should actually want a woman like her—a woman who had never really had time to play and enjoy life, a woman who had dedicated herself to her business life, a woman who took her responsibilities so seriously that they were the prime focus of her whole life.
She had been a fool.And it didn’t help knowing that she was far from the first woman Giles had deceived. Indeed he had made quite a career out of it, safe in the knowledge that his other victims, like her, would not want to broadcast their idiocy.
It made it no better knowing that she had willingly allowed him to dictate the course of their relationship, to sweep her off her feet, insisting that he loved her, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. That holiday in Provence had been going to be a time of pre-wedding intimacy, a whole month of getting to know one another, of becoming lovers, of committing themselves to their shared future.
She had been so blinded by wonder, by the thrill of believing that he loved her, that she hadn’t even looked for any flaws in him.
Tom had told her gently that she mustn’t blame herself; that there came a time in everyone’s life when they were vulnerable to that kind of foolishness—that she had been lucky because fate had stepped in and saved her before it was too late.
As her solicitor he had felt bound to point out to her that, had she and Giles actually been married, she could have suffered far more than the emotional destruction of her life. She could have virtually lost if not everything she had worked for then certainly a good part of it.
That had been a bitter pill to swallow: the knowledge that Giles, simply because of her imagined wealth, had callously and cold-bloodedly set out to deceive her into believing he loved her. He had wanted, not her, but the company. His desire had not been for her, but for money.
The humiliation of that knowledge was something she thought she would have to carry for the rest of her life—that and the knowledge that she had been such a fool. Falling in love with a cheat was something a girl in her teens could be forgiven, but a woman of her age ought to have known better, ought to have realised…What? That it was impossible for a man to fall instantly and completely in love with someone like her, a woman who, while passably attractive, had hardly the kind of head-turning looks that had men falling over themselves for her attention.
Even now she still couldn’t understand why it had happened—why she had so easily allowed herself to be deceived. She shivered suddenly, her flesh going cold as she dwelt on all she had put at risk—not just her own future, but her mother’s as well and those of her employees, and all for what? For the meaningless smiles and even more meaningless flattery of a man who had cold-bloodedly set out to use her.
Was she so emotionally bereft of inner strength, so vulnerable, so in need of believing herself loved that she had not had the sense to see what Giles really wanted? Was she so much of an emotional fool that she had really believed him when he’d sworn he loved her, when he’d told her he wanted her as his wife? Why hadn’t she questioned him more deeply? Why hadn’t she suspected?
Because it had never occurred to her that she might fall into that kind of trap, that a man might want her simply because of the financial gain she represented.
That was what hurt her the most of all, she recognised: that she had been stupid enough to believe herself loved when all the time Giles had been laughing at her gullibility, when he had been secretly assessing her financial worth. All those lies about wanting their lovemaking to be perfect, about wanting to take her away somewhere where he could have her all to himself. All those lies, which she had believed, when the truth was that he had already been sleeping with someone else.
In New York women employed private detectives to search into the lives of their menfriends. She had thought them cynical and cold-blooded. Now she was not so sure.
Facing up to the knowledge that she had made such a fool of herself had been the hardest thing she had ever had to do. She had been remorseless with herself, not allowing herself to hide from the truth, making herself confront her own frailties, her own stupidity, making herself see that she had craved being loved so much that she had almost eagerly thrown away her intelligence and self-respect.
Up until Giles’s arrival in her life, she had considered herself to be fulfilled and as reasonably happy as any human being could expect to be.
Marriage, children—these were secret dreams she had kept tucked away in a private corner of her mind. She had looked around at the relationships of her friends, seen how very difficult it was in this frenetically paced age merely to find the time to devote to developing and then cosseting emotional bonds, and had told herself prosaically that maybe later in her life she would opt for a sensible, unpassionate marriage to some kind, bland man who would share her desire for children and stability, but that that time had not come yet and that she was presently more than content with her life, that the wild love-affairs indulged in by some of her friends were not for her and more to be looked upon with mild amusement than envy, that the trauma of intense emotional relationships were never worth the expenditure of time and emotion that went into them.
And then she had met Giles, and he had turned her whole world upside-down, and she, fool that she was, had helped him.
Well, she was suffering for that self-indulgence now.
‘Exhaustion’was her doctor’s pithy diagnosis of the enervating malaise that had drained her to the point where she felt she could simply no longer function as the person she had once been.
There had been a good deal of shocked reaction from her friends. The words ‘yuppie flu’ had floated sympathetically on the air. None of them had been tactless enough to suggest she was suffering from something as unfashionable as the misery caused by a broken heart, especially as it was twelve months since she and Giles had parted. Modern women did not have hearts that broke; they were far too sensible, far too mature. They wisely assessed the advantages and disadvantages of every relationship they entered, not having the time to waste on those that were unprofitable. If only she had followed that sensible course…But she hadn’t, had she? And she was left, not only with the pain of being deceived by someone she had thought cared for her, not only with the anguish of her own misery and her bruised pride, but she was also having to contend with the realisation that she was not the woman she had always supposed; that she was not the mature, wise creature she had always prided herself on being; that she was in fact as vulnerable as the rest of her sex when it came to her deepest emotions and needs.
Which was why, on the insistence of her doctor, she was taking this enforced break. It had been Tom, her solicitor, and one of her closest friends, who had offered her the use of the Pembrokeshire cottage he had recently inherited from an uncle.
‘It’s virtually in the middle of nowhere, five miles from the nearest village, but the countryside is wonderful. I went down there never having even seen the place. I’d already made up my mind to sell, but once I did see it…Well, I’ve decided to keep it, and it’s yours for just as long as you need it, Angelica.’
She had wanted to protest that she wasn’t an invalid, that she didn’t need it, that she didn’t need anything or anyone; that was how raw and sore she still was inside, but she had known she would have been lying. She badly needed somewhere to crawl away into and hide, somewhere where she could lick her wounds and recover at her own pace.
She could leave the business in the capable hands of Paul Lyons, her second-in-command; she knew that.
She didn’t love Giles any more. How could she? The man she had thought she loved had never actually existed, but that didn’t stop her heart from thumping crazily every time she saw a man with fair, sun-streaked hair and blue eyes. It didn’t stop her from waking up alone at night with her face stiff from the drying salt of her tears. It didn’t stop her from feeling it was impossible for her to face the world, from feeling that everyone who looked at her knew what a fool she had been.
Tom was right—six weeks away from London, living simply and on her own, was probably just what she needed to get things back into perspective, to recoup her old energy and determination.
They had had lunch together yesterday, and then he