‘But you don’t mind hurting me,’ Hugo had challenged her grimly.
She had sighed and wrapped her arms lovingly around his neck.
‘Does it matter which of you won the argument?’
‘Yes,’ Hugo had told her simply, before pointing out more acerbically, ‘If it didn’t you wouldn’t have found it necessary to side with your father, would you?’
‘I meant, does it matter to you?’ Dee had countered placatingly. ‘It isn’t easy for Dad, you know Hugo, having to accept you into my life.’
‘It isn’t easy for me having to accept him into ours,’ Hugo had retorted. ‘One day you’re going to have to choose which of us your loyalty really lies with,’ he had warned her.
But Dee had crossed her fingers behind her back, telling herself that, given time, the pair of them would become better friends. And perhaps they might have done if Hugo had been more willing to give ground to her father and listen to his advice, even if he didn’t act on it, or if her father had been able to accept that Hugo needed to be allowed to feel that her father respected his viewpoint even if he couldn’t agree with it.
As it was, with neither of them prepared to give ground, Dee had eventually resorted to keeping the peace between them by keeping them apart.
Later on, when she was sitting with her father, all too conscious of the growing male antagonism between him and Hugo, and just about to have a final attempt at bringing her father round to the idea of her working abroad with him, the doorbell rang. Whilst he went to open the door Dee acknowledged that if she had to choose between them, then she would choose Hugo. Her father was her past...Hugo was her man, her lover, her present and her future. Her heart sank as her father walked back into the room accompanied by his visitor.
Her father had first introduced her to Julian Cox just after Christmas. Although he was no more than five or six years older than Dee, Julian dressed and behaved more like a man of her father’s age, and Dee particularly disliked the patronising way that Julian behaved towards her, and the disparaging references made to her status as a student. Her father, though, refused to acknowledge any fault or flaw in him, and constantly sang his praises to Dee, drawing Dee’s attention to his politeness and good manners, his smart way of dressing.
Personally, Dee found him smarmy and totally unappealing, but she had no wish to widen the rift developing between her and her father by telling him so. Her father had informed her that Julian worked as a freelance financial consultant, and, at her father’s instigation, Julian had been invited to join the committees of two of the charities her father was involved with.
The two men seemed to spend a good deal of time together, and Dee acknowledged as she watched the familiar way Julian dropped into one of the sitting-room armchairs that it irked her that he should be so much at home in her father’s house. Almost immediately as he sat down Julian began a conversation with her father which totally excluded Dee, eventually turning to her and apologising insincerely.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Dee...we must be boring you. Finance isn’t of any interest to you students, is it? Unless you’re agitating for larger grants.’ He guffawed loudly at his own joke, and to Dee’s irritation she could see that her father was actually smiling.
It was very tempting to tell Julian that, far from not having any interest in finance, she had managed very successfully to turn the modest investments she had begun with into a very respectable amount of money.
The two men were discussing the charity her father had begun to set up to benefit the local townspeople.
It was obvious to Dee from what was being said that Julian Cox was expecting to play a very major role in the control of the foundation’s assets. Dee found this information disquieting.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Hugo had asked Dee when she had tried to explain her instinctive dislike of Julian to him.
‘He makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,’ was all Dee had been able to tell him.
‘Dee,’ Hugo had teased her, ‘I thought only I could do that.’
‘It’s not the same,’ Dee had objected. ‘When you do it it’s because...because I love and want you, but when it’s him, it’s because... He makes my skin crawl, Hugo... there’s something about him that I just don’t like. I don’t trust him...’
‘Tell your father, not me,’ Hugo had counselled her.
‘He wouldn’t listen,’ Dee had admitted uncomfortably.
Hugo’s eyebrows had risen, his mouth curling cynically as he’d commented, ‘No...but according to you your father is a man of reason and compassion, a man who is always willing to listen to the views of others. Others, but not, it seems, to me or to you...’
‘Hugo, that isn’t fair,’ Dee had protested. ‘We’re talking about two different things. My father—’
‘Your father is jealous because you love me,’ Hugo had told her flatly, ‘and until you accept that fact I’m afraid you and I are never going to see eye to eye over him.’
‘Now you’re doing what you always complain my father does,’ Dee had told him angrily. ‘Now you’re trying to put emotional pressure on me. Hugo, I love him...he’s my father and I want so much for the two of you to get on well together...’
‘Have you told him that?’ Hugo had asked her wryly.
It was an argument that was destined to run and run, and of course it had.
* * *
‘Have you told him yet?’ Hugo asked Dee that evening.