was willing to acknowledge that where women were concerned he had a low boredom threshold. In fact he was notorious for the brevity of his relationships. But this would be something different—something new and fresh. A contractual agreement would be the best blueprint for such an arrangement. His lawyers would relish that novel challenge almost as much as he would revel in having Lia act out his every tacky fantasy…
The young bespectacled solicitor gave Lydia a troubled look. ‘I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.’
Lydia dropped her head, weariness engulfing her. ‘I know…’
‘You must protect yourself,’ he warned her equally wearily.
‘Not if that means my mother taking the blame,’ Lydia countered in a tight, driven voice. ‘This is nothing to do with her and I won’t have her involved.’
‘But as co-signatory on the cheques she is involved,’ the solicitor pointed out flatly. ‘Naturally the police want to speak to her as well.’
Lydia said nothing. During the preceding long and nerve-racking interview with two officers she had been asked repeatedly where her mother, Virginia Carlton, was. Nobody had believed her when she’d said she didn’t know, and she had tried not to care. After all, even if she had known she would have protected the older woman by keeping her whereabouts a secret. She was determined not to let her mother pay the price for her daughter’s mistakes.
Now, one of the fraud officers reappeared. He told her that, although she was to be released on bail while more enquiries were made, she would have to return to the station in four days’ time for further questioning. Even as her heart sank at that assurance, Lydia was informed that she would have to leave the interview room and wait in a cell for the necessary paperwork to be prepared. Her tummy flipped in dismay. Her solicitor protested, but to no avail.
The cell door was mercifully closed on her before a violent fit of shaking overtook her tall, slender frame. Sinking down on the hard sleeping platform, Lydia wrapped trembling arms round herself in an effort to get a grip. There was no point in giving way to the fear and the panic pulling at her. Matters were only going to get worse, she reminded herself heavily. The wheels of justice were grinding into motion to prosecute and punish her, and if she was found guilty she would serve a prison sentence. Eventually the sight of a cell would be very familiar to her. The money from the Happy Holidays account was gone, and she could neither repay it nor borrow it. The conviction that she could only blame herself for that state of affairs hit her hard.
Her thin shoulders slumped, guilt racking her. It was a familiar feeling. Things always went horribly wrong, and it seemed that it was her fault…
When Lydia had been ten years old she had survived a boating accident in which her father and her kid brother had drowned. Her mother, Virginia, had been distraught. ‘This is your fault!’ she had screamed furiously at her daughter. ‘Who was it who begged and begged to go on that stupid boat trip? You killed them. You killed the two of them!’
And, even though other people had hushed the hysterical older woman, Lydia had known that her grieving parent was only speaking the unpalatable truth. Then, when her father’s business had gone bankrupt, and their comfortable standard of living had vanished overnight, Lydia had known that she was to blame for that as well. It had been a huge relief when she’d discovered just a few years later that she had the earning power to give that luxury lifestyle back to her mother. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one Lydia had made a small fortune as a model.
But then, Lydia acknowledged wretchedly, she had become selfish—stupidly, wickedly selfish. And shortsighted. She’d hated modelling, and a bad experience and a broken heart had persuaded her to leave the fashion world behind and train as a garden designer. Everything that since had gone wrong could be traced back to that single foolish and fanciful decision…
Still in fear of the press cameras that had greeted her arrival at the police station, Lydia walked stiffly out to the reception area. Thankfully the only person to show the slightest interest in her appearance was the small curvaceous brunette seated there. Her cousin Gwenna stood up, frowning when she saw the exhaustion etched on Lydia’s face. Yet the younger woman still looked so incredibly beautiful that even Gwenna found it hard not to stare. The pure lines of Lydia’s delicate bone structure, allied to her dazzling blue eyes and the mane of naturally pale blonde hair, took most people’s breath away.
‘Gwenna?’ Lydia was dismayed that the other woman had subjected herself to the embarrassment of coming to the police station on her behalf. ‘You shouldn’t have come—’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Gwenna scolded her in Welsh as she marched her much taller cousin out into the night and on to the car park, with her head held high and her chin at a determined angle, defying the camera flashes. ‘You’re family—and where else should I be? I’m here to take you home—’
Lydia was too touched by Gwenna’s appearance to be able to find the right words in Welsh, a language that she had only recently rediscovered. She swallowed hard on the thickness in her throat and climbed into Gwenna’s ancient hatchback. As a young child she had often stayed in Gwenna’s Welsh-speaking home while her own parents were abroad. Eighteen months back, when Lydia’s life had been in awful turmoil, Gwenna had phoned to invite her to use the family farm as a bolthole. The generous warmth of that offer had meant a great deal to Lydia at a time when her friends had abandoned her.
‘I really appreciate you doing this, but I think you should forget that you know me for a while—’
‘I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Gwenna interposed, in probably much the same no-nonsense tone that she employed with the teenagers she taught. In her early thirties, she had short dark hair that shone as though it had been polished.
When Lydia unlocked the door of the tiny terraced house where she now lived, Gwenna headed straight for the kitchen. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea while you nip upstairs and pack a bag.’
Lydia stiffened. ‘No, I’m not coming home with you. This is a small community and you have to live and work here. You mustn’t get caught up in my problems.’
Gwenna turned. ‘Lydia—’
‘No…’ Fierce conviction made Lydia’s soft voice unusually firm. ‘I mean it. Think of your father. He’s barely over the loss of your mother. Let’s not upset him with this as well.’
The brunette’s look of disconcertion told Lydia that she had stumbled on the one argument that would work—for Gwenna was protective of her elderly parent.
‘But thanks for caring,’ Lydia tacked on gently.
Sudden anger brightened Gwenna’s troubled gaze. ‘But it’s not a matter of caring. You didn’t take that money and we all know who did!’
Her colour fluctuating at that assertion, Lydia breathed, ‘Maybe you think you know—’
‘Come off it! You’re so straight you can’t tell a lie without crossing your fingers!’ her cousin told her impatiently. ‘Do you expect me to keep quiet while you take the rap for a woman who couldn’t care less about you?’
Losing colour at that blunt statement, Lydia switched on the kettle. Gwenna had never been able to understand the nature of Lydia’s relationship with her mother. The brunette’s family had been blessed with a quiet and secure lifestyle, while Virginia had survived tragedy and a succession of thoroughly unreliable men that would have broken a lesser woman. ‘My mother has had a very tough life—’
‘Look, she was telling you that when you were five years old, making you fetch and carry like a little slave while she moaned about the horrors of motherhood. And let’s not overlook the fact that between them your mother and your stepfather have managed to spend every penny you ever earned!’
There was reproach in Lydia’s troubled gaze. ‘You can’t blame them because the nightclub failed and I lost everything last year. I was naïve about the amount of money I’d made as a model. I thought it would last