Oh, God, he’s never going to want me now. He’ll hate me even more than he does already. I put us all through this torture for nothing!’ She buried her head in her hands, her hair falling around her body like a golden veil. Then she wrenched her tragic face up again. ‘And Granny—the wedding! Regan—please help me…what do you think I should do?’
Regan forced herself to be calm, not to choke on the throttling hope that threatened to close off her air supply. ’The first thing you have to do,’ she said carefully, ‘is tell Joshua.’
Carolyn looked white-eyed with panic. ‘Oh, no, I can’t tell Jay!’
‘Why can’t you?’ asked Regan hollowly. Was Carolyn now going to proclaim she’d fallen out of love with Chris and in love with Joshua?
‘I just can’t,’ she babbled, clutching the arms of the chair. ‘Not after all he’s done for me. He and Chris had never had a serious argument in their lives until I came along, and now, because Jay stood up for me and tried to help me, even knowing how much I love Chris—Oh, God, neither of them are going to forgive me…it’s all going to be so humiliating…you just don’t understand!’
Better a little humiliation now than a lifetime of unhappiness ahead, thought Regan acidly. How in the world had Carolyn thought she could be happy in a marriage that would have made her a sister to the man she still truly loved? How could even Joshua have been so arrogant as to believe he could make Carolyn content with such a situation? It was a recipe for emotional disaster whether or not the estrangement between the brothers remained permanent.
‘No, I don’t understand,’ she said steadily. ‘But I do know that you can’t go through with the wedding with Joshua still thinking that you’re going to have his brother’s baby. You must know how he feels about honesty. Remember what happened last time he married a woman who tried to use a pregnancy to manipulate him? As a matter of honour—his and yours—you have to tell him.’
‘He’ll think I’m a moron—so will Chris!’
‘Chris is a doctor, for goodness’ sake—he should have considered the possibility of something like this and insisted you both reserve any decisions until you’d had a proper examination. Of course, that would have been the rational thing to do, and people in love aren’t always rational.’
Carolyn’s eyes suddenly went dreamy. ‘No…that’s true…I know I sprung it on him badly, when we were in the middle of a fight about something else, and he felt cornered—but so did I! Maybe I should tell Chris first. After all, it was supposed to be his baby—and he could tell Jay…’
Regan eyed her cynically. ‘I don’t think it’s the sort of thing Joshua would appreciate hearing second-hand.’
All Regan’s advice seemed to fall on deaf ears, and by the time she went downstairs she had a real headache, which suddenly got worse when Sir Frank greeted her in the breakfast room with cheerful congratulations on her excellent timing—because Joshua had just arrived and was waiting to see her in the library.
‘I put him in there because he said it was business and he wanted somewhere you wouldn’t be disturbed. I hope he’s not going to try and poach you away from Harriman’s before the takeover—but then, that would sort of be like poaching you away from himself, wouldn’t it?’
His chuckle followed her down the hall, but Regan didn’t feel at all like laughing. As soon as she walked into the library and saw Ryan standing slouched beside the desk, nervously pushing his glasses up his nose, her heart sank.
Joshua, standing behind the desk, threw a sheaf of computer printouts on the desk, scattering them like confetti.
‘Perhaps you’d like to explain these?’ Icicles dripped from every syllable.
Out of the corner of her eye Regan could see Ryan wince. Whatever he had done, against her express instructions, she knew she couldn’t let him take any of the blame. ‘I—what are they?’
Joshua’s fist crashed down on top of the papers, the ice melting to reveal the molten volcano of temper beneath.
‘Don’t compound your lies by pretending innocence!’ he roared. ‘No wonder you were so eager to join me on the boat yesterday. It provided you with the perfect alibi!’ He raked her with a look of searing contempt. ‘You had my son back at the office doing your dirty work for you, while you kept me safely out of the way. I compliment you on your technique—suborn the son and seduce the father.’
Regan had done neither, but she could see he was in no mood to listen. She tentatively picked up one of the pieces of paper. ‘But, surely, you must be able to see—’
He lunged forward and dashed it from her hands. ‘I see, all right!’ he erupted. ‘I see that you used him…you used my son—’ in his ungovernable outrage, his passionate protectiveness towards his family had never been more apparent ‘—to cover up a crime! You used his feelings for you to make him an accessory to fraud. When I found these in his room this morning I knew that I was the fool being taken for a ride yesterday.’
‘But, Dad, I told you—Regan said she didn’t want me to—’
‘Be quiet, son, you’re in deep enough trouble as it is! What Regan says and what she means are two different things.’ He swung his attention back to her guilty white face. ‘Was this a set-up right from the beginning—from that first night in my apartment?’
Regan rallied, as outraged as he by the notion. ‘No! You know it couldn’t have been!’
‘And you expect me to believe you?’ he slashed sardonically, but seemed to accept that his accusation was incompatible with subsequent events as he went on, ‘Serendipity, then, when you were given the chance to come to Palm Cove and realised that you might use our former…liaison to help create a smokescreen for your actions. Were those sexual tricks you performed on me yesterday supposed to be your version of a personal insurance policy? Designed to make me reluctant to summon the police in the event of your being found out—’
‘Joshua!’ she gasped in agonised protest, glancing meaningfully at Ryan, who was following the conversation back and forth with a deep, and noticeably unrepentant fascination.
Her concern seemed only to trigger an even greater fury. ‘What? Do you think we might be corrupting his innocence? It’s a little late to worry about that, isn’t it? I think, for his own future protection, it’s about time he learned the difference between an honest woman and a conniving little whore!’
Chapter Ten
‘LEAVE? But you don’t have to leave!’
Sir Frank’s bluff response to her miserable confession made Regan feel marginally better. Her coruscating encounter with Joshua had ended shortly after his ugly outburst, when he had seemed to recognise that his inability to control his rising fury at her brave defence of her character rendered him unacceptably vulnerable in his son’s eyes—and his own. He had stormed out of the house leaving a dozen menacing threats hanging in the air, with a stunned Ryan mouthing silent apologies and flapping cryptic hand-signals to Regan that she presumed were meant to be reassuring as he was frog-marched to the door.
It had all happened so fast that Regan had felt as if she had been the victim of a lightning razor attack—there had been no pain, only a numb shock as she’d contemplated her numerous slicing wounds. She had limped back to the dining room and summoned the presence of mind to make a clean breast about Michael’s theft, and her failed efforts to replace the money, to an astonished Sir Frank and Hazel.
She hadn’t mentioned Ryan, merely saying that Joshua had discovered what she was doing, and she had been staggered when, instead of accusing her of aiding and abetting her husband’s crime, or condemning her stupidity, the Harrimans had rallied round with shocked support.
At her implacable insistence,