At eighteen, her daydreams and folly cruelly exposed by Simon’s sophisticated mockery of her, she had thought her world had ended; she had wanted it to end, unable to endure the pain of his cruelty … and he had been cruel … encouraging her to believe he returned her feelings only to turn on her with ill-concealed contempt … taunting her for her inexperience. It had been a hard lesson for her to learn, especially as she had made no attempt to hide her feelings for him.
‘Well then, I’m afraid there’s something else I must tell you.’
Her heart seemed to seize up, her body freezing and yet burning at the same time. Dear God don’t let her mother tell her he was married … in love with someone else … ‘Jeremy wants you to spend the summer working for him.’
It was several minutes before she could take in the meaning of her mother’s words, so great was the shock to her system of her overwhelming reaction. For years she had barely given Simon a thought. She had put him behind her, and yet the very mention of his name; the very thought of him being involved with someone else … Just reaction, she assured herself shakily … Of course she was over him … what she had felt for him had been an adolescent crush, nothing more.
‘Jeremy wants me to work for him?’ she repeated, trying to force her brain to work as she fought for control of her rioting emotions.
‘No, darling, not for him,’ her mother corrected patiently, ‘He wants you to work for Simon. Apparently, his latest book is going to be set in the Carribean. It’s about an Elizabethan adventurer who sailed with Drake and then turned pirate. Simon discovered a vague story about him when he was on holiday there last year. Apparently there’s a local legend about this man, and the dynasty he founded. He died in a shipwreck, apparently caused deliberately … the local legend is that it happened because a rival pirate gang had raided his home. Simon has worked out where such a wreck would be, if indeed the story is true, and he needs an experienced secretary, cum illustrator, cum diver to work with him during the summer while he tries to piece the story together.’
‘Why me?’
Her eyes were guarded, cool almost as she studied her mother.
‘I promise you it wasn’t my idea. Jeremy mentioned you first. He told Simon what an excellent job you did for Miles in India last year.’
Christy sighed. Last year she had spent four months in India with Miles Trent, another writer involved with the same publishing house as her mother. Miles had been writing a novel about the British Raj and had persuaded Christy to go to India with him as his assistant. A mild-mannered, chronically disorganised man, he had claimed that the speed with which his novel had been completed was due solely to Christy’s help. It was Christy’s personal view that the reason Miles had been so pleased with her had little to do with her professional ability, but a good deal to do with the fact that she was completely immune to his rather film-starish brand of blond good looks. Poor Miles; no one could be less equipped to deal with the feminine interest he aroused then he was. He looked every inch the blond macho hero, but in reality was an extremely serious writer, dedicated to his work—a bachelor still at thirty-odd, he had leaned heavily on Christy for protection from the many women who had tried to get involved with him. He was very fond of Christy but Georgina had been very frank in the opinion she gave to Christy which was that Miles was a man with little enjoyment of his effect on the opposite sex, and therefore unlikely to be very rewarding as a lover. Christy was inclined to think that her mother was right, and it had amused her when she came home to see the headlines in the gossip press, linking her name with his, and suggesting coyly that there was more than a working relationship between them. Two more unlikely lovers it would be harder to find, she had reflected at the time.
‘Well, there’s no need to worry about it,’ she told her mother calmly now. ‘Simon is hardly likely to want me as his research assistant. Why settle for a person who can combine all three roles in one, when he can have the variety of three separate females to choose from. You know Simon; he always did prefer variety.’
‘I’m afraid on this occasion it seems that he doesn’t,’ Georgina replied quietly. ‘He wants you to work for him, Christy. In fact he made a point of telling me so. Apparently, the timing of the diving is very important … the weather will only be suitable for a very short span of time.’
‘Tell him I can’t swim,’ Christy retorted curtly, ‘I don’t want the job Mum … I’m looking forward to my summer off.’
‘Christy …’ Georgina looked at her daughter helplessly. How could she trespass into her daughter’s privacy when she was the one who had taught her to respect it in herself and others? ‘My dear, I’m afraid he’s determined to have you …’
It was an unfortunate choice of words, and one that made Christy’s grey eyes glitter.
‘He intends to come down here to see you. I simply could not put him off … If you refuse to see him he’ll …’
‘Assume that I’m still suffering from a massive adolescent crush,’ Christy supplied bitterly. ‘Well, I can’t see why I should allow myself to be pressurised into accepting a job I don’t want, simply to prove something I don’t care about to someone I’m not interested in.’
‘Well if that’s how you feel …’
Georgina sounded so helpless and vague that Christy stared at her suspiciously. She knew her mother when she used that tone of voice, it meant she was concealing something.
‘Obviously you don’t agree with my decision.’
‘My dear, it isn’t a matter of not agreeing,’ Georgina said gently, ‘it’s more a matter of why you’re so determined not to agree. If you really do feel nothing towards Simon I can’t see why you’re refusing to accept the job. Only the other month you were saying you’d love to go to the Caribbean, but you couldn’t see how you could afford it.’
‘That was for a holiday—not to work, and you’re right, I’m not indifferent to Simon,’ she said crisply. ‘I dislike him. We wouldn’t work in harmony together.’
‘Well, you know your own mind, but I suspect that Simon will try to change it for you. This book means a lot to him, Christy. He’s done all the ground work and all he needs to do now is to make this trip out to the Caribbean.’
‘And of course nothing must stand in the way of what the great Simon Jardine wants,’ Christie said bitterly. ‘I’ve been used as a sacrifice on the altar of his ambition once Mum, I’m not letting it happen again.’
After that the subject was allowed to drop. Her mother went upstairs to unpack and Christy wandered back into the garden to enjoy the last of the afternoon sun, but found that she could not settle or relax. Of course she had made the right decision, Simon Jardine had hurt her badly once, so badly that the scars still had the power to ache, but she wasn’t vulnerable to him any longer. So why was she refusing? Forcing herself to be honest with herself, she acknowledged that if the job had meant working with someone else, Miles for instance, she would have jumped at it. Was she indifferent to Simon? Of course not; how could she be? He had hurt her deeply and of course she was wary, but that didn’t mean she still had a crush on him—far from it. She mulled the matter over in her mind, convinced that she had made the right decision. In that summer she was eighteen she had lived on the edge of her emotions all the time. She didn’t want that again. She was safe now and she enjoyed her safety, she didn’t want to have to be constantly on edge, constantly reinforcing her immunity to him. And Simon himself would never accept her indifference; he was the sort of man who demanded by right the interest of every woman who crossed his path, no matter whether he was prepared to return that interest or not.
Forget about him, she scolded herself, put him out of your mind … concentrate instead on the summer ahead. She closed her eyes, letting her thoughts drift, but annoyingly they drifted back in time not forward. At last unable to fight the crushing pressure of her memories any longer she gave up the battle. Oh very well … perhaps she ought to remember … perhaps she ought to relive those days again, if only mentally …