This was a stupid conversation since she was going absolutely nowhere! she realised suddenly, and sighed, her shoulders slumping inside the soft mink wool. ‘There isn’t a name,’ she muttered, angry at the easy way he had managed totally to deflate her exciting day. Her eyes glittered around the scattered parcels which had now lost all their pleasure. ‘I’m on my way in, not out.’ And one look at this room made it as clear as night followed day that she had just come in from a long day’s shopping spree! Who was he trying to kid with that small frown that suggested he was only just noticing the mad clutter of boxes, bags and tissue-paper?
Daniel moved across the room to the nearest one—a long, flat box which had not yet been delved into by curious fingers—and Rachel took her chance while he was no longer blocking her exit, picked up her new brown suede bag and moved towards the sitting-room door, her mouth set in a thin line of disappointment.
‘What’s in this?’
She shrugged, feeling as petulant as Kate did when she did not get the response she had been anticipating. ‘A suit,’ she answered reluctantly.
‘And this one?’ He nudged another box with a highly polished shoe.
‘Underwear.’ She blushed uncomfortably, because the box was full to overflowing with the most expensive silk underwear Rachel had ever seen.
‘And this?’
‘A couple of new dresses!’ Her eyes flashed resentfully at him. ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘You aren’t going to read me a lecture on over-spending are you? It was you who gave me all those credit card things! One for every big store in London, I think!’ She had a wallet stuffed with them. They had just taken up space in her purse until today, when she had learned the delights they could offer her.
He ignored that, his expression slightly guarded when he suggested casually enough, ‘A dress worthy of dinner in one of London’s most exclusive restaurants, with maybe a little dancing later?’
She had turned back to the door by this time, but the invitation had her spinning back to stare at him in blank incomprehension. ‘Are you asking me out?’ she queried, with such a blatant lack of guile that Daniel’s smile became ruefully crooked.
‘Yes.’ He nodded, all dry mockery. And Rachel had a feeling that he found her lack of sophistication highly amusing. She flushed heatedly, wishing the world would just open up and swallow her rather than continue to put her through this purgatory. Nothing she could do, it seemed, would ever make her anything more than a silly, gauche fool! ‘Yes, Rachel,’ he repeated more gently, as though reading her discomfort and suddenly sorry for causing it. ‘I am asking you if you would like to dine out with me tonight.’
‘Oh.’ Thoroughly disconcerted, and not sure how to answer him, she was very relieved when Sam came tumbling down the stairs at that moment, like a snowball out of control, to rumble right by her and leap like a jack-rabbit on to his father’s chest.
‘Hi!’ he greeted, smiling into that face which was so like his own. ‘Mum’s got me this great new computer game,’ he went on in an excited rush. ‘Can I bring it down here and try it out on the big TV? It’s a flight simulator and you have to take off and land a Tornado jet!’
‘Why not?’ Daniel agreed, smiling at his son while his eyes never left Rachel. ‘If your grandmother doesn’t mind, that is, since she will be staying here with you while I take your mother out to dinner.’
‘You’re taking Mum out?’ The child sounded as surprised as Rachel had been, which made Daniel grimace. But Sam was already beaming his approval at Rachel. ‘That’s great!’ he announced. ‘Dad taking you out instead of you going on your own like last—’
‘Sam.’ The quiet warning from his father shut him up, and Rachel felt stiff and awkward.
‘Maybe your mother doesn’t want to baby-sit,’ she said uncomfortably, knowing he had only asked her because he felt obliged to after seeing all the trouble she’d gone to to make herself different. ‘She’s been here all day as it is. It isn’t fair to—’
‘I don’t mind,’ another voice chipped in quietly from the hallway. Rachel turned to find his mother and Kate standing there, listening in as if there was no such thing as privacy in this house!
‘That’s not the point!’ Rachel snapped. ‘You’ve been put on quite enough for one day. I—’
‘Take her somewhere nice,’ Jenny said to her son over the top of Rachel’s protests.
Rachel sighed impatiently because she was well aware that she was being thoroughly outmanoeuvred here. ‘I haven’t said I want to go out, as far as I recall!’ she inserted crossly.
‘Of course you want to go!’ Jenny dismissed that argument. ‘So just get upstairs with you—and take all those boxes with you!’ she ordered. ‘Kate—Sammy—help your mother upstairs with some of these,’ she continued briskly, while Rachel heaved a small sigh of surrender because, unless she was prepared to tell all of them why she had no wish to go anywhere with Daniel, she really had no choice.
The children jumped eagerly to their grandmother’s bidding, gathering up parcels and making for the door, leaving Rachel to bring the rest. She was just starting up the stairs when Jenny’s voice drifted towards her, sounding cross and stern. ‘If you ask me, Daniel, this evening out for both of you is well overdue! And it wouldn’t go amiss if you began involving her in your business socialising too!’
Pausing on the stairs, Rachel waited curiously to hear Daniel’s reply to that stern scold, but his voice was pitched too low for her to catch the words.
But Jenny could be heard plainly. ‘Rubbish!’ she snapped. ‘How do you know she’ll hate it when you’ve never given her the chance to find out for herself? The trouble with you, Daniel, is you’ve kept her so wrapped up in cotton wool that she’s never been allowed to discover what she wants out of life!’
Was that what Jenny really thought? Rachel mused curiously. She’d always thought she knew exactly what she wanted out of life—to be a wife and mother. That was all. Nothing fancy. Nothing ambitious or overexciting. Just a wife to the man she loved and a mother to the children she adored.
Was there something wrong with that?
‘And I’ll have my say about something else, while I’m about it,’ Jenny continued brusquely. ‘I don’t know what has been happening here to break that poor child’s heart, but I know her blessed eyes have been opened to something nasty—and I know where the blame for that lies too!’
Rachel felt her heart sink, that horrible feeling of desolation washing over her as it always did when she was reminded of Mandy’s call.
Lights really do go out when your world caves in, she observed sadly.