then consider it forgotten—by both of us,’ he added grimly. ‘As far as I’m concerned you’re a stranger, anyway.’

  Velvet flinched, wishing in some way she could make him believe her. ‘Jerard—’

  ‘Goodnight, Velvet,’ he cut in firmly. ‘I’m grateful for your help with Vicki,’ the words seemed to be forced out of him, ‘but I won’t bother you again.’

  ‘And if Vicki should need me?’

  His face hardened. ‘We’ll deal with that when—and if—it happens.’ His tone left her in no doubt as to his feelings on the matter.

  She stumbled out of the apartment and went back up to her own room. Well, she had told Jerard the truth and he hadn’t believed her, there was nothing else she could do—except cry herself to sleep. And she did that, somehow feeling hurt and confused by Jerard’s treatment of her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  VELVET slept in late the next morning, waking up after ten, wondering why Carly or Paul hadn’t come to her room and demanded her presence for work on the beach. She soon found out why they hadn’t!

  ‘Daniels called me early this morning,’ Paul muttered, as she joined him and Carly by the pool. ‘He said you didn’t leave him until four-thirty this morning, so you’d need to rest.’

  Colour flamed in her cheeks. ‘Did he explain why I was in his apartment until four-thirty this morning?’

  Paul looked mocking. ‘No, and I didn’t ask him.’

  ‘I went to see Vicki,’ she defended indignantly. Jerard had done this deliberately!

  ‘Of course you did,’ Paul nodded.

  ‘But I did!’

  ‘I just agreed, didn’t I?’ he taunted.

  She frowned. ‘It was the way you agreed.’

  Carly giggled. ‘Well, really, Velvet, that was a pretty feeble excuse. His little girl must have been in bed hours by that time of morning.’

  ‘She had, but she woke up, and she wanted me. She—she seems to have taken to me,’ Velvet revealed awkwardly.

  ‘Like her father,’ Paul teased. ‘All right, all right, there’s no need to get violent,’ he said at her furious expression. ‘So you and Jerard Daniels didn’t so much as hold hands last night.’

  Velvet blushed as she remembered just how intimately Jerard had touched her, still confused by her own reaction to those caresses, although luckily they hadn’t haunted her dreams the second time she went to bed.

  Paul was watching her closely. ‘On second thoughts,’ he said slowly, ‘maybe he did—and lot more besides, by the look on your face.’

  ‘Paul—’

  ‘You’re embarrassing her again,’ Carly told him. ‘Let’s go for a swim and leave her to calm down.’

  ‘I’m going back inside,’ Velvet told them crossly. ‘I take it we aren’t working today?’

  ‘No.’ Paul stood up, very lean and attractive in navy blue swimming trunks. ‘We’ve nearly finished, anyway.’

  ‘Does that mean we can go home soon?’ Velvet asked hopefully.

  He nodded. ‘We’re booked on a plane to England in two days.’

  ‘Good!’ She made no effort to hide her pleasure in that arrangement.

  ‘Missing Tony?’ Carly sympathised.

  ‘Too much to want to do this again in a hurry,’ she nodded. ‘I think I’ll go and get myself some breakfast.’

  ‘Next time I should make Daniels provide that,’ Paul teased. ‘It’s the usual practice.’

  Her answer was to push him into the pool, watching with satisfaction as he came up spluttering.

  ‘Good for you!’ Carly chuckled, diving smoothly into the water to join her boy-friend.

  Velvet was still smiling as she drank her coffee and ate her toast, the smile broadening as Greg joined her a few minutes later.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘You’re still in one piece, then?’ he gave a rueful grin.

  She nodded. ‘And you?’

  ‘Mm. I’ve had a bit more of my tail chewed off, but I’m otherwise unscathed.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’ Her smile faded.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ He touched her hand.

  She knew that it was. If Jerard hadn’t come down to see her he would never have seen Greg. But Greg seemed prepared to forget it, and so must she. ‘Did you ever see to that complaint?’

  He gave a rueful smile. ‘Eventually—after they’d complained that I hadn’t seen to the first complaint.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Velvet burst out laughing, then her humour faded as she saw Jerard Daniels and Vicki standing in the doorway of the dining-room. She looked away. ‘Are you on duty, Greg?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Sure. But why—Oh no!’ he groaned, seeing Jerard too. ‘Not again!’ He put his face in his hands.

  Velvet knew how he felt, she was beginning to feel rather haunted by Jerard herself. ‘Maybe if you just get up and leave he won’t say anything,’ she suggested hopefully. ‘After all, you have to be pleasant to the guests.’

  ‘But not one guest in particular,’ Greg grimaced. ‘Oh well, here goes.’ He stood up, walking calmly to the door. ‘Sir,’ he greeted politely.

  ‘Boyd,’ Jerard nodded curtly.

  Velvet felt the tension leave her as Greg managed to escape without the verbal slaughtering he had been expecting, and turned back to her coffee, still deeply aware of Jerard being somewhere in the room.

  ‘Can I ask her now, Daddy?’ Vicki could be heard asking excitedly.

  ‘Vicki, I told you—’

  ‘Oh, please, Daddy!’ she pleaded.

  Whatever it was the little girl wanted Velvet didn’t see how her father could hold out against her, she knew she wouldn’t be able to.

  ‘Okay,’ he murmured agreement. ‘But no pressurising,’ he warned.

  Vicki appeared beside Velvet’s table, jumping up and down in her excitement. No sign of her distress of last night was now evident in her animated face, and her shorts and top were as casual as Velvet’s own.

  ‘Hello,’ Velvet greeted her with a smile.

  ‘Hello,’ Vicki returned, suddenly shy.

  ‘Would you like to join me?’ Velvet invited, at the same time sensing Jerard’s presence close by. A curious sensation fluttered down her spine, and she looked up into his hard blue eyes as she came to stand behind Vicki, the cream shirt and brown trousers showing the taut outline of his body.

  He didn’t approve of Vicki talking to her, it was there in every hard line of his body, and Velvet’s hackles rose in indignation. Just who did he think he was anyway!

  ‘Daddy and I ate breakfast upstairs,’ Vicki told her in her serious little voice.

  ‘Oh. Well, would you like some fruit juice?’ She indicated the jug of fresh orange juice on the table.

  ‘Yes, please.’ Vicki gave a wide grin and perched herself on one of the chairs.

  Velvet looked calmly up at Jerard Daniels as he still loomed over them. ‘Would you like some?’ she asked him casually, pouring Vicki’s into a glass.

  The set of his mouth showed his disgust. ‘Not for me,’ he refused calmly enough.

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’ she invited, not at all daunted by his attitude.

  ‘No—’

  ‘Oh, sit down, Daddy!’ Vicki’s nose came out of the glass long enough for her to request, a ring of orange around her top lip. ‘I haven’t asked Velvet yet, and besides, I have to drink my orange juice.’

  He did so with ill-grace, his thigh momentarily touching Velvet’s, and her bare skin tingled from the contact. She was wearing yellow silky shorts and matching top, prepared for the heat of the day, although now she wished she had worn something else, something that didn’t make her feel quite so naked.

  She looked at Vicki, pointedly ignoring Jerard. ‘Haven’t asked me what, poppet?’

  The little girl put down her empty glass. ‘I—We—Daddy!’ she looked to her father for help.

  His expression was stern. ‘It was your idea, Vicki.’