redolent with his silent laughter at her expense ‘—you grew up surrounded by swimming pools and sea! Some of us didn’t!’
Theo was intrigued. He had wanted valuable information, information he could use to build up his case against her so that he could prevent a travesty of a marriage taking place, but this useless snippet was curiously engaging.
‘I didn’t think that you needed to be surrounded by swimming pools and sea in order to learn to swim,’ he said, staring at her flushed face. ‘I thought schools in England offered swimming lessons as part of the curriculum.’
‘They probably do!’ It was out before she had time to think. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out the next logical question to her outburst and she waited in gloomy silence for the inevitable.
‘You mean you didn’t go to school in England? Did you grow up in Australia? Is that why your parents returned there?’
Abby looked at him with a hunted expression. ‘No, I didn’t grow up in Australia. I had an unusual upbringing,’ she eventually muttered.
‘How unusual?’ He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and continued to look at her with what she thought was an unhealthy level of interest.
Couldn’t the man see that she was uncomfortable? Yes, she thought waspishly, of course he could, which would be no reason for him to back away from the subject. Well this, at least, was no great secret, was it?
‘My parents were…a bit unorthodox. They travelled a lot.’
‘You mean they were gypsies?’
‘Of course they weren’t gypsies! Not that I have anything against gypsies, as it happens! But do I look like a gypsy to you? Do I? With this hair?’ She yanked off the hat and extended one long handful of her amazing hair towards him. Theo realised that he was thoroughly enjoying this surreal turn in the conversation. He took the proffered hair and made a show of examining it carefully.
‘Could be dyed,’ was his comment as she snatched it out of his fingers.
‘I’ve never dyed my hair in my life.’
‘So explain.’
‘Okay. If you really must know, my parents were…were…sort of…hippyish.’ There. It was out. She waited for the roar of laughter and the immediate attack. Instead he was looking at her with real interest. ‘They didn’t believe in material possessions or settling down. When I was older, Mum told me that life was one long adventure and what was adventurous about settling down with a mortgage and a job at the bank? So they travelled. Course, I did go to school but never anywhere for very long, not long enough to…’
‘Take swimming lessons? Make friends?’
‘Of course I made friends! Lots of them over the years.’ But they had come and gone and her parents had never understood that whilst they saw that ever-changing parade of people entering and leaving her life as exciting, she found it very hard to deal with. She had never really even had the opportunity to have boyfriends in the normal way. What would have been the point? They would have been short-lived anyway. Which, with the benefit of hindsight, had made her a walking target for being hurt, because when her parents left for Australia and she could finally impose stability on her life, she just didn’t have the accumulated experience to spot the cad. Oliver James had been charming and persistent and she had fallen for him hook, line and sinker, never spotting all the inaccuracies in his behaviour that most other girls would have seen a mile off.
That, she thought, was something Theo Toyas would never learn about!
‘That was incredibly selfish of your parents. Why did they decide to go to Australia?’
‘More space to wander.’ Abby grinned sheepishly. ‘Although they tell me that they’ve now opened a shop in Melbourne, selling organic food and ethnic ornaments. They’ve even bought themselves a small house and they’re planning on coming to England next year for a three month holiday.’
‘I’d like to meet them,’ Theo surprised himself by saying. He was picturing her as a girl, trekking in the wake of her parents from one place to another, longing for stability so that she could be like everyone else.
Then he reminded himself that really this was just the sort of background that would encourage her to go after a man with money, a man who could promise her the security she craved.
‘I don’t often meet nomads in my day-to-day life,’ he amended, backtracking on that fleeting impulse that had seen him wrapped up in her life story, hanging on like a kid listening to a riveting bedtime yarn. Touching though her little tale had been, it had nothing to do with the reality he needed to deal with. He gave her a brisk, cool smile and vaulted to his feet. ‘I’m going to have one last swim before I go inside for breakfast. In case you don’t know the routine, breakfast tends to be a buffet affair. Everyone’s going to be busy getting ready for tonight, so I shouldn’t expect to be waited on hand and foot if I were you.’
With that he turned his back and sauntered towards the pool, leaving her to simmer at the pointed dig in his remark. She was sorely tempted to throw her book at the back of that arrogant head of his, especially as it was a hardback, but no, giving in to emotion was a bad idea. Instead she glowered and removed herself from the lounger and headed back towards the villa.
For a minute there she had very nearly forgotten how dislikeable he was and that wasn’t going to do. For Michael’s sake, she had to be on her guard.
The object of her protectiveness was still asleep and Abby nudged him with one finger until he rolled over and looked at her blearily. ‘You can’t spend all day in bed,’ she informed him without preamble and Michael smiled at her drowsily.
‘You sound like a wife.’
‘Michael, be serious.’
‘I am being serious.’ He grinned. ‘Where have you been, anyway?’
‘By the pool.’
‘You can’t swim.’
‘I know that, Michael. I was by the pool with your brother and I’m beginning to think that this engagement business wasn’t a very good idea.’
That had him sitting up abruptly. Michael had a range of silk pyjamas. It was his only sartorial weakness. Today’s number was a deep blue and beige Paisley. Abby fleetingly wondered whether his brother had a similar taste in pyjamas and concluded that the man probably didn’t sleep in any at all. He didn’t strike her as a pyjama-wearing type. She immediately squashed any follow-up to that line of thinking and focused on her partner, who was looking at her with a worried expression.
‘Of course it’s a good idea. You’re not going to back out on me now, are you? Are you?’
‘I just didn’t think it through,’ Abby mumbled. ‘I can see why you wanted it, really I can, but now that I’m actually here, I don’t like deceiving your mother. And your grandfather, for that matter. They’re nice people.’
‘We’re not deceiving them,’ Michael whispered urgently. ‘And the reason we’re doing this is because they’re nice people. Please don’t back out on me now, Abby. Please.’
‘And another thing,’ she said uneasily. ‘Your brother suspects something.’
‘What?’
‘Well, for a start he thinks that I’m after your money.’
Michael grinned at that. ‘Well, that’s okay. He’s way off target, then.’
‘True, but the fact is that he’s going to probe until he finds out the truth.’
‘He’s here for three days, Abs. How much probing can one man do in the space of three days?’
A normal man, she wanted to say, not much, but your brother, more than I feel happy about.
‘I suppose I could just keep out of his way for the