Questions Of Trust: A Medical Romance (13 page)

She stood on tiptoes and whispered, her mouth close to his ear: ‘Can you picture me, Tom? On a beach? Stretched out, oiled and bared to the sun?’

The warm tip of her tongue touched his ear. With a cry he wrenched himself away, turning his back on her before he lost control of himself. Immediately Rebecca was up behind him, pressing her body against his, her breasts firm and full against his back, her arms sliding round so that her long-nailed hands splayed across his chest.

‘Please,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, Tom, please. I want you. I need you. On the bed, right now. Just like before. You want it too. I know you do.’

Her hand swept down towards the front of his trousers. He caught her wrist, pushed her arm away.

‘No, Rebecca.’ His voice was guttural.

‘Tom –’

‘No!’
He flung her arm away and broke free, stalking across the room and turning to face her when he got to the wall. She stood staring after him, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, her head lowered, her lips full and moist and slightly parted. One of her hands reached up to a breast, her fingertip teasing the nipple which had risen visibly through the thin material. Her other hand roamed down over her belly and lower still.

‘Rebecca.’ Anger and lust mingled in him, and he concentrated on the anger, stoking it, allowing it to get the upper hand because he knew what would happen otherwise. ‘You tricked me.’

‘Like I said, Tom. I had to. Otherwise you’d never have agreed to see me.’

‘What do you want?’

She began to move towards him again. ‘You know what I want. Haven’t I made it clear?’

Tom held up his hand to fend her off but she continued to advance. ‘But why? Why now?’

‘I’ve never fallen out of lust with you, Tom. Perhaps I never fell out of love with you, either.’

‘What –’

‘I can give you what you want, Tom. We can help one another.’

He stared at her, suddenly understanding, and it was as though the curtains had just been drawn back to let the sun flood into the room.

‘You thought you could make me give up custody of Kelly… by
seducing
me?’

‘It’s not
seduction
, Tom.’ She’d stopped a few feet short of him this time. ‘We’ve… done it before. It would be picking up where we left off.’

‘Picking up…? Rebecca, will you listen to yourself! We’re divorced. The marriage ended. At your insistence, I might add. And now you think you can get me to give up custody of my daughter by sleeping with me?’

‘I don’t –’

‘What do you think custody means to me? Do you think it’s some sort of bonus, some sort of severance pay you’ve granted me, to be swapped for something I might prefer? Kelly lives with me. I’m her main caregiver. We’ve built up a life together over the last six months and more. I’m not going to relinquish that for anything, least of all for a quick roll in the hay with a woman I once found attractive.’

‘
Still
find attractive.’ Her expression challenged him to disagree. Tom stared at her in wonder.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘You really don’t get it, do you? Anything I’ve been saying to you. Now or over the last few weeks.’

Rebecca’s brazen demeanour was beginning to crack as her control slipped. She put a faltering hand up to her throat. ‘She’s my daughter. I’m her mother. You’ve no right to keep her.’

‘I’ve every right. You’re still entitled to see her and spend time with her, even have her over at yours or take her on holiday sometimes. But she lives with me, Rebecca. End of discussion.’ He sighed. ‘Why don’t you just go back to London, Rebecca. Stop hanging around here, stop wasting your time. And mine.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go. Don’t you dare pull a stunt like this again.’ He headed for the door.

Behind him she said, ‘Last chance.’

‘What?’

‘This is your last chance, Tom. I’m warning you.’

Tom stopped. Slowly, deliberately, he turned back. Rebecca was standing by the bed, arms by her sides, her fists clenched. The sexy, pouting look had gone from her face and had been replaced by a dark, glowering expression he hadn’t seen before.

‘Yes, Rebecca? You’re warning me? Please tell me what about.’

‘Reconsider, or you’ll be sorry.’

‘Do your worst. I’ll be ready.’

‘No, you won’t.’

There was something about the certainty with which Rebecca said it, something about the hint of a smile that played about her lips, that made Tom ask: ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m just saying. I told you before, Tom, that you have no idea what I’m capable of. You’re about to find out.’

He resisted the impulse to take a step towards her. ‘If you do anything, anything, to harm Kelly –’

‘Oh, no, Tom.’ Her eyes were wide in
faux
innocence. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt her.’

It was only when he was through the doors of the hotel and striding back towards his car that he realised there’d been the ghost of an emphasis on the word
her
.

Chapter Eight

Even working freelance as she did, Chloe experienced the same feelings on a Monday morning as a nine-to-five officer worker: a sense of being slightly daunted by the week ahead, and an initial lethargy and reluctance to get going.

She’d conducted the interview with the deputy leader of the town council on Friday afternoon. It had been a cordial meeting, the councillor initially laying on the bonhomie with a shovel but retreating into defensiveness when Chloe pressed him on his organisation’s failure to address the estate residents’ concerns. Although she’d typed up the interview as close to word-for-word as she could recall it, Chloe had saved the writing of the actual article until today. It had been tempting to spend the weekend working on it, but she’d been determined to devote Saturday and Sunday to Jake, exclusively, with no room for work. And she’d stuck to it. On Saturday they’d driven to a new out-of-town zoo which turned out to be more out of town than she’d realised, and on Sunday they had travelled all the way to London to see a matinee children’s theatre production in the West End. Exhausted, but happy, Chloe had dropped into bed at ten on Sunday evening, slept for an unbroken nine hours, and awoke refreshed and ready for the day.

But with that Monday morning feeling, nonetheless.

She set up the dining room table methodically, her laptop in the centre, her printed notes to one side, her phone and coffee mug to the other. Jake was in her line of sight, playing happily on the rug. Sooner or later she’d need to set up a proper study, in the spare bedroom, but for now this arrangement suited her.

Her email inbox was full; she hadn’t checked it since Friday afternoon, quite deliberately. Chloe supposed catching up with emails was a forgivable indulgence before setting down to work, and didn’t represent Monday morning displacement activity designed to avoid work.

A few of the twenty or so emails were junk messages which had dodged her spam folder. These she deleted immediately. Three more were from friends and former colleagues in London, catching up. She saved these, to be replied to later on, at her leisure and when she could give them the attention they deserved. She’d been neglecting her old friends, she acknowledged guiltily.

The work emails she spent more time on. There were a couple from Mike Sellers, addressed to her personally and following up on a couple of queries she’d sent him on Friday after the interview, in which she’d asked about the ins and outs of the local council’s workings. Other emails were essentially memos, copied to all staff and freelancers attached to the
Pemberham Gazette
.

One of them was from a staff reporter at the paper to Mike Sellers. Chloe was one of several people copied in, and when she scanned the content she realised she’d probably been added inadvertently to the CC list, as a result of a copy-and-paste job. The email was about a story involving some fundraising event taking place in the town this summer.

Chloe was about to delete the message when an addendum at the end caught her eye:

PS. Thanks for the tip-off about the Dr Carlyle thing. Will look into ASAP and get back 2U.

Chloe read it and reread it. There was only one Dr Carlyle it could possibly be referring to. What was this all about?

She took a sip of her coffee and thought about it. She had to find out what it meant. But wouldn’t it seem intrusive of her if she simply rang up the reporter who’d sent the message and asked him about it? He’d copied the email to her by mistake, but was still responsible for having done so. Still, the correct thing to do in such cases was to delete the email as soon as you realised it wasn’t meant for you, and say no more about it.

Chloe decided that she was a journalist, after all, someone whose job it was to get to the truth even if it involved an indirect and sometimes cunning approach. She’d speak to Mike, her editor, on some pretext, and find a way to steer the conversation as subtly as possible to the subject of Tom Carlyle. It was easy enough to find reasons to speak to Mike given that she was busy writing a fairly major article for him.

She picked up the phone and rang the
Gazette
’s office. Mike’s secretary answered. The boss was in a meeting, and wouldn’t be out until lunchtime. Would Chloe like to leave a message? Chloe replied that she was calling about the story – Mike would know which one she meant – and wanted to speak to him non-urgently about it.

After she’d rung off, Chloe stared at the message on the screen.
The Dr Carlyle thing...
Might it be something to do with Tom’s custody problem? But why then would the
Pemberham Gazette
be interested? In the months Chloe had been associated with the
Gazette
she’d come to appreciate that it was a serious paper of record, committed to honest and professional reporting of news which might be of legitimate interest to the community. It wasn’t some muckraking rag, bent on stoking up scandal. It was hardly likely to pry into a citizen’s private business.

Had something happened to Tom? The possibility struck her with cold force. Chloe had been out of town for much of the weekend; might Tom have come to some harm in her absence? Surely not, she thought. For one thing, word would have spread already and Mrs McFarland would have been round like a shot to tell Chloe.

Untamed speculation was like weeds rapidly taking over the garden of the mind. Chloe knew this, and she remembered also how annoyed she’d been that the ladies of the town had been coming up with fanciful ideas about her and Tom. So she forced herself to put the cryptic email out of her thoughts and concentrate on the morning’s work.

By half past twelve in the afternoon, nearly four hours later, she had the first draft of her article finished. And a pretty decent draft it was, too, she thought proudly. It was a little rough around the edges, and she wasn’t convinced she’d quite got the balance right yet between straight reportage and editorialising; but on the whole it was a fine piece of work. She decided to take a break to prepare some lunch for herself and Jake, then have another read through her manuscript with a fresh eye. Perhaps she might even have the final draft ready for Mike by late afternoon, even though he needed it only on Wednesday.

At a little after three o’clock, when Chloe was deeply into a critical rereading of her article, her phone rang. It was Mike Sellers.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

Chloe had already thought up a few questions for him, some points of clarification about the article. He answered them readily, and sounded on the point of saying his goodbyes when Chloe said: ‘Have you got anything else lined up for me? Any story after this one?’

‘Yes, a couple, actually,’ said Mike. ‘Plus, there will probably be follow-ons from this one. Have things changed on the estate, three months on, et cetera.’

‘Anything or anyone for me to investigate?’ she said, in as casual a manner as she could manage.

There was a pause at the other end. Mike said: ‘What are you referring to, Chloe?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. I just wondered if there were any juicy new stories brewing?’

Another silence. Then he sighed audibly. ‘So you’ve read the email, too.’

‘Email? Which one?’ But her pulse had quickened.

‘The one Simon sent to me, and copied to all and sundry by mistake. The one with the mysterious reference at the end.’

‘Dr Carlyle.’ She felt bold enough to come out and say it. She might be a journalist and therefore nosy by nature, but Mike was an even more seasoned pressman and had detected right away that she’d caught the scent of the story from the tone and nature of her questions.

‘Yes.’ He seemed to be deliberating at the other end, before he said, ‘Chloe, I know you’re a freelancer and not on my paper’s staff, so strictly speaking this isn’t any of your concern. But I’ve come to respect your discretion and your integrity enough to believe you need to be let in on a few details. Especially because you’ll hear about it sooner or later.’

‘Hear about what, Mike?’

‘I don’t want to say anything over the phone. And I certainly don’t want to put anything I writing, either. Look, I’m too busy to meet you today, but could you come in tomorrow morning, say around nine thirty? I’ll explain then.’