‘Just leave it, Miranda, won’t you?’ Suddenly Catherine was feeling flustered, out of her depth. Her boss was the last person to make a value judgement about her behaviour, but what about the way she was judging herself? ‘I don’t want to talk about it!’
‘Well, let me show you something,’ said Miranda slowly, and picked up a clutch of photos which were lying on her desk, ‘which might just change your mind.’
‘If it’s photos of Finn, you’ve already shown me—remember? I know he’s loaded, and I know he’s powerful and the next-best thing to sliced bread, but if you’re looking for a kiss-and-tell story then you’re wasting your time, Miranda.’
‘No—look,’ said Miranda with unusual brevity, and handed her one of the photos.
Catherine stared at it, and her blood ran cold as time seemed to suspend itself.
For it was like looking into a mirror. Seeing herself, only not quite seeing herself. The same and yet remarkably different. She blinked. The woman in the photo had jet-black hair and huge green eyes, and a certain resemblance around the mouth, but there the similarities ended.
It was like comparing a piece of crude mineral deposi
t to the finished, highly polished diamond it would one day become.
Because the woman in the photo had all the pampered glamour of someone who spent absolute riches on herself. Someone who indulged, and indulged, and indulged.
‘Who is this?’ breathed Catherine.
‘Deirdra O’Shea,’ said Miranda instantly. ‘Heard of her?’
‘N-no.’
‘Bit before your time, I guess—though I’d only vaguely heard of her myself. She’s Irish—well, the name speaks for itself, doesn’t it?—starred in a couple of forgettable films about ten years ago and has been living in Hollywood trying to make it big ever since but never quite managing it. She’s your spitting image, isn’t she?’
Something close to fear was making breathing suddenly very difficult. ‘Why are you bothering to show me this?’
Miranda shrugged, and thrust another photo into Catherine’s frozen fingers. ‘Just that she was Finn Delaney’s sweetheart.’
It was a curiously old-fashioned word to use, especially about a man like Finn, and it hurt Catherine more than it had any right to. ‘What do you mean, his sweetheart?’
‘He was smitten, apparently—completely and ut terly smitten. They met before either of them had really made it—and you know what that kind of love is like. Fierce and elemental. Love without the trappings.’ Miranda sighed, sounding for a moment almost wistful. ‘The real thing.’
‘I still don’t understand what this has got to do with me!’ said Catherine crossly, but she was beginning to get a very good idea.
‘He’s a notoriously private man, right?’
Catherine shrugged. ‘Apparently.’
‘Yet he meets you on a Greek island and tells you to look him up.’
‘Lots of people do things like that on holiday.’
‘And you fly out there and have some kind of red-hot weekend with him—’
‘I didn’t say that!’
‘You didn’t have to, Catherine—like I said, I can read it all over your face.’ Miranda paused. ‘Are you seeing him again?’
Now she felt worse than reckless—she felt stupid, too. ‘I—hadn’t—planned to.’
‘He didn’t ask you?’
No, he hadn’t asked her. The truth slammed home like a blunt fist and defensiveness seemed her only rational form of protection. ‘Miranda—what the hell is this all about? Some kind of Spanish Inquisition?’
‘All I’m saying is that if he used you as some kind of substitute for the woman who broke his heart—’
Catherine opened her mouth to say that it wasn’t like that. But what had it been like, then? He hadn’t struck her as the kind of man who would normally make mad, passionate love to a complete stranger. A notoriously private man…